Hitting the Target

by Evangeline Anderson

  In fact, she felt anything but fine. A heaviness seemed to have settled in the pit of her stomach although whether it was the poison already acting on her or just the fact that she was never going to see Trey again after today that was affecting her, she didn’t know.

  “Well…” The big Kindred was wavering. He seemed to sense that something was wrong with her, but he didn’t know exactly what.

  “I don’t want you to miss your surgery.” Mia tried to smile though the expression felt stiff and unnatural on her face. “I’ll be here studying—I want to pass all the certifications at once so I can assist you during your next one.”

  At last it looked like Trey was going to let himself be persuaded.

  “If you’re really sure…” he began.

  Mia nodded firmly. “I am—yesterday was bad but I’m better now. Honestly.”

  “All right then. I’ll call you on the com-link around noon to check on you.” He pulled her into a swift embrace and Mia had to fight to keep herself from clinging to him.

  Don’t go, she wanted to beg. Don’t leave me—I’ll never see you again. I don’t want to die without you.

  “I love you,” she whispered in his ear instead and then made herself let him go.

  “I love you too, little one.” Trey pulled back and searched her eyes with his own, which flashed from green to gold for a moment. “You know—there are some things I need to tell you about before we’re bonded, but I don’t have time now. Maybe we could make a date to talk tonight after Last Meal?”

  “I’d love to,” Mia said, knowing she would never share a meal with him again. “But for now, you’re going to be late.”

  He sighed ruefully. “You’re right. Why is it so hard for me to leave you?”

  Not half as hard as it is for me to leave you, Mia thought sadly. “I love you,” she said again. “I’ll see you tonight.” Which was a lie.

  “See you tonight.” Trey gave her another big hug and a lingering kiss and then, finally, he opened the door in the ship’s metal and was gone.

  Mia sighed and slumped as he finally left. Now there was nothing to do but wait for her extraction and regret the path that her life had taken. Nothing to do but begin missing the big Kindred because she knew she would never see him again.

  Trey didn’t like leaving her for some reason. Though she claimed to be fine, he thought he saw a haunted look in her pearly blue eyes that bothered him, and she’d barely touched her First Meal food. His beast was worried about her too, and suggested strongly that they stay home.

  There’s something wrong, he told Trey. She smells different. We should stay.

  But Trey overruled his other half. Mia was a grown woman and clearly wanted to be treated as such. Though she had wanted to be held and cuddled the night before, that morning she seemed determined to be strong and put the attack behind her.

  It would still be nice to spend the day together though, Trey thought longingly, remembering the feel of her soft curves pressed to his own hard body. Well, maybe he would go home early today, he told himself, brightening up. He only had the one surgery scheduled and he could ask to have his consults rescheduled for another day. He could go home and surprise her for Mid Meal. Either they could go out on the town to try and forget everything—or else they could just stay home and watch vids and relax on the couch.

  Either option sounded great to him as long as it involved the little female he loved. His beast grumbled some more but he promised his other half they would be going back to Mia soon—right after he finished the surgery.

  Lydiah was assisting him that day in the OR and he was almost done when she said, “Say, I meant to ask you earlier, Healer Treygar—did you hear about the body they found in your park?”

  “The body?” Trey looked up from the patient on his table, his stomach suddenly cold.

  “Yeah—looked like he’d been killed by a targen of all things. But you know we don’t have those this far west,” Lydiah shook her head. “I don’t know how it could be unless one escaped from the zoo.”

  Trey felt a guilty sense of relief. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about disposing of the body of the man his beast had killed the day before. That was sloppy of him—really damn sloppy. But at least the death had been chalked up to an animal attack and couldn’t be traced back to him in any way.

  “A targen? I’ll have to be careful going back and forth from the transport station to my domicile.”

  “Well, at least the damn thing killed the right person,” Lydiah remarked as she counted the instruments.

  “What?” Trey frowned at her. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say? He was a spy from the PR. At least, that was what the Watch-See News vid said. And they’re usually pretty accurate.” Lydiah shook her head. “You know, they’re always sending their agents down here—I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish. Half the time I think they’re just trying to cause trouble for no reason.”

  Trey felt sick. “Healer Hrll,” he said, motioning to the younger healer who had been assisting him and observing his surgical technique. “Can you close?”

  “Me?” The young healer’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Trey snapped. “Can you handle it, or should I call in a more senior member of the surgical staff?”

  “Oh, no—I can handle it,” Hrll said quickly. “Thank you, Healer Treygar, for the opportunity.”

  “You’re welcome. I have to go.”

  He started for the door as Lydiah and the rest of the surgical team looked at him in obvious surprise. He had never been known to leave a surgery early before.

  “You in a hurry to get somewhere?” Lydiah asked. “You know, Teela is coming for lunch and bringing her homemade tisrock stew. You want some?”

  “Thank you but I have to get home,” Trey told her. “As soon as possible.”

  He went running for the lockers and stripped out of his surgical togs in record time. But even before he finished dressing, he tried calling Mia on his hand-held com-link.

  No answer.

  Trey let it ring and ring and then tried again…and again with the same result. Now he was feeling almost panicked.

  Oh Goddess, where is she? Is she all right? Are there more agents of The EYE after her? Were they waiting in the woods until I walked past? Did they already grab her? Can I get to her before it’s too late?

  “I told you something was wrong with her!” his beast growled. “I told you she smelled wrong. We should never have left her—never!”

  “No time for that now,” Trey told his other half. “Right now we have to concentrate on finding her.”

  He kept calling her, all the way home, hoping against hope that she was just in the bathroom taking a long shower and wasn’t hearing the trilling sound of the com-link.

  But when he got to his ship, he couldn’t pretend anymore. He could tell the moment he stepped inside that she was gone. The ship echoed emptily when he called her name and her sweet scent was already fading from the air.

  “Where is she? Where is she—we have to find her!” his beast raged in his head.

  “I don’t know…I don’t know,” Trey groaned aloud. “Shut up a minute—I need to think!”

  He ran his hands through his hair, squeezing his skull between his palms as though willing the knowledge of Mia’s whereabouts to come to him.

  “Think,” he muttered. “Think. The only scent in the ship is hers and there’s no sign of forced entry so if someone took her, they waited until she went outside. But why would she go outside after what happened yesterday?”

  “Let me sniff around the ship,” his beast pleaded. “I might be able to track her.”

  “Wait…” Trey’s eyes had fallen on the small desk where the link-box was still open. He didn’t remember using the desk or the box the night before. So it must have been Mia who had used them. Which made sense if she was studying and then she got grabbed but still…he had a feeling—a strong
feeling—that he needed to check the box’s contents.

  He had helped Mia set up her link-mail and had advised her to change her password so she was the only one who knew it. But to his relief, she hadn’t done this because the password they had chosen together when he’d first set up the mail system still worked.

  Trey scrolled down. At first, he didn’t see anything but junk mail. But then he thought to check her deleted files section. She hadn’t yet emptied the bin, so he was able to access what she had been looking at the night before…which was only an advertisement for eye exams, he saw, frowning.

  Then he clicked on the link.

  A man with slicked-back hair and cold back eyes popped up on the screen. He didn’t exactly look like an eye healer to Trey.

  “Hello, Mia my dear,” he purred, grinning out of the screen with flat, soulless black eyes. “And so, we meet again. How have you been enjoying your little vacation on the wrong side of the Great Barrier?”

  Trey felt as though someone had stabbed him in the gut with an icicle. Who was this male and what did he have to do with Mia? He didn’t have long to wonder. As the male went on talking, the icy feeling is his stomach grew—he was horrified at what he saw and heard. And he could barely wrap his mind around the implications of it.

  Mia—sweet, innocent little Mia—a spy? Surely not! And yet if what this slick, smirking bastard on the screen was saying was right, it was completely true! And had she really poisoned him? She wouldn’t…would she?

  He ran to the sleeping chamber and looked around. His heart sank when he saw the discarded green capsule by the side of the bed and a great wave of emotion—equal parts fury and sorrow—crashed over him. How could she? She’d said that she loved him—how could she betray him like this? How could she lie and try to kill him?

  She was sent to me by the Goddess—how can this be? How can it be? How could she have told me she loved me and then poisoned me?

  His beast had been unaccountably silent all this time but now it spoke up.

  “Treygar, I don’t think—” his other half began but Trey wasn’t even listening.

  “I have to get back to the Care Center,” he said roughly. “I have to be tested and get an antidote before we do anything else.”

  “But the man said he would have Mia by tonight!” his beast protested. “We have to track her—have to save her!”

  “She betrayed us,” Trey told him. “Forget about her.”

  “I can’t. I LOVE HER.” The roar in his head was so loud Trey winced.

  “I do too, all right?” he shouted angrily. “But she was a spy—sent by those bastards from the People’s Republic—and now she’s gone back again after poisoning us. What do you want me to do?”

  The beast’s answer was immediate.

  “Go after her now—before it’s too late.”

  “Not until I get checked for poison and get the antidote—if there is one,” Trey growled. Ignoring the anguished protests of his other half, he called the Care Center and asked Lydiah to have a poison checker set up for him. She must have heard the tone of his voice because she didn’t ask any questions—just promised to have it ready.

  Trey wasn’t going to waste time taking the public transport again. Taking his much smaller and more maneuverable air craft, he flew directly to the Care Center and was there in half the time it would have taken on the crowded public conveyance. Of course, he was breaking his own rules—he and the other Lei’on Kindred were trying to assimilate into Ormyulian society which meant limiting the use of their superior transportation technology. But considering that he had been poisoned, he thought an exception could be made.

  Lydiah met him without a word and led him to a private exam room where the poison checker was already set up. She picked up the wand and waved it over him, then tested his blood and had him swallow a small, free-floating probe the size of a pill.

  It was this last test that Trey was sure would yield results. But when she had finished scanning the read-out, Lydiah shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Trey—or I guess I’m not sorry—because the checker can’t find even a trace of any poisonous or toxic substance anywhere on or in you.”

  “What? But that can’t be right! She poisoned me—I know she did. I saw the message her handler sent her—he told her exactly what to do to me.”

  “Whoa…wait a minute.” Lydiah raised an eyebrow. “Are we talking about Mia here?”

  Trey nodded miserably. “You and Teela were right to warn me.” His voice dropped to a hoarse growl. “I just didn’t want to see…didn’t want to believe…”

  She shook her head. “I was afraid of something like this. Those assholes from the PR just won’t leave those of us on this side of the Barrier alone—they want to drag the whole world into their sick paranoid fantasy.”

  “It feels more like a nightmare to me.” Trey tried to keep the hurt out of his voice and couldn’t quite manage it. He still couldn’t understand what had happened. “If Mia didn’t poison me then why did she still leave?” he asked. “He told her to do it—why didn’t she obey orders?”

  “He who?” Lydiah asked, frowning.

  Trey took a deep breath. “The male who is her handler or direct supervisor, I think. I found a message from him to Mia in her delete file, instructing her to poison me and be ready for extraction at O-nine hundred this morning.” He sighed unhappily. “She must have left almost the minute I stepped out of my domicile.” And to think he’d been on his way home to take her to lunch or cuddle with her on the couch—to think he’d thought he had a future with her!

  “…have access to the message?”

  Lydiah’s voice cut through his unhappy thoughts.

  “Sorry, what?” Trey looked up.

  “I said, do you still have access to the message? If you don’t mind, I’d like Teela to have a look. She’s still here because she brought her tisrock stew for lunch.”

  Trey wasn’t sure what good it would do to have someone else look at the incriminating evidence, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt either. Right now he just felt numb—he still couldn’t believe the female he loved could betray him so completely.

  “But she didn’t completely betray us—she didn’t poison us,” his beast pointed out. Trey didn’t even care. She had come to him under false circumstances and spied on him—had pretended to return his feelings for her. Poison or not, he still felt betrayed.

  “Yes, I can access the message,” he told Lydiah. “You get Teela while I load it up.”

  He accessed the link-mail on his com-link and pulled up Mia’s account. He pressed the holo button which projected the message above the com, showing the bastard who had been running Mia as a disembodied head. Then he paused it so that the male was just hovering there, that smug look on his face, making Trey want to punch him all over again.

  A strangled gasp from the doorway made him jerk around. Teela was standing in the doorway with Lydiah behind her. Her hand was pressed to her heart and her already pale features were paper-white. Her eyes were so wide Trey could see the whites all around them.

  “Teela, honey?” Lydiah got a better look at her mate’s face and became immediately concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “The…the…” Teela pointed a shaking finger to the holo image floating above Trey’s com-link. “The Commandant,” she got out at last. “It’s him…it’s him.”

  She looked so ill that Trey rushed forward to help Lydiah support her to the exam table. Teela slumped down onto it and put her head between her legs, breathing deeply like someone who was trying not to faint or be sick. At last she looked up.

  “That’s the bastard I escaped from.” She spoke in a low, trembling voice and it took Trey a moment to realize that she was shaking not with fear but with a sick, awful rage. She swallowed hard, her hands tightening into fists at her sides. “I can’t even tell you how many times he raped me or the vile ways he used me. He’s the reason I was ready to walk into the Barrier even
if it didn’t come down.”

  “Gods…” Trey was horrified. Despite his anger at Mia, he couldn’t help remembering the part of the message where the Commandant had talked about the “unfinished business” he had with her. At the time he had been too angry and anxious to consider it—he had just assumed the bastard was talking about some kind of intelligence briefing or some other spy-related activities they had to finish. Now he was getting a whole new picture of what the Commandant might have meant and it wasn’t pretty.

  “Are you all right?” Lydiah asked her mate. “You don’t have to watch this if you don’t want to. I just thought you could give Trey some perspective on what was going on because of your background. But if this is too painful—”

  “No.” Teela straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, a look of determination coming over her pale face. “No, go on and show it. I want to try and help—I can stand it.”

  Trey would have refused to show it, not wanting to traumatize her further—but he badly needed the help. He didn’t understand what was going on here—there were too many inconsistencies—too many pieces of the puzzle were missing.

  He started the message and they watched the Commandant’s message together, with his sneering, smug delivery. Trey felt his hands curl into fists and he wished in the worst way that the male was really in front of him so that he could punch that arrogant look off his face.

  He was worried about Teela seeing it and it was clear Lydiah was as well, by the way she hovered near her mate, an anxious expression on her face. But the little female betrayed no emotion at the message from her old tormentor other than the fact that her lips were a thin white line in her pale face as she watched in silence.

  At last it ended, and Trey was quick to dismiss the holo image. He looked up at Lydiah and Teela.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “She’s a VAR all right,” Teela said in a low voice. “But not a willing one, I wouldn’t think. Did you hear what he said at the last? That she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer if she didn’t complete her mission?”

  “Teela’s right.” Lydiah looked up at him. “Did Mia ever tell you about her family? Anyone she left back in the PR she might have been close to?”