Cardinal, (Citizen Saga, Book 2)

by Claire, Nicola

I hated it instantly.

  I flicked my eyes around trying to determine where Trent's team had placed the bugs, but obviously couldn't spot any. Harjeet knew of them, had probably removed them already, and even if he hadn't, they were too small to detect with the naked eye.

  "Do sit down, my dear," Harjeet offered. "You look as though your afternoon has been quite taxing."

  If only he knew.

  "I saw coverage of the helicopter crash on the vid-screens," he added, moving to his side of the low lying table and leaning over to pour me a cup of tea from a still steaming pot. Clearly I'd been expected.

  A delicate porcelain tea set was on display before him, silver kettle, and cream and sugar jugs to the side. Small intricately made sweets and desserts sat artfully arranged on platters. Yellows and pinks and greens and reds. Adding to the symphony of colour already on display in this lavish room. Citizen Kandiyar was putting on a performance worthy of any Elite.

  I sat back and watched him, sizing up my slippery opponent while I still could.

  "Of course, the images were pulled from the Wánměi Net within minutes of the leak," Harjeet continued, placing a full cup of tea in front of where I sat. "Can't have our nation aware of such unrest."

  "If you saw it, others did as well," I offered.

  "Indeed," he replied, flicking his r'aru out of the way to avoid creasing it, as he assumed his seat opposite, intelligent and cunning eyes lifting to my face. "Drink, my dear. You must be thirsty after your hard day at work."

  "I'm fine."

  Harjeet just smiled, but I noticed he didn't drink from his teacup either. Gentlemanly even though he really wasn't.

  "I believe you have something of mine," he said after a short pause as we sat staring at each other.

  "The antidote first, Harjeet."

  He tsked softly, shaking his head. "Selena, don't embarrass yourself. We both know you didn't uphold your end of the bargain."

  "The situation was more complex than we at first believed," I argued.

  "And because of this you think we should negotiate our agreement after the fact?"

  I shrugged my shoulders, knowing how the inappropriate movement set his teeth on edge.

  "I believe you want what I have enough to grant me this wish," I countered.

  He stared at me for several long seconds, then started to laugh. It was incredibly uncomfortable, because I was sure he was laughing at me. And I really had no idea why.

  "Even backed into a corner," he said through continuing chuckles, "you still fight for a win. Remarkable." The laughter stopped. "But naive. Give me the flash-drive, Honourable. And then we'll see if the information you have obtained for me warrants an added boon."

  Isha moved out of the shadows. No gun in her hand this time, but I wasn't fooled.

  I was out numbered, unarmed, and held no leverage to speak of. Thankfully, I had handed the broken vid-screen I'd recovered to Simon before we left the van. So should I be incapacitated now, Harjeet would only find the flash-drive and not that.

  I wasn't sure if the memo would uncover more intelligence that could be used to bargain with this man, but I had to hope it provided us with something that, if not turned the tables, at least gave us a fighting chance.

  Harjeet knew all. But did he know Shiloh was about to be in command?

  I reached into my handbag and fished the drive out, then placed it on the table between us with care. Isha may look harmless, but any brash movement from me could still prove fatal, I was sure.

  "Well done," Harjeet congratulated me. "Please have a drink of your tea, or something to eat, while I check this."

  I was interested to know what the flash-drive contained, so when Harjeet pulled a laptop up from beside him and inserted the device into the side, there was nowhere else I'd rather have been. I couldn't see his screen, but I could see his face. And any reaction he made would be telling.

  At the moment he looked excited, an emotion I had not seen on the man before.

  His eyes lifted over the top of his computer, flickering amber and gold caught my gaze.

  "You look exhausted," he commented, as though he really cared. "Please eat, my dear. This may take a while."

  His attention returned to his vid-screen in the next instant, too eager to see what the laptop revealed, not ensuring I followed through with his suggestion. Uncaring, even though his concerned words had suggested he might have been. Harjeet was only interested in his own wellbeing, but appearances were his forte. He wasn't about to drop them now.

  I waited for a few more seconds, but no surprise or elation or anything showed on his face, so I leaned forward and picked up a slice of Halwa. Hoping to give the impression of nonchalance, when all I really wanted to do was look at his vid-screen. The overly sugary sweet burst on my tongue, followed up with hints of sesame and pistachio nuts. I quickly swallowed it down with a good portion of the tea. Then replaced both on the table, regretting having eaten a thing.

  My stomach was in knots. Worry over Trent's state of health, over what the flash-drive actually contained, over what Harjeet's next move would be, where we would go, whether this day would end better than it had been, making digestion impossible right then. I licked my lips, the sweetness had turned a little bitter.

  "Well," Harjeet finally said, his attention still on his vid-screen. "That is unexpected."

  Oh, he was doing this on purpose, I was so sure.

  I didn't say a word, feeling the emotional weight of the day finally catch up with me.

  He moved his laptop to the side, pocketing the flash-drive. His sharp eyes lifting to hold mine.

  "It would seem you have delivered the correct item, but it is impossible to access."

  What would that mean for Trent? For us?

  "I carried out my end of the bargain," I said slowly. A little too slowly.

  "Yes. But you need not worry about your friend. The hypnotic Isha administered was laced with the antidote. Timing meant a need to ensure he did not test whilst in my home."

  Relief at his words wouldn't come. A bubble seemed to have wrapped around me and cut off the rest of the world.

  "Is this still our home?" I asked, thinking I might have slurred on the last word. I blinked, watching the dim lights in the room sparkle, dull dread trickling into my veins.

  "That remains to be seen," the D'awan murmured, lifting a cellphone to his ear.

  I watched him, in a numb kind of haze, my body refusing to answer my directions. To lift an arm. Turn my head. Call out to Alan or Simon. The tea, or the Halwa, I reasoned through slow firing thought processes, must have been laced with a powerful hypnotic. Just like the one used on Trent.

  Who wouldn't hear me if I screamed.

  I'd been such a gullible fool. But what Harjeet's goal was, I still didn't know. I held onto consciousness with grim and stubborn determination. Watching as Isha moved in to remove the tea pot, then came back for the desserts. Within the blink of an eye and the next the table was emptied of all paraphernalia, and Harjeet's laptop rested there instead.

  I couldn't see the screen still, but its positioning was a taunt he must have known I'd feel in my heart.

  "We have a deal," I heard him suddenly say, aware he'd been talking, but the words had only sounded like angry bees. The cellphone was swiped closed, the SIM card removed, the battery extracted, and then a small hammer used to destroy the device in an act of overkill that said more about the man than any of his nefarious machinations to date.

  Harjeet was thorough.

  "You won't get away with this," I said, or tried to. Not sure yet what he was trying to get away with. But certain Trent would come.

  Trent was out cold. Like I was about to be.

  "Rest, Honourable. You'll be home again very soon."

  Not words I wanted to hear. I struggled to sit up, desperation and pure panic making my body move when the drugs should have hindered movement at all.

  "Restrain her," I heard Harjeet say, and small, but claw-like hands, wra
pped around my upper arms and forced me back down onto the couch I'd been sitting on. The room turned sideways, as my viewing angle altered with my new reclined stance.

  The lights dimmed, my heart rate escalated, a fluttering butterfly desperately trying to get out of my chest.

  "Why?" I mumbled. Or maybe it was what.

  "You are the key, my dear," Harjeet said, from right beside me, his lips brushing lightly over my ear. "You always were," he whispered, in a macabre show of intimacy. "And I found the lock that you open."

  He sounded thrilled. At himself or the outcome, I couldn't tell.

  "You can sleep now, Honourable," he murmured, shifting further away. "There's no need to keep fighting now."

  No. I wanted to. But I simply couldn't. The dancing lights of Harjeet's chamber changed to flashing lights in the dark. The incense became the scent of leather, the smells of a damp city street.

  No.

  But I was out numbered. Out gunned. Out played.

  Sleep came uninvited, as my mind tried futilely to figure it all out. I was the key. But for Harjeet, a snake of a businessman, what exactly was I the key to?

  Chapter 35

  My Lena

  Trent

  My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. It peeled away slowly as I attempted to swallow past the regurgitated ball of concrete dust at the back of my throat. I gagged, rolled over to cough, felt aches scream to life throughout my entire body, then promptly vomited all over the floor.

  Which was moving. Great. Fucking great.

  "Easy, boss," came Alan's steady voice from my side.

  "Wah?" I managed. Even I didn't know what I meant.

  "Sleeping drug," he explained and the scene from on top of Harjeet's roof flashed before my tightly closed eyes.

  "Lena!" I surged up from my horizontal position, arms flailing, legs all akimbo, and smashed my head on the ceiling of the room.

  "Fuck!" I groaned as I sank back down again, the ground moving, the world twirling, and more vomit insisting on rushing up my gullet.

  "Take it the fuck easy," Alan said slowly, his hand resting on my shoulder, as if to hold me down. I wasn't about to move again. The room was doing enough of that on its own.

  "Give us a bit of space," I heard Alan say. And the room rocked instead of simply moving.

  "Shift over," Emir's voice said.

  "It's too tight back here," Si offered. "Sit up front with Paul."

  "That would mean climbing over Trent and Alan," Emir pointed out reasonably. "And besides, the front seat is full of more gear."

  "This is useless, Alan," Si complained. "We can't operate out of here."

  OK. It was time to chance opening my eyes. The shock of light pierced my skull like a dull set of serrated knives. The flash of colour whirling past my face made me think we were in the middle of a tornado. And then details slowly materialised and reached my abused brain. A window. A leather seat beneath my body. The sound of tyres on tarseal. The smell of something metallic on the air.

  "We're in the van," I announced and the vehicle went deathly silent. "Lena?" I said, more quietly, less desperately, despite my chest aching and my blood pumping in utter fear.

  "We've been evicted," Alan replied, I think purposely not answering my question about Lena. "We grabbed what we could and left before Harjeet's bitch put bullets between our eyes."

  "One little girl and we ran with our tails between our legs," Paul hissed from the front of the car.

  "Well," Si offered, "she did clip Emir in the shoulder and Alan in the leg before we even knew where the hell she was hiding."

  Jesus, that was blood I could smell.

  "Status?" I asked, wanting to sit up and see for myself, knowing I was nowhere near ready to do so without consequences.

  I'd fucking slept through it all.

  "We're fine," Alan said steadily. "Emir's bullet was just a graze, mine's been removed. Movement is restricted, but it'll come right in a couple of days."

  "Med gear?" I pushed.

  "Enough to handle most non-life threatening injuries."

  "Tech?"

  "Lena's bag, plus Si managed to grab his satchel and an additional vid-screen, along with some cellphones."

  "Weapons?"

  "Two guns, no lasers. Just what we had on our persons. Isha had cleaned out our stash before we were even aware."

  Silence while I digested that shocking piece of news. So little. Even worse than when Tehteh had been destroyed.

  "Lena?" I repeated, forcing myself to sit up and face the music.

  "Harjeet, as you can guess, has gone rogue," Alan said, still not fucking answering my question. My hands fisted into tight balls at my sides. "His intention was to take as many of us out as he could, but it was clearly a last minute decision, not well thought out."

  "Otherwise he would have used more than a fucking little girl armed with a handgun hidden in the rafters," Paul offered.

  "Si tested the dart we found still embedded in your side," Alan went on, ignoring Paul's comment. "It contained a strong hypnotic to make you pass out and what we think is an opioid antagonist. The antidote. He treated you, which leads us to suspect, he never intended to turn on us. Why prevent you from testing and then try to kill you instead? Whatever happened when he saw the flash-drive Lena stole for him changed his game plan."

  "Where is Lena?" I said very slowly, daring them to deny me the answer now.

  "We don't know."

  My hand was wrapped around his shirt collar and I had him pushed back against the side of the van in a spilt second.

  "You mean to tell me you left her behind?"

  "We didn't leave her boss," Si said carefully, from over my shoulder. "She just wasn't there."

  My head swam as I spun to look at him, making me have to blink back spots before my eyes. Nausea rolled through my stomach. For more reasons than just a drug.

  "What do you mean?" I asked, not releasing Alan. I couldn't have unclenched my fingers even if I wanted to right then. My body was a taut bowstring away from snapping.

  "We searched, after we immobilised Isha," Si explained. "But both Harjeet and Lena were gone. The base empty. He left his shadow behind to clean up the mess and ran."

  "His quarters were in a shambles," Paul added. "As though he grabbed supplies in a hurry, took what he could before we came storming in, and simply turned his back on the rest."

  "That's not the Harjeet Kandiyar we know," Emir offered. "So, what that tells us is he's made a rash decision in the blink of an eye and decided to roll with it."

  "What would make Harjeet give up that compound?" I asked. Alan finally sensing my anger had morphed into confusion, reached up and pried my fingers loose from his shirt. I didn't stop him. I didn't help him, but I didn't stop him either.

  "It would have to be a pay-off worthwhile," Si suggested.

  "He's a businessman at heart," I mused, sitting back in my seat and desperately trying to think of anything else other than Lena being in the clutches of that madman. "It would be for financial gain."

  "Or political," Alan offered and the other men in the vehicle stilled. Only Alan would dare to incite my rage.

  "You think he's working with Wang Chao?" I asked, the nausea now a full blown acidic quagmire inside my gut.

  Alan shrugged. "It's a good guess." It was, that's why it hurt so much to consider it. "And if he is, and he has Lena..." He didn't finish the sentence.

  "We're homeless, practically tech-less, and almost weaponless," Si said. "But we do have credits."

  Lena's credits. I closed my eyes and tipped back my head, breathing through the frustration and desperation. I needed to find her. Hold her. I needed to lay waste to Little D'awa and then follow that up with Chew-wen Wang Chao.

  "Can we return to Harjeet's and salvage anything?"

  "Drones moved into Park Road by the time we'd determined Lena was missing," Alan advised.

  "How did you get away?" I asked, stunned they'd made it out alive at all. They
would have been hauling my unconscious body as well as what little they managed to save of our gear.

  Alan smiled. It actually reached his eyes. "We used the roof. Took the path Lena had shown us. Came out by this van two blocks away."

  I started laughing, feeling every crunch of my stomach muscles and every crinkle of my face as I grinned, as though sliced by a two edged blade. Even when she was gone she was helping us.

  I sucked in a breath and let the laughter die away.

  "You know I'll have to go after her," I said into the silence that had followed.

  "Where you go, we go," Alan advised. And I hadn't realised how much I needed to hear that. I nodded, unable to say a word in reply.

  "But we can't go in like this," Si offered. Meaning our disadvantaged, under powered, near broken current position.

  "What do you suggest?" I asked the van at large.

  They all shared a look; clearly they'd discussed this already. Just waiting for me to catch up.

  "Hold on. How long have I been out?" I asked, noting the sun high in the sky outside the still moving car.

  Alan cleared his throat. No one made any attempt to offer him a lifeline.

  "Forty hours, boss."

  It took a second or more for me to compute that. We'd hit the roof of Harjeet's just after curfew on Sunday. Forty hours would make it approaching midday Tuesday.

  Harjeet had had Lena for over a full day.

  I shook my head, disbelief warring with desolation.

  Then lashed out with a fist to the seat in front of me; which thankfully was empty. Following it up with kicking the ever-loving crap out of the thing until I could no longer breathe. None of the guys tried to stop me. All of them just watched on with silent support and bleak understanding.

  By the time the seat had actually been snapped out of its tracks on the floor of the van and Paul had been forced to pull the vehicle over to the side of the road or risk losing control when parts of the interior were torn out and hurled around the inside, I'd run out of juice.

  Exhausted. Bereft. Fuming.

  "What is your suggestion?" I said, voice hard and sharp edged.

  "The black market," Alan immediately replied. "We've already tee'd up a contact."