"I regret that I have yet to taste you. For all that we’ve done, we’ve yet to make love leisurely in a bed, where I can take my time licking you until you cream all over my lips."
His words made it hard to focus on anything but having Catam inside her again. Then footsteps sounded near and she started to awareness.
"Ah," she cleared her throat, "we’ll have to do something about that then. Later." He chuckled. "Now stop distracting me. We need to get out of here before we’re found. I think I know where to go to get the answers we need."
Catam nodded. "Fine. Then lead on, sweet."
His voice sounded gritty, and she knew he’d aroused not only her, but himself as well with his sex talk.
She grinned and increased her pace. There around the bend should be a servants’ exit. Harron couldn’t have sabotaged this entire map. She’d checked a clean copy of the Klin estate blueprints during her two week run from the law, and had found only one or two inconsistencies between the real map and Harron’s.
They found the servants’ exit and Isa heard Catam mumble a thank you to Flor for seeing them out safely.
"Catam, never thank Flor until the job’s done," she whispered. "You’ll jinx us."
"Too late." Catam cursed and threw her through the exit door. "At least four thrells are coming, and they sound angry."
Isa and Catam broke into a run, snarls and grunts following them along the paved pathway around the house.
"We can’t keep to the path," Isa gasped as Catam passed her. "Security will be waiting for us."
They turned a corner and not surprisingly, six men armed with phasers stood menacingly in the garden patio.
Catam slowed and stopped, his arms up in surrender.
"We’re unarmed. Before you do anything, call off the thrells."
One of the men gave a shrill whistle and the thrells gaining on Isa and Catam broke off chase and joined the head handler.
He ordered all four beasts inside and left, leaving five men to guard Isa and Catam.
"Let’s talk about this," Catam tried in an easy voice.
"Silence, thief," one of the men barked. "Uron, inform Lady Klin we’ve found the housebreakers. Keep it quiet. We don’t want Statesman Bedenzi to know we have trouble here."
As if Arnath won’t know when they find him with Daarna, Isa thought with a huff. She swallowed her alarm when the guards motioned for Catam and her to draw nearer.
Forced to move, they did so, until Catam stopped a few feet from them.
"I’m a peacekeeper. Check my papers." He opened his jacket slowly and nodded to an inside pocket.
One of the men laughed out loud. "Sure."
"No, really. I followed her," he nodded at Isa, "inside the house and had just captured her when someone released the thrells. Please, check my papers."
The lead guard nodded but kept a wary eye on Catam. "Sherf, search him."
Sherf found Catam’s peacemaker papers and looked disappointed as he handed them to the lead guard.
"Catam of Mardu?" the lead asked.
"Yeah."
"I know your brother, Sernal. I didn’t realize you had two peacemakers in the family."
"Why am I not surprised you know Sernal?" Catam distanced himself from Isa, lowering his hands as he walked calmly toward the guards.
They accepted him and Isa felt very much alone.
Catam chuckled at something one of the men mumbled and turned to leer at her.
"Sherf, much as I agree with you, I can’t have you saying it out loud."
In the blink of an eye Catam laid Sherf out flat on his back, unconscious.
"Catam!" Isa cried worriedly. What was he thinking? He would get himself killed!
The lead guard gaped and redirected his phaser. "You traitor!" He began blasting.
Catam narrowly avoided a phaser pulse by ducking behind a nearby stone fountain. Then the attention turned back to Isa. She dove for cover too late to avoid a burning wound across her shoulder. "Catam, what are you doing?"
He laughed nearby, ducking when a shot would have struck him. "Saving your ass?"
She wanted to blister his hide for scaring her when he did it again. His lack of communication skills not withstanding, he could at least warn her to prepare for his stupidity.
She watched the man she’d made love with for the past several days turn into someone she didn’t know in the slightest. His eyes became twin orbs of fire before he began to shimmer, fading from sight only to reappear a far distance away.
The guards fired at random all around, hoping to hit one of the ‘Catams’ dancing just out of reach. He laughed, an arrogant chortle that sent worry down Isa’s spine.
One guard suddenly toppled to the ground. Isa blinked when his phaser found its way into her hands, out of thin air. She felt a brush against her cheek.
"Be careful," Catam whispered then vanished again.
Another guard fell, then another, until only the lead guard remained.
"Damn you," the guard shouted and fired haphazardly around him. "Show yourself."
"Okay." Catam shimmered to visibility behind the guard’s back and struck him in the neck. He caught the man and gently led him to the ground. "He’s a friend of Sernal’s. It’d be rude to let him drop to the rough ground," he explained in Isa’s direction. "He might hurt himself."
Isa could only stare. Catam’s eyes glowed, but no longer with the burning intensity he’d worn before he’d set storm to the guards. He looked positively thrilled, excited and pleased with himself all at once.
Isa clenched her jaw. "Let’s get out of here. And don’t think you’re not going to explain this. You’re in a lot of trouble, Peacemaker." She ignored the wounded look he shot her and stalked past the garden, back the way they’d come.
It was a good thing he hadn’t been killed. She wanted that job for herself.
Chapter Nine
They spent the next few hours in silence, putting a healthy distance between Voran and Tekar, the northern territory where Isa hoped to find Cheltam. According to Feltang, Cheltam was her best hope for information.
Right now, however, she wanted anything but information. She wanted Catam’s stupid, prideful, macho head on a platter. She jerked at a low-lying branch and grimaced at the pain that shot through her arm.
Her shoulder throbbed. The blood pooling from the wound had matted onto her jacket, and the fabric now clung to her arm. Fortunately, the jacket masked the wound, leaving no blood trail to their escape--an escape that almost hadn’t occurred because someone thought he was invincible.
Unable to keep silent any longer, she swiftly turned and found Catam’s gaze warm and full of humor.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she seethed.
He looked shocked at her outburst. "What? What did I do?"
"What didn’t you do? You didn’t tell me what you were planning. You didn’t use a lick of sense when you attacked a guard--in plain view of the others! You didn’t seek cover until after they started shooting."
She opened her mouth to continue but Catam quickly bridged the distance between them and covered her lips with his hand.
"If I lift my hand will you stop harping already?"
He sounded exasperated, and she couldn’t believe how dense he acted.
She bit his palm and he cursed, whipping his hand away. Her eyes bright, she admitted, "I was worried, you drun!"
His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned in displeasure.
"You could have been killed," she continued. "They fired everywhere, and only by Flor’s grace did you escape unscathed. What the hell was that, anyway? I want my explanation, and I want it now!"
His gaze warmed. His golden eyes filled with an emotion she couldn’t quite name, and he stared at her for a moment before his expression sobered.
"I’m sorry I worried you."
Tears threatened and Isa blinked rapidly to maintain some dignity. She’d be damned if she’d cry for the halfwit.
"I’m sorry,
sweet," he repeated and embraced her in a tight hug.
The movement, thought comforting, brushed her shoulder and she couldn’t contain a gasp of pain.
He quickly sat her back and held fast to her forearms, studying her. "Isa?" His eyes glowed and she knew he used that odd sense he possessed to enhance his vision. His gaze lingered on her shoulder and he cursed, loudly and creatively. "Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d been wounded?"
He sounded panicked, completely opposite of the arrogant warrior who battled and defeated five security guards. "Isa? I need to see the wound."
He handled her with the utmost gentleness, but still she shrieked when he peeled the jacket from her arm. No longer encrusted with blood, the wound oozed and throbbed painfully.
"Isa, this has the beginnings of an infection." His voice calm, Catam worked to force the worry from his tone. Her arm didn’t look healthy, and the wound held a distinct stench of decay that his keen senses detected. Only two hours had passed since she’d received the laceration, but every second in their less than sanitary surroundings counted.
He needed to take her to a physician. But they had at least another few hours before they reached civilization. And considering the incident with the guards at the Klin estate, by now he, along with Isa, had a bounty on his head.
By Flor’s dagger! He fumed as he studied her arm and knew it had to hurt.
"I wish you had told me about this earlier," he muttered as he studied the deep blast. The phaser should have seared the wound, burning any infection. But he recalled Isa rolling on the ground in her haste to duck the guards, and who knew what now contaminated her blood?
"It’ll be fine. Leave it." She tried to take her arm back but Catam refused to let go.
Worry gnawed at him, an unfamiliar emotion he’d only recently experienced with his brother Gar. Gar, he reasoned, just needed time to deal with his grief. But if Catam didn’t do something for Isa, he feared she might not have the time to deal with her troubles.
Coming to a decision, one he prayed he wouldn’t regret, he decided to turn to those he trusted. He reached into his jacket and retrieved his com device.
"What are you doing?" Isa asked.
He ignored her and waited for someone to answer his signal.
"Mara’s Light," Lurin Vez’s voice returned over the com device. "How may I help you?"
"Lurin, it’s Catam." He ignored Isa’s whispered oath to disconnect. "I have a situation here and I need some help, some discreet help." He paused and nodded at Lurin’s suggestion. "Fine. I know the place. We’ll be there as soon as possible." He hung up to find Isa looking livid.
"How could you do that? I’m wanted by everyone in Mardu. I’m worth ten thousand beks to anyone who brings me in! Do you really think your friends won’t succumb to that kind of temptation?"
Catam grinned. "Sweet, you have no idea the temptation Lurin lives with on a daily basis. Captain Mara is, well ... you’ll see when you meet her."
"Captain Mara?" Isa’s eyes shot green fire and Catam delighted in the possessive streak curling her fingers into tight fists.
"Relax Isa, she’s my boss, my real boss."
Isa’s eyes flared to a darker green and she cursed him to eternal impotence. He flinched at the thought.
"You’re bringing bounty hunters to help us? You must be crazy!" she continued to rage when he dragged her in a new direction.
Yeah, crazy, he thought glumly as he toted the screeching woman, crazy in love.
* * * *
Nu, Set and Lurin stared with approval at Isa marching stiffly in front of Catam, a long jacket folded over his arm. When she saw the three men waiting by a shuttle outside the pleasure club, she turned and colorfully cursed the Mardu to eternal damnation.
"I like her already," Nu murmured, earning a grin from his brother.
"She’s got a mouth on her as nice as that body," Set commented with a sly wink.
Catam’s head shot up, surprising Lurin that at such a distance the Mardu heard the comment. Catam glared at them and dragged the woman the rest of the distance to meet them.
"She sure looks tasty," Lurin drawled and felt a surge of furious possession emanating from Catam, as the Mardu shifted to stand protectively between the men and his "gracious" companion.
"Thanks for coming," Catam said in a growl. His voice sounded harsh, but his hands were gentle on the woman. "This is Isa, and she needs some help."
"I need my head examined, traveling with you," she grumbled.
"We can arrange that too," Lurin said, choking back laughter at Catam’s glare.
"That’s Nu and Set, and this is Lurin, my captain’s husband," Catam introduced them casually, a curious emphasis on Lurin’s relation to Mara.
Lurin laughed, pleased with Catam’s jealousy. He clapped the man on the back and with Nu and Set, led the escapees to the shuttle. "You’re in luck, Isa. We happened to bring along a physician friend of my wife’s."
"I don’t know why we need the help. My arm’s not that bad."
Lurin sensed her pain and would have merged to ease some of it if Catam hadn’t proven so prickly over the female. Lurin’s kind, the Thesha, could control the female mind. But sensing to do so would push Catam in a direction the Mardu wasn’t ready to go, Lurin left the woman alone.
"Actually your arm looks infected," Set remarked and drew nearer to study it.
Nu closed the shuttle doors behind them and within moments the shuttle left Mardu behind and entered space. Lurin watched as Catam glared Set away from the woman, then led her to the physician waiting with her kit in the back of the craft.
While the doctor fixed Isa’s shoulder, Lurin pulled Catam aside to learn more about the situation. The stubborn Mardu turned to face him, but refused to budge more than an arm’s length from the woman.
"So Catam, is there some specific reason you called on us instead of your brother for help? Not that we mind, but this was his mission in the first place."
Catam sighed. "I didn’t want to call you at all. But Isa’s arm needs attention. I can’t contact Sernal because I’m already late bringing her in." He paused and glanced behind him at Isa.
"And?" Lurin’s eyes narrowed as he studied Catam’s face. "I know when you’re holding back. Let’s have all of it. What else is going on that we should know about?"
"Nothing--"
"And don’t tell me nothing because Mara specifically told me not to return to the ship without answers."
"You don’t really take orders from your own wife, do you?" Catam scoffed.
Lurin raised one brow in answer. "You know Mara. You’ve taken orders from her for years. What do you think?" Lurin recalled the last set of orders he’d taken from his wife involving strips of silk and a jar of sylvan sweets.
"You’ve got that look on your face." Catam grimaced. "Forget I asked."
Lurin crossed his arms and waited.
"Fine. You win." Catam bit his lip. "But you cannot pass this to Sernal."
"Agreed."
"Lurin, you’re new to the bounty hunting business but even you can see that life isn’t always black and white."
"Tell me about it. I distinctly recall telling you and the others I was innocent. Yet you still put me in chains and imprisoned me aboard your ship."
"Exactly my point," Catam emphasized. "Certain evidence pointed to your guilt, yet Mara and myself sensed your innocence."
"Mara and you?" Annoyance crept over Lurin at memories of the harrowing experience. "My wife was the one who believed in my innocence. I don’t recall your help until the very end."
Catam waved that aside and replied in low voice so as not to be overheard, "You Thesha have always been too sure of yourselves. Hell, I knew what you were the moment we picked you up. Had the ship not been hijacked, I’d have set the captain on the right trail to freeing you, and without giving away your secret."
"It’s a moot point now." Mara knew firsthand the gifts of the Thesha. Lurin didn’t worry she would ever
betray him. He trusted her completely. For the most part he trusted Catam to be as trustworthy. It helped that the Mardu now needed his help, cementing their bond even further.
"Yeah, well, I’m digressing." Catam blew out a breath. "The point is, your situation and Isa’s are very similar. Just as you were falsely accused, so was she. And Sernal isn’t in a position as a peacemaker to open a new investigation, not without going through the proper channels. By the time he can get through those channels, Isa will be dead."
Catam sobered after uttering those words, and Lurin saw how very much the thought bothered him. Interesting.
For the past year, working with Mara’s crew had been an eye-opening experience. The Fas brothers proved amusing and tenacious, strong in resolve and in physical toughness. He’d enjoyed watching them work. The Raggas normally brought their bounties in through sheer force alone.
Catam of Mardu, on the other hand, worked in a completely different manner. Using innate charm and a keen sense of wit, he cajoled and convinced his bounties to turn themselves in. His affable nature often caused others to overlook his fighting skills. When charm didn’t work, however, as in the case of Rantak Borsham, Catam stalked his prey like an ancient Xema warrior. Lurin thought the man’s abilities were truly a wonder to behold.
Lurin had seen the Xema train, but he’d never actually seen a Xema warrior in battle. Unlike the Raggas, the Xema relied on their stealth, on their agility and extraordinarily quick reactions. The blurring, distorting techniques Catam often used to confuse his quarry were astonishing.
"Lurin?"
Lurin realized he’d been staring at Catam long enough to cause questions. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"Dammit, pay attention here." Catam’s eyes narrowed in anger, an odd occurrence for the normally even-tempered Mardu. "Isa’s life is on the line. She’s being framed for a murder she didn’t commit."
Lurin scowled. He knew that scenario only too well. "Sernal copied us on the file. If Isa didn’t kill the statesman, then who did?"
"Lady Klin and Arnath Bedenzi," Isa answered in a loud voice. Her eyes burned with anger and a hint of fever.
Lurin thought the fever explained her incredible accusation. "You’re kidding, right?"
The Thief of Mardu Page 8