by Natalie Grey
“Now?”
“Er. Yes, ma’am.”
“Better late than never, I suppose.” India stood. “You will guard the cell with Officer Bismarck until I return.” She looked into the cell at the prisoner. He had his head turned away, and his shoulders were shaking. “Stefan, you have some time to think. Use it well.”
She left, her boots clicking on the concrete.
A niece. Eddis had a niece. Perhaps he could be convinced to be more cooperative if she were to hint that his niece could be moved up in the ranks. After all, the girl seemed bright and well-mannered—India wouldn’t even have to do much.
Yes. She would find a way to suggest it.
Samara watched the woman walk away and felt her hands flex and clench. It would be so, so easy to pull out the gun and shoot her in the head. She’d heard enough to know who this woman was—she must be running Operation Blackout. She was dangerous.
And Stefan, tortured into telling everything, would be even more dangerous, no matter whose hands he was in. She told herself that, and hoped it wasn’t just her affection for him talking.
She looked over at the other officer, who was staring at her curiously. Blonde hair and pink cheeks. Pretty, even a little innocent looking. For a moment, Samara felt bad about what was going to happen next.
Then she remembered that if this girl were a miner, she’d be some officer’s mistress by now, willing or not. And instead, she was serving the Warlord—by choice. There was no way to serve here, to stand outside the cell of a tortured prisoner, and not know what you were doing.
That made it easier. Samara stuck out her hand, smiling. She could see Stefan out of the corner of her eye, looking away to hide the expression on his face.
“Hi,” Samara said. “I’m Emily Eddis.” She smiled shyly. “I suppose you knew that already, what with me telling Sergeant Quince.”
“Sara Bismarck.” The other girl hesitated, then reached out to shake Samara’s hand. “I didn’t know Captain Eddis had any fam—”
She died easily, without a sound, Samara’s knife embedded in her neck, blue eyes widening in horror. She had enough time to know what was happening, but no more; her face went slack and she crumpled to the ground while Samara grabbed the keycard from her belt and swiped it on the cell.
The door clicked open and she hauled Bismarck’s body inside, as quickly as she could. The woman was short and fairly slim, but her uniform would just have to do. Samara crawled over to Stefan and unlocked the cuffs, taking his hands and squeezing them.
“Tell me you can walk. We need to get out of here.”
“How did you—”
“No time. Help me.” She began stripping Bismarck’s body, cursing the heavy limbs, trying not to look at the wound on her neck. She hadn’t ever killed anyone before, and she could feel bile rising in her throat. She kept it down by force of will, but she knew when this was over—
Don’t think about it.
They managed to get the uniform onto Stefan, too-short pants hidden inside the boots, the coat a bit too tight, but not—Samara hoped—so much so that someone would notice if they looked quickly. Apparently, no one else wore the gloves, even though she’d found them with the uniforms. She considered taking hers off to shove them into her pocket, but was afraid people would see the distinctive black grime around her nails. There was no washing that off. It was already a risk for Stefan.
“Are you ready?”
“I don’t know.” He was shaking. “If they catch us—”
“Don’t think about it. Are you ready?” She held his eyes.
He shuddered and then nodded jerkily.
“Good. Come on.” She led him down the hallway at a brisk walk. She’d picked her time very carefully, and any minute now….
Out in the streets, the buzzer blared: ten minutes until shift change. Within a minute, maybe less, the streets would be full of miners hurrying toward the lifts.
At the small set of chairs where the guards were lounging, she stopped for a moment. “Do you know where Quince went?”
They shrugged.
“Dammit,” Samara muttered. “Well, tell her the Captain wants to see her, will you?”
“Tell her yourself,” one of them said. Her dark hair was cropped short, like Samara’s. She shook her head. “She scares the shit out of me.”
There was a murmur of agreement and Samara only shrugged. “They’re all the same, aren’t they?”
The guards laughed at that.
“Tell her if you’ve got the balls, then,” Samara said, and she gave a little wave before leading Stefan up the stairs.
“Why did you stop?”
“Because now we have uniforms and a few guards who know our face,” Samara whispered back. “We could use these again if we need to. Plus, now they’re not suspicious.”
“I suppose. But, how do we—” He broke off, putting his head down as another couple of guards pushed past them.
But they didn’t look. It was so beyond the realm of reason that the resistance would do something like this, that it never occurred to them to look closely at anyone in the halls of the jail. Samara pushed ahead, her heart hammering double-time, and strode out into the courtyard, toward one of the small doors flanking the big gate.
Samara pushed the door open, hearing the alarm sound and a shout behind her, and then she pushed Stefan out the door and slammed it, dragging him into the crush of people so that they were lost in the crowd.
“Captain.” India opened the door to Eddis’s study without knocking.
He looked up, and she saw him suppress a look of annoyance. “What can I help you with, Sergeant?”
India paused. “Your niece said you wanted to see me.”
“My niece?”
This was getting tiresome. India summoned up the memory of the young woman. “Emily. She’s a credit to you—well put together, very polite.”
Captain Eddis blinked at her. “My niece’s name is Fiorella, and she is two years old.” He misinterpreted India’s look. “My brother is younger than I am, and his wife is far younger than him.”
“But she said—”
India broke off. Now was not the time for useless platitudes, for plaintive little sayings. Right now….
Her chest felt hollow.
“Sir?” A guard slid into the room behind India and saluted. “Two guards have just left, unauthorized, but everyone seems to be accounted for. Except—”
“Officer Bismarck,” India said.
The guard looked over at her, wide-eyed. “Yes, ma’am. How did you—”
“You’ll find her body in the farthest holding cell.” Fury was heating her blood, even as fear caught her. “And retrieve all video you can find of those two ‘guards.’ They’re resistance fighters, both of them. One of them is Stefan Novotny—find me the other’s name. The woman.”
“Sergeant Quince, my officers have their own duties.” Eddis was impressively calm about the murder.
India rounded on him. “And I have been given express leave to use any and all resources.” She stared the man down.
“Of course,” was all Eddis said, mildly. But as he settled back in his chair with a faint smile, his face said, now you see. Now you realize you’re outmatched.
It was nothing she could reprimand him for, nothing she could write up in a report. But as India turned away, she swore to herself that he would pay for this.
Just as soon as she had the resistance fighters back.
18
Aryn sat very still, staring down to where she clenched her hands in her lap. Uncurling them would reveal pretty half-moon crescents of white on her skin, a common sight lately. The past two days had been a misery of pacing and fruitless efforts to divert her attention.
Samara had not been in contact. Not even a message. Aryn wavered between the desire to move, to be anywhere but here, spending hours in the pool or on the mats of the gym, and the fear of missing a message from Samara. She had resorted at last to leaving the
room in the hopes that somehow Samara would be more likely to call if she did.
It never worked.
“Ma’am?” The servant’s soft voice interrupted the whirl of her thoughts.
Aryn closed her eyes briefly.
“Yes, Emala?” She smiled as she turned.
“The stylists are here.” The maid gestured down to the entryway. “For the charity event tonight. Should I tell them to come up?”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.”
“Ma’am…are you well?” The maid looked genuinely worried.
“Yes, thank you.” Aryn smiled at her. The words were automatic, borne of long practice.
“Yes, ma’am.” Emala smiled but did not look convinced. “I’ll be back.”
Aryn paced to the windows and looked out, studying—for a moment—the faint reflection of her face outlined against the glittering skyscrapers of New Arizona’s financial district. She shouldn’t be here. They needed her at home.
And she had done everything she could. As the stylists walked into the room behind her, Aryn shoved away her fear, her resentment, her swallowed-down words. She had done all she could. Why could she not let it go?
Because all she could do was not enough. But that thought would drive her mad.
She went to the bed, watching them lay out the gowns for her to look at. She kept back the scream that she did not care at all, that none of this mattered. She could not say such a thing to strangers. So she stood still while she chose, and the stylists fluttered around her, rubbing color into her cheeks and outlining her lips.
She had just chosen a gown of deep, glittering blue—her favorite color—from the assortment when a suited man opened the door to her dressing room and strode inside. Aryn was on her feet in a moment, heart pounding, a line of makeup jagged across her cheek from where she’d disturbed the stylist. For a moment, she saw only height and muscle, and she knew that Ellian had been right to want a bodyguard for her. She was going to die.
When she saw who it was, she let out a breath and raised her chin.
“Mr. Williams.” Her heart was still skittering with fear, and she wiped at her cheek. She was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was in a nightgown and a short robe, one eye perfectly made up and the other bare of any adornment. It didn’t help, of course, that his eyes were roaming over her as if he would not only examine every line and muscle, but also peer into her head and see her secrets as well.
“Ms. Beranek.” He ducked his head at her.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m your bodyguard.” Something had flashed in his eyes at the question.
“No. Why are you here? In my dressing room?” Out of the corner of her eye, Aryn saw the stylist trying desperately to melt into the wall and failing.
It took everything she had to stand her ground as the man stepped forward, his grey-green eyes boring into hers. Half of her wanted to run, flee straight back into the depths of the dressing room—though what good that would do, she did not know. There was no accounting for instinct. The other half of her, for some reason, wanted to step closer. She had, at the very least, the good sense to know that neither option would be good. She raised her chin again.
“Well?” she managed.
“I’m your bodyguard,” he repeated. Each word was carefully enunciated. He might have been one of Ellian’s business partners, for all that he behaved like a servant.
“Do you think I need saving? Did you think my stylist was going to assassinate me?” The stylist gave a strangled sort of noise, and Aryn shot her an annoyed look. “Oh, for God’s sake, he’s not going to kill you.”
A muffled snort caught her ear, but when she looked back, the man’s face was straight once more.
“Ms. Beranek, are you aware of what a bodyguard does?”
“Well aware.”
“Then you are aware that I will need to be at your side until I can determine where you might be safe.”
“I’m in my own house!”
“As you often are, I understand. Almost always, no? And yet your husband hired me to be with you all day, every day.”
The thought was thrilling.
Terrifying. She meant terrifying. Her nervous system was just confused.
“Well, then.” She smiled as graciously as she could. “Welcome to my dressing room.”
“Thank you.” She thought she saw amusement in his eyes, but it was gone a moment later.
“Yasmin, you may continue.” Aryn sat back down.
It took at least five minutes for the woman to calm down, during which she managed to smear Aryn’s eyeliner twice. Aryn sat still, her posture belying the fact that her pulse still had not stopped beating double time. Every time she caught a glimpse of the man’s shape in the mirror, her stomach twisted.
As she was selecting jewelry, she noticed that he was beginning to fidget, look away and then back.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Williams?”
Whatever retort he wanted to give, he swallowed it, only shaking his head. Still, when Aryn sent the stylist away, he was visibly relieved.
“Thank you for explaining that I wouldn’t kill her.” His voice was expressionless.
She shot him a look, but there was no way to gauge if he had been joking.
“She wouldn’t be worried about you if you didn’t loom, you know,” she said simply. She waited, and when he said nothing, she wrapped her robe a little tighter and tried to find something else to talk about. “Today, I’ll be going to a charity lunch at—”
“I know. Ellian gave me your schedule.”
“I see.” Aryn swallowed, looked down.
“That’s why I came early.” When she looked up, it was to see him studying her. “We have things to go over before we leave.”
“Things like what?”
“Some basic self-defense moves, but more signals. Ways for me to know if you’re in trouble without alerting people nearby.”
“Why would I need to do that?”
He blinked at her. Then, apparently realizing she was sincere, he chose his words carefully.
“Many people who are abducted are warned not to alert anyone.”
“Why would they—”
“Because they’re being abducted at gunpoint, and they do not want to be shot.”
Her eyes went wide.
“If that happens,” he said quickly, “you will have ways to alert me and mark your path so that I can find you.”
She could not think of anything to say.
“Very well,” he said in a moment. “The first thing I’m going to teach you is a specific way to clear your throat.” He demonstrated. “It echoes against the back of the throat this way.” He demonstrated again. “You try.”
She cleared her throat once, twice. She was feeling foolish. On the third try, she did it passably.
“Good. Again.” He paused to listen. “Again. Again.”
“What is this for?”
“Clearing the throat is a common panic response. Unlike a whistle, for instance, it does not seem to be communication.”
“And if we’re out in public somewhere, with all the noise—you would hear this?”
“Yes,” he said, so assuredly that she found she believed him. “It’s…how I was trained to communicate.” He seemed about to say something else, but evidently thought better of it.
“I forgot you were a Dragon.” She swallowed and looked away. She had begun to relax in his presence, a slow shift she had not even noticed until the comfort was abruptly gone again.
“Why do you say that?” His voice was suddenly alert.
“No reason.” Her voice was flat.
She had thought a dozen times of going to Ellian and pleading her case, asking him not to use a Dragon—but she knew he would tell her that she was being foolish. Maybe he didn’t know the truth about them, she realized. And she would have no way to convince him of what she’d seen on Ymir, of the elite soldiers in red and black picking off her friends as S
amara dragged her away. Aryn had never made much of a soldier, but even those with skill had stood no chance against the Warlord’s pet Dragons. That was when she realized that no one was coming to save them on Ymir. Even the Alliance was in bed with the Warlord.
Ellian would tell her that those weren’t Dragons, but Aryn had seen the glints at boots and ears and in the face point. A Dragon always wore red, everyone knew that.
Had this man been there? She turned away.
“Ms. Beranek.”
“What’s the next thing you wanted to show me?” she asked, her voice as neutral as she could make it.
“This.”
She jumped when he took her hand. He selected the middle finger of her right hand and drew her back close to him. His hand was rough on hers, the heat of his body radiating in the air. He showed her an ink capsule, and pressed it under the fingernail, giving an involuntary empathetic wince when she gasped at the prick of pain.
“Watch,” he said quietly. “You can use it almost as a crayon, to mark the edges of things you pass by. Or you can press on the pad of the finger, like this, to spray ink.” He paused awkwardly. “Does it still hurt?”
“No,” Aryn managed. “No, it doesn’t.” She looked up into his eyes, and at the jolt of awareness, drew her hand away as if she was being burned, turning away so he could not see her face.
“Are you all right, Ms. Beranek?”
“Perfectly fine.” It was better, she reminded herself, if they did not enjoy one another’s company. It would be better if she were not taken in by his false concern, his attempts to gain Ellian’s favor by protecting her. She had learned at least a part of how the world worked, after all. Everyone was out for something—and no matter the subtle humor in this man’s eyes, the awareness she felt in his presence, it was better if she remembered that she just didn’t know what he wanted yet.
“Ms. Beranek?” There was something in his voice that she could not name, and she swallowed reflexively, turning back with her practiced smile.
“What was the next thing you wanted to show me?”