“I want you to stay right where you are. Don’t move,” the man instructed gruffly. Zane eyed him warily. What were his chances of getting past him? The gun didn’t worry him. But he didn’t know who else—or what—was outside the door. There was Berry’s safety to consider as well.
“Where’s the girl?” he asked as if reading Zane’s mind. He tried to peer around Zane without getting any closer. Zane darted a glance back at Berry, who had tucked her face out of sight in her arms. Her shoulders trembled. Apparently Zane had been much less scary than the kidnapper.
“Behind me,” Zane answered calmly, turning back to the man. “She’s frightened of you.” The man didn’t react at all to the news that a small child was terrified. It figured. One would have to have a heart of stone to make a living off kidnapping children.
Another man stepped through the door and around the first and approached Zane. “Don’t move, or we will shoot you, and then we will shoot the girl,” he said firmly. Zane eyed the man critically. Could Zane take the kidnapper, even with the gun pointed at him? The other man would be hard pressed not to shoot his comrade in this small of a space. But what about Berry? While he debated, the second man pulled a scanning wand from his belt and ran in it front of Zane, then yanked him around to run it behind him. Zane gasped at the jolt of pain in his stomach but then gritted his teeth against it.
“He’s not transmitting,” the man reported. “We’re still clean.” The first man nodded. Zane recognized that this was how the first group of kidnappers must have realized his jewel could be tracked. Anything on him that was sending out a signal probably registered on the scanner. But obviously it couldn’t detect a chip that was capable of transmitting but currently wasn’t.
The corner of Zane’s mouth quirked up. He still had one last resort for contacting his father. He wasn’t going to use it though—not yet.
It was truly his last option.
Apparently the guards still felt he was a threat, because one of them stepped forward and pressed his laser directly to the side of Zane’s head while the other bent down and snapped shackles around his ankles. Then he rose and checked behind the crates, sparing Berry only the briefest of glances. Obviously he didn’t consider her any kind of a threat because he turned casually away from her and strode back to the door.
“He’s secure, Shiz,” the man called.
Zane drew in a breath. So he was going to meet the mysterious boss behind the auction. Pity he had a laser pressed to his temple. This was one man he wouldn’t mind taking a swing at.
A tall figure in a dark military combat suit stalked into the room.
Zane raised an eyebrow. Well, make that one woman he wouldn’t mind taking a swing at.
She appeared to be about his father’s age, with iron-gray hair cropped close to her scalp and intense, dark eyes that swept the entire room before ranging over Zane head to foot.
“Hmm. You look older in person. Less the rebellious but dashing son and more the middle-aged wastrel gone to seed,” she observed. Her voice was dry and thin, as if she’d spent years breathing asteroid dust. She didn’t speak loudly, but there was something in her tone that indicated that she was completely confident in herself and her situation. She did not fear Zane in the slightest.
“Kirtuth must have been a shock,” she mused. “Such weakness on the part of an otherwise worthy opponent. Lev should have had you killed after your betrayal.”
Zane would have shaken his head, but refrained since the laser was still poking into his skin. How did this woman know about his betrayal? It was not public knowledge that Zane had tried to trade Jaxon and Jimmy to pay off his nanospeed debt. Most people knew about Kirtuth, though. Maybe she had made an educated guess. Or maybe she had an inside source. He decided to fish a bit.
“Did Kozel tell you about that?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. Bingo. She was working with Kozel. And if he was any judge, she wasn’t happy that Zane knew about him. She pursed her lips together for a moment and then sighed. “Well, it was inevitable that Kozel would slip eventually. Honestly, I expected to lose that asset sooner. Another misstep on the part of Lev. He must be losing his touch.”
“You speak like you know my father personally.” Another fish for details. The more he could find out about her, the better.
Her mouth quirked up. “One must be well-informed about her rivals.”
“So you’re a zone boss then?” If she was, how had he never heard of her?
She laughed derisively. “The Red Zone is a sandbox, Zane Quintan. A play place for the kiddies. I would expect even you to understand that.” Zane processed that statement silently. Was she working on the interplanetary level, then? That suggested that her real rival was Jay Forrest, not his father. Several pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
“You orchestrated the kidnapping with all the blame pointing to me just to attack Quintan-Forrest Enterprises?”
She smiled slowly. “Maybe you are not as stupid as you appear.” She tapped a finger to her lip and then shrugged. “I must admit, it’s gratifying in a way for someone to finally realize what you have managed to accomplish after years of patient work without credit. When my first attempt failed, I was certain that it would come to light then. Yet Lev only pursued Quartos.”
“You were the one behind the destruction of the first gate?”
“Of course. Obviously, it didn’t work as planned. Instead of the catastrophic chain reaction destroying both Quintan Tower and the gate at the Marah resort, only one gate was affected, and you merely rebuilt it. Plus, the Forrest twins managed to survive somehow.” She sighed theatrically. “All that hard work wasted. I had to start over almost from scratch.”
Zane clenched his jaw. If she had succeeded, a lot of people in Quintan Tower would have been killed, most likely including Zane and all his sisters. Had that been by design as well? Had Shiz waited specifically until his sisters had come home from school for vacation? If Jaxon and Jimmy had been killed in the attack at Quartos’s base as well, Jay and his father would have lost every one of their children except Jay’s oldest daughter. With the complete destruction of both prototype gates at the same time as such an immense personal crisis for both directors, the company may well have crumbled.
A diabolical plan. But the kind of plan devised only by a person with no conscience and no consideration for life at all. The same kind of person that would kidnap a mother and her children and auction them off for torture and death in hopes of bringing a company to its knees.
At that moment, he knew. He knew Shiz would kill him. The only question was when. His eyes flicked toward Berry’s hiding hole. She was still tucked behind the crates, her head down. Zane had to get her to safety first. Whatever the cost.
“Well, as interesting as this chat is, I need you to do something for me,” Shiz said, as if they were old friends catching up on the past seven years. “I have a rather unhappy customer I need to placate, and since you were dumped unceremoniously on my doorstep, I think I’ll offer you. Keep silent, and he may just decide to take you. Otherwise, you are of no use to me anymore.”
She caught the eye of the guard standing to the side and jerked her thumb. “Bring the girl, too. If he resists, cut off one of her fingers,” she said without a hint of emotion. The guard nodded and withdrew a vicious-looking Majellan-style blade from his belt as he tugged Berry out from behind the crates. Zane blanched. What kind of monster was he dealing with?
The threat was effective, though, because he didn’t dare to do anything but meekly hobble along with the guards out of the room. Once in the hallway, he studied their surroundings, trying to get an idea of where they might be. What surprised him were the muddy bootprints everywhere. The hallway was filthy. It was lined with closed doors, and there were no windows. The doors at either end were tall, double wide, and reinforced, though they weren’t blast doors. Where was he? Still
in the Red Zone? Off-planet? The only thing he could be certain of was that he wasn’t on a ship.
Two guards ushered Zane into the new room first, followed by a third man who almost dragged Berry along with him. She could barely keep her legs moving, and he yanked her upright and forward every few steps. Zane’s chest constricted at the sight of the tears streaking down her cheeks and the terror in her eyes. How could these men be so callous?
He swallowed. Hadn’t he once callously dragged Jenna down a hallway while she pleaded with him? Was he any better than these men? Then he shoved the thought aside. He wasn’t that man anymore. People could change. And he would get little Berry Forrest out of the grip of these cretins if it killed him.
Glancing around, he studied his surroundings, looking for some opportunity for escape. The room was not as bare as the storage room; this was clearly a rec room of some kind. There was a game station, some comfortable-looking chairs, and a large terminal screen on one wall. Even kidnappers with hearts of stone must need time to relax, he thought sourly.
“Going to let us play a game or two?” he asked dryly. “It was boring in that storage room, I’ll admit.”
The man to his right ignored him, but the one next to him squeezed his arm, digging his nails into painfully into Zane’s bicep. “Silence,” he threatened in a low voice. “You got that? Not a word.” The third guard tugged Berry’s hand higher and pressed the blade to the base of her little finger. A squeak escaped Berry, and then she squeezed her eyes shut.
Zane nodded, not even speaking the answer so that the man would realize he got the message. When the guards positioned him so he was in full view of the holocam with Berry beside him, he didn’t even struggle.
The large screen before him flicked to life, and Zane stifled any sign of surprise. He recognized the heavyset figure leaning forward in his high-backed office chair, with his distinctive white hair and piercing blue eyes. This Armada admiral was a customer of Shiz?
“This?” the man exclaimed abruptly, jabbing his finger in the air. “This is your compensation for losing the woman? Worthless Zane Quintan?” Zane let the insult slide right off him. Obviously the admiral was continuing a conversation that he had been having already with Shiz. Zane cocked his head thoughtfully. For years his father had been providing Admiral Leckey with “incentives” to keep the Armada far away from the Red Zone. Was the admiral now colluding with the kidnappers? Who was the woman they had lost?
“He could be useful,” Shiz said mildly from her chair to the side. She wasn’t in view of the holocam. Zane wondered if Leckey knew who he was working with.
“I’m not interested in men, Shiz,” the admiral said with disgust.
She laughed. “No, I know of your predilection for, shall we say, broken young women.”
Zane couldn’t suppress a shudder of disgust. Surely Shiz wasn’t suggesting what he thought.
Shiz took a sip from a bottle and swallowed. “I meant that he could provide you with leverage against his father,” she continued.
“That was your job. When I agreed to bid up your ridiculous little auction, you promised me that the Quintans would fall. You promised me the gate plans.”
“I promised you no such thing,” she disagreed, her voice hardening slightly. “I promised you that Quintan-Forrest Enterprises would be broken, ripe for the picking, including the gate plans. It is up to you how you take advantage of the situation. A little leverage might be useful.”
The admiral waved his hand away. “I’ll have those gate plans as soon as Jay Forrest is dead. He’s been the only one keeping the Armada from straight-out requisitioning them as a military necessity.”
“Well, my sources say you will soon get your wish. Then our business transaction will be complete, will it not?”
Zane heard the words, though he struggled to keep his face impassive. This was far more insidious than he had even dreamed. The Armada was scheming to take the gate plans? Leckey was plotting to help destroy the company?
There was no point in confronting Leckey directly. Instead, he studied the man’s background, trying to get an idea of where he was. Was he is in his office at work? At his home? Some other location? Part of a window was visible in the background. A glimmer of glass buildings—and a blotch that could, possibly, be a shuttle. Was he on the base, then?
If Admiral Leckey was bold enough to receive this comm in the same office where he oversaw the Omphalos Armada base, things were even worse than Zane thought. It might not matter if he managed to contact his father.
“There is still the matter of Jenna Forrest,” the admiral said coldly. “I paid for her, and now you can’t provide her.” Zane’s heart leaped. Had Jenna gotten away? She must be the woman they had lost! Or had something happened to her? “Zane Quintan is not an acceptable replacement. Richard Donnell has been a thorn in my side for many years. I paid handsomely for my revenge with my . . . pleasure. I will have it, Shiz. Or you will find that the local Armada patrols soon ‘stumble’ on your little haven in the Ravine.”
Shiz’s face hardened into granite. “I told you, we lost power during the storm, and she managed to escape. She’s probably dead already. There is nowhere to go.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe. Either send her to me alive and well, or produce her dead body. This is my revenge, and I am the one who will make sure that she is returned—in the state I choose—to her father. That is what you got your money for. Speaking of which, I did pay for a child as well. Surely you haven’t lost them both?”
Shiz waved at the knife-wielding guard, who grabbed Berry and yanked her forward into view of the holocam. “No, we’ve got her right here,” Shiz said. “In perfect health.” That didn’t make any sense. The other kidnappers had tried to auction Berry and Erik together, so presumably they had won the bid for both of them. That meant Shiz had probably meant to send Jenna’s older daughter to the admiral. Had Shiz “lost” her too? With any luck, that meant Jenna had somehow escaped with her daughter. If he could just get word to his father . . .
When he returned his attention to the screen, Admiral Leckey was staring at Berry speculatively. “She’s very young,” he mused aloud. “Though still quite pretty.”
Zane’s stomach twisted. He flicked a glance at Berry. She was sobbing openly now. Zane reached over with his clamped wrists and brushed a shoulder with his fingers. She stiffened, but her sobs quieted a bit.
“Send her to me, then. Unharmed, Shiz,” he said sternly. Zane’s eyes brightened. If they couldn’t hurt Berry, then now he had a chance. “Throw in Zane Quintan, and I’ll give you a bonus,” the admiral continued. “Most importantly, I want Jenna Forrest, alive or dead. Two days, or the deal is off.”
“Very well.” Shiz’s voice was brittle. The screen shut off, and Shiz jumped up from her chair. “Comm Finn and tell him I want Jenna Forrest now. I don’t care if he has to swim across that river and kill every villager personally!” she barked. “And take these two back to the red room.” She stalked from the room, and the guards scrambled to obey her orders.
Time to exercise the last resort. Hopefully they would be too busy trying to find Jenna to scan him again. He leaned down to the little girl at his side. “Berry, as soon as no one is looking, drop to the floor and crawl out of the way. Hide if you can and don’t come out, no matter what,” he whispered urgently. His guard yanked him back up, and Zane let the momentum carry his whole torso up, bringing his elbow smashing into the man’s jaw.
The guard staggered backward, and Zane turned on the other man. He’d barely had time to kick out when something slammed into the back of his head. His knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor, the pain spawning red waves that made his vision swim.
This was it. His best chance. Summoning his mental focus, he called up the code, the phrase he had avoided thinking for more than ten years.
Zane Folcher Quintan, 434, Nightshade.<
br />
He felt the mental click, the shift as the thoughts activated the hidden transmitter and summoned the darkness.
Mercifully, it arrived just as the next blow to his head did.
41. Trust
The sudden high-priority comm alert startled Jimmy, and he stumbled into the railing that separated him from the copter deck. A Quintan Security officer eyed him and then went back to watching the copter carrying his father to the shuttleport diminish into the distance. Jimmy’s hands trembled as he pulled up the message. The audio comm had come from an unknown number. Could it be Jenna? Or kidnappers with another ransom demand? He listened to it once and then gasped, relief coursing through him followed by a sharp stab of alarm. He glanced nervously at the security officer, who was pretending to ignore him.
It was Lilah. He recognized her voice; she hadn’t needed to add the Glimmer Shimmer part at all. She had been semicryptic, but all in all it wasn’t a difficult message to understand. She was with someone called Luzia in the Vincze crew–controlled section of the Red Zone. Best of all, Erik was with her and safe. Using the initials to his full given name—Erik James Donnell—made it unmistakable who she was referring to. He wanted to shout with joy at the news. His son was safe, at least for now.
The last part of the message was ominous, though. She couldn’t get the help of Quintan Security because they were hunting her. Or someone pretending to be Quintan Security was.
Not good. Not good at all.
Now what?
He started back inside. First order of business was to find Grier. Then he needed a transport. That meant he was going to have to take his father’s advice. He was going to have to trust Lev Quintan.
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