Charlie was tempted in so many ways. Besides the obvious appeal of the man himself, who knew what she might learn after Rafe had a few beers in him? What kind of person was he, out from under the weight of caring for his father?
But there was a major obstacle to the plan. “I guess it’s not a bad idea, but we don’t have anyone to care for Del—Rafe’s dad—while we’re out. We can’t leave him alone.”
“I could sit with the old man for an evening.” Her friend’s sharp eyes sparkled with mischief. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. How long is it since you’ve been on a date?”
Forever.“You just said it’s not a date. And don’t get excited. Rafe may not want to go.”
Louise laughed. “He’ll want to go all right. I’m betting wild horses couldn’t keep him away.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elisa Chaudry stretched across her bed in apparently satisfied abandon, but a tiny frown marred her perfect features. “You know, the oddest thing happened at work today.”
Zouk twined a lock of her dark hair around a finger. “What was that, my love?” His pulse kicked up. How much did she remember?
“I was doing the station accounts—just routine, you know—and suddenly I found myself looking at an entirely different file! It was some travel order written a twinmonth ago, had nothing to do with what I was working on. Who knows how I got switched over to that file. Must have nodded off and hit some weird command keystroke in my sleep!”
Shalssit! She wasn’t supposed to remember anything about her actions today. He’d inserted the compulsion deep in her mind, below the layer of conscious thought. He’d planned for his little puppet to get the information he needed, transmit it to him and remain oblivious. This was a complication.
He forced a laugh. “Was the work that boring?”
“Oh, gods,” she groaned, “Page after page of data about fuel consumption and weapons replacement and on and on. But I imagine I’ll get a break tomorrow. They’ll want to interview me about what happened.”
He sat up and stared at her, his thoughts as sharp as razors. “What do you mean?”
She sat up, too, and put a calming hand on his arm. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s just a formality. I had to report the glitch—security, you know. Especially since the file I landed in had a really high clearance level.” She let go of him and dismissed his concern with a wave. “Anyway, it’s no big deal. Nobody’s even gotten back to me on it yet. They’ll get around to it eventually, I suppose.”
Zouk was certain the interview Elisa thought of so casually would happen right away. It would be thorough and extensive and no doubt would use the same psychic techniques he himself had used to enter and probe her open mind. Her interrogators would find the compulsion he had implanted, complete in all its details, including where the information she gleaned was to be transmitted.
He had covered his tracks well. Even with the transmittal data, Rescue would not find him easily. Still, he hadn’t counted on a breach of this magnitude. His mind cold, his heart a black hole, Zouk determined what must be done.
Elisa was still talking when he shut down her mind with the compulsion to sleep. He picked her up, her naked body warm and supple against his, and took her to the bathroom. He placed her gently in the shower unit, found some cleaning gloves under the sink and scrubbed her inside and out with the cleansing foam, removing any trace of his DNA. The apartment was another matter, of course. He did what he could by changing the sheets and sweeping with a Clenelight.
Those tasks complete, he returned to Elisa, still slumped awkwardly in the bottom of the shower. He took the knife he’d found in the kitchen drawer, curled the fingers of her right hand around the hasp and sliced her left wrist lengthwise twice, cutting deeply into the veins and arteries. Blood spurted across the shower wall, and Elisa jerked, but she didn’t wake. He repeated his actions with the right wrist, less expertly this time, since she was right-handed.
Again the blood shot from her veins and ran down the shower wall. The floor of the shower was slippery with it, despite the drain. And despite his best efforts to avoid it, the red stuff had washed over his skin, too. But no matter. He turned on the shower and rinsed away the gore, and hit the pad for air-dry. Then he turned on the shower again and left it running, as if she had done this horrible thing while the water ran down. There was an automatic cut-off after five minutes, a water conservation measure common to the buildings in this sector, so there was no danger of flooding and alerting the downstairs neighbor.
Zouk dressed and checked the apartment one last time for any evidence of his presence. The place was clean. He had thought of everything. It was a shame he’d have to cultivate a new contact at Rescue headquarters, but that was the price of security. He only hoped his next mole was as . . . cooperative . . . as Elisa had been. And the best part, of course, was she’d done her job before she’d been discovered. Zouk had already retrieved the data from the anonymous comp address in a public comm station.
Zouk fingered the tiny chip in its case in his pocket. He smiled to himself, turned off the lights and let himself out.
The shower had run for its allotted five minutes, but Elisa Chaudry’s body had kept right on bleeding out onto the shower floor afterwards, leaving a red, sticky mess around her jumbled limbs. It wasn’t the worst crime scene former FBI Special Agent Lana Matheson-Cruz had ever experienced, but two dead bodies in as many weeks was more reminder than she wanted of her previous life.
“I wouldn’t usually bring you two in on this kind of investigation,” Rayna said to Lana and Gabriel. “But something about this seems, I don’t know—”
“Suspicious?” Gabriel said, his expression neutral.
--Funny, Lana sent him.
Rayna didn’t bother to answer.
“Sensors put time-of-death at about 2200 hours last night,” Lana offered. “I’d say she came right home from work, helped herself to that wine we found in the kitchen, thought it over and didn’t like the future she saw.”
“That’s certainly what we’re meant to think.” Gabriel stared down at the body, a frown tugging at his lips.
Rayna indicated several others in the next room. “We’ve got a team scouring this place from top to bottom, but we haven’t found a single piece of evidence yet that says anyone else was with her last night.” She shook her head. “Much as I hate to believe one of our own would do this, Elisa Chaudry was a traitor and a coward who stole secrets from us and killed herself rather than pay for it.”
“It’s too easy,” Gabriel argued. “An explanation all wrapped up in a neat little package.”
Lana’s intuition said so, too. “I have to agree. She was passing those secrets off to someone. We still don’t know who that is.”
“So unless the team comes up with some physical evidence—which is unlikely—Chaudry’s death leads us nowhere.” Rayna’s frustration grated in her voice.
“Not necessarily,” Lana said. “That’s what we’re here for, remember? What did she steal again?”
“We caught her trying to access travel records,” Rayna said. “Classified top secret because they contain operational data—dates, times, places. The glitch she reported was for files from a twinmonth ago; any of our current ops might have been compromised.”
“Why would she self-report?” Lana said this even as she registered that Gabriel was working on a different problem in his head. He had a hunch, and the tracker never failed to build a coherent theory from his hunches.
“She had no choice,” Rayna replied. “The computer had already detected the breach and would have done it if she hadn’t.”
“Are names attached to these travel orders?”
Gabriel’s comment seemed like a non-sequitur, but Lana saw where his thoughts were going. Chaudry’s had been no random fishing expedition.
Rayna scoffed. “Of course not! There’s a code.” Her eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, shit. She was after Del’s location!” She snatched at the comm unit at
her waist. “RHQ Seven requesting computer access via retinal scan. Initiate.” She stared into the unit for a second.
“Computer access granted,” the unit informed her.
“System Query: List all activity regarding ICAR Security Code 27a within the past 48 hours.”
“Listing onscreen.”
Rayna needed only one glance at the screen to begin a stream of cursing. Then she looked up at Lana and Gabriel.
“She got the code. Whoever she sent that info to can attach the names to the travel orders. It won’t take them long to track Del to the Shadowhawk, and the Shadowhawk to Earth. We need to warn Rafe. He’s gonna have to move.”
Gabriel’s voice remained calm. “Warning him is a sensible precaution, but I don’t think we should be too quick to change Del’s location. He’s safe where he is for now; his son can protect him. And it will take time for his enemies to find him—time we can use to track them.”
Lana had a nanosecond to communicate her doubt and fear to him through their bond: a subverbal are you sure we can do this?
He responded with confident warmth: trust me.
“You want to use a hero of the abolition movement for bait?” Rayna stood toe-to-toe with the much larger tracker, her temper in full flare. “A hero, I might add, who is crippled in mind and body and can’t lift a finger to defend himself!”
Gabriel smiled. “Rayna! Do you really think I can’t find these pultafas before they find Del?”
His cocky assertion had its intended effect. Lana watched Rayna go from angry to amused in the space of a heartbeat. But, then, the two had been friends a long time. Ray was used to the wild claims Gabriel made, and she knew he had the skills to back them up. Lana was still learning how much.
That didn’t mean Rayna was about to give up her argument. “And just where are you gonna look, smartass? Our best techs have been over Chaudry’s comps both at work and here with a nanofilter and three separate code scans and they can’t find any sign of a transmission. If she downloaded the data and passed it off, we have no way of tracking it. Her contact is a ghost.”
“Not to me.”
Almost as quickly as Lana sent the question to her mate through their bond and was answered with a mental smile, Rayna voiced it. “You can feel something? Here in the apartment?”
“Whoever we are looking for was very careful to remove his DNA traces from this place,” Gabriel said. “But he is at least partially Thrane. Even though his psi talents aren’t particularly strong, he used them frequently here and left plenty of evidence of it behind in his EM signature.”
Lana addressed him through their link. Why can’t I feel him?
--Because I have been blocking him, k’taama. His energy is dark and twisted, and the pleasure he took in the murder is still fresh in the air. You don’t need to feel that.
She sent a wave of love and strength to him along their bond. No, she didn’t need to feel that; neither did he. But he would do it to get the job done.
“So you have his EM signature, but what good does that do us?” Rayna asked. “I don’t suppose there’s a secret EM database somewhere?”
Gabriel laughed, a sound without humor that Lana would never want to hear as his enemy. “A database? No. But there are people who find this kind of man useful. And I know some of them.”
The Spacedock traffic coordinator at Terrene was Barelian and as thick as the cargo containers stacked in endless rows in the busy warehouse outside her office. And despite her gender she was oblivious to Zouk’s attempts to win her by means of any sexual lures. Just as she was resistant to any of his mental touches. In fact, her mind appeared to be every bit as thick as her body.
“I’m not asking for classified data,” he repeated for the third time. “By law, the manifests of ships coming and going from Terrene Spacedock should be public knowledge, entered into the open database.”
“So why you asking me, then?” Her voice was deeper than a human female’s, or even a Thrane’s, and her accent was harsh and guttural. “Go look in database.”
Zouk took a breath before he answered; he couldn’t afford to lose his temper with this official. “The information I need is not in the database. I fear there has been some mistake along the way.” He didn’t dare imply Rescue had deliberately erased the data, or never entered it, in an effort to hide the Shadowhawk’s departure. The organization might as well contain Samarra and all her angels as far as the returned slaves and their descendants on Terrene were concerned. Rescue could do no wrong.
But the Barelian was offended anyway. “Mistake! What kind mistake? Ship leave here, ship in database. Ship no in database, ship no leave here!”
“Yes.” Zouk nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. I could be wrong—”
She folded her beefy arms over her chest. “Yes. You wrong.”
“Fine. But perhaps you would just do me the favor of looking in your records, which I’m sure are so much more detailed than the database. Just so we can be sure?”
Apparently he had said the magic word; the traffic coordinator leaned in. “Favor?”
Zouk knew that look, even on the brutish face of a Barelian. “Yes, a special favor. I do realize I’m taking up a large amount of your valuable time. Of course, I wouldn’t want to ask you to do that without something in return.” He glanced around for evidence of a camera, found none, and turned his comm screen in the woman’s direction. The credit transfer was all set; she just needed to give him her information.
“Hunh. Okay, fancy boy.” She reached for the device and entered her transfer info. She handed it back to him. “Wait here minute.” She plunked herself down at a desk, worked a compscreen with more than expected dexterity, and within minutes had come up with the data he needed.
“Shadowhawk depart twinmonth ago for Beh Deen II, Norian sector.” She pushed a flimsy at him. “Details.”
The Norian sector was not what he had expected to hear—too far off the usual trade routes. But then, Zouk doubted that was the Shadowhawk’s final destination.
“So,” he said to the official, unable to keep from prodding her. “Mistake.”
She shrugged. “Not my business.”
By which, Zouk surmised, she’d been paid to overlook the lack of an entry in the database, or Rescue did this routinely. Or maybe she genuinely didn’t care. She didn’t seem like a stickler for the rules once the credits started to flow.
“Well, then. Our business is done.” He bowed. “Madam.”
But the Barelian had returned to her compscreen and didn’t look up.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The cabin was quiet when Rafe rose in the gray light just after dawn. The Old Man had slept through the night, for once his dreams undisturbed by the horrors of his past. If Rafe hadn’t been up until all hours reading that damn report from Rescue, he might have had a decent night’s sleep himself.
He padded into the kitchen and started up the coffeemaker. Outside the big windows of the great room, fog rolled and swirled like a ghostly sea, obscuring the valley and most of the mountain slopes, sailing past the cabin in tattered wisps. The sun would be hours breaking through this morning. Rafe grabbed a sweatshirt from a peg near the door and pulled it over his head. He put on his boots, too, while the coffee was dripping into the pot.
At last he took a mug of the stuff and went out on the porch. His talk with Rayna needed to happen where it wouldn’t wake the Old Man. And Rafe guessed he had some apologizing to do. Which had been the Chief’s plan all along, hadn’t it.
The report he’d been assigned to read had detailed the exemplary record of one Gabriel de Santos Cruz, tracker, extractor, investigator, frequent “advisor” to Rescue. The report described several rescues in which Cruz had played a significant part, including one on Earth. He apparently was an old friend of both the Chief of Field Ops and her husband, Sam Murphy. He was well versed in self-defense techniques and the use of weapons. His psi talents were off the scale. And, oh, by the way? He’s half-Thrane.
Just keep your shalssiti Thrane claws off my father’s brain. Rafe’s reaction wasn’t logical, he knew that. It had nothing to do with who Cruz was, and everything to do with what he was—a representative of the animals who had reduced his mother to a helpless, shrieking, mindless shell full of nothing but pain. He couldn’t get the image of her death out of his head. He didn’t know how he could ever allow a Thrane—no matter how much others might trust him—to touch his father.
His coffee had gone cold, forgotten as he paced back and forth across the porch. He tossed it into the brown grass in disgust just as his comp pinged at his waist.
His superior didn’t waste time with niceties. “So, Agent Gordon. Have you read that report as ordered?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And?” Rayna’s expression was impatient.
Rafe stood up straighter, though the small screen wouldn’t have shown it. “Gabriel Cruz appears to be a useful asset to the organization, ma’am. We are lucky to have him.”
“I agree. He has been more than useful on many occasions. He’s saved my life. And my husband’s.”
“That was in the report, ma’am.” He understood it was personal for his boss. It was personal for him, too.
Rayna cocked her head at him. “You’re awfully polite today, Rafe.”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “That kind of day, ma’am.”
“I have a feeling that’s about to change. You’ve had a chance to think again about what I asked you. We need that intel from your father. We’re running out of time.”
Rafe’s pulse kicked up. “Has something changed?” He wished for the luxury of face-to-face; her reactions weren’t that readable on his small comp screen.
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