Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2

by EJ Fisch

  There was a slight smack of skin on skin as the two men clasped hands and shook. “Great,” Aroska said. “I’ll check in first thing in the morning, if that works.”

  “I’d rather you started this afternoon. The sooner we find Payvan, the sooner our troubles are over.” Then he added coldly, “If that works.”

  “Sure, sure,” Aroska stammered, making Ziva grimace. “Just give me a couple hours to get cleaned up, and I’ll be in as soon as possible.”

  They were silent as their feet moved across the floor and the front door opened. “Good day, Lieutenant,” Dasaro said.

  “Good day, sir.”

  Then the door closed again, leaving the house as silent as she’d found it the day before. Ziva relaxed her grip on the pistol but refused to move otherwise, picturing herself waltzing out into the living room to discover that Dasaro was somehow still there, lying in wait. She stood perfectly still, listening to her own blood rushing through her ears until Aroska appeared in the kitchen doorway. He nodded that things were all clear.

  “Does this mean I’m off the hook for the rest of my so-called treatment?” he asked, flashing a playful smirk.

  Ziva stepped away from the wall and holstered her weapon. “You’re going to have to be more careful around Dasaro if you want to keep him convinced of anything for more than two minutes,” she sighed, brushing a hand back over her head and leaving it there. “Did he know? Could you tell?”

  “If he did, he did a good job of not showing it,” Aroska replied. “Something tells me that if he knew, he would have just put a round between my eyes then and there. I don’t think he saw you, and I doubt he could smell you with the smoke in the air. I know I couldn’t.”

  Ziva raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know whether to be relieved by that or disturbed that you were trying.”

  “So am I ready or not?”

  “You’re going to have to be. Dasaro’s a tough one to impress, but you can start by taking some initiative and showing integrity.” She gave him a once-over. “You’re a complete mess but at least you’re sober. Now hurry and clean up. You don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  -30-

  Residential Sector

  Noro, Haphez

  Diago Dasaro waved his fingers and the three agents accompanying him materialized from the shadows around Tarbic’s house and fell into stride behind him. He waited a moment before crossing to the other side of the street, where the four of them piled into the parked HSP-issue groundcar without a word. He was fed up with everything – the case, the people around him, everything. How Payvan could have evaded all the checkpoints and infrared probes was completely beyond him. He was confident that she was indeed still on the planet, but it was impossible to know if she was still running around in the forest or hiding out somewhere in one of the cities. What they really needed were more checkpoints on the ground, but at this point tightening the net would only create holes elsewhere that Ziva would take advantage of at first opportunity.

  Dasaro pulled the car out and joined the flow of mid-morning traffic. He looked forward to bringing Aroska Tarbic on board. He’d heard good things about the man; his excellent work ethic, investigative skills, and his experiences with Payvan would prove to be invaluable. The only thing that made him uneasy was the fact that Tarbic had been away from the agency on leave for over a month. According to the director it was nothing more than accumulated vacation time, although it had escalated from some personal time awarded to him after the Solaris group had been disbanded.

  He maneuvered the car into a busier traffic lane and began weaving back toward downtown Noro and HSP headquarters. Once they settled down to a steady speed he reached over and activated the mobile comm system on the car’s control panel.

  “She hasn’t been at Tarbic’s place,” he announced when Nejdra Venn answered the transmission.

  The woman swore. “We’re running out of ideas and time,” she said.

  “That doesn’t mean we stop trying,” Dasaro snapped. “I’m bringing in another resource. Tarbic volunteered his services – says he thinks he can help us find her. I think he’ll be a valuable asset.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Gather up the information we have and make a copy of the files so we’re ready to brief him when he arrives. We’re about twenty minutes out.”

  -31-

  Tarbic Residence

  Noro, Haphez

  “Nejdra,” Ziva corrected. “Nejdra Venn. The woman is a complete shouka. I guarantee she’s going to hate you the moment you walk through the door so don’t do anything that’ll dig you deeper into the hole. She’ll eat you alive.”

  “Nejdra,” Aroska repeated from behind the closed door of his bedroom. “Nejdra, Kyron and Diago.”

  Ziva was leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway, arms crossed, just as she had been since she’d heard him emerge from the lavatory. “Don’t bother getting on a first name basis with them,” she said. “They won’t be friendly enough to do so with you – hold your ground.”

  There was a thump as a footlocker closed, followed by some rustling. “Venn, Hoxie and Dasaro, then,” Aroska said, his voice muffled as if his head were inside a piece of clothing.

  Ziva looked down and watched his shadow shifting around under the door, listening as he moved across the floor to the closet and began going through it. She felt like a mother waiting on her dawdling son. After nearly two hours, she was beginning to wonder if there was another man in the galaxy capable of taking so long to get ready. Taking into consideration the condition he’d been in, however, she was grateful he’d taken the time to do a thorough clean-up job. Not only would it allow him to fit in at HSP as if he’d never left, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could have put up with being around him before he showered.

  She stepped out of the way when she heard him come back to the door and stop. The door slid open slowly and light from the bedroom poured out into the dark hallway. She strode out into the living room with him hot on her heels and snatched up her communicator from her meager pile of belongings.

  “What do you want me to do if I see Skeet or Zinni?”

  Ziva turned back to face him in the better light, startled by what she saw. She suppressed her shock by coming up with a speedy reply. “Tell them everything except where I am. I don’t need them getting in trouble for knowing more than they should.”

  She hoped her mouth hadn’t hung open as long as it felt like it had. The man standing before her was neither the Aroska Tarbic from two months ago nor the one who had locked himself away in the lavatory two hours earlier. She studied him for another microsecond. The warm amber eyes and the kind face belonged to the man she had known, the one who had helped her bring down Dakiti and the Sardons. However, his familiar shoulder-length hair had disappeared entirely – it had been replaced by a close-cropped cut he had styled into a short mohawk. He had also done a careful job shaving, masterfully resurrecting the thin black goatee she remembered. In addition, he had successfully gotten rid of the musty alcohol stench that had been hanging around him. He was dressed in a set of clean clothes and wore the same black field jacket he had always worn.

  He shrugged. “Do you approve?” he asked with a smirk.

  Ziva placed her hands on her hips and nodded, allowing a slight smirk of her own. She wagged her head. “I have to say I’m impressed,” she said, eyebrows raised. “Much better.”

  Aroska shrugged and scraped his fingers against the short, bristly hair on the back of his head. “So what is this, the second or third time I’ve ever done anything right by you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe I’ve got some points in your book. Maybe it’s time to stop treating me like I’m totally incompetent.”

  “Oh, so this is all a game and we’re keeping score now?”

  “I think you know that’s not what I meant.”

  “I think you should learn that there are times for joking and now is not
one of them.”

  “And I think you need to lighten up a little.”

  Ziva felt her face flush with anger as she ventured a step closer to him. “Damn it Aroska, what will it take for you to figure this out?” she exclaimed. “You want to get shot? How about tortured? Maybe then you would understand why I take everything I do so seriously. The more you focus now, the faster we can get this all over with. Then – then – I might ‘lighten up a little’.”

  She stared him down for a moment, giving her words ample time to sink in. Then, after turning over the communicator in her hand and tossing it into the air once, she offered it to him.

  Aroska took it and examined the tiny screen for a moment before pocketing the device. He opened his mouth to speak but looked away, wisely choosing to remain quiet and allow her to give him further instructions.

  “I’ll contact you on that by early evening,” she explained. “Ignore the transmission if you’re not in a position to talk. By all means do not let Dasaro know you have it.”

  “I have a comm,” Aroska said, raising a cynical eyebrow.

  “You can bet Dasaro will have yours bugged. It’s a standard part of his initiation process – everyone under his command has been through it at some point, including me.”

  He shuffled his feet and glanced toward the door. “If you’re in such a hurry to get this over with then I suggest we get this show on the road.”

  Ziva caught his arm with a firm hand as he turned to go. “Be smart, Tarbic.”

  “You know me.”

  “Exactly – that’s why I’m worried.”

  -32-

  HSP Headquarters

  Noro, Haphez

  When Skeet glanced up absentmindedly from his work, the last person he expected to see emerging from the elevator was Aroska Tarbic. At first the man’s identity hadn’t registered – he’d just happened to be looking in that particular direction at the exact moment he’d stepped out onto the squad floor. The faded black jacket was what he had recognized initially, and then he had realized who he was looking at. The changes in Tarbic’s hair had been enough to throw Skeet off, but now his eyes were glued to the man as he moved across the floor.

  He unwrapped a fresh chunk of govino gum and popped it into his mouth, savoring the fruity juices as they swirled over his tongue. Zinni sat just to his left, absorbed in her computer, so he nudged her shoulder and nodded in the direction Tarbic was headed with a single guard escort. “Hey,” he said, shifting the govino around in his mouth.

  Zinni glanced up quickly, startled and blinking as if she had been jolted awake from a dream. “Sheyss, Skeet,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes. “What?”

  “Check this out.” He gestured toward Aroska again. The sight of the man stirred an odd jumble of feelings within him. The last time he’d seen him, the team had been dangling by grappling cables in the Dakiti building’s main elevator shaft. All Skeet remembered was an image of Aroska and Ziva climbing out of the shaft in full tactical gear before he and Zinni had gone on to complete their part of the mission. The next thing he’d known, both of the lieutenants had been captured and the Grand Army had arrived with ground support. Helpless and frustrated, he’d been ordered to depart Sardonis and return to Noro, where he, Zinni and the Tantali prince Jayden Saiffe had been held under observation at a med center.

  “Aroska?” Zinni said after studying the man for a moment. She stood halfway up and peered over the wall of the bullpen. “What the hell?”

  Skeet hadn’t even heard Tarbic’s name mentioned for the past two months. One moment he had shot and arrested Ziva – after she’d risked her life to get him out of Dakiti – for a reason that remained a mystery. The next thing he knew, Emeri Arion had reversed the death sentence and Ziva had been free to go. When prompted later, Ziva had refused to discuss the events that had transpired. Skeet had left the matter alone, though curiosity was eating at him to this day. He couldn’t help but think Aroska had had a hand in the sentence reversal, though it made no sense when compared to what he had only just done to Ziva.

  Empowered by a fresh bout of curiosity and anger, Skeet logged out of the computer and pushed his chair in so forcefully that it hit the desk and bounced back to nearly the exact position it had been in.

  “Skeet, what are you doing?”

  Zinni called after him again but he ignored her and began jogging across the massive room. He wound through the maze of cubicles and workstations, blind to everything except that which was directly in front of him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Zinni’s hurried footsteps running to catch up to him, but they were little more than an echo.

  Skeet broke out into the aisle and turned right, having missed the interception by about six meters. Not breaking stride, he took one last set of jogging steps to close the distance between him and Aroska. “Hey Tarbic!” he called.

  Aroska pivoted, looking around for the source of the voice. His eyes brightened when they fell on Skeet and he turned fully, offering a hand. The word “hello” hadn’t quite escaped his lips when Skeet’s fist collided with his jaw.

  “No, Skeet!” came Zinni’s quiet but firm voice as she leaped at his arm and restrained him from lashing out again. The guard escort had done likewise with Tarbic, whose face was twisted in shock and disbelief as he rubbed his jaw.

  “That’s for what you did to Ziva,” Skeet said, shrugging away from Zinni and thrusting a menacing finger at Aroska. His knuckles throbbed from delivering the blow.

  The field ops lieutenant stole a glance in the direction he had been headed, toward the bank of offices on the far side of the squad floor. Three of the captains were approaching, including Diago Dasaro, their attention drawn by the commotion. He turned back toward Skeet, making a show of advancing in a defensive manner. When he spoke, his voice was firm but it lacked the anger Skeet had expected. “We need to talk,” he said.

  Dasaro and company were now upon them and the large man glared down at Skeet, each of his eyes a black abyss. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  Aroska kept his eyes locked with Skeet’s for another few seconds before answering. “Absolutely nothing, sir,” he muttered, shifting his attention to the three captains.

  Dasaro eyed the group warily then dismissed the guard with a wave of his hand. “Duvo, Vax, if you’re still standing here in three seconds I’ll have your badges. Tarbic, come with me.”

  -33-

  HSP Headquarters

  Noro, Haphez

  Jaw aching, Aroska watched as Skeet and Zinni reluctantly retreated under Dasaro’s threatening gaze. Some welcoming gift, he thought, hoping Skeet’s behavior hadn’t made matters any more complicated than they already were. At least the outburst had been enough to convince the captain that Aroska wasn’t on anybody’s side. He feared, however, that getting close enough to Skeet to pass on Ziva’s message would now be nigh on impossible.

  “Welcome, Lieutenant,” Dasaro said, initiating a handshake. “I appreciate the effort you made to get here in a timely manner. Meet captains Nejdra Venn and Kyron Hoxie.”

  The man and woman with him each nodded silent greetings and maintained hardened countenances. The four of them continued on to the offices, where Dasaro motioned for Aroska to pull up a chair and Nejdra handed him a data pad. He read over some of the file headings, testing the mobility of his jaw and tasting a little blood from where his teeth had cut the inside of his mouth. “This is everything you have on Payvan?” he asked.

  “Everything pertaining to the current investigation,” Dasaro answered. “To tell you the truth, there isn’t much else that’s not classified beyond even the scope of spec ops. Rumor has it you’re aware of Lieutenant Payvan’s status as one of our deep cover assassins.”

  Aroska nodded. He recalled his attempts at accessing Ziva’s files after Soren’s death and he had no doubt that most of her information was restricted, but he still wasn’t convinced the captain was sharing everything. Being kept in the dark was nothing new –
he already felt as though he had walked into HSP without a clue what was really going on. “Is there anything specific you’d like me to get started on, sir?”

  Dasaro slipped an access key across his desk. “You’ve been granted temporary special operations clearance until we can bring Payvan down, so you are free to go about your investigating independently. Start with a thorough go-over of that material and make sure you’re familiar with our methods, and then we can discuss specifics if you still have questions. Report directly to me with anything you find. And Tarbic, if you can do this, we’ll see about making your special ops position something more than temporary.”

  “Yes sir,” Aroska said, fighting away the smile he felt creeping onto his face. An odd tingle of temptation numbed his mind for a split second until Ziva’s words echoed gently through his memory: “What would you think of a permanent position in special ops?”

  There were times when he wished he’d accepted her offer, but the thought of continuing without Jole Imetsi and Tate Luver after going through the trouble of saving them seemed absurd. Perhaps turning her down had been irrational thinking – it certainly seemed like it now, considering the mess he’d worked himself into during his time away from the agency. Still, he hadn’t been convinced of the sincerity of Ziva’s proposition. He’d encroached enough in her space as it was, and despite everything she’d done for him, he still hadn’t felt entirely comfortable being around her. Both were reasons he had politely allowed her to fade into the background after he’d departed her house that day.

  With a nod of Dasaro’s head, Aroska was dismissed from the office. He was glad to be on such a long leash, but at the same time he felt it would be easier to maintain Dasaro’s trust if he had a definite course of action to follow. What exactly was he expected to do, wander aimlessly for the next few hours and then report to Dasaro that he’d found nothing? Lie and make up some false information? He fingered the communicator Ziva had sent with him and wished she would hurry and contact him with further instructions.