by Moira Rogers
The man stared at him.
Zel had never been good at faking innocuous, but he did his best to at least avoid seeming outwardly hostile. “We’re both in a bit of a tight spot here.”
Nothing.
“Yeah, I’m really impressed with the silent treatment, but it’s not going to do you much good.”
Cyrus frowned. “Nothing will. Not at this point.”
“Not even if we send you back to your city?”
“Do you know what a double agent is?” He smiled faintly. “A compromised operative poses a significant risk, Dominic Wetzel.”
So much for the promise of leniency—for the man or their settlement. “So you’re ready to die?”
His eyes were flat, black. “It’s my job.”
“Do you want to die?”
“I’m not one of your crazy feral warriors, Wetzel. But I’m not afraid of it.”
Cyrus wasn’t going to bend, but Zel had better tools at his disposal than crude torture. He leaned back in his chair and raised his voice. “Lanna?”
Lanna drifted into the room, and Zel fought the temptation to groan. She’d braided her hair while waiting outside, twisting it into twin pigtails that hung over her shoulders, and her expression was one of wide-eyed innocence. She looked like a teenager who’d wandered into the wrong room instead of what she was—a hybrid with a dangerous psychic gift.
Zel gestured to the spy. “Should I bother talking to him?”
The man grimaced and hissed a curse. “Get the fuck out of my head.”
“No need to be crude.” Lanna toyed with the end of one braid. “You think you’re afraid of me now, but you have no idea. With my help, any halfblood here could flip you.”
He froze. “I don’t care.”
Lanna’s voice dropped to a croon. “With my assistance, a halfblood would not need to stay close to control you. I could ensure any command they gave you persisted…all the way back to Nicollet.”
He relaxed a little. “They’d anticipate a counter-offensive, possibly even with me as the pawn. It would be useless.”
“Would it?” Lanna’s tone shifted, turned predatory enough for Zel to know she’d found a weakness. “We have no need of a spy, but I think you would make an excellent weapon. The man who betrayed his own people. When I am finished with you, the grandchildren of your city’s grandchildren will use your name as a curse.”
His voice shrank to a whisper. “No.”
“Speak. Tell us why you are here.”
His jaw clenched. “I was told to infiltrate this settlement.”
Zel leaned forward, both elbows braced on his knees. “Obviously. Tell me why.”
He hesitated so long that Lanna stepped forward again. Finally, he spoke. “I’m awaiting further mission objectives.”
“Lanna?”
“He’s telling the truth.”
Zel released his breath on a frustrated sigh. “Is this related to the incident two months ago? Is Nicollet planning to retaliate?”
The man snorted. “You’re lucky they haven’t already firebombed this shit hole.”
A blatant threat, and not a very deft one. Between Graham’s undercover snooping and Tanner and Juliet’s observations, Zel had a decent idea what sort of military firepower Nicollet could bring to bear, and it fell significantly short of firebombing. “So that’s the plan? Wipe us out like vermin?”
“No.” He bared his teeth in an angry grin. “That would be too easy.”
Lanna shook her head. “He doesn’t know. He’s not important enough to know.”
The spy shot her a look that could have flayed skin from bone. “More important than you. Any of you.”
“Enough. This is a waste of time.” Zel rose and waved a hand at the man in the chair. “Don’t hurt him, Lanna. We may need him later. But take everything he knows.”
“It won’t matter,” Cyrus said again, frantically this time. “It won’t matter.”
Lanna paused, tilting her head to the side. “He thinks he’s being truthful.”
It didn’t mean much. The spy had no way of knowing what Trip and Lanna had planned—hell, Zel didn’t completely understand it himself, and Trip had been explaining the idea of it for a month. As far as Zel knew, no one had successfully counterfeited someone else’s signal in the network, not proficiently enough to fool a full scan. What Trip had managed was one step short of magic.
What Lanna was about to do was magic, plain and simple. She settled into the folding chair Zel had vacated and crossed her legs at the ankle before folding her hands together in her lap. Prim and proper, but for the look in her eyes. She’d dropped any appearance of innocence, and her cold, calculating expression evoked a primitive response in Zel, the urge to guard against a potential enemy. As useful as Lanna was, he’d never been fully comfortable around her.
He didn’t need to be for this. She closed her eyes, and the council agent jerked once in his restraints, his eyes rolling back.
Zel turned his back, unwilling to watch. Lanna had the power and the strength to copy every thought in the man’s head, and the eerie ability to compartmentalize and access them at will. Trip could make the council see their spy standing in front of them, but Lanna could make them believe.
Now all he had to do was pull one over on the Nicollet council while regaining the confidence of his people and not getting distracted by the smoking hot woman holed up in his guest quarters.
Easy as falling off a log…into a pit of snakes.
Cache pulled Juliet into the network construct, and Devi watched as the blonde flickered and swayed. “I hate this shit.”
“I know you have a hard time with it, but a secure network is the only way to have a truly private conversation at this point.”
Tanner popped in a second later, much steadier—or much better at hiding his discomfort. He glanced around and quirked an eyebrow. “You redecorated, baby girl. Been streaming old historical videos?”
Cache wrinkled her nose, but didn’t disagree. “Feels like we should be preparing for a siege. Maybe I’m just paranoid.”
The place looked like a centuries-old war room. The walls were dark, polished and aged oak, heavily papered with military strategy maps and flashing monitors. A large round table stood in the middle of the room, books and notebooks and even a globe strewn across its surface.
Devi climbed on top of the table and sat, cross-legged, to survey her crew. “Sometimes, paranoia is justified. This would be one of those times.”
“The fuel supervisor is civil enough.” Juliet spun the globe with a flick of her wrist. “It’ll take a few days to synthesize enough fuel. Figured you’d want us to top off all the tanks while we were at it.”
“That’d be best.” There was no telling where—or how far—they might have to run before finding a safe place. “Unfortunately, some of the people here blame us for bringing in the spy.”
Tanner lifted a heavy-looking sword from its display on the wall and gave it an experimental swing. “I’m okay with getting patched up and getting gone. If I wanted to spend my days locked up in a city, I’d still be down south.”
Devi’s stomach clenched. “You’re not hearing me, Tan.”
Juliet whipped her head around, delicate wisps of hair flying and then settling around her face. “We can leave, can’t we, Dev?”
It was Cache who answered, her voice low and a little afraid. “If we could, she would have traded for fuel already. We’d be gone.”
This was it. She could let her team descend into fear, or she could give them back some power. Some control. “So we spin this the way we want it. We find out what the deal is with this guy we brought.”
Juliet snorted. “Come on, do we have to wipe their asses for them too?”
Keeping her own tone even was an exercise in self-control. “They bailed us out of a hell of a jam the other night, Jules.”
“It’s not about knowing what they know,” Tanner pointed out as he spun the sword around in a quick, ti
ght circle. “We need to know before they do.”
Cache dropped her feet from her desk and scooted her chair up so she could pull her terminal around. “I found a back door in Trip’s network last night while I was poking around. I think I can piggyback the signal without going through their network, just use it to boost me into the Global. I’ve still got the passenger manifest, so I can start trying to track him back. I also have that safeguard scan I did of everyone’s chips when they boarded. His pulled up the right info on a cursory check, but I can dig deeper. Track his chip ID instead of his ident code this time.”
Bypassing the monitored access Zel had offered was a gamble, but they had no choice. “Check communiqués to see if he managed to fire one off during the attack, but I think we have to operate on the assumption that he did.”
Keys clacked on an old-fashioned keyboard. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on it.”
Tanner laughed. “Hacker girl knows her shit, boss lady.”
The typing slowed—marginally—as Cache lifted one hand to make her special Fuck you, Tanner gesture.
Devi relaxed a little. “While Cache is doing her thing, Tanner, you and Juliet keep on the trucks. Work on the fuel, and make sure the rigs are sound. In the meantime, we’re just going to lay low.”
They lingered for a while, discussing things in hushed tones despite the security of their location. But they all avoided any mention of what it meant to assume the spy had sent word of the demon attack to his employers. A whole new life, one of even greater danger and hardship, off the grid like the citizens of Rochester.
Devi remembered Zel’s words from the first night. We can give you a week’s shelter. If you want to stay after that, you’ll all need to go through the approval process. Cache might be happy with that, maybe, but Juliet and Tanner would rather take their chances than be stuck underground every day.
And all Devi had ever personally known was the road, the twisting, patchwork stretch of asphalt her father had taught her to love. She’d never planned on putting down roots anywhere because she already had. Home was her truck, her crew.
We can give you a week’s shelter. If you want to stay after that—
She wouldn’t lose her home. She’d buy or trade for a new chip, change her looks and find another base of operations. A new list of clients and regular runs. A whole new life.
Chapter Eight
Zel stilled his leg for the fifth time as he watched Trip pound away at his keyboard, his concentration complete. A few seconds later his damn leg started bouncing again, worse than a nervous tic. Only four days since they’d rescued Devi’s crew, and he was already as jumpy as a teenager. It was hard to resist the urge to scratch his arm, as if he could fix the itch crawling under his skin so easily.
Four days. They’d had time to refuel and repair the trucks, and it was time to pack up Devi and her crew and send them on their way. Temptation averted, danger removed, and he could go back to worrying about the rebellion brewing among his people, along with the thousand other headaches chipping away at his will to live.
Focus. They were already riding their deadline hard, but it had taken a full day for Lanna to wrench enough detail from the spy’s mind to make their deception possible. A risky game, but their only chance at gaining a real advantage. “How’s it going there, Trip?”
The younger man frowned. “Not so hot. There’s something weird here with the usage logs.”
Dread filled his stomach. “Check it after you send the message. We need to make contact before the council figures out something’s wrong.”
After another tense minute, Trip huffed. “Done.” His frown had become a scowl. “It can’t be a trace. The bulk of the activity started before we even attempted contact.”
The sick feeling wasn’t dread, it was betrayal. Anger. “You been keeping an eye on your little purple-haired friend?”
“Shit.” Trip scribbled something on a piece of paper and shoved it at Zel. “Meeting place and time from the council. You’ll want to keep that out of the system. In the meantime, I can’t fucking tell what little Miss Princess was up to. Could have been scavenging a signal, could have copied every goddamn bit of information we have stored.”
Zel’s fingers tightened, crushing the piece of paper. “What does that mean? Practically? Is she better than you thought? Good enough that I need to be worried?”
Trip’s terse reply terrified him. “She’s decent.”
“Keep looking.” Zel rose and shoved the paper into his pocket. “Ping me as soon as you’ve got info one way or another, even if it’s that you can’t tell. And get the stuff for this meet together.”
A grunt was Trip’s only response, so Zel left him to his own devices. The sloping walls in the hall outside the office aggravated him more than usual, closing in on him as he strode toward the stairs. Claustrophobia joined with anger and frustration, sharpening his temper until every step echoed through his mind like thunder.
It didn’t help that he understood. Trapped in Devi’s place, he would have been desperate to gather information, to use every resource at his disposal. Knowledge was indispensable and, in Cache, Devi had the perfect weapon. He couldn’t blame her for using it.
He couldn’t accept it, either.
Zel reached the stairs and paused to drag his handheld out of his pocket. He had to confront Devi, but not until he gathered a little information of his own. Devi had Cache, but Zel had something almost as good—someone who’d been in the techie’s head. Lorenzo would be able to tell him if he should consider the girl’s snooping idle curiosity or the opening gambit in a full-on attack.
And once he knew… Taking care of the danger Devi might represent wouldn’t be as easy now as it had been a few days ago, but he’d do what he had to.
At first, the sound of the door chime confused Devi. Her own people were unused to electronics of the sort—or permanent doors, for that matter—and tended to knock.
“Just a minute.” She put away her logbook and kicked her duffel under the bed.
Zel stood on the other side of the door, his shoulders tense and his expression blank. “Can we talk for a few minutes?”
She stepped back, nodding to the scarred table. “What happened?”
He waited until she’d closed the door before answering. “Trip caught your girl playing with his firewalls.”
That made it sound like Cache had been trying to compromise them, and Devi straightened her spine. “Bypassing them, you mean. She was following my orders.”
“Well, your orders are making my life hard. It’s a fucking propaganda nightmare.”
As if all that couldn’t be resolved by letting them leave. “Gotta maintain that image, I get it. Luckily, there’s an easy fix.” She was tall, but she still had to tilt her head back to stare up at him. “Say the word, and I’ll gather my crew and leave.”
His lips pressed together, his jaw so tight he had to be grinding his teeth. “Trust me lady, I was about to. But I need to know what your techie saw in our network.”
“Fuck you.” Cold fury shivered through Devi, settling in her belly. She wished she could deny the charge outright…but curiosity sometimes got the better of Cache. “She’s not after your precious secrets.”
“Then what was she after?”
She considered not telling him. “Information about your spy and any communications he may have sent back to the council in Nicollet. Information we don’t have already, because we’re not actually working with him, contrary to what people here seem to think.” Hurt feelings lent her words a sharp, mocking edge, but she couldn’t help it.
His hands fisted. “I don’t think you’re working with him. But people in towns like this have secrets, and a net-hacker who can get around Trip’s firewalls can get any damn thing she wants. Do you not get that it’ll scare the hell out of people?”
“You think it didn’t scare the hell out of me and my crew when you made it clear we had to hide down here if we didn’t want trouble? Trouble we didn’t e
arn or deserve?”
“It shouldn’t have. I told you I was taking care of it.”
She had to stay calm. To take deep breaths and consider the situation rationally. “Your people are frightened, but there are limits to what you can reasonably expect from me. I can’t trust you like that, Zel, even if I want to.”
“I know.” It was almost a snarl, and he turned and strode past her, presenting her with the unyielding expanse of his back. “I still need to know what she accessed. You want to protect her, and Lorenzo is pretty sure she’s not a threat, but we have information in our network that could put us in danger. Maybe her too, if she found it.”
If she called Cache, she’d tell the truth. And Devi would ask her, if only to check the dangerous slide of threat and suspicion. “I’m not trying to compromise your authority. I just want you to understand why I had her do it.”
“It shouldn’t matter.” His voice grated, suddenly angry. “God damn it, it shouldn’t fucking matter. You shouldn’t matter.”
It hurt, even though she understood the sentiment perfectly. “Thanks.”
He snarled again and covered the space between them in two long strides, crowding her against the wall. His hands slapped the wall on either side of her head, but he didn’t touch her. “Liar. Or are you going to tell me you want me to matter?”
She opened her mouth to give him a kind lie, to tell him he didn’t matter in the least, not to her. “No. I wish I didn’t give a damn about you.”
“You don’t. You don’t know me.” He pressed closer, nothing but hard muscle and heat stretched out against her. “We both got it bad, sweetheart. If you want to take me for a ride and get it out of your system, I’m game.”
“I bet you are.” He’d obviously given the matter some thought, which was more than she was capable of at the moment. Her body had gone into sensory overdrive, cataloguing every bit of tactile information it could gather about him.
And it wasn’t enough. She wanted to know what he tasted like, mouth and skin. Whether she could find softness anywhere on his body, or if he was all hard. There was only one way to find those answers, so she lifted her hands to his shoulders and pushed, testing his strength.