But she didn’t. The bitch walked on by without turning her head, wiping her eyes with the backs of her fingers, talking to herself beneath her breath. Skelly recognized one word out of the few that were spoken. A name. It was not his.
A noise at the opposite side of the gymnasium startled him, drawing his attention away from Hallie. Burke stood by another locker, the door slightly dented. He held his closed fist in his other hand, swearing. After a moment he headed for the hygienic facilities, no doubt to shower and perhaps engage in some other activity subsequent to his physical contact with Hallie. Burke walked past the apertures and did not bother to raise the screens.
Skelly frowned. Did Conlan know he was there? Had he left the screens down to thwart him, to flaunt his bravery over Skelly’s cowardice? Skelly’s chest tightened. He shoved his hand deeper into his pocket, fingers closing around the vial with enough force to crush it. He was careful not to.
A few minutes later he heard the water come on. He stepped out of his hiding place. Skelly had suspected what would come of Conlan’s arrival in Sector 43 the moment he saw him. Now, a matter of weeks later, he knew for certain.
Burke Conlan was his enemy. In this place, only one outcome could come of that knowledge.
EMERALD TWILIGHT – SEASON TWO
TWILIGHT’S DARK GLEAMING
I.
MALICE HATH LONG ARMS
Cross-legged on the edge of her bunk, Hallie held the soundsphere to her ear. Usually it beat like a heart, rhythmical and pervasive. Today, it held a music she could not recognize, the cadence altered as if the music belonged to another, belonged to that mute child of her dreams whose identity and reason for being in her head Hallie now understood.
Burke Conlan had a daughter and Arad had threatened the child to ensure that Burke did as he was told. The actions of the man she had lived with as bond-wife these past ten years sickened her. Sickened her, but didn’t surprise her. If she had been shocked, she might not have believed Burke. Yet she did believe him, and she knew the desperation moving through her was nothing compared to what Burke had to be experiencing.
Would Arad harm a child? Given his behavior of late there was no reason to expect he wouldn’t. She knew this. So did Burke.
She couldn’t hide in her cell any longer. She’d been doing so for three days, only leaving at odd hours for meals and to shower. She had more questions to be answered, more things she didn’t understand. It was time to talk to Burke again.
Hopping off the berth, Hallie returned the soundsphere to the desk drawer. Skelly Shane had made repeated attempts to speak with her, hammering on the door, but she had begged off. Calypso had come, too—Hallie had let her in, especially once she found out Calypso’s birthday was a week away. The island woman had been subdued by the knowledge of celebrating far from home, explaining how it would be done had she been in the Tansi. Determined to make her a gift, Hallie immediately began breaking off strands of her own hair to weave into a bracelet. The bracelet was nearly complete and lay in a softly shimmering circle in the bottom of the drawer beside the sphere.
From Burke she’d heard nothing.
In those few moments when truth had been spoken between them and he had taken her into the fierce circle of his embrace, everything had changed. The exchange of truth was never simple. She had lost the focus of her anger and animosity and been forced to redirect it back where it belonged. As that target was nowhere near, she’d been set adrift. The only familiar thing to her now was Burke, a strange and devastating realization.
Still, she couldn’t help the constant recollection of his arms around her. The memory steadied her when her logical mind told her it shouldn’t, as did the remembered scent of him, masculine and musky from his workout, and the stroke of his hand on her hair, down her back, murmured words vibrating deep in his chest. In her longing to feel those things again, she was stricken by the knowledge Arad had set all of it in motion. Perhaps it was his masterstroke of cruelty, that she should find solace only in the company of the stranger who had betrayed her.
If it was merely irony and not a fabrication of the long arm of malice, it made no difference. Burke had to be aware of the twisted indications as well.
Nevertheless, she needed to talk to him. She didn’t know if he would want to talk to her. She was partially, though indirectly, responsible for the risk to his daughter. If she hadn’t allowed herself to fall into complacency, living day to day with an unbearable situation, pretending to make it bearable, Arad actions might have been prevented. She should have mustered the mettle to return to her family long ago. Arad would have retaliated, of course, yet his revenge would have been directed at her alone and not Burke’s innocent child. And Hallie would have been with her family, where some protection existed.
Even so, Burke’s career choice meant he wasn’t blameless, by any means. Hallie remembered the moment in the arboretum when she thought he’d come to kill her. Only a minute consideration had been enough to make her realize such a solution was not Arad’s way. He preferred to mete out prolonged suffering rather than quick ends. She had witnessed this tendency on the Council floor and in their private lives. She knew him. She knew him.
Now there was every possibility Burke’s daughter had come under his control.
Fueled by renewed urgency, Hallie hastened into her uniform and left the cell, even though any thoughts to save the child were futile. No communication capabilities, no visitation, no possibility of parole to free either one of them. The realization making her frantic had to be slicing him into bloody pieces.
Heading first for the common room, Hallie entered to the sound of Calypso’s laughter. The island dancer stood in the middle of the floor, swaying in a suggestive, rhythmic dance. To her ears she held two glittering objects which, upon closer inspection, proved to be a pair of the gaming crystals.
“Look what Skelly and Emil give me,” Calypso exclaimed, lowering her hands in order for Hallie to have a better look at the crystals on her palm. “Emil promise to make them into earring for me. In his old life before this one, Emil is a—a—”
Hallie glanced over at Emil who was observing their conversation with an astonishing, almost friendly expression. “Jeweler?” Hallie offered.
“That is it. Jew-e-ler. You like?”
“Very much.” Hallie was surprised that either of the men had parted with the crystals. Was it acceptance that they were never leaving, never going to cash in on their game winnings?
“Early birthday gift,” Emil said, without his usual corrosive lilt. Nearby, Skelly watched impassively, toying with a small object beneath the edge of his food tray. When Hallie briefly caught his eye, his lassitude evaporated.
“Did you sleep late, Hallie? We haven’t seen you in days. Something wrong? Sit down and we’ll talk.”
Skelly issued the query like a challenge, pushing out a chair at his table with the heel of his boot as he glanced toward the opposite end of the room. Burke was seated alone in the far corner. His dark gray gaze met hers.
Burke rose from his seat and crossed the floor with a casual stride that did not hide the tension in his neck and shoulders. Observing Burke’s approach, Skelly tapped his finger on the tabletop and suddenly turned to Emil.
“Conlan doesn’t look to have slept well, either, does he, Emil? Coincidental, do you think?”
“If you have a question for me, Shane,” said Burke, his voice a low rumble as he reached Hallie’s elbow, “ask it.”
“Sure. Are you fu—”
“Skelly!” Emil warned sternly.
Burke’s jaw muscles tightened. Otherwise, his countenance remained controlled.
“Are you sleeping with our new recruit?” Skelly amended.
“How dare you?” Hallie said.
“I want to know how you managed it, Conlan,” Skelly went on, ignoring her. “Don’t you think you’re taking unfair advantage of Hallie? Scared. Lonely. I guess those things worked in your favor.”
“What I I think,
” Burke answered, “is that Hallie is not one to be taken advantage of, and is possibly the least easily frightened of any of us. However, I don’t think she likes being spoken of as if she’s not even here. Do you?” he confirmed, turning to her.
“I do not,” Hallie began angrily, and felt the stroke of Burke’s fingers behind her elbow. She stilled.
Burke nodded at Skelly. “We are being monitored, so composure is of the utmost importance. Your insinuation, Shane, is not only insulting to Hallie, but inaccurate. If you have a problem with me personally because of what you have mistakenly perceived, then I suggest you handle it in a different fashion in future.”
During a period of awkward silence, the color rose in Skelly’s face. He shoved back his chair and stalked out, slamming his tray into the disposal unit as he passed by. Hallie released her breath, turning to Burke.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“I need to talk to you as well. Would you come with me?”
* * *
“I can’t believe Skelly would say such a thing.”
Burke glanced at Hallie. She walked with confidence, head held high. Not in pride, only certainty, and yet her naïve viewpoint contradicted that assurance. He understood precisely why Shane had said what he did. “Close quarters can breed all sorts of mayhem,” he answered. “Who knows what Shane thinks and why.”
“Where are we going?”
“I was going to suggest my cell, but after Shane’s comments that wouldn’t be wise.”
She bit the corner of her lip. He looked away from the gleam of her teeth in soft pink flesh. “The exercise area? We could run the water.”
To mask their conversation. Smart. A smile loosened the restricted muscles of his jaw causing the scar running down the left side of his face to wrinkle stiffly. “That works.”
Once inside the vast, echoing gymnasium, Burke stepped into the hygienic chamber and turned on all the shower heads. Rushing water made a thunderous noise. Hallie observed from the doorway, arms folded across her chest. He walked back over, pausing inside the threshold. She stepped closer.
“I’ve found out a few things about our little planet and the world outside,” he said. Her gaze was on his mouth, following the movement of his lips as he whispered. At his words her brows arched. Her gaze lifted to his. In the dimness of the chamber her eyes looked nearly as dark and intricately patterned as the shadows in a forest.
“How did you manage that?” she asked.
“With all due caution. I didn’t want to find myself deterred in my quest for knowledge. Though frustrating, what I managed is not that difficult if you know how to get around certain security factors.”
“And you do?”
“I do. Learned a trick or two while I lived with my grandmother.”
Her lips curved in a slow smile that was about the sexiest thing he had seen in a long time. He steered clear. “Why are you amused?”
“Picturing you living with a grandmother.”
“Don’t indulge yourself in any homey images. I lived on Wiley, the gaming moon. My grandmother hustled the patrons with the best of them.”
She laughed at his confession. He liked the sound of her laugh. It was the first, he realized, that he’d heard it.
“Charming.” But she continued to smile.
Needing a moment to recover his balance, he looked away from her, pretending a check of the water gurgling into the drainage system. “Anyway,” he continued, “the Zebulon facility is definitely not underwater, as I suspected, but it is also not underground.”
A long breath escaped her.
“Relieved?”
She nodded. “More than you know.”
“Where, precisely, the facility is situated on the planet I have yet to determine. The atmosphere of Zebulon, though somewhat lighter in density than that on Citadel, is essentially the same composition.”
“I’m feeling even better. Thank you.”
“Right. But I have to tell you, I can’t figure out what we’re seeing outside those damned panels. I plan to find out, though, given enough time.”
Hallie studied him with a frown, blinking away steam-curled hair from her eyes. It occurred to him that he should have run the cold water. The heat was making their uniforms stick to their bodies, perspiration running from both their foreheads. She turned away.
“To what end, Burke?”
“What?”
“Why are you doing this research? Not merely to allay my fears, surely.”
He barely caught her words and reached out to her arm, circling his fingers around her wrist. “I can’t hear you like that.”
Beneath his fingers the configuration of bone and flesh and softly pulsing veins felt fragile, yet he knew firsthand her physical strength. He stepped toward her quickly, lowering his mouth to her ear. “One day this knowledge might come in handy.”
Hallie grew still, not looking at him. “Could we all survive out there?”
She’d made the leap like lightspace, sprinting ahead of spoken words to accurate conclusions without the need for any drawn-out explanation between. A rush of admiration and warm affection startled him. “I don’t know. I don’t know what lives out there. I can’t imagine what circumstance would enable us to alter our current situation. Or even,” he added, “if I would involve anyone else in that danger but myself.”
She stared down at the smooth surface of the floor beneath her booted feet, blinking several times to clear her lashes of moisture from the growing humidity of the chamber. Water collected on her cheeks, sliding slowly along the curve of flesh to her chin. She might have been crying, but he knew better. She wore a look of fierce determination.
“Hallie—”
“You’ll take me with you, Burke Conlan.”
“I don’t—”
Spinning on her heel, she met his eye. “You will take me with you, if it comes to it. I don’t care what the dangers are. Promise me that if the opportunity arises for escape you won’t think for a moment about leaving me behind.”
He hesitated, shocked by her demand, by her willingness to throw her lot in with his. “You would trust me with a promise? A man you have every reason to distrust? To hate?”
She swallowed, the cartilage of her throat moving beneath silky, damp skin. “If I’m willing to trust you with my life, I think I should trust you with a promise.”
“Hallie, don’t—”
“Promise me. You will promise me.”
“Hallie.”
“I made a pact with a devil a decade ago, and didn’t realize it. Whatever you may be, Burke, you’re no devil. Strike this bargain with me and seal it. You owe me that much. You know you do.”
She had him there. He owed her every consideration he could manage. But to bring her into danger—if escape ever became possible, he reminded himself—wasn’t a burden he wanted to add to the vast baggage of guilt he already carried. Still, he understood her reasons for wanting to escape, even in the company of a Drifter with a score to settle.
He exhaled massively. She looked up at him with an expression of triumph.
“You may hate me more for this, Hallie—”
“I don’t hate you.”
That stopped him. “Why the hell not?”
“I don’t hate anyone. Not even Arad. Hating people for what they’ve done would imply that I am perfect and have never done wrong. I may hate their actions, but hating the person isn’t my prerogative.”
“How can you separate the two?”
“I learned, as part of my lessons as a child. It stuck.”
“So you hate what I’ve done, but not me?”
“Burke, I don’t even hate what you’ve done, because I understand it now.”
His guts writhed at her statement. “Are you saying you forgive me?”
She snorted. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Drifter.”
Her blue-green eyes shone in the dimness. Burke could hardly draw breath. How could Sterne have mistreated this woman, d
espised her? He asked as much, his voice thick.
“Because I allowed him to do so,” Hallie said. “I’ll never let that happen again. Now promise me. Promise me you’ll take me with you.”
“I do. I will. I promise.” The words gushed from his mouth like those of an infatuated boy. And yet, only darkness could come from keeping his vow. The world outside the prison would likely kill them both.
“I want you to say the promise. No tricks.”
She wasn’t making this any easier. “I promise not to leave you behind, if we can get the hell out of here. I promise to lay down my life to keep yours safe. I promise to take you home, to your family. I promise to get my daughter out of Sterne’s hands and then I promise to—”
“That’s it,” she interrupted him. “Don’t say any more.”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid of what comes next.”
Hand still on her wrist, he drew her near. He smelled the sweet dampness of her skin, of her hair, felt the heat of her flesh beneath his fingers and through the moist fabric of her uniform. “Seal it,” he said. “Seal the bargain before I regret it.”
“With what? Blood?”
She started to disengage her hand from his grasp to offer her wrist to him in the desert tradition. He pulled her closer, slipping his other arm behind her back. Before he could think twice, before she could refuse him, he lowered his mouth hard onto her own.
“Ahem.”
Hallie jerked away from him. Shane stood outside the doorway leaning against a locker with his arms folded across his chest. Damn it, had he heard anything? Or only witnessed enough to draw more of his coarse conclusions? Of course, while Burke bore the residual force of that binding kiss in his blood, any conclusion Shane might draw at this point would be pretty damned close to the truth.
Hallie was the first to recover. “What is it?”
Burke hurried to turn off the nozzles. Shane straightened, pushing off the locker with his hip. The man’s eyes glittered when he looked at Burke, but the gaze he turned on Hallie altered in a manner Burke couldn’t read.
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