He took a step to the right and she lunged forward to pound her fist into another attacker at the same moment that Marcus tackled him to the side.
“Hey!” She didn’t protest for very long.
Two more attacked from the side the guard had left open, and she and Todd turned and attacked at the same time.
“Oh, yeah!” she cried and he laughed with her as they faced the next two. Together, they moved closer to Vishlog, eliminated another two hopefuls, and threw the chairs they’d wielded away from the fight.
They paused and searched for more adversaries when the wail of approaching sirens caught their ears. Todd didn’t let that stop him, though. He stepped into the path of the next guy who thought Vishlog made a good target. Instead of landing solidly, the blow fell short and he was lifted up and away from the fight.
He lashed out with a boot as he left and turned to deal with the new threat but Vishlog wrapped him in a firm grip and carried him out of range as the world blurred around them.
“What the—”
Stephanie hushed him. “We need to leave.”
She seemed to ignore the hand wrapped firmly around her arm as Lars kept her upright and guided her through the club. They made it through a side door held wide by one of the club guards and kept running, the streetlights and roads still blurred.
Marcus sprinted on Stephanie’s other side, his hand under her other arm, and Avery and Brenden had disappeared.
“They’ll meet us,” Frog told him when the Dreth set Todd on his feet and he began to run on his own.
Red and blue tinged the road behind them, and they made an abrupt left turn down a side street, slowed to a jog, and then to a walk when the strobing colors remained in the distance.
“That was close.” Stephanie laughed and breathed hard as she rested her hands on her knees. After a moment, she raised her head and scanned the team. “Okay, who’s hurt?”
Frog coughed and stepped forward. “It’s more a matter of who isn’t. Your boyfriend sure knows how to pick a fight.”
She stepped over to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. As a blue glow seeped out from her palms, washed over the guard, and vanished into him. As it disappeared, he gave a contented sigh.
“You’d better see to Marcus next,” Lars said, hauled the other man’s arm over his shoulder, and brought him to stand in front of her. “Someone had a bottle.”
From the looks of it, it had been a broken bottle and Marcus hadn’t noticed when it found a gap in the body armor. She healed him and gave him a gentle clip upside the head. “That’s for not telling me sooner.”
She turned to Lars and poked him in the chest. “And you should know better.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, but his gaze roved the street around them and the rest of the team spread out around them to cover all approaches. They even scanned the windows and fire escapes above.
Todd watched as Stephanie worked through her team. As soon as he’d been seen to, Lars stepped back and spoke into the team’s comms, and his gaze slid down the street. Avery and Brenden should bring the shuttle in soon, he assumed, and hoped they hadn’t been held up in the car park.
“Did you see the look on that guy’s face?” Frog laughed and Johnny chuckled. “I don’t think he’d ever seen a short guy with that much attitude.”
Todd smiled but jumped when a hand came to rest on his upper arm. Stephanie peered at him. “Are you hurt? That was some workout for a guy still in recovery.”
Until she said it, he hadn’t noticed. Now, however, he did.
“I think I took a few punches,” he admitted and she rolled her eyes.
“Truly? Yuh think?” She pulled on his arm. “Here, lean on the wall.”
He let her guide him over and she settled her palms on his shoulders. Blue gleamed between them and spread out and over him. The accompanying warmth soaked through anything that hurt and erased the pain in its path.
“Wow,” he managed when she raised her face to study him. “That’s... Thank you.”
Before he knew what she was doing, she’d stretched up on her toes and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “That’s for me being stupid in high school,” she told him. “I should have told you I liked you.”
“Oooh!” The soft chorus from the guys came as the shuttle descended from above.
Chapter Eight
As the shuttle touched down to pick up Stephanie and her team, Elizabeth nursed the rental vehicle into her driveway.
“Are you sure they’re gone?” she asked once she’d opened the comms to BURT.
“I watched them leave but lost them after a mile.”
She tutted. “You’re slipping.”
“I do not slip,” he informed her and gave a human-sounding sigh. “But even my resources have their limits. I ran out of coverage.”
“I appreciate you doing what you could, BURT,” she told him, yanked her tablet out of its holder, and brought up a screen with a single button displayed.
After one brisk tap on it, a small bar filled and turned into a solid line of green. “Nanos, away.”
“I have them,” BURT told her. “They are very responsive.”
Ms E headed to the door. “Tell me when they’re done.”
“Aren’t you going to wait?”
“You assured me you were fast,” she retorted and inserted her key into the lock.
“They will have your little welcome gift disarmed in five...four...three...two....and we’re done.”
He watched as she entered the apartment and surveyed the mess. “I truly am sorry I couldn’t track them further.”
Elizabeth waved his apology away. “Don’t sweat it. You got further than I would have.” She held the tablet up. “Patch me what you have.”
“And…done.” BURT sent the relevant takes and waited while she watched the would-be assassins finish priming their bomb and depart.
“At least we know they didn’t dick around with anything else.” She turned on the spot to survey the apartment. “Now, let’s see what we have here.”
It didn’t take her long to verify that the bomb’s components could be disposed of and she knew the perfect people to do it. “I have to find a few people and a team to watch over my doppelganger. Given that she’s gone and found a beach somewhere, I’d better make them the deadliest cabana boys to ever set foot on sand.”
She moved through the apartment and sighed as she looked at the furnishings. “I’m gonna miss this place.”
“I could have it cleared and moved,” BURT offered but she shook her head.
“No, this has to look real.”
She picked up a small block of crystal. Encased inside it was a single delicate fern frond. Before BURT could get a good look at it, she tucked it into her purse.
“Never you mind,” she told him as though sensing his curiosity.
“I wasn’t going to—”
Elizabeth headed to the stairs leading to her bedroom and en-suite.
“You were thinking it,” she argued and strode to the walk-in closet that held her clothes.
She trailed her hand along the lines of hanging fabric as she passed and gave a heavy sigh. This time, BURT refrained from offering to replace the outfits. He’d seen her pick up the crystal block and assumed she’d take anything special with her.
Sure enough, her gaze settled on a blue-and-green fall of silk and she sighed again.
“Not one word,” she muttered, and he knew she was referring to him. He observed her lift the silk creation and encase it in a clothing bag that she rolled carefully and carried out to the balcony.
Elizabeth tossed it over the edge and into the front garden before she returned to the closet and this time, moved directly to the back and knelt a foot away from the wall. With a few deft hand movements, she uncovered a panel set into the floor and opened the compartment beneath.
The duffel she dragged out caught BURT by surprise. “Are all those legal?”
Ms E smirked. “That de
pends on your point of view.”
She dragged the bag clear, checked its contents, and slung it over her shoulder. Once she had it settled, she left the closet, hesitated as she passed the balcony exit, and carried the bag downstairs to set it beside the dress in the garden.
Once that was done, she jogged upstairs again and opened the back of her dresser to retrieve a fistful of credit sticks from the compartment BURT had never suspected was there. She stowed these in her tablet satchel.
From what he could see, not a single one of them had more than a hundred and fifty credits value.
“Why do you care?” he asked and she stopped in the middle of sealing the compartment again.
“Care about what?”
“The credit sticks,” he replied. “They don’t seem worth rescuing.”
“Untraceable goes a long way, BURT,” she told him and patted the satchel. “Besides, I worked hard for this credit. I’ll need it for my moving violations when they finally figure out which persona to blame.”
“And will they do their jail time, too?” he wondered.
She shot him a filthy look. “I never said they would work it out fast.” BURT, however, caught what she wasn’t saying.
“Or that all the infringements would be there when they did,” he finished, and she smirked.
“Let’s not go there, BURT. You’re probably better off not knowing.”
“What if I’m curious?”
“Curiosity kills more than cats, BURT.”
“I am not a cat. Knowing what you do cannot hurt me.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she told him and dragged a suitcase out from under the bed. This one appeared to be empty until she withdrew a few detonators from inside the lining.
After that, she wandered the apartment, took some of the explosive material from the bomb, and filled the suitcase with it. “I gotta make this look like a bad result when I come out alive.”
She hauled the suitcase to the balcony, looked down, then moved along the short hall to the guest room. This one didn’t have a balcony but it did have a window overlooking the rental car parked in the driveway.
“Are you sure you can doctor the video?”
“Of course. I could even make a fake video that looked totally real so you didn’t have to do this.”
Ms E pursed her lips and turned back to the window.
“Some things require a little truth to them,” she muttered, crossed the room, and set the explosive up. “Do you have the rest?”
“I have the nanos standing by to reactivate it.”
Elizabeth lined the window up. “Good,” she told him and immediately sprinted toward the window. “Don’t blow it early.”
“As if I would,” BURT told her as she pulled her pistol and fired to shatter the glass in front of her.
“Now!” she shouted as she leapt through the gap and twisted so her back landed on the car roof first. Above her and in front of her, the explosives detonated.
Glass exploded out of the other windows and fire erupted inside the apartment. Ms E rolled off the car and landed on all fours on the ground.
“Oww,” she moaned. “I am way too old for this shit.”
She raised her head and wheezed slightly while she scanned the area to see if the assassins had left someone behind to report the results of their little attempt. She could really do without discovering she’d missed one when he walked up to her and put a round through her head.
That wouldn’t do at all. When her scrutiny confirmed that the coast was clear, she exhaled a long, slow breath. “I’m getting shirtless guys with palm fronds for the weekend.”
“I thought you were going to get bodyguards,” BURT commented.
“That’s Monday,” she told him, stood, and strode to where she’d left the dress and the bag. “The weekend’s going to be for momma.”
Ms E grunted as she settled the weight of the bag over her back and slung the dress over the top of that. “Do you wanta call me a cab and get them to pick me up two blocks down?”
“I can do that,” BURT told her. “Are you sure you don’t want me to send Stephanie and the team?”
“Oh, hell, no. Those guys are curious enough as it is.”
“All of them?” he asked. He hadn’t been aware of more than one call between them.
“Okay, Lars is too curious and way too smart for his own good.”
“But he was the one who suggested you get a security team for yourself,” he protested.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “Like I said, the boy’s way too smart for his own good.”
As the cab dropped her off at her back-up apartment, a small group of men gathered around a distant table, each with a laptop open in front of them.
“It was a near miss,” one of the men said and shoved his dark hair out of his eyes. “The team screwed up the explosives and blew her out a window, hurting but not killing her. She’s gone to ground.”
“And the attempt on the witch?”
“She wasn’t in town. It seems she went to visit a friend.”
“What about putting a team on the friend?”
At this, one of the other men raised his head. Hawk-eyed and partly balding, his narrow face was full of disapproval at the suggestion. “No.”
The other two stared at him. “But why?”
“She leveled a town for this friend. I don’t want her so enraged that she levels another looking for us.”
His companion with the dark hair fixed him with a steady stare. “We have to be ready to sacrifice.”
He met his stare and raised an eyebrow. “Then you just volunteered. We have established I’m here for personal reasons, not altruism or any of that other shit, and I intend to be alive at the end of this.”
“Fine. Have it your way. Let’s focus on the witch. I’d rather keep things direct, anyway.” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his chest.
The third man spoke again. “I’d rather gather more information before we plan another strike. There’s nothing worse than putting a team in place and then having a no-show. Let’s make sure she’s there next time.”
The other two men exchanged glances before they nodded and came to a silent consensus.
“Fine,” the hawk-eyed man agreed. “Let’s do that. When do you want to meet to plan the next strike?”
“How much time do we have?”
“We can let the smear campaign build. The minister tells me it’s going nicely and our big green friends tell me they’re almost ready. We can leave the planning for a week of observation, take a day for analysis, and then a day for planning.”
“So, eight days from now?”
“For an attack to be executed three days later,” he confirmed and looked around the table. “What do you think?”
He looked from one to the other, meeting their eyes, and elicited a nod from each.
“It’s agreed then?” he asked and closed his laptop. “We’ll meet eight days from now at Site B. I can book a private room for lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“I can call it a business meeting, then, and no one will question why I’m not in the office.”
The dark-haired man sighed. “If your people believed in the cause, you wouldn’t need to find an excuse.”
“Yes, but my people would be very upset if they found out, and we all know why. Be grateful I follow the money and not what some would call a conscience.” He stowed the device in its case. “Now, if you gentlemen would excuse me, I need to attend to the rest of my day.”
They said nothing but rose and followed him to the door, taking different paths into the night.
Chapter Nine
Two days later, Todd and Stephanie held hands as they walked into the passenger terminal at Washington’s starport. It was the same port from which Stephanie and the team had left for Meligorn but now, it felt different.
For one thing, she wasn’t the one leaving, and it was hard to say goodbye when she didn’t kn
ow when she’d see him again—or if she ever would. She squeezed his hand, wanting to remember the feel of it in hers.
She really, really didn’t want to let go.
He’d slung his navy issue duffle over his shoulder and seemed perfectly content to keep holding her hand as he walked beside her. His mom and dad had said goodbye at their front gate, gaping at the shuttle and the team.
They’d smiled, though, when Stephanie had taken Todd’s hands and given him a swift peck on the cheek in greeting. Now she knew how they felt and why he talked nineteen to the dozen as they moved toward the passengers queued for boarding.
He glanced out the window at the tarmac and his jaw dropped.
“You put me on that?”
Stephanie frowned and elbowed him in the ribs when he came to a stop short of the line.
“Shut up. You know I have more money than I know what to do with. I chose to send you back on a very expensive and incredibly fast luxury liner so I could have another day with you.”
When she saw he still looked uncomfortable, she rolled her eyes. “Look, if it helps your ego, consider how much that one day was worth per hour, and then think of it as a gigolo fee.”
“So we got to walk in a park and skip rocks across a lake?” Todd asked, his eyes wide. “Are you kidding me? Seriously, if it cost that much for hand-holding how much would it be worth if w—”
“Don’t,” Lars snapped and rubbed the side of his hand across the bridge of his nose and covered his eyes. “Just... Don’t go there.”
“No, but you really should shift your ass and go there,” Frog interrupted and pointed to where the last of the passengers was preparing to step up to the flight attendant. “You don’t want them to leave without you.”
Todd started, turned to face Stephanie, and took her other hand. “Well, this is it,” he murmured and watched her mouth tighten.
She cast a quick look at where the attendant seemed to have realized that Todd was the person they were waiting for. The woman glanced impatiently toward them so she leaned up and kissed him quickly on the cheek and released his hands before she stepped back.
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