by Kali Argent
Tariq couldn’t see Cami’s face, but he could smell the tears streaking down her cheeks, and he’d heard enough. “Back off,” he growled.
“Don’t push me, Navarra. You’re only here because I allow it.”
Pulling Cami behind him, Tariq advanced on the elite. “And you’re only standing because I haven’t shoved my fist down your throat and ripped your balls out through your mouth.”
“Stop it.” Cami hurried forward to stand between them with her arms outstretched. “Both of you, just stop.”
“Cami, move.” Tariq’s was about to make good on his threat, and he didn’t want her to get hurt.
“No,” she answered stubbornly. “Listen to me. Tariq, stop growling.” After smacking him in the chest, she spun around to face Whitmore. “Is there a med bay on the station?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll give a blood sample. My DNA will still be registered, right? Even if the records say I died?”
The general nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Okay, then we can have this all cleared up in a couple of days. If I’m not who I say I am, we can revisit this conversation. Agreed?”
It was a fair deal, and one the general would take unless he wanted to get up close and personal with Tariq’s fangs. “We’re leaving now.”
“I’ll agree to the DNA sampling, but until I know what’s going on here, the girl is going to the brig.”
Tariq chuckled darkly. “I’d like to see you try.” Wrapping his arm around Cami’s shoulders, he kissed the top of her head and turned her toward the doors. “The girl has done nothing wrong, and she’s coming with me.”
“Stars help me,” General Whitmore mumbled. “Fine. She can stay with you until we figure this out, but she’s not to leave your quarters. Understood?”
“Fine.” Then they’d need to find a new mechanical engineer, because he wouldn’t be leaving his quarters, either. “Anything else?”
“Dennison is dead,” he stated bluntly. “Techs found him under some old tarps in the repair bay.”
“Cause of death?”
The general’s eyes shifted toward Cami and back. “Stabbing.”
Just as Cami had said. “Do you know which ship was docked on that platform?”
Whitmore shook his head. “There is no record of a ship being docked on that platform at the time of the airlock breach.”
Cami folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head to the side. “It sounds like you have bigger problems than worrying if I’m supposed to be dead or not.”
“Yes, I’d agree, but until you can prove otherwise, I have to treat you as a person of interest.”
“Wait.” Tariq held his hand up for quiet. “You think Cami killed Dennison. A man more than twice her size? That’s what you’re going with?”
“I don’t know!” Whitmore yelled at him. “I have a girl who’s supposed to be dead, a repair bay on lockdown, a ship that never existed, and a gutted engineer. You tell me what I’m supposed to believe.”
“If the docking logs were altered, that means someone on the station is involved.” Cami spoke with surprising calmness considering the circumstances. “That person could still be aboard.”
“Yes, I’ve considered that.” Dropping into his seat with an exhausted sigh, General Whitmore scrubbed both hands over his face. The dark rings beneath his lower lids dulled the color from his eyes, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept since their last meeting. “There are seventy-two dock workers with access to those logs, as well as sixteen Alliance personnel. We’ve already started questioning the dock workers, but it’s going to take time. Maybe more than we have.”
“The ship is gone and Dennison is already dead.” Tariq didn’t mean to sound callous, but those were the facts. “Why the urgency?”
“Because four women went missing from the station yesterday, and they were last seen just hours before the lockdown.”
“That’s what Dennison saw.” Placing a hand over her mouth to muffle her gasp, Cami pressed closer to Tariq’s side. “He heard those poor girls and when he tried to help, they killed him for it.”
“Find out who killed our programmer,” General Whitmore added, “we find out who took those girls.”
“I want to help.”
“Cami, no.” Tariq held her arm, keeping her close to his side.
“Stop.” She didn’t jerk away, but she leveled a glare on him that could have scorched any sun. “Let me help. I can do this.” Then she turned back to the general. “I doubt this was the first time the logs have been doctored, and it won’t be the last. I can find the person falsifying records, but I can’t do it if I’m confined in Tariq’s quarters.”
Tariq wanted to find the missing girls and Dennison’s murderer as much as anyone, but he didn’t want Cami caught up in the middle of it. He had no authority to tell her what to do, not that she’d listen to him anyway. The best he could do was watch over her and place himself between his angel and anyone who wished her harm.
Rising from his chair, General Whitmore stared back at Cami with an unreadable expression. Finally, after several silent seconds ticked by, he nodded. “Report to the med bay for a blood sample.”
“Does that mean you’ll let me help?”
Cami looked far too excited for someone marching headlong into what could quite possibly be her death. Tariq closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The gods save me from fools.
“Report to med bay,” the general repeated. “Then…you have three days to bring me something useful.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Stepping into the lift that would carry them to the living quarters on the bottom level of the station, Cami rubbed her arm where the med tech had drawn her blood. “I’ll need access to each of the docking bays, but I think we should start with those closest to Bay E.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Everything else she’d learned in Whitmore’s office was too depressing to discuss. “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
She’d spent nearly half her life alone in her family’s big, empty house, never venturing any farther than her balcony. For ten years, she’d endured the way her father could never quite look her in the eye for fear he’d see Derrek lurking in the gray depths. In all that time, she’d never complained, even when she felt the weight of her isolation would crush her.
Her father hadn’t only feared for her. He’d been afraid of her. She could see it so clearly now that she wondered how she’d ever missed it before. More than once, she’d wished she would have died in that shuttle on Fort Nacht. Apparently, so did her father.
By the time the lift doors opened, Cami felt like she’d been flayed down to the last raw, painful nerve. No matter how hard she tried to stem their flow, her tears fell fast and hot, obscuring her vision and burning her nose. A hollow ache coiled inside her chest, a dark, cold void she couldn’t banish.
As the emptiness snaked through her, the tears finally dried, and she no longer felt pain. She no longer felt anything.
“Come here, angel.” Lifting her easily, Tariq cradled her to his chest, carrying her the last few steps to his quarters. “It won’t hurt forever.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered in a monotone that sounded strange, even to her own ears.
“I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding,” Tariq offered as he eased her onto the sofa in his living room. “It could be a mistake.”
Cami laughed without humor. “Wearing red shoes with a green dress is a mistake. Forgetting to water your plants is a mistake. Declaring someone dead doesn’t just happen by accident.”
She didn’t want to talk anymore. She didn’t want to think. Pulling Tariq down to the cushions, she crawled into his lap and straddled his thighs before slanting their mouths together. When he tried to push her away, she growled at him.
“Cami, stop. Slow down.”
“Don’t want to slow down
. I just want to feel something.” Stripping his shirt off him, she attacked his mouth again as her hands roamed his corrugated abs, mapping each brick of muscles with her fingertips. “Make me feel something, Tariq.”
With a feral snarl that sounded half desperate and full of need, he flipped her over, pressing her back into the sofa as he loomed above her. “Be sure,” he warned. “I’ll take you right now and I won’t be sorry for it, so be sure.”
Insecurity seeped into the moment, but Cami wanted this. She’d never wanted anything like she wanted Tariq. “I’m sure.”
Arching against him, she moaned when his lips traveled down the curve of her neck and his teeth scraped over her collarbone. Fire erupted in her belly, spreading quickly to her extremities when his work-roughened hand dipped beneath her dress and skimmed along the inside of her leg.
When Tariq’s long fingers reached the apex of her thighs and teased the seam of her panties, she nearly came undone. Moisture slicked her pussy and her inner walls clenched with each throb of her racing heart. Great stars, she’d never been so completely out of control, and she needed more, would do anything to prolong the feeling.
Still, a note of apprehension lingered, forcing words through her lips before her brain could filter them. “Just…go slow,” she panted. “I’ve never…”
Tariq froze. “Oh, angel.” Easing his hand out from beneath the hem of her dress, he pushed away to sit at the other end of the sofa.
“You don’t…you don’t want…” She didn’t know what to say, didn’t really understand what had just happened. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, Cami, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Tariq held his arms out for her and cuddled her close to his bare chest when she scrambled into his lap. “Believe me, I want you unbearably, but not like this, not for your first time.” He kiss her cheeks, her eyelids, and each corner of her lips. “You deserve better than that.”
Cami didn’t argue, but she didn’t necessarily agree. However, she understood the point Tariq was trying to make, and her heart warmed that he would put her needs before his own.
Without his body to distract her, the warmth didn’t last long. Pain and uncertainty came rushing back, spreading to fill every corner and crevice of the emptiness. Her thoughts swirled in a chaotic storm, never holding to one idea for too long, but they all inevitably circled back to her family. Without the numbness to protect her, sadness gave way to despair, which eventually bled into panic.
“No one is looking for me. No one is coming.” She could read minds and had yet to find a language she couldn’t translate. Beyond that, she had no discernable job skills. She didn’t even know how to wash her own clothes. “They’re not coming. My family isn’t coming for me. I’m alone, Tariq. I’m all alone, and I don’t have anyone.”
Combing his fingers through her hair, Tariq held her motionless, forcing her to look him in the eyes before he spoke. “You have me.”
* * * *
Cami had never seen a microwave before. “So, you put food in there, and it what?” She stared transfixed as the plate of sliced chicken spun around on the glass turntable. “It cooks it?”
“Or warms it.” Tariq chuckled under his breath. “The chicken is already cooked. The microwave is just reheating it.”
It wasn’t the only thing in Tariq’s quarters that had confounded her. The previous night, she’d spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom cycling through variations of “shower on” before Tariq had finally come to her rescue. When he’d turned the levers to start the spray of water, Cami had been appalled, but the promise of a hot shower had proven too tempting to resist.
Once she’d finished bathing, she’d run into another problem when she couldn’t find a drying chamber. Again, Tariq had come to her aid, laughing his fool head off as he’d cracked the door to pass her a towel. Cami still couldn’t understand how drying her body with a sheet of cotton was in any way efficient or even sanitary.
Leaning closer to watch the spinning food, she lost her footing and stumbled forward, catching herself by placing both hands against the door of the microwave. At the same moment, loud electronic beeps emitted from the whirring machine, scaring her half out of her wits.
“Oh, shutterbug, I think I broke it.” Cami fluttered her hands over the buttons on the side panel but didn’t know which one to press. Then the lights turned off, the fan stopped blowing, and the whole thing went silent and dark. “Shoot. I really broke it now.”
Tariq’s deep, baritone laughter echoed through the apartment. “You didn’t break it. That means the food is ready.”
Knowing she’d just be in the way, Cami shimmied up on the counter to watch Tariq finish preparing their dinner. “Sorry. I guess I’m kind of useless.”
“Stop it,” Tariq growled. Dropping the plate on the counter with a loud clang, he turned to her, positioning himself between her legs. “Tomorrow, against my better judgment and all of my instincts, we’re going to the docking bays to find a killer. Does that sound useless to you?”
Cami knew she shouldn’t feel sorry for herself, but she found it hard to remember that with her life falling apart around her. “I can hear people’s thoughts, things they wouldn’t share with anyone. It’s an invasion of privacy, and I can’t always control it.” It wasn’t exactly the gift she’d been promised. “I’m a freak.”
Tariq stared at her for a moment and nodded, like he’d decided to let her in on some secret. “I’m going to tell you a story.”
“Does it start in a galaxy far, far away?”
“Your sarcasm is duly noted, little grasshopper.” Tariq pinched a lock of her hair and tugged gently. “There once was a boy born of two worlds, and though he tried, he did not truly fit in either. Bigger and stronger than his peers on Helix, but he was not invincible, because you see, the boy couldn’t shift. The others in his tribe called him an abomination. They said he’d never belong, that he’d never become anything more than what he was—a freak.”
Sadness enveloped her as Tariq’s story unfolded, and her heart ached for the little boy he’d been, the things he’d suffered. “What happened to him?” she whispered.
“He proved them wrong.”
Cami sensed the story had a much darker ending, but Tariq would tell her in his own time. The fact that he’d shared that much, trusted her with his vulnerability, meant more than she could say.
“Thank you.”
A faint smile curved his lips, and Tariq ducked his head to capture her mouth in a heartbreakingly tender kiss. “My point, angel, is that what you are doesn’t define you. It’s who you are, who you choose to be.”
“My father shot me,” Cami blurted. “Then my other father declared me dead and locked me up in the museum he calls a house for a decade. I’m pretty sure what I want, or who I choose to be doesn’t matter.”
His gazed hardened, and the muscles in his jaw ticked as he gritted his teeth. “Your father shot you?”
She hadn’t meant to say any of that. Apparently, her brain-to-mouth filter was still malfunctioning, but she couldn’t take it back now. “I was fourteen. He killed my mother and three guards before he turned his blaster on me. Then he disappeared into the badlands and left me for dead.”
The growl that rumbled through his chest would have made a grown man wet himself, but Cami didn’t fear him. They may have only known each other for a short time, virtual strangers in almost every sense, but she recognized something in Tariq, something she’d been searching for him her entire life. She didn’t have a name for it, couldn’t explain it because it didn’t make sense, not even to her. Still, when she looked at Tariq, when he touched her, she felt…peace.
“So your father, the one who lived, he locked you away to protect you? He wanted to keep you safe in case this other man returned?”
Cami chewed her bottom lip while she thought about how to answer. “In part, yes. Mostly, I think he was afraid of me. I think he feared I wouldn’t be able to control my abilities, and that I’d be
come like Derrek.”
“Derrek? This is the man who hurt you?”
Oh, her brave, overprotective warrior. She could see the calculation in his eyes, knew he was preparing to go out and slay every demon and bad dream she’d ever had. “Yes, but he can’t hurt me anymore. He’ll never find me here.” For mercy sakes, she didn’t even know exactly where she’d landed.
“And your father, the one who owns the company that makes medicine?”
“Canaan,” she supplied. “What about him?”
“You say he fears you, but why?”
“Derrek was a Class-A Telepath. I inherited my abilities from him, and then when I received my enhancements, they went kind of turbo.” She’d had a rare and uncommon reaction to the genetic modifications the Alliance had given her, and no one really understood why. “Under the right conditions, I can hear thoughts from as far away as the atrium from here. It’s not an easy gift to control. The voices drove Derrek to insanity, and I think my father feared the same would happen to me.”
“Then perhaps he should have been teaching you control instead of locking you up like a criminal.”
His vehemence on her behalf touched her, but neither of them could change the past. “It’s not all bad, though. I have a better than average ear for languages.”
Tariq frowned. “That’s why we have language converters.” He tapped the back of his neck. “Why is that a good thing?”
Well, didn’t he just know how to rain on a girl’s parade? “I guess you’re right.” And now Cami was back to being useless. “Is dinner ready?” It had been a day full of ups and downs, and Cami wanted off the emotional rollercoaster.
Stretching to the side without moving from his place between her legs, Tariq took a thin slice of chicken from the plate, tore it in two, and offered her the smaller piece. “You eat. I’ll go see if I can find something for you to wear.”
She’d showered, but she only had the one dress. “Do I smell?”
Tariq pressed against her, bending his head to skim his nose up the side of her neck. “I love the way you smell, angel. I thought you might feel more comfortable in some clean clothes, though.”
