“And you want me to believe that?” she asked, planting her fists on her hips in a rather melodramatic manner.
The uneasiness notched upwards. Apparently she was used to getting her own way and if she didn’t, she was capable of throwing a tantrum. Or was this her actress persona again?
“You have no reason to disbelieve me.” Any man who tried to browbeat her, whether in bed or out, was in for a surprise. Where was he going with this train of thought? He could ill afford thinking of her in that way. Women in bed and assignments from Murrach Pardua didn’t mix. He couldn’t afford to let his attention slip for even half a second. The only other assignment during which he had allowed himself to be persuaded into a sexual entanglement was when he had been married to Abby. Sexual liaisons on the job slowed down critical response times, especially when they had to be made within seconds.
“I honestly don’t know who to believe,” she muttered.
For a solitary moment, Dak allowed himself to feel pity for her. Mentally, he cursed himself. Hadn’t he discovered that feelings led to heartache, as falling in love with Abby and losing her had? “Give me the benefit of the doubt,” he said in a low growl. “No one else will help you on this station.”
His quiet words must have struck hard. She recoiled in fear and stepped back, possibly readying herself to fend him off. The irresistible urge to kiss her sensuous lips overwhelmed him. Forcibly, he drove his thoughts away from the beckoning temptation. She was Baylon’s woman. He had no doubt of that. He had to find out where the drug dealer had gone. Only she had that information. Besides, the bastard owed him.
He raked a hand through his hair. Revenge. That was all he could think of with his wife dead. Nothing else mattered but bringing Baylon to justice—not the type of lax justice the Galaxy Administration meted out. No, the kind only Dakoda Harley would hand out. Revenge had eaten away at his insides until there was nothing but raw hatred left. Along with crazy loneliness for the wife who had tragically died on assignment after being betrayed by someone she had trusted.
He watched the fantastic blue baubles that were the woman’s eyes narrow. Her shoulders tensed. She blinked several times. A split second later, he came to the conclusion there was something he probably wouldn’t like directly behind him.
Chapter Three
If he stepped aside and whoever had it in for him had a weapon, Odessa would be in the direct line of fire, and there would go his last chance to get the information he so desperately wanted, intelligence he had waited much too long for. The next few seconds would be crucial. With timing to the nanosecond, he launched himself towards Odessa, tackling her to the floor and out of the immediate danger of being shot full of bullet holes. She landed heavily on the man he had disabled earlier. Harley heard the air from her lungs whoosh out at the impact. He waited for the sound of bullets to scream by.
Nothing except the repetitive, mindless chatter the space station was constantly filled with. A quick glance over his shoulder demonstrated that nothing seemed out of place. The hitman wasn’t making his presence obvious. But then, why should he? On Romaydia, dirty secrets threaded with lies, deceit and death abounded.
Odessa screamed, the noise scarcely registered above the decibel level surrounding them. She scrabbled her nails towards his cheeks as she attempted to break free of him. Her eyes were filled with terror, but he had no time for hysterics. He seized her wrists and, using his body as a shield, pushed her forward, heading towards the nearest concourse, where they might be able to take cover. She smelt wonderfully of gardenias and freshly washed skin.
One muffled curse after another assailed his hearing. He smiled inwardly. The station didn’t afford many places in which to hide an assassin. Secretive locations would disrupt Murrach Pardua‘s plans to take over the galaxy.
Odessa launched herself at his face again. “Don’t you get it? I’m not interested in your games.”
“It’s not my game, you little fool. Stop fighting me. Who did you see behind me?”
She sucked in an unsteady breath. “He’s shooting at you. Whoever he is, he has no reason to shoot at me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. We’ve got to get to the next concourse. If we don’t, we’ll die here.”
“Get up off me and I’ll show him a thing or two.”
“I’m not impressed. Words, no matter how lethal we intend them to be, can never match the deadliness of a bullet or two.”
“Come off it,” she protested, lifting her head to look over his shoulder. “Is this some kind of charade?”
He debated whether to tuck her head under his arm to keep her down in a headlock. She would fight him with more enthusiasm than a cat with outstretched claws tied in a burlap bag. “Only if the bullets aren’t real. But I have a sneaking suspicion they are.”
“Call the cops,” she insisted. “What do they get paid for? Eating day-old donuts?”
He snorted derisively at the stereotype of Terran police. On Romaydia, the law was different. The law was ‘every man unto himself unless Murrach Pardua deemed it wise to interfere’. “The law is of little use here. Everyone does as they please until they die or they get off this blasted piece of metal junk.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” She squirmed as he continued to push her soft, yielding body to safety. He hadn’t been this close to a woman since before… Dakoda didn’t want to think about Abby. Once more, the hole in his heart gaped open before he shoved the pain down into the blackness.
“You men are all the same,” Odessa shouted. “Is this some kind of ruse to get me on your side?”
“Stop making my life miserable, Miss I-Don’t-Need-Your-Help. I’m trying to save your skin.”
“By getting onto mine,” she shot back.
Despite the gravity of the situation, he chuckled. “You do have a way with words, don’t you?” His amusement didn’t last long. A bullet whistled by his head, missing his ear by a hair’s breadth. That had been too close for comfort.
She must have felt the bullet divide the air near her scalp. Her head snapped back before a glazed look haunted her eyes. Odessa huddled up against him, her upper body quaking visibly with tension, her arms around his neck. “Was that what I think it was?” she asked, her voice a tad higher pitched than he had yet heard it.
“Yeah. Whoever decided to make us target practice, decided to do it with old-fashioned bullets. Weapon smugglers ply them to the lesser dependencies. Still deadly, but not as accurate as shokkguns.” He had to tamp down his burgeoning fear, remember his years of disciplined training, if he wanted to think clearly and find a way out. He had no idea who was shooting at them, or why. It could be one of the crazed men the Murrach employed, or it could be one of Odessa’s enemies. With a mouth like hers, he imagined she would have quite a few. He didn’t know that to be the case, he mused. He knew very little about her outside of her name and that she was Roland Baylon’s woman. That alone was a lethal combination.
“Who’s shooting?” she asked, trying to look around him again, and clutching his shoulders.
“Whoever is doing the shooting is staying hidden behind an invisor shield. Who did you see behind me?”
Odessa shook her head. “An invisor shield?”
She obviously didn’t know much about weapons, which Harley found unusual. How much had Baylon taught her? “It’s an almost invisible shield surrounding an attacker. He can target you, but you can’t see him to target him.”
“But he’s using bullets,” Odessa remarked.
“The invisor shield is flexible and allows him to shoot out. It doesn’t matter what kind of weapon he has, whether it’s new or old or in between.”
“Still has the same effect, huh?”
“Yeah. Dead is dead,” Harley muttered, wishing he knew who was taking pot shots at them. He would have no reason to, since he hardly kept tabs on women debarking on Romaydia. Would Pardua have an eye kept on her because she was Baylon’s woman? Harley sucked in a deep breath and let it out sl
owly. The Lord, who thought of himself as the future ruler of all the known galaxies, wanted Baylon as much as Harley did. Not more, though. Nobody wanted the bastard like Harley did.
To the frightened woman, he said, “For the time being, let’s count our blessings that he’s not using a shokkgun.”
Her lips trembled before he heard an unmistakable whimper. “A shokkgun? What is that?” She drew herself closer to him, almost burrowing her face into his jacket. Despite everything he had learned in his twelve years as a GDA agent, especially the parts about not becoming emotionally attached to criminals, he wanted to stroke her hair and comfort her. He forced himself to think of Abby, her bright laughter and the light in her lovely eyes before Baylon had extinguished it. Odessa was the enemy. She was on Baylon’s side.
Dakoda didn’t want to scare her to death. “It’s much like a gun, but it works with a contained burst of radiation and has a built-in heat-sensing device. In other words, it seeks out the warmth in a human body.”
She shook her head from side to side, clearly not understanding.
“A built-in heat sensor enables the target to be easily found, since everything that breathes gives off heat.”
“I never learned that in school.”
“The School for Teaching Ladies How to Stand Up for Themselves?”
“Stop ridiculing me. What did I do to you?”
He didn’t have a chance to respond. Her mouth opened wide in a fevered scream as another bullet flew past. “He’s going to kill us,” she shouted.
He shoved her back further into the concourse. Her screams echoed all around them. He prayed the heat sensor wouldn’t quickly target her breath.
Time slipped away. His blood had boiled with helpless fury and another woman’s soft, rounded flesh pressed against his chest. He and Abby had been assigned to the Waterman case and six months later, as the job wound down and they had gathered almost enough evidence to put away Jeremy Bellingham, the notorious drug leader had trapped them in an old, abandoned warehouse. Knowing the pair were cornered, he’d ordered his flunkies to exterminate them with shokkguns. To Harley and Abby, he had called out, “I won’t let you out of here. My men will burn this place down if they have to.”
The sliding door to the warehouse had slammed shut with a finality Harley could still hear echoing in his mind. They hadn’t even bothered to use the shokkguns. It would have been too easy a death. Instead, they’d thrown a homemade bomb through a nearby window. Now with Odessa nearby, Harley gritted his teeth. Abby and he had almost made it out.
Almost.
Dakoda began to shake violently at the repressed memory. He had to clear his mind, to concentrate on getting out of the concourse and past the attacker.
The automated station manager’s voice carried above the whining noise of the bullets. “Warning. Outer doors will seal in two minutes. Warning. Occupants must leave now. Warning.”
“What does that mean?” Odessa asked, her nails biting into his shoulders. Tears streamed down her face and stark terror dulled her eyes.
“It means we have to get out of here.” Or die, he finished silently. Who had hit the button to shut down the concourse? If the passageway sealed from this end, trapping them inside, the sustenance of life—the air in their lungs—would quickly be sucked out. Dead was dead and there was no coming back from the beyond. His beloved Abby was clear proof of that.
Chapter Four
“Warning. Outer doors will seal in two minutes. Warning. Occupants must leave now. Warning.”
“How long do we actually have to get out of here?” Odessa queried. Each nerve in her body, especially at the back of her neck, was strung tighter than an elastic band about to fly loose. She felt a rare headache coming on, but that was preferable to death. Wasn’t it?
“Usually there is a failsafe mechanism on the concourses but I doubt they operate on this station since the maintenance is so lax. Probably less than a minute.” The man’s cheeks were pale, his jaw drawn tight, and his pupils darted around in search of an escape route. He was as calm as a humid summer day before a thunderous storm in Washington.
Odessa took in a deep breath, trying to calm herself so she could think. A bullet winged by, scraping against the wall an inch from her head. She couldn’t help herself. She sniffed, ready to cry and start screaming again. She had pictured herself as being able to stand up and fight anything she encountered. The truth wasn’t quite so pretty. She was helpless and her one source of aid, the devastatingly handsome man on top of her, his thighs tangled with her own, was not to be counted on. Was this all a ploy to get her to rely on him? When he felt confident she was trapped, he would swallow her, much as a man-eating Venus fly trap did. She shuddered. Was it her imagination, or was the air becoming thinner within the confines of the concourse?
“Warning. Outer doors will seal in one minute. Warning. Occupants must leave now. Warning.”
“You don’t have one of those invisible shields handy, do you?” she asked her rescuer.
“If I did, that idiot wouldn’t be attacking us.”
Then two idiots would be fighting. “I fail to see how that would help against the concourse shutting down,” she murmured.
More bullets whizzed by and struck the wall, barely missing the crown of her head. She whimpered. “At least tell me your name,” she said softly, wishing she could have chosen the companion she would die with. But that wasn’t an option. She craved the power of her uncle’s arms holding her, comforting her as he had when she’d been a child.
“Harley. Dakoda. My friends call me Dak.”
Before she could ask him anything else or prepare herself for certain death, he lifted his head. Her eyes met his, jewels in the nearing darkness. “You’re too young to die because of my foolish mistakes,” he said in a tortured, hoarse whisper.
Baffled, she watched as his lips descended on hers. The nectared kiss was neither gentle nor tender, but like the first taste of a long-awaited candy and the promise of more sweetness. He drew back, his eyes enormous.
She shook her head, and her hair bobbed with the movement. “I think we’re going to die.” The air was getting thinner. She had never accomplished anything in her life without a struggle. What was more important than opting to live?
Dak examined her from his sprawled position. “You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?”
“I’d say something like, ‘great minds think alike’, but I don’t think we have the time,” she grumbled, doubting Dak was weak-willed, but why hadn’t he considered her simple solution?
Harley rose up with her and, hugging the wall behind her, dashed for the concourse entrance, braving the attacker. His breathing came in ragged gasps from the thinness of the air, and he couldn’t seem to draw in a lungful. Where was the shooter?
Odessa paused for a bare fraction of a second. “When we get to the entrance, stay right behind me.”
Harley stifled a grin. He was the one who was supposed to be leading them out of this mess. Odessa was only a snippet of a girl. What did she know about drug operations and the blood and gore that went with each encounter, as one side fought the other for control in a battle in which there were few winners?
More than she should know, he could hazard a guess. After all, wasn’t she Roland Baylon’s mistress? He looked left and right as they rushed out of the concourse. They had scarcely cleared the entrance before the doors slid shut with a finality that jarred him to his very core. He heard the whoosh behind him as the air was sucked out of the passageway. And he also heard another bullet screaming towards them. Odessa had paused too long at the entranceway and instead of ducking to make her profile low, she stood ramrod straight, perhaps surveying the public area, making herself the perfect target.
He reached up and spread his palm over her head to shove her down to the floor and she cried out. Incredibly, silence fell over the people in the public area, who stood watching but unwilling to get involved. Everyone on Romaydia protected
their own skin first, and few saw the need to step into what they’d perceive to be someone else’s battle.
“She’s been hit,” an Ashtari fellow said. The lack of sympathy mixed with avid curiosity grated on Harley’s edgy nerves. The Ashtari’s voice held a hint of cruelty, like Jeremy Bellingham’s in the warehouse that day Abby had died.
Odessa turned to Harley, bewilderment crossing her face. “I think I’ve been hit,” she murmured before she sank to the ground at his feet. Her cheeks lacked colour, as if she was slipping into shock. Beads of sweat lined her luscious upper lip.
Harley groaned and crumpled to his knees, cradling her head against his chest. He had to get her to his chambers and find medical help somewhere on this godforsaken station. The attacker must have fled by now, a result of the attention focused on him.
Without thinking, Dakoda picked her up in his arms and hurried towards his chambers. She had eluded one kind of death, unexpectedly only to be threatened by a different one, but he wouldn’t let her die. She was too young. A rare feeling of protectiveness urged him to rush on. He had enough training to assess her injuries, but he doubted anyone could survive a bullet to the stomach—not here, not on a filthy station like this. His feet pounded underneath him. Behind him, people in the crowd began to call out to each other. He and Odessa were already gone from their minds, nothing more than a momentary aberration.
Odessa was so slight, she hardly weighed anything. With her in his arms, he could have run from the Earth to the Moon and returned to run farther. Marvellously long eyelashes feathered her cheeks, and she looked peaceful in her unconscious state. Harley prayed she wouldn’t die.
He swallowed hard. Abby had shrieked in agony before the shock of the fire burning around her had claimed her. He hadn’t been able to help his wife, no matter how much he had wanted to. Maybe, just maybe, he could help Odessa. The sound of his shoes on the decking echoed in the empty corridor around him. His eyes filled with unwanted tears. If only he could bring Abby back. If only he didn’t hear her haunting screams night after night.
Whispers in the Dawn Page 3
