by Sonya Clark
“Mrs. Jones.”
The sound of his voice scraped against her nerves. She looked up from the floor to see that Halif had drifted off to talk to others. Channing stood over her. “What do you want?”
“Going a few rounds with you sounds like fun.”
The innuendo in his tone made her stomach heave. It was tempting to spar with him because she knew she could beat him. But she’d have to touch him to do it and right now she couldn’t handle that. Not with him looking at her like a toy. Something to be played with, used and discarded. She’d had enough of all of that in Gehenna. Being a Ranger didn’t allow her total freedom but she didn’t have to take that kind of treatment anymore. She just had to figure out the best way to scare him off, a way that would allow him to save face so she wouldn’t have to deal with any blowback.
But then he had to go and fuck that up by putting his hands on her. As she stood he grabbed her ponytail and dragged her to him, slamming her body against his. “I plan on enjoying this mission. You can too, if you stop pretending you’re better than me.”
“I am better than you.” She wrapped one hand around the top of her ponytail and pulled, losing a few hairs in the process. He clamped an arm around her waist, forcing her even closer. She slammed an elbow into his gut, grabbed his arm and twisted. Kept twisting until he was on the ground, forehead on the floor, feet scrambling, knees sliding.
“Bitch, let me go!”
A crowd was beginning to gather. Tuyet ignored them. It would get her in a hell of a lot of trouble if she was caught, but she drew energy from the ground to help keep Channing under control. Just like drawing on concrete and steel back in the zone. Magic ran through her blood like a rock fall, wild and fast and very nearly out of control. She soaked up the strength it gave her.
“You’re gonna break my fucking arm. Let me go, you crazy bitch!”
“Caron!”
She took her eyes off Channing long enough to see who’d called her name. Hayes stood ten feet away, a warning look on his face and something she couldn’t name in his eyes. “Let him go,” he said.
Tuyet released the man’s arm and sent him sprawling to the floor with a mild kick to the ass. “Keep your hands to yourself. Here, and on the mission.”
Laughter sprinkled through the group, all but Hayes. He watched her intently as she walked away.
With her back to him, she didn’t know Channing had made it back to his feet until he shoved her. She hit the gym’s wood floor hard, the impact knocking out her breath. She pushed to her side, wanting up and out of a vulnerable position as fast as possible. It wasn’t fast enough. Channing brought his fist down before she could move any farther. Pain ripped open her head like a bomb, a double shot of it, first from his punch on one side, then as her head bounced off the floor. She curled into a ball, gasping for breath, spots in her vision obscuring everything. For a long time, or maybe just a few seconds, voices were nothing but white noise.
A gentle hand on her back brought her out of it. Halif. “Can you move?”
Yelling, cursing. The sound of a fight. A sickening crack followed by a piercing scream that added another layer of pain to her head.
“Oh, shit, that’s no good.” Halif eased her into a sitting position, his gaze on the commotion.
“That’s enough,” Gibson stood over Channing, who was slumped on the floor. She had one hand thrown up at Hayes in a warning gesture.
The spots began to clear. Details sank in quickly once her vision went back to normal. Channing held his arm at an unnatural angle, his face contorted. Two men from the crowd helped him up and guided him out of the gym as he cursed and complained.
“Take her to a healer,” Gibson ordered Halif, not sparing a glance at Tuyet. The warrant officer hurried over to Hayes. “What the hell was that?”
Halif helped her stand. The pain was receding quickly now, thanks to her drawing extra energy just moments before she was hit. That was not something the warrant officer needed to know or even suspect, so Tuyet let Halif lead her out of the gym. Behind them, Gibson and Hayes argued in low voices.
Hayes might have just blown the mission. No other team could be ready for it in time. A Shanghai antique dealer using sorcery to smuggle weapons—and worse, using sorcery to upgrade those weapons—was a high-value target and damned near impossible to get near. The cover of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, a husband-and-wife team of experts on Egyptian artifacts, had a chance of getting close to the dealer. But first they’d have to pass muster at an exclusive auction in Hong Kong and hope for an invitation to an even more exclusive event. The intelligence arm of the Rangers had been working to get that initial invitation for months, and now Hayes had blown it before the team even left the country.
It was nearly midnight when a knock at her door roused her from a heavy doze that had been threatening to turn into sleep. She snapped fully awake immediately and hurried to the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s Hayes. I need to get you up to speed on the mission changes.”
Tuyet opened the door. “How much trouble are you in for breaking Channing’s arm?”
Hayes winked. “Can I come in?”
She stepped aside to allow him to enter. “Did they call off the mission?”
He wore his dress uniform, which gave her an idea of the kind of evening he’d had. “Made some changes, that’s all. Do you have anything to eat?” He flashed the boyish grin she’d noticed the first time they met. “I was busy getting yelled at during dinner.”
Modesty was something they stripped away during training. You never knew if you might have to change clothes in a hurry, if an injury might necessitate cutting away clothing. Normally Tuyet would not have thought twice about her snug tank top and shorts, the lack of a bra. Normally she wasn’t alone in a room at night with Dale Hayes. She picked up her robe from the floor and slipped into it then waved her hand at the control panel on the wall by the door. Light filled the room. Blinking against it, she said, “I’ll see what I’ve got.”
The studio apartment had an open floor plan that left only the bathroom private. Hayes looked around as he followed her to the small kitchenette. “You like abstract art?” He indicated two of several prints on the walls.
“Getting high isn’t an option anymore so I had to find something else to help me get out of my own head once in a while.”
He stopped on the other side of the bar from her, tapping his fingers on the top of a stool. “You’re mad at me.”
Looking at him was not a good idea. Slapping a sandwich into submission seemed like a better one. “You shouldn’t have done it. People will talk.”
“About you and me?” He eased onto the stool, elbows on the bar. “People already talk.”
Tuyet slammed a jar of mayo onto the counter. “But there’s nothing to talk about!”
“Now there is.” A laugh to match his grin slipped out.
“Sir, it’s not funny. I don’t think you understand.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me in this conversation, and I understand more than you think.”
Tuyet pushed a plate at him and glared. “It doesn’t matter if there’s no truth to what people say. It doesn’t matter if you never touch me. All I am to most people is the slut witch you like to look at. The slut witch you favor over the rest of your team.”
“I can’t control what people think or what they say.”
“You shouldn’t be here at this hour. Especially not alone.”
“Channing will never touch you again. Neither will anyone else. Not after what I did today. I didn’t just break his arm, Tuyet, I snapped it like a twig and made him look like a punk bitch in front of a gym full of people.” He took a bite of the sandwich and spoke around a mouthful of it. “Fuck people that like to talk. Let ’em say whatever they want.” He held up the sandwich with one hand and wiped at his mout
h with the other. “This is really gross. You drowned it in mayo.”
She waved at the ingredients still arrayed on the counter. “Make your own God damn sandwich then.”
Hayes was a handsome man who could stop a woman in her tracks just walking by. He had a certain smile he only deployed on occasion, a smile like dirty sunshine, blatantly sexy, part invitation, part promise. He used that smile on her now and she hated what it did to her. “It was really sweet of you to worry about me getting in trouble.”
“Oh, shut up.”
He laughed as he carried the sandwich and plate around the bar, sidling up next to her in the small space. “It was worth it. Damn, it was worth it.”
Tuyet gathered the robe closed over her front and turned to face him, leaning her hip against the counter. “Did you get in trouble?”
“I’ll have to face a disciplinary hearing when we get back. The major made it clear how the mission goes will impact how the hearing goes. I didn’t work my ass off to get here just to lose it after only six months.” He made a pained sound. “My biggest punishment so far is that I have to keep Channing on the team.”
That was punishment for more than just Hayes. Tuyet put thoughts of Channing away and focused on the immediate issue. “So will I be working with Halif, or did they give you a temporary replacement?”
“Halif will be working support while Gibson coordinates the op.”
“A replacement, then?”
Hayes withdrew a bracelet from his pocket, the match to the one Gibson had given her earlier. “Mrs. Jones, meet Mr. Jones.”
Relief, anger, trepidation and a dozen other emotions warred in her at once. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You might as well just confirm the worst of what everyone thinks of us.” Not to mention treat her like a piece of property, something he’d won in a fight. Because that’s exactly what she was now.
“You can’t let that crap matter to you. Look, this is for the best and you know it. Channing would have blown this op with his behavior toward you. You and I will be able to work together. We can do this. Bring in our target is all we need to do to shut people up.”
For the first time she gave serious thought to his side of things. The youngest team leader in the Rangers, unabashed in his fondness for both of his witch team members, beyond reproach in his treatment of her—he might have favored her at times, but he never expected anything in exchange. Never harassed her like some of the men, did his best to keep Channing and others like him from treating her like a plaything instead of a person. She hated to admit it, but he was right about breaking Channing’s arm. That simple, brutal act would go a long way toward curbing the worst of the harassment.
But it would also make Hayes look like a man being led around by his dick. Successfully executing this mission would mean as much, perhaps more, to his reputation than to hers. They both needed a win.
No matter how much she’d learned—of polite society and political correctness, art and music and literature, how to pass herself off as nearly anyone, how to defend herself expertly—a part of her would always be that scared, powerless little girl she’d been in Gehenna. She didn’t want to feel this tangle of warmth and safety and a strange sort of feminine satisfaction over a man doing violence on her behalf. But there it was, bubbling up from the deepest parts of her, the dark places she preferred to forget existed. A primal desire to curl herself around him, accept his warmth and his violence and the proprietary instinct she suspected he wasn’t even aware of. Accept him because he accepted and desired her.
That wasn’t an option.
“Then we’ll bring in our target.” It was that heated darkness that made her meet his eyes. “Mr. Jones.”
His lips parted and he took half a step closer. He started to speak and swallowed the words instead. Awareness sizzled between them, crackling like magic at her fingertips. She wouldn’t ask, and he wouldn’t admit to it, but she knew he could feel it. The heat and the darkness from deep down, pulling at them both.
Then the spell was broken and he stepped back. “Good night, Mrs. Jones.” He backed out of the apartment as if loath to break eye contact until he had no choice.
The door closed behind him. Tuyet gestured at the wall panel, setting the locks and lowering the lights. Just hours ago she’d worried about having to fight Channing to keep him away from her. Now she was more concerned about keeping herself away from Hayes.
Chapter Ten
2067
Hayes dropped his phone on the bed, twitchy from lingering distaste. It had been easy to lie to Colonel Talbot, much easier than Hayes expected. His conscience was clear too, untouched by even a bit of disloyalty. The distaste came from having to deal with Talbot at all, the smug superiority in the older man, the expectation of blind obedience.
Blind obedience wasn’t something Hayes could do anymore.
He paced the small hotel room, feeling confined by more than its walls. Tuyet had been gone when he woke, but she’d left him a stale energy bar and crumpled bills with a note that read coffee’s on me in her careful handwriting. All of her belongings were still in the apartment, which meant she’d elected to trust him at least somewhat. He didn’t take that lightly, but he still had no idea how to keep them both out of trouble. Bring her in and he’d get his dream career back. Let her go again and he’d lose what little he had left. Lousy choices, and the longer he took to make a decision, the harder it would be to carry out, no matter what it was.
Hayes found himself facing a question he’d been avoiding for the past three years: What did he really want?
He still didn’t know the answer to that. Another big question was what did Tuyet want? Three years was a long time. It wasn’t fair to assume she still felt the same way about him. Just because she’d wanted him to run away with her then didn’t mean she still wanted him now. He hadn’t even worked up the nerve to ask if there was someone in her life, though the lack of signs of a male presence in her apartment was a pretty good indicator.
She hadn’t asked him that question either, so maybe she didn’t care.
He checked his phone for messages, finding none. In a password-protected section of the device, he had something that would have gotten him court-martialed if anyone had found it years ago. It was the only picture he had of Tuyet, probably the only one that had survived the virus she used to destroy her records before fleeing the Rangers. They stood together on a beach in Thailand, bodies angled toward each other but not touching. Looking at each other rather than the camera, smiling. Halif had taken the photo after borrowing Hayes’s phone on some trumped-up excuse, leaving it for Hayes to find later.
Hayes stared at the image now. Tuyet was made of gold in the unearthly sunlight. Caught in a carefree moment, she looked happy too. Hayes had to laugh at himself; he looked worshipful. Halif had captured them perfectly. Tuyet was a goddess and Hayes her adoring supplicant.
Feeling useless and stupid, he left the hotel and made his way to Rockenbach. The streets were much calmer this afternoon. Crowds of people went about their business relatively free of tension. Few cops were in evidence, a fact that probably contributed to the lighter mood. Hayes wasn’t far from his destination when something caught his eye. He paused in the middle of the sidewalk, peering through the glare of the bright sunlight at an arcade across the street.
Tuyet had entered the place several times during his surveillance. It had no apparent name. The only signage that caught his eye advertised a game called Silver Wheels. Hayes hadn’t heard of it, which meant nothing as he hadn’t gamed much in years. What got his attention was the game’s logo: a black V10 Panther Ultrabike with a black-clad rider wearing a mirrorball helmet.
Just like the spelled image that had careened through Rockenbach shortly before the protest march began, and then later drawn police away from Tuyet’s location.
&n
bsp; Also just like the bike that had been his pride and joy, and the helmet worn by the only other person he’d trusted to ride it—Halif Osman.
Hayes jogged across the street. There was no line to get in, so he purchased a ticket for an open console and entered, squinting at the abrupt darkness. Deeper inside, neon and LED lights gave the space a flashy glow. Sounds from different games competed, underscored by the insistent rhythm of trance music. He found a console as far away from a speaker as he could and tapped the touch screen to select the game.
He was out of practice with this kind of thing, and he’d never been great at it to start with. Halif and Tuyet used to play all the time. They’d never admitted it, but he’d suspected they took their game play into cyberspace by trancehacking.
To start with, he did some simple missions designed for learning the game and its world. It was easy to see why it had been co-opted by protesters. The game was set in a futuristic dystopia. Silver Wheels was the anonymous champion of hacktivists and free-information advocates. There was no magic in this world, but Hayes could see the metaphors clearly. If the game ever achieved more than cult status or if New Corinth authorities figured out where the character used in the protests came from, it would likely be banned or forced out of circulation through corporate maneuvering.
He crashed three times before giving up. Other than symbolism, he could see no immediate connection to the protests. Even so, it bothered him. He didn’t believe in coincidence, but there was no other explanation for that particular bike and helmet combination. Not unless Tuyet had taken up game design and was spending the money on something other than a nice place to live.
