Cover Fire (Valiant Knox)

by Anastasi, Jess

  At the end of the passageway, she stopped, waiting for Bren and Alpha to catch up with her.

  “Seb didn’t escape. He was taken, probably injured, without a doubt seriously.” The words came out even and detached, as though she was talking about someone else. Someone who didn’t matter. Someone she didn’t know. It was the only way she could cope.

  Bren and Alpha stared at her.

  “Seriously injured?” Alpha demanded in a low voice, likely so the MPs wouldn’t overhear them. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Jenna took a second to reinforce her composure, which was thinly covering her tumultuous emotions, the barrier between them about as substantial as paper in the rain.

  “It’s my belief CI were attempting to have Seb killed. The night he was shot at Harley’s, that was one of their attempts, so it would look like a random killing or accident.”

  “Jesus.” Alpha ran a hand through his hair, shock stealing over his face. “Why the hell would CI want Seb dead?”

  “Because of me.”

  “I knew at some point this was all going to be your fault.” Bren’s voice held a definite note of contempt.

  The accusation hurt more than she would have guessed. But that didn’t matter. The only priority she had was to find him. One way or another.

  “That still doesn’t explain why,” Alpha put in, a hint of impatience in his voice.

  “I’m one of them—a CI agent. Seb was helping me hide. I know I shouldn’t have let him. I shouldn’t have put him in that kind of danger. But when he offered, when I agreed, that was before—” The words were cut off by the sudden swelling in her throat, and she had to take a second to swallow the lump down.

  She launched quickly into the story, from when Seb had been tasked with the assignment, to their arguably ill-advised plan to head to the crash site so Seb could see whether Lawler had perished, leaving out her feelings and anything personal that’d happened between them. Not because she didn’t want Alpha and Bren to know, but because if she went there, the emotion seething within her would become too much, and she wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done.

  “This is a goddamn disaster,” Alpha muttered when she’d finished. He paced a few steps away, one hand braced against the back of his neck.

  “You should have come to us,” Bren admonished, not seeming like she was struggling with the truth like Alpha, but had already processed it and was ready to steamroll the responsible parties—notably her. “You should have trusted the system. Trusted that we could help you no matter what intentions CI had.”

  “Seb wanted to. He trusted you both, wanted to bring you in. But I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t trust the system, not when it had already betrayed me once.”

  Jenna crossed her arms, every conversation, every decision, every little moment rushing through her mind in a jumble. She’d never been one for regrets, but if she’d made different choices, if she’d played things a little differently, would Seb still be alive? An ache lodged into her heart, like someone had gouged it hollow.

  “What do we do now?” Alpha returned, looking pissed and prepared to shoot anyone who got in his way.

  “If we want to find Seb, we need Stanton. He believes I’m dead, and likely thought Seb was the last loose end to tie up. Once he knows I’m still alive, I can get him to tell me what he did.”

  Alpha didn’t look all that convinced. “You sure about that? The guy seems like the kind of droid who wouldn’t do anything without it gaining him something.”

  “He will be gaining something,” she replied with more confidence than she felt.

  “And what might that be?” Bren asked.

  “Me.” The single word came out calm and even, though inside she was quaking with both anger and sorrow. “He gets me and the chance to kill me for good this time.”

  Shock dropped across Alpha’s face, while Bren’s jaw clenched, her expression going from skeptical to downright unimpressed.

  “What the hell kind of plan is that?” Alpha demanded.

  “The only one we’ve got.” She pushed through the doors behind her before either of them could say anything. Like they cared what happened to her anyway. She’d been responsible for getting their friend killed, no doubt it would be some kind of justice if she met the same fate.

  Maybe she should have been terrified, should have let her survival instincts kick in and fled this base, this world, this entire system. But ever since she’d realized that CI had intended to see her buried, she’d been living on borrowed time.

  That extra time, every second she got to spend with Seb, it had been a gift. But the cost had been too high. She’d like to be able to say that had she known this would be the eventual end, she would have run as far and fast away from him as she could. But she couldn’t be that selfless, because what she felt for Seb was like nothing she’d ever experienced in her life—the most amazing rapture and now the worst possible pain imaginable.

  Alpha and Bren didn’t try to talk with her as they crossed the base again, though they spoke in low tones a few steps behind her. Probably debating what to do with her once this was all over. Unfortunately, it wasn’t their choice to make. On the small chance she got out of this alive, Jenna Maxwell would cease to exist.

  They arrived at the base’s main offices.

  “What are we doing here?” Bren asked.

  “Trying things Seb’s way. Brazen and balls out.” She headed around the long reception counter to the bank of comm equipment.

  “Hey, you can’t touch that.” The admin officer started over, but Bren intercepted her, murmuring something to keep the woman distracted.

  Jenna tabbed a base-wide channel open.

  “Attention CI Agent Stanton. This is Jenna Maxwell. You have something I want. I’m waiting at the administrative building. Don’t make me come find you, because we both know the game is up.”

  She set down the comm and turned to find everyone in the office staring at her.

  Head held high, she skirted back around the counter and took a seat in one of the chairs lined up against the wall.

  Bren sat next to her, while Alpha took to pacing.

  “You think Seb is dead, don’t you?” Bren asked in a whisper so that even Alpha didn’t hear.

  She gave a single nod. “I don’t want to believe it. But everything I know of CI, everything I know of Stanton tells me that he’s gone.”

  Bren looked away from her, and though her expression remained blank, she could see in the woman’s gaze she was taking the news hard.

  “If that’s the case,” she said, only the slightest hitch in her voice. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense for you to disappear? What do you hope to get out of this?”

  “Justice.” The word gave her no satisfaction. “I’m going to get justice for Seb.”

  “And what’s that going to cost?”

  Was that a note of real worry in Bren’s voice? Maybe the woman didn’t fully hate her guts after all.

  “Whatever it costs won’t come anywhere near measuring up to what we lost.”

  The doors to the building swung open and Stanton rushed in. Jenna pushed up from the chair and went over to meet him, keeping her steps purposefully even. Seeing her ex-handler made dark, hot anger sweep through her. But she kept the emotion locked down. There would be time for that later.

  “Jenna?” Stanton’s gaze swept over her hesitant but hopeful, the most emotion she’d ever seen from the usually detached agent.

  Of course, she hadn’t expected him to recognize her, since the man had never seen her true face. Instead she silently held out her hand. Stanton pulled a specially issued CI comm from his pocket and scanned her palm, gaze fixed on the screen as he waited for the readings. After a short second, the device chimed and he looked back at her with a convincing amount of shock and confusion. For the first time, her belief that he was behind this wavered. But then she shook the doubt off. Of course, he’d be shocked and confused that his assassination had failed
.

  She speared him with an implacable look, sensing Bren and Alpha had come to stand at her back.

  “Before you get any ideas about trying to kill me again, I need to know what you’ve done with Seb.”

  “Seb?” Stanton repeated, now looking even more confused.

  “Sub-Lieutenant Sebastian Rayne. I know you took him.” Damn it, she didn’t have the patience for his games.

  “I can assure you that I don’t have Sub-Lieutenant Rayne. And why do you think I’m trying to kill you? I thought you were already dead, that you’d been betrayed by our deep-cover operative who’d gone rogue.”

  “You’re trying to tell me that you didn’t give the order to have me killed?”

  “I may be a lot of things, but you can trust me when I tell you that I never gave any such order. I thought you were dead, just like everyone else.”

  A big part of being a successful CI agent was being able to tell whether someone was being honest. And while reading other agents could be rife with falsehoods and difficulties, she couldn’t shake the sense Stanton was telling the truth.

  But if Stanton wasn’t behind this, then who the hell was?

  “We have a mole in CI.” The words came out of her mouth before she’d even questioned the wisdom of trusting the man Seb had been convinced was the culprit.

  Stanton glanced at Bren and Alpha, then took her arm and led her a few steps away. But she shook him off and shifted back again. “Whatever you’re going to tell me, say it in front of them. Someone recently made me realize that operating in the shadows isn’t going to win this war. It’s only going to leave us in the dark.”

  His jaw clenched as he studied the two fighter pilots. At last, she could see he’d resigned himself to her demand. “After I thought you’d been killed and the covert operative turned, I started looking into things more closely. As much as I hate to say it, I think you’re right, CI has been compromised as well. There’s a mole in our ranks. I couldn’t figure out any other reason for you to be killed.”

  “So we find the mole, we find Seb?” Alpha put in from behind her right shoulder.

  “Put simply, yes,” Stanton replied, a note of caution in his tone. “But the number of agents I haven’t cleared is too long. It could take days or weeks—”

  “We don’t have days or weeks.” Sharp, hot frustration whipped through her. She hadn’t expected to hit a wall. Damn it. How the hell were they supposed to work out who—

  The comm.

  She’d thought the comm she’d taken off the dead agent had led her to Stanton. But he hadn’t been the only one sitting at that table in the café.

  “It’s Carrie. She’s the mole.”

  “How do you—”

  “I’ll explain later,” she butted in before Stanton could get into the hows and whys. “Just tell me you know where she is.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Maybe it made him a complete coward, but hell, if only he could have stayed unconscious for a while longer. Until say a rescue party turned up, or crazy-pants-Carrie decided she’d played with him enough and simply killed him.

  Despite her tactics, he hadn’t told her anything, though she’d certainly enjoyed herself in every way possible. Thank God she’d received a call and hadn’t gotten around to making certain threats a reality.

  Whatever the message, she seemed pleased and immediately set herself straight and disappeared. A few moments later, everything around him had hummed to life, confirming he was in the hold of a ship. He estimated they’d been traveling for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes—deeper into enemy territory if he had to guess.

  He’d considered trying to get free again, but his last attempt had only left him with sore, bleeding wrists. His plan was to wait until Carrie released him—assuming she was going to move him off this ship at some point—and fight his way free.

  Since he’d come out on the losing end the last couple of times he’d fought her, he didn’t expect to win and escape. No, this was more a sacrificed-at-the-hand-of-the-enemy thing. There was probably no hope of saving himself, but he could make sure that Jenna was safe… Or at least not in danger because he spilled his guts. Plus, there was absolutely no way he was going to take another round of interrogation like the last he’d just endured. He would die before he let that psycho bitch lay one more finger on him.

  Everything around him rattled as the ship bumped down to land and then went quiet once the engines were offline. And now the fun would begin all over again.

  Carrie appeared from the hatchway, strutting through like a cheap stripper on a stage, wiggling her fingers at him.

  “Hope you’ve settled in, lover. We’ve got company.”

  He only glared. She smiled back at him as if he were a cranky puppy, which only kicked his already wildfire-burning temper up a few more notches. When he got his hands on her, she wouldn’t be so chummy any longer.

  She pushed some junk out of the way then hit the ramp release controls. The atmospheric doors cracked open, sending more unsecured stuff tumbling as a shaft of sunlight cut right across his eyes.

  Carrie called a greeting and two male voices answered, one so familiar, it sent an ache through his guts, before it tipped the boiling anger into outright savage fury.

  Lawler.

  He’d recognize the guy’s voice anywhere; it’d been haunting his dreams.

  “I’ve got a special guest,” Carrie said as she led the two men into the ship.

  Seb blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the brighter light, and focused on the CSS traitors in front of him. He didn’t know the other guy’s name, but he was a supply runner who worked shuttles between the UEF Ilari base and the Knox.

  “Sebastian Rayne.” Lawler walked over and clapped him on the shoulder, squeezing painfully, digging his fingers into the joint. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon, buddy.”

  “Get your filthy hand off me, asshole.”

  Lawler laughed, and then reached down to pluck at the ruined remains of his shirt. “Carrie, I see you and Seb have become intimately acquainted. He always was a magnet to the ladies. Used to drive me nuts. One smile, and he could have any girl he wanted. Couldn’t understand why he didn’t plow his way through the entire female population on the ship. I certainly would have.”

  “Maybe because I’m not a sleazy dick-bag like some people,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

  Lawler backhanded him, reopening the cut on the inside of his lip, leaving blood welling in his mouth.

  “Why exactly is he here, Carrie?”

  The agent stepped forward, bracing one hand on the back of his chair and catching his chin. “Besides the fact that he’s gorgeous? I thought he knew something about the drive or its whereabouts, but so far, he’s proving uncooperative.”

  He didn’t bother telling her for the millionth time that he didn’t know anything about the damned-to-hell drive, instead he wrenched his head out of her hold, leaving scratches across his jaw.

  “Looks like he’s still got some fight left in him. Maybe you just need to work him over a little more. Actually break him this time?”

  Carrie crossed her arms, pinning Lawler with a scowl. “I was working my way up to it when you commed. You said you found the drive.”

  Lawler glanced at his companion, who’d remained silent so far. “Deric knows where it is.”

  “Well?” Carrie shifted her glare to the man in question.

  “The rebels have it,” Deric answered, a note of hesitation in his tone.

  Yeah, he could get that, telling crazy-pants-Carrie bad news would probably not end well. She seemed like the type who would shoot the messenger.

  Carrie strolled forward. “And how did the rebels come to acquire such an important item?”

  “We think one of them was following the CI deep-cover agent who had the drive, and swapped it out with a blank one when the CI agent, Jenna, was killed.” Deric stiffened, but otherwise didn’t move as Carrie reached him and trailed a
finger up his arm, to his shoulder, and across his upper back as she stopped behind him.

  A hard surge of relief swamped Seb, making him dizzy for a second. They still thought Jenna was dead. Thank God. Now all he had to do was make sure it stayed that way. The tidbit about the drive was interesting, because according to Jenna, the deep-cover agent had never made the handoff. So however the rebels had gotten their hands on the device, it’d been at some other time, not when the ill-fated meeting with Jenna had gone down.

  “Well, I suppose the rebels having it is slightly less inconvenient than the UEF having it.” Carrie shifted closer to Deric, pressing her chest against his back as her hands landed on his shoulders. Now the man wasn’t looking so nervous…more intrigued. Obviously the moron hadn’t gotten the memo about how sociopathic the woman was.

  “Still, we don’t have the drive, and that’s a problem.” Carrie’s hands slid upward, until they were all over Deric’s neck and head, and the guy definitely thought Christmas had come early.

  With a sharp jerk, Carrie twisted, snapping Deric’s neck and leaving him to drop to the floor. She stepped over his body and leaned closer to Lawler, who didn’t seem either surprised or perturbed by his companion’s sudden demise.

  “So we need to find those rebels and get the drive back. Yes?”

  Lawler gave a slow, calm nod. “I’ve already got people on it.”

  Carrie patted his cheek. “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Turning, she set her eyes on Seb, making his blood run like ice water through his veins.

  “In the meantime, let’s figure out once and for all whether my darling Sebastian has any useful information.” She sent Lawler a coy smile. “I’m in the mood for a threesome.”

  The churning in his guts surged up to the back of his throat, but he swallowed down the burn. Bad enough that Carrie had put her hands all over him. If Lawler so much as touched him—

  A furious, white-hot flaring rage the likes of which he’d never felt before alit, leaving his very limbs smoldering.

  Despite already knowing it wouldn’t do him any good, he subtly tugged at his wrists, pulling and twisting, trying to yank free or loosen the binds.