by Natalie Grey
The noise outside came again and Hugo leaned over to his computer to bring up security feeds outside the office.
There was no one there. No one at all.
Which was why, when his office door came open with a creak, he jumped.
There was no one behind the door when it opened, either.
Hugo stared at it, his breath starting to come more quickly. He had been waiting for this since he took the job—Soras’s revenge in the form of a rogue Dragon or other unknown agent. It wouldn’t be the same one who had killed Hoa, he knew that. He’d seen Tera’s testimony and he’d drawn his conclusions from what she didn’t say as much as what she did.
But it would be coming. A man like Soras didn’t just go quietly into jail.
But John Hugo was also not a man to jump at shadows. He accepted the danger of his work as a necessary cost. He was good at what he did, and that meant that he was duty-bound to give that talent to the world.
If he stopped his work, dangerous people would go free and innocent people would be hurt.
He was so focused on the door that he barely noticed the screens changing, but motion caught his eye and he looked over sharply.
It was a very short loop of video, very short indeed, but it was enough for Hugo to see everything he needed to. It was enough to see that Yenn, the nanny he’d left with his daughter this evening, was lying in a pool of her own blood and she wasn’t moving at all.
And it was enough to see his daughter being carried, her small body limp, out of the apartment in the arms of a man in full armor.
Hugo’s world narrowed to the screens in front of him. There wasn’t a mark on Rhea. In fact, the man carrying her was taking care not to bump her head against the doorway, and he held her carefully. He wasn’t hurting her.
That was only more chilling to Hugo.
Your daughter is fine, the video said, for now. We’re not the monsters—if we hurt her, it will only be because of you.
He knew what to do, but it took all of his courage to do it. For the first time, he completely understood the desire to go to the people who had taken a hostage and throw himself on their mercy, give them everything he wanted.
He sat for a long moment and tried to tell himself that Rhea would survive this.
But he could not promise himself that.
He couldn’t think about this at all, or he would do the worst thing. He swallowed hard, and then he pressed a tiny button hidden inside his shoe. It would send his current location, captures of any nearby computer systems, and several more pieces of information, to a carefully curated list of people.
Including L.
34
“Hello.” Alina Kuznetsova came through the doorway of the suite with a small smile. “The Pele was coming in behind me but I gave up waiting for Mase. I have no idea what’s keeping him.”
Nyx looked up from her couch with a smile, but made no move to get up and greet the other woman. Mala had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on Nyx’s lap, and Nyx didn’t intend to move unless the station started crashing toward the planet below.
Or possibly until she ran out of cake. The crews of the Ariane and Conway had managed to polish off most of the five cakes Nyx had gotten for them, but she’d managed to nab a large slice for herself and she was still savoring it.
The rest were either off exploring Akintola Station or draped over couches in various states of exhaustion. Talon and Cade were the only two who were being productive. They’d declared their intentions to make dinner for everyone and had spent most of the day so far cooking something that smelled deliciously of chilis.
Hearing Alina’s voice, however, Talon stuck his head into the seating area. If there was one thing that could drag Talon away from a project, it would be this.
“So?” he asked instantly. Alina had been going after Zachary Hinn, a somewhat newer Dragon on Team 18.
Andrew Beckett, Team 18’s captain, had managed to avoid the confusion of Soras’s final weeks by tracking down a remote group of slavers. He’d been out of communication for so long, in fact, that they had feared he was dead. A week or so after Soras’s trial concluded, however, he’d popped back up … only to find out what had happened in his absence.
He had reported to Talon that he didn’t think there was a spy on his team, but Talon hadn’t believed that. Cade had identified Hinn as the likely traitor, and Alina had gone on the trail at once.
“It’s done.” Alina lifted a shoulder and nudged Loki aside to take an open spot on one of the couches. There wasn’t much room left, but she was unusually small, even for a normal civilian. “Not much to tell. He didn’t know I was coming, but he did know why I was there when I showed up. Ran like a rabbit.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Very, very briefly. I’ve got some information for you. He was forthcoming about what he knew, although that wasn’t very much. He’d been sending information, not getting it. It seems he wasn’t actually aware of who Soras was until recently.”
Talon and Nyx exchanged a glance. Killing an unwitting double agent seemed over the line, and Alina had always been very deliberate in her actions. A few other Dragons had picked up their heads as well, frowning.
She saw their look and held up two fingers. “First, I expect any Dragon who reports on their commanding officer to someone else to have a damned good reason. In this case, it’s not enough that Soras was the head of Intelligence. He should have had a reason to suspect that Andrew was up to no good. But he didn’t.”
Talon frowned slightly and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms.
“The more you think about it, the more you’ll agree,” Alina told him. “Two, and more immediately damning—once he knew, he still gave Soras information.”
Talon’s jaw set. Nyx could see that any sympathy for Hinn was now gone, and she agreed. If Hinn had the merest hint of honor, he would have confessed what he’d done. Instead, he’d doubled down.
“He seems to have argued for Soras not to take Andrew out,” Alina said. “Or possibly he was the reason that they went after that slaving syndicate the way they did. If you think about it, it was one less team that could come to your aid.”
Nyx’s jaw tightened. Soras had managed to lay low for so many years because he didn’t simply kill those who might be a threat, but instead redirected them along paths they were only too eager to walk. He’d pretended to help Talon with the assault on Ymir, and he’d sent any number of Intelligence agents and Dragons off on hunts for shadows and whispers over the years.
He’d been very, very good at what he did.
“He was terrified of Soras getting out,” Alina said. “And terrified of us. He knew I’d disobeyed Soras’s orders when it came to you. Anyway, that’s over now.”
The door opened behind her and Mase slipped into the room.
Nyx drew in her breath sharply. Everyone who was still awake did the same. Mase looked terrible. In her experience, he’d always had a smile on his face and a joke at the ready, and like all Dragons, he was at the absolute peak of healthy.
Now he looked sick. His clothes were loose and there was an unhealthy pallor to his tanned skin.
Talon straightened up. “Mase, man—what happened?”
“It’s done.” Mase’s words were the same as Alina’s, but there was a wealth of difference between them. He stood in the entryway for a moment, as if he’d forgotten what he was doing and why he was here, and then he walked slowly into the room and sat down in a chair Tersi vacated for him.
They watched him silently. Aegis and Wraith, coming out of the kitchen with food in their hands, stopped dead when they saw him.
Nyx eased Mala’s head up off her lap and slipped off the couch. She went to crouch in front of Mase, staring up into his eyes. “Mase. What happened?”
He focused on her face. “I can’t … talk about it.” He considered. “Yet. It’s done, that’s all, it’s done.” He looked away and started to press himself up out of the chair. “I should go. I just wanted to tell you it’
s done.” He said the two words like they were a talisman of some sort—or a prayer.
“Hey, now.” Nyx met his eyes and held them until he sank back into the seat. He looked relieved to do so. He was exhausted, she could see it in the way he moved. “Is Litchfield dead?”
Something flashed in his face. “Yes.”
Mase had gone after Yara Litchfield on Team 5, one of Jamie Bank’s team members. Litchfield had been in the Dragons for six years, first on Team 1 with Wraith and Jamie—then known as Hera. When Hera had been given her own team, Yara had followed a year later. It was one of the things Cade had noted when he looked through the dossiers of each team.
There was a silence.
“And Hera’s dead.” Mase’s face went absolutely blank. He looked away, over Nyx’s head.
A cold feeling settled into the pit of her stomach and she found herself looking at Tersi. The same hurt was echoed there. There had been rumors about Mase and Hera once. They were private about their relationship, but it was more a personal choice than anything related to their work. They weren’t on the same team, and it was simpler for a Dragon to have a relationship with another Dragon than with anyone else.
Another Dragon, after all, understood why their lover would be out of touch, or why they might show up with a shadow behind their eyes and not want to talk about their mission. Dragons had a good sense of how to take care of one another, too—when to let the other person be silent, and when to push them to talk.
Nyx had seen Mase and Hera together once or twice since they both had their own teams, and she’d gotten the sense that their relationship was not so much a traditional one, or one of all-consuming passion, as it was a matter of comfort, a shared set of goals, a shared world. They made each other laugh. They were easy in each other’s company.
That wouldn’t make this hurt any less.
She reached out to take his hand and he clasped it, a bit desperately.
“I can’t talk about it,” he said. “Not yet.”
They nodded.
“Stay,” Tersi suggested. He caught Mase’s eye when the other man looked up. “At least have some food.” There was a pause and he added. “Trust me.”
Of all people, Tersi understood—and Mase knew that. He gave a jerky nod. “Sure. I, uh … right. I’ll tell my crew.”
“I’ll handle that,” Alina said with alacrity. She looked around. “Now I want cake, too, so we’ll get some of that.”
They sank into silence as the door closed until Mase said, impatiently, “Talk. Someone say something. I’m going to go out of my mind if I have to sit here with everyone tiptoeing around my feelings.”
Talon’s eyebrows went up, but there was a hint of relief there. He and Nyx smiled at one another. Anger was at least more lively than despair.
Talon drifted back to the kitchen and Nyx went back to the couch, nudging Mala. The other woman half woke and promptly went back to sleep again with a slight smile on her face, reaching over Nyx’s lap to take her hand.
“I’m glad to see she’s looking so well,” Mase said wryly. “You know, what with being dead and all.”
Nyx chuckled. Mase was hurting, but he was going to be okay. He’d made his choice when Tersi invited him to stay.
She wondered if they’d ever hear the story, and resigned herself to not knowing. It was over, and that was what mattered to her. She’d have plenty to worry about with Ghost in the mix. When she had sent a message to Hugo after taking out Tristan, she’d gotten a response that hinted that his investigation was turning up considerable amounts of information,
He’d promised to tell her when he knew more.
For now, she settled back on the couch with a smile. She’d take her break and be glad of it.
Tersi pillowed his hands over his stomach and tried not to groan in pain. The curry Talon and Cade had put together, which had been simmering all day in a gigantic pot, had disappeared in record time.
Four crews of hungry Dragons could eat a lot.
Mase had passed out for what appeared to be the first time in days. He had left the table after a large helping of food and was now snoring gently on one of the couches, completely oblivious to anything around him.
Tersi looked over at the captain and something in his chest tightened. Every time he thought he’d forgotten Sphinx, or at least come to terms with her death, something reminded him of her.
It wasn’t like he was trying to wallow. He’d told himself firmly, many times, that he could hardly wallow about his loss when he’d never expected to have something like that in the first place.
Lord knew, neither of them had intended for it to be what it was. It had been one night, just an overnight shift in a dead stretch of space and the muffled sound of laughter—the shock of something more, all of a sudden, something white-hot, urgent, completely unexpected after years on the same crew.
And then it hadn’t just been the one night. They’d hung out for years, bemoaning family tangles, discussing the news, talking idly about what they would do when they got out of the Corps. Sphinx knew things about him that he’d never have considered telling to a girlfriend.
It just worked, in a way neither of them had anticipated, fitting into a space in their lives they’d never noticed was empty.
His throat tightened and he looked up at the ceiling.
He missed her every day and he didn’t know how to stop. The days were gone when he felt like he couldn’t breathe. Habit had carried him through with the bare minimum: food, clean clothes, all the motions of daily life. The team had done a good job of letting him recover to where he was now.
He just didn’t know how to get past this—and the truth was, part of him didn’t even want to. He didn’t want to stop loving her.
It was things like this that he couldn’t bring himself to tell even Nyx or Talon. She was dead, she didn’t exist for him to love anymore. He loved a memory and he knew they’d be sad for him. They’d pity him.
And while Tersi wasn’t as famously proud as Talon, he had enough of a proud streak to hate it when people pitied him.
There was a knock at the door and he did groan. The thought of getting up to open it was too much.
Thankfully, it opened on its own. Lesedi swept in with Tera. They had been out, getting their own dinner at a little restaurant Lesedi missed from her time on Akintola, and no one had expected to see them back for hours.
That they were early was already a bad sign, and the look on Lesedi’s face confirmed it. Tera, as always, looked calm, though her mouth was pressed into a thin, tight line.
“John Hugo’s daughter has been abducted,” Lesedi said simply.
In the resulting silence, Talon struggled to his feet. “What?”
Nyx had also surged out of her chair, hands clenched. “Ghost,” she said at once.
“Ghost,” Lesedi agreed. “There have been no demands yet, but they’re coming. He sent me a distress message, encrypted. He didn’t dare do more.”
“He sent you a message?” Talon asked, looking confused.
“Not important right now. There’s someone else on the way to meet us here, apparently. Whether or not we can trust them, I couldn’t tell you. She says Hugo also sent her a message that included my details. I’ve looked her up—her background, at least, looks to be legitimate.”
“Who is she?”
“Dess Tasper. A hostage negotiator. I suppose it makes sense that someone at Hugo’s level would have one ready to call.” She lifted her shoulders. “But it’s a gamble. Ghost has agents everywhere in the government.”
A second knock on the door sounded and everyone looked around. Tersi, closest to the door, met Nyx’s eyes. You know Ghost—do I let this woman in?
After a moment, she nodded and Tersi stood. He winced as he went to the door and opened it.
The woman outside met his eyes, then looked him up and down and peered into the room. She picked out Lesedi, then gave the rest a once-over. “Dragons?” She sounded surprised.
<
br /> “Why don’t you come in?” Talon suggested when Tersi said nothing.. It was a perfectly reasonable invitation, unless someone would have good reason not to want to see these particular teams of Dragons as a surprise.
She hesitated, but she stepped into the room past Tersi. She gave him another assessing look. “Thank you.”
Tersi nodded. He had meant to say something, but every word had gone out of his head when he saw her. Her dark hair was drawn back in a bun, her brown eyes were shrewd, and her features seemed to be the perfect mix between strong and delicate.
“We should talk,” Lesedi suggested.
The woman paused again, her eyes searching Tersi’s with a faint frown, and then she shook her head slightly and looked over at Lesedi. “Yes, of course. We don’t have any time to waste.”
She left, giving a half-glance back at Tersi, and he stared after her.
After a moment, he looked back at the rest of the Dragons—all of whom hastily looked away and cleared their throats. Nyx and Mala were suddenly in a very serious discussion, Alina began telling several people on Mase’s crew about a mission she’d run on Osiris a few years back, and Talon had busied himself with picking up everyone’s plates.
What the hell just happened? Tersi gave another look after Lesedi and the hostage negotiator.
“I, uh….” He scratched at his head. Was he supposed to be doing something right now? He’d forgotten.
“Have a drink,” Cade suggested.
“I’ll make it.” Tera went to the bar. “What can I get you?”
“I have no idea,” Tersi said honestly. “Was that, uh—her? Tasper?”
“Seems to be, or I assume Lesedi wouldn’t have gone off alone with her. Of course, we’ll have to figure out if we can trust her.” She poured something deftly into a mixer. “You’ll want to make sure you get to know her.”
“Right. Yeah.”
“Consider that your assignment.” Talon looked amused. “I want to know everything about her by the end of the week.”
