The Scarlet Empress

by Susan Grant

  The general exchanged a sharp glance with his driver. The car didn’t slow.

  “Don’t let Banzai get away, Aaron,” the president warned.

  “Have no worries.” The general flicked a speck of dust off the steel toe of his boot. “The team is moving in. There’s nowhere for her to go.”

  They say she turns to air to slip out of any trap, that she catches bullets with her teeth! She can change the minds of men with a single look. . . .

  The president might very well fret the growing legend, but Armstrong had an advantage no one else did: he knew Banzai’s Achilles’ heel, her one weakness. The chink in her armor was his son.

  By the time the first of the rocks began hitting the windshield, the general had ended the encrypted call. Crossing one leg over the other, he settled in for a turbulent ride to the White House. Nothing could affect his mood now. At long last, Banzai Maguire was his.

  Chapter Two

  The Raft Cities were the kind of place you ran to when you needed to hide. The region belonged to no nation, no world order. Sea gangsters lived alongside former Maldivian islanders and the scrappy ancestors of the Lucky Ones, survivors of the unintended nuclear war between India and Pakistan a century ago. In this cobbled-together hive of bandits, mercenaries, and lost souls, U.S. Air Force Captain Bree “Banzai” Maguire sought refuge from the assassins on her trail.

  Temporary refuge. She was willing to bet on that. After inadvertently managing to piss off nearly every world leader to the point that either they’d ordered her killed on sight or issued warrants for her arrest, she had the feeling it would take more than a game of hide-and-seek to make them change their minds.

  At the controls of a speedboat, she raced over choppy seas. Thunderheads sprouted on the horizon like spunglass mushrooms: rain to soak the lush grounds of piratelord Ahmed’s estate, which weren’t grounds at all, but structures and landscaping sunk deep in dirt hauled generations ago, shipload by painstaking shipload, to this nameless, town-sized raft, one of thousands anchored over submerged islands once known as the Maldives.

  Bree could almost taste the thunder in the air, the crackling anticipation, the humidity. It was going to pour good and hard—a real toad-strangler, her friend Cam would have predicted—and before nightfall, by the looks of it.

  She’d arrived at the pirate’s stronghold just in time. Then again, timing—good timing—was everything, wasn’t it? It was the only reason she was still alive.

  Infamy was a bitch.

  To the sound of distant thunder, she yanked back on the throttle of the speedboat and decelerated in a wide arc as her partner watched for threats through the enhanced sights on his rifle. Tyler Armstrong. Protector, confidant, lover. The top UCE general’s son, he no longer acted the part. With over a week’s worth of scratchy growth on his jaw, he resembled a UCE SEAL commander even less.

  Ex-SEAL commander. His military career was finished. He’d jettisoned his bright future the day he helped her evade the charge of treason his country had foisted on her—that same nation for which his father, Aaron “Ax” Armstrong, ran the military under the telling and chillingly accurate job title of supreme commander.

  Bree alone knew that hidden under Ty’s shirt was a scar from the bullet that had almost killed him—put there by an assassin on the UCE’s payroll, a soldier whom Ty feared the Ax himself had dispatched with orders to kill anyone standing in the way of taking her out. Ty had been half-dead from blood loss when he voiced that opinion, and since recovering, he’d never mentioned it again. She hadn’t forgotten, though. Was that all he was to his father—collateral damage? It was clear where the general’s loyalties lay, and they were not, to her disgust, with his son.

  Bree turned more sharply than she needed to and opened the throttle. Water sprayed over the bow. The raft town looming ahead was huge. Beyond-imagination huge. Ty had described it to her, but she hadn’t expected a man-made island.

  They’d been in the Raft Cities for about a week now, quietly learning the lay of the land—and the water—until they deemed it safe to contact Ahmed. Lying low, they’d restocked supplies, anchoring out at sea, never on one of the rafts. Much of the region was poor; she’d seen a lot of squalor. But this raft? All she could say was that the pirate biz must be good.

  Coasting up to their assigned rendezvous spot, Bree killed the engine and deployed the autoanchor. The speedboat looked like a gnat sidling up to a dinosaur. The boat pitched precariously, throwing salt water onto the deck, splashing Bree’s boots. “Holy Christmas, Ty.” Wiping damp strands of off her forehead with the back of her arm, she lifted her gaze higher and higher until she found the top of the structure towering over her. “This thing is huge.” Shiny black pontoons bristled with parasitic flotsam, jetsam, and guns—big guns, resembling cannon. Except these puppies glittered with LED lights and sensors. If the great sea captains of the past were looking down from heaven, it was in a fit of must-have envy.

  “I was impressed the first time I saw it, too. For different reasons. I’d come here to infiltrate.”

  She turned slightly, met his bracing blue eyes. “I bet that was exciting.”

  “No more so than today.”

  He’d fought in the Pirate Wars, a prolonged campaign to combat sea terrorism. It had been his first command. He’d lost men there. Lost them here.

  “It must feel strange coming back,” she said, quieter.

  “It does,” he admitted. “But the circumstances . . . they couldn’t be more different. Then, I fought to keep my country from harm. Now, it’s to keep my country from doing harm to me.” So that I can stay alive to protect you, he left unspoken. Ty was a career soldier. His life came second to the mission. His mission, he said, was her.

  Ty secured the safety on his rifle before stowing it in a holster slung over his back. The wind rippled across the fabric of his faded, olive-green T-shirt, which he wore tucked into equally bleached-out camouflage pants, secured at the waist by a weapons belt from which a variety of killing devices dangled. It hit her how hard and battle-ready he appeared. Bree doubted that he had an ounce of body fat left on him. Any smidgen of softness had turned rock-hard the past few weeks with the brutal physical training program he’d put them both through. She would have liked to say that she, too, was now the proud owner of buns of steel, but no. Biology (or was it heredity?) had played a cruel trick on her. But hey, a girl couldn’t have everything.

  “It’s far from being the largest of the rafts,” Ty said. “But it is among the best protected.”

  “It had better be.” She gave the raft another once-over. “Or we’re screwed.” Again . . .

  More thunder rumbled, a hollow sound. Wind ruffled strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail, drawing Bree’s attention away from the raft to the sea, where the sun rode ever lower in the sky. Sunsets at the equator seemed to last forever: long, drawn-out, and utterly gorgeous spectacles. When night finally fell, it’d be blacker than any she’d ever known. Her scalp crawled as she imagined a rifle scope trained on her head.

  Assassins are like roaches; for every one you kill, there are ten more to take its place.

  Or at least it seemed that way. The first person to take a crack at killing her was a guard at Prince Kyber’s palace; the second tried doing her in by dropping acid from a plane; and the third shot at her while she slept—and very nearly was successful.

  Bree scanned the horizon, half expecting something dark and formless to appear on the edge of the world and swallow the peace she’d hoped to find here. If this is supposed to be a safe haven, then why is my gut screaming at me to run, to get the hell away from this place?

  It defied all logic, the sense of dread dogging her all day. But she couldn’t shake it, couldn’t help wondering if someone had followed her here.

  Like Ty’s father. Her gut told her that the elder Armstrong wouldn’t stop until he pinpointed their location. The general’s back was to the wall. With the UCE rushing headlong toward revolution, e
verything he’d worked for all his life hung in the balance. With Bree as that revolution’s inspiration, if she lived, he lost; it was that simple. She knew a military man of Ax’s reputation would see only one way out: her immediate and efficient execution, along with the deaths of all those in her company. Hadn’t that hypothesis been substantiated by the past few weeks?

  Which, of course, meant Ahmed the pirate and his merry men were as good as dead. Dead like almost everyone else who helped her and Ty.

  Bree squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed. Personal danger didn’t scare her as much as the consequences of her actions—or lack thereof—on the innocents in all this. Or on the guilty. How many lives would be saved based on her decision to help the Voice achieve its goals? How many would be lost? Would it all be worth it in the end—if there was indeed ever an end?

  She often wondered if this was the kind of torture world leaders and their generals went through when contemplating whether to involve their countries in conflicts. And if it haunted them as much as it did her, not knowing what would be the outcome of those decisions.

  “Bree . . .” Ty brushed a warm, work-roughened finger down her cheek, making her aware of the jaw she hadn’t realized she’d clenched. “You okay?”

  The speedboat bobbed on the choppy seas. She held on to the wheel to keep her balance. “Peachy.”

  “Peachy, my ass.” Her slang often threw him, but it never fooled him; he saw inside her head as no man ever had. But hell if letting him inside her heart wasn’t scarier than hand-to-hand combat.

  “Am I going to have to wrestle it out of you?” The edges of his wide mouth twitched. “I’m certain you remember what happened the last time.”

  To her surprise, a laugh burst out of her. Ty had a way about him that undercut all her defenses. “Vividly.”

  She glimpsed Ty’s private and very male satisfied smile as he bent his head to taste her lips with each word: “If we were still at sea, I’d take you right here on the deck. You’d be wearing a different expression when I was done with you. In fact, you’d be wearing nothing at all. . . .”

  She could almost feel the images his words left in her mind, because she’d lived them these past few weeks. They had been the only high points of the flight to freedom: the unexpected, easy playfulness between her and Ty; the way he kissed; bare, sun-warmed skin; the shocking heat of their passion, and afterward, always afterward, a sea breeze cooling the dampness left on their bodies. They’d passed many an hour that way, making love to forget the rest of the world was out there, hunting them.

  Relentlessly hunting them.

  If you let fear rule you, girl, they’ve won. She’d never let the bastards claim victory. Never. She was in too deep. No turning back. She’d come too far.

  Now that you have won your liberty, Banzai Maguire, you must win freedom for us all! She winced at the remembered words of the Shadow Voice.

  “Bree . . .”

  She glanced up sheepishly.

  Ty’s thumbs circled over her upper arms, a small movement that was nothing short of miraculous in the way it soothed her. But then he was good with his hands. Very good. “I lost you again,” he said.

  “I can’t help it.” Wearily, she sighed. “Any chance I can trade this job for what’s behind door number two?”

  “I’ve got you covered, Bree. I’ll keep you safe.”

  But what if he can’t? What if I can’t promise the same? A thread of ice coiled up her spine, raising the hair on the back of her neck.

  Ty felt her tremble, a frisson of fear she tried to hide. “Help me out here, Bree. What’s eating you?”

  “It’s nothing concrete. Just a hunch.”

  “If I’m going to protect you properly, I need to know what’s going on in your head. Gut feelings included.”

  She swallowed. “I’ve had them before. These hunches.”

  “Yeah, and they’ve been damn accurate.”

  For a moment the only sound was the wind whistling through the nooks and crannies on the speedboat.

  “I think we’ve been followed,” she admitted finally.

  Ty didn’t say anything at first. His eyes narrowed slightly, freezing into chips of blue ice. Whenever she saw that glacial look of his, she considered herself lucky that she’d never ended up on the business end of his rifle; his coldness was that scary. Yet that expression was all Ty. The man never showed fear, though she knew he often felt it. Instead, he revealed his apprehension with subzero aloofness. “By whom, Bree?” he asked. “Who’s on our tail?”

  Your father. She thought about vocalizing her opinion but changed her mind. He knew. And family, she decided, was best left out of this. “Does it make a difference? If the UCE finds us, I’ll likely be killed. And if it’s Kyber, probably you will. Now that we’ve involved Ahmed, your pirate friend, he’s fair game, too.”

  “We sailed here under the radar, Bree. Total radio silence until making contact with Ahmed. Even with satellite surveillance looking down at us, we would have been but one boat out of millions. It’s unlikely that anyone knows we’re here.”

  “Unlikely. But still possible. We left a string of dead bodies behind us that stretches all the way back to the Han Empire. Bread crumbs on the trail.”

  “Those are some grisly bread crumbs.”

  “Even so, it’s a trail for anyone able to spot it.”

  Ty shook his head. “If someone wanted us, why wait until we came under a third party’s protection before striking?”

  “Because they haven’t caught up to us yet?”

  “Bree . . .” He sighed. “Sweetheart.”

  “You asked what I thought, and I gave it to you. Hey, how about this? It’ll be the best of both worlds. We’ll board as planned, restock our supplies, stretch our legs a little, but that’s it. We could launch again by midnight.”

  Ty folded his arms over his chest. “And go where?”

  “Someplace . . . less populated. I don’t know. What’s to the south?”

  “Antarctica.” His expression didn’t change.

  She rolled her eyes. “I mean between here and there.”

  “Not Australia. It’s back to its eighteenth-century colonial roots as a dumping ground for criminals—Earth’s human refuse. The country lies in the hands of an opiateaddicted parliament run by a group of self-indulgent dandies who model themselves on nineteenth-century Regency England society.”

  “You never know . . . it may not be as bad as it sounds.”

  He made a clipped, strangled sound. “Newgate? Not as bad as it sounds?” He rubbed his forehead, a sign of irritation. “Bree, the longer we run in the open, the more likely someone will spot us. Ahmed’s raft is our best shot at making contact with the Voice of Freedom without calling attention to ourselves. We’re safer here than anywhere else. Look at the guns, the warning systems—and those are only the ones we can see. What about the rest of the arsenal? It’s considerable, let me tell you. I’ve seen it. It’s going to take more than a simple knock on the door to get inside. Even if that were to happen—I won’t rule it out—we’ll have warning, something we didn’t have the last time an assassin found us.”

  In that hotel bedroom in New Seoul. They’d almost died that night. Assassins, assassins everywhere. Again, unease filtered through her.

  “This raft is a fortress. We’ll be no safer anywhere else. Trust me on this. Is that possible?” He smoothed a hand over her hair tenderly, as if she were the most important thing in the world to him. Her chest squeezed tight. “You always want to be the one to take the fire,” he murmured. “But you don’t need to prove anything, Bree. Not with me.”

  Her desire to act flippant was crumbling. She wiped sweat off her brow and tried to act more laid-back than she felt. Ty took hold of her chin between his thumb and the crook of his index finger. Dipping his head, he looked her straight in the eye. “Would this have anything to do with your aversion to putting others in dangerous situations?” He held tight to her chin so that she couldn’t tu
rn away from his scrutiny. “Well? Does it?”

  She was overprotective. She knew it. It was why losing Cam cut so deep. But she sidestepped Ty’s question with one of her own. “Does it matter? Is it fair to force ourselves on Ahmed without telling him the whole story?”

  “That you’re a soldier from the past? Or that you incapacitated the most powerful dictator on Earth with a neuron fryer?”

  “After I got you out of his jail.”

  “Dungeon,” Ty put in with deadpan humor. “It was definitely a dungeon.”

  “Sure, laugh about it now. It wasn’t so funny then.” For most of her stay in Prince Kyber’s palace, she hadn’t known the truth about the deplorable conditions Ty had endured. When she did find out, she had been shocked. The emperor of Asia had been so kind to her. Well, while she had agreed to be his guest. “I don’t know if Kyber ever intended to let you go.”

  “Or you, for that matter,” Ty said woodenly. Prince Kyber was a touchy subject for him. He probably still wondered what sort of feelings she’d developed for the prince over the course of her stay at the palace. She wasn’t sure herself sometimes, but it absolutely wasn’t what she felt for Ty. More, she doubted Kyber was capable of feeling anything resembling adult love for her. Even if she had accepted his numerous invitations to be his lover, his doting affection would have made her feel more like a special house pet than a real woman.

  “Look Ty, by now my face has been on every monitor—personal and public—all over the world, from the Mars station to Newgate, along with a handy downloadable catalog of my crimes against humanity—too many offenses to count, the last time I checked—but if I remember right, ‘armed and dangerous’ and ‘guilty of inciting rebellion’ are on the list.” Dangerous, she thought with a snort. Get real. The only thing she’d ever considered treacherous about herself was her mood when she went too long between chocolate fixes.

  Suddenly she was battling a bone-shaking craving for M&M’s. Of all the things she missed about her old life, junk food was nearly tops. She used to think nothing of downing a Coke and candy bar for breakfast. Ever since she’d woken up in this world, however, her snacking had been pitifully nonexistent. Some of the old goodies were still available in the UCE, Ty told her, but life as Public Enemy Number One had a way of putting a damper on her hopes of getting any.