“No, the man who haunt your eyes. Think he not your husband.”
Hallie frowned at the suggestion of impropriety, then realized Calypso made no hint the allegations against her had been true, that she had lied about them being false. Calypso’s was a statement of observation, filled with the kind of certainty that spoke of deep intuition.
“Oh. It is another man. A stranger. The one who attested to the affair with no inducement for his actions but the credit he was offered. And which he did not receive,” Hallie added without the sense of vindication she expected. She let her breath out slowly.
“How you know this?”
“Because he told me.”
“The husband?”
“No. The man who testified against me. Burke Conlan.”
At that, Calypso’s composure left her. She fluttered to her feet with flawed grace, staring at Hallie through eyes that had gone as red as fire.
* * *
Skelly turned away from Hallie’s open door with a contemplative stride. Fingers tapping the vial in his pocket, he lifted the other hand to rub the nape of his neck, pressing the short, bristly hairs against the grain of growth. This was an interesting development.
He hadn’t much cared for Conlan’s self-righteous attitude the night before, his insinuation, his pompous judgment. And all the while the duce was sitting on a secret like this one. Pimped himself out for a little credit, had he? Sold his honor to a rich man and got himself screwed in the process. Not to mention what he’d done to Hallie. Well, she might have deserved it. Who could know? Skelly didn’t think so, though. There was something about her.
Steering his thoughts from further rumination on Hallie’s character, he walked into the common room, straight up to the shielded window. For a long minute his hand hovered near the deactivation dome. If he could just do it, look once more into the hell outside, he might prove something to himself, show himself and everyone here he was still a man. Show Emil, and that damned Conlan. Show Hallie.
He clenched his shaking fingers into a fist as he turned away. It was no use. He couldn’t. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Returning to the other side of the room, he dropped into one of the chairs and pulled up close to the table. Settling his cupped hand over the tabletop, he released the half-filled vial onto the surface. With a flick of his fingers he uncapped it, deftly tapping a line of the powdered drug onto the laminate. Utilizing the edge of the cap he crushed the larger crystals, working the line until it was straight and even, then he bent and placed a finger over one nostril, inhaling the drug up the other through a thin tube. After, he leaned back in his chair and sniffed and reaching out to wipe the dusty residue off the table, which he rubbed over his gums.
There. Better now. How generous of the powers-that-be to provide this type of recreation to Zebulon’s inhabitants, should they choose it. Really quite good of them.
Skelly turned an unsteady eye to the screened panels, letting his glance hover briefly before looking away into the center of the room.
How fortunate, too, that he happened to be standing in the corridor when Hallie made her announcement to that unfortunate wreck of a dancer regarding Conlan and his dirty deed. He could use the information a number of ways. Women tumbled to a sympathetic ear. He’d provide that to Hallie when the time was right. As for Conlan, well, he could find ways to profit from this knowledge.
That Hallie already knew the truth ruled out blackmail. No matter. It would be like Conlan to go to her with the story anyway, if Skelly threatened him. Now he wouldn’t need to. He would come up with something else. Despite the obvious flaw in Conlan’s character, the man obviously possessed something of a conscience. Brave men and fools could both be brought down hard by conscience. Oh yes, they could.
Skelly lifted his feet and plopped them on the chair opposite. He extended his arms to cup his hands behind his head. Here, he had begun to feel unbelievably, subtly powerful. On Lucas, he was nothing. Here was an opportunity for that status to change.
Tipping his chair back against the wall, Skelly listened to the sound of footsteps in the outer corridor. He recognized the sound of everyone’s footfall. This tread was unfamiliar. Therefore, he knew it must be Hallie’s. He smiled to himself.
Time to begin.
VII.
RARELY PURE and NEVER SIMPLE
Hallie hesitated in the doorway, pushing the damp hair back from her face. Her ablutions had been hasty after Calypso’s departure. Moisture still clung to her skin beneath her uniform. Calypso had been right, though. She felt better now.
Glancing around the common room, Hallie found its sole occupant leaning in a chair against the wall. Skelly looked comfortable, contemplative, somewhat pleased with himself. He turned as if just seeing her, but she had the feeling he had heard her coming.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Is it morning? I wasn’t sure. It’s hard to tell.” She looked toward the covered panels. Skelly did not.
Moving to the meal-prep unit, Hallie deposited the mug in which she had been served her tea, then eyed her choices for breakfast. Nothing looked particularly appetizing, but she knew she had to eat.
“Try a liquid. It sits better after a run-in with a cyber.”
Blowing a breath over her lips, Hallie reviewed the choices again, running through them with a fingertip. “Does everyone know?”
“About the aftereffects? Oh, most certainly.”
“No. I mean that it happened to me last night.”
“Emil doesn’t know. He wasn’t awake. Still isn’t.”
“But you’ll tell him.”
“Of course. We need something to talk about, don’t we?”
“Of course.” Picking a thick liquid concoction with a pleasant color that turned out to have an equally pleasant odor, she went to sit at the table with Skelly. He dropped his feet from the chair opposite and swiped at the seat.
“You’ll need to talk, too, I expect,” he said as she lowered herself into the chair.
“About what?”
Sipping the creamy mixture, she was pleased to find it tasted as good as it smelled. Fruity, although she assumed that was artificial. Fresh fruit would have to be transported in, and wouldn’t be fresh by the time it arrived.
“Things that upset you. Memories. Betrayal.”
Hallie lowered her drink to the tabletop. His questions were too close to recent events. Just how much did he know? Had Burke been talking about the job that landed him here? Somehow, she didn’t think so. He didn’t seem the type inclined to talk to anybody about his life. Maybe Skelly was angling for entertainment. Maybe, though, this was a common theme, not some mystifying deduction. “Did you carry me back to my room?”
He considered his answer, wavering, eyes sliding away, then back. “No.” The admission apparently pained him.
So, then, it was the cybernetics. Hallie picked up her drink again.
“I brought you the blankets.”
“Thank you.” She assumed, then, that he had removed her boots. She didn’t care for the idea of a strange man removing any article of her clothing, no matter how innocuous, and especially while she was unconscious.
“How’s your throat?”
Hallie looked up. His hand rested on the front of his neck in indication of his meaning. “What reason did you have for opening my collar?” she demanded.
Skelly looked oddly pleased at her angered tone. He took a moment to answer. “I didn’t,” he stated. “It was Burke.”
* * *
Burke jabbed the screen control at the base of the window. The opaque covering on the panel disintegrated, clearing first in the center and circling outward like ripples on standing water. Static lifted the hair along his naked arms.
The transparent panel revealed the most appreciable illumination he had witnessed since his arrival on Zebulon. a dark green with little form or shadow, as if the atmosphere had been washed in heavy dye. Far below he glimpsed darker projections th
rusting up out of the blacker mass. Thought he had his suspicions, he wasn’t making any wager on what they were. Still, the monochromatic gloom felt familiar in a way he couldn’t quite name.
A face floated into the gloom. He sucked in a breath, realizing it was a reflection in the aperture of someone in the gymnasium behind him. Hallie. He hadn’t even heard her coming. That sort of carelessness would never do.
Once again she was angry. He noted it in her stance reflected next to his. Her voice when she spoke, however, was strained, but calm. Good. She learned fast.
“What is that out there?”
Burke stepped closer to the window. She moved up beside him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, fists tucked behind her biceps, respiration deliberate and deep. The scent of soap drifted to him from her skin.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Are we underground, do you think?”
“I tend to doubt it.”
She nodded. “Nor underwater.”
“Definitely not. The descent in the transport would have been different.”
“I don’t remember the descent.”
He made a noise in his throat. No doubt with the life she had led, she was unused to such rude conditions as transport on a prison ship. Yet, remembering her erstwhile husband, Burke realized she had likely suffered worse indignities.
“I was sick,” she added.
“Space sickness.”
“Uh-huh.”
That could be nasty. He was surprised she had bounced back as quickly as she had, especially with the added burden of the sedative. However, she looked recovered. Thin, a little tired, but energy shimmered from her like a charge. He could feel it as potently as the recent static, dancing along the exposed skin of his arms and legs in his workout suit.
“Is the atmosphere breathable, do you suppose?”
He inhaled, released the breath, thought a moment, wondering if she asked for the same reason he’d been looking outside every day since he’d come. “I don’t know.”
“I feel like I’m suffocating,” she whispered.
He hadn’t realized he’d moved until he felt the heat of her through her coverall. If she noticed his proximity, she made no sign. He looked down at the top of her head where frosty blue and golden strands of loosened hair curled up from the crown. Her eyes were closed. Her throat moved as she swallowed.
“You’re not suffocating, Hallie. You’ll be fine.”
A single drop of saline moisture slid from the tangled edges of her lashes and over the ridge of cheekbone beside her eye. “Don’t call me that. You have no right.”
“Hallie—”
She spun away from the hand he had placed on her arm.
“No!” Lowering her voice, she repeated the syllable, rubbing her arm where his hand had been. He hadn’t grabbed her hard, just touched her in comfort. He supposed her action was more one of repugnance than anything else. He couldn’t blame her. What he had done was every bit as heinous as what her husband had.
“You came to my cell last night. Didn’t you?”
“I brought you there,” he said.
“You did?”
“I did. The cybers leave you where you fall.”
“Skelly said—”
He tensed. “What did Shane say to you?”
“Nothing. He didn’t really say much of anything.”
“Don’t cover for him. He’s not to be trusted.”
She lifted a brow at him. “Is anyone?”
His core contracted as if at a blow. A well-deserved hit. He turned back to the window. She moved closer to it, staring down into the emerald murk. Her hair fled to the glass, drawn there by static. “That’s me,” she said.
“What’s that?” To not call her by name was difficult. He wanted the intimate sound of it, which was precisely why she denied him the courtesy. He thought of other things he would like to call her, impulsive, fleeting endearments, and wondered where in the hell that urge came from. She’d kill him, plain and simple, because he wouldn’t stop her. He’d heard about desert clans, their warrior women. She knew how to do it.
“That murk,” she said. “I feel like that. I don’t know what it is out there and I don’t know who I am in here.”
He grunted, not daring to say more. A shiver coursed her spine, visible to his eye. She clutched her arms tighter across her rib cage.
“You took off my boots.”
So, they were returning to their prior topic. “Yes.”
“And loosened my clothing.”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“To make me comfortable.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand that kind of decency from a man who would do what you do.”
“I wanted to help you.” The explanation sounded shallow, even to his ears.
“Help me? Why? To assuage your guilt?”
“Maybe.”
“Fantastic. Glad I could be of assistance with that.”
“Hallie—”
“Don’t.”
“I feel responsible—”
“You are responsible! For my being here, and for this!” Snatching at the fastening to her uniform, she pulled open the collar to reveal the bruising he had seen the night before. “Can you guess what he said to me when he did this?”
Burke shook his head, unable to fathom what a man might say at such a time.
“He said, ‘if a man’s wife is unfaithful to him, he is entitled to his anger’. As if it were true. As I lay on the floor, nearly unconscious, he had one parting remark to make. He told me his vengeance would be complete if the marks he had made upon my flesh lasted long enough. I don’t even know what he meant by that. But pondering that answer will keep me awake at night for a long time.”
Burke closed his eyes. I do. I know.
“Why? Why did you do this thing?”
At her words, Burke felt something inside of him shatter like glass, like the fine, hand-blown glass of the old artisans, not the thick, manufactured vitrine. He almost visualized it falling about him in splintered, glittering shards. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Were you that much in debt? You could have picked another job. One that didn’t ruin lives.”
He grabbed both of her arms as she turned to leave him, holding her fast. She didn’t resist, no doubt recalling the cybernetics, but tipped her head back to look him in the eye. He felt her anger-heated skin through the cloth of her uniform, the rock-hard tension in the muscles beneath his hands.
“I have a daughter, Hallie. A daughter. I told you about her last night, while you slept off the sedative. I know you don’t remember, but—”
She jerked away. Her eyes widened in comprehension, then horror. “No!” She flung herself against the panel, mashing her face, her body against it as if she hoped to push herself through into whatever lay beyond. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I don’t believe it,” she said through clenched teeth, but it was plain she did. She wiped futilely at the flowing tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Burke’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not your fault. It’s Sterne’s…and mine.”
Yes, and his. Although Sterne was a black-hearted, blackmailing, sadistic bastard, Burke had gone to him with every intention of executing a job that might damage some individual down the line. As a Drifter, Burke understood the nature of his occupation. So did Sterne. A job was a job. Burke had turned down a few, but he’d always known that one day his choices would catch up to him. He’d never realized the debt would be demanded of someone else, least of all his own child and this wronged woman standing before him. Wronged, and nevertheless grieving over the evil her former husband had brought to pass.
He spun Hallie around into his arms, holding her tight. She wept as if heartbroken, the noise muffled against his chest, the fabric of his garment clutched in her fists. He stroked her hair, fingers moving over her crown and down the contours of the braid soft beneath his hand.
“Hallie, it will be all right.”
But, damn it he didn’t see how it would be.
* * *
Skelly’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t dare go closer, afraid of being spotted and of being too close to the unscreened panels. In spite of his fear, his gaze was drawn to the two standing in front of them. He couldn’t hear their words, but whatever Conlan had come up with must have been damned good. Letting him touch her, stroke her, hold her body close against his. Weeping in his arms when she should have been berating him. Accepting comfort from him when she should have been lashing out, seeking her comfort elsewhere.
Skelly slipped his hand into his pocket, fingering the nestled vial. He brushed himself, quite by accident, and was surprised to find that the scene being played out in front of him had him aroused. Well, maybe not entirely surprised. After all, a woman in distress was vulnerable to accepting all manner of pleasant diversion. Not difficult to envision what could be had if he managed to steer Hallie clear of Conlan’s attentions to his own. He knew how clever he could be, how persuasive. Despite his long incarceration, he remembered what a spirited woman felt like held down beneath him. That dancer, Calypso, did nothing for him. She was too pale, too practiced, too aloof. Hallie’s skin was like gold, her movements naturally seductive, her spirit full of fire. He had seen her angry, even when afraid. Understanding how to take advantage of that combination aroused him further and he shifted his weight where he stood, silently rearranging the folds of his coverall.
Moving back into the space between the locker and the wall, back into the shadows where he had been before taking a few steps forward in his interest, Skelly watched as Hallie extricated herself from Conlan’s embrace, brushed the tears from her face, recovered her composure. She said something to Conlan. Skelly witnessed the change in the man’s expression with satisfaction.
Then she was turning to depart. Conlan took a single stride after her before halting, pushing the dark hair back off his forehead, pivoting away to the window. Skelly spared no more thought for him, watching Hallie draw closer, nearing the door.
Look at me, he willed, staring hard at her. Look at me! He could make her look. He knew he could. He possessed that power. She would know he was there, merely by the strength of his desire that she know it.
Emerald Twilight: Bundled Edition Page 6
