Chapter Five
Jenna crouched in the eaves of an almost-intact building, one of the very few in the bombed-out, abandoned section of this underprivileged city. She kept her gaze focused on the structure next door, which had once been a bank. Inside laid the body of the woman she’d been tasked to meet, a deep-cover agent who’d turned out to have an ulterior motive for the get-together.
They ordered my death.
The thought didn’t stop recurring, no matter how many times she shoved it down. She didn’t know for sure that her apparent execution charge had come from higher up the CI chain, but someone had betrayed her, contacting this agent and demanding she end the meeting with Jenna’s death.
The woman had tried to take her by surprise, but—maybe because Jenna’s adrenaline had already been running high from her crash landing and trying to stay one step ahead of the CSS patrols—she’d reacted fast and with force. Jenna had managed to save herself and turn the tables. Unfortunately, the fierce fight had resulted in the other agent’s death. Jenna had been hoping to simply subdue her so she could get some answers.
With the deep-cover agent dead, she’d done the only thing left available to her—slapped the woman in Jenna’s appearance-altering tech to disguise her as best she could and then sent a message using the agent’s personal comm to the last contact, with the simple message of it’s done. After that, she’d scaled the building next door to settle in, waiting to see who, if anyone, came to retrieve the body.
And now, after hours and hours of waiting, and the kind of speculation that could only lead to insanity, at last she saw some action. A figure moved out from behind the shell of a destroyed transport father down the block, ducking from one shadowy corner to the next, picking their cover wisely, methodically closing in on her position. In another few moments, the figure slipped into the old bank, and Jenna swore under her breath. She hadn’t managed to get a clear look at who’d come for the intel on her dead body. All she could tell was that the figure had definitely been male.
Well, she had the element of surprise, another opportunity to subdue and capture. Hopefully, this time she’d learn who ordered her death, and it wouldn’t result in another agent’s demise, especially her own.
Jenna clambered down from the roof and dropped silently into the street below. She approached the old bank from the opposite side the other agent had entered.
Now that it was dark, seeing inside the building was almost impossible. Somewhere deeper within the degenerated structure, the faint echo of murmured curses floated back to her. Then came a sweeping, blue-light beam.
No CI agent worth their badge would ever turn on what appeared to be a flashlight in an abandoned building in the middle of enemy territory. Was she dealing with amateur hour here? Odd that they’d send a greenhorn so far into CSS held territory. But since she’d just found out her own people had possibly tried to have her killed, she wasn’t going to question their motives now.
She gave a mental shrug and started forward again. If the CI agent was a total rookie, then it made her plans that much easier.
Using the source of light as a beacon, she followed the other agent into the vault where she’d left the disguised woman. The male agent was crouched next to the body, dark head ducked down, using the flashlight to examine the woman’s face.
Jenna sped forward, tensing her muscles for the attack, but just as she was about to launch herself at him, the man looked up, and shock made her stumble. She skidded to a stop, almost tripping on the body of the dead agent.
“Seb?”
He stood in a surge, falling into a defensive stance, aiming the flashlight in her face. “Who are you?”
A laugh constricted her chest, part relief, part hysteria, but she swallowed it down and cleared her tight throat. “It’s me.”
He scoffed, producing an electromag pulse gun from somewhere and aiming it at her chest.
“Sorry, lady, you’re going to have to do better than that, or I’ll be asking my next question with this gun.”
Oh, right, she’d taken off all that appearance-altering tech and put it on the dead woman.
“I’m Jenna, the CI agent you flew down here earlier today. We crash landed. No, what did you call it? A drop-and-slide?”
The gun lowered a fraction and he stepped closer to her. “The CI agent I dropped off this morning was killed. I came here to retrieve her body.”
His words were clipped, but he didn’t sound so sure of himself.
“That’s what I wanted them to think. When you met me earlier today, I was using appearance-altering tech to disguise my true features. Seriously, Seb, how else would I know about our landing? Just come and take a closer look.”
He edged over to her and lowered the flashlight beam until she could see his face more clearly. His gaze roamed over her, ending on her eyes and sticking there.
“It is you.”
She blew out a relieved breath, her shoulders dropping as tension drained away with the intensity of being sucked into a vortex.
Seb slipped his gun away and glanced at the dead body. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m not glad to find you alive, but what the hell is going on?”
“I was sold out, that’s what’s going on. Someone sent that woman here with orders to kill me.”
“Is she CSS?”
Jenna shook her head wearily. “No, one of ours. A deep-cover CI agent.”
His confusion morphed into one of shock. “No way. Are you telling me CI tried to have you killed? Why the hell would they do that?”
Actually, now that she thought about it, why the heck had they sent someone as inexperienced as Seb this far into enemy territory to retrieve sensitive, important intel? Unless he was somehow part of the conspiracy.
“That’s the million-dollar question. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it would you, Sub-Lieutenant?”
Despite the shadows, she caught the unfettered surprised that crossed his face. From the time she’d spent with him, she didn’t think he was a good enough actor to pull off a lie, and his shock at the questioned seemed genuine.
“Me? You’re kidding, right?”
“No, but I had to ask.” A low swell of relief flowed through her, letting her drop her guard the slightest bit. Because Seb was here, she had one ally at least. And that fact reassured her more than it should have.
“Of course you did.” The look he sent her in return was unimpressed to say the least. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’ve got the woman’s personal comm, and I intend to find out who wanted me dead. Except obviously I can’t do it from down here behind enemy lines, I need to get back up to the Valiant Knox.”
“Well, that’s no problem. I procured a new ship. I was actually on my way back when my CO contacted me and said I needed to retrieve your body. It kind of put a dampener on the whole death-defying, crash-landing mission to hear you’d been killed.”
“Sorry.” She grimaced, not really sure what she was apologizing for, making her feel a bit silly. “They’ll want this.” She pulled a thumb-sized data storage device out of her pocket and held it up under the beam of the flashlight. “I was meant to download a whole lot of information about the inner workings of the CSS from the other agent, except instead of giving me the data, she tried to kill me. Tell them it was too hard to retrieve my body, but you did manage to grab this. They won’t care so long as they get the device.”
Looking perplexed, Seb took it from her fingers. “Hang on a minute. I thought you just said you were going back to the Valiant Knox. Why don’t you just hand it over yourself and tell them screw-you-very-much for trying to kill you?”
“Because if CI really does want me dead for who-knows-what reason, and they find out they failed, then it won’t be long before I’m dead for real. I need them to keep thinking I’m dead, at least until I work out who exactly screwed me over.”
Seb rubbed his forehead, expression pained. “Now I remember why us dumb stick jockeys hate dealing with CI. I can fly you back up to the Knox, but how am I going to explain having a passenger? Jenna is dead, here’s your information, oh and BTW I just brought this random chick with me back from Ilari. Yeah, that’ll go down really well.”
If they hadn’t been in such a precarious situation, she would have had a good laugh over that piece of sarcasm. Now she knew why he made jokes at the most inappropriate times—finding a small spark of dark amusement in her situation lessened the tension. Honestly, she was kind of impressed about his way of handling things. He was probably way better adjusted than she ever would be.
“I’ll hide out in the shuttle and then sneak off later.”
Seb shook his head. “I said it before and I’ll say it again. All this sneaking and hiding, it’s exhausting. Don’t you ever get sick of it?”
The question reminded her of the conversations they’d had after crashing the shuttle. Then, she’d ignored the deep-seated disquiet that’d been building within her, which would lead to nothing but questions of what she was really getting out of life by being so entrenched in CI and all its workings. But after almost getting killed by one of her own, the notion struck deep into a corner of her soul she hadn’t acknowledged for a long time. Funny how one incident could be like ripping a hood from darkened vision. Life was staring her in the face, normal stuff like home and family. But she was way past ever going back to anything resembling that kind of existence.
“You know what? I am sick of it. Being a CI agent didn’t end up anything like I’d imagined when I left pre-mil training.”
At first, his eyebrows hiked up, like he couldn’t believe she’d admitted to anything, let alone such a mammoth statement. But then an understanding gleam lit his gaze, along with something a little too close to pity for her comfort zone.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here before my luck runs out.”
Seb shot her a grin. “Stick with me and your luck will never run out, ’cause I’m one lucky son of a bitch.”
“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes and reached for the flashlight he still held pointed at the ground. “Turn that off before someone decides to use it for target practice. Don’t you know the basics when it comes to operating behind enemy lines?”
She slipped the flashlight in her pocket and turned away from the body of the other agent.
“Of course I do.” Seb’s voice had a mildly insulted edge to it. “I figured since I was standing inside a bank vault, I could risk it.”
She glanced back over her shoulder as she reached the door of the vault, but she could hardly see him in the near-pitch darkness.
“Lucky I was the one who found you and not a CSS patrol.”
“I doubt any CSS in their right mind would come down to this wasteland, especially at night,” Seb muttered as they crept into the main room of the bank.
Jenna went in low around the counter, weak moonlight filtered in through the gaping holes that had once housed windows. She paused in a crouch, Seb coming up next to her. With a slow movement, she looked around the end. Though the coast looked clear, she stayed statue-frozen, keeping her breathing even as she assessed the shadows. She couldn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, but her well-honed agent instincts were telling her someone was nearby. It could have been her going into overdrive after nearly being killed by one of her own, but she wasn’t about to ignore the creeping sense they weren’t alone.
Dirt scrunched under his boot as Seb shifted slightly. She clamped a hand on his arm, indicating for him to be still without looking back at him.
He tensed beside her, but otherwise took on a rock impersonation, so motionless and quiet, she couldn’t hear him breathing. The solid heat of him beside her steadied her nerves after all the shocks she’d had in the past few hours.
The minutes ticked by, noises from deeper in the city ghosting on the slight breeze that whistled between the broken buildings. A single step echoed like a clap after straining her ears into the near silence. Seb jumped slightly, bringing him tighter against her side.
A second footstep joined the first, and then slowly the pace increased. Jenna tracked the sound, mentally mapping where the person was and where they were headed. When she estimated they were close to the opposite end of the counter, she tugged Seb’s shirt and silently scrambled with him around the near end of the counter, keeping them out of sight as the other person advanced on the vault.
She let Seb go and skimmed along the front side of the long dusty bench, retracing the other person’s steps and coming up behind them. At the last second, she risked ducking her head out to snatch a look as the intruder disappeared into the vault.
The glance filled in a few details—tall, male, dressed like a CS Solider. Considering he was lurking around the rendezvous site, there was a small chance he was another one of theirs, or he could have been exactly what he looked like—a CS Soldier or agent who’d gotten word something had gone down here tonight.
At the vibration in her pocket, she slapped a hand over the device—the one she’d taken off the dead agent—making it go still. She got out half a hard breath before it started up again. With hasty yanking at her clothes, she grabbed the comm out and tabbed off all communications. Seb cast her a questioning glance and she shook her head, indicating he remain silent, even though she knew he had enough experience behind enemy lines to follow basic protocol like keeping quiet.
The CS Soldier emerged from the vault muttering, a comm in his hand. Had he been the one calling the device in her pocket? Obviously her appearance-altering tech had worked, and he didn’t realize the woman he was trying to contact was the dead body in the vault.
With the soldier’s attention on his comm, she took a gamble and made for new cover—a tipped over desk that, on closer inspection, wasn’t as big as she’d hoped. She and Seb scrunched down behind it, practically sitting in each other’s lap.
She tried to steady her breathing as the footsteps of the soldier crossing the open space echoed all around them. But she was fighting a lost cause, all because Seb was pressed up behind her, one of his hands on her hip. The touch was pretty well impersonal—she doubted he even realized where his hand had landed in the scramble to find cover, but nonetheless warmth from his palm was burning through her layers of clothes.
The CS Soldier paused at what had once been the doors.
“It’s Barnes. Confirmation. Task completed, but Holly’s off the radar. She never made the rendezvous, and she’s not answering her comm.”
There was a pause, presumably as the soldier listened to whoever was on the other end of the call.
“That’s a negative. Go ahead with the extraction as planned. Holly will turn up at some point and if she doesn’t…” The rest of the soldier’s words were lost as he moved out of eavesdropping distance.
She and Seb stayed as they were, hunkered down in the dust behind the desk for a good fifteen minutes. With careful movements, she stretched her legs out and glanced around the splintered edge of the broken furniture. Seb leaned into her, his breath feathering against her neck as he looked over her shoulder. She didn’t see anything to be concerned about and didn’t get the sense there was anyone out there.
“Come on. We better move,” she whispered, ignoring her protesting muscles as she unfolded and pushed to her feet.
Seb wasn’t so stoic, muttering a bunch of curses as he stretched first his arms, then his back, and finally his legs.
“Is contortion one of the required skills to be a CI agent?” he asked as they crept out.
“Yep, totally is,” she replied distractedly, checking the street as she reached the nearest busted-out floor to ceiling window.
“What do you think that was all about?”
“That CS Soldier? He was obviously looking for the CI agent I killed, probably one of the deep-cover contacts she cultivated. And since I put my appearance-altering tech on her—”
“He assumed the body was you,” Seb finished in a grim voice. “What about the ‘extraction’? What do you think they’re up to?”
“I have no idea and it’s not my problem right now. Or ever again, probably. My single aim is to stay alive, stay one step ahead of whoever gave the order to burn me, and find out exactly why that happened.”
He sent her a nod, gaze intent and somber, but otherwise didn’t reply to her hastily fabricated plan, and once they were out in the street, Seb took the lead. Halfway to his ship, they ran across a patrol of local law enforcement who seemed to be out to rile unfortunate squatters. They waited, hoping the ruckus would be over with quickly, but when the commotion continued, they backtracked and picked a more circuitous route. When they arrived at the shuttle at last, Jenna was relieved and impressed.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the ship stealing thing,” she said as they boarded and Seb closed out the predawn chill. “This is actually a pretty nice ride. I was almost expecting to see something in worse condition than the flying junk heap we came down on.”
He rolled his eyes. “Please. Give me some credit. I’ll have you know I had to trick a pack of unsuspecting guard dogs to steal this from a highly secure facility.”
“Really.” She loaded that one word with a whole lot of disbelief.
“Okay, it was only two poorly trained guard dogs, and the highly secure facility was actually the front yard of the mayor’s house back in Farmerville.” Seb sent her a sheepish grin as he sat in the pilot’s seat, which made her brain turn to mush for a few long seconds.
“Farmerville?”
“That’s the name I bestowed upon the cluster of hovels making up the town we landed near yesterday.” He ducked under the control panel and fiddled with a few wires and some kind of circuit board, before the ship rumbled quietly online.
“Of course you did.” She sank into the copilot’s chair as he got the shuttle off the ground. They weren’t out of danger yet. They still had to make it to UEF-held space, and when she got back to the Valiant Knox, she had to face the possibility her own people wanted her dead. Yet she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this free. No one knew where she was, she was completely and utterly on her own. Instead of freaking her out, it gave her strength. Like CI had been tethering her to a dead weight and she’d suddenly been cut loose to surface into crisp, clear air.
She glanced over at Seb, and that feeling of liberation got headier.
Which was absolutely ridiculous. So, he’d made her laugh freely for the first time in living memory. So, he’d challenged her ingrained notions about her career even before the organization tried to have her wiped. So, he’d come to retrieve her body and then helped her when he’d found her alive. Despite those few occurrences, they were still strangers.
Unfortunately, that logic didn’t lessen the way her stomach flipped as she took in his profile and remembered how his body had felt—all heat and muscle—against her in the bank while they’d been hiding from the CS Soldier. Damn it, the man was dangerous to a woman’s common sense.
“Do you have a plan beyond sneaking back on board the Knox, or is this a making-crap-up-as-you-go kind of thing?” he asked as he guided the ship away from the city.
Right. Finding out who’d ordered her to be killed—life-and-death situation. Totally not the time to be distracted by Sebastian Rayne and all that he had going on.
She gave herself a mental shake and tapped at the ship’s console screen in front of her, making it light up with information. While she couldn’t fly the ship, she could still work the systems connected to the Knox’s larger onboard computer.
“I’ve got a vague idea. I just need to iron out the details.”
“And you’re going to tackle this all on your own?”
She glanced over at him, catching a hint of something in his voice she couldn’t decipher.
“I don’t know who I can trust. Any of the people I would’ve turned to could be the ones involved in the plot…if there is a plot.” Her chest tightened and she rubbed her sternum.
“What are you going to do?”
This time, there was no mistaking the quiet intensity of his words.
She swallowed, compartmentalizing her emotions after long years of experience. “In order to disguise how I got onto the Knox, I’m going to check the schedule of incoming transfer shuttles, so I can pretend I got off one. After that, I’m going to do whatever I can to find where the order to kill me came from.”
“It would help if you had a connection on board, like someone you were pretending to visit. I could help with that. You could pretend you’re my sister or cousin, or something.”
She evaluated Seb and the larger situation. An aching part of her wanted to jump at his offer of help, simply so she didn’t have to be in this alone. It was definitely reassuring to think she might not have to take this on by herself. Except, did he have any idea what he’d be getting himself into? When backed into a corner, CI could be the deadliest organization in the known-worlds.
You can talk to me. When he’d said those words to her on the ground earlier, an intense and utterly serious gleam to his gaze, her heart had gone into a mini-free fall. But that was before she’d sabotage his trust in her—
“I didn’t kill him.” The words burst out of her, running together until they were almost incoherent.
“Who?” Seb cut her a carefully detached glance.
“The CS Soldier in the woods. The one who nearly took your head off.”
His brows drew down, as if he was assimilating that information. “But I heard—”
“I shot him in the leg. A flesh wound, nothing fatal. I checked his ID then told him if he told anyone about us, I’d track him down and the next blast wouldn’t leave him breathing.”
The confession left her feeling lighter. Like the misdirection of truth between them had been a heavy mantle on her shoulders. She hadn’t had to answer to anyone but Stanton for so long, and even then, he never really asked why she did anything. Having Seb know the truth was vital to her in a way she didn’t want to examine at this point.
He gave a slow nod. “That’s… Good. It’s good. I thought—”
“I wanted you to think that.” She crossed her arms and slouched farther into the seat.
“Why?” The word was so quiet, she almost didn’t catch it.
Her agent-honed instincts, the ones that had always kept her alone and isolated, growled at her not to answer. But long-forgotten desires were rising up within her, basic human yearnings to make a connection. She wanted to do things differently with Seb, wanted to let someone help her for a change.
“Because you got under my skin,” she replied into the heavy silence. “You were being too nice to me, and I wanted to alienate you.”
He gave a darkly amused laugh. “Well, congrats, you did one hell of a job with that.”
Yeah, she was nothing if not proficient at recognizing people’s weaknesses and exploiting them. His deeply ingrained morals had been obvious, and she’d picked up on the way he second-guessed himself when it came to his actions in this war. She sensed he’d questioned—a time or two—whether he was any better than the people they were fighting.
It’d been the obvious ploy, letting him think she’d killed that soldier in cold blood, knowing he would recoil at the utter brutality and ugliness. The worst part of the whole thing was, if Seb hadn’t been there, hadn’t already sown tiny atoms of doubt in her subterfuge-wearied mind, she might have actually done it. Killed the young soldier because it was the easier thing to do. Once, she would have reasoned that she’d made such choices, done such ruthless things for the sake of survival, for the sanctity of the mission, for the bigger picture. Today, those mantras rang hollow, and she could no longer believe them.
She forced the uncomfortable introspection aside and refocused on how she was going to get by on the Knox. “So you have a sister? It would work if I could pretend to be someone like that.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
“I’m assuming there are people you work with, friends who would know that and find it suspicious you suddenly turn up with one. Plus, why would anyone’s family visit them in a war zone?”
He cut her a dismayed look. “You’re right. It was a dumb idea, forget I said anything.”
Before she thought about what she was doing, she leaned over and covered his hand with hers, wanting to reassure him. “No, it wasn’t a dumb idea. It’s really a very good one. And I’d like to take you up on it, if you’re really sure you know what you’re signing up for. This isn’t going to be like any assignment you’ve ever taken on. It’s going to be dangerous, but you won’t see your enemies coming, because they’ll be sneaking up on you. And it’s not the kind of thing you can go into guns blazing. This calls for patience and subtlety.”
“I don’t care what I’m getting myself into, though I’ll admit, patience and subtlety aren’t exactly my strongest attributes.” He sighed and dragged his free hand over the lower half of his face. “Look, I’m aware we don’t know each other very well, but you shouldn’t be facing this type of thing on your own. I know exactly how it feels to be betrayed by someone you trusted with your life.”
Right, his friend who’d turned out to be a CSS mole. Was that the only reason he was helping her—some misplaced guilt or anguish about his own circumstances? The thought sobered her right up. But she couldn’t let his motivations matter. She needed an ally, and he was all she had.
“I’m grateful you’re willing to help me, and I think your idea could work, but I’d be better posing as an old family friend rather than a relative. I can forge some documentation that gives me a ground posting on Ilari starting in a few days. We can make like I came out here early to catch up with you before I take up the position.”
Seb nodded. “Okay. I can go along with that.”
She gave his hand a quick squeeze, but when she would have let go, Seb caught her fingers and returned the gesture, adding a reassuring smile, as if she were the inexperienced one in this scenario.
With her pulse skipping, Jenna returned her concentration to the screen in front of her, checking the incoming schedule for the Valiant Knox.
“There’s a shuttle due soon, it should be docking not too long after we get in ourselves. Obviously I can’t board it, but I can sneak into the terminal and slip into the crowd disembarking, and with a few alterations of the booking system, it’ll look like I had a seat on the passenger manifest.”
“So, how do we proceed after that?”
For the remainder of the trip, they discussed particulars, giving themselves a detailed history of how they knew each other, deciding on childhood family friends who hadn’t seen each other for years. Seb filled her in on a few details about his neighborhood and growing up. It all sounded perfectly mundane, normal, and charming. She hadn’t exactly had a bad childhood, but she’d been an only child, lived in an apartment building where they didn’t know their neighbors, and her parents had both worked long hours. By the sounds of things, growing up next door to Seb would have been idyllic.
By the time they closed in on the Knox and were contacted for docking procedures, Jenna felt confident that Seb could help her carry this plan off. Once the final details were in place, she went to the back of the ship and clambered into a maintenance hatch to hide.
In the dim, cramped confines of the space, she set her personal comm for a reminder and then settled herself into a semi-comfortable position for a power nap. She’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and considering she had no idea what the next few hours and days would bring, taking a quick recharge seemed like a smart idea.