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Missed the first book in the series? Read about Cassie and Vikram , or a preview below:
1.
CASSIE
Cassie peered out of the window at the media frenzy as Archie brought their little ship in to land.
Their corvette, built for just five people, was tiny compared to the yachts most of the politicians attending the conference had brought to the space station. "Maybe we won't have to deal with too many cameras," she said to Archie, who cut the engines on the ship.
"We want to deal with the cameras. We need media coverage just as much as the people we're standing against."
She knew it was true, but the media aspect was one aspect of being part of such a contentious charity that she wasn't looking forward to. She'd joined the Universal Rights Foundation to help people on the ground originally, but had been quickly ushered up the chain of command and was now the second to Archie, one of the faces of the foundation. She'd only been at the foundation for ten years and already she was being groomed as a negotiator, and attending the biggest conference on universal rights in years.
Archie stood up and stretched, peering out of the window again and straightening his tie. "I'll get them over here when we walk out," he decided. "Stop chewing your lip. We're confident, not worried. How you appear is the most important thing about this whole conference. Even if someone says something that completely destroys one of our arguments, you smile, say something back, and move on. You can never let someone know they've beaten you. Especially not when all you're doing is leaving your spaceship on the first day."
She chuckled, redoing the top button of her blouse she'd undone for comfort on the flight. "Okay. Straight face."
"Slightly bitchy straight face," he advised. "You're good at that one."
Archie had been her mentor for four years now, and they were close. She'd gone from not being sure she wanted to be out of the on-the-ground support at all to hanging off his every word. She’d loved being a medic in combat zones. It had been immediate validation that you were helping someone. But, he was so intelligent and passionate that she wanted to be just like him, to inspire the same hope and certainty that they were fighting for the right cause in everyone she spoke to.
"I think the bitch face is going to be a lot easier to keep on when we get into the conference. The moment I have to play polite with people advocating for torture it's going to be hell trying to smile."
Archie leaned against the console, watching a delegation leave one of the bigger ships to manic flashes of cameras. "We can't compete with the Agalaxian Crown Prince. We'll wait until he's gotten inside. And stop seeing them as people, and see them as potential boyfriends. You've got to woo them to your side, not batter them." Prince Qugrom was one of their biggest opponents at the conference. Agalax was a large, wealthy trade planet with seemingly infinite natural resources—they paid a lot of tax to the Intergalactic Union, and held a lot of sway.
Cassie pulled a face as she watched the scaled, reptilian body of Prince Qugrom as he spoke to the camera. He was flanked by two bodyguards. "That's going to be a tough one." Archie clapped her on the shoulder, and she frowned. "If you're about to make a comment on how I'm in dire need of a boyfriend and I shouldn't be picky, don't bother."
He held up his hands. "I'd never say such a thing."
"Yeah, sure you wouldn't." It was true that she'd not had a relationship the entire time she'd been working at the foundation, but she didn't have time to juggle work and a boyfriend, and work was infinitely more important. She'd deal with the fact she wanted a family at some point in the future. She still had a good few years left in her.
The prince finally made his way through the glass door and into the space station's main building, leaving the media hungry to film the next arrival. "This is our time," Archie said. "You've got your memory card?"
She felt the pouch she'd sewed into the inside of all her bras. The small piece of plastic and metal sat there, completely unseen to anyone who looked at her. "I've got it."
Archie hummed. "You're right, you don't need a boyfriend if that's where you're keeping our trump card."
"I like to think security aren't going be patting my under boob during my search. I don't want to know where you're keeping yours."
"With these men, I wouldn't be surprised," he muttered. "You know how the Union is." He shook his head. "Anyway. We need to get out there. Miranda!" he called. "We're about to leave."
Miranda was the assistant they'd brought with them to help with research and clerical issues. She trotted out of her bedroom with a grin on her face. "Ready!" She was quite a bit younger than Cassie, and always walked with a spring in her step, despite everything she'd seen on the ground.
Archie looked from the window one last time. "Okay," he said. "Let's do this."
They stood in formation behind the door of the corvette. Archie was in front, naturally, his back straight and his head held high. Cassie stood just behind and to his right, hands folded politely in her lap and her lips curled in indifference. Miranda was behind her, eyes downcast and disengaging from all the attention. She was just an aide, and the media wouldn't be interested in her. She needed to fade into the background.
Archie pressed a button and the side of the corvette opened and lowered, creating a ramp for them to walk down on. Archie stayed still for a moment, giving the journalists a chance to get over to their ship and take photos and video of their disembarking.
It was nothing like the frenzy Prince Qugrom had received, but a good semi-circle of cameras surrounded them, lights flashing.
Archie walked down the ramp, and Cassie followed, their footsteps entirely in sync. It was hard not to get taken in by the architecture of the hangar. She'd never been to the Intergalactic Union's headquarters before, but it screamed opulence. Instead of glass or metal, the whole thing was made of brick, like the human castles of old. It was modern and ancient all at once, with a force field and all the mod cons necessary for space ships to dock and be repaired.
She was enamored.
But her bitch face remained until she could escape later and wander around the building, admiring it at her own discretion.
They stopped in front of the cluster of microphones the journalists held out. Archie had been rehearsing his speech on the entire two-day journey to the Union. "This week we have the power to prevent further injustices to minorities in the Union." His voice was clear and crisp, passionate but controlled. No one could argue that he was just in his position for the money—he truly believed what he was saying. "For too long the Intergalactic Union has allowed unspeakable acts of torture to go unpunished—"
Four gunshots rang out in the crowd, and all hell broke loose.
Archie collapsed to the ground, his mouth still open on the last word of his speech, blood flowing from his lips. Cassie stared, wide-eyed, reactions delayed as the light in Archie's eyes dimmed. He couldn't even focus on her, just stared at the roof.
Before she could drop to her knees and hold him, she was faced with the barrel of a laser pistol. Lilac eyes met hers, and she froze. Her brain screamed to run, but it would make no difference.
She flinched when a gun sounded, but it wasn't the one pointed in her face. What must have been a dozen followed it, all into the body of the assassin. She ignored him, though, and finally dropped to the floor beside Archie, taking his hand in hers and pressing the other to the side of his face. The wound was through his neck, and that he'd even held on this long to squeeze her hand was a miracle.
He wasn't going to make it.
"Archie," she whispered, voice choked. "Archie, you're okay."
He moved his eyes slowly to her, and they were laughing behind the pain. He opened his mouth but no words came out. She knew he was saying "You're a terrible liar," in his mind.
"You'll be all right." She was a terrible liar to herself, too. "Everything is going to be okay."
"You'll be okay," he croaked, his whisper barely audible over the clamor going on around them. "You'll win."
The pressure on her hand slipped away, and his head lolled against her knee. Blood seeped from his wound onto the floor around them, covering her pants.
It was in a small moment of clarity that she began patting down his body, as subtly as possible in the face of the cameras, to try and find where he'd hidden his memory card. It must have been in there somewhere. He wouldn't have kept it hidden where he couldn't protect it.
Someone pulled her away too early, though, and immediately his body was crowded by people, stopping her being able to see him. Several microphones were pushed in her face. "Who do you think it was?" someone demanded.
"Do you have a few words?"
"Will the conference go on?"
Endless questions were thrown at her, and the bitch face wasn't difficult to conjure now. "No comment," she said, cold, turning away from the hungry journalists who were eager to snap pictures of her grief; of Archie dead on the ground and the man who'd killed him lying dead just a few feet away.
Miranda was watching the scene play out from the sidelines with wide eyes, clutching her binder with white knuckles. Cassie went to her, and wrapped the aide in a hug. She wasn't sure if it was for her benefit or Miranda's, but it felt right, so she did it.
"I'm so sorry you had to see that," she whispered, keeping her voice low and away from prying ears. "No one should have to see that." No one at the foundation was unfamiliar with death. They'd all been on the ground during war zones, during State executions. They'd seen victims of torture and sexual violence reliving their stories in court and in interviews.
But she knew Archie. Archie had been her friend. Her best friend. The only person in the world she truly looked up to.
And she'd just seen him murdered in cold blood.
She didn't know how to cope.
"Let's get out of here," she decided, releasing Miranda and squeezing her upper arms. The aide's eyes were red-ringed, and Cassie's shoulder was wet from being cried on.
She gave the scene one last look, and wondered whether she should make a statement now. She should be the first one to speak to the press about Archie, shouldn't she? She should tell them what a brilliant person he'd been, how he was the last person in the universe who should be attacked.
She wanted everyone to know. She didn't want to hear speculation on what he might have done wrong, or whether he'd done something to deserve it.
One look at the hungry press told her she needed to wait, though. She wouldn't be able to hold herself back from telling them how disgusting she thought it was that they were profiting off people's grief right now. "Let's go," she repeated, turning away and going to one of the guards who was securing the glass doors through to the main building. "Can we leave?" she asked. "I can't stay in here any longer, with all that going on. It's too much right now."
He looked around, but then nodded. "Of course." It wasn't like there was anywhere she could hide or leave once within the headquarters. The hangar was the only way out. Teleportation was disabled on the space station. "Speak to someone at reception and they'll give you your room key. The police will want to speak to you soon."
She did as he'd said. Miranda trailed after her, head down and her gaze on the floor.
The architecture barely registered as Cassie walked. She'd been so excited to see the old marble statues, the famous fountain in the lobby. Union headquarters was as much a museum as a parliament building. It was a blur now, though. Everywhere she looked all she could see was the red of Archie’s blood, was the laugh Archie had given her before they left the corvette, the encouragement he'd given her for years.
He'd even been encouraging her on his deathbed.
She wanted desperately to drop out of the conference. To retire to her small apartment back on Luseck Six and grieve properly.
The memory card in her bra was like a dead weight, though. If they missed this chance it might never come up again. They were the only three people in the world who had this information.
She planned to do exactly what Archie had told her to with it.
She planned to win.
2.
CASSIE
Cassie threw herself into action when she was back in her room. She walked Miranda to her room, gave her another hug, and told the aide to buzz her if she needed anything, even if it was just to talk.
Then she retired to her own room and made a list of things she needed to do before she collapsed onto her bed and cried.
She needed to write a speech for the press, about Archie's life and about how she was going to stay at the conference as lead diplomat in honor of his memory.
She needed to get his memory card back, somehow. If someone got hold of it before she had the right moment to use the information it might all blow up in her face.
She needed to get herself some protection.
The assassin had pointed the barrel of the gun in her face, and the eyes that had watched her hadn't been unsure. They were cold and detached as they prepared to pull the trigger.
She was sure she'd been a target, too.
And so she needed someone to have her back.
She looked at her bed, tempted to sit down to make the necessary call to her director, but was worried she'd never get up again. She sat cross-legged in front of the floor length window at the edge of the room, instead. She was back in the new quarters of the space station: her room was absent of stone, and included every modern convenience she could think of. The glass didn't have curtains, it had a button to tint it to darkness when she wanted to sleep.
From here she could see plenty of things on the station below her, though. The station was like a floating saucer, and she was halfway up a tower on the edge. The courtyard was completely visible to her, as was the rushing of journalists, IU staff, and diplomats attending the conference trying to organize themselves and figure things out.
Just before she was about to press the call button to the director, she saw the stretcher carrying Archie's body being brought across the courtyard. They'd covered him, but she could see his outline beneath the black plastic—see his hooked nose and the outline of his wedding ring where his hands were crossed over his chest.
Tears stung in her eyes, and she pushed them back. Crying was for later, when she'd done everything she could to make sure she was prepared.
She was a professional first and foremost.
Everything else was secondary.
She waited until he'd been taken to an elevator and out of sight before turning and leaning her back to the glass instead. It was only distracting her. Then she pressed the call button.
The director's PA answered. "Jensen Lassen's office, how can I help?"
"Dala, it's me. Cassandra. I need to speak to the director. Have you heard yet?"
She could picture Dala's frown. The older woman had seen a lot of shit over the years, and she knew how to read when something was wrong. "What's going on?"
"Put the news on. Any station will do."
There was a pause, and then a gasp. "Oh my Lord," Dala breathed, her voice catching. "It's really true? Archie?" There was another gasp. "How can they be allowed to play the footage like that? Oh, no. No. No. This is not okay."
"Dala," Cassie tried to soothe, though it came out as more of a bark. "I need to speak to the director."
"Of course! He's on a phone call, but I'll make him hang up. He's going to be devastated. Oh, Archie. He never deserved this."
Cassie's chest felt hollow, and she dug her nails into her palm to stop her bursting into tears. She just needed some time alone, to get it all out. To scream and punch and cry until she was worn out and could deal with people without flying off the handle. But she didn't have that time.
"I'm sorry I had to tell you like that," she said to Dala. "It's all just so hectic here and I need to make arrangements and speak to the press and everything fast. I need to get ahead of it."
"Don't apologize. You're doing the right thing. It's just hard. Give me a second." Cassie was put on hold for a moment while Dala spoke to the director. "Okay. I'm about to put you through. Stay strong, Cassie. I know you can handle it. Archie thought you could."
Two tears burned tracks on Cassie's cheeks. "Thanks, Dala. I'll see you at the funeral."
“I’ll put you through to Jensen.”
Then she was patched through to the head of the foundation. "I'm so sorry to hear the news," he siad. The director wasn't someone she'd had much contact with herself, but she knew he and Archie had been negotiator and mentor once upon a time, just like she and Archie had. He must have been grieving. His voice betrayed nothing, though.
“It’s not been the best start to the conference,” she agreed. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”
“Better from you and Dala than a call from a journalist. I’m sure I’ll be getting many of those over the coming days.”
“I need to ask you about getting some protection.” She may as well get straight into it. The director was a busy man, and he didn’t need to spend time placating her feelings. “The assassin almost killed me too, and I don’t believe it was accidental. I’d feel safer having someone just to watch out for me, if the budget can swing it.”
“Of course. I’ll sort something out and have someone with you before the day is out. We have companies on hold for situations like this. Unfortunately it’s not the first time we’ve had to deal with threats to our personnel.”
Her fingers laced in her lap. She wanted to ask what had happened last time. “Thank you.”
“So you’re staying at the conference?” he checked. “There’s no shame in saying you need to come home. We have people on stand by.”
“No, I want to stay.” She didn’t want to stay at all; she wanted to go home and cry, and get lost in her misery for a few days. She wanted to be on the ground, where she could help people directly and immediately and have that satisfaction of someone giving her a grateful smile. The last thing she wanted to do was play politics with people she knew were scum.
With people who might be responsible for Archie’s death.
But she and Archie had worked long and hard to get the information that was going to swing this conference in their favor. It was highly secret, and she couldn’t bring herself to give it to someone else in the organization even if they might have been better equipped to use it.
Cassie and Archie had had a plan, and she was going to stick to it.
It was what Archie had wanted, in that last dying moment. He’d told her to win, and she would.
“I can be first chair at the conference. Archie trained me well. I’m ready.”
“I don’t doubt your skills as a face for the charity, I doubt your emotional state right now. Losing someone close to you isn’t the basis for a good negotiating performance.”
She swallowed the automatic response that she agreed with him. She didn’t know if she was ready, or if she could do it. “I’m a professional. I can grieve on my own time.”
Jensen paused. “Then I shall leave it in your hands. Don’t hesitate to call if there’s anything we can do for you. I’ll inform Archie’s widow, and let you know of the funeral plans when I have them.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Jensen, please. There will be someone with you about your safety by the end of the day. Stay put until then. Keep your statement to the press short and to the point, and take the day off. The conference will be delayed for a couple of days, take that time to get your head together. I have to go. I’m sure you can do it.”
Her heart clenched, and she had to clear her throat before responding. She hadn’t realized she needed that encouragement until she heard it. “Thanks, Sir. Erm, Jensen. I appreciate the vote of confidence. I’ll keep you updated.”
He hung up and she was left staring at the ceiling, the temptation to crawl into bed gnawing at her. Just a few hours to mope. Just a few hours to remember all the things she’d admired Archie for.
She stood up, though, and stretched. Not yet. There was still too much to be done.
And the first of those was to draft a speech for the press. She wanted to give it before the day was out and she’d let it sit and the speculation happen. She didn’t want to seem weak, either. Taking a day to recover would be weak. Getting out there and showing that she was grieving, but still a professional, might help stop some of the dismissal she was going to get from other conference-goers that she was just being an emotional woman whenever she said something they disagreed with.
The Intergalactic Union refused to legislate against torture—there wasn’t a lot of legislation, or common sentiment, confirming that sexism was wrong yet, either.
She took her notepad and pen from her bag rather than her tablet. She didn’t handwrite things very often, but right now she needed the distraction of forming the letters on the page, the satisfaction of scribbling out words she’d changed her mind on rather than an underwhelming backspace. It helped stop the thoughts of Archie taking over as she tried to write about him.
The mini-bar was incredibly tempting, but she put that off until later, too. A reward to go with the crying she planned to do.
She’d only been sitting for an hour when there was a knock on the door.
Swallowing, she checked her phone, but there were no messages. Miranda normally messaged before coming to see her, even when they were just in their offices, across a hallway from one another. She was overly polite like that. Maybe it was the police. They’d be coming to speak to her soon.
Or maybe it was another assassin, coming to finish the job.
She stood up and brandished the pen in her hand, looking through the peep hole in the door.
A burly man stood on the other side. It wasn’t someone she recognized, and the police normally traveled in pairs. She hoped someone that gorgeous hadn’t decided to throw their lives away assassinating people for a side who advocated the right to torture people. His jaw and cheekbones were strong and angular, his hair arranged in loose black curls on top of his head. His eyes were intense as he watched the door. She was somehow sure he was staring right at her even though there was a thick slab of metal in between them.
She put the pen down in favor of the knife she always carried in her purse, and then took a deep breath. Assassins didn’t knock on the door, she decided. They didn’t stand on the other side with their arms crossed, no gun in either hand. The other one had been wearing a mask, had lilac eyes. He didn’t.
But she still opened the door with the knife behind her back, more than ready to plunge it into whatever part of him she could if he made a move.
“Cassandra Maxwell?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“I’m Vikram Pallan of Suytov Planet Security. I’ve been assigned as your bodyguard for the rest of the conference, at the request of the Director of the Universal Rights Foundation.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. She should have realized earlier. He was the same species as the bodyguards who’d been flanking the Agalaxian Prince when he’d disembarked earlier that day. They looked mostly human, but there were some subtle differences that told her he had some genes from elsewhere. The first was the sheer size of him. He wasn’t so tall it was unnatural, but he was almost seven feet tall. It wasn’t strange as a one-off occurrence, but the bodyguards she’d seen earlier had been huge like that, too, and it wasn’t a coincidence. The other thing was his skin. She hadn’t been able to tell from a distance when she’d seen the bodyguards with Prince Qugrom, but it was more leathery than that of a human. More toughened. His race clearly had human ancestry, but when humans had found his planet they’d mated with something else there, and he was the result. No doubt there were more changes in his genetic make-up beyond just appearances.
“Nice to meet you.” Sheepishly, she pulled the knife from behind her back and set it on the table. “Could I see some ID?” she asked. “Sorry. I’m feeling a bit distrustful of everyone right now.”
He pulled out his phone and handed it to her, the ID on screen so she could scan it with her own and verify it as IU-recognized. “Normally this part would be more professional, but we’ve been a bit overrun the past few hours.”
“No worries.” When it was all verified, she stepped to the side and allowed him into the room, closing the door behind them. He seemed to fill up all the space in what she’d thought was a huge room when she first entered. He wasn’t just tall, he was built like a tank. And he carried an armory, too. On his belt were countless knives, and two guns. She felt safer already. “I can’t say I’ve ever had a bodyguard before. You’ll have to explain to me exactly how this is going to work.”
“There’s nothing to it. I’ll just be keeping you safe in the background. You don’t have to pay any attention to me.”
“Where are you staying?” Her room was quite small. She had a couch but it wouldn’t have been very comfortable for someone of his size. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of him sleeping too far away, either, though. When she was asleep and defenseless, that was surely the best time to strike.
“I’ve been assigned a room on the corridor. I’ll never be too far away if you need me during the night.”
She held her tongue on a comment that if someone broke in with a gun, she doubted down the corridor would be enough to stop someone capping her in the head. “Great.”
He retrieved something from his pocket and handed it to her. “This is a panic button. It sends a message straight to my phone telling me if you’re in danger. You should keep it on you at all times, and press it if you think something is wrong.”
She took the small button from him, fingers brushing against his as she did. He was warmer than she’d expected, hot even at the tips of his fingers. “Okay, that’s actually great. It really does make me feel better.”
“That’s what I’m here to do.”
And she intended to put him to good use. She’d look much more legitimate with a bodyguard following her around like all the other top diplomats at the event, and she’d feel more comfortable negotiating with the people she had dirt on with someone that strong standing beside her.
Even if she was unconvinced that he’d be able to stop an assassin with a loaded gun shooting her dead before he could even get close enough to react, she could put him to other uses while he was here. “I have to go and make my speech to the press soon. I hope that’s all right.”
“You just need to go about your day as you would be doing and I’ll always be behind you, making sure nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I’d appreciate a schedule of what you’ve got planned for the day in the morning, but if you can’t get it to me it’s not essential.”
“I can do that. When the rescheduled agenda for the conference is released I’ll get you a copy, too.” She paused, shifting in her chair. She felt strange, sitting with him in her room and having no idea what to say. She was drawn naturally to small talk, but his looming figure and emotionless mask didn’t seem interested in something like that. He was a professional, and he was there to do his job.
She should be focusing on hers.
So she zoned back into her notepad with the scribbled out words for the journalists and ignored him as he walked around the hotel room and assessed the doors and windows. It was difficult not to notice every time he frowned, every time he seemed to find something unsuitable in her room.
Every time he found a weakness.
She’d be cataloging every one of those points and staring at them when she tried to go to sleep that night.
Eventually, she sat back and frowned. “Could you give this a read?” she asked, handing him the sheet of paper. “See if it’s all right? I’m guessing you’ve looked after loads of politicians. You probably have a better idea of what makes a good speech than I do.”
He took the piece of paper from her. “I’m surprised you handwrite. It’s a long time since I saw someone do that.” His dark brown eyes moved rapidly over the piece of paper.
“It’s a better distraction. Can you read it all right?” She wrote in the cursive style her parents had taught her, and it was rarely used anymore.
“Of course. You write nicely.” He gave nothing away until he hit the second to last line. “Don’t use the word sorry,” he said, handing it back to her. “I’ve heard plenty of people over the years say that you should never apologize for anything in a speech, even with something like this.”
She hummed and scrubbed it out, biting the top of her pen before writing something else instead. “You really are going to be useful.”
Now the final edits had been done, she typed it up into her phone so there would be no focus on how she held pen and paper when she spoke. Nothing was going to detract from the fact she was there to talk about what a great man Archie had been.
“You must have been close,” Vikram said, leaning against the window, his gaze on the people milling around the courtyard.
“Yeah. We were.” She took a deep breath. “I need to go and see our aide. Well, I guess she’s my aide now.” She felt awful for Miranda. She’d been with the team almost as long as Cassie had, and Archie had been fond of her. She always did her job well and was visibly affected when things went badly.
She must have been in her room falling apart. Cassie should have gone with her, but she needed to fall apart a bit, too.
Before they left the room, Vikram touched her arm to stop her, and gestured to her right eye. “You’ve got a bit of black there.”
“Oh, shit.” She’d allowed a few tears to fall. She scrubbed at it with her thumb and then looked back up at him. “Gone?”
He hesitated before rubbing his own thumb against her face, to the right of where she’d been aiming. His skin might have looked leathery, but it was silk to the touch. She wanted to take his hand and feel more of it, see if she was imagining how soft the pad of his thumb felt against her face.
He pulled back. “It’s gone.”
“Thanks.” She wasn’t sure why he was frowning so hard, why he looked so unsure of whether he’d just done the right thing. “Let’s go, then. I just want to get all this over and done with.”
3.
VIKRAM
Vikram followed Cassandra down the corridor of the hotel, eyes scouring everything in sight for anything amiss. This was the bit he was good at, the bit he knew. Protecting and preventing things from happening.
Sitting in her hotel room and talking to her was the difficult part. It was too personal, and the lines were blurred too easily.
He’d never touched a client like that before. He had no idea what had possessed him to do it then. She hadn’t seemed to think it was a big deal. He was over thinking things, as normal.
His mentor had told him that his entire job was about pushing back his instincts until they were necessary, and so whenever he acted beyond his remit it felt like he was letting Ballar down.
They reached another door and Cassandra hesitated only slightly before knocking. He couldn’t quite place her yet. She seemed strong and weak all at once.
“Miranda! It’s me. It’s Cassie.”
Cassie, not Cassandra. He made a mental note.
The door inched open. “Cassie,” said Miranda, opening it wider. “How are you doing?”
Her smile was tight. “Yeah. I’m doing okay.”
Miranda peered around further and saw him. “Who is that?”
“This is Vikram. He’s my bodyguard for the rest of the conference.”
“Wow. The director didn’t send me a bodyguard.”
Cassie gave a small laugh. “It’s just precaution. I’m sure he’ll just be bored trailing me and listening to speeches all day and never having to lift a finger.” She smiled at him, and he wondered why she was different from everyone else he’d guarded.
Admittedly he wasn’t a veteran of the job yet. He’d been working at Suytov Planet Security since he was sixteen years old, like most of their recruits, but years of that was training. He hadn’t had his first job until he was twenty-three. He’d been held back from being assigned someone for a few years longer than most. He’d struggled with the emotional side of it, to the point where he thought he was going to have to give up, but Ballar had set him straight, and eventually he’d been qualified as a full-time bodyguard.
And all his charges up until this point had been middle-aged politicians who always had at least one other guard as well as him. He operated as a complete shadow in their lives, never speaking to them except when necessary.
He definitely didn’t get smiled at in public by any of his previous charges.
“Did you want to come in?” Miranda asked.
“Not if you don’t want. I’m mostly here to ask if you could get the media together. I’m ready to make my statement about Archie. I don’t want to bug you, I know I’m more than ready to just curl up and be left alone by everyone.”
Miranda didn’t seem as upset by it as Cassie did, though. She was chewing her lip and frowning, but it didn’t go posture deep. They couldn’t have been as close; she was just an aide, not his second-in-command. “I can do that. I can get everyone together beside the big fountain in the lobby for—” she paused to check her watch, “—two o’clock?”
“Perfect. I won’t keep you.” Cassie squeezed Miranda’s hands. “I hope you’re okay.”
“I’m coping.”
“We’ll talk properly tomorrow, when it’s not as fresh.”
They said their goodbyes and Miranda closed the door. “I feel awful for her,” she said as they walked back down the corridor. “When you go out of the field and into the office you don’t expect to see things like that anymore. You feel like you’ve seen enough death for a lifetime.”
“She’ll be okay.” Vikram believed it was true. “Death just takes some time to get over.”
“Yeah.” She took a deep breath and stood at the doors of the elevator. “I’ve got ten minutes until the press are going to be waiting for me. I’ve never done this before.” Her knuckles were white as she clutched her phone in her hand. The clock ticked another minute closer to two. “Archie was always the one who dealt with the journalists. He knew what he was doing. I’ve always hated it.” She chewed her lip until it bled, and Vikram felt helpless as he watched her. “Archie was better at all of this stuff than me. I was just along for the ride. What am I going to do now?”
Tears formed in her eyes and Vikram warred between what he knew he was supposed to do, coldly tell her it was fine, or even just ignore her, and the instinct that screamed at him to just go and give her a hug.
He went for something in between. He placed his hands on her shaking shoulders, and squeezed. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, voice as soothing as he could make it. “You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think you could do it.” He hoped that was true, and that he wasn’t assuming things about their relationship that weren’t true. He might have been an evil old bastard who tore her down at every available opportunity. He doubted she’d be so upset if that were the case, though.
She sniffled. “I hadn’t finished learning yet. I was supposed to shadow him for another twenty years before I was put here. I can’t do it. I should have let the director send me someone who knew what they were doing.”
He squeezed her shoulders again, soft beneath his hands. “I read your speech. It was good. You only need to be in front of the press for a minute, tops. Don’t answer any questions.” He’d been guard to so many politicians he’d absorbed this information as the facts of life. He sat in on strategy meetings, and unlike most of his colleagues, couldn’t manage the head space where he ignored everything that was actually being said and let his imagination run wild. He was always keyed into the conversation, taking everything in.
“And for the entire conference? What about that?”
“Think about that tomorrow, when you’ve had time to grieve.”
She wiped her eyes even though no tears had fallen. “You’re right. Dammit, see, even you’re better at this than me and it’s not your job.”
“It’s my job to look after you.”
She laughed, shook her head, and straightened her back. “Wow. I think I really needed to hear that. Thank you.”
His smile was small. He’d already breached so many protocols, and he pulled back his hands as if she’d burned him. He checked his watch. “Two minutes to go.”
“Right.” She pulled the speech up on her phone and gave it a last read through. “I’m ready. I’ve got this.” Then she peered out of the glass wall beside the elevator and saw the people gathering below. Panic gripped her face again. “What if someone tries to kill me? This is how it happened last time. This is what happened to Archie.”
“I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“It feels strange putting my life in the hands of someone I met a couple of hours ago.”
“It’s my job. I know what I’m doing. No one’s going to get to you.”
She stared him down, as if she could read whether he was telling the truth by looking into the face he’d hidden behind a professional mask of stoicism. “Yeah,” she said eventually, when a shiver of heat had just worked its way down his spine under her scrutiny. “Yeah. I believe you. Let’s do this thing.”
He stood just behind her as they got into the elevator and went down to where the press awaited them. Cameras flashed as soon as the door opened, and microphones were shoved in her face. She ignored them all until she got to the spot Miranda had said, in front of the fountain in the lobby. Plenty of flashes were directed at him, but he wasn’t paying attention. His gaze roamed the sea of faces looking for anyone out of place.
He knew how to read body language, it was what a lot of his training had been. He needed to be able to spot people who were about to do something to his charge, not just intercept them when they were already attacking. It was a game of cat and mouse, about who made the first move.
Now, though, he couldn’t see anyone suspicious in the swathes of people. They were all watching Cassie, a range of sadness to contempt on their faces.
Her speech was good. She was constrained and emotional at the same time. Her voice broke on just one word, her mentor’s name. It was so perfectly done he wondered whether it was an act.
He had to stop himself looking at her as she spoke; even her tone was enough to throw him off balance.
He’d been so cut off from people who freely showed emotions for so long that she was almost overwhelming.
Need to know what happens to Cassie and Vikram? Read their story .