Atrophy (29 page)

“What do you know about what needs to be done?” His voice had taken on a quiet stillness, like a storm cloud waiting to unleash its fury. She took a step back, mossy-hazel gaze deepening to a richer green as her eyes shimmered with tears. The thought that she might at last be afraid of him shook him to the core. But that, too, got shoved away until it couldn’t affect him anymore.

“What do you know of anything besides the safe life you’ve lived closeted away on Aryn? You might think I’m some sort of hero, and that I saved you from the Reidar, but it’s nowhere near the truth. I only took you onboard, only kept you around, because you’re a tool, a means to an end. When I need to, I’m going to use you just like the Reidar would have. So don’t think you’re doing me some big favor by coming in here and trying to tell me that everything will be all right and that I shouldn’t feel guilty over getting my sister tortured and killed.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over, running down her cheeks, and she wiped a hand over her face. “It doesn’t matter what you say, Rian, I know the truth. I’ve seen into your heart.”

“I don’t have a heart. And your tears won’t make a difference to me.”

Anger flickered behind her wet gaze. “I’m not crying because I want your sympathy. You want to know why I’m crying? It’s because you won’t. Or can’t. I haven’t quite worked out which yet.”

He couldn’t look at her anymore, but he hid the urge to drop his gaze by retrieving his frozen Violaine from under the couch. The ice on the bottle stung his palm as he picked it up and straightened. He wished he could drink until he was too plastered to care if he threw up until he passed out.

“Get out.”

From the corner of his eye he saw her take a step towards him, hand outstretched as if she intended to touch him again. “I said get out!”

She didn’t react to his yell, but stepped away. He could tell she wanted to stay, wanted to say something else, considered defying him as she paused by the door.

He strode over and grabbed her arm with rough hands, forcing her out.

The hatchway closed and he let his forehead drop against the door frame with a solid thump, not helping the pounding he got when Tannin tried to rearrange his face.

If the Reidar thought Zahli’s death would slow him down, make him hesitate, or even change his mind about coming after them, they’d been dead wrong. Without Zahli to temper his yearning to destroy, the Reidar might have just gotten what they wanted.

Except this time, the body count wouldn’t be human.

Chapter Twenty-Four

R
ian’s house wasn’t huge, it was a monstrosity.

“Neither you nor Zahli ever said anything about being rich,” Tannin said as they stepped through the massive iron gates.

“Because we’re not.” Rian hooked his hands on his weapon’s belt, like maybe he expected to be attacked in his own driveway.

“Your ginormous house would suggest otherwise.”

Rian shrugged. “We’d have heaps of money if we sold everything. But my parents didn’t leave us much in the way of hard credits. I spent what we had on the
Imojenna
, so most of the currency I make is sent back here to Nyah for upkeep of all this shite. I don’t know why we haven’t sold it all. We’d probably be better off if we did.”

Tannin had been inside a mansion or two when he’d been growing up. Heck, his own home hadn’t exactly been small. But Zahli and Rian’s house belonged in a fairy tale movie, like two dozen servants and a butler would come streaming out when they walked up the long, gently winding drive to the palladium that acted as a portico and entryway.

But the residence remained quiet. The only movement came from the tall, weeping trees that lined the drive, their long, divine branches and leaves swaying in the warming breeze, ends brushing the precise-cut grass and gleaming pavers on the drive.

Lianna had tried calling ahead to Rian’s house sitter, Nyah, but the
Imojenna’s
long-range subspace communications weren’t working, not unusual on the junker. Besides, unless they paid the exorbitant cost of sending the message through a Transit Gate, they could arrive at Dalphin themselves before they got a reply.

While he, Rian, and Ella had come to the house, the others had split into two groups—Kira and Jensen had gone to make arrangements for Zahli’s memorial once they got her body from Niels, while Callan and Lianna were on a supply run so they could restock the ship and get off world ASAP. They were all on edge, ready to cut and run at the slightest hint of trouble if things didn’t go down the way they should.

Tannin had been unsure how he felt about going to Zahli’s home, seeing where she’d grown up, learning more about her when she was already gone; he wouldn’t get the chance to see her in this new light. He also wondered how in the hell he’d get through the memorial service without sobbing his heart out. Even now, just the thought of it made his throat tighten and eyes sting.

After he’d finally emerged from his cabin, the crew—minus Rian who
hadn’t
come out of his quarters—had a lengthy discussion about how to proceed. Callan had worried that coming to Dalphin might be some kind of Reidar trap. And there was every chance it was, Baden Niels himself might be here, expecting to trade Zahli’s body for Ella.

There was no way in the fiery pits of Erebus they’d ever hand Ella over. Yet the crew had all agreed they couldn’t abandon Zahli, even in death. Coming to the planet was a risk, and they were taking it anyway.

Rian hadn’t said how he was going to handle the situation with Niels, either, only that he’d contact the bastard and make some kind of deal once they got here. Tannin’s best guess was that Rian would either hand himself over in Ella’s place, or pretend to agree with Niels’s terms, only to go all deadly-supernova on the Reidar as soon as he got within shooting range.

Until they’d disembarked from the ship today, he hadn’t seen Rian. There were too many reasons why he hadn’t wanted to face the man. In part, he still wanted to kill him over Zahli. Well, maybe not kill him any longer, but at least do him some serious damage. But no matter how furious he remained, something in his conscience, maybe his unspoken promise to Zahli to watch over her brother, rebelled at the idea of beating up a guy who’d spent most of the hours since Niels’s transmission tanked.

Except when Rian stepped into the cargo bay this morning, he hadn’t seemed wasted, messy, or weighted with a purple-tinged hangover from the Violaine. In fact, he didn’t look like he’d been drunk in days. He appeared more locked down and put together than Tannin had ever seen him.

Rian reached for an old-fashioned handle on the mansion door, but it swung inward, revealing a young woman with a wild tumble of dark mahogany hair and eyes that matched the soft grass in the front yard.

“Rian?” She opened the door wider, obvious relief crossing her features. “Thank God. I’ve been trying to comm the
Imojenna
for the last ten hours.”

The captain stepped across the threshold, passing a distracted glance around the large, airy foyer. “The long range comms have been out for the last few weeks.”

Tannin followed him inside, Ella on his heels.

Nyah crossed her arms. “And you didn’t think that was something you needed to get fixed right away so I could actually get in contact with you? Zahli disappeared, and I didn’t know what—”

The oddity of Nyah’s statement struck him with all the not-so-subtle impact of blunt force trauma to the head. “What do you mean Zahli disappeared?”

The woman glanced at him, and when he took a closer study of her features, the dark smudges under her eyes and pale countenance hinted that she was fatigued, stressed, or all of the above.

“I’m going to take a not-so wild guess and say you’re Tannin?”

The surprises just kept coming. “How did you know? And what did you mean about Zahli disappearing—?”

“Nyah, there’s something we need to tell you about Zahli,” Rian said, almost at the same time.

Her gaze bounced between him and Rian, before returning to settle on him. “Zahli told me the night she got home. All about you and everything happening on the
Imojenna
the past few weeks. And she hasn’t stopped moping or mentioning you a single day since.”

Ice blasted through his veins with shock and disbelief.

Rian took a couple of steps closer to her. “What do you mean
when Zahli got home
?”

Confusion and concern added weight to Nyah’s attractive features.

“She got home, bone tired, about two weeks ago, swearing because you’d made her take a public transfer from Tetsu and miserable because she had to leave Tannin.”

“How could that be?” Ella managed to find her voice before anyone else.

Rian looked at Tannin, a strange kind of fanatic fire burning in his gaze. “It’s a trick. She must be one of the Reidar.” He turned to look down at Nyah. “Zahli’s dead, Nyah. We saw it with our own eyes.”

She shook her head and jerked back a step from Rian. “Don’t be stupid. Zahli’s been here for weeks. I think I’d know if it wasn’t her.”

Rian’s fists clenched. “You want to believe that, but we saw her—”

“But what if we didn’t?” Tannin’s thoughts swirled so fast he could barely get a handle on them. “We saw someone who
looked like
Zahli die. But what if it wasn’t really her?” Hope surged through him like dawn after a rainy night. “What if she’s been here all along?”

Rian’s brow lowered, his expression dark and foreboding. “Don’t get your hopes up, Everette. It’s not her.”

Tannin squashed the frustrated urge to shake Rian until he saw the truth. “Why send a replacement here when we’d know straight away it wasn’t really her? She knows things, told Nyah everything that’s happened on the
Imojenna
in the last weeks. How could a replacement know that?”

Rian crossed his arms, his body taut with visible tension. “They probably tortured the information out of her, so the shifter would know everything about her life.”

“But Nyah said Zahli arrived here two weeks ago,” Ella put in, seeming to take his side. “That keeps time with how long it would have taken for her come by public transfer from Tetsu.”

Rian shook his head again, a stubborn glint in his eye. “It’s not her. And when she gets back here, I’ll kill it just to prove you both wrong.”

The dark, ugly urge to rip Rian’s throat out resurfaced, rage almost blanking his mind. “You’re not going to touch her. Not until we work out whether or not it’s actually her.”

“It’s not.” Rian’s tone came out flat.

“Like I said, it doesn’t make sense—”

“But it makes sense that they’d make a double and then torture and kill it so we’d think Zahli was dead?” Rian’s voice dripped with sarcasm and disbelief.

“You tell me, Rian. How well do the Reidar know you?”

Rian’s expression got colder and more turbulent, like an arctic wind ripping through bare-limbed trees. “It’s not the trap we thought it was. You’re right. The frecking bastards are screwing with me.”

Relief ran hot with elation through his system. “We’re next to untouchable onboard the
Imojenna
, Ella most of all. But here, where we all split up, where we think Zahli is already dead and are waiting to trade, it’ll be easier to take us out and re-capture Miriella.”

That obsessed, grim glint returned to Rian’s eyes as he turned to Nyah.

“You’re coming with us. Take Ella and go pack some stuff. You need to be on the ship ASAP.”

An irritated expression crossed Nyah’s face. “I’m not going anywhere. You know how much I hate space travel. And who’s going to look after the house?”

Rian took her arm and tugged away from the doorway.

“You’re not safe here, and the house won’t matter one bit if we’re all too dead to come home again.” He snagged Ella with his other hand and steered the two women toward the stairs. “You’ve got five seconds to pack or you’re leaving without anything. Where is Zahli?”

Nyah looked back at them from the first step. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. She went out last night to get some things for dinner and never came home again. That’s why I was trying to contact the
Imojenna
. I was so worried, and I didn’t know what to do.”

The sparking elation that Zahli had been here safe all along instantly turned into cold razors freezing and shredding his insides. Had the Reidar snatched her for real this time?
No
. He refused to almost get her back, only to lose her again.

“Go upstairs and pack, Nyah.” Rian’s voice was about as un-hostile as he’d ever heard it. “Don’t worry, we’ll find Zahli.”

Once the girls were gone, Rian took out his personal comm. He tapped at the screen, and a second later, a trilling emanated from somewhere deeper in the house.

“Damn it, Zahli. She left her comm here.”

“They’ve already got her, don’t they.” A hot and cold mix of frustration and anticipation curled through him like frost and smoke. “We have to find her.”

“I’ll send a message to the rest of the crew to let them know they need to be onship ASAP.” Rian looked up, more emotion in his features than Tannin had ever seen before. “Let’s go find Zahli.”

“How are we going to do that? She could be anywhere. They might have already taken her off-world.” He trailed Rian along the hallway, into an industrial sized kitchen and then through another doorway into a large garage. Inside were several different types of vehicles parked, both wheeled and flight varieties.

“On the ship. We’ve got DNA taggers, remember?” Rian approached a sleek, black, shiny, wheeled autocar and slid into the driver’s side. Right. Those highly illegal DNA taggers stashed in the contraband compartment. He’d never seen one used before, only UAFA had the authority for application of the tech. Not even IPC officers were allowed to employ them. With a DNA sample, the tagger could pick a single person out of crowd, which was how UAFA so successfully apprehended wanted criminals a lot of the time.

Tannin jogged around the nose of the car and jumped into the passenger seat. The engine roared to life and Rian switched the vehicle from auto-drive over to manual,
of course
, and steered them out of the garage, tires spinning and squealing as he pumped up the speed. Since they’d landed and left the ship, the sky had clouded over and rain had started falling, getting harder as they reached the spaceport.

Rian illegally parked in an unmanned luggage hauler zone, throwing him a captain-says look as he pushed open the door. “Stay here. I’ll get the DNA tagger and be back in a few minutes.”

Tannin nodded, tapping his foot in impatience before Rian had even slammed the door closed. Sitting still was almost impossible. The frustration made his limbs feel like they were burning with lactic acid, like he’d been running and running until his muscle were nothing but smoldering liquid metal. Time was ticking away like a caustic liquid dripping on his skin, one burning spot at a time. They had to find Zahli and get everyone back to the safety of the ship.

The DNA tagger would help, but without a probable location, it would be like looking for a single carat diamond in an asteroid belt. And that was if the Reidar hadn’t taken her off Dalphin.

With nervous energy sparking through him, he leaned across the dash and tapped the inset crystal screen to life on the car’s onboard computer and communications systems. He launched several tandem searches, everything from street and traffic cams searching for facial ID of Zahli, to any connection Baden Niels might have to Dalphin, to random reports of unusual activity like reported alien sightings from the fringes of the galaxy-wide internet usually reserved for conspiracy theorists.

With his mind occupied, it seemed like only a matter of seconds had gone by before Rian opened the door, returning to slide behind the wheel.

“What are you doing?” the captain asked as he snapped open a small black case and pulled the clunky, square gun-shaped DNA tagger out.

“Trying to narrow our search.” And it had worked better than he’d hoped. At the Mercy of Patrons Hospital, one of the largest medical centers on Dalphin, which was like its own mini-city with every available treatment known to man, there was a medical research lab owned by a company named GenProxy. The name was simply a front, because GenProxy was a shell company. And that shell company just happened to be a subsidiary for Dieter Industries—CEO Baden Niels.

A check of street cams around the outside of the hospital had turned up footage of an unconscious woman on a hover stretcher being taken into one of the back entrances close to the GenProxy lab. She’d been covered up and her face turned away from the camera, but he was sure it was Zahli. Also, the fact that the entrance wasn’t ever used for patients pricked his suspicions. Maybe this lead wouldn’t pay off, but it was a start.