Hammer Down: Children of the Undying: Book 2 (9 page)

Cache wrinkled her nose, but didn’t disagree. “Feels like we should be preparing for a siege. Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

The place looked like a centuries-old war room. The walls were dark, polished and aged oak, heavily papered with military strategy maps and flashing monitors. A large round table stood in the middle of the room, books and notebooks and even a globe strewn across its surface.

Devi climbed on top of the table and sat, cross-legged, to survey her crew. “Sometimes, paranoia is justified. This would be one of those times.”

“The fuel supervisor is civil enough.” Juliet spun the globe with a flick of her wrist. “It’ll take a few days to synthesize enough fuel. Figured you’d want us to top off all the tanks while we were at it.”

“That’d be best.” There was no telling where—or how far—they might have to run before finding a safe place. “Unfortunately, some of the people here blame us for bringing in the spy.”

Tanner lifted a heavy-looking sword from its display on the wall and gave it an experimental swing. “I’m okay with getting patched up and getting gone. If I wanted to spend my days locked up in a city, I’d still be down south.”

Devi’s stomach clenched. “You’re not hearing me, Tan.”

Juliet whipped her head around, delicate wisps of hair flying and then settling around her face. “We
can
leave, can’t we, Dev?”

It was Cache who answered, her voice low and a little afraid. “If we could, she would have traded for fuel already. We’d be gone.”

This was it. She could let her team descend into fear, or she could give them back some power. Some control. “So we spin this the way we want it. We find out what the deal is with this guy we brought.”

Juliet snorted. “Come on, do we have to wipe their asses for them too?”

Keeping her own tone even was an exercise in self-control. “They bailed us out of a hell of a jam the other night, Jules.”

“It’s not about knowing what they know,” Tanner pointed out as he spun the sword around in a quick, tight circle. “We need to know
before
they do.”

Cache dropped her feet from her desk and scooted her chair up so she could pull her terminal around. “I found a back door in Trip’s network last night while I was poking around. I think I can piggyback the signal without going through their network, just use it to boost me into the Global. I’ve still got the passenger manifest, so I can start trying to track him back. I also have that safeguard scan I did of everyone’s chips when they boarded. His pulled up the right info on a cursory check, but I can dig deeper. Track his chip ID instead of his ident code this time.”

Bypassing the monitored access Zel had offered was a gamble, but they had no choice. “Check communiqués to see if he managed to fire one off during the attack, but I think we have to operate on the assumption that he did.”

Keys clacked on an old-fashioned keyboard. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on it.”

Tanner laughed. “Hacker girl knows her shit, boss lady.”

The typing slowed—marginally—as Cache lifted one hand to make her special
Fuck you, Tanner
gesture.

Devi relaxed a little. “While Cache is doing her thing, Tanner, you and Juliet keep on the trucks. Work on the fuel, and make sure the rigs are sound. In the meantime, we’re just going to lay low.”

They lingered for a while, discussing things in hushed tones despite the security of their location. But they all avoided any mention of what it meant to assume the spy had sent word of the demon attack to his employers. A whole new life, one of even greater danger and hardship, off the grid like the citizens of Rochester.

Devi remembered Zel’s words from the first night.
We can give you a week’s shelter. If you want to stay after that, you’ll all need to go through the approval process.
Cache might be happy with that, maybe, but Juliet and Tanner would rather take their chances than be stuck underground every day.

And all Devi had ever personally known was the road, the twisting, patchwork stretch of asphalt her father had taught her to love. She’d never planned on putting down roots anywhere because she already had. Home was her truck, her crew.

We can give you a week’s shelter. If you want to stay after that—

She wouldn’t lose her home. She’d buy or trade for a new chip, change her looks and find another base of operations. A new list of clients and regular runs. A whole new life.

Chapter Eight

Zel stilled his leg for the fifth time as he watched Trip pound away at his keyboard, his concentration complete. A few seconds later his damn leg started bouncing again, worse than a nervous tic. Only four days since they’d rescued Devi’s crew, and he was already as jumpy as a teenager. It was hard to resist the urge to scratch his arm, as if he could fix the itch crawling under his skin so easily.

Four days. They’d had time to refuel and repair the trucks, and it was time to pack up Devi and her crew and send them on their way. Temptation averted, danger removed, and he could go back to worrying about the rebellion brewing among his people, along with the thousand other headaches chipping away at his will to live.

Focus.
They were already riding their deadline hard, but it had taken a full day for Lanna to wrench enough detail from the spy’s mind to make their deception possible. A risky game, but their only chance at gaining a real advantage. “How’s it going there, Trip?”

The younger man frowned. “Not so hot. There’s something weird here with the usage logs.”

Dread filled his stomach. “Check it after you send the message. We need to make contact before the council figures out something’s wrong.”

After another tense minute, Trip huffed. “Done.” His frown had become a scowl. “It can’t be a trace. The bulk of the activity started before we even attempted contact.”

The sick feeling wasn’t dread, it was betrayal. Anger. “You been keeping an eye on your little purple-haired friend?”

“Shit.” Trip scribbled something on a piece of paper and shoved it at Zel. “Meeting place and time from the council. You’ll want to keep that out of the system. In the meantime, I can’t fucking tell
what
little Miss Princess was up to. Could have been scavenging a signal, could have copied every goddamn bit of information we have stored.”

Zel’s fingers tightened, crushing the piece of paper. “What does that mean? Practically? Is she better than you thought? Good enough that I need to be worried?”

Trip’s terse reply terrified him. “She’s decent.”

“Keep looking.” Zel rose and shoved the paper into his pocket. “Ping me as soon as you’ve got info one way or another, even if it’s that you can’t tell. And get the stuff for this meet together.”

A grunt was Trip’s only response, so Zel left him to his own devices. The sloping walls in the hall outside the office aggravated him more than usual, closing in on him as he strode toward the stairs. Claustrophobia joined with anger and frustration, sharpening his temper until every step echoed through his mind like thunder.

It didn’t help that he understood. Trapped in Devi’s place, he would have been desperate to gather information, to use every resource at his disposal. Knowledge was indispensable and, in Cache, Devi had the perfect weapon. He couldn’t blame her for using it.

He couldn’t accept it, either.

Zel reached the stairs and paused to drag his handheld out of his pocket. He had to confront Devi, but not until he gathered a little information of his own. Devi had Cache, but Zel had something almost as good—someone who’d been in the techie’s head. Lorenzo would be able to tell him if he should consider the girl’s snooping idle curiosity or the opening gambit in a full-on attack.

And once he knew… Taking care of the danger Devi might represent wouldn’t be as easy now as it had been a few days ago, but he’d do what he had to.

At first, the sound of the door chime confused Devi. Her own people were unused to electronics of the sort—or permanent doors, for that matter—and tended to knock.

“Just a minute.” She put away her logbook and kicked her duffel under the bed.

Zel stood on the other side of the door, his shoulders tense and his expression blank. “Can we talk for a few minutes?”

She stepped back, nodding to the scarred table. “What happened?”

He waited until she’d closed the door before answering. “Trip caught your girl playing with his firewalls.”

That made it sound like Cache had been trying to compromise them, and Devi straightened her spine. “Bypassing them, you mean. She was following my orders.”

“Well, your orders are making my life hard. It’s a fucking propaganda nightmare.”

As if all that couldn’t be resolved by letting them leave. “Gotta maintain that image, I get it. Luckily, there’s an easy fix.” She was tall, but she still had to tilt her head back to stare up at him. “Say the word, and I’ll gather my crew and leave.”

His lips pressed together, his jaw so tight he had to be grinding his teeth. “Trust me lady, I was about to. But I need to know what your techie saw in our network.”

“Fuck you.” Cold fury shivered through Devi, settling in her belly. She wished she could deny the charge outright…but curiosity sometimes got the better of Cache. “She’s not after your precious secrets.”

“Then what
was
she after?”

She considered not telling him. “Information about your spy and any communications he may have sent back to the council in Nicollet. Information we don’t have already, because we’re not actually working with him, contrary to what people here seem to think.” Hurt feelings lent her words a sharp, mocking edge, but she couldn’t help it.

His hands fisted. “I don’t think you’re working with him. But people in towns like this have secrets, and a net-hacker who can get around Trip’s firewalls can get any damn thing she wants. Do you not get that it’ll scare the hell out of people?”

“You think it didn’t scare the hell out of me and my crew when you made it clear we had to hide down here if we didn’t want trouble? Trouble we didn’t earn or deserve?”

“It shouldn’t have. I told you I was taking care of it.”

She had to stay calm. To take deep breaths and consider the situation rationally. “Your people are frightened, but there are limits to what you can reasonably expect from me. I can’t trust you like that, Zel, even if I want to.”

“I know.” It was almost a snarl, and he turned and strode past her, presenting her with the unyielding expanse of his back. “I still need to know what she accessed. You want to protect her, and Lorenzo is pretty sure she’s not a threat, but we have information in our network that could put us in danger. Maybe her too, if she found it.”

If she called Cache, she’d tell the truth. And Devi would ask her, if only to check the dangerous slide of threat and suspicion. “I’m not trying to compromise your authority. I just want you to understand why I had her do it.”

“It shouldn’t matter.” His voice grated, suddenly angry. “God damn it, it shouldn’t fucking
matter
.
You
shouldn’t matter.”

It hurt, even though she understood the sentiment perfectly. “Thanks.”

He snarled again and covered the space between them in two long strides, crowding her against the wall. His hands slapped the wall on either side of her head, but he didn’t touch her. “Liar. Or are you going to tell me you want
me
to matter?”

She opened her mouth to give him a kind lie, to tell him he didn’t matter in the least, not to her. “No. I wish I didn’t give a damn about you.”

“You don’t. You don’t know me.” He pressed closer, nothing but hard muscle and heat stretched out against her. “We both got it bad, sweetheart. If you want to take me for a ride and get it out of your system, I’m game.”

“I bet you are.” He’d obviously given the matter some thought, which was more than she was capable of at the moment. Her body had gone into sensory overdrive, cataloguing every bit of tactile information it could gather about him.

And it wasn’t enough. She wanted to know what he tasted like, mouth and skin. Whether she could find softness anywhere on his body, or if he was all hard. There was only one way to find those answers, so she lifted her hands to his shoulders and pushed, testing his strength.

He didn’t budge. His lips curved into that wicked smile she’d first seen at the Pit Stop, and his hands skated down to grasp her hips. One quick jerk lifted her off the ground, onto his solid, muscular thigh, and he crushed his mouth to hers.

Heat blazed through Devi. Nothing, not even the way she’d spent the last few days craving him, had prepared her for the way she reacted to what should have been a simple kiss. His tongue touched hers and her knees went weak, leaving her grinding down on his leg. He knew how to take a woman’s mouth with single-minded determination, waging all-out war on her defenses. His thigh began to move against her, and he matched the thrusts of his tongue to that slow, deadly rock.

Devi jerked her mouth from his with a gasp. “Harder.”

“Bossy.” He bit her lower lip, and his chuckle rolled over her. “You want something, you take it.” He fit his mouth to hers again as his rough fingers curled around the back of her neck.

He liked being in control, but so did she. When she rocked against him this time, she dropped her hand and caressed the hard ridge of his cock in time with her body’s movements.

She swallowed his hissing moan, and a heartbeat later he snatched up her wrist and pinned it against the wall. “If that’s how you want to play…” He moved his other hand from her hip to her ass, dragging her into his next grinding thrust.

A little creative wiggling put her legs on either side of his, and she arched off the wall. She wanted to play, so badly that once wouldn’t be enough. She’d fuck him fast, round off the sharp edge of hunger twisting her belly. Then she could take her time, learn all those things she couldn’t leave without knowing.

He groaned, a rumbling noise that was half pleasure, half something darker, but he let her wiggle as he lowered his lips to her ear. “Impatient, aren’t you? Do you usually fuck men who roll onto their backs for you?”

“Sometimes.” She moved her hips once more, and a bolt of pleasure shuddered through her. Anticipation prickled over her skin and tightened her nipples.