Acting Out (9 page)

The hallway was empty of other guests, and Jessica breathed
a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have to offer any explanations so soon into
their mission. “Where do you think we should start looking?” she asked her escort,
her whispers echoing softly.

Zandar furrowed his eyebrows in thought. “I’m not exactly
sure, but I would hazard a guess that Rox’Ana would want to keep her personal
transmissions and correspondence as secret as possible, especially after her
last failed scheme. She is free under T’Kalan law to say anything she pleases
about the king without fear of consequence, but tangible evidence of treason is
punishable by exile.”

“Exile?” she parroted back to him incredulously. “Don’t you
guys have jails on this planet?”

Zandar nodded. “Of course we have prisons on T’Kala, but
they are for non-violent offenders only. They are more like rehabilitation
centers where we work with the prisoners on trying to correct their mistakes
and allow them to make restitution for their crimes. Violent offenders and
those that commit acts of treason are sent to prison camps located on the
planet Calfaxis. Most of them are never heard from again, but some have
returned to T’Kala after their sentence was fulfilled. Either they never commit
their crimes again out of fear of returning, or they become clever enough not
to get caught.”

“Huh. Well, I guess that works for you guys. Too bad Earth
doesn’t have that option,” she mumbled. She came to a stop in the hallway and
looked around with confusion. “How are we supposed to know what’s in these
rooms if most of the door panels are shut?”

Zandar grabbed her hand and dragged her over to a sensor.
“That has given me an idea. In most T’Kalan homes, the sensors are programmed
to open or not by the owner. Rooms like bathing chambers and kitchens are
programmed to allow anyone to enter.” He placed his palm on the sensor and the
doors slid open to reveal a bathroom. “What we need to find is a room that will
not allow anyone else to enter with the exception of Rox’Ana, and I believe
that is where we will find our proof.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” she agreed, “But if the sensor
is only programmed to allow our hostess to enter, then how are we supposed to
get inside?”

Zandar was already moving to the next sensor and he turned
his head to flash his teeth in a roguish grin. “Leave that to me. Come help me
before someone misses us and decides to come looking.”

Jessica leapt into action and raced from sensor to sensor to
see if the doors would open. She found closets, storage chambers, sitting
rooms, and what appeared to Par’Nisis’ room. By the time she and Zandar had
tried all the sensors, they had narrowed their search down to two rooms that
wouldn’t open to them. The duo stood in the hall and tried to decide which one
held their goal.

“We only have the time to try one of them, Jessica. If I
should hazard a guess, I would say this one is a study or library of some sort
and the one at the end of the hallway would likely be her bedroom,” Zandar
explained.

Jessica gave it a thought and then announced, “We should try
her bedroom. In my experience, a woman’s bedroom is her sanctuary. I know that
if there is something I don’t want found by someone else, I will hide it in my
bedroom.”

Zandar ate up the distance to the closed panel in no time.
“Keep your eyes on the doors and let me know if you see or hear anyone coming.”
Jessica peered around the corner and watched the panel that lead back into the
rec room where the guests were still partying. She heard Zandar cursing, the
sound of something popping loose, and then a grunt of victory as he hissed,
“I’ll show her what a barbarian warrior is capable of doing.” Then louder,
“Jessica, we are in.”

With one final sweep of the hallway, she raced back over to
join Zandar and darted into the room ahead of him. As the door panels slid
closed with a
swish
, the lights in the room glowed to life to illuminate
the interior. They were right in assuming this to be her bedroom, but it was
massive. Works of art, both 3D and moving pictures, adorned her walls, the
furniture was sleek and likely more decorative than for comfort, and her bed
was big enough to hold four T’Kalan warriors shoulder-to-shoulder. Thankfully,
there were no companion animals in her room that would have created an
impediment, but then again, the noblewoman didn’t strike Jessica as the
maternal and loving sort.

While Jessica had been ogling her surroundings with a
combination of awe and disgust, Zandar had been busy. She found him sitting at
a desk located on the far wall and his fingers were flying over the vidscreen
surface. Jessica decided to do her snooping the old fashioned way and began to
open drawers and cabinets, peeking into every box and under every cushion. She
even paused to try and peer under the bed, but it was completely empty.

“Jessica! I think I have found something,” Zandar whispered,
waving her over to join him. Jessica craned her neck over his shoulder to see
strange characters and an unfamiliar language flashing across the screen. “Most
nobles do not bother to learn the programming structures of their transmissions
systems. They pay a technician to come in and install them and then call them
back to perform maintenance and updates,” he explained.

“How did you learn how to do all this?” she asked, awe and
surprise coloring her voice.

His shoulders moved under her hands with his laugh. “Despite
what the noble class would have you believe, warriors are not solely trained in
combat. We are often sent to other worlds on missions, and we would not make it
very far with just our blades. Every warrior receives some degree of
transmissions and communications training in the event of a crash or other
emergency. We cannot always afford the luxury of taking a warship like
The
Ax’Sandre
and her crew with us. We have to be prepared for every
contingency.”

She felt a bit foolish for not realizing that sooner and
could kick herself for unknowingly allowing the nobles’ prejudices to color her
own beliefs. Both Mikael and Korian had proved to be extremely intelligent and
capable, so she shouldn’t have assumed that all they knew how to do was fight.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, her head growing dizzy from watching his
fingers.

“Most citizens don’t realize that when they erase messages, they
are still stored on the mainframe for up to 30 sun cycles for retrieval in case
of an accidental deletion. Of course, we do not spread that fact around,
either, for cases such as this.” He pressed a few more buttons, and exclaimed,
“Ah ha! This is where her secrets will be found, mark my words.”

Jessica groaned at the sheer number of messages and video
transmissions that dated back for the last month. “There’s no way that we’ll
have time to go through all of these. Is there any way to email them or copy
them to a jump drive?”

Zandar chuckled. “You say the strangest things sometimes,
Jessica. I do not know what this email or jumping drive is, but I can copy them
and send them via a transmission to my account. That should give us time to
review them without fear of being discovered.”

Before Jessica could reply, her ears picked up the murmured
sound of voices heading their way. “Zandar, quick! Someone is coming!”

The warrior’s fingers flew like the wind over the vidscreen
as he copied and sent the file and then erased all signs of his presence while
Jessica pressed her ear to the door to see if she could hear who was
approaching. Her heart pounded in her throat when she heard Rox’Ana’s angry
tones mixed with an unfamiliar male voice as they stopped at each room to peer
inside.

She knew they would be discovered any moment and there was
no time to lose. As she raced back over to her co-conspirator, she pulled
strands from her elegant up do until several tendrils were hanging down around
her face. She loosened one latch from her red dress and allowed the material to
dangle precariously from the tip of her breast and slid out of her shoes.

Zandar stood from his seat at the desk and faced her. “I
have completed the transfer-“ he began, but cut himself off at the sight of her.
“Jessica, what are you doing?” he asked, his voice a mix of confusion and
suspicion.

“I don’t have time to explain,” she hissed, as she reached
for his shirt and began to tug it loose from his pants. She opened the latch at
his throat until it hung open across his muscled torso and ran her hands
through his jet black hair until it stood on end. “Quick! Take off your shoes!”

Without another question, he followed her command until he
stood in his bare feet. She could hear the voices outside the door now, getting
louder and more insistent, so she turned Zandar toward the bed and gave him a
shove. He landed with a bounce and his ice brown eyes widened when she crawled
across his body and latched her lips to his just as the door panel slid open.

“I told you, there is no one screaming for help, you
imbecile,” the noblewoman’s voice carried through the room with scorn. “You can
believe that your employer will hear about this-“ her voice cut off as the bed
came into view.

Jessica released Zandar’s lips and clumsily scrambled to her
feet while clutching her dress to her chest. “Oh! You startled me, Rox’Ana,”
she exclaimed, her voice breathy and embarrassed.

Their hostess took a long moment to take in the picture of
them half-clothed and in obvious dishevelment. Her lips curled in a Cheshire
smile as she replied, “My apologies, Jessica. I had not realized that we were
interrupting. This idiot,” she waved dismissively at her liveried companion,
“insisted that he heard someone screaming for help in one of the rooms.”

Jessica glanced at the man standing open-mouthed next to her
hostess, and she clenched her jaw at the sight of the nosy waiter that had
hovered around her all evening. “He did, did he? Well, I can assure you that
any screams coming from this room were not for help.”

Zandar eased his way to his feet and turned his back to set
his clothes to rights while Jessica calmly latched her dress and sat on the bed
to slip her shoes back on. Rox’Ana watched them carefully, her gaze sharp with
calculation. “How did you manage to gain entrance to my bedchamber? I was sure
I had locked it before the start of the party.”

Zandar’s tone was mischievous when replied, “That was my
doing, Rox’Ana. I apologize for taking liberties with your property, but
Jessica assured me that you gave her perm-“

“That is quite alright, Zandar Nic’Omar,” she cut him off
swiftly. “There appears to be no harm done. Why don’t we give you both some
privacy to make yourselves presentable before you return to the party?”

Before the witnesses could escape, Jessica called out,
“Wait!” When the waiter and her hostess turned to face her once more, she said,
“As I’m sure you both know, this situation could turn into a big
misunderstanding with the king. I hate to be rude, but I’m going to have to
insist that you both keep what you saw here to yourselves. Please.”

Rox’Ana was clearly enjoying the spectacle, but she gamely
agreed. “Of course, Jessica. I would not dare dream of placing either of you in
the pathway of the king’s wrath.”

Jessica turned an icy glare on the waiter and was surprised
to see anger on his face. He didn’t speak a word, but he nodded his head
sharply and spun on his heel to exit the room ahead of the noblewoman who
paused at the door to give them a little wave of her fingers.

Jessica breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally
alone again. “Shew, that was a close one,” she acknowledged as she slipped the
loose tendrils of hair back in the clip. “Sorry about that, Zandar. It was the
only thing I could think of to keep her from being suspicious about why we were
in her room.”

The warrior finished tucking his shirt back in his pants and
ran his big hand through his unruly hair. “I would be lying if I said I was
sorry it happened. My only regret is that you were forced into this situation
by my actions.”

“Hey, I agreed to this crazy plan, so I’m just as much at
fault as you are, big guy. Let’s just hope that the information you found makes
this all worth it,” she replied as she stood to her feet and shook out the
wrinkles in her dress.

She felt the heat of his body as he sidled into her personal
space. He placed a finger under her chin and tipped her face up until their
eyes met. “Was kissing me and pressing your body to mine such a hardship,
Jessica? I had hoped that your lack of passion was only because of the
circumstances, but I have a feeling that it means something quite different.”

Jessica’s heart thudded in her ears and she swallowed
nervously. “I’m sorry, Zandar. I didn’t mean to lead you on, I swear I didn’t. You
are so kind and generous, and I have come to care for you a great deal, but…”
she trailed off, the words sticking in her throat.

“But you are in love with Korian, am I right?” he demanded,
his jaw clenched. When she only nodded miserably, he released her chin and
stepped back until there was at least a foot of space between them. “I had
guessed as much, especially after you both had disappeared together from the
gala at his compound, but I had hoped I was wrong. I have never seen you look
at me the way you do when he arrives in the room. Your whole face lights up and
your pale skin turns pink with excitement without him even touching you.” His
voice was tinged with sadness as he added, “Even when your breasts were crushed
against my chest and your hips were cradling mine just now, your skin remained
as pale and cold as the snows of Mount Vic’Nar.”

Jessica felt wretched as his sorrow washed over her. She
tried to hold back her tears, but they rolled down her cheeks unhindered. “It
would be so much easier if I could love you like you deserve, Zandar. I’m
afraid I have made a mess of everything. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to
see me again. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’ll be returning to my home in a few
weeks anyway. I don’t think that your king will want me to stick around after
my month is up.”