Born of Fire (15 page)

What would happen to her family without her?

How was she going to survive?

She looked over at her churlish companion. Syn knew. He’d been running since he was a kid.

But would he continue to help
her?

Not if he suspects you in any way
. . .

Maybe he wasn’t quite the beast his bounty sheet claimed. Maybe he liked Caillen enough to keep her safe in the name of their friendship. Grasping that small hope, she turned to face him. “Since we’re in this mess together, care to tell me why you’re so important to the Rits?”

He opened his eyes and cocked a questioning brow.

When he didn’t answer, she tried again. “Come on, Syn. I’m not green. I know governments don’t expend this kind of energy to go after a run-of-the-mill filch or even a murderer. Nor do they routinely beat their prisoners to a pulp. You were seriously interrogated by someone who knew exactly how to wring the most pain out of you while keeping you alive and able to speak. There’s a lot more to this than what’s on the surface and they want you for something significant. What is it?”

He let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, there’s a lot more to this.”

She waited.

When he refused to say more, she gently poked him in the ribs.

He hissed and smacked at her hand, but not hard enough to hurt her. Then he winced as if his own actions had caused him pain. He glared at her before he spoke again. “Do you really care to know?”

“Yes.”

With another deep sigh, he ran his hand over his whiskers and she watched the play of lean tendons under the bruised skin. “When I was fourteen, I was doing a filch for a certain political candidate on Ritadaria. The information he wanted was pretty routine, just dirt about his opponent and their party. I was going along my merry way, recording and scanning secure chips in their offices, when I accidentally came across Merjack’s personal diary.”

“Chief Minister of Justice?”

“No, his son, who later became president.” He paused. “What I discovered was that the Minister and his son were responsible for President Fretaugh’s death.”

She gaped at his disclosure. “They killed him?”

“In a manner of speaking. Back in the day, the Minister was only a vice warden in our fun little prison. He released one of the assassins for the hit and, once the assassin killed the president, Merjack’s son killed him to keep the man from talking.”

She scowled at his far-fetched story. “That seems like a lot of effort to go to. Why not kill the president themselves?”

“They needed an airtight alibi. What better one than being directly beside the man when he’s executed and the whole thing is being covered by every major news organization in existence? All the assassin had to do was shout out a political statement against the president as he killed him and everyone assumed our friends had nothing to do with it. And no investigation was held since everyone plainly saw it was a psycho zealot who took the president out. Likewise, no one thought twice about the hero who ended up killing the zealot while trying to apprehend him. Ironic really, by killing the man they’d hired to murder the president and covering their
tracks, Jonas Merjack was able to secure the presidency for himself. Living proof that there really is no justice in the world.”

Shahara digested that slowly. Now this was an interesting snippet and it went a long way in explaining why Merjack wanted Syn so badly.

Then again, Syn could be lying. Filches had a nasty habit of doing that sort of thing when it suited their purposes. “And you have the chip to prove all of this?”

“Had it.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “What do you mean you
had
it? How could you let something like that out of your sight?”

He gave her a droll stare. “It was a long time ago and I was a scared kid. Merjack had a separate security feed on the diary which I didn’t discover until it was too late. They were bearing down on me and I stashed the chip barely a heartbeat before they caught me.”

“Why would they go to such extremes to hide their actions only to put it down as hard evidence for someone to find?”

Syn shrugged. “Why do people do anything they do? I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out the stupidity or arrogance of the average person. Maybe he was so proud of it that he had to let it out and since he didn’t dare tell a real person, he told his recorder. I don’t know. All I know is it’s his voice and his confession.”

She wasn’t so sure. This was just a little too much to believe. “How old did you say you were? Fourteen?”

He nodded.

“Do you honestly expect me to believe that a serious political candidate would entrust something as important as gathering campaign secrets to a mere child?”

His features turned to stone. “I don’t give a damn what you believe.”

She scoffed at him. “You really are a piece of work. I almost believed you.”

“You should. It’s the truth.”

Yeah, right. “I doubt you’d know the truth if it came up and slapped you down.”

He glared at her. “And what makes you so sure that I’m lying?”

“Because I was orphaned at sixteen and I know people don’t hire children to do much of anything. The best job I had at that age was scrubbing floors.”

He snorted. “They do when it’s something highly illegal and they know you were trained by the absolute best.”

“And just who trained you? Idirian Wade?” she asked sarcastically, using the name of the most notorious criminal who’d ever lived.

His look was as cold as steel. “Yes.”

Shocked, she stared at him. Now
that
was one fact omitted by both his sheet and her contact.

Could it be true?

Surely he was lying.

But if he wasn’t, that made him even more dangerous. Because anyone spending time with Wade had been spending time with the devil himself.

Syn looked so serious that he was either a consummate liar or he was telling the truth.

Which one was it? Honestly, his story was way too much to be believed.

“Why would Wade train
you?
Especially as a kid? He wasn’t exactly known for having partners or letting them live once someone made the mistake of thinking he wouldn’t skin them. Literally.”

His look was completely cold. “Why do you think?”

She shrugged. “I can’t imagine how a criminal like him would have any interest in a snot-nosed kid.”

He rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Seax. You’re not this dense or that stupid. Your father was one of the greatest smugglers ever born and what was the first lesson he taught your brother?”

“How to . . .” Her words broke off as she finally understood. “You’re telling me Wade was your father?”

He gave her a sarcastic salute. “Give the woman a hero cookie.”

Shahara couldn’t breathe as those words sank in. Dear God, she was sitting next to a man descended from the most psychotic killer ever known? Someone who was notorious for killing hundreds, if not thousands of people—men, women, and children. And he didn’t just kill his victims, partners, and friends, he tortured and mutilated them.

He’d even cannibalized some of the bodies.

Wade was a man so evil, that even decades after his death, decades after his ashes had been scattered in space and every possible trace of anything that might contain even a micro hair or skin cell from him had been seized and destroyed, governments were still terrified someone would use his DNA to bring him back.

And she sat next to the son he’d trained . . .

For a moment, she thought she’d be ill.

Syn tensed as he saw the look in her eyes that he despised most. It was the one that said he contaminated her air with the filth of his past. That if the car wasn’t in motion, she’d be running out through the street to get away from him. Not for anything he’d ever done.

But because he’d been unlucky enough to be fathered by a psychotic animal.

Just once couldn’t someone surprise him and separate the truth from their fears? Only Nykyrian had ever really accepted the fact that his genetic link to a madman hadn’t corrupted him, too.

What did you expect?

Nothing, really. It was the same reaction Kiara Zamir had given him. But what killed him most was the knowledge that if he really were his father, he’d have butchered them over those looks and then kept their eyes as trophies.

Provided he didn’t eat them.

Disgusted, he looked away.

Shahara sat perfectly still as she came to terms with the fact that she was sitting next to the devil’s spawn. No wonder he was so good at what he did. His father had eluded custody for decades. Those who’d come close to finding Wade had been gutted, skinned, and pinned to walls as a warning to anyone else who had dreams of bringing him in.

In fact, he would have never been caught at all had someone not . . .

She licked her lips as a shot of hope went through her that said Syn might not be quite as corrupt as his father. “You’re the one who turned your father in, aren’t you?”

Syn cringed at a question only one other person had ever asked him. No one but Nykyrian had ever figured that out.

He started to lie to her, but why bother? It wasn’t like her opinion of him would change. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” If only he’d known then what hell was going to rain down on him, he might have reconsidered. But at the time, he’d wanted to get away from his father’s brutality so badly . . .

He’d had these stupid dreams of the authorities giving him to a family where he could go to school like a normal kid and have a life like everyone else.

Even at ten years old, he should have known better. He’d seen enough of the darker side of human nature by that point . . . but the kid in him had been dumb enough to believe in happy endings and rainbows.

“So how much money did they pay you to betray him?”

He loved the way she phrased that. Like he’d betrayed the father who’d never done anything for him except make him suffer. Yeah, his dad had given him a certain set of criminal skills that had served him well over the years, but that benefit was far outweighed by the rest of the damage the bastard had done to him physically and mentally.

“I was a kid, Shahara. They didn’t give me shit for it. It was my civic duty.” He almost choked as he repeated the words the Overseer had said to him right before they put him in cuffs and hauled him to jail.

“Then why did you do it?”

To retaliate for his sister’s death. He hadn’t been big or seasoned enough to kill the bastard himself. So he’d allowed the authorities to do it for him.

But that was something he’d never admit to. In the end, he got what he deserved, too.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I’m coming back for you, you little bastard. And when I do, you’ll suffer like no one ever has. So help me, gods. I should have let your mother drown you when you were an infant. See what mercy gets you? A bastard seed who betrays you to the grave. May the gods make you suffer every day you live and may each one be more painful than the one before it.

Those had been the last words his father had ever spoken to him. To this day, they warmed the cockles of his blackened heart.

And it proved the one point Syn had lived his life by ever since.

Everyone betrayed.

He’d sold out his father and his son had turned his back on him. And just like he’d done to his own worthless father, his son called the authorities any time he tried to visit.

Poetic justice really.

“Syn?” she asked insistently. “Why did you turn your father in?”

“I told you. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Shahara shook her head, unwilling to accept that. He was hiding something more, but it was obvious he didn’t trust her with it. And why should he? She hadn’t been exactly trustworthy where he was concerned.

So she changed the subject to something less volatile and to the only thing that could save her life. “Fine. Let’s assume you’re telling the truth about all this. Why didn’t the Merjacks kill you? If you’re the only person alive who knows what they did, why would they take the chance on you telling someone else your story?”

“Because they couldn’t find the chip. That’s the only reason they haven’t killed me . . . yet. After all, who’s going to believe
me?
A lying, sack-of-shit convict whose father’s memory can still make seasoned assassins piss in their pants?”

Confused, she tried to make sense of it. “I don’t understand. If you’re dead, why would it matter where it is?”

“Anyone could find it and expose them,” he said as if he were talking to a small child. “I’m actually surprised
no one has found it yet. It would have been real easy to locate. We’re just lucky they haven’t.”

“Then why haven’t you gone back for it and exposed them for the murderers they are?”

“Because until you showed your pretty little neck in my home, they’ve mostly left me alone. I mean, sure they tried seriously to find me for a couple of years after I escaped prison, but I changed my name and they eventually went away. I was practicing the live-and-let-live social policy of survival.”

“But if they killed someone, how could you not—”

“Look,” he snarled, cutting her off. “Better
him
than me. Believe me, I’m sure Fretaugh had skeletons aplenty in his closet none of us know about and I don’t have your wonderful little sense of justice. That’s one luxury I’ve never been able to afford. The only law I answer to is the law of survival. And that law says for me to keep my ass as far from Ritadaria as I can.”

She clenched her teeth in frustration. She’d never understood people like him. People who could turn a blind eye to corruption, to crime.

If what he said was true, how could he just let criminals get away with . . .

Oh, he
was
a criminal. No wonder he lacked her morals. If he’d had them, he would never have done all the things he’d done. And that was something she’d have to come to terms with for the next few days until they located the chip.

“So where are we going?”

He opened one eye and pierced her with a glare from it. “You’re not about to let me rest, are you?”