Shades of Treason (4 page)

A spy.

A telepath.

And Trevast hadn’t been joking. He’d
known
.

Cheerfully, Jevan had duplicated the Sariceans’ files, but his smile disappeared when he discovered he couldn’t access the data. He’d turned to her and demanded the cipher. Ash had glanced at her team lead, but Trevast had shaken his head. A second later, Jevan put a bullet between his eyes.

There were more bullets, more threats, a plea for his life from the youngest member in her squad. She’d almost given Jevan the key then, but Chakin—for two minutes her commanding officer—ordered her to keep silent. Jevan turned, raised his gun again, and Chakin’s brains scattered across the dura-steel tiles.

The dream, the memory, blurred after that. She remembered her ears ringing and the room spinning as her fiancé took her face between his gloved hands. She remembered him looking into her eyes as he’d done a hundred times before, but this time, the gaze was different. This time, it was penetrating.

She’d fallen to her knees. She felt his touch and heard his voice, but didn’t understand his words. Something
moved
in her mind, and despite all her training, she was helpless.

But Jevan wasn’t able to rip the cipher from her mind. She knew that only because he was pissed when the CSS
Anthem
came within scanner range. He’d grabbed her by the hair, dragged her toward the docking tube. At the last moment, she’d recovered enough of her senses to fight, to shove him out of the shuttle and seal the emergency-tube hatch, then she’d crawled back to her comrades with Jevan screaming profanities in her mind.

“The rate of your breathing has changed, Ash. You’re awake.”

Rykus’s voice pulled her out of the memory. She opened her eyes to slits. “You getting off watching me sleep, Rip?”

A part of her hated to provoke him, but she had no choice. If he stayed—if he forced her to give him the cipher—the Coalition would gain access to the Sariceans’ files and to the information that would rip the Coalition apart. Ash wouldn’t let that happen. The KU needed the Coalition, and she’d vowed to preserve and protect it.

“Get up.” Rykus leaned against the data-table in the center of the room and crossed his arms over his chest. The dark gray dress-downs he wore didn’t disguise his physique; it accentuated his biceps and the powerful muscles in his shoulders. He was fully capable of hauling her ass out of bed.

“We could have more fun over here.”

Maybe she should have lifted her blanket or patted the sleep-slab to make her point. His eyes didn’t narrow and his strong jaw didn’t clench. Not good. She’d have to be even more forward to get to him. She didn’t want to go that far. She’d reined in her behavior since she’d graduated—Trevast just hadn’t been as fun to torment as Rip. Plus, Trevast and the rest of the guys were like brothers to her, and it was somewhat awkward to flirt with family around.

They
had
been like brothers to her. She fought back the anguish threatening to cloud her mind.

“Get up. Now,” Rykus ordered.

Next time, he’d
command
her compliance. She was surprised he hadn’t stormed in and immediately done so. Surprised and a little dismayed. He was treating her as if she were still his cadet. The instructors on Caruth had a code: they respected the anomalies’ right to free will, only using compulsion if they had to. Rykus shouldn’t be extending that courtesy to her now though, not after the way she’d treated him yesterday.

She sat up and turned toward him, letting her long legs dangle over the edge of the sleep-slab. The room spun when she did, and she felt a not-so-gentle pressure at the base of her skull. Her hands and feet prickled, but just as quickly as they came, the sensations vanished.

“You can talk to me or you can talk to the interrogator. He’s waiting outside.”

She focused on Rykus again and hid her anxiety behind a half grin. That drew a reaction. His lips tightened just perceptibly. They were nice lips even though they didn’t smile often. Soft too, she imagined. It was a shame they’d never kissed, but Rykus wasn’t one to violate protocol.

“Come here.” He turned to tap in a command on the data-table.

Damn, his back was tempting—for a number of reasons, actually—but she wasn’t going to attack her fail-safe. The loyalty training discouraged it.

He threw a glare over his shoulder. “I said come here.”

Apprehension coiled in her stomach. He was too in control of himself. The compulsion would work if he used it, and once it took hold, his next orders would be all but impossible to resist. Ash had to set him off.

“Are you married, Commander?” She tilted her head and let her long bangs fall across her cheek.

“You don’t know when to stop, do you?” His tone was even, unaffected. Hell, maybe she
had
lost her touch.

She raised her cuffed hands—damn, her wrists were sore—in a semi-innocent gesture. “What? I just want to know if you’re available.”

He moved fast, grabbing her arm and yanking her off the sleep-slab. Her neck popped from the whiplash, then she was shoved facedown over the data-table. Her nose pressed against an image of Trevast’s corpse.

She tried to move away, but Rykus held her down. Trevast’s body was more real than the one from her dream. She could almost smell it, could almost feel the blood congealing between her fingers.

“This is cruel, Rip.” She hated the way her voice cracked.

He pressed down on the back of her head, preventing her from turning away. “You don’t want to see your handiwork? I thought you’d enjoy it. They found you bathing in their blood.”

Her heart hurt, physically hurt. Back on the shuttle, she’d crawled across the slick floor to Trevast. He’d still been breathing, still been able to talk, to tell her not to decrypt the files for anyone.
Will destroy the Coalition
, he’d said. Then he’d grabbed her shirt and whispered,
Fashions. Fight.

Trevast’s mind had been muddled by his impending death. He’d merged together their previous argument over her not-quite-regulation camouflage and an order for her to fight. She’d demanded
he
fight, and she had tried to save him. She would have saved all of them if there’d been a way, but the others were already dead, and he was too weak. He’d lost too much blood.

Rykus’s grip on her neck tightened. “He had a family. You met his wife, even gave his five-year-old son a present for his birthday last month. That’s what Lydia said when she was told you killed her husband.”

The table image changed, and she stared into the glazed eyes of Kris Menchan.
Kris
.

“He was the newest member of your team,” Rykus continued. “He graduated three months ago. You were his mentor. Taught him a lot of the things I taught you: how to drop-kill surveillance systems, how to subdue captives. But you didn’t teach him how to avoid a knife in the back, did you?”

“Go to hell, Rip.”

Ash wouldn’t cry. She
never
cried.

She managed to twist enough to hook her left foot around his ankle. She kicked forward, forcing him to shift to maintain his balance, then she dropped her shoulder and slipped out from under him.

Rykus’s time away from Caruth hadn’t diminished his ability to kick ass. He evaded her spin kick and the fist she aimed at his chin. Her next move slipped through his defense, but only because he allowed it. He took the blow on his chin, then used his close proximity to swing the blade of his right hand into her shoulder, sending a jolt of sharp pain from her neck to her lower back.

Her knees gave out. She rolled when she hit the ground, but Rykus didn’t pursue her.

“On your feet,” he ordered.

She complied but circled away from him, giving her body a few seconds to recover. She’d sparred with him before, but never when she felt like this: angry, frustrated, and burning with the need to beat the ever-living hell out of something.

“Did you betray them for money?” he demanded. “You were close to bankrupt two weeks ago. Now you have a year’s salary in your account. Did the Sariceans pay you?”

Rage scalded her veins. She wanted to tell him where he could shove his accusation, but she’d tried to tell others the truth, that she lived on very few credits each month and sent the excess money back to her home world. She’d blacked out before she spoke a syllable of the explanation, and the investigators hadn’t been able to trace the money. None of it ended up in legitimate bank accounts. She sent it to Glory’s precinct bosses. It was bribe money. She paid the bosses to leave the Coalition’s humanitarian aid workers alone.

Those aid workers had saved her life and her soul. Ash did everything in her power to do the same.

Rykus took a step forward, stopping beneath the not-quite-hidden security camera in the ceiling. He must have noticed when she glanced up because he shook his head.

“It’s not going to happen, Ash. I ordered them to stay out.”

She suppressed a grimace. He knew her too well. She’d never get off the
Obsidian
with him supervising her imprisonment. But she would try. She and all the other Caruth-trained anomalies didn’t know how to give up.

“They’ll come in if I drop you.”

His laugh was short, mocking. “You’re good, but I know all your moves. You’ll never be able to take me hand to hand.”

Ash refused to acknowledge the truth in those words. Trevast had told her to fight. The order might have been shrouded in the confusion of his impending death, but she intended to carry it out. She wouldn’t let the stolen files destroy the Coalition she’d sworn to preserve and protect.

She let Rykus approach even though it was foolish to let him get close. She landed a few punches, got one solid kick through his defenses, but he was too strong, too experienced to damage. He knew her weaknesses, knew she was limited in her moves by her restraints, and he was too damn perfect to make a mistake.

He didn’t pound her face in like he could have—like he probably should have—but he slammed her to the floor and pinned her arms over her head.

She stared defiantly into his eyes. “Congratulations, Commander.”

“You think I enjoyed this?” he demanded. The way he held her wrists made her restraints dig into her raw and swollen skin.

“You’ve been waiting for an excuse to take me down for years.”

“Tell me what happened on that shuttle.”

She shook her head. He shook her.

“Tell me!”

When she refused a second time, she expected to be jostled again, but his grip on her loosened, the anger whooshed out of him, and his body relaxed against hers. She realized a moment too late what would happen next.

“
Did you execute your team
?”

His tone and cadence were perfect. The loyalty training slithered through her body, and a familiar warmth surged in her bloodstream. Her veins felt foreign, like they were strings extracted from a puppet, and she had no choice but to speak the truth.

But she couldn’t. Something else seized her—a different compulsion, a different command—and an indescribable panic settled in her chest.

Ash couldn’t comply with both orders.

She
had
to comply with both.

Her vision blurred, and when she opened her mouth to tell Rykus she hadn’t killed her teammates, the only sound that came from her lips was a scream.

CHAPTER FIVE

RYKUS RELEASED HIS cadet, arms raised as if he’d just blown his cover on an op, but as soon as he let go, Ash’s fingertips dug into her temples. He hovered at her side, stunned, until her screams faded and the seizure began.

He gave her more space, his heart free-falling into his stomach. He hadn’t pressed an attack during the fight, only deflected her punches and kicks. Nothing looked broken, but her back arched and her arms flailed at her sides. When she slammed her head into the ground, then into the leg of the data-table, he gathered her into his arms.

“Medic!” he shouted at the room, holding her tight. “Shh, Ash. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Her tremors turned into trembles, tiny shudders that were vaguely familiar. He remembered holding her when she’d stumbled inside his office one cold night on Caruth. He had ordered her to sit outside and count stars. She’d been pressing her luck for too long and he’d finally had enough. While there were a million things he could have punished Ash for—her flippant speech, her lackadaisical attitude, her open flirtation with him—he’d lost his temper over the most simple, stupid transgression: her hair. She’d shown up late after a weekend leave, and her wavy locks, soft and shining in the artificial lights, had spilled over her shoulders.

He should have ignored the infraction because, once he confronted her, she knew it was the perfect way to shatter his composure. She insisted on wearing her hair any way she liked. He insisted on her following regulation and braiding it. Since Ash and the other cadets hadn’t been put in the psyche-mask yet, he’d ordered her out into the night. She remained there for hours, long after a blizzard covered the compound in ice. The weather had turned early. He hadn’t realized it until, half-frozen, she’d shuddered her way into his office, not repentant
per se
, but much less blatantly insolent. He’d wrapped his arms around her, warming her with his body heat while he called for a medic. After that her protests became smaller, more measured. From that point on, she’d pulled back her hair, but she’d twisted only that small, almost-hidden portion of it into a braid.

He let that braid slide through his fingers now as he rocked her, and finally, her eyes fluttered open.

“Hey,” he said, going still.

She swallowed, focused on him, and swallowed again. “I’m so fucked, Rip.”

“Tell me how to help.” He brushed hair damp with sweat from her forehead, then let his fingers trail down her cheek, smooth except for a red welt beneath her right eye, probably from when she hit the table. She had a beauty mark to the left of her mouth. Rykus had always been tempted to run his thumb over it—he thought it too strategically placed to be real—but he wouldn’t let himself touch it now. It seemed… inappropriate.

“Just… go away.” Ash’s tone was halfway between a plea and an order.