Tex's Revenge: Military Discipline, Book Two (17 page)

“That's sort of underhand, don't you think?” Zora asked, her face screwed up after a demonstration of something particularly nasty.

“The world can be underhand. You do what you need to do to keep your head above water, you hear me?” Johnny had gone serious. He didn't often go serious, but when he did it was like looking into a pool so dark you couldn't see the bottom. She didn't probe him however. She let him have his secrets, just like he let her have hers.

“When are you going to go out again?”

Johnny's question caught her off guard. “What?”

“To the city. You still haven't done any shopping.”

“People shoot me in the city.”

“One person shot you once. I'll go with you. Keep the bullets off you.” He put on his best encouraging face.

Zora shook her head doubtfully. “Tex probably wouldn't let me.”

“Let's ask.”

Zora agreed, figuring there was no way in hell Tex would ever agree to it. He'd been quite clear she should stay in the compound. To her great surprise, Tex didn't say no when they traipsed into his office to ask him. “I don't see why not,” he said, barely glancing up from his work. “As long as you go in your down time. John has work to do.”

“Yessir,” Johnny saluted. “Thank you sir.”

“Thanks,” Zora tried to smile, but her expression wasn't nearly as bright as it should have been. “What about Anja and the bullets?”

“It's been taken care of,” Tex said in an offhand way that didn't give her much peace of mind.

“How?”

“It's been taken care of,” he repeated himself.

“Well forgive me if I don't quite believe you,” Zora snapped. “You...

She was cut off by Johnny putting his arm around her and clamping his hand over her mouth. “What she's trying to say is 'thank you',” he said, keeping a hold of her whilst she struggled.

“Dismissed,” Tex snapped. He seemed irritated. He seemed irritated and distant a great deal of late, which was no real skin off Zora's nose because it meant she wasn't getting hit.

Johnny let go of her once they were well clear of the offices. “It's like you want to cause trouble,” he said, rubbing the palm of his hand on his pant leg to clean it of Zora's spittle.

“I just don't trust him,” she said. “And I've got no reason to either.”

“So you're just going to sit here and rot?”

“Maybe I will.” Her defiance was absolute and try as Johnny might to cajole and tease her into a better mood, she resisted all his efforts until he finally gave up and left her alone.

* * *

A week later she was still walking with a limp. Though her leg was healing steadily, a bullet to the thigh was nothing to be shrugged off. The knowledge that someone hated her enough to want to actually killed her had wormed into her brain and was leeching through her consciousness, changing things little by little without her really being aware of it. One thing that she was aware of however, was her growing loathing for Tex. She managed to hold it together thinking that she would soon see Savage again, but when Savage's return date came and went without the man showing up, she went to Tex's office to make forceful inquiries.

“Where is he?” She slammed her palm down on Tex's desk. “You promised he would be back.”

Without looking up from his work, Tex frowned. “Go back to your room.”

Staring at the top of his head only served to irritate her more. “No, I'm not going anywhere until you give me answers.”

“Go. To. Your. Room.” Tex lifted his eyes to her. There was no genteel patience in his gaze as there had been in the past. He was hard and cold. His gaze alone made her recoil from the desk a step or two, but it did not make her retreat.

“I want to know what's going on.”

“What's going on is that you're interrupting me and disobeying orders. If you continue to do so, you will regret it.”

A slow smirk spread over Zora's lips. “I don't think so.”

“Zora!” Tex's voice snapped through her sharp as a whip. “Go before you get hurt.”

“You can't hurt me anymore,”  she said, cocky.

With a growl of annoyance, Tex pushed back his chair and made towards her. She let him come. Johnny had prepared her for the moment and as Tex laid his hand on her wrist she she grabbed towards his inner thigh, catching a pinch of skin high on his leg. She pinched and twisted hard. She'd never heard Tex make a sound of pain before, but his shout of agony and surprise was like music to her ears. He dropped her like a hot coal and she tumbled to the ground, her weaker leg giving way.

 “Not enjoying being on the wrong side of the pain?” She taunted him from the floor. “Don't you ever hit me again.”

Tex reached for her and hauled her up from the floor with almost no effort at all. She'd forgotten how strong he was. “Johnny!” She screamed for all she was worth. “Johnny it's not working!”

“He can't help you now,” Tex snarled, pressing her face down over the table. He leaned over her, pressing her down with his torso as he hissed into her ear. “And don't think he will either. If he tries I'll send him to the other side of the world. Afghanistan is nice this time of year. Maybe Syria. Or perhaps Libya. So many little countries dotted here and there.”

“No,” Zora's eyes widened. She flailed around and found something against her hand – the butt of Tex's pistol. It seemed to slip into her grip and before she knew what was happening, her finger was curling around the trigger.

She didn't know if she was trying to shoot Tex or not, but the sound of the gun firing was louder than she realized it would be. The bullet missed both of them and thunked solidly through the carpeted floor. Both she and Tex froze momentarily, silently acknowledging the near miss they'd had.

Almost immediately the door of Tex's office slammed open as several men rushed in. One of them was Johnny, but he was at the back of the pack. She could barely make out his expression of concern amidst all the others.

“We heard a shot fired.”

“Accidental discharge,” Tex said, standing with his hand on Zora's shoulder. Both had forced, fake plastic expressions on their face, Zora because she did not want Johnny to know how dark things had gotten, and Tex because he didn't want his subordinates knowing how close he'd come to being shot by a woman. “You can return to your posts.”

The men withdrew, leaving them facing one another. Tex's anger had faded into an expression of focused interest. “So you would shoot me, would you?”

Zora bit her lip and remained silent. What sort of answer was there for a question like that?

Tex didn't seem put off by her silence. He was too consumed with what he had to say and he said it leaning over towards her, his voice a low rumble of threat. “Need I remind you that I am the one who liberated you from your life in a shack? The one who has done his best to make sure that you are comfortable? I've even employed your man so that you two can have something of a life together.”

She looked up and met his eyes. “You've done that all for your own ends. Don't act like you're doing me a favor. You're playing a game.”

“Am I?” Tex's chuckle was soft. “I don't think so. I think this is very simple. You do as you're told.  Brett Savage does as he's told. Everyone has a nice time. But neither of you can seem to manage that.”

Her ears pricked up, or would have done if she were a puppy and not a person. “Neither of us? What's he done?”

Tex's face was all hard planes of frustration. “That's immaterial.”

“Is that why he isn't here?” Zora allowed herself a small smile. “Is your little pigeon not returning to the loft the way you planned it?”

“For your sake you better hope that's not the case,” Tex's answering smile was smaller and colder still. It was barely a smile, more a perversion of what a smile might be. “I don't have an awful lot of use for... people like you.”

The words were innocuous, but there was so much derision in the sneer that Zora felt as if she'd been slapped across the face. Without another word she turned and walked out of Tex's office. She didn't see the way the tall man slumped into his desk chair when the door closed behind her, though she would probably have enjoyed the way he hissed between his teeth as he rubbed his inner thigh where her punishing pinch had found its gripping place.

Chapter Twelve

Savage was not long off a flight from Bahrain when his phone rang. He'd almost forgotten about the slim newfangled device that came packed in his gear as a standard add on. Pulling it out of his bag, he briefly considered drowning it in the beer he was midway through imbibing.

Tempting at it was, he decided against it. If nothing else it was a waste of beer. He answered the small shrieking device with a resigned wariness, knowing in advance that the conversation he was about to have would not be pleasant. Sure enough, the voice on the other end was as tense as it was terse. “You're off profile, agent.”

Savage's expression betrayed no emotion, nor did his voice. It stayed steady, almost flat as he replied. “You failed to hold up your end of the bargain.”

There was a pause, as if the speaker was trying to decide between threatening or luring him back. Tex settled on a question. “What do you intend to do?”

“I intend to fix it.”

“How...”

Savage snapped the phone shut. He was not in the mood to engage in discussions with his employer or to explain himself or his methods.  He was only interested in doing one thing: eliminating the last remaining threat against Zora Matthews. He did not anticipate any great difficulty in doing so, it was easy when you knew precisely who you were looking for and it was easier still when you'd taught that person everything they knew.

* * *

 “We need three more of these analyzed by morning.” Three slim silver disks in plastic cases were slid onto Zora's workstation, adding to an existing pile so tall it was threatening to topple over. The agent delivering the discs made no comment, but it was obvious even to the most casual of observers that Zora was behind on her work.

The source of the retarded productivity was not difficult to find, instead of being glued to her monitor, or even glancing at it vaguely, Zora had several empty cases stacked in front of her in the style of a house of cards. There were seven triangles on the base, six stacked above them and five above them, making for a total of thirty two cases being misappropriated. Several more were on their way to being added to the third tier of the pyramid.

She had expected some kind of retaliation after Savage failed to return on schedule, but to her surprise Tex did not take Savage's absence out on her. Instead she had been given busy work to do, the sort of work that numbed the brain and dulled the spirit. It was the same sort of work the military had assigned her in the latter days of her incarceration at their underground complex. It gave her a new source of desperation – boredom.

Her leg had pretty much healed, but it didn't make any difference. She was no longer allowed to leave. Tex had revoked that particular privilege and her picture sat in the guard house at the gates, a constant reminder to all on duty that she was not to be allowed out under any circumstances. She was a prisoner once more.

There was a lot of work on, but all of it bored her. Instead of ploughing through yet another late night of tiresome tasks that seemed to almost have been designed to tire her out, she abandoned her tower of translucent plastic, went outside and sat beneath the stars, leaving reports unwritten, footage unseen.

It was pleasantly cool and peaceful outside. That far from civilization there was no background noise to drone in her subconscious, no light pollution to block out the stars above. Zora sighed and leaned back against the wall. The concrete felt good against her back, radiating the heat it had stored throughout the day. Looking up at the stars, it occurred to her that the whole world was a prison in one sense or another. She could not free herself from the bonds of the earth for very long and she certainly could not survive in the cold reaches of space. Travel as she liked she would achieve nothing. Perhaps freedom itself was an illusion she mused whilst Orion hung overhead, the silent hunter forever trapped in the obsidian sky.

“What are you doing?” Johnny emerged from the night. His arrival did not startle her. He was always nearby. Always watching. At first it had weirded her out but now she was accustomed to it, though she still did not know if he was a guardian angel or a stalker or some combination of the two.

“Nothing. Just thinking.” She smiled at him, but there was no answering smile. His usually jovial expression was dulled by some heavy burden that made the corners of his mouth droop.

He stood in front of her, managing to loom. “You should be working. You've already missed three deadlines this week.”

She frowned at him. “Are you my supervisor now?”

“No, I'm your friend, and I don't want to see you sanctioned.”

A smirk sprang to her lips. “What? They won't let me trade oil with Russia?”

“Something like that.” He manged a weak smile “What's eating you so badly? Why aren't you doing your job? Do you want to get into trouble?”

Zora tried to gather her thoughts but there were too many and they kept slipping through her mental fingers. It took some effort to get close to what was bothering her. “Tex engineered everything with Savage to get me. To. Get. Me,” she emphasized the point by stubbing her finger into the seat. “Now he has me he doesn't even want me. He wastes my time with these stupid little assignments that aren't of any use to anyone. It's insulting, that's what it is.”

“You're starting to sound like a slighted woman,” Johnny observed. “Was there something between you two?”

“Between me and Tex? No,” Zora sneered. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you're whining like a little bitch.”

Zora looked at him wide eyed, then laughed from shock. “That's not nice.”

“At least it made you smile.” He smiled a little himself, though the expression failed to get anywhere near his eyes.

Her scowl returned in force. “And now Savage is missing. Again. All he does is go missing. And that's making Tex pissed, which is making him mean. You know he revoked my leave again?”