The Down Home Zombie Blues (27 page)

C
OMMANDER
J
ORIE
M
IKKALAH
, G
UARDIAN
F
ORCE
H
UNTER
S
TATUS
C7-1.

He saw the word
Sakanah
and recognized it as the name of her ship. Then there were lots of numbers that meant nothing and a couple of symbols that meant even less.

Zeke made some more notations on his pad, then left to find out if Suzanne was ready to give Tammy medical clearance.

“You see why we don’t work with nil-techs?” Jorie asked as Zeke’s footsteps faded.

“You worked with me.”

“You’re…” And she closed her eyes briefly. “Different. Special.”

He almost asked her to define
special
but didn’t want to get his hopes up that she meant something personal. It was safer to respond as a cop. “And that’s why you came looking for me?”

She sighed. “Unlike what Zeke Martinez believes, I did not come looking for you. I wanted my agent’s T-MOD, which you had. Had you relinquished it when you should have, we would not now be having this conversation.”

Okay, score one for Jorie Mikkalah. Yes, he had hoped to catch her off guard and get her to admit she’d targeted him. Listening to Zeke had opened that small, worrisome doubt. Illogical because he’d seen the zombies, the Tresh, her ship.

But he also saw himself starting to care very much about what happened to her, and not just because heat roared through his body when she did that head-tilt thing. It had moved beyond that—he didn’t know quite when and where, because the past two days were now becoming a serious blur.

Like all cops, he was trained to never become emotionally involved with an investigation—especially not with the subject of an investigation.

With Jorie Mikkalah, he’d broken that rule, big-time. And that scared him almost as much as being Baker-Acted to the psych ward.

It would be so much easier if Zeke was right and Jorie Mikkalah was some kind of foreign superspy with James Bond–like toys. He could arrest her, turn her over to FDLE, which would in turn send her off to the FBI. He could forget her. And they could deport her back to…the Chalvash System.

Except that not the FBI, the CIA, hell, not even NASA would know how to send her there.

Which was just as well. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her here, with him.

And that scared the hell out of Theo Petrakos even more.

Tamlynne should,
would
be fine. Jorie let that one worry drift away from her as Theo guided the white land vehicle—the Essuvee, she corrected herself—back to his structure. Her fears for her ship, for Captain Pietr, for Rordan, Trenat, Lorik, and everyone else plagued her. Maybe she should have asked Prow if the
Sakanah
had been destroyed. Not that she believed he’d have told her the truth, but perhaps she could have inferred something from his tone, the shift of his eyes. Then, at least, she’d know.

Not knowing was eating her up inside.

Once Tamlynne regained full consciousness—Jorie checked on her lieutenant with another glance over her shoulder at the rear seat—she might have some answers to a few of those questions. But up to this point, with the pain from the implant lacing through her body, Lieutenant Tamlynne Herryck had been able to provide little coherent information about the Tresh attack in Theo’s structure.

Jorie didn’t discount that the Tresh might have interfered with Tamlynne’s memory of their arrival and subsequent actions. She doubted Dr. Suzanne Martinez—as skilled as she was—would have any way of restoring that. Her tech, like most everything else on this ball of dirt, was rudimentary.

Peculiar world, this planet named for dirt. So many large gaps in technology. Yet some of the nils—the inhabitants—she’d met were so…special. Extraordinary.

She turned back to find Theo watching her, though in the vehicle’s dark interior she felt his gaze more than saw it. The vehicle was stopped, idling, because of the colored-light edict. Foolish and unnecessary, as there were no other vehicles in the immediate vicinity. She shifted in her seat, but Theo didn’t move his gaze. She couldn’t read his expression, but, oddly, what she felt more than saw pulled at her. Heat blossomed on her cheeks, and she was suddenly very aware of his presence mere minmeters from her. His strength. His warmth.

“Theo?” she asked softly, not wanting to wake Tamlynne. Suzanne Martinez had given her a medication to encourage a healing rest.

He said nothing for a moment, then shook his head and turned away. The vehicle moved forward again.

She shook off the sensation. She was stressed and tired. That was all.

When Theo pulled behind his structure, she already had her scanner out, verifying shield integrity before she temporarily disengaged it. No breaches. Whether any had been attempted she wouldn’t know until she went inside and checked her tech.

“I’ll take her,” Theo said, after Jorie had hopped out of her seat and was opening the rear door. He pushed that metal ring he always carried into her hand, then picked out a short object from the bunch. “To open the kitchen door.

“It’s a key,” he said, when she held it up in his back porch light to examine it.

“Ah.” She nodded.

“Key to my heart.” His tone was light, but his voice was soft.

Heart?
She knew he referred to his structure as a
house.
She shot him a puzzled glance and was about to ask for an explanation when he shrugged.

“Never mind. It’s…it’s just a joke.” He gathered Tamlynne’s limp form into his arms.

They’d reached Theo’s bedroom door when a possible problem occurred to Jorie. “I’ll need to work in there. And she needs someplace quiet to rest. Best I move my tech—”

“It would be better to open the sofa bed in the spare room. Let her stay there. That way I don’t have to bother her to access my stuff.”

“Sofa bed?”

Theo set Tamlynne down on his bed. “I’ll leave her here for now. Come with me.”

The sofa bed turned out to be a colorful couch with a bed folded within. Not unlike the recessed bunks on Kedrian troop ships but much nicer. Jorie ran her hand over the mattress, then helped Theo secure the sheets and blanket he’d pulled from a corridor closet.

She moved the broken remnants of the Guardian MOD-tech to the corner behind his exercise machine. Theo brought Tamlynne in.

“Nice, so nice,” her lieutenant murmured in Alarsh as she snuggled against the blanket. Jorie pulled off Tamlynne’s boots and loosened the top of her uniform. They would need clothes, clean clothes, soon. There was nowhere to get supplies. The ship…

She pushed it away.

“So nice,” Tamlynne whispered again.

Jorie sat on the edge of the mattress and brushed the curls off Tamlynne’s forehead. “Nap, Tam.” Whatever medicine Suzanne gave Tamlynne must be working. Her skin was less clammy.

Tamlynne sighed, her eyes slitting open for a moment. “Theo is…so nice.”

Theo? Yes, Theo. Even Tamlynne wasn’t immune to his very good face or his delicious grin, it seemed. Though it had been a while since Jorie’d seen the latter. “Yes, he is, Tam. Now nap. I’ll be in the next room, working.”

“You work too much. Sir.” Tamlynne smiled dreamily. “Theo likes you.”

“And you’re hallucinating.” Jorie smiled back.

“Do you…like him?”

Did she like Theo Petrakos? Her body heated in answer. “Of course.”

“A lot?”

“Yes, a lot,” she admitted, surprised by her own truthfulness. But less surprised at the reasons why she felt that way. Images of Theo handling her weapons with ease, firing on the zombies, escorting her all over his city without question, breathing life into a failing Tamlynne filled her mind. Yes, he had the Guardian implant in his shoulder, but she knew that wasn’t what motivated him. It wasn’t why he brought her glasses of precious water or showed her how to make peanut butter and bread meals. It wasn’t why he pushed himself as hard as she did.

There was an uncommon courage and dedication in him. It made her feel stronger just being with him.

“Good,” Tamlynne whispered. “I think you two—”

“Close your eyes and your mouth.” She tapped Tamlynne teasingly on the nose. “That’s an order, Lieutenant.”

“Sir. Yes…sir.” The last word was muffled as Tamlynne turned her face into the pillow.

Jorie smoothed the blanket around Tam, then got slowly to her feet. Tamlynne would be more herself by sunwake. And if the Tresh hadn’t tampered with her memories, she’d be able to provide answers as to Rordan and the
Sakanah.
She’d be functional, coherent, not babbling silliness about—

Theo. Standing just behind her, leaning against the edge of the doorway. He’d removed his security vest. His tight-fitting black shirt clung only too well to his broad shoulders and defined, only too well, the outlines of the muscles on his chest and arms.

Her breath caught, embarrassingly so. He was looking at her. She could see an intensity in his eyes that she’d only felt before in the darkened vehicle.

Had he heard…? But no, she and Tam had spoken only in Alarsh.

Hadn’t they?

“Everything okay?” His voice was a deep rumble.

“A good nap will help,” she said, moving away from the sofa bed. “I need to…” and she waved one hand in the direction of his structure where her tech still gathered data. But she couldn’t think of what he called that room or even how to describe what she needed to do. Because the way he was looking at her incinerated every sensible thought in her head.

Theo curled his fingers around her wrist and pulled her toward him. She went without resistance, as if she were a ship caught in a tow field. He stepped back into the corridor and she followed, his gentle pressure on her arm guiding her closer. Then he reached behind her and shut the door.

“Jorie.” His arm slid around her waist. The fingers holding her wrist raised her hand to his mouth. He brushed a lingering kiss across her palm. The incinerator in her brain unleashed a flash of heat that rushed down her body and flared between her thighs.

Trembling, she uncurled her fingers. She traced the rough line of his jaw, then her thumb found the softness of his lower lip.

He pulled her more tightly against him. He lowered his face but she was already raising hers, her mouth seeking his, not with the hard, desperate intensity of their earlier feigned kisses but more gently. Carefully. Something was happening, changing between them. It made no rational sense. She knew with the same, unerring clairvoyance that had kept her alive all these years that what she was doing was dangerous. Theo Petrakos was dangerous.

She didn’t care. But she would be careful.

His mouth brushed hers, the warmth of his breath flowing across her face. She answered with the smallest of kisses, the slightest meeting of tongues. She dropped her hand from his face and splayed her fingers against his chest. She could feel his heart beating rapidly.

It matched her own.

He rubbed his face against hers, his mouth touching her cheekbone, her jaw, and, as she angled her head, trailing down her neck. A soft heat, gentle and searing at the same time.

He took another step back, bringing her with him as he leaned against the wall. She went willingly. His hand at her waist pressed her to him, clothes and weapons—bulky—merging.

His light kisses were sheer torture, but she didn’t push, didn’t ask for more, because his restraint was as much of an aphrodisiac as his touch. A powerful man controlling his power.

A passionate man willing to take his time.

Her own desire teetered on the edge of exploding. It would be so easy to tear Theo’s clothes off and blank her mind, lose her worries in a hard, driving sexual encounter with this man whose body trembled under her fingers.

But that wasn’t what he was asking for. And it wasn’t what she wanted.

She was very aware that what he wanted and what she wanted might never come to pass. There were the Tresh and the zombies. There was a city about to be under siege. There was the very real problem of survival.

And if—
when
—the
Sakanah
returned, she would leave. It was her duty. Just as it was his duty to protect his city.

A low chuckle rumbled in his chest as he ran his hands up the length of her back, as if he too suddenly realized this was a desperate foolishness. His voice was a husky whisper in her ear. “You make me crazy,
agapi mou
.”

Jorie understood
crazy
—especially as it related to Theo Petrakos—only too well, though his other phrase was lost on her. She turned her face, brushing his mouth with hers, then moved away. His arms loosened around her, but he didn’t let go.

She sighed with more forcefulness than she wanted to and, when she looked at him, saw a sadness in his smile that echoed her own.

She touched his mouth with her fingers one more time. “We have work to do,” she told him.

He nodded, then draped one arm over her shoulders. She wrapped her arm around his waist and headed for his bedroom, where her blinking array of MOD-tech was now their only lifeline, their only hope.

18

Agapi mou.
My darling. My love. Theo knew the phrase because he’d been raised speaking Greek, but he’d never before said it to any woman out loud. Not through his high-school years, not through college or the police academy. He’d never said it to Camille.

To speak those words in the language he’d heard from infancy was too intimate. It exposed his heart.

Yet he didn’t give a damn that it had been only two days. He’d touched Jorie, kissed Jorie, argued with Jorie, and fought by her side. There was no doubt.
Agapi mou.

It was just another bit of damned irony that this was the worst possible time for him to feel that way.

He sat on the edge of his bed and watched her tap requests into the yellow-green screen, listened to her utter soft commands in Alarsh. It was almost one-thirty in the morning, officially Christmas. Children everywhere were snug in their beds, dreaming of Santa Claus and sugarplums or however the old poem went. Yet zombies and the Tresh were more likely to land on their roofs than eight tiny reindeer.

Helluva Christmas present.

Jorie stopped tapping at the screen and rubbed tiredly at her face.

“Anything I can help with?” he asked, because he felt so useless and because he wanted her to know she didn’t have to carry the burden alone.

She looked over her shoulder. “No, but thank you.” She went back to her computer with a soft sigh.

He stood, restless energy unsettling him. He wanted to stay awake in case she needed something, but to just sit there and listen to his mind think—and his heart break—was driving him crazy. Hurry up and wait had never been his strong point, which was why he liked detective work. He could always find something to do.

But here, too much had happened, and so much of it had been out of his control. He needed to refocus…yes. He grabbed his guitar case. Duty belt and weapons were carefully placed on his nightstand. Boots came off. He propped his pillow against the wrought-iron headboard and brought his guitar into his lap. The well-worn Brazilian rosewood was smooth and cool under his fingers—and very familiar. He dug out his slide, then picked aimlessly at a few strings until a blues refrain he’d been toying with came to mind. Zeke had been busting his butt for over a year now about his reclusive ways since his divorce.
You still singing
The Down Home Divorced Guy Blues? was Zeke’s constant taunt.

So Theo actually started writing the song. He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the sassy notes of the music, keeping time with one foot against the blanket. He hummed the melody softly—he was still working on the lyrics.

The tension leached from his neck and shoulders. He went through the refrain twice, then something made him open his eyes. He realized the room had grown quiet. He no longer heard Jorie’s voice or her tapping on the screen just on the edge of his hearing. That’s because she’d turned, her eyes wide in question.

Skata.
He should have asked if playing his guitar would bother her.

“Sorry. I’ll stop.” He shifted forward to put the guitar back in its case.

“No. That’s blissful.” A small smile played across her lips.

“I don’t want to disturb what you’re doing.”

“I’ve done all I can for now,” she said, and rubbed her hand over her face again. “Until the zombies take a new action, I can only watch and wait.”

“And the Tresh?”

“I’m no threat to them until the zombies wake again,” she continued. “And since they know more than I do about the
Sakanah,
they may not consider me a threat at all.”

Theo could hear the strain in her voice at the mention of her ship. He wished he had answers for her, but that too was out of his control.

She motioned to his guitar. “Please. It sounds so nice. And I need something else to think about for a little while.”

Was that why she let him kiss her? Was that part of the playacting they’d started—
he’d
started—earlier? And he had started it, he admitted ruefully.

But somehow, no, he didn’t think she was toying with him. And he hoped it wasn’t only his male ego making that claim.

He glanced at his watch: two-ten. He pulled another pillow against the headboard, then patted the mattress. “Come, sit with me.”

It would be temptation, Jorie next to him on his bed. But playing his guitar would keep his hands occupied. Because after what had happened in the hallway, he knew if he touched her again, he wouldn’t be able to stop.

She pulled off her boots, then climbed across his bed on all fours, looking almost childlike, an impish smile on her face. She settled next to him and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.

He found himself playing Traveling Ed Teja’s “Blue Light,” because it was soft but upbeat at the same time. Somewhere in the middle of the song, Jorie’s head came to rest on his shoulder. He smiled to himself and kept playing, going through the song a second time, then segued into Teja’s “Blue Dime.”

He plucked the last few notes softly. She’d curled up against him, her knees resting against his thigh.

He put his guitar and case carefully on the floor, tucked the G-1 under his pillow, then turned off his bedside lamp and drew her into his arms. She murmured something unintelligible. He smoothed her hair back from her face and she settled into slumber again.

Theo listened to her breathing, the muted clicking of her computer, and the rustle of the night breeze through the fronds of the palm trees outside.

It was Christmas, and somewhere, sweet voices were singing,
Silent night, holy night…

While all of unholy hell waited just beyond his door.

Jorie woke to a dim, shadowed room and a man’s arm draped over her waist. She recognized the intermittent
click-whir
of her tech and saw the green glow of a nil-tech timekeeper on the wrist lying across her forearm.

Theo. His breath ruffled her hair. Everything he was tugged at her heart.

She glanced at his wrist again—she knew how to interpret the symbols to this locale—and then at the pale light filtering through the covered viewports. It was just before sunwake. She—they—had been asleep for a little more than four sweeps. Hours, she corrected.

With no emergencies, no Tresh transporting in, no zombies crashing past—bliss, that.

She slipped out from under his arm.

“Jorie?” His voice was thick with sleep.

She thought of the last few times she’d slipped out of a man’s embrace in bed. She hadn’t heard her name whispered, but another female’s. She touched her finger to his lips. “I’ll look in on Tam and be back.”

She would. She desperately needed rest, and if the zombies were in an inactive phase—she checked her readouts as she padded by, and they were—then she wouldn’t look a gift fermarl in the ears. She needed all her strength for when the next spur hit.

Her scanner showed Tamlynne to be resting comfortably, her shoulder healing with only a little swelling. But some of the clamminess had returned to her skin. Jorie remembered that well. The nightmares she knew so intimately weren’t over for her lieutenant yet. The implant’s removal only halted further damage. Suzanne Martinez had no way to correct what had already been done.

The med-techs on the
Sakanah
could help, she thought, as she slipped back into Theo’s bedroom. But her ship wasn’t here.

She sat slowly down on the edge of the bed, not wanting to wake him. She was fully capable, as her brother often reminded her, of worrying enough for the both of them.

Galin. How long before a Guardian officer delivered the news of the destruction of the
Sakanah
and the death of his sister? Just after he’d learned of the loss of his longtime friend? It wasn’t that Galin wasn’t strong—he was. It pained her that she would be the cause of such suffering….

“Hey.”

Theo’s arms went around her and Theo’s warmth encompassed her as he sat behind her on the bed. And only then did Jorie realize she was shivering, her breath coming out in small hiccuping gasps. Hell’s wrath. Would the damage the implant caused never grant her peace? Or had seeing Prow and Sem reawakened old horrors?

“Hey,” he said again, his voice a low rumble. He drew her back against him. “Come here.”

She turned in his embrace and let him lower her to the bed, fitting herself tightly against him. She couldn’t stop shaking.

“Is Tammy okay?”

She nodded under his chin. “Fine.”

“What is it,
agapi mou
?”

“Nothing.” She buried her face into his shirt and bit her lip to try to refocus her body’s reaction. It didn’t work. “It’ll pass.”

Strong hands massaged their way up her spine and down again.

“You’ve had a very stressful few days,” he said.

“Yes.” But she’d had worse. She should be able to handle this. That too made her weary.

He worked the muscles on the back of her shoulders with a gentle pressure. She sucked in a series of long breaths, tried to focus on the sound of Theo’s heartbeat. Focus on the fact that Cordo Sem was dead. Davin Prow, she thought, might have been wounded. There was something about that encounter she felt she was missing, but she couldn’t bring it to mind now. The last thing she wanted to see in her head was Prow.

Slowly, the knife-edged insanity that wore a Tresh Devastator’s face slipped back into the depths of her mind where it belonged. Thankfully she’d only gotten the shakes and not awakened screaming from a nightmare. She felt limp, a little boneless. Theo’s fingers slowed.

“Better?”

“Thank you.” She pulled her face off his chest with a sigh, then rolled away from him, onto her back.

He leaned over her, his lips touching hers with a light kiss, then pulled back. “You’re welcome.”

He propped himself up on one elbow and watched her. “You want to tell me now what happened?” he asked after a long moment of silence, during which she was far too aware of the heat of him next to her.

She laid her fingers on the edge of her sweater near her collarbone. “Bad memories.”

“The implant the Tresh put in you.”

“Yes. Ten years past.”

He folded his hand over hers. “How long before it was removed?”

“Forty-four of your days.”

He uttered an unfamiliar series of harsh words. “But you still remember the pain.”

“It has nothing to do with remembering. The Tresh device is insidious,” she continued. “You know that word?”

“It causes collateral damage.”

“Even Tamlynne, with the few sweeps it was in her body, will have resultant issues. It’s good, then,” and Jorie realized it was, “that I’m here. She may have small episodes, and I can help her work them through.”

He was nodding but frowning slightly. She thought she knew why. “Guardian restrainer implants are noninvasive. Not like the Tresh one. There’s no neural interface.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “So mine just gives me a zap if I piss you off.”

She owed him the truth. “Yours does nothing. I neutralized it.”

His eyes widened. “When?”

“When I did my funny stuff.” She gave him a small smile. She liked that phrase he used. It was so very much Theo. “Before we went to capture the juvenile zombie at your park. Kip Rordan…” She forced from her mind the question of whether he was dead or alive. “I was worried he had some issues with you.”

“You mean an intense mutual dislike?”

“He had the command codes when I wasn’t here. And his understanding of the mission, his goals, were different than mine.” She sighed, her mind coming back to the one fact she couldn’t push away. “If they’d only listened—”

“Hey.” He kissed her lightly. “You can’t change the past. Let it go, Jorie. All you can do is what’s here and now.”

“But—”

“I know. Believe me, I
know.
When you beamed me up to your ship, I thought I’d lost everything, everyone. I reacted stupidly, getting angry, going over all the mistakes I’d made that brought me there instead of thinking and looking at what I had where I was. What I could work with. What I could do.”

She remembered his bursts of temper and his subsequent, not always successful, attempts at self-control.