Enemy Games (17 page)

Tahem chuckled.

She blew out a short puff of breath. The man was distracting them. Both of them. She scowled at Tahem.

“You have a crystal specimen you sent the Claugh to find. You have information about my father. Yet rather than tell us what’s going on, you’re diverting me with the past and with hints about Damen’s changing biology. You’re wasting time. Why?”

Tahem’s grin was beatific. “Because, dear girl. Omorle trusted you with the one thing he never gave me, a trip into one of his missions. He could never love you in a romantic sense. I knew that. But he gave you a part of himself he refused to give me. Did you know how he adored you? He was your damned bodyguard and he fancied himself your surrogate father. Idiot.

“Yes, I’m stalling, keeping you here to no purpose because it is a wasted day that brings no profit. I sold you out.”

S
ENSING the hurt underpinning the spite in Tahem’s voice, Jayleia swore.

Damen growled.

She shoved Tahem’s chair away, leaped to her feet, and charged across the room.

The door burst open. She skidded to a halt, hands shoulder height, and stared up the barrels of a trio of laser pistols.

“Hold it! Hands where I can see them!” a gruff male voice barked. The lead pistol barrel gestured at Damen. “Get up. Nice and easy.”

Looked like Tahem had overcome his crush on Damen.

“Nothing personal, sweetheart,” Tahem said. “Don’t waste your anger on me.”

Breath coming in short, angry gusts, Jay glanced at Tahem. What had he seen to make him use that specific phrase? Not “don’t be mad.” Not “anger is useless.”

Tahem’s words suggested that she should, in fact, nurse her rage and, that if applied correctly, it might change the game in her favor.

She’d loved him once. She’d thought he’d cared about her.

“When Omorle claimed he couldn’t keep time to save his life,” she said, choking on the acrid taste of his betrayal, “you taught me to dance.”

Tahem pinned her with a stare, the masks gone, the petulance erased as if it had never existed.

Jayleia wondered how much she really knew about her beloved bodyguard’s partner.

“I will again, sweetheart,” he said. “Don’t let the past get in the way of what you could become.”

That was a coded message, if ever she’d heard one. How many games was Tahem playing, and where did she and Damen fit in?

Above all, what was it supposed to mean?

Damen, wary and deliberate, stepped in beside her, his hands up, mirroring hers.

“Search ’em,” the gruff-voiced security guard ordered.

“Get out,” Tahem ordered, turning his chair to face the computer screens.

The bulky guard stretched thick lips into a placating grin. “You got your cut. Let us handle . . .”

“Get out!” Tahem bellowed.

The guard’s com badge beeped. Growling, the guard gestured them out the door.

“All right, all right,” he snarled. “You heard him. Out.”

Three guards, two male, one female. The leader, the one Jayleia thought of as “Thick-lips,” showed signs of wanting to show off. The woman with close-cropped, pale orange hair, looked half amused, half bored. The greatest danger, Jay judged, was the youngest guard. The thin, dark-haired man looked as jittery as he did watchful. He’d be unpredictable.

“How about we take our time getting back to lock up?” Thick-lips said, leering. “I’ll find me a quiet spot hereabouts so this pretty, little gal can resist arrest.”

Rage gathered in her chest, scorching her from the inside out, setting her senses to high alert.

“Nah,” the woman drawled. “She’s gonna be put up for merc auction.”

“Mercenaries won’t care about her condition,” the man retorted.

“Orders are clear,” the youngest guard piped, his voice high and reedy for an older adolescent male. “Someone’s saving her for something special.”

With her body systems ramping to overdrive, Jay imagined she felt the subtle uptick in Damen’s body heat beside her. She heard the sharp intake of his breath. Anger? She hoped so.

“Got no orders on pretty boy, though.” The thick-lipped guard sneered.

The youngest sniggered. “He’ll get sold to the sex trade again. Want to have fun with him, go ahead. Didn’t think he was your type. He’ll fight back.”

Jayleia stopped dead. Her heart and mind froze in horror as the words replayed over and over in her head “sold to the sex trade
again
.”

Fury and pain burst into flame within her. She could hardly draw breath.

“Hey.” The bulky guard behind her pushed her right shoulder.

She remained still.

A few paces ahead, Damen and the young man at his back hesitated, and then turned to look.

The woman trailed them, caught halfway between Jayleia and the young guard.

Jay met Damen’s gaze knowing she couldn’t communicate her ire or her intent.

His gray eyes widened. His lips thinned.

Maybe she could.

“Move it!” her guard growled. The edge of increased effort in his voice alerted her to another, more forceful shove. Observation and his own words suggested he’d enjoy sending her sprawling.

Years of training gripped her. She sidestepped his blow, grabbed the arm and shoulder that passed her when he missed, and using his already off-balance body weight against him, Jayleia slammed the guard chest-first into the wall.

The impact knocked his breath out of him in an audible
whoosh
. His face hit. Blood erupted from his broken nose.

He rebounded.

She did not release him. Jay turned so that his semiconscious, stillon-remote-control body stood between her and his companions. The woman took a step toward them before she thought better of it and drew her gun.

Her indecision gave Jayleia all the time in the world. Driving her victim with the last remnants of momentum, she planted him in the woman’s arms. She had to shoot him, sidestep him, or catch him. In the heat of the moment, Jay saw panic spike in the guard’s brown eyes.

She tried to catch her coworker with one arm and angle her weapon around for a shot.

A well-placed kick to the back of the man’s left knee bore both guards to the floor. Jay pounced, stomping on the woman’s gun hand, sending the weapon skittering down the corridor and wringing a muffled cry of pain from her.

Damen roared a warning.

Jayleia dropped to the floor. A bolt of light and heat sizzled over her head. Rolling away from the two bodies on the floor, she bounded to her feet and, already sprinting for him, shot a glance at Damen’s young guard.

The kid dangled several centimeters from the floor.

Damen held him aloft, one fist wrapped around the wrist of the boy’s gun hand. Growling, Damen cocked back and knocked him senseless. He plucked the gun from the kid’s limp hand and tossed him aside.

Jayleia heard the telltale beep of a com badge activate.

The woman.

“Prisoners,” the woman gasped, her voice tinged with pain and effort, “escap—”

Jayleia shoved the unconscious guard off the woman, yanked the com badge from the guard’s uniform and pulled the woman to sitting.

The guard stared past Jayleia, blanching.

Damen moved in beside Jay, pistol in hand. He pulled the trigger.

The woman collapsed.

The muted whine of the weapon registered after the fact. Jay nodded.

He’d stunned the guard, not killed.

Wishing for access to an airlock port, Jay glanced at the com badge in her hand. She settled for a trash chute.

“Catch me if you can,” she growled at the still-transmitting badge, before lobbing it into the garbage.

Damen joined her and held out a pistol. “Take it.”

“No.” She strode down the vacant corridor, aware they had precious little time to clear the area before backup arrived. The lack of gawkers fired her instincts and she began cataloging escape routes and lines of possible attack.

“Jay, you’ll need it,” Damen persisted. “Take the gun.”

“I can’t shoot,” she confessed, glancing at him as he kept pace beside her.

His brow furrowed. “Temple dictate?”

She flushed. “No. I mean I can’t hit the broad side of the
Sen Ekir
standing ten paces from it.”

That earned a surprised grin from him. “Do you know how to use a gun?”

“Do you imagine I could live and work with Ari for six years and not?” she retorted, flashing him an annoyed look.

His grin deepened. “Then take it. No one else needs to know you’d empty the cartridge before you hit something important.”

She accepted the weapon. “I’d be more effective using it as a club.”

Stifling a laugh, he turned eyes dancing with mirth upon her. “You were damned efficient empty-handed. I thought you’d given up Temple training.”

“I tried.”

“What happened?”

“My family,” she said, shaking off the bitter memory of her expulsion. “They rallied to convince me that staying in top physical condition would augment my performance and endurance for fieldwork. Masterful piece of familial love and manipulation. The galling part is they were right.”

“Families are the same across cultures, then,” he noted, still grinning. “Mine . . .”

“Twelve Gods, Damen, no they aren’t.” A chill crawled into her gut. “Your family sold you into slavery.”

“My mother,” he corrected.

She blinked at his matter-of-fact tone. “That’s family.”

“No.”

“What?” She stopped dead in the middle of the corridor.

“Tahem is my family. The people I’ve recruited and trained, they’re family,” he said, taking her elbow and tugging her alongside him. “Admiral Seaghdh, since he recruited and trained me.”

“What do you call blood relations, then?”

“Kin. Or blood.”

“And you maintain no bond, no ties of loyalty to your kin? Or they to you?” she marveled.

“You do?” he asked, the glance he flicked her keen with interest.

“Definitely. Among my people, your mother would go to prison for selling you, especially into the sex trade. It’s such a gross betrayal . . .”

He started. “Betrayal? Those who don’t work the trade are pitied and ridiculed.”

The defensive tone in his voice bumped her out of her gathering sense of injustice. She peered at his unsettled expression. “How old were you?”

“Eleven.” The lines of trouble around his mouth deepened when all she managed was a squeal of rage in response. “We reach sexual maturity faster than most species. The sex trade is a practical solution to the problem of having adolescents at home with infants.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Of course. The female of most predatory species can only provide for one or two infants at a time. Your people drive away the adolescents in order to safely breed again. The adolescents band together for mutual protection.”

From a biological standpoint, it made sense, but the image of eleven-year-old Damen, his world sundered and his heart savaged, made her blood run cold.

She felt Damen’s searching gaze on her and met his eye. His smile looked pained.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“For what?”

He shrugged. “No one’s ever understood before.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I’m taking refuge in science to pretend that the thought of you abandoned as a child doesn’t shred my heart.”

His grip on her elbow tightened and he looked unsettled, as if he didn’t know how to handle the fact that she hurt on his behalf.

“Why did you leave your training and your family? Will you tell me? The real reason?”

Shame scalded the inside of her skin. Jayleia opened her mouth, but could find no words to give him.

People stepped into the corridor.

She saw the guns first, yanked out of Damen’s grasp, and reached for her weapon.

Damen swore.