Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (31 page)
Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
The girl nodded and raised an eyebrow, making a half-hearted effort to sit up. “Ziva Payvan?”
Startled, Ziva offered her the kytara and helped her get to her feet.
“We need to talk,” they said simultaneously.
In the fifteen years he’d spent as director of HSP, Emeri Arion had never felt less in control of his agency. He shut the office door as quickly as he could, taking a moment to revel in the darkness and silence of the room. It seemed as though thinking things would return to normal once Ziva was gone had been a mistake – now everything was falling apart faster than he could put it back together.
The first issue was what had transpired at the Royal Guard office two nights earlier, the event that had perhaps sparked all of this madness. The four dead men found on the premises were confirmed to be ex-military, but why they’d been there and who had shot them remained a mystery. On top of that, secure files had been compromised and Agent Shevin and his family were now missing. Emeri had spent a good portion of the morning on comm with SSA Luko Zona trying to sort everything out.
It seemed that Zona had been in contact with Captain Dasaro, who had apparently formed the theory that this missing agent was responsible for all the chaos at RG headquarters. After hearing Zona’s account of the situation, it certainly seemed as though that were the case, though Emeri had never gotten the impression Shevin was capable of such things.
Eager to hear the captain’s theory for himself, Emeri had sought Dasaro out only to find that he and the other two agents assigned to him had disappeared entirely. According to Zona, it had been at least a day and a half since they’d spoken, and since then there was no record that he or Captains Venn and Hoxie had been present at HSP headquarters at all. At first it hadn’t registered to Emeri that anything was wrong, though he’d found it rather strange that Dasaro would sever communication with the RG office after keeping in such close touch with Zona. But now, after close to thirty-six hours and not a word from any of the captains, it was clear that something was amiss. Upon further investigation, it appeared Lieutenant Tarbic was gone too. That made a total of five agents missing, all gone for indefinite amounts of time and without even the slightest attempts at communication.
Sighing, Emeri played with the control panel beside the door and illuminated the office before crossing to his desk and slumping down in his chair. It was only mid-afternoon, but the realization that everything was out of his control exhausted him. He summoned enough energy to reach down and retrieve a glass and a bottle of liquor from one of the desk drawers, the same one he had drank from two months earlier as he’d pardoned Ziva’s life.
Oh, Ziva. He’d meant it with all his heart when he’d said he didn’t like the way things had turned out, though there had really been no other reasonable punishment for the crime she’d committed. Zona had brought up some interesting points during their conversation, however – it sounded as if there was some question as to whether or not Ziva was even guilty. It turned out most of these ideas had originated from Agent Shevin, who had turned himself into a bit of a person of interest in the case according to Dasaro. Nonetheless, with all the unexplained occurrences and questions being raised as of late, Emeri felt compelled to go back and take a second look at things despite the fact that all the initial dust had finally settled.
There were a number of concerns that had manifested themselves since he’d begun to dig deeper. Perhaps the biggest was that he’d been unable to find Ziva’s body when he’d gone to have it properly buried. The team he’d sent to Haphor had found nothing, and they’d reported signs that something – most likely a machine – had been poking around near the pyre on which she’d supposedly been burned. Taking into consideration the newly-formed relationship between Ziva and Lieutenant Tarbic, it wouldn’t have surprised Emeri if he had elected to give her a more formal burial elsewhere rather than follow Dasaro’s orders. The fact that the lieutenant wasn’t around to confirm was what had him worried.
Emeri downed his glass and poured himself another before returning the bottle to the drawer and finding a more comfortable position in his chair. There were other smaller details that plagued him as well, things that didn’t fit with anyone’s story and made him unsure about the things they already knew. The hoverbike pilot who had been discovered in the forest, missing his suit…the missing footage from the RG’s security cams from the night of the break-in. An RG groundcar, stolen that same night, had been recovered at the Noro spaceport, its supplies and weapons cache stripped clean. The only thing that comforted him was the fact that nobody else had a clue what was going on, either.
The team he’d sent to investigate the pyre hadn’t had much to say, but Emeri had had them detained anyway just to be on the safe side. The last thing he needed right now was to have rumors spreading around about things he didn’t know enough about to fix. In the event that Ziva was somehow still alive – the thought seemed preposterous – he thought it best to keep quiet about it. Maybe she really was innocent and he was doing it to protect her, or maybe he dreaded to think of the bad name HSP would have when the world realized it had failed to contain her. He just wasn’t sure.
Did this – oh, what did they call it –
Nostia
give her some uncanny ability to survive a gunshot? Emeri had agonized over whether or not to go public with her secret. In the end he had decided against it, fearful that he would get in as much trouble for hiding knowledge of her power as she would for wielding it. Once she was gone, it was like a massive burden had been lifted from his shoulders, but now that he was so uncertain about things, he found himself once again trying to decide whether or not to reveal what he knew.
Other than being entirely uncomfortable being around anyone who could exercise such power, Emeri wasn’t exactly sure what all the fuss was about. After the Federation had retaliated against the Resistance and outlawed the use of nostium close to twenty-three years earlier, the Haphezian government had followed suit and threatened to execute all Nosti for fear of attracting a Federation presence. Emeri was by no means interested in starting a revival or some such thing – few Nosti had ever occupied Haphez as it was – but he didn’t see how one person who had been careful not to reveal her secret could possibly be an issue. It was yet another reason he had chosen to keep his mouth shut about Ziva, and why he now decided there still wasn’t much point in bringing it up again.
The silence of his office was suddenly shattered when his comm system came alive. He barely caught one of his secretaries announcing he had visitors before the door burst open and in walked Skeet Duvo and Zinni Vax, looking sleep-deprived but more driven than he’d seen them in a long time. It was a vast improvement from the two sorry people he remembered from two days earlier.
Emeri hardly had time to open his mouth before they were upon him, looming over his desk with determination in their eyes. “We need to talk, sir,” Skeet said.
Somehow Emeri knew this was about Ziva and the investigation, and of all people, they were the ones he felt the most comfortable discussing such matters with. He motioned for them to be seated in the chairs opposite him and used his desk’s control panel to lock the door and tint the windows.
“Believe it or not, you’re just the people I wanted to see,” he said, “but let’s hear your story first.”
It took the two of them a moment to get going, and when they did it was slow and methodical, almost as if they’d been rehearsing what they were going to say. Each of them took turns filling him in on progressively important details, a technique most agents used as they decided whether or not they could trust their audience. He learned they had been in contact with Veya Shevin, the missing wife of Kade Shevin, though they refrained from specifying where. He learned of their suspicions about Dasaro and how they’d started keeping tabs on him until he and the other two captains had disappeared unexpectedly. Most importantly, he learned that the bird was still in flight, a message that supposedly could have only been passed on by Ziva herself.
Emeri leaned forward, looking them each squarely in the eyes before speaking. “Are you
sure
?”
Skeet and Zinni glanced at each other and shrugged as if there had been no point in even asking. “There just doesn’t seem to be any other explanation,” Skeet replied. “The details don’t make any sense. I mean, unless Ziva somehow reached out from the grave, there’s no way Veya Shevin could have been familiar with that phrase.”
“You said Lieutenant Tarbic knew it,” Emeri put forth. That brought a moment of silence as the three of them contemplated that idea. It was true that Tarbic had been in league with Dasaro and could have somehow passed on the message, but it was also clear that in order to do so he would have had to be in contact with Ziva somewhere along the way – other than when he’d shot her, of course. Judging by Aroska’s actions right there in the office two months before, he didn’t strike Emeri as someone who would go through the trouble of betraying Ziva’s colleagues after she was dead, even if he
had
been working with Dasaro.
It was a while before either Skeet or Zinni spoke. Their silence gave Emeri the impression that perhaps they had already considered Tarbic’s involvement and had concluded that he was still on their side.
“I just don’t feel like he would do that,” Zinni said, “not after making a point of coming to us the way he did.”
“People can be devious, Officer Vax,” Emeri said, more of an idea to keep in mind than an actual suggestion.
“Think of it this way,” she continued. “Ziva’s always right – you know that as well as anyone. She
told
Aroska to shoot her, and maybe it was for a reason. Maybe she had a plan.”
“We reviewed the footage,” Skeet said. “If you look at the placement of his shots and the way Ziva fell down that riverbank, it’s possible that she’s still alive, that the two of them staged it all. And if they did, they did a hell of a job.”
“And wherever she is, she’s probably injured,” Zinni added.
“Do you think she would trust him enough to do something like that, given their history?” Emeri asked.
Skeet shrugged. “I think something happened between them. I’m not sure what it was, but I think he’s one of the only people she
can
trust right now.”
Emeri paused and rubbed a hand over his face. Now he was convinced that there was more going on than met the eye. The players: Ziva, Dasaro, and the rest of his missing agents. Maybe Ziva was innocent and Dasaro was hunting her for some reason they had yet to discover. Maybe she was guilty and he was simply tracking her down like he’d been trained to. Either way, there were far too many secrets being kept and too many unanswered questions for Emeri’s taste.
“I want you two to bring Special Agent Luko Zona on board,” he said. “Tell him everything you just told me. Between the four of us, we just might be able to get this mess cleared up.”
Kat Reilly took a moment to study the three people she’d just brought into her garage. They were quite the motley crew, bruised, beaten, and exhausted. Two men and a woman, two ops agents and an RG officer; it seemed there were a hundred ways to look at it. Ziva Payvan in the flesh – Kat still couldn’t believe it, especially since she was supposed to be dead. Aroska Tarbic was quite the looker, strong and handsome, but he seemed fidgety and his mind was obviously elsewhere. Then there was the third member of their party, Kade Shevin, whom they had picked up on the way back to her place.
They’d managed to fit both her car and theirs into the small shop – parking anything on the tiny landing pad outside was bound to raise questions they didn’t need. The space where she lived was one of several former mechanical shops belonging to a company that had gone bankrupt years before. Since no one else had bought the corporation after it died out, this property and others like it remained unclaimed and untouched. Up until now, no one else knew she resided there – she had a separate legitimate address where packages could be delivered and messages could be left, if necessary.
This downstairs area served as a garage, living room, and workspace, furnished with shelves of tools, a workbench, a ratty sofa, and an old heating panel that glowed a soft orange. A large overhead door and a man door separated them from the landing pad and tiny balcony outside. Upstairs was the little lavatory and the two office spaces she had converted into a crude kitchen and sleeping quarters.
Kat placed her helmet on the car’s hood and took another moment to study her three visitors. “So Bosco sent you, we’ve established that much. But that still doesn’t really explain what you’re doing here.”
“He said you’d be able to help us,” Aroska said.
How two veteran agents and a respectable RG officer expected her to help them, Kat had no idea. By now, she’d heard each of their names on the intragalactic news networks – Ziva’s, mostly – enough times to deduce that they were in some sort of trouble, but she couldn’t fathom why Bosco would have referred them to her rather than just taking care of them himself.
“Oh he did, did he?”
“Have you ever heard the name Diago Dasaro?” Ziva asked. She went on to explain the basics of their predicament: how she had escaped HSP custody, how she’d sought Aroska out, how she’d had to go back to get Kade before the three of them made it off the planet. Much of this Kat already knew from news at the embassy, but hearing the story from Ziva’s perspective helped fill the numerous gaps the reporters and HSP had left.
“So you’re telling me you
didn’t
kill the Royal Officer,” Kat said. She’d had a hard time believing Ziva was guilty from the beginning – based on her own investigative experience, everything had seemed too clean cut in terms of the investigation and much too sloppy on the part of a professional like Ziva.
“That’s right. This is all a set-up and we’re reasonably sure Dasaro is behind it.”
“I think I believe you,” Kat said, perching on the edge of the car beside her helmet. “The main reason is I’m pretty sure Dasaro is dirty too.”
None of them said anything for a moment, but the reaction she’d provoked was clear. Ziva began moving slowly toward her, arms crossed, drilling into her with those intense crimson eyes. She finally paused about two meters away, and Kat’s focus shifted to her scar and bruised face.
“What do you know?” she growled.
There weren’t many things that made Kat squirm, but she found that Ziva was one of them. “It turns out I’ve been looking for you just as much as you’ve been looking for me,” she replied, doing her best to hold her ground. “You’ve got quite the reputation, and I figured you’d be the best person to help me with a little problem of my own. When I saw you in Endion I couldn’t believe it – I wasn’t sure if my message had even gotten through, and once you were arrested I didn’t think—” She stopped when she noticed the look on Ziva’s face.
“What message?” the woman asked.
Kat hesitated. “I thought maybe that was why you came to Chaiavis in the first…. Forget it. I contacted HSP several days ago, the morning you were taken into custody, hoping to talk to you. I spoke to someone else – Vax, I think her name was, and I disconnected after she transferred me to someone in records. Of all people, I figured you’d be able to find me even with so little information.”
It was a relief to see Ziva’s expression soften somewhat. “Well, I’m here now,” she said. “What does Dasaro have to do with any of this?”
“I’ve been doing some research of my own over the past few years,” Kat replied. “His name has come up a couple of times in conjunction with other information I’ve found, though it’s never been enough to pin anything on him. That’s where I hoped you’d come in.”
“What kind of research are we talking about?” Ziva asked.
“It has to do with the mining operations in Argall. That’s where I came from, I guess. I’d been trying to—” Once again, Kat paused when she saw the thoughtful look on Ziva’s face. “What?”
Rather than respond, Ziva turned to face the two men. “Argall came up during my search as well. It was only once and
it didn’t make much sense, but—” she returned her attention to Kat “—if we pool our resources, we may yet be able to make some sense of all of this. Give us a few minutes to get settled, and then I think we need to have a long chat.”
