Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (26 page)
Read Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
“Come on.”
Ziva looked down to find Aroska sitting in the grass a couple of meters in front of her. The fact that she’d been too distracted to even notice him move made her shiver.
He patted the ground next to him then settled down on his back, folding his hands behind his head. “Sit down. Trust me when I tell you you’ll destroy your neck if you try to stand there the whole time.”
She moved forward and settled down beside him, keeping about a meter between them. He was right; leaning back was not only more comfortable, but it gave her a better view as well. The pillar of aeromids broke apart into several smaller clusters, each still composed of thousands of the bugs. Those clusters narrowed and stretched out into long lines that swirled around each other in a triple helix formation that supposedly helped the little creatures maneuver against the strong winds that sometimes came in off the river. They reminded Ziva of massive luminescent ribbons someone was twirling through the sky.
“This place has always been kind of a family secret. Soren and I used to come up here all the time when we were out here visiting our grandparents.”
A tingle ran down Ziva’s spine, immediately breaking the trance the light show had put her into, and she turned to look at him. He stared straight upward, with the light of the aeromids reflecting off of his face. There’d been something in his voice – a certain emphasis on his brother’s name – that told her he’d had ulterior motives for bringing her up here.
He was toying with her, beating her at the same head games she’d played with him since they’d met. First he’d forced her to face his family, and whether it had been his intention or not, she’d shown the very emotion she’d sworn she’d never let him see. Now here they were, sharing an experience he’d only ever shared with a man she’d killed. In a way, she couldn’t help but be proud; this was exactly the type of thing she’d do to him if she wanted information. But that pride quickly transformed into a sickening lump that settled in her stomach.
“Tell me about it,” he said. It was a simple statement rather than a demand.
“About what?” she snapped.
“You know.”
It was true – she did know. He spoke of Soren’s execution, the last thing she ever wanted to talk to him about. “Why now?”
She made a point of directing her gaze upward as she sensed him roll over and prop himself up on one elbow. The last thing she wanted was for him to see the regret that flashed across her face.
His voice was strained when he spoke. “When we first met, I was convinced you’d crawled straight out of hell. Trust me, there are times when I still wonder, but like I told you after Dakiti, I’ve now had several opportunities to see that there’s more to you than that.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she muttered through her teeth, attempting to single out a particular aeromid and track its movements. It was futile; the sight of the insects had completely lost its charm, but it was still better than having to look at Aroska.
“The way people have talked about it…‘You don’t know as much as you think you do.’ ‘You don’t know the half of it.’ I’m clearly missing something, but after spending over two years of my life wanting nothing more than to kill you, I was determined that part of me had to continue hating you. I didn’t want to be proven wrong again.” He leaned forward and nudged her shoulder, forcing her to give him her attention. “And don’t think you’re fooling anyone. Maston just thinks you’re a hardass, but I can tell how much being here is upsetting you. I want to know why. I just want to know the truth.”
Ziva wanted to yell, but her throat tightened and the only words that came out were a choked “please no.” She sat up in hopes of distancing herself a bit. He had already developed immunity to her manipulation tactics and had even gone so far as to turn them against her. Now with…with
this
, he was trying to break through her final defense.
Hang on a little longer. Don’t let him in.
You know it’s pointless to even try to fight anymore.
“You ruined my life, Ziva,” Aroska said. “And those people down there? The ones who invited you into their home and are relying on you to find their son? You ruined their lives, too. I just feel like I deserve an explanation.”
Ziva heaved a sigh. She fixed her gaze on one of the moonlit hills across the river and silently counted down from ten before turning to face him.
It was one of those days where the sun was hidden by thick clouds but its warmth still managed to reach the earth. When combined with the sticky summer humidity, the heat trapped under the cloud cover had turned the spaceport city of Noro into a massive sauna. Worse yet, there wasn’t even the slightest of breezes to get the stagnant air moving. Even with the window open, she was still sweating as she sat there assembling the rifle.
A noise drew her attention to the door. She held perfectly still for a moment, watching as a pair of shadows passed by outside. The majority of her jobs took place in old abandoned apartments and warehouses, so it was odd to be taking a shot from a building that was still in use. It was the headquarters of some obscure financial firm she’d never heard of. This particular block of offices was shut down as the ventilation system underwent some routine maintenance – another contribution to the room’s stifling temperature – but there were still the occasional passersby heading toward the employee lounge down the hall.
She’d made herself comfortable in the conference room, where she’d locked the door and dimmed the lights to her liking. Looking out with her naked eye, her target was nothing more than a bipedal speck moving across the open-air bridge that connected two buildings several blocks away. In fact, the only thing that told her it was actually him was the flashing yellow dot creeping across the geographic display on her viewscreen.
His name was Soren Tarbic, a young military engineer wanted for the murder of his superior officer and subsequent theft of classified documents. She’d only been assigned to him the previous evening – he really wasn’t even
her
target. The agent tasked with eliminating him had picked up a mission at the last minute and had asked her to take over. She didn’t particularly like being chosen as a Cleaner, especially because she too had a priority mission she needed to prep for, but if the man was a threat, he needed to be taken care of. She’d spent much of the night immersing herself in his file, learning all there was to learn about him and his case, and she was looking forward to getting this over with.
She finished piecing the rifle together and climbed up onto the long conference table, settling down on her stomach behind the scope. She paused a moment to study Tarbic’s relative position on the viewscreen before locating him with her sights. It appeared he had stopped at the outdoor café on the opposite end of the bridge, the destination he’d specified when he’d hailed a cab earlier. According to the original Cleaner’s intel, this was the first time he’d left his house since his hearing. When someone was wanted for murder, they tended to avoid going out in public. Logical.
The trouble was that nobody was quite sure whether he was really guilty. More accurately, he was guilty on some level but possibly not to the extent to which he had been charged. According to the file, his family members were his only grace period sponsors, and they’d been working feverishly for the past week trying to prove his innocence. Unfortunately, they hadn’t managed to scrape together enough evidence for a second trial. His father and oldest brother were both persons of interest in the case so anything they had to say was taken with a grain of salt anyway.
Today was the last day of his week-long grace period, and technically the deadline had been two hours ago. The Cleaners could take as long as they wanted to take out a target, though they weren’t known to wait more than a couple of days past the deadline. She took a moment to study him through the scope, watching as he sat there drumming his fingers on the café table. It was odd that he had chosen to come out in public today, considering he was now fair game to whichever Cleaner had been assigned to him. A guilty man would certainly have bolted by now, and the thought occurred to her that maybe he really was innocent. She checked the time, noting that she needed to be on a transport to Vellom in less than five hours. There wasn’t time to stick around and find out, and that wasn’t her job anyway.
She drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out through her nose, letting everything fade into the background except what she could see through the scope. A serving bot approached Tarbic and offered him a drink, which he promptly declined. It seemed he wasn’t there to enjoy a nice meal before his impending execution. Was he meeting someone? Things could get messy if he was. It was rare for a Cleaner to take a target down in a place as public as a restaurant, much less when there was someone else with them. She hated to rush but she dreaded to think about what would happen if someone decided to drop by.
The shot would be clean; there were no obstructions and there was little air traffic. HSP’s Cleaners used soft projectiles as their signature ammunition, a mark to show any uninformed investigators that the hit had been sanctioned. They were cheap and lightweight and did a good job of staying embedded in the targets’ bodies once they entered. On the off chance that the round passed through-and-through, a low decorative wall would keep it from traveling out into traffic and grazing an engine or another civilian.
It appeared Tarbic wouldn’t be going anywhere soon – he’d reluctantly started sipping at a glass of water the serving bot had brought him despite his refusals. It was time to make her move. A clean headshot would do nicely. Her round would enter through his right temporal lobe, severing his optic nerve before breaking up within his brain. His death would be painless, and the cleanup crew wouldn’t have much work to do.
Drawing in another deep breath, she placed the pad of her finger against the trigger and tightened the muscles in her hand. “
Tsufein sieda
,” she whispered. Find peace.
Movement on the edge of her sights caught her attention at the exact moment Tarbic looked up and smiled with relief. She immediately lifted her finger, shifting the scope over to study the person who had just arrived. It was another man, a relative judging by the amber-colored streak running down the center of his head. He was also armed with a typical HSP service weapon. This must be the middle brother. She couldn’t remember his name – something weird, started with an A.
Well, this was a fine mess. She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment before readjusting her sights. The brothers appeared to be caught up in heated conversation. Aroska – oh right, that was it – had handed Soren a data pad and was leaning forward in anticipation, and the younger man was reading over it with an uneasy look on his face. She guessed the device contained information regarding the case. Her files stated that Aroska had been benched by HSP for the duration of the investigation due to his relationship with the convict, which restricted him from even visiting his brother’s home. That explained the random meeting location and the urgency with which the two of them seemed to be interacting.
She growled under her breath, unhappy with this inconvenient turn of events, and looked down at the military tags lying on the table beside her rifle. They belonged to Soren; she’d taken them in the wee hours of the morning when she’d broken into his house to place a tracker on him. The majority of military officers wouldn’t be caught dead without their metal – she snorted at her own joke – but judging by the stench in his room and the bottle on the nightstand, he’d spent most of the night drinking himself into a dazed stupor pending the end of the grace period. She doubted their disappearance had even registered. She fingered the tags. Even in the heat of the room, the thin metal still felt cool against her skin. Specialist Soren Tarbic, age twenty-five – merely a year her junior – Sehale Engineering Unit. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d do with them; she imagined the family might like to have them someday, and then she kicked herself for being sentimental. There was work to do here.
She settled back down behind the scope and took another few seconds to study the two men sitting at the table. Aroska was watching his brother expectantly, and Soren was still studying the data pad, alternating between looks of relief and suspicion. She wondered what was so important about the information that the older brother would risk his career to share it. Unless she was mistaken, he could easily be tried for treason if he were caught. Reporting him was pointless though, considering Soren would be dead in a minute anyway. He was only trying to help his brother, and part of her regretted that Soren had to die in front of him. But that was his own fault – he knew good and well that a Cleaner could strike at any time. Besides, HSP was a big place. She doubted she would ever see him again.
It appeared the conversation was drawing to a close; this secret meeting, whatever it was for, hadn’t taken very long. The lieutenant had taken the data pad back and was leaning forward, saying something to which Soren was responding with sharp nods of agreement. She locked her sights on him, hoping desperately that he would remain seated for a few more seconds.
She saw the older brother stand up on the edge of the scope. She went rigid.
“Take it,” said a voice inside her head.
She pulled the trigger without another thought. Even with the suppressed barrel, the pop of the rifle discharging still seemed loud against the quiet of the room. She fixed her sights once more on the café table and took just a split second to stare at the cloud of red mist that drifted about in the place Soren had been sitting. As she pulled away, she caught sight of Aroska as he dove to the ground, trying to keep his head down and reach his dead brother. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out where the shot had originated.
The weapon was disassembled within a few seconds and laid neatly back into its compact carrying case. The table was wiped down quickly, cleared of any sweat and residue from the rifle, and the decorative centerpiece was put back in its place. She paused a moment at the door and surveyed the room – everything was still and quiet as if it had never been touched. It was time to move on, time to put this job behind her and focus on the next one. That was how it worked; one had to erase their presence in both a physical and mental sense.
She turned and slipped out the door, almost able to feel Lieutenant Tarbic’s frantic gaze as he searched the surrounding buildings for any sign of his brother’s killer. She locked the door and continued silently down the hall. In more ways than one, it was as if she had never been there.
