Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (27 page)

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Hillside

Outskirts of Salex, Haphez

Aroska remained in his place on the ground, too numb to move as her story sunk in. He wasn’t sure when during the narration Ziva had stood up, but she paced back and forth a couple of meters away, looking at anything but him. One of the things that had always bothered him the most about Soren’s death was the fact that Ziva had killed him while the two of them were sitting there together. In his mind, anyone who killed a person in front of his family – regardless of the circumstances – was a monster. Part of him still felt that way, but the sudden dump of new information was making it hard for him to sort out his thoughts. And based on what little he could see of her face, she was on the verge of tears. Monsters didn’t show remorse.

“It was an accident,” he murmured, almost not wanting to say the words. He’d been right; there was more to the story than he’d ever realized, and the truth made him feel sorry for Ziva, just as he’d feared.

“Think of it however you want,” she said. “I was left out of the loop. I didn’t get the memo. HSP received the data you sent in. You weren’t even supposed to be part of the investigation, and you’d already missed the deadline for a trial, but they accepted it and called off the Cleaner, at least until the evidence could be studied more closely.” She hesitated. “But they sent the order to the wrong person, the agent who was supposed to take the shot.”

“She wasn’t even supposed to be there,” Aroska whispered, repeating what he’d heard Emeri say on comm that day. At the time, he’d assumed that meant Ziva was some sort of sadist who took pleasure in defying orders. The reality didn’t by any means condone Soren’s death, but now he felt as though a certain weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

“I called it in,” Ziva continued, “and when HSP had no idea what I was talking about, I knew something was wrong. I’d just assumed the other agent had briefed them on the task delegation, and maybe it’s my fault for not double checking. You know, I was probably in Emeri’s office when you came to the door.” She finally turned around, and in the light cast by the aeromids, he saw that by some miracle she’d managed to keep the tears at bay.

For the next couple of minutes, all Aroska could do was sit there with his elbows resting on his knees, head resting in his hands. He wasn’t sure whether to be angry, sad, sorry, or just confused. Angry that someone somewhere had made a mistake big enough to result in the loss of innocent life. Sad that Soren was still gone. Sorry he’d jumped to conclusions before trying harder to learn the whole story, and sorry he’d wasted so much of his own life wallowing in anger and self-pity. Still, the truth didn’t explain a lot of Ziva’s behavior; in fact, it did the exact opposite. If she had essentially killed Soren by accident, why had she spent so much time playing up his death? What was the purpose of all the manipulation and mind games? The word
monster
began to bounce around inside his head again.

“Why not just tell me?” He looked up to find her staring blankly down at him.

“I couldn’t,” she answered.

What was that supposed to mean? She was physically incapable of telling him? He wondered how many other people knew what had really happened. Probably most of the spec ops division. Emeri, Skeet, and Zinni for sure. Regardless, there were plenty of people who could have filled him in. No explanation could have changed the fact that he’d watched Soren die, but it might have saved him two years of suffering and rage.

He scrambled to his feet, only to drop back into a kneeling position as all the blood drained from his head. “Why didn’t you
just tell me?
” he shouted. The sound echoed off of the surrounding hills, shattering the silence, and the swirling cloud of aeromids relocated to a higher altitude further out over the cliff.

Ziva didn’t even blink. “All Cleaner activities are kept confidential – you know that. Not even the unit captains are made privy to cleaning orders. With your emotional involvement in the matter, Emeri was afraid you’d share the information with a third party if you were briefed. You were deemed an intel risk.”

Aroska stood back up, trying to ignore the way she’d just referred to his family as a third party. “No Ziva,
you
. Why didn’t
you
just tell me the truth in the beginning? Why the act? Why keep calling attention to what you did?”

She didn’t look at him with sympathy, concern, or even guilt. She just looked at him. “You remember what I said in the car about forming connections?”

He managed a wary nod.

“Think for a minute. How many people do you think are still alive after I’ve had them in my sights?”

“Not many.”

“Not many,” she confirmed. “But I saw you. You may not have been the target, but you were there. Soren may have only been my mark for one day, but I still treated him like any other target. I studied his file front to back, found out where he lived, who his friends and family were, you name it. But it’s all just words on a screen until I see the person with my own eyes. At that moment, they become real, more than just a story. That connection has formed, but I never have to worry about it because it’s severed a moment later when I put a
bullet
through their head.”

He couldn’t tell what gave him chills – her words or the sudden breeze that had come up off the river. “What are you saying?”

“It happened with you, okay? You were in the file. You were there that day. The connection wasn’t as strong because the intel wasn’t about you, but when you’re looking at someone through your scope, the knowledge that their fate is in your hands brings about a sense of…” She paused as if she didn’t want to say the word. “Intimacy. Familiarity.”

She threw her hands up and took several steps away, looking out over the orchards. “I thought the chances of ever running into you again were so remote that I wasn’t even concerned.” She turned and forced a short, disgusted laugh. “Imagine my surprise when I found out you were being assigned to my Solaris task force.”

For just a moment, Aroska thought he understood. She was so accustomed to severing her connections that she didn’t know how to handle one that was still intact. There were things about Ziva Payvan that never ceased to amaze him, in both good ways and bad ways. This was a woman who could shoot a man’s arm off to keep him from reaching one of her targets. She could stroll into the Niio spaceport and demand help from the head of the Niiosian Mob without a second thought if it meant getting the job done. But when it came to interpersonal relationships, she was so broken, so emotionally damaged. It was almost…well,
pitiful
was the first word that came to mind. He was surprised by how sorry he felt for her.

“You were using Soren’s death as leverage,” he said. The look on her face told him it was strange to hear someone finally put her thoughts into words. “I reminded you of him, so you were trying to push me away, keep me at arm’s length.”

Ziva sighed and brought her hands to rest on her hips, taking a single step toward him. “I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say because I’m not going to repeat myself. Right here, tonight, in this spot on this hill, I’m admitting that I care. About people. But I’ve told you before – in this line of work, I can’t afford to care. The more people I care about, the more ways someone could hurt me. The more lives I feel responsible for. The more distractions I have. That’s why I have to break these connections so quickly. When you showed up again, I knew I had to figure out some way cut you off before I could start to care. But no matter what I did, you just wouldn’t go away.”

“How could I after you saved my life?” he said. Once it had become apparent that she was more than a bloodthirsty murderer, curiosity had taken over. She was like a puzzle, and he had to assemble all the pieces in order to see the big picture. Solving puzzles and mysteries was what he did for a living, so solving the mystery that was Ziva Payvan had become a personal goal of sorts. The more she fought him, the more he knew she had something worth finding. “This is why you came back to get me at Dakiti, isn’t it. And it’s why you saved me on the landing pad.”

She nodded.

“I don’t understand though. After Dakiti and everything we accomplished while bringing Dasaro down, why keep this up? Why keep fighting me?”

Ziva blinked. “Because you terrify me.”

The nonchalance of her response was startling. It was the last thing he’d ever expected her to say, and he couldn’t help but let out an incredulous snort. “What?”

Her voice had risen in volume as the conversation progressed. “I mean, just listen to me. I’m telling you things I can’t even tell myself. I don’t know how, but you seem to have me figured out, and you have from the beginning. Out of all the awful things in this galaxy, that might be what I’m most afraid of: having someone figure me out.” She shrugged and shook her head, and unless it was Aroska’s imagination, her jaw trembled ever so slightly. “
Sheyss
, I can’t believe I’m even saying all of this.”

He had to laugh to himself; he wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard her talk so much at once, especially about herself. These things she was telling him…he would have never guessed she’d been fighting such a brutal internal battle for so long, and in that sense he had to give her credit for being able to push through it and even function in her role at HSP. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that the great Ziva Payvan was afraid of him, even if she’d meant it figuratively. Once upon a time, it would have flattered him to know he scared her, but at the moment the idea made him feel terrible.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and moved over to her, relieved by the sincerity he saw in her face. It seemed so foreign after seeing nothing but indifference there for so long. In fact, her demeanor as a whole was unusual; her shoulders sagged and she sported dark circles around her eyes. She seemed smaller than usual, tired, defeated. But realizing how much she’d been hurting almost made him miss the familiar Ziva, regardless of the things she’d done. As enlightening as it was to see this side of her, he needed her to be strong now as they faced Ronan. All of Haphez needed her to be strong.

“What happened when the agency found out about the miscommunication?” he asked.

Some of the tension in Ziva’s body visibly released. She was no doubt glad to answer a question not directly about her. “I spent a week on disciplinary leave for accepting an assignment from a fellow agent rather than Emeri,” she answered. “The man who was supposed to take the shot was dishonorably discharged from the agency and all of its affiliates – not even spaceport security could hire him. A few days later, he was mugged in an alley. Somebody took a bar of eograde steel to his knees, shattered every bone in his legs. They also said he’ll never be able to reproduce again. Very unfortunate.” The corners of her mouth twitched upward ever so slightly.

The thought coaxed a full smile onto Aroska’s face. “Well, thanks for that.” He almost didn’t want to smile, not while the anger over Soren’s death and Ziva’s behavior was still so fresh. But just knowing the truth made him feel like he could finally understand everything. He may not have agreed with the extent to which she tried to lock herself away, but he knew why she did it, why she didn’t want to care. He could almost understand why she hadn’t wanted to let him get close to her and, subsequently, why the fact that he
had
gotten close made her so angry. And knowing the full story about Soren’s execution…he’d always told her he’d never be able to forgive her for killing his brother, but after hearing her account and realizing how guilty she felt about what had happened, well…. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to admit it out loud just yet, but maybe there was room for forgiveness after all.

Aroska thought about shaking her hand but decided it would seem rather silly. Instead, his attention was drawn to a large blade of grass that had lodged itself in her hair when she’d settled down to watch the aeromids. He’d almost forgotten that was why he’d brought her up here in the first place.

“You’ve got…” He gestured half-heartedly at the side of his head.

Ziva’s hand went to her own head, probing the area he had indicated, but her fingers bypassed the grass blade and it remained stuck there. She bristled when he reached out to help but eventually lowered her hand, allowing him to pluck the blade from her hair and let it fall to the ground.

A cluster of black strands came loose from her ponytail, and he gently swept them away, tucking them back behind her ear. He began to withdraw his hand, brushing his fingers along her jaw before pausing for a moment and resting his palm against her cheek. She stood motionless, eyes unblinking, and he could feel her racing pulse in her neck.

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and nodded, running his thumb over her scar once more before giving her cheek a slight pat and returning his hand to his side. “Okay.”

They both turned and watched the aeromids in silence for another few minutes; the swarm had formed a massive spiral that swirled just a few meters above their heads. One by one, individual insects broke away from the group and floated back down toward the grass. The glow from their bioluminescent abdomens slowly faded until the bugs themselves once more became invisible in the darkness, just as they’d been when the two of them had arrived.