Dark Solstice (11 page)

He looked away, scrubbing his hands over his face in a manner that almost seemed agitated. Apparently he realized it gave away more than he wanted to. He dropped his hands to his knees and stood, pacing the length of the cell. He stopped when he reached the door, gripping the bars in white knuckled fists for a time, his gaze focused on the corridor beyond the cell while he wrestled with his thoughts.

Despite the fact that she was more unnerved than at any time since she’d first found herself caged with the iceman, Rhea discovered she couldn’t drag her gaze from him. She’d wanted a reaction from him—
some
kind of reaction—something that would convince her he wasn’t as cold blooded and unfeeling as she feared.

She hadn’t expected this and she wasn’t at all certain that it was a good thing.

In fact, she was pretty sure it wasn’t.

It was for damned sure that it was highly unnerving to discover that she’d cracked the shell of ice that he had encased himself in. She had an uneasy feeling, now, that that façade of ice had hidden emotions more powerful than she was equipped to deal with.

The temptation arose in her to admit she’d faked her attraction to Kyle just to get a rise out of him. She tamped it with the reflection that it was only true as far as her motivations. It had only started out that way. She
had
enjoyed sex with Kyle and she knew that Raathe knew it.

It seemed very unwise, especially at the moment, to remind him.

It might have helped matters if she could’ve convinced him that she hadn’t said the things she had to protect Kyle, but she suspected he’d know that for a lie, too.

She hadn’t realized she was such a bad liar, but maybe it was because she hadn’t had a lot practice? She certainly wasn’t used to lies of self-preservation—which had to be the most convincing of lies to work.

Maybe it wasn’t that, though, so much as the fact that Raathe had watched her with Kyle and nothing she could say was going to convince him that what he’d seen wasn’t true?

When he continued to ignore her, she looked away, focusing on her own thoughts, wondering why she’d felt compelled to try to protect Kyle. She couldn’t even protect herself! What had possessed her to try to provoke Raathe to begin with and
then
to compound that stupidity by trying to protect Kyle?

She hadn’t expected Raathe to see through her attempts, but that was hardly an excuse.

She didn’t even know Kyle as well as she did Raathe. She didn’t know why he’d been sent to Phobos and that made it all the more irrational for her to either trust him or want to protect him.

Was Raathe right? Was she such a complete idiot that she could fall for the man’s charm even knowing how dangerous he must be?

She at least knew Raathe’s history even if he was so reticent that weeks of living with him hadn’t really given her much insight into the heart and soul—if he had them—of the real man.

She dismissed that thought as anger inspired. He had a heart and soul. She knew better than anyone else, she suspected, that he did—or at least had. Maybe Amy had taken them when she’d left him?

Maybe everyone was wrong about Raathe and it wasn’t his training or the years he’d spent as an assassin that had drained away his humanity? Maybe it had taken no more than one woman to turn him into a stone cold killer?

How had she? What had she done?

Not that that excused anything. She just wanted to know,
needed
to know if there was any humanity left in him that she could appeal to to save herself.

She was afraid to ask him, though.

She wasn’t certain she could even nerve herself to try to seek that spark again if it was even there. Thawing the iceman suddenly seemed like the stupidest thing she’d ever attempted.

* * * *

Raathe tried to convince himself that the rage boiling inside of him and threatening to overflow was completely rational and specifically because his plans were falling apart before his eyes. Without a doubt that was at least part of it, maybe most of it. He preferred to think it was anyway.

He’d spent nearly two years—most of the time he’d been incarcerated in Phobos—working on a plan to get out again, carefully and methodically putting the pieces together. He’d studied both Grimes and Cook cautiously, for months, before he’d first approached them and even at that he’d danced around the subject for months more before he’d decided he could trust them enough to include them in his plans, realized he
had
to give them something because he couldn’t manage it completely on his own.

If he’d been able to manage it alone, there wasn’t a maggot in the place he would’ve trusted further than he could spit—low life bastards, the lot of them!

That fucking prick Justice had zeroed in on him almost from the time he’d arrived and that was enough in itself to set off alarms. Nobody wanted to befriend him purely because he had a winning personality. If Justice was hot to do so, he had another agenda.

And he’d suspected from the beginning that there’d been a leak, somehow, and that the fucking warden had tossed Justice into the prison population to ferret out the conspirators and find out exactly what they were up to.

If he’d had more than suspicions, he would’ve disposed of the bastard long since. He hadn’t wanted to risk the possibility that disposing of the warden’s snitch would wreck his plans, though. He’d thought it safer to keep an eye on him. He could always slit his throat on his way out if it looked like the snitch had tumbled to his plans.

Justice had done more than gotten a ‘whiff’, though. It was patently obvious the bastard had somehow figured out the entire plan—or been told. He’d beat that out of Grimes at the first opportunity that presented itself.

It had to have been Grimes. Cook didn’t do a lot of talking anymore, not since he’d had his throat cut in a fight in the showers six months earlier. It took too much effort and he couldn’t control either the volume or the tone. Mostly all he could manage was a gravelly growl.

The bastard Grimes shouldn’t have approached Justice at all. If he thought Justice had something they needed, he should’ve come to him first. It was
his
fucking show.

His woman, too, he mentally added, transferring his attention to her abruptly, although he didn’t turn around to look at her.

He was well aware that the sexual encounter had begun as a show for his benefit. He was pretty sure that was what she’d had in mind anyway, although he was damned if he could figure out why she’d set out to ‘punish’ him. He’d given her the option of deciding whether to offer herself or not. He hadn’t ordered her to. He hadn’t even
asked
to, not directly. She could’ve said no.

It pissed him off that she hadn’t.

Instead, she’d agreed to do it and been pissed off at him for pointing out that that was what Justice wanted.

He suspected that was only part of the answer he was looking for, though, and he was afraid he knew what the other part was.

He’d dreamed of Amy and woken up making love to Rhea. He had a bad feeling he’d been doing a lot more than just dreaming. The odd way she’d looked at him afterward was a definite clue, he thought in self-disgust, wondering what the hell he’d said.

He sure as fuck wasn’t going to ask, but he didn’t think he needed to.

He was pretty damned sure, all things considered, that he’d called her Amy and that was why she’d decided to use Justice to get even with him.

He thought it had started out like that, anyway.

If it had ended on the same note, he wouldn’t have been so damned pissed off.

Or maybe he would’ve anyway. He’d regretted the fucking suggestion as soon as he’d made it. Right up until he’d looked into her big brown eyes he’d thought he didn’t give a shit one way or the other as long as he got the information he wanted. That one look had changed everything, though.

It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him like that—too damned long. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have a woman look at him like he mattered to her, as if he was just a man like any other, a man they desired. The women he’d dated after Amy was killed hadn’t been interested in him as a man. They’d been interested in his reputation as a killer, had found some perverted thrill in fucking him—like they were fucking a snake.

All that feigned shock at discovering he was an assassin when the media had begun hounding them! There wasn’t a fucking one of the lot that hadn’t gone out of their way to climb in his bed because they
knew
he was a hit man for the company. Hell, the company had
arranged
most of his ‘relationships’.

Just like they’d arranged his hits.

Just like they’d arranged his sweet Amy’s brutal murder to turn him.

The military didn’t allow personal vendettas. The only way he could go after Amy’s murderers was to quit, and Johann Solutions had been waiting with everything he needed to get the job done.

He pushed that thought away just as he had every time it had surfaced since he’d discovered just how deep the deception went, just how carefully the company had manipulated him into becoming their killer for hire. It didn’t bear thinking on that he’d spent five years of his life tracking down Amy’s murderers only to discover that it was the bastards he was working for.

Maybe that was what had made him dream of Amy—the realization that he was close, finally, to avenging himself on the men who’d hired her killers and orchestrated her murder—He’d tracked down and killed the hit men long since. He thought he could live with that possibility a lot better than the alternative—that it was because Rhea had brought something out that he’d thought he’d buried a long time ago.

He shook that thought off. She was munch and she was temporary at that. If she preferred fucking Justice, that was just too fucking bad. She was his to use as long as he was here, and he wouldn’t be leaving Justice behind to take up where he’d left off. If any of them even managed to get out of the prison alive they were going to be damned lucky, but the life expectancy beyond the walls of the prison weren’t a hell of a lot longer. He’d be lucky if he lived long enough to put his plan in motion—to take the fucking bastards down.

The question, he realized abruptly, was who to hand his delicate little munch over to when he left? It was going to have to be somebody strong enough to hold on to her and keep her alive until someone came for her—which they would if he was successful.

Maybe he should leave Justice behind, after all? He was in for murder, but he hadn’t seen that the son-of-a-bitch had the mean streak most of the bastards in Phobos had. He’d been gentle with her even though she’d been as stiff and unresponsive as a corpse at first.

She seemed to like fucking the son-of-a-bitch well enough, he thought derisively. She could have said no. Maybe it was a match made in fucking heaven?

Chapter Ten

Rhea’s first view of the hydroponics garden stunned her. She’d known there must be one. Plants produced oxygen and gardens were a crucial part of sustaining life in any place off world, whether it was a colony or a long range transport. It just wasn’t practical or desirable to rely completely on canned Oxygen to sustain life, although it also wasn’t safe to rely too heavily on the gardens either when plants were so fragile and the death of the garden could mean the death of everyone relying on it for air, if not for food.

What stunned her was the magnitude of it and the sheer fecundity of plant life.

What stunned her more was the size and lushness of the fruit bearing plants. There was enough food to feed the entire prison population. Why were they being fed the horrible, tasteless processed mush they had at every meal when it was obvious they could grow enough to give the prisoners fresh fruit and vegetables at least occasionally?

“It’s the warden’s garden,” Raathe murmured, correctly interpreting the expression on her face.

She sent him a sharp look.

His lips curled derisively. “Why waste it on the animals?”

She looked away, wondering if the barb was directed at her. She never knew with Raathe. He’d been particularly taciturn since the incident with Kyle the day before and not terribly pleasant when he did speak. “He’d be arrested and jailed himself for treating animals as badly as he does these prisoners.”

Raathe glanced around sharply before he returned his attention to her. “Take care with that tongue, munch. You haven’t seen unpleasant, yet.”

Rhea glared at him, but he missed it, striding away from her as he was summoned by one of the guards who’d accompanied the detail formed to work in the gardens. She stared after him a moment and followed, bending to lift one of the bags of soil the men were hefting onto their shoulders and carrying from the storage room the guards had opened. The weight of the bag nearly dislocated her shoulders when she tried to lift it. Grunting, she bent over for a better grip.

“Bend at the knees,” Raathe advised coolly, “otherwise you’ll throw your back out and that’ll make fucking really interesting.”

“Jerk,” she muttered. She bent her knees as he suggested, though, grasped the bag around the middle, and managed to lift it free of the cave floor.

Raathe slid a cool look at her as she straightened, but she discovered when she’d finally managed to waddle toward the trough that they were filling that there was a definite gleam of amusement in his eyes. “What did you for a living before you became munch, munch?”

“Cut the chitchat ladies and move your fucking asses!” one of the guards growled, earning a look of deadly intent from Raathe that made him take a step back before he realized what he’d done. It pissed him off when it dawned on him that he’d given away the fact that he was intimidated by an unarmed man. He divided a glare between Rhea and Raathe.

“Your munch can move the seedlings,” he added, waving Rhea in the direction of the trestles that held the newly sprouted plants.

Rhea glanced uneasily from the guard to Raathe. Raathe, she saw, was staring speculatively at the trestles, or more specifically at the men working at them. He met her gaze, nodding faintly, and then turned and headed back to the shed for more of the bagged soil.