Jump Zone: Cleo Falls (13 page)

Twenty

L
ibra hunched over the small pile of tinder, the driest collection of forest debris he could find, and blew the sparks until a flame appeared. Cleo had left him in charge of making camp while she hunted for something to eat. He had no idea what manner of beast she’d return with, considering she had nothing but his K-Bar knife and the net bag, but having witnessed her unique capabilities, he wouldn’t be surprised if she brought back a four-course meal.

After a hard day of physical exertion, he should feel hungry, but his appetite couldn’t compete with the germ of anxiety that settled in his gut during the airplane conversation and spread throughout him like a virus with every step that took them closer to the Cut, toward the inevitable end of his mission.

Throughout their journey, as guilt, lust, and honest-to-goodness admiration for Cleo tipped his moral scales, his mind turned over every possible alternative scenario to avoid doing what had to be done. It was either drop her into unconsciousness with the implant just before they got to the Trading Post and carry her out, or make use of that damn ampoule, nestled deep in the pocket of his pants. Either way, the self-loathing felt like a black hole in his soul.

He may have only known her a matter of days, but she’d impacted his life, his views and attitudes. He was split between resenting her and admiring her, wanting to throttle her and wanting to kiss her. Never had a woman, or anyone, made him feel so two-faced, so unsure of himself. He’d always been a righteous bastard—he’d gone to prison for his convictions—but Cleo had turned his black and white axioms to murky gray.

What would she think if she knew the real reason he was here—the points, the personal revenge? Worse, what would she think of him and his group of shit-disturbers back in Gomeda?

The faintest glimmer of an idea began to form as he built a fancy tepee with sticks and twigs around the crackling tinder. He stood to crack a few larger branches across his knee when he heard her come up behind him.

“Let me guess,” he said without turning. “Buffalo steaks?”

“Buffalo have been extinct for a century.”

“Yeah, but if anyone could find one, I’ve no doubt it would be you.” Libra began to pivot when she draped something around his neck.

Snake.

He barely caught himself from committing an unmanly jolt, instead pretending nonchalance at the headless reptile across his shoulders.

“Time for your cooking lesson,” she said. “Taiga survival for beginners.”

She had to be kidding. With two fingers, he yanked the snake to the ground. At least it wasn’t as slimy as he’d imagined. Wasn’t slimy at all. “Think I’ll watch, if you don’t mind.”

Libra had no intention of doing even that. If he had to partake in the barbaric practice of eating something that had been alive less than five minutes ago, he preferred to ignore the process. He returned to fire tending, but by the time Cleo had washed, gutted, and skinned it, and threaded the pieces onto a sharpened stick to roast it on the fire, fascination replaced his revulsion.

Didn’t smell horrible, either.

“Okay, hand over a piece.”

Without trying to hide her smug smile, she passed him a morsel.

The meat was flaky and looked a bit like her fish from earlier. The rib bones made him pause—there may have even been a gag—but if his little warrior could take down two Bangers, he could be man enough to choke down a little fresh-cooked kill.

All the same, he was glad it was dark enough that she wouldn’t be able to see his complexion pale at the thought of putting it in his mouth. Not that he was squeamish.

“Well? Will you live?”

“It’s…it’s not bad, actually.”

“It’s better when it’s battered and deep fried with a side of butter sauce.”

While he helped himself to more, Cleo threw together a second course of dandelion leaf salad, flavored with a handful of nutty-tasting berries she’d picked along the trail. She added a bonus education lesson while he ate, so he knew that were he ever stuck and starving in the Taiga, he should only eat berries if they had a little crown because it meant they weren’t poisonous. If she could throw a decent meal together out of snake and berries, imagine what she could do with real ingredients. She babbled on about roots and mushrooms unprompted, allowing his mind to tumble over other things.

There it was again…that glimmer. An idea so thread-thin, so ungraspable, too insane to even contemplate… but what if?

She could always say no.

And since the perfect segue presented itself, he decided to dip his toes in the water. “Y’know Cleo,” he said, pouring water from his canteen over the empty plate, “Maybe you should join me in Gomeda. We could open an authentic Taiga restaurant. First of its kind.”

“I’m glad I’ve impressed you,” she said, smiling, “but if I’ve given you the impression that cooking, or spending any time in a kitchen, is appealing to me, I’ve misled you.”

“Aw come on,” he joked. “We could serve bacon.”

She grew very quiet and a serious furrow formed in her brow. Libra wasn’t sure how to continue since cajoling hadn’t taken him in the direction he needed.

“Actually, I wanted to ask you about that,” she said, staring at her feet.

“Bacon?”

“No,” Cleo said, shaking her head. “Something else.”

She fidgeted and paused as if she were unsure how to approach the question. When she finally spoke, her voice thin and vulnerable, he wished he’d been mentally prepared.

“Can I trust you?”

“Trust me?”
No! Absolutely not. Run.
“Have I given you reason not to?”

She contemplated that for a moment, eyes on the stone she’d been toeing out of the ground. Her gaze flicked up for a second—too quickly for him to read her expression, too quick to prepare himself for what she would say next. “I need to go to Gomeda. Will you take me?”

Libra’s jaw unhinged. If he didn’t believe in a spiritual overseer before, he was all kinds of devoted now. “You want to go to the city? With me?”

“Not
with you,
with you. Not like a stray dog that won’t leave you alone. Just ‘with you,’ like a travelling companion.”

Libra couldn’t find words fast enough.

“Because that’s kind of where I was headed when I, you know…when I had the incident in the river.”

Libra set down his plate and faced her across the circle of fire. This was getting interesting, and he didn’t want to miss a single detail.

“You were going to Gomeda?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She picked up the stone she’d unearthed and turned it over in her hand. “I need to find my brother.”

“And he’s in the city?”

“That’s where he was going, yes.” She brushed the dirt from the rock, revealing a shiny, almost crystalline surface. She toyed with it, turned it between her thumb and forefinger, hypnotized by the reflection of the flame in the facets. “I’ve got to get to him before he gets inducted or drugged, or whatever it is your Ministry of Opportunity does to keep my people there. I need to bring him home.” She flung the rock deep into the bushes and watched it, as if she could see it land in the dark foliage. “Will you help me find him?”

Libra dug his fingers into his scalp to stop his brain from exploding. They wanted her, she happened to be going there. Coincidence? And why didn’t she just tell him that in the first place and save him days of planning, days of emotional tug of war? Why the big secret? There was something more going on, and he had a feeling he was a pawn in much larger game. If they already had Jaegar, what did they need his sister for? But while his mental cogs spun, he needed to answer her.

“What if he doesn’t want to come back?” he asked. “He must have had a reason for leaving.”

Cleo’s face blanched. Last time it had gone that pale, he had to catch her from fainting. She clutched her necklace, her lifeline, before answering. “Yes, there was a reason, but it was a stupid one.”

He let silence fill the space, hoping she’d continue.

Cleo rose and went to the stack of sticks and branches he’d assembled to feed the fire during the night. She grabbed a dried-out chunk of dead timber and threw it haphazardly onto the pile of embers. “I have to set things right. And I’m the only one who can.”

He tracked her as she sought something to do, some task, other than sit and face him across the fire.

“Of course I’ll take you,” he said, realizing she was waiting for his answer. “I’ll even help you locate your brother.”

She stilled. Her shoulders dropped and her face drained of tension. Her look of pure gratitude unravelled him.

He wouldn’t need Trevayne’s help after all.  Or the ampoule. Or the implant. He waited for a sense of relief to hit, but his fingers curled into tight balls and the muscles up his back wound like a constricting spring around his spine.

Lies aside, his mission had gone from a potential violent kidnapping to that of a simple escort service. Take her to Gomeda, find Jaegar, politely suggest they stop by DynaCade to visit Achan, and put them both on the transport back over the Cut Road.

The truth would eventually come out, but not yet. He couldn’t compromise her trust so far into the end game. Better to wait until they were in
Gomeda. Or on the way
out
of Gomeda.

“Thank you, Libra. That means a lot to me. I…I…don’t know why the fates are suddenly taking pity on me because I don’t deserve it, but thank you. For…everything.”

The irony made him laugh. “Why don’t you deserve it?”

“I just don’t.”

Interesting. Cleo Rush had more secrets. “What will you do if he doesn’t want to come back?”

She stared into the fire.

“Cleo? What if your brother likes the city, doesn’t want to come back up here?”

“He has to come back,” she said, her voice revealing no hint of emotion. “He’s supposed to be the leader-elect of our tribe.”

Libra’s mind spun the new facts into those he already knew, which wasn’t much. It explained why Achan wanted Jaegar Rush—the leader-elect would hold as much power as the sitting leader. If mining agreements needed to be made, they could be done with Jaegar alone.

So why the last-minute change in his mission directive? If Jaegar already made it to Gomeda and Achan knew that, why send Libra to get Cleo? Why not just cancel the mission and send Libra back to the penal colony? What could Achan possibly want with them both?

Though he was barely old enough to remember his father, the story of how Lewin Rush killed Bronson Cade, Libra’s father, in cold blood, was dinner-table conversation. It was a given that Achan hated the tribers for taking his only son away from him, but he never once spoke of vengeance. He only used his anger and loathing to enforce his convictions about the savages of the northern wild.

No. His grandfather was a single-minded bastard whose purpose often shadowed his motivations, but Libra never knew him to be violent. The old man didn’t even like dirt under his nails. Achan was a brains-over-brawn kind of director. If he couldn’t use logic to get his way, he used manipulation. But violence? Never.

Was he being manipulated? Of course, but only in the sense he was performing an unsavory task for money.

Libra still felt as though he was missing critical information, but what? Cleo was holding back, he could feel it, but he didn’t dare poke too hard lest she pulled a quid pro quo. So far, the less either of them asked, the less they had to answer. Like a silent game with unspoken rules…but they were both definitely playing.

Tonight, after she fell asleep, he’d sneak out of camp with his satcom and call off Trevayne. That much, he could do.

His attention returned to Cleo, who busied herself turning over the wet cloths that were drying on a rock. He was completely unprepared for that rush of light-headedness he got whenever he looked at her.

Did she have any conception of how gorgeous she was? How sexy? How his entire body hummed to life when she spoke? Just watching her luscious lips form words made him ache.

Like an addict, he needed to hear her speak. “I don’t know anything about your politics, Cleo, but do you think he took off because he doesn’t want to be the leader? I mean, that’s a lot of pressure for someone to face, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is. Too much. But he has no choice. It’s tribe law.” Her movements were jerky, repetitive, and unsettled. “It’s…complicated.”

He hadn’t seen her agitated like this since she woke up naked and bound. Not even after she killed the alphacat. Another thought nagged him. Why was Cleo sent after Jaegar, alone? If her brother was that important, why wouldn’t they send a delegation or an army? “Why don’t you try to explain?”

She threw more wood on the fire, which was already flaring too bright and using up what they’d need to stoke it during the night.

“Cleo?”

“Because I drove him away, okay?” She dropped a heavy chunk of rotten tree stump in the center of the flames.  “
I’m
the stupid reason he took off, and
I’m
the one who must get him back.” She stared at the flames, her face shiny with sweat, her breast heaving.

Libra circled the fire, kicking the embers that had bounced out back into the shallow pit. “Okay, darlin’. Whatever you did isn’t worth burning down the Taiga for.”  He made his way around to her and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Just… Take a deep breath and…”

She turned and threw herself into his arms. He rubbed her back and thought he felt her shoulders tremble. Crying? No, she couldn’t be. Cleo Rush was the strongest woman he’d ever met. He looked down, but her face was buried in his shirt.

“Don’t worry, Cleo. I’ll find him. I promise. Everything will be fine.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled.

He smoothed her hair, tangling his fingers in its silky length, until he felt her muscles relax. Until he felt his own muscles relax. Holding her like this felt so right, so damn perfect, he didn’t think he could let her go.

“Will your friends mind?” she asked, peeking up.

“My friends?”
Shit, his cover story!
He stepped back.

“My camping buddies? Hell no. And if they do, we’ll just head out alone, right? We can double on my solar scooter. It’s a biggie, and brand new…” he babbled, telling her they’d go east and shoot over the St. Mary’s Dam, avoiding the longer but safer Dead Zone route. He prattled about their journey while his mind worked out other things, like how to communicate all this to Trevayne, and how he could pull this charade off without her catching on. How could he have forgotten his camping buddies?