Light of Kaska (2 page)

When he didn’t respond to her introduction or her denial of his guilt, she said, “I saw the evidence from the scene. There’s not a single trace of you on those boys, and no trace of them on you. Your ship is clean, too. What happened to those boys—” She paused, tears springing to her eyes and her breath hitching painfully while the image of their small, mutilated bodies burned her memory. “There’s no way the killer didn’t get their blood on him. No way he couldn’t have left something of himself behind. You didn’t kill them.”

“So how ‘bout you be a good girl and let me loose?” The acid in his tone denied hope that she would do it.

His deep, growling voice put her in mind of her panther again, and she leaned toward him unconsciously. “They won’t listen to me,” she answered in frustration. “They can’t believe that one of their own could do something so horrible, and you’re such a convenient target. They want someone to pay and you’re it. They aren’t listening when I say you didn’t do it.”

“Why don’t
you
turn me loose?” he asked again, but this time his tone was more curious and his eyes held an intensity that made her drop her gaze.

She lifted a hand to push strands of hair away from her face, shoving them roughly behind her ear. “I tried,” she said through clenched teeth. “Clavis has the key on him at all times and it would take me a year to hammer through those chains and bolts. Don’t ask me if I can pick a lock.” Shoving to her feet, she began to pace, trailing her hand along the cool adobe wall. “I thought about chipping the bolts out, but that would take too long. They’d catch me at it.”

“In my ship, there’s a repair kit with a cutter—”

“Gone,” she interrupted him, her movements tight while she paced the short wall, spun on the ball of one foot, and stalked back the way she’d come. “They’ve been through your ship. I don’t know who has your things.”

She heard him make a low, vicious sound in his throat and she slapped the wall as she measured it with her strides. “Damn it, I know these people. I’ve known them for years! I can’t believe one of them could—could do such unspeakable things to anyone, let alone the twins. And it’s almost as hard to believe that they would willingly burn an innocent man, just because they need vengeance. These are
good
people!”

She stopped, hearing the bewilderment in her own voice. Closing her eyes, she pressed her cheek against the wall and breathed in the earthy smell of it.
Good people.
Would good people ignore evidence, decline to make a thorough investigation, and refuse the man’s right to a fair trial?

Silence grew in the space between them, broken only by the faint chink of metal when he shifted. She wondered what it would mean to her adopted community to have one of their own revealed as a monster. Most of these people had been born and raised in this very place and hadn’t traveled as far as the other side of the planet, let alone off world. Even after all the years she’d been living with them, they still viewed her as the outsider and probably would until she laid claim to one of their men and allowed him to father her children. They’d held her at arm’s length—did she really know them?

“Innocent ain’t exactly how I’d describe me,” he finally said, his tone thoughtful with what might have been a hint of humor.

Sukeza turned her head to look at him, but his face held no expression, dark eyes watching her with the steady, fearless gaze of a predator. She felt herself flush. “I-I didn’t mean—what I meant was that you were innocent of
this
crime,” she said lamely. “You don’t deserve what they’ve got planned for you.”

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing on her. “Maybe I deserve it for other things. Maybe they’re thinking to save the Collectors some time and trouble.”

She pressed her lips together, turning her face away from his burning regard. Her gut clenched with uncertainty and confusion. What the hell was she doing, trying to free this man? He was right—innocent was a galaxy away from his true nature. “Even if that’s true,” she muttered, fingertips tracing a faint crack in the wall, “nobody deserves such a barbaric death. If the Collectors didn’t execute you, who are they to impose that sentence?”

“Trust me, death is better than what those bastards have waiting for me.”

Despite the heat building in the room, she felt a chill race down her spine. She wrapped her arms around her middle, keeping her face averted. “I know mental containment is hard—”

His humorless bark of laughter cut her off. “You don’t know shit about hard. When they stick that band on your head and your body goes zombie, there’s part of you that still knows, that watches you take orders and do their dirty work, watches you bend over and take it up the ass.”

She sent him a sharp look. “A different set of chains,” she said. “You’re still caged.”

He jerked at his restraints, eyes glittering at her. “I’m still myself here. I got options. With the Collector’s brain band, there’s no hope.”

Sukeza shuddered, thinking of her panther again.
No hope.
She returned to pacing, measuring the room with her agitated stride as she chewed on her lips and searched her mind frantically for another way to free him. Her convictions had brought her to this place, knowing they’d imprisoned the wrong man. The stunning force of him, his beauty and his desperation, kept her there.

“So, if you’ve got no way to turn me loose, why are you here?” he asked flatly.

Her pace slowed and then stopped. She sighed, sliding back down the wall and staring at him over her bent knees. His face was still and hard as granite, but she thought she saw anger in his eyes. His hands were slowly curling into fists and releasing. He didn’t look very receptive. Sukeza clasped her hands in her lap, pulled her elbows in tight to her sides, and forged ahead anyway. “I need your help,” she said in a hesitant voice. “If-if there was any other way to set you free, I’d do it, but—”

“What do you want?” he growled.

Nope. Not receptive at all. She took a deep breath. “You didn’t kill those boys, but somebody did. If I can figure out who and prove it, they’d have to set you free.”

He shook his head at her. She thought she saw his mouth twitch with contempt. “Shitty logic, farm girl. They’re more like to keep me for the Collectors.”

“Still,” she said stubbornly, feeling her face heat with humiliation, “they might change their minds. What do you have to lose by helping me?”

His gaze left her, moving around the room and settling on the high window where sunlight streamed in. He shifted restlessly, arms twisting in the shackles. “What do you want?” he asked again, sounding a shade less menacing.

She swallowed, her throat giving a dry click. “I was hoping you could tell me about last night, about what you saw, what you remember. If you noticed anything out of place—”

He snorted, eyes swinging back to her with the twitch of his mouth that could have been contempt. “Lady, everything here is out of place. It’s like something out of the Earth Era. You don’t even have a weather net and you use animals to cart you around.”

“Right, sorry,” she muttered, grimacing to hide a sudden, horrible urge to smile. She remembered having the same reaction when she’d first come here, stunned and disoriented by the simplicity of their lives, the primitive, low-tech nature of their community. “Just—what did you see? Maybe you can remember something that I could use.”

He studied her for a long moment, his steady regard making her skin feel a size too small for her bones. It was all she could do to return that forceful gaze and not huddle into herself like a mouse in front of a cat.

“Night’s easier,” he said abruptly, tilting his head up toward the window again. “Not so…exposed. I’m used to stations, bases, spacecraft—not all this wide open air. So I’ve been walking at night, looking around while you all were tucked away in your houses.
Kessu,
you people are so—” He paused, shaking his head. His stoic expression didn’t finish the sentence for him, but she could guess.
Vulnerable. Weak. Trusting.
Yes, they were all of that. “That animal stockade—”

“Barn,” she murmured and got a sharp look for her correction.

“It didn’t look any different from the night before. Sounded different, though. The animals were making more noise. That’s what drew me there.”

Sukeza straightened. “Can you describe what you heard?”

He gave her that mouth twitch again. “What, you think I heard the murder? Lady, I can tell the difference between kids dying and a bunch of cragged out farm animals.”

“No, of course I don’t think that,” she responded with a shake of her head, hands knotting around one another in her lap. “They were dead a while before they were found, which was when you were spotted at the scene. I just know the
chukra
in that barn very well, and anything you can tell me might help. Even—even animal noises,” she finished, dropping her eyes from his regard and studying the tops of her knees instead. What the hell was she doing playing detective? This was insane. But she couldn’t think of any alternative.

There was a moment of silence before he spoke again in a musing tone, “I heard lots of banging, like they were kicking at the walls, and snorting noises. One of them made a trumpeting sound.”

“High pitched or low?” she asked, raising her gaze to see him studying the window again.

“Shit, how the hell would I know?”

So Sukeza demonstrated, mimicking the two
chukra
who would have sounded the call of alarm. He raised his eyebrows, mouth twitching again as he met her gaze. She felt a flush rise up her throat, but she fought down the surge of embarrassment and waited for his response.

“That second one was more like what I heard,” he said in a neutral tone.

She nodded, picturing the creature and where it was in the barn. “That’s strange. It should have been Baka sounding the alarm, not Suni. She was the furthest away from where the boys were found.”

“They your animals, then?”

“No, that’s Stockton’s barn and livestock. I just…work with them a lot,” she said with an uncomfortable shrug. “Do you remember anything else?”

“Just the screaming, shouting, and people chasing me down,” he answered dryly. Then he tossed his head, trying to get a lock of sweaty hair out of his eyes.

Sukeza shifted, struck again by his suffering and his stark beauty. “Have they given you any water?” she asked suddenly, realizing the answer even as she spoke.

“Every couple hours the fat guy comes in and spits on me. Other than that, no.”

Burning shame and anger roiled in her gut, and she looked away from the furious irony in his gaze. “I’ll bring back some water and food. Can—can I look at your wrists? I’d like to tend those wounds if I could.”

There was silence while she plucked at the hem of her shirt and felt her heart thump hard in her chest. “Sure, have at it,” he said with low sarcasm. “Should be in stellar shape for my burning, right?”

Without looking him in the eye, she stood and took a hesitant step toward him. Focusing on his right wrist, she saw that his fist was clenched and felt a spurt of adrenaline.
If he could get out of those chains and hurt me he already would have,
she reasoned to get her feet moving again. The sight of the welts on his wrist drew her the rest of the way.

Catching her lower lip in her teeth with a frown, she leaned close and studied the area. Some contact spots were merely red and bruised looking, but a few had blistered and two areas were bleeding. Without conscious thought, she touched his fist, easing his grip so she could shift his wrist further out of the shackle and more into view. “Bandages,” she muttered to herself. “Antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic. You need to stop rubbing at—”

“Are you
petting
me?” he interrupted in an incredulous tone.

Sukeza flamed with embarrassment and jerked away when she realized that she had indeed been stroking his arm soothingly as she would one of her animal charges. With belated alarm, she tucked both hands behind her back and stepped away, fingers tingling at the sensation of hair-roughened, sweat-dampened skin. “I-I’m sorry. I just—I’m used to working with—” She stopped short, nearly biting off the words
wild animals
before she uttered them. She strongly suspected that he wouldn’t appreciate her equating the domestication of
chukra
to her tending his chained self.

The opening door would have been a welcome diversion if it hadn’t been Stryker’s callous, massive jailor. A thundercloud pulled Clavis’s brows into a severe frown as he lumbered into the small room, his voice a rolling boom. “What in the three humps of Keesis are you doin’ in here, Suki?”

She stiffened her spine, facing him with chin lifted. Never mind that her knees were trembling and her heart was beating at killing speed. “Tending to your prisoner, something you’ve obviously neglected.”

“He don’t need tendin’,” the big man snarled, his face red and brown eyes fixed on Stryker with wary malice. “Bastard should thank his lucky star if he up and dies of dehydration ‘fore we get to him.”

Anger curdled her fear and Sukeza stepped in front of the chained man, catching Clavis’s eyes. In as even a tone as she could manage, she said, “Even a rogue animal deserves humane treatment before it’s put down, and you’re not planning on
getting
to him for a while. Let me do my job, Clavis.”

Clavis stared at her, his expression slowly turning sullen when she didn’t back away. “Just so you know you’re tendin’ a dead man.”

“I’ll be bringing him food and water, so you’ll need to find a way to get him to the facilities.” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth with a vicious look in his eyes. “Before you tell me he can go where he is, may I direct your attention to the fine bench he’s currently sitting on? You will never get the stains or the smell out of that wood. Meeting day will never be the same.”

He closed his mouth with an impotent glare and spun his bulk around, slamming the door on his way out. Sukeza felt her knees quiver and slowly sank to the floor before her legs gave out. Bending over her shaking limbs, she closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to recover her equilibrium.