Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (15 page)
Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
Reciting the numbers to herself as she went, Ziva stopped in a shadowy alley and programmed the code for the communicator she had given Aroska into the one she’d just purchased. It wasn’t time to contact him yet; it had barely been an hour since he’d left for HSP and the chances that Dasaro was still nearby were high. Being kept out of the loop – no, intentionally
excluding
herself from the loop – was almost more than she could stand. It was one thing to be trapped on the planet, giving Dasaro all the more time to revise his strategies and close in on her. However, being both trapped
and
blind was close to terrifying. Worse yet, she had no way of knowing whether Aroska – her surrogate set of eyes – was even going to see anything useful.
She had opted to leave the house, at least for the majority of the day, after being stricken with the fear that she shouldn’t be trusting Aroska. She couldn’t shake the memory of what had happened on the landing pad on Sardonis after she had risked her own life to rescue him from Dakiti before the Grand Army attacked the hostile Sardon facility. Not only had she gotten him out successfully, but she had gone on to reveal her Nosti abilities in order to save him again. What had he done? He’d turned around and arrested her – after shooting out her knee – per Emeri Arion’s orders. Of course everything had been sorted out, but sometimes she wondered why she even bothered. If all she ever received in return for her hard work and stress was betrayal, it wasn’t worth it.
Ziva sighed. Aroska’s problem wasn’t necessarily that he was a backstabbing bastard. Rather, it was that he seemed to have a problem doing anything that defied orders. She doubted he would turn her in just for the sake of turning her in. If he confessed to Dasaro that he’d been in contact with her, she guessed it would be because he truly believed he was doing the right thing by helping bring down a murderer.
No,
Ziva thought, wincing. There she was again, succumbing to the lie and allowing herself to believe she was what everyone claimed she was.
Aroska hadn’t given her the impression that he believed she was guilty – in fact, he hadn’t acted like he cared at all. In that sense there was no way to predict what he was going to do. She had packed up her few belongings and helped herself to Aroska’s small weapons cache, making sure to dispose of the borrowed clothes and wipe down every surface she’d touched when she had finished. Her plan was to spend the afternoon with one eye on Aroska’s house and one eye on the street. If all remained quiet she would risk a transmission by early evening, and if that went well she would return to the house.
It was midday now and the streets were crowded with shoppers, children, and tourists from some of the neighboring Fringe worlds. The clouds from the past two days had also disappeared, allowing the sun to beat down on the damp earth uncontested. Ziva was sweating profusely in the riding suit and flipped the helmet visor up for a moment, drinking in the only-slightly-less stuffy air. She wondered if the agent from the forest checkpoint had been found yet. If that were the case, she imagined she should ditch the suit. With Aroska’s viewscreen down and no other source of information as of yet, it was impossible to tell. Still, a generic gray riding suit, no matter who it had belonged to, would probably be less conspicuous than her own clothes that could be seen in every mugshot planetwide. Taking one last breath of fresh air, Ziva closed the visor again.
She stepped back out into the street, surveying the immediate area for HSP foot patrols. Seeing none, she veered left and began weaving in and out of the crowd, keeping her head down and her eyes open. The shade of the abandoned house where her stolen bike was stashed sounded inviting at the moment, not to mention it would be a quiet place where she could observe Aroska’s house. The thought struck her funny.
The things I look forward to while on the run.
Aroska’s house was another four blocks to the west. Ziva picked up her pace a bit, free to do so as the shops gradually turned into apartments and homes and the throngs of people began to thin out. She glanced out into the street as she approached an intersection, searching for a gap in traffic.
Movement on the walkway caught her attention and she shifted her focus back to what was in front of her. She quickly sidestepped, but it was too late – her shoulder collided with that of a blue and gray-clad HSP agent who had just come around the corner with his partner. The two of them looked nearly as startled as Ziva was, and there was a brief hesitation where the three of them locked eyes, though hers were obscured behind the visor.
“Excuse me,” said the officer who had bumped into her.
Blood roiling, Ziva skirted around them and continued on, narrowly avoiding a passing groundcar in her haste to cross the street. She jogged on to the opposite side, slowing to a stiff walk that felt so uncomfortable she might as well have kept running. Now she was glad to be hidden within the riding suit; the helmet helped contain the sound of her panting and concealed her widened eyes. She walked for a full block without stopping, muttering under her breath in an attempt to calm herself. The street ended in a T-intersection, with Aroska’s house several more blocks to the left. She glanced in the direction from which she had come, checking for traffic, and caught sight of the two HSP Blues following at a distance. Both had their eyes on her and one of them, the one she had collided with, was speaking into his communicator.
A fresh bout of fire shot through Ziva’s nerves and she pivoted, rushing to the right instead. As soon as she was out of the agents’ line of sight she took off at a dead run, looking wildly about for somewhere to hide. The area was almost strictly residential now, which accounted for fewer crowds to blend in
to and fewer alleys and dark places where she could disappear. She also realized running would only make the officers more suspicious than they otherwise might be, so once again she slowed to a fast walk, wondering how far behind they were. Certainly they had no idea who they were dealing with, but she dreaded the thought of giving them any opportunities to find out.
Glancing quickly at any reflective surface she passed, Ziva finally caught sight of the familiar blue and gray uniforms approaching. She was a good sixty meters ahead, but the street was long and straight and offered little to no cover. She pondered the option of simply facing them and taking them out quietly. Either choice – killing them or merely incapacitating them – would no doubt result in a canvassing of the entire neighborhood by HSP, putting both her and Aroska in jeopardy. Again sickened by the idea of having no choice but to run from the problem, Ziva ducked into the first alley she came to.
The space was narrow, with tall apartment buildings rising up on either side. Broken glass and other trash carpeted the ground, crunching and rattling under her boots. She moved on light feet, eyes on a smaller passage that branched off from the one in which she now stood. She pulled up short when she reached it.
A dead end
. A drunken homeless man lay passed out on a bed of rags he had created against the far wall, the liquor bottle still in his grasp. Mind and heart both racing, Ziva slipped back out and continued deeper into the heart of the apartment complex. She could hear the voices of the two agents out on the street as they drew nearer.
The main vein of the alley made a sharp ninety-degree turn ahead and she made a beeline for it, imagining a maintenance ladder or some such means of escape beyond. Her heart skipped a beat when all she found was a solid wall adorned with various city-operated control panels. Ripping the helmet off, she looked wildly about for any alternate route. With a little work, she could climb the pipes and cables lining the wall, but once her pursuers knew she was on the roof, she’d be fair game to any air patrols that happened to be nearby. It seemed leaving the alley was no longer an option either – she could now hear footsteps approaching.
Replacing the helmet, Ziva drew the pistol she had taken from Aroska’s house and held it at the ready. She kept her ears focused on the alley and her eyes on the wall, where she could see the shadows of the two agents as they moved closer. They were coming as silently as possible over the litter-covered ground, neither chatting casually nor relaying information via communicator. If they were coming into the alley alone they more than likely hadn’t called for back-up. As far as Ziva could tell, she still had the upper hand in the situation. From the shapes of their shadows, she could see that they had not drawn their weapons either. She hated having to attack two virtually innocent people, but she saw no other way out.
Ziva’s muscles tensed, her finger closed around the trigger and she inhaled all at the exact moment one of their communicators crackled to life. She froze, as did the two officers. One of them cursed and the other responded with a chuckle and a snide comment. “Go ahead, Central,” said the first, replying to the transmission.
The dispatcher began rattling off instructions and numbers, and Ziva caught the phrase “assault in progress” toward the end of the string. If she’d heard the address correctly, this call would take them back to the area where she had purchased the communicator. She lowered her pistol but didn’t loosen her grip.
“Copy that,” the agent said. “On our way.”
With that they were gone, leaving everything silent except for the hum of passing traffic. Ziva stood there in the alley for another several minutes, back flat against the wall, giving her racing heart time to settle. She wasn’t sure why all of this was getting her so worked up. Maybe it was the fact that those who would normally be backing her up were now against her. There were still the select few who were on her side, though they were severely outnumbered. Realistically, this was like any other mission. The only difference was that the enemy was her own people.
Feeling as calm as she guessed she would ever be, Ziva slid the pistol back into her pants and smoothed the jacket over it. Sighing, she established a firm grip on a thick pipe that ran up the wall and shinnied upward. Digging her toes into the wall, she heaved herself over the edge of the roof and rolled to her feet. Baking in the damp heat, Ziva began walking.
“Skeet,” Zinni said quietly, inserting herself into the space between him and Tarbic.
He sent a fiery glare in Aroska’s direction. “You’d better have a good reason for being up here,” he muttered before shifting the glare toward Zinni.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Aroska said. “I’ve got something important to tell you both – a couple of things, actually.”
“You shot Ziva, betrayed her right after she saved your ass. Now you’re here to help Dasaro catch her. Why should we listen to you?”
“Listen, Skeet!” Tarbic snapped. “I don’t need this
sheyss
from you. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”
“If this is your definition of the ‘right thing’—”
“Skeet!” Zinni exclaimed, crossing her arms.
“First of all I want to apologize to you both for selling Ziva out on Sardonis,” Aroska said before anyone could speak further. “Violation of protocol or not, she had just put her life on the line to save not only me but Tate and Jole as well. Without her, the mission would have fallen apart – hell, it never would have even existed. I thought I was doing the right thing by taking her into custody, but it didn’t take me long to realize I was wrong.” He hesitated a moment. “I’m the one responsible for convincing the director to drop the charges. Nobody’s supposed to know.”
“Have you told
her
all of this?” Zinni asked.
“Of course.”
Skeet stood, still holding the railing, trying to decide whether to be relieved by Aroska’s words or infuriated that he would wait so long to confess. The latter, he realized, was little more than an excuse to be angry about everything that was going on. If Aroska had taken the time to seek them out for this, he was most likely on their side. It still didn’t account for the fact that he had come to Headquarters to speak with Dasaro – there was some explaining that needed to be done.
“Any chance we’ll ever get to find out what that ‘violation of protocol’ was?” he asked, allowing the tone of his voice to soften significantly.
Tarbic shrugged. “If you do, Ziva should be the one to tell you. The only thing I’ll say is that she knew the consequences but she chose to do it anyway. She saved my life…again.”
Skeet ruffled his hair and glanced at Zinni, who was eyeing him like a mother waiting for an apology from her child. “So is that why you’re here? Decided you’d drop by and tell the truth when you had a spare few minutes?”
Aroska’s face suddenly hardened a bit and he drew closer to the two of them, speaking in a hushed voice. “I’m here because Ziva sent me.”
For several seconds, Skeet wasn’t sure if he’d heard him right, then he wasn’t sure if he could hear at all. All the noise around him was suddenly drowned out by a deafening…
silence
inside his head. The idea that Ziva was alive and well sent a shiver of relief down his spine.
“She’s with you?” he asked, voice dry.
“She said that for your safety I shouldn’t tell you where she is,” Aroska replied. “She’s safe though, and we’re doing everything we can to get her off the planet.”
“We?” Zinni asked.
“She’s probably doing more work than I am at this point,” Aroska explained, “but I like to think it’s a collective effort. Jada Jaroon is on board to a degree, but according to Ziva she’s afraid to do too much for fear of being implicated. My instructions were to come here and monitor the progress of the investigation, as well as to make sure the two of you were aware of what was going on.”
Skeet suddenly felt humiliated by the way he’d been acting, though he still wasn’t thrilled with the choices Aroska had previously made. “And I thank you for that,” he said. “How’s the old girl holding up?”
“I think she’s scared,” Tarbic replied, “although you’d never get her to admit it. She’s doing better than I imagine I would if I were in her place. She’s quiet…and cranky as ever.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Skeet said, allowing a short chuckle before becoming solemn again. “Listen though. I’m not sure how much you remember of that conversation we had—”
“How could I forget any of it?”
“—but you’re going to have to tread extra lightly around Ziva right now. If she ever feels threatened in the slightest way, she’s like an animal trapped in a corner and she won’t hesitate to fight her way out. She may want to do things you don’t agree with, but odds are she knows what she’s doing and trying to interfere will get you killed. Sound familiar?”
“Very much so. On that note, I may have to do some things you don’t agree with either. Part of ‘monitoring the investigation’ includes gaining the captains’ trust to the point that they’re willing to give me the information I need. I’m not sure what all that’s going to entail.”
And then there was that. However, the thought of having someone else on their side in this seemingly eternal struggle was enough to make Skeet willing to forgive both Aroska and Ziva in advance for any lengths they went to in order to get the job done. There was no question of whether or not things would get ugly – he hoped this turn of events would get everything moving along faster. The sooner this was all over, the better.
All he could do was nod in agreement as Zinni responded. “Understood,” she said quietly. “I suppose we would do the same if we were in your boots. Is there anything specific we can do on our end?”
Aroska shrugged and stole a nervous glance back into the building. “Ziva says she didn’t kill Tachi. The way I understand it, everyone is supposed to be doing everything they can to convict her. I would start by trying to prove her innocent.”
“It won’t be easy,” Skeet said. “Dasaro’s running this place like a mining camp on Midore. Do you think you can keep him occupied?”
“I’ll do my best. Speaking of which, I should be getting back before he wonders what I’m doing.”
Skeet rushed forward when Aroska turned to leave. “One more thing, Tarbic – take care of her, will you? She’s going to want to handle everything herself and she’s not going to be able to.”
Aroska grinned wide. “And yet you just finished telling me not to interfere with anything she does.”
“There’s a difference between interfering and looking out for her,” Skeet replied. “You can help her by being there for her and backing her up on the rare occasion that she actually
asks
you to. Compliment her, try to keep her thinking positive.” He smirked, though his face felt like it was laced with a tangible layer of disappointment – disappointment that he couldn’t be there for his friend when it seemed she needed him most. “Keep her from wreaking more havoc than necessary.”
Aroska’s eyes darted back toward the building again before he shook Skeet’s hand. “Will do, Sergeant. I’d say we’ll contact you, but there’s no guaranteeing what will happen in the next couple of days.”
“Do what you have to,” Zinni said. “Be safe.”
Nodding respectfully and submissively toward each of them, Aroska turned and rubbed his freshly cut hair as he walked back toward the building. Skeet watched him go, lost in the rhythmic echo of his footsteps as he crossed the landing pad. He was startled out of his trance when the man stopped and turned back to face them, eyes wide as if a sudden thought had come to mind. “Do either of you have a spare memory stick I can borrow?”