Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (19 page)

-42-

Palace of the Royal General

Haphor, Haphez

By the time Aroska pulled up in front of Njo Jaroon’s estate in the Royal City, it was mid morning and the rest of Haphor was bustling with life. There had been some to-do when it came to letting him through the gates – one of several negative side effects of having been away from work for a month and a half – and only after contacting the director himself had he been allowed through. Everyone else was in the same boat, it seemed. Since Tachi’s murder, the security detail had been on edge and virtually the only people allowed into the Royal City were those who lived there, according to one of the gate guards. Aroska didn’t blame them at all for being cautious, though he felt crushed under many a wary gaze as he exited the car and made his way up the front walkway.

It was a pleasant day, warm but overcast, and the hum of insects buzzing in the flowerbeds filled the air. The grounds surrounding the mansion were meticulously maintained, with freshly-cut grass, ornate fountains and thriving green plant life. The house itself was even more impressive. The outer walls were pure white stone, and, despite the fact that it was only two stories, it had a commanding presence that seemed fit for the king himself. Why Ziva had chosen to give up life in such a place was beyond him.

A man with the look of a butler about him was waiting at the front door and let Aroska in without a word. The grand entry hall was still and quiet, with no signs of life in the immediate vicinity. The place reminded him of a museum – cold and delicate – so he moved forward into a pristine little sitting area and contented himself with looking rather than touching.

A massive spiral staircase rose up before him, stretching up to the second floor where he could hear faint footsteps approaching. A woman appeared at the top of the steps and hesitated for several seconds, looking down on him as if he were somehow inconveniencing her by being there. He didn’t need to read his data pad or study the
gesh punti
on her face to know that she was Namani Payvan-Jaroon. The woman was a spitting image of Ziva, but about twenty-five years older. She had the air of a trophy wife about her, with perfect clothes, perfect nails, perfect hair, and skin that she had no doubt paid a large sum of money to maintain. Nonetheless, this was the first blood relative of Ziva’s he had met to date and it somehow seemed surreal.

“My lady, my name is—”

“Lieutenant Tarbic,” she interrupted, quickly descending the stairs with her head up in a pompous manner. “Your captain told us you would be coming, and I will tell you right now that you are wasting your time. I assure you that you will find nothing here and none of us can tell you anything that will help you.”

“That may be true ma’am, but with respect, I can’t leave just yet. With your permission I’d like to just take a look around – you won’t even know I’m here.”

“Very well,” said a male voice accompanied by heavy footfalls. “Do your work Lieutenant and then be done here.”

Aroska turned and found himself looking into the all-knowing eyes of Njo Jaroon. He couldn’t recall that he’d ever seen the man in the flesh, and now that he was seeing him face-to-face he felt put in his place. Intimidation was probably a large factor in Jaroon’s skill as a politician; he was just as tall as Aroska and as thick as Dasaro. If Ziva didn’t look so much like her mother, he would have guessed Njo was the relation, not Namani.

Aroska dipped his head, still caught off guard by how impressive the Royal General was. “Yes sir, thank you sir.” He suddenly felt very small and wished he was dealing with someone with whom he was more familiar – which, he realized, was only Jada. After the mere thirty seconds he had been in the presence of the Jaroons, he already felt like he understood at least partially why Ziva wanted nothing to do with them. He doubted she’d be willing to tell him her family backstory, but curiosity was beginning to eat at him.

“You may dispense with the pleasantries, Lieutenant.” Jaroon’s speech was dignified but his voice was gruff. “Rest assured that no one in this household has seen or heard from Ziva since the assassination.”

“Do either of you have any idea what would have prompted her to kill Tachi?” The question felt strange – after such a brief conversation with her about the matter, Aroska was not yet convinced that Ziva was entirely innocent. At any rate, it seemed she was potentially
more
innocent than whoever else was involved, if that even made sense.
What have I gotten into?

Njo glared at him from behind bushy black eyebrows, silently chastising him for daring to ask another question. “No,” he snapped. “If anyone had any idea, it would be you and your agency.”

So the mysterious incident that had sparked Ziva’s hatred for Tachi wasn’t known outside of HSP. That would help when it came to narrowing down exactly what it was. Reminding himself that he should currently play the role of loyal investigator rather than actually
be
one, Aroska forced another abbreviated nod. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be on my way.”

The three parted company, Njo and Namani exiting through an open patio door and Aroska heading up the impressive staircase. The house truly was a masterpiece, no doubt dating back to the original establishment of the Royal City. It was eerily quiet, and that combined with the fact that he didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing left him frozen halfway up the steps. He had made a point to rise early in order to prepare himself for the day and had found, to his surprise, that Ziva was already gone. On second thought, it hadn’t actually surprised him at all. The woman was a ghost, disappearing on a whim and affecting his mind to the point where he’d wondered if everything that was happening was just part of some insane dream. It was no wonder HSP was unable to track her down.

If it
was
a dream, he was still in it. With no way of knowing when or if he would ever wake up, he concluded that it would be best to at least do something that would leave him with a sense of accomplishment when the time came. Helping an alleged capital criminal evade the authorities was accomplishing something…wasn’t it?

Aroska broke out of his stupor and continued to the top of the staircase, where he found himself in a small open area with a sofa and table and a hallway on either side of him. According to the data he had gathered before leaving headquarters that morning, there was Jada and then there were Jaril and Jazel, the Haphezian half-siblings. He preferred to not deal with the latter two if he could so help it, but at the same time he thought he should probably try to stall in order to buy Ziva the time to do whatever the hell it was she was doing. On the other hand, he didn’t want to take too long and drag out the escape process any longer than necessary. “Ziva, you owe me big time,” he muttered, turning down the corridor on the left.

There were several closed doors lining the wall to his right, no doubt bedrooms overlooking the back of the property. He felt odd intruding on anyone, but standing in the hallway looking lost wouldn’t do any good either. Inhaling deeply, he went to the first door and knocked, waited, and then tried the controls to find the room unlocked. The door slid open with a hiss and he found himself looking into a large apartment-style room that appeared to have been unoccupied for some time judging by the storage containers stacked about and the bare mattress in the bed frame. He ventured a few steps inside and listened for a moment before retreating back out into the hall, satisfied no one was around.

Mind wandering, Aroska continued to the next room, this one on his left. He repeated the process of knocking and waiting and found that it too was unlocked. Inside he found a well-furnished room similar in style to the other, though this one was clearly still in use. The massive canopy bed sat unmade behind a thin pale-green veil, and a variety of clothes were strewn about the floor – all feminine, mostly undergarments, Aroska noted. This room obviously belonged to…

Her name trailed away when her voice rang out from down the hallway. “Who the hell are you?”

Aroska turned in the direction he’d been heading to find Jazel Jaroon standing outside the lavatory door wearing only a flimsy house robe. She pulled it tighter around her scrawny body and strode toward him, face scrunched in a manner that attempted but failed to intimidate him. She was about the same height as her mother and only bore a resemblance to Ziva if he squinted a little. According to the information, she and Jaril were twenty-year-old twins, though Jazel made herself up to look a good three or four years older. In the few seconds he’d stood there studying her, it was clear that she tried way too hard, whether it was to draw the eyes of men or give her self-esteem a boost. It was typical behavior for a child in a family with a structure such as this one, nothing but an attempt to compensate for the lack of attention from royal parents. Her face was caked with powder, eyes lined with black half a centimeter thick, eyebrows plucked to the point that they were nearly nonexistent. Vanity aside, she wasn’t bad-looking – if he’d had no idea who she was, Aroska might have expressed interest.

“Hello Jazel. HSP,” he said, displaying the special ops credentials he had been given. “Care to answer a few questions?”

The young woman smirked and leaned up against the frame of her door, no longer quite so conservative with the grip on her robe. “Are you here to interrogate me, agent?” she asked, letting her eyes flit about flirtatiously.

The girl had no shame. In any other situation Aroska would have responded with a coy comment of his own, but at the moment he was determined not to stoop to her level. “Have you heard from Ziva recently?” he asked, refusing to indulge her.

“No,” she snapped, “and I don’t care to. Thanks to her, this whole city is on lockdown and I’ve been stuck in this house for three days.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds brutal.”

“It is. If you ask me, she’s getting what she deserves for what she did to Tachi, but it’s unfair that the rest of us have to suffer.”

“It sounds like you couldn’t care less about what’s happening to your own sister.”

“
Half
-sister,” Jazel bit. “It’s too bad a relation could be proven using DNA – otherwise I wouldn’t claim one at all. All she’s ever done is cause problems for us. She’s messed up in the head.”

Aroska wondered
who
exactly was messed up in the head, as well as what the definition of a “problem” was. He couldn’t fathom how she’d even had the opportunity to develop this attitude, considering he was fairly sure Ziva had done everything in her power to avoid her family during recent years. Had Namani instilled this mindset in her? Was this conflict the reason Ziva had left so many years earlier? He considered the things he’d read in Ziva’s background profile, and now he was even more curious to hear her take on the situation. A dozen points of argument spun through his skull, but Jada appeared out of thin air and prevented him from speaking his mind.

“Lieutenant Tarbic isn’t it?” she said, gliding up to them with a distasteful eye on Jazel. “We met a couple months ago in Noro.”

“Jada,” he replied, hoping his relief wasn’t as obvious as it felt. “Always a pleasure.”

Her long brown hair was loose from the braid she had worn when they’d first been introduced, reaching two thirds of the way down her back. She seemed shorter than Aroska remembered, though he realized she was barefoot. Despite the fact that she was younger than her Haphezian counterpart, it was clear merely in the way she carried herself that she possessed wisdom and charisma beyond her years.

“If you’re here about Ziva, I’d be glad to answer any questions,” Jada said, turning back the way she had come with a short cough.

“Great,” he said, mustering all the poise he could while Jazel was still present. “I won’t be long – I’ve got somewhere else to be and they’re expecting me back in Noro soon.”

Thankfully Jazel took her cue and turned away. “If there’s anything else,
Lieutenant,
I’ll be in the shower.” She began to strut back toward the lavatory, throwing a wink back at him as she went.

Aroska shuddered and began walking beside Jada, bewildered by the reaction Jazel had provoked in him. Ordinarily he would have been delighted to be flirted with without having to work for it, but at the moment it was making his stomach churn.

Jada walked like true royalty, with shoulders rolled back and head held high. Aroska wasn’t sure if it was two months’ worth of maturity or simply the fact that they were under the Royal General’s roof, but there was definitely a more aristocratic air about her than there had been during dinner that night in Noro.

“I’m terribly sorry about that,” she said, loud enough that Jazel could no doubt still hear.

“Your sister has a very…
mature
outlook on life,” Aroska scoffed, stealing a glance back toward the lavatory.

Jada led him past the staircase to the room at the far end of the hallway. “One of many side-effects of being raised in an environment like this,” she replied, opening the door and stepping aside to let him through. “Don’t get me wrong, living here isn’t a bad thing, but unlike Jaril and Jazel, I’ve had enough experience with life on the outside to know I shouldn’t take all of this for granted.”

“A logical perspective.”

“Yeah, well around here the logical thinkers are the ones who are considered narrow-minded. If they want to know who’s
actually
short-sighted, all they need to do is look in a mirror.” She showed him to a comfortable chair near the glass door that led out to a balcony overlooking the yard. “It’s an interesting phenomenon. I’m under the impression that everyone thinks I’m as crazy as Ziva the majority of the time.”