Shepherd (18 page)

Clay couldn’t meet Ty’s gaze. Ty had played him, so certain he would take advantage of Esme’s skills like everyone else in her life. Perhaps the worst part was that he deserved this because he had fallen so easily into that trap. But it wasn’t Esme’s skills holding him captive. It was the spark she brought to his dire existence. Were she “Dr. Doom” herself, he couldn’t love her less.

“And since you haven’t asked,
again
, I’ll tell you anyway. The sister worked for us. Esme didn’t have a damn thing to trade; she just wanted them safe.” Ty squatted in front of him. “I want to think she cares about you perhaps as much as you care for her.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” No doubt, she hated him now.

“She wouldn’t have stayed with you if she didn’t want to. She figured a way through your security system to contact Radar and save your life. She could easily leave.”

Clay glanced up. “She doesn’t know. Even if I wanted to tell her, she’s safer not knowing about Radar.”

Ty shrugged. “Her guess that Radar was a direct line to me will hold up to scrutiny—for the time being. For what it’s worth, I trust her instincts with my secrets. You should marry her.”

“Are you insane?”

“No.” Ty leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “When the Regents legalized multiple marriages for the purpose of increased procreation, there was no restriction created for gender. I’m sure, in retrospect, they wished they’d added the restriction. However, one of the councilwomen took fondly to the idea of multiple husbands. They’ll never pass a modification now.”

“That’s sick.” Yet a light broke through his self-absorption.

“No. It’s legal.” Ty initiated a screen from his wrist communiqué. With a quick command, he displayed a document.

Clay’s vision wavered as he read the legalese. “This was two days ago. How—”

“The benefit of having a friend who’s a Regent. I can do anything I please—sometimes. If you love her, claim her. Make her your wife in
all
the ways that count. If someday, my verification of Esme’s body is proven faulty and she reappears alive, then you’re both covered.”

The idea grew, taking hold in Clay’s mind until he winced, remembering where he had left her. “This may not be an option.”

Prepared for Ty’s harsh reaction, he braced himself.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Ty didn’t touch him, but the grating timbre of his voice spoke volumes.

“She’s not harmed. She just isn’t going to speak to me again.” He allowed the hard shove and loud curse. He deserved it. Not waiting for more admonishment, he stood and brushed the bits of packing material and splinters off his pants. His options with Esme seemed infinite and impossible. Two ends of the spectrum. He would most likely end up in the unhappy middle. A true mess of his own making.

Ty ran a hand across the braids on his head. “So now what?”

“Now we’re going back to release Esme.” He turned away but not before he saw Ty’s jaw drop and heard the muttered curse. “Then you’re going to help me salvage the plan for Aaron.”

“We already have team three in position. It’s a little late to doubt the plan.”

“Yeah, but the critical parts of the plan are Esme’s, and I’m not sure how keen she’s going to be on participating at this point. I may need you to keep her from killing me until after we free Aaron.”

“And then?”

“She’s entitled to all the shots at me she wants.”

***

That Clay turned on the light had given Esme some hope.

With a grunt and an awkward twist, she maneuvered behind her back for the safety precaution she’d hidden in the seam of her waistband. She hated confinement, but damn if she didn’t learn from her lessons. Never go anywhere without tools and backup.

She struggled to reach behind her right hip for the tiny sliver of wire she reserved for emergencies. Not that she had expected one to arrive so soon, or as a result of Clay, but life was unpredictable. It was good she didn’t fight the old instinct to be prepared.

Unfortunately, he had chosen to cuff her right arm, which made her goal more difficult. The stretch burned as she squeezed her body against the wall in an attempt to keep still and reach farther. Her fingertips touched the thin wire and pulled—

“Countdown—twenty minutes.”

“Shit.” The wire gleamed from the floor.

She was going to make him suffer for putting her through this, a promise she planned to keep. She reached with her toes. Clenching two toes, it still took her three tries until she finally caught the wire. Negotiating the small hole in the cuffs to disrupt the magnetic lock took longer but didn’t tax her body nearly as much.

With the click, she sank to the floor and for a second rubbed her wrist, contemplating her next move. It would hardly be work. Clay was right
—
she was a tiny bundle of trouble. All because she had learned to used her time and resources wisely.

She moved to the plasma wall and aimed the cuff’s magnet, now visible with the cuffs open, toward the security section at the far edge of the wall’s control panel. The panel’s receptors turned toward her, tilting it a few degrees. Granted, the panel provided only a seventy-degree angle of remote command acceptance, but if she stood at the farthest edge of the wall and pointed the magnet at the keypad with the new angle—ah, yes. Using the wire, she covered and exposed the magnet in a rapid sequence of instructions.

Not a practical application, but she didn’t need much more than SOS, or in this case Clay’s ID sequence, to trigger the release of the door lock. Sitting around on her butt on the floor had provided her plenty of time to look around, and an even longer time to conceptualize all sorts of ideas. The door clicked and swung a few inches. She dashed to catch it before it drifted closed.

A glance in each direction and a scan of the console confirmed he was definitely gone. She took in the empty room with a sigh and blinked away her emotions. First, she would make sure they weren’t the missing link for the extraction. Then she would figure out how to track Clay, tie him down if need be, and pound some sense into him.

He might be a stubborn SOB, but he was hers, even if he didn’t want to be right now.

She had found the one man in this insane world who she wanted more than life, and she was keeping him. After years invested with professional mercenaries, she understood the wide range of evil and violence. Monfort categorized the darkest end, soulless individuals who never witnessed the death and havoc they authorized, and worse, never cared. From her perspective, Clay, and now Aaron, fell into the victim category. Young men manipulated without choice. Somehow Clay had escaped his fate. He hadn’t trusted her yet with his worst atrocities, but she was prepared whenever he was ready. Esme Loures hadn’t been hatched in a safe cocoon. She had survived men who fed on turmoil and chaos, had witnessed enough to fill her nightmares for a lifetime. She didn’t judge Clay or Aaron. For both of them to have escaped the Regents’ design was her confirmation miracles existed.

First the bedroom. Not bothering with finesse, she took a chair to Clay’s closet and tossed his neat piles aside, looking for her boots.

Next step?
She glanced at the numbers counting down on the screen above the control console.

They were already behind schedule, and Clay wasn’t back. His prep bag sat atop the table at the back of the room.

Esme grabbed his black mesh jumpsuit and pulled it on over her shirt and tie pants, rolling the pant legs and sleeves as she made her way to the supply shelves. She tucked an ion laser in her pants pocket, strapped a K39 laser cannon to her thigh, cataloged the remaining items, and then slipped on the vest she had prepped with the ERD and dampeners.

She turned back to the console. The plan milestones and the team member assignment filled one screen. Initial assignments displayed in white, which turned to red with completion. Ratter had completed the cutout for the keg’s insertion, Ghost confirmed initiation of the diversion in the squad compound. Onyx confirmed departure for the meet point. A flashing orange assignment required Shepherd’s authorization to commit to the extraction scenario.

Biting her lip, Esme pulled the keyboard in front of her.

Active?

Four “copy” responses cycled back.

Initiate Wolf Xtract

Ghost: Confirm

Ratter: Confirm

Specter: Confirm

Radar: Confirm

She switched from the Shepherd ID to her own.

Karma: 10 minutes to launch

Four confirmations returned in sequence. She released a sigh of relief and snapped on a wrist comm. They were five minutes behind schedule, but everyone was in place, all cogs progressing as planned. Her familiarity with the details for every step of Clay’s plan didn’t stop her from downloading the full sequence to her device. Redundant personnel existed on-call for Ghost and Onyx, with three backup strategies for every point of failure.

Yes, Clay’s plan. She had felt so proud to have him accept her input to the plan, yet he’d spent hours scrutinizing screens and layouts, running scenarios to test each milestone, confirming each overlapping task, all to tighten and verify every minute of the mission. There wasn’t an incident, short of global destruction, he hadn’t accounted for. Which was why, with a five-minute shortfall in the schedule, she could move the team into active status.

She still embraced the project without regrets, proud to finally be involved with a rescue mission instead of one of destruction. However, her respect was for the man who had offered her the chance. In spite of his doubts, he had believed in her enough for her to get this far. For now, that was enough.

She gave one last glance around and wondered if she would see this place again. It felt so much like home, but only with Clay. Hair pinned up under his cap, she initiated the face visor, activated the ERD grid with the keg, and headed for the door.

***

“Countdown—eight minutes.”

Clay ignored the system count, heading straight for his console. At the stream of red task items on the plan followed by the activation signal from his code name, he froze in his tracks. He turned and brushed by Ty in a desperate search for the equipment he had organized for his trek with Esme and the keg.

Pack, weapons, and keg were all gone.

“Team’s been activated.” Ty slid a second keyboard his way and continued to search through the camera feeds from Down Below. One feed zoomed in on a shadow beneath grid girder 673, the injection site for the keg. “I don’t see anything there.”

Clay ran a sweep of heat signatures. A faint residual signature headed away from 673 toward the sewage ejection point on the west end of the New Delphi grid. “There.” He pointed to a shift in the shadows. An energy signature disappeared behind a mound of steel. Damn interference. Another key sequence confirmed the dampener bots’ activation and progression. “She’s out there and has loaded the ignition device.”

“How far does Aaron have to drop after the explosion?” asked Ty.

“The full drop is three hundred feet. Ratter will have him in a backup anti-grav belt.”

Ty glanced back. “A backup will only kick in during the last fifty feet.”

“It’s a rough landing. Anything stronger will register on the Regent scanners. He’s supposed to be dead, remember.”

“And the break in the sewage line?”

“We have a reroute in effect. The New Delphi Sanitation Department already had a standard maintenance cycle scheduled. Specter will patch the hole, and the segment will look normal by the time the maintenance crew arrives at that location.”

Clay spun the keyboard back to lock the system and then grabbed a laser gun and visor.

“She confirmed the mission and launched the device—do you still not trust her?” Ty asked.

“My gut’s always trusted Esme. It’s my brain that had trouble with each new bit of information. I hope to God I get a chance to convince her of that.” Clay tossed a second laser gun in Ty’s direction. “The problem is Aaron’s been in captivity for two years. While I want him home as much as the rest of us, she has no idea how much desperation and anger the squad training can instill in a man.”

Ty shrugged as he attached the cannon beneath his trench coat. “I think she has a fairly good idea. But you’re right, more backup won’t hurt.”

Chapter 12

Clay was right. Loading the keg into the conduit would have been easier with his help. The panel cut into the wide pipe was adequate, but manipulating the ERD with one hand and physically shoving the keg into the opening with her other pulled several muscles in her neck and shoulder. Or perhaps anxiety triggered the tense nerves and nagging pain. Fortunately, guiding the device with her remote and detonating it had gone as planned.

The explosion point still several yards away, Esme halted.

Clay had chosen a clear section in Down Below for Aaron’s expulsion. The intersection of the sewage lines should be over an open spit of land. Instead rubble and junk rose twenty feet into the air. Wet soil and the stink and gleam of sewage covered the pile and several smaller ones to the side.