Word and Breath (12 page)

He heard her breathing slow down. Felt her tension relax a little. She still didn’t pull away from him.

He pulled away instead, dropping his arms and edging back a few inches. If he didn’t, he would end up doing something utterly wrong, something completely at odds with his job here.

“Do you think you’re ready to tell me about it yet?” he asked.

Riana took a ragged breath and nodded.

Before she could begin, Mikel’s phone rang. He wouldn’t have bothered answering it, but he recognized the ring.

Largan. If he didn’t answer, he would be suspected of some involvement—no matter how irrational such a theory was.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’ll be right back.”

He picked up the phone and went into the back room, listening to Largan’s urgent questioning.

When he could get a word in, Mikel said calmly, “Stop yelling. Raging at me isn’t going to do any good. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. But I haven’t seen her, and I have no idea where she might be.”

***

“Where is she?” Largan raged to the room at large. “We have the finest military and police force ever assembled in the civilized world! How can we not find one untrained, injured woman?”

Nobody was fool enough to answer.

The room buzzed with activity, as dozens of people talked on the phone and did frenzied research in an attempt to find Riana Cole. After the disaster in Canning Square today, her location was their number one priority.

How could this have happened? Who would have tried to kill the girl?

Whoever it was had almost succeeded.

Largan strode over to the young man he’d ordered five minutes ago to get details on the shooting. “What did you find out?”

“It was a long-range rifle. Military issue. He was stationed in an apartment building a few blocks from the square. They think he was professionally trained.”

“Military?” Largan repeated, his voice rising again in his frustration. “Are you saying a member of our military did this?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the young man replied, visibly cowering before Largan’s rage. “I’m just repeating what was told to me by the investigators.”

Largan turned away abruptly, tired of talking to this idiot. At a familiar, banging noise, he noticed there were workers in the far corner. They’d torn a hole in the wall, working on the wiring or plumbing or some such nonsense. Why they couldn’t manage to keep this building together was beyond him. “Stop that banging! We’re trying to work in here.”

The noise from the construction workers ceased immediately. It provided Largan a brief sense of relief, and he didn’t even care if he was being unreasonable.

Then Largan spotted Smyde standing next to the door of the main office.

“Over here,” Largan ordered. “Do you have information for me?”

“No, sir. I closed down the office for the afternoon. There was no sense in trying to get work out of the Readers after what happened. I just came over to offer my assistance, if I can be of any.”

Largan grunted, as much of a thank-you as he was capable of at the moment. “Any ideas?”

“I assume this wasn’t a sanctioned Union shooting?”

“No, it wasn’t! We needed Riana Cole alive. And now Talon is dead, and he would have been useful.”

Smyde twisted his lips. “A traitor?”

“A suspected traitor, but one we knew about. And he was one of the few Readers left who know the Old Language. He was valuable to us.”

Shrugging, Smyde muttered, “The Old Language is too dangerous to use for any reason. We can do without Talon. Any word on Riana’s whereabouts?”

“No!” The bellow caused half the room to look up and the other half to hunker down and hope it wasn’t directed at them. “She’s disappeared. I just called Mikel, but he hasn’t heard from her. He said he’d try to contact her and let us know what he finds out.”

“She’ll probably go underground, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but we need her available. What, by the living and dead, is going on here?”

In the midst of his rage, something occurred to Largan then. Something that made his stomach drop sickeningly.

Clenching his fist, he turned and stomped back to his office, leaving Smyde without a word of explanation.

If he found out this catastrophe was carried out by another branch of the Union—in his city, without his being made aware of it—heads were going to roll in the capital.

He took a few slow breaths to compose himself and then picked up his phone. When his assistant answered, he said, “I need to talk to the President’s Chief of Staff.”

***

Canning Square was completely cordoned off for the official investigation of the shooting, so Connor wouldn’t have been able to look around, even if he’d been willing to take that risk.

He mingled with the curious onlookers for a while, getting as clear a sight of the scene as he could with the official restrictions.

But there wasn’t much use in hanging out here now anyway.

Riana was long gone.

And Jenson was…

He hadn’t let himself even process that knowledge yet. There was too much going on. He was the leader of a movement that was slowly spiraling into chaos. Marina had been killed too. A traitor—although almost certainly pressured into it. He could only pray she hadn’t spilled any vital information before she died.

And Riana was missing.

He and Kelvin headed back toward Tava’s apartment, where a few of the other members of the Front had already gone.

When he got there, he wished he hadn’t come. Tava was in tears.

She’d cared for Jenson. Connor had always known it—even if Jenson had been oblivious.

Tava’s face crumpled again as she saw Connor, and she came over to give and receive comfort.

Connor gave the requisite hug, but he pulled away as soon as he could. He couldn’t break down, and it was easier not to think about it.

There was something else that needed his attention now anyway.

“Did she say anything last night?” Connor asked Tava. “Anything that might give us an idea about where she would go?”

Tava wiped at her cheeks with her long fingers and sniffed a few times. “I don’t think so. She didn’t say much. But…” She trailed off and her face twisted again, as if the remembered conversation had hit her hard.

“But what? Anything might be important.”

“There was a man. She didn’t say who he was, but she admitted there was a man in her life. Someone she was interested in. Maybe she would have turned to him.”

Connor almost didn’t feel the pang of jealousy—everything else churning inside him was too strong. “But she didn’t say who he was?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Tava turned away, stifling her sobs, and Connor didn’t have the heart to press her anymore.

“I don’t understand who would have tried to kill her. Why kidnap her sister if they were just going to shoot her?” Kelvin looked exhausted, almost dead on his feet.

He’d been knocked out in the middle of the chaos—before he could tell Connor what happened. Kelvin couldn’t remember anything about who or what had knocked him out. The implications were frightening.

Connor leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He’d been doing a lot of thinking over the last few hours, and there was only one conclusion that made any sense. “They wouldn’t.”

He saw the eyes of others in the room turn to him, waiting for him to guide them, for him to tell them what to do. He didn’t want such pressure. He didn’t want the burden of dealing with his own needs as well as everyone else’s.

He didn’t want to do this at all.

He ignored the inner resistance and said bluntly, “We must be dealing with two different forces here. One wants to kill Riana. And one wants her for information.”

“So why Riana? What’s so special about her?” Kelvin intended no insult by the question. It must be the same question everyone else had.

Connor could give a million reasons why she was special to him. But only one reason why she’d be special to the rest of the world.

Her grandfather, Marshall Cole, had been…significant.

All he said was, “We’ll figure that out. But first we have to get her back.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” Riana agreed, looking at Mikel’s handsome, slightly stunned face. “It sounds crazy. I still can’t believe it’s really happening.”

She was seated on the couch in Mikel’s tidy apartment. The place wasn’t at all what she would have expected of him—it was generic and rather unlived in with neutral colors and a couple of boring landscapes on the walls. He probably didn’t spend much time here, though, and maybe he wasn’t interested in interior decorating.

Riana was on her second cup of overly sweet coffee, and Mikel was working on the wound on her arm. He’d had to cut off the sleeve of her blouse, and now he was cleaning and disinfecting the gash.

It was superficial—just grazing the fleshy part of her upper arm—but it was more painful than she’d realized, now that she’d come out of her state of shock.

The physical pain was almost a relief. Something concrete and tangible to distract her from the knot of fear and grief in her gut that wouldn’t go away.

She’d told Mikel as much of the story as she could—still careful to protect the Front’s secrets and the identities of the people involved. Mikel listened in silence as he gently wiped the dried blood from her skin. Only when she finished did he speak or react.

“So you’re sure they were trying to kill
you
?” he asked after a moment’s further reflection.

“I think so.” She sucked in a breath as Mikel wiped something sharp and bitter on her raw skin. “Jenson thought so.”

As she said his name, her features twisted in sudden emotion, remembering Jenson’s face at the end, his urgency and resolve to keep her alive at any cost.

She’d known him for years. But she’d never known he had that in him.

A mild and ironically intelligent Reader.

A man who’d died for her.

“I had to leave him,” she whispered. “He was… I tried to help him, but he was… I had to leave him.” She was speaking as much to herself as she was to Mikel, feeling again the agonizing rent in her chest as she’d finally let Jenson’s limp body drop to the ground.

His head had impacted hard against the pavement. The dull sound it made as it connected was perhaps the most horrible memory of all.

“Of course.” Mikel’s voice and face were calm. He had finished disinfecting the wound and was now wrapping it with a bandage from his medicine cabinet. She noticed how carefully he worked, his long fingers infinitely precise as they brushed against her skin, even as he pulled the bandage tight.

The delicate precision of his touch was an odd thing to notice, given the situation, but Riana kept observing it.

“If they were trying to kill you, then you didn’t have a choice,” Mikel continued, his black eyes focused fixedly on his hands as he tended her wound. “Escaping was the only thing you could do.”

She’d been hysterical when she’d seen him on the street a little while ago. She hadn’t known where she was running but wasn’t surprised she’d ended up on her block. The sight of Mikel heading into that coffee shop was like a miracle from heaven. She’d run to him instinctively and clung to him like a child.

She was too drained and exhausted now to even be embarrassed by her behavior. Too spent to cry anymore. In some ways, her fatigue was a relief, a brief shelter from the turmoil of emotion.

“So do you have any idea why someone would want to kill you?”

“No. It makes no sense. If they kidnapped Jannie to get something from me, then why would they just turn around and shoot me?”

“They wouldn’t.”

Riana had to admire Mikel’s calm mental efficiency. Another man would have been confused, disbelieving, or alarmed by her bizarre story. Another man would have been too shocked to think things through completely. But Mikel had processed everything and was asking the most relevant questions—the questions that might lead them to answers.

Questions Riana had barely been able to process herself.

“It would make no sense for one person or group to orchestrate both things,” Mikel said, lifting her hands to tend the scratches on her palm she’d received from her fall. “It seems to imply that there are two groups involved.”

“Two groups. Two groups after me.”

She’d closed her eyes to deal with this idea, but when she opened them again, she noticed again the delicacy of Mikel’s touch. She couldn’t look away from his graceful fingers as they moved deftly over her hand. Like he was reluctant to make any unnecessary contact.

It hurt her feelings a little. That he didn’t want to touch her the way she wanted to touch him. She remembered very vividly how strong and warm and masculine he’d felt when he’d held her a few minutes ago to comfort her.

She pushed the stray thought back to the dark corner of her mind, where it belonged. It was ridiculous to think of such things when so many more important things were happening.

“So, if we assume for the sake of argument that the Union has your sister, perhaps the people trying to kill you don’t want you to talk to the Union. Can you think of anyone who wouldn’t want you to talk to the Union?”

“Just the Front,” Riana said. Then her eyes shot up to Mikel’s. “But the sniper wasn’t them! I told you—they’ve been trying to help me.”

“They also got you into this.” Before she could object, he continued, “Maybe the Front is not as unified as you believe. Maybe some of its members are extremists and do their own thing.”

Riana’s lips parted, considering the possibility. Then she shook her head with a ragged exhale. “We’re never going to figure it out until we know
why
I’m suddenly a target. None of it makes any sense.”

Mikel finished with her scratches and went to return the medical supplies and bring her a fresh cup of coffee. As she took a sip, she was relieved that this one wasn’t so sweet.

“So let’s think,” Mikel said, sitting down on the couch beside her. “What about you is unique?”

“Nothing. That’s what makes no sense. There’s nothing special about me.”

“You’re a Reader. They’re getting less common.”

“Yes, but there are other Readers. I’m not even close to the only one left.”

“Are you better than the others?”

Riana tried to be honest. “Yes. Better than a lot of the others. But I’m not the best in the world. Jenson was better than me.” That thought hurt so much she tried not to dwell on it. Then something occurred to her. “I guess maybe… I mean, I know the Old Language. That’s pretty rare. My grandfather taught it to me.”

“How many others know the Old Language?” Mikel was all business now—thinking through her dilemma with impressive clarity and composure.

“Less than twenty-five, I’d guess, in the Union, although it’s hard to get an accurate count. The Union is so large now. And not everyone wants to admit they have such a skill.” She shifted her eyes to gaze at the pastoral scene in the oil panting across the room. “Jenson could read it. Now I’m the only one in the Reading Office in Newtown who knows it.”

Connor had been able to read the Old Language too—before he’d dropped off the planet.

“But it still makes no sense,” she went on, her voice louder with her growing frustration. “I would have been happy to translate something from the Old Language if they’d wanted me to. It was my job. I wouldn’t have even questioned it. There’s no reason for all these elaborate maneuverings to get to me.”

“Yeah, it’s got to be more than that. You must know something that they want or need.”

Riana flopped back against the couch cushion in disgust. “But I don’t know what it is.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and Riana slanted her eyes back to Mikel. His fair hair gleamed, even in the dull light of the apartment. She’d never seen anyone as handsome as he was—it was almost unreal.

“Sorry to drop all this on you,” she murmured. “You were just a nice guy, getting my bag back from the mugger. Now I’ve dragged you into this. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Mikel shrugged and gave her a half-smile. “I’m glad I was able to help. And I’d like to keep helping, if you let me.”

She wasn’t sure why, but all of her instincts told her she could trust him. She was usually good at spotting fakes, and she’d swear Mikel genuinely meant what he said.

She didn’t know why such an extraordinary man would be interested in helping her, but she wasn’t about to turn him down.

She liked him. The more she got to know him, the better she liked him.

“All helping me is likely to do is get you in trouble,” she warned.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” His gaze was speaking, and Riana reddened slightly in response.

Then she was suddenly slammed with unbearable guilt. Jenson was dead—shot full of holes in an attempt to keep her safe. And Jannie, her dear, innocent sister, was being held captive somewhere. Who knew how she was being treated? Who knew what would happen to her?

And it was all Riana’s fault.

Riana—who’d just been almost flirting with an attractive man.

Covering her face with her hands, she curled her body into a ball, shaking a little as she tried to control her emotions. She couldn’t cry anymore, but she felt like she was sobbing anyway.

Mikel let out a long breath and pulled her against his side, keeping just one arm around her instead of hugging her close as he had before.

The weight of his arm was warm, heavy, complete, and she huddled into him instinctively.

He didn’t say anything—a decision she infinitely appreciated—and after a few minutes she was able to ask, “Do you think she’s dead?”

He didn’t need to ask her who “she” was. “I don’t know, Riana. I wouldn’t think so. But I don’t know for sure.”

The honesty in his words was more supportive than soothing lies would have been. She sniffed and let him stroke her hair, which she’d taken out of the knot but hadn’t had the energy to braid.

Slowly she started to feel comforted, soothed despite herself.

Something in his touch was healing. Something in his presence was strength.

Riana needed it now.

She didn’t have anything else.

***

Connor wasn’t able to bury Jenson’s body.

The Union had taken possession of it as part of the investigation, and eventually it would be passed on to Jenson’s closest known relative. Since Connor had gone underground, that would be Aunt Lilly, a maiden aunt who knew nothing of her nephews’ political leanings and would have been scandalized at the thought.

There probably wouldn’t be much of a funeral, and Connor wouldn’t be able to attend it anyway.

He also wasn’t allowed to attend the memorial service for Jenson the following day, organized by the Office of Readers.

The closest he would come to attending a funeral for his cousin was at Tava’s that evening—as several friends and members of the Front gathered to grieve and discuss options.

He’d spent all afternoon putting out feelers for Riana, but so far he’d had no success. One of his informants claimed to have seen a woman who fit her description running down the sidewalk on the street where she lived, but he hadn’t followed her and so he didn’t know where she’d gone from there.

Connor had investigated the possibility of Riana’s having a boyfriend, but no one had any information on a man she might have spent time with. So that lead had gone nowhere.

He just didn’t think she had the resources to disappear completely, and he was starting to fear that she was hurt and holed up somewhere without any help.

They needed to find her. She had become too important to too many parties to let slip between the cracks.

He
needed to find her. She’d always been important to
him
.

“Connor?”

He jumped at the soft voice behind him. He’d gone into the kitchen alone so he wouldn’t have to be surrounded by concerned friends. They all kept darting anxious looks at him and asking him if he was all right.

When he turned around, he saw Tava. She’d carried some used dishes in. “Hi,” he said, his voice hoarser than he’d expected. “Just tell me if I’m in your way.”

After she set the dishes down, she just stood in the middle of the floor and looked at him. He was starting to get self-conscious when she said, “It’s not going to do any good to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“I know that.” A tremor of defensiveness ran up his spine, but he forced himself not to snap out a rude retort. “I’m not pretending it didn’t happen. There’s a lot to do now, though, and I can’t let everything else slide.”

Tava didn’t look convinced, but thankfully she didn’t press it. “Donn just arrived. I think he has some news about Riana.”

Connor grasped onto this new straw of hope and distraction with a rush of relief. “Bring him in here, will you? We should be careful about how much information we share. After what happened to Marina.”

He was surprised by how much it hurt to think about Marina. She had betrayed them, after all. But the woman had been with them from the beginning and had always offered loyal service. She’d lost two of her sons already, and he could only imagine what she’d be willing to do to keep the last one safe.