Ceylon, their house manager, buzzed through the house comm system. “Your vehicle is here, Commander.”
He kissed her lips softly, taking in her sweetness and that sharp edge of her, too.
“Be safe. Please.” She tugged his earlobe. “And Ash? I know. I know it’s different.”
He relaxed, happy she’d admitted it. “You’re everything.” He kissed her again quickly. “I’ll be in touch.” He looked around her to Brandt. “Travel safe. Report anything you find.”
When he left, she watched him from the front door, and he touched his fingers to his lips, still feeling hers there.
Sera had watched each of them leave. She stood in the doorway and tried not to hurt that they’d had to leave her behind. She understood it. It was part of the assignment, and they all had their own specialties and jobs.
But watching Brandt’s face as he contemplated his sister’s involvement in an executable offense tore her apart. Sera had been the one to uncover the first evidence of her involvement. How could he not blame her at least a little bit?
And Ash, when he got to HQ in Ravena, he’d be surrounded by ranked people. His own class. Would he remember the importance of his station then? She couldn’t lie to herself anymore; he’d married Kira because he’d had to. What did the future of his position hold for them now?
If his cousin was involved, it would cause terrible upheaval in the Walker Family. One thing she was pretty sure of, Perry Walker had involvement with Owen Alder and whatever in hells Giles Stander had been doing.
She needed someone who could get her in some back channels to do some snooping in the Family networks. And she needed to think. Or maybe not to think.
Shaking her head, she returned to her rooms and tossed herself on the bed. Just as quickly she got up and moved to the comm unit and pinged her brother. Not surprisingly, he was out, so she grabbed her firearms and headed to the range. A little target practice was just the thing to clear her mind while she worked through the puzzle of the whole situation.
Some time later, after she’d showered the acrid scent of cordite from her body, she’d headed back inside to see that Paul had messaged her back.
“Ceylon!” she yelled as she headed downstairs in search of the house manager.
“Subcommander Ayers, I apologize. You shouldn’t have to come and find me.” He bowed.
“Don’t be silly. I came to find you rather than summon you like royalty. I need for you to make travel arrangements for me. To Sanctu.”
Chapter 23
“I’ve got the pretty blonde, thanks Georges.”
Sera rolled her eyes as the assistant at the front gates backed away, and her brother came forward to grab her bag.
The trip to Sanctu had been relatively short. The Walker Family-controlled territory neighbored Borran. A little under a standard day, and her military transport had dropped her away from the main dock, and she’d been met by her contact, who’d driven her to Paul’s place and left without a single question. She could really get used to that sort of power.
She’d grown up in Sanctu. It was where she’d met Ash. As a young woman she’d been enrolled in the language academy in the capital city of Mirum. He’d been—oh, gods—handsome and refined. Older, wiser, powerful. He’d worked in the same building as she had her first internship. She’d pretended to bump into him as often as she could, and he’d finally asked her name.
Within months they’d begun sharing a house. Their connection had been so fast, so deep, and she’d thought so enduring. Three years later, she’d walked away from Mirum and Ash Walker.
She shook it off, focusing on her brother instead. His spacious and yet totally off-the-grid compound was in the mountainous region to the south of Mirum. He paid his bribes to the Walker Family, and they pretty much left him alone.
“Welcome. It’s been far too long since you’ve been here.” He hugged her, kissing each cheek. “You look good, a bit sad. I expect you’ll share what you want to and know I want to hear it. Come on up. Lina is here, and she’s made a large meal for us. You know Mai and Dai will be crushed if they hear you’re here and you don’t go to see them.”
Their parents lived in a small working-class suburb outside Mirum. She couldn’t involve them in this mess nor could she even begin to explain Ash’s presence in her life again. Not yet. She’d have to face them sometime, but she couldn’t deal until she had the rest all tied up.
“I’m here on business. I can’t involve them right now. I’ll be back later, when it’s just a social call. Right now, Paul, I need every connection I can make.” She paused a moment. “Let’s go inside and see Lina first.”
Lina, her childhood friend and Paul’s on-again-off-again lady love, met her at the door with a hug and a smile. “It’s so good to see you. Come in! Paul, put her bag in the guest room and meet us in the kitchen. Be quick, or we’ll eat all the good stuff.”
All through the meal Sera itched to check her comm to see if Ash or Brandt had been in contact. They hadn’t in the day before she’d been able to get out of Borran, and then she’d traveled for some time, too. She knew they’d be busy with family and in meetings. It was unreasonable for her to expect them to message her so quickly. Didn’t mean she wasn’t disappointed. Funny how she missed them so sharply. They’d only been a part of her life a short time and yet had become totally integral to it.
Despite her impatience, the meal had been truly fabulous, and the company relaxed her. Paul was an easygoing person. They’d always been close, even when he’d chosen a life she never would have. And Lina, well, her brother was a fool for not marrying her. They were together in some way, that much was clear, and Sera certainly had no place to question it, given her own circumstances. So she just rolled her eyes at him when Lina took her leave at the end of the night.
“Did you have something to say?” He grinned.
“Yes, show me your electronics. The good stuff, and don’t waste my time with any denials. I need to break into a Family network, and I need to do it quietly and quickly.”
He locked the house and took her down a stairway and into a room totally packed with machinery. “What do you need? I’m not leaving you alone in here. This stuff is my life, and you need me. You know you can trust me.”
She snorted. “Of course I can trust you. I had no plans to ask you to leave. You can do this way faster than I can.” She held out the chip with the encrypted data. “Oh, and this, too. Do you think you can unlock it?”
He just looked at her as he snatched the chip from her fingers. “Don’t insult me. Anything else?”
She explained what she needed, and he moved via a chair with wheels from station to station, mumbling to himself. While he worked, Sera updated the information she had with supplemental material Ash had uploaded. He must have received it when he went to HQ.
The picture it painted, as she added her own intel, was one of a cold-blooded greed that made her skin crawl. Each new thing she pieced into the overall puzzle pointed more and more in Owen Alder’s and then Perry Walker’s direction.
Among the information Ash had sent there’d been a note, a quick one. But he’d said he missed her. It made her smile.
“Gods, what the hells is that?” Paul had moved behind her, and he saw the pictures on her monitor.
“That’s what’s left of a relay station. A relay station the Imperialists attacked. Everyone there was murdered, and vital information was stolen.”
Her brother stilled. “A Family member did this?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think so, yes. That’s why I want you to get into Kira Pela-Walker’s personal network and into Perry Walker’s as well. Someone fed the Imperialists information about the location of this station.”
“What have you gotten into?”
“Don’t ask. It’s better you don’t know, and of course, you know to never breathe a word about it.”
“We’re going to crack into that network. This sort of thing can’t be allowed to continue.” He rolled back to his station and began to type quickly.
Brandt eased himself down from the high window. On soundless feet, he crouched and waited for any other sounds but his breathing.
Satisfied he was indeed alone in Kira and Perry’s home, he stood and adjusted his night-vision glasses.
The security had been easy enough to outwit. Two guards on a timed sweep of the property. The internal security had been coded to the main Pela estate, so one quick adjustment back at his own home, and he’d been able to create a window in the system for himself to get in.
If his sister and brother-in-law weren’t traitors, he’d have to speak to them about how woefully inadequate their home security was.
He’d been in the house a few times, enough to know where the home network was located, and he quickly made his way there. Where he found some real security. Interesting.
The panel on the door took some time for him to get past, and he was glad he’d brought his tools with him. One ear listened for external noise while he focused on the intricate task of hacking their electronic locks to get into the network room.