Chapter 30
The briefing room looked pretty much as it had the last time Reece had been there. That shouldn’t have been so surprising, he supposed. It had only been a few weeks. Still, it felt longer than that somehow. Much longer.
A lot had happened since the last time he was here.
A lot.
Col. Barnes was parked at the end of the long table, his bulky frame wreathed in cigar smoke and backlit by the glowing holoscreen on the wall behind him, displaying the details of Reece’s post-mission report.
Agent Lennox was sitting beside him, studying a handheld data slate that contained the same information.
Beneath her severe hairdo, her silver brows were knitted with concentration.
The room was dead silent, save for the soft hum coming from the AC vents in the walls.
At last, Lennox set the slate on the table and leaned back in her chair.
“Well,” she said. “At least the mission wasn’t a total failure.”
Beside her, Barnes snorted out a little cloud of smoke. “Don’t you think that’s a bit of an understatement? The team made it out alive. Plus, they identified and neutralized a traitor to the Guild. That’s no small thing.”
Lennox sighed.
“Naturally I’m glad there were no casualties,” she said. Her cool tone made it sound as if she were talking about commodities, not people. “But the Mercenaries’ Guild expects more from its combatants than mere survival…”
She rose from her seat and turned to face the holoscreen on the wall.
The cold light limned the silhouette of her feminine figure beneath her bureaucratic suit.
The agent had kept fit, even with a desk job.
Reece noticed, but felt nothing in particular.
There was only one woman who stirred his arousal now.
He glanced across the table to where Fairchild was sitting, flanked by the other two members of the team, Dutton and Nash. Her outfit was almost identical to the one she’d worn a few weeks ago to the briefing. Cap. Tank top. Shorts. The tight-fitting clothes left little to the imagination.
Not that Reece needed imagination. He had memories.
After Slayn’s escape, they had commandeered the arms dealer’s ship and piloted it back to Guild HQ.
The trip had taken them precisely one week.
Lots of time to kill for four healthy adults with no clothes and a lot of pent-up energy.
They had fucked like lagomorphs the whole way home, making use of every horizontal surface in the ship, and quite a few of the vertical ones too.
They hadn’t worried about birth control.
“What concerns me the most,” Lennox said, still facing the holoscreen, “is not the fact that the target got away. It’s the fact that the three male members of the team allowed themselves to be captured. That’s against Guild protocol.”
“It’s also against protocol to leave a comrade behind,” said Barnes.
“But allowing themselves to be captured?”
“It all worked out in the end. The Guild even got their hands on Slayn’s ship as a result. Lots of information on those computers.”
Lennox just shook her head.
“I suppose,” she said. “But I have trouble seeing that as anything other than dumb luck. I mean, using ejaculatory fluid as a weapon? Really?”
Of course, Nash took it upon himself to chime in.
“That wasn’t luck, ma’am. I never miss.” And then, just for good measure, he added: “If you’d like, I’d be happy to go down the hall to the gun range and demonstrate my marksmanship.”
Reece suppressed a laugh. Without even looking, he could sense Fairchild doing the same.
Lennox turned and arched one steely brow.
“That won’t be necessary.” She glanced down at the data slate on the table. “I suppose we had better discuss the issue of pregnancy. I’ll make an appointment for Fairchild at the infirmary. If the test results come back positive, we’ll arrange for a termination.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Fairchild said calmly. “I won’t be terminating the pregnancy.”
Lennox looked at her.
“Are you… sure?”
A nod. “I plan to keep it.”
The answer didn’t surprise Reece in the least. They hadn’t discussed it during the trip home, but they hadn’t needed to.
If the forced breeding with Dutton hadn’t impregnated her, the week of non-stop unprotected sex definitely had.
The woman was knocked-up six ways to Sunday with one of their babies.
Reece didn’t particularly care which one.
As far as he was concerned, the baby belonged to all of them.
“Well,” Lennox went on, “that’s certainly your choice. In that case, I suppose we’d better move on to your next assignments.”
Assignments? Plural?
Before Reece had a chance to question that wording, Fairchild spoke up again.
“Ma’am, we request permission to continue our search for Slayn.”
Lennox shook her head.
“No. He knows who you are now. The element of surprise has been lost. We’ll have to give the job to a different crew.”
“It doesn’t need to be undercover,” Fairchild protested. “Considering how things went down, I’m pretty sure Slayn won’t be going back to Calyxia anytime soon. We can take a more direct approach, hunt him down and—”
Lennox slapped the table, hard.
“I said, no. You’re too close to this one, Fairchild. You let it get personal.”
“Personal?” Reece interrupted. He knew Fairchild didn’t need him to stick up for her, but he couldn’t help himself. “With all due respect, ma’am, Slayn killed her last team. Maybe he didn’t pull the trigger, but he planned the whole thing out.”
Lennox gave him a cold stare.
“That doesn’t matter. We can’t have emotions clouding an operative’s judgements on the battlefield. That’s why I’m assigning you, Dutton, and Nash to a new mission…”
She looked at Fairchild.
“…and I’m assigning her to a new team.”
“What?”
Until now, Fairchild had been leaning back casually in her chair. Now she bolted upright. There was so much visible tension in her body, Reece half expected her to leap right out of the chair and jump up onto the table.
“You heard me,” Lennox replied. “I’m assigning you to a new squad.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I can, and I am. It’s for your own good, Fairchild. You didn’t just get too close to the mission. You got too close to your teammates as well. It’s understandable, considering what happened to your previous team, but the Guild can’t allow it to continue. It’s too dangerous for everyone involved.”
Reece could sense that Fairchild was about to say something—something she might later regret—so he stepped in and spoke up first.
“A team is supposed to be close,” he said. “That’s the whole point. Take Dutton and Nash over there. Sometimes they know what I’m thinking before I even know it myself. We’ve all got the blood of the Mercs flowing through our veins. We’re a family.”
“Maybe,” said Lennox. “But there are limits to everything. As long as Fairchild’s on your team, she’s a liability.”
Reece could see he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Lennox. He shifted his attention to Barnes instead. The old bulldog was still puffing away on his cigar.
“Colonel?”
Barnes shook his head sadly.
“Sorry, kid. It’s not my call, I’m afraid.”
Damn, Reece thought. Apparently he’d underestimated how much pull Lennox had in the Guild. She must have been closer to the top than he’d initially realized.
Across the table, Fairchild was still poised on the edge of her seat.
“What if I say no?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” replied Lennox.
“What if I refuse to be reassigned?”
Lennox’s mouth twisted into something akin to a smile. Her lips were obviously out of practice.
“You don’t have a choice,” she said.
“I don’t?”
“Not as long as you’re a part of the Guild.”
Reece already knew what Fairchild was going to say next, and it made his heart clench like a fist inside him.
“In that case,” she said. “I quit.”
For a moment, Lennox appeared too shocked even to answer. Reece had never seen the woman of steel thrown off her game like that before.
“You can’t quit,” she said.
“Watch me.”
Reece didn’t know if Lennox watched, but he sure did.
He watched Fairchild stand up from her seat and stride right out the door, hips switching with every step, the perfect woman and the perfect killing machine all rolled into one.
He didn’t take his eyes off her. He couldn’t. Not until she was already out the door.