Chapter 23
They booked into a new hotel.
The townhouse had to be considered compromised, given Grogan knew where it was and he had clearly been tortured.
The hotel they’d stayed at the night before was in her capacity as Fiona Russell, head of Larga Ways, and for now she was hoping her Feenra disguise was still useful.
So they bought some clothes on the way, and checked in, and when Fiona saw the view, a panoramic vista up and down the river, with the bridge on one side, and the gleam and beauty of the buildings on the opposite bank, she leaned against the balcony railing and let herself forget everything for a moment and simply enjoyed the view.
Hal came up behind her and tugged her close, and she sighed and leaned back against him.
They found themselves standing like this often on Larga Ways, as her apartment had an even larger balcony than this one, and her view was of the main street through the way station, with Balco rising up green, gold and blue in the distance.
“Weren’t you down here to keep yourself safe from assassins?” Hal murmured in her ear, and then kissed the skin just below it.
“Mmm-hmm.” She stretched against him. “At least the attempts to kill me down here haven’t been personal,” she said, and laughed. “They just wanted me dead without payment or even knowing who I am.”
“That’s obviously much better.” Hal pulled her backward, until they were in the bedroom, and then lowered her onto the bed. “When can you go back?”
“I actually haven’t heard a word from Tean Lee, which is strange, but I know Eazi is keeping an eye on him and his investigation into the supposed assassination plot.”
“With luck, we won’t hear from anyone for at least the next hour,” Hal told her, and began unfastening her shirt.
A sharp knock at their door stilled his hands.
He pushed back without a sound, and Fee swung her legs over the side of the bed while she quickly set her clothing straight.
Hal lifted his comm unit, checking to see if they’d missed a message, and frowned as he shook his head.
“Eazi, we have someone at the door. Do you know who’s looking for us?” Because they had not shared their location—they’d made the decision to come to this hotel on the spur of the moment after General Olna had left. For the first time since she and Eazi had saved Larga Ways, Eazi didn’t answer her.
Fiona lunged forward as Hal approached the door, and shook her head.
“Eazi isn’t answering,” she mouthed to him, and his eyes widened.
He understood immediately how bad that was.
The knock came again, and Fee realized it was better they knew who was looking for them. She indicated to Hal to open up, and she stood so that she would be the first thing the knocker saw.
Hal pulled the door open just as the person outside was lifting their hand for another knock.
Hal grabbed their wrist and yanked them inside, and Fiona checked they had come alone before quietly shutting the door.
She turned and studied the woman they’d allowed in.
She had wrenched her arm away from Hal and was looking at him in outrage, and Fiona suddenly remembered her.
“Kivisha da Pirro,” she said. “Leader Baruke’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know we were here, Kivisha?” Hal’s tone was hard and uncompromising.
“Someone I know told me they saw you checking in,” Kivisha said. “I came right over.”
“And how did you know this was our room?” Fee was feeling very skeptical of her answer.
She pressed her lips together and then her shoulders drooped.
“All right, my father had your hover tagged just before you left the hospital. The signal repeats off receptors on the main roads and tracks your journey. We lost you for a while this morning, but picked you up when you came back into the city. Someone who works on the reception desk knows who I am and told me which room you’re in. ”
Fiona wondered if that was true.
Baruke hadn’t seemed up to ordering someone to tag their hover at the hospital, although Kivisha had gone off on her own. As for the hotel revealing their room—she wasn’t staying here another minute after this conversation was concluded. “They just handed it over to you?”
“I asked nicely, and said it was urgent.” Kivisha narrowed her eyes. “But they only noticed you, Captain Vakeri. They said you were with a Grihan woman, not Fiona Russell.”
“I’m often mistaken for a Grih,” Fiona said. She had taken off her disguise as soon as they’d entered the room.
Kivisha looked uncertain, but eventually gave a nod.
“So what’s so urgent?” Hal still sounded pissed off.
Kivisha obviously wasn’t used to hostility and sent him a hurt look. “My father left to meet up with someone today and I haven’t been able to get hold of him since.”
“Did he tell you where he was going for the meeting?” Fiona asked.
“I thought they were meeting at my father’s office, but I’m not sure. He took his new guards with him, but no one’s heard from any of them.” Kivisha ran a shaking hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face.
“Why are you coming to us?” Hal asked, bluntly. “He’s the leader of the whole planet. Surely there are people you can contact?”
“I don’t know who to trust.” Kivisha wove her fingers together and then began twisting them.
“I know for sure you weren’t behind the attack on him at the dinner, you were a victim, same as he was.
And the Grih are the senior partners in the alliance with Balco, and have the power that comes with that.
I want my father found, and I don’t want to leave it in the hands of someone who might be involved in his disappearance in the first place. ”
“Give us your comms link so we can get hold of you, and we’ll look into it.” Fiona wanted to shove Kivisha and her problems out of the room, given Eazi was out of communication.
His safety felt like the bigger issue, but she was aware the two could be linked.
Kivisha blinked at her bluntness, but Hal opened the door and she stepped out into the passage.
“You’ll be in touch?”
“As soon as we know something. We want to get to the bottom of it as much as you do,” Fiona assured her.
She gave a nod. “Thank you. I’m sorry for ambushing you like this, I just didn’t know where else to go.”
Fiona murmured a platitude she didn’t mean and Hal closed the door on her. Fiona immediately tried to contact Eazi again. When there was silence, she tried Paxe.
She almost never had to try to contact them, the link between her and them was almost always already open.
“Paxe?” Again, nothing.
She tried to let that fact calm her. “It’s most likely a comms issue. I can’t see how they could both be unavailable at the same time, when neither of them have ever been unavailable. Either the link has gone down by accident, or someone has damaged or destroyed it.”
“I’ll contact the general, see if she knows anything.” Hal had to work his way up through the chain to Olna, unlike he’d been able to do before with Eazi helping him contact her directly.
“Vakeri?” Olna’s tone was surprised.
“There’s a problem,” Hal said. “Neither thinking system on Larga Ways is contactable. Are the comms to the way station down?”
“Let me check.”
Fee could hear her asking someone the question and then there was silence for a few minutes. It felt like forever.
“We can’t get hold of Grih Battle Center headquarters on Larga Ways, either.” Fee could hear a chair scrape back, as if Olna had shoved herself away from her desk. “It’s been over five minutes without a response.”
“A little longer for us, but not by much,” Hal told her. “We’ll be heading up to Larga Ways immediately.”
“There’s chaos on approach, apparently. With no comms, there’s no entry and exit instructions, and so there seems to be a lot of milling around,” Olna said.
“General, it’s Fiona here. Baruke’s daughter Kavisha came to see us. She says her father and his security detail have disappeared. She wanted Grihan help because she doesn’t know who on her father’s team to trust.”
Fiona heard Olna swear under her breath. “Did she say where he went missing?”
“He went to a meeting with an unknown person,” Fiona said. “He hasn’t been heard of since.”
“I’ll get some of my people to look into it. He replaced the Grihan soldiers guarding him with a new Balcoan team first thing this morning.” Olna sounded grim. “Larga Ways comms going down and the Balcoan leader disappearing around the same time is not something that’s making me feel very good.”
No. It stank. And Fiona couldn’t help but worry about Eazi and Paxe. A lot of people considered them the biggest, baddest monsters in the galaxy, but it was possible to destroy them.
Eazi had always looked out for her, and she would look out for him.
They needed to get to Larga Ways as soon as possible.