Romani Armada (9 page)

“And now you understand my long term staffing dilemma over that gap,” Nayara told him, with a smile. “There
is
no specialist for what we’re facing these days. We seem to be forging new frontiers as we move along. Fahmido is as good as we’ve got for right now.”

“You need a clinician, not a researcher. A cutting-edge therapist, one that really knows their stuff and knows how to extrapolate methodologies could work with Fahmido to formulate theories and apply them as practical treatments,” Christian told her.

“Find me that physician and I’ll give you your annual salary as a bonus,” Nayara said.

Christian looked startled, then thoughtful.

Ryan chuckled. “Never complain if you don’t want to be part of the solution.”

The door to the green room swung wide open as Brenden strode in. Brenden tended to look like he was striding everywhere, but it was just that his legs were so long his normal walking pace made it look like he was rushing.

Justin slipped into the room right behind the giant Spartan. His gaze flickered across the people ranged there. He moved through the pale wooden furniture arranged around the faux-spruce coffee table and sat on the sofa opposite Ryan. It wasn’t next to Deonne, but it put his knee almost in contact with hers.

Deonne put her nearly-finished coffee back on the table.

Brenden threw himself onto the only space left; the chair opposite Deonne and across the little coffee table from her. “The last of the media people have left. The Norstedt people are over the moon about the exposure their building got, tonight. I saw some of the live footage going out — lots of long shots of the building from across the river, with the Vasabron Bridge in front of it.”

“I’m glad,” Nayara said, from her corner of the sofa she now shared with Justin. “They went out of their way to help at the last minute.”

“We should leave, too, and let them settle down. They’re quite nervous. All human, of course.” He glanced at the shut door. “While it’s all family and you’re still here, Deonne, there’s a question that I’ve wanted to ask you for a while. You’ve been back in China every time I remember to ask it.”

Deonne picked up her glass of coffee again and wrapped her hand around it. “What would you like to know?” Brenden had given her one of the most intense security screenings she had ever been through, the first time he had given her access to the station. There surely couldn’t be that much more he didn’t know about her. Oddly, it didn’t bother her that the big Spartan knew more about her life than even Justin did. The one thing she had learned about vampires and Brenden in particular, was their in-built discretion. They
never
spoke out of turn.

Brenden glanced around the room again. It was clear that he was bothered by having to ask her in front of everyone, but as he had said, his opportunities for asking has been limited, lately, by her living back in twenty-first century China.

He grimaced. “I wanted to know where you came by your knowledge of the casts.”

Deonne struggled to keep her breathing at an even rate and not show the tension curling in her gut. There was nothing she could do about her heart rate, but if her external signals didn’t tip them off, they may miss the sudden jump in her pulse. “I don’t believe it’s necessary to provide the names of my sources.”

Brenden scowled. “You could only have got the information from a vampire. Either one of us, or one who’s passing. If it’s one of us, then I have a severe security breach. If it’s one who is passing, then I still need to know, because the bloody idiot shouldn’t have been spilling his guts to mere slip of a human girl.”

Deonne sipped her coffee, giving her hands something to do to disguise the shake and to give herself time to think.

Ryan and Nayara were watching Brenden, thoughtful looks on their faces as they considered the matter from all angles. Justin was watching Brenden too, which meant Deonne couldn’t see his face right now.

She met Brenden’s hot gaze once more. “Why could I not have got the information secondhand? What makes you so certain it is a man I got my information from? Have you not yet rid yourself of your misogynist upbringing?”

Christian chuckled. “Mine was the misogynist culture, actually. Spartans let their woman own property, vote, take lovers and do everything but fight wars for them.”

“Irrelevant,” Rob growled. “The lass has a point. She could’ve got the information from anyone if some vampire had the bad form to spill his guts to another human.”

Brenden shook his head, his gaze not moving from Deonne. “Not this time. It’s a possibility, sure, but you don’t work that way. I’ve studied your professional profile and nearly every story you’ve ever worked on. You don’t like to rely on secondhand information. You go to the source. There’s no way you’d hold the entire vampire race over a barrel the way you did us, six months ago, based on secondhand information. You knew you had good data. You knew it was pure. So, give. Who is your source?”

Deonne shook her head, just as Brenden had. She didn’t have the courage to speak.

Brenden leaned forward, sitting on the edge of the lounge chair. He already stood a head higher than most men, but with everyone relaxed back in their seats, it made it seem like he was leaning right over the coffee table. The table was a small, square thing, so while he towered over the table, he also loomed over her. “I don’t have to explain the mandatory reporting clauses in your contract, or the penalties that are attached to them, do I?” he asked softly.

She felt her mouth drop open as she mentally raced through the sub clauses in her contract, trying to remember if any of them covered this situation. To her knowledge, none of them did.

“You’re bluffing,” she told him. “And you’re trying to twist the intent and spirit of the contract against me. That’s unethical and unprofessional, Brenden, and not something I expected from you.”

His face darkened. “Then you don’t know me very well, little girl. I will do whatever it takes to protect me and my kin, including bribery, extortion and, yes, murder, if it comes to that. I’ve done it before and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. If you think any one of us in this room isn’t practiced at getting rid of bodies, think again—”

“Okay, Brenden, I think Deonne has got the general idea,” Ryan interrupted.

Brenden took a breath, staring at her, before swiveling his head to look at Ryan. “She may understand me, but does that mean she is going to give us her source?”

Ryan looked at Deonne. “It would help Brenden plug up a big security breach if you did give us your source. Would you?”

Deonne swallowed. She could hear her heartbeat thudding in her ears. It made thinking difficult. It made courage even harder to cling to. The knowledge that every person—every
vampire
—in this room could tear her limb from limb and not think twice about it sat in the forefront of her mind. She didn’t need Brenden’s reminder. The power and very different moral compass of these people had kept her on her toes and her adrenaline pumping for nearly a year now, as she tried to learn more and more about how they thought and would react under any given circumstances.

Deonne gave a mental sigh of relief as she realized
that
was the key to her response. She looked Ryan in the eye. “You are asking me to break my professional ethics and the trust this source placed in me. If I do that, they will know. They will find out. Then I will never be trusted as a
confidante
again, and my use as a freelance communicator will essentially be over.”

Ryan hesitating, glancing at Nayara in that way he had when the two of them seemed to commune via the wordless and very special telepathy they shared. It wasn’t true TP, but simply a deep understanding from being years in each other’s company.

“You’re not seriously buying this?” Brenden asked, sounding angry.

“She has a point,” Nayara said gently. “You can’t expect her to give up professional secrets just because you ask her for them, no matter how much you may desire the information. Deonne’s reputation is built on the knowledge that people can come to her and she won’t speak their secrets to the wrong people.”

Deonne put her coffee glass down. “It works both ways,” she told Brenden. “There are a great many things I have learned moving amongst your kind that non-vampires would probably like to know, but they will never hear of them from me.”

Brenden snorted. “Of course they won’t. Not with that prince of a contract we made you sign.”

“The contract is irrelevant,” Deonne told him, with a small smile. “It puts less limits on me than I consider appropriate in the first place. Besides, if I were to rely only on that contract to cover me, what position would that place me in if my next client pressured me as you just did, Brenden? What if, say, they want to know the five richest women you’ve been sleeping with since the Vienna Ball last year?”

Ryan laughed softly, then shut up. He sat, smiling, watching Brenden.

Brenden’s face was actually turning a soft shade of pink, which was a remarkable feat for a vampire, who had little blood to spare for blushing.

Nayara’s lips were pursed, her eyes twinkling. Tally had her head turned into Rob’s shoulder so that only her eyes were visible, but they were alive with merriment. Christian was grinning openly and Rob’s lips were curled upwards.

Deonne still couldn’t see Justin’s face. Instead, she looked back at Brenden as steadily as she could, lifting her brow enquiringly.

“If you told them a single bloody thing…” Brenden began.

“But they threaten me with bodily harm if I do not tell them,” Deonne replied. “Just as you did and this time, I only have a silly contract to keep me silent. I have no morals or ethics or concern about my professional reputation to guide my actions. I would most likely sell you down the river, and screw the contract – I can always make reparations later. It’s much better to be a live contract breaker than a dead body some organization has efficient means for getting rid of. Don’t you agree?”

Brenden opened his mouth three times and each time he shut it. He looked at everyone sitting around the room, but no one stepped in to help him. Christian made a sound that was suspiciously like a choked guffaw of laughter, but otherwise, everyone was looking politely at either her or Brenden, even if their eyes were very wide and bright.

All except Tally, who had given up any pretense at control and turned her face into Rob’s shoulder, hiding it completely from Brenden’s gaze. Her shoulders were shaking.

Deonne knew she had pushed it as far as she could. Brenden was the wrong man to make an enemy out of. She smiled at him as warmly as she could. “It’s a good thing I have my morals and business ethics to guide me instead of your cast-iron contract, isn’t it?”

Brenden sat back. “Why the bloody hell did you sign it, then?” he asked, with a deeply baffled tone.

“I believe it might have had something to do with getting paid,” Nayara said, interceding.

Justin stood up. “Speaking of pay, I believe you said something about Deonne earning her keep tonight. I’ll see her to the safe house Kieren arranged, so she can recover to earn tomorrow’s.” He looked down at her. “Ready?” His expression was passive, with no trace of mirth anywhere.

She uncrossed her legs and picked up her carrysack. “Sleep sounds heavenly,” she lied with complete conviction.

Chapter Seven

Stockholm, Sweden, 2264 A.D.:
Even in the little runabout they didn’t have complete privacy, because Kieren and one of his team were squeezed in with them. Justin made no attempt to speak to her and Deonne took her cues from him and remained silent herself. She didn’t know Kieren all that well, although he seemed to have become a semi-permanent part of the Agency’s operations, especially since the station had exploded.

Justin was probably just being cautious.

Kieren piloted the vehicle through the late evening traffic to the sleepy little neighborhood where the agency kept an apartment for transient guests. His men had secured the apartment and the area for the last few hours, making it a temporary safe house. When they arrived, Kieren still insisted on waiting in the vehicle until his companion had gone ahead to check the route into the building.

“It’s tiresome, I know,” he told Deonne. “But it’s the small slip ups because you’ve grown bored that they take advantage of.” He gave her a small smile—merely a glimmer of anything other than rigid attention to duty. “So it pays not to grow bored.”

Justin didn’t speak, so Deonne gave Kieren a smile in return.

Kieran’s second moved a little way out of the glass and steel foyer and stopped several meters down the path and nodded. Kieren stepped out of the vehicle and held the door open. He looked in at them and addressed Justin. “Sir, with your greater hearing and sense of smell…would you mind casting about the area? See if there’s anything odd in the vicinity?”

Justin looked shocked, then uncomfortable. He glanced at her, then away. “I…er…sure,” he said. He pulled himself forward through the cramped seating and stepped out next to Kieren. It put his back to Deonne and as she couldn’t see any higher than just above his waist unless she got out of the runabout, she couldn’t see what he was doing, or hear them unless they spoke loudly. She heard them murmuring.

Then Kieren looked back inside the vehicle. “It’s safe enough, ma’am.”

“I’m Deonne, remember?” she replied, with more heat in her voice than she intended. It was the third reminder.

“Not until I’m off duty.” He stepped back as she climbed out carefully, for the runabout sat low to the ground and her skirt was tight and there was little give in the fabric.

Justin helped her to her feet, but he avoided meeting her eyes and Deonne’s heart skipped unhappily.

Kieren hurried them along the wide path and inside the elegant building. It was very Scandinavian in design, using lots of pale faux wood surfaces, white walls and lots of glass to capture natural light wherever possible. It was airy and simple, but sophisticated.

The apartment was filled with eclectic furniture that went with the design of the building – sophisticated and low key…and comfortable. Someone had gone to a lot of time and trouble and spent a lot of money picking the items that filled the apartment.