She felt the spotlight sweep over her at that moment, the light seeping through her damp tomb with its smell of the earth and the musty wet of decomposing forest debris. The light didn’t linger. The sound of the chopper grew more distant heartbeat by heartbeat as the search went downriver, the voices of the searchers on foot also heading in that direction.
“I think they’re gone,” she said at last.
“Slowly.” Coming up from his prone position with painstaking care as she did the same, Aden picked up the pack she’d thrust under a tangle of undergrowth, then looked up at the smattering of stars exposed by a small gap in the cloud cover. “We’re in the northern hemisphere.”
Since it was spring in that hemisphere, they had to be either at a high elevation or in one of the generally colder areas such as Alaska. “Can you narrow it down further?”
“No, but this might.” He retrieved a small device from the pack, stilled before turning it on. “It could have a tracker that could lead the search straight to us.”
“Don’t use it,” Zaira said. “The risk outweighs the gain. In fact, leave all the tech behind. They may not have thought of it yet, but if there are trackers, they could activate them remotely.”
Aden took out every piece of technology they’d carried this far, venturing to the river’s edge to throw them in the water before returning. “How good is your knowledge of astronomy?”
“Bad. I’ve always had access to the PsyNet for reference.” The psychic network overflowed with data. “And after my defection, I could telepathically contact others if I needed location data.” Zaira had played dead for five years and eight months in order to provide a safe haven for “broken” or used-up Arrows for whom Ming had signed execution orders, but now the Net needed her alive and part of it. A large number of the Venice contingent had returned to the PsyNet with her, none of them any longer at risk from Ming’s assassins and pet medics.
It had been a strange homecoming, the formerly stark night sky landscape of the Net now webbed with delicate golden threads created by the empaths whose presence protected the Psy race from a deadly psychic contagion, but it had been a homecoming all the same. In a heartbeat, her world had gone from a small, contained network she’d had to constantly remind herself wasn’t a cage, to a vastness without boundaries.
It felt as if she’d taken her first real breath in years.
As a result of the work she’d done protecting empaths, thus interacting with them, one of those fragile golden threads had reached out to her and, despite her instinctive defensive reaction, she’d allowed it to connect. She had no desire to end up insane and foaming at the mouth as a result of the infection that had almost destroyed the Net before the empaths created the Honeycomb.
Thinking of the Honeycomb as armor helped her accept it. Knowing that on the other end was an empath with absolutely no survival skills whatsoever helped even further—Zaira had more chance of being eaten alive by scarab beetles than she had of coming under attack by an E whose gift helped create that protective web.
“Tell me when you start to flag,” Aden said, pack back on. “We can’t go far in the dark anyway, especially with no landmarks.”
Zaira knew that had she been uninjured, they would’ve kept going. “I say we put more distance between us and our pursuers regardless.”
They walked in silence, surrounded by trees on every side, with thick shrubs forming the undergrowth—which meant they unavoidably left a trail—and jagged rocks hidden beneath that they tried to avoid. Aden was the one who stopped. “Look.”
Following his arm, she narrowed her eyes to see better. “A cave?” It was more a serrated slash in the rock face, but when they squeezed through, it proved large enough to fit them both. However, the instant they were inside, they shook their heads and moved back out. To be in that cave was to be protected—and to be trapped.
Instead, and keeping an eye on the increasingly ominous cloud cover, they eventually made a shelter at the tangled roots of a forest giant, breaking off branches from a nearby fir tree to create a carpet and then a kind of tent. Zaira ate the energy bars Aden gave her, made sure he ate his share, and forced him to drink half of one of the high-density nutrient drinks from the med kit.
“You’re no use to me dead or hypothermic,” she said when he told her to finish it. “Drink it.”
Filling the empty bottle with water from a nearby stream, Aden put it back in the pack and lay down beside her. Snug against one another in the small space they’d deliberately structured that way to maximize heat retention, she said, “How did they take you?” Aden was as experienced as she was, and while she was the more deadly in one-on-one combat, he was smarter when it came to tactics. No one should’ve been able to outmaneuver him.
“Blitz attack,” he said. “Four men hit me on a city street in the split second while I was out of public view—they came in shooting. I took a stun to the face.”
That explained the spreading bruise on the right-hand side of his face. “They respected your skill more than mine.”
“That’s why you’ve always been so dangerous. People see you and think woman first and soldier second.”
“I used to think my shape a hindrance before I realized the effect it had on males.” At a height of five feet and two inches, she was relatively short, and while she was in lethal shape, her body tended toward curves rather than straight lines. “Now I see it as camouflage.” The soft, unthreatening exterior hiding a razored blade that could cut your throat and not blink.
“Good.” Aden put his hand on her forehead. “Your temperature is slightly elevated. Rest.”
Tired from the continued pain in her gut and aware she had to become stronger if she was to function as his backup, she didn’t argue. “Will you take first watch?”
When he said, “Yes,” she closed her eyes and went to sleep. Because Aden was the one being on the planet she trusted never to harm her. He was too irrational to be sensible.
Chapter 4
“IT’S CONFIRMED? THE Arrows have escaped?” That was the last thing the organization needed.
“They won’t get far,” said the blunt-faced man who was the leader of the cleanup squad. “At least one is badly injured, from the report we received before it went to shit. Bandage we found inside was soaked with fresh blood. She’ll die soon and save us the trouble of hunting her down.”
“Arrows don’t worry about camaraderie so she’s probably already been dumped to survive on her own.” The group of elite assassins was composed of piercingly intelligent and highly trained rabid dogs who’d do anything to complete a mission—or to survive capture. Leaving an injured squadmate behind wouldn’t even be a question. “The retrieval of her body isn’t a priority.” Zaira Neve was no longer useful. “Concentrate on Aden Kai.”