Forty-three

 

The yacht bounced through the water. Zagrando felt vaguely queasy. In fact, the queasiness was worse than it had been when he traveled to the island with Elise. And the queasiness wasn’t caused by nerves or by remorse over leaving her behind.

Apparently, he got motion sickness on the water. Severe motion sickness. Because if it hadn’t been severe, the stay-healthy nanobots would have alleviated all of it.

He needed to ride in the prow of the yacht, just so that he had an unimpeded vision of where he was going. But he didn’t want to leave the security of the cockpit.

He monitored everything—the exterior, the water around him, the air above him. He worried that someone would come after him.

He was vaguely disappointed that no one had.

He really wanted to shoot someone. He hadn’t been this angry in a long, long time. Maybe not since he had to stand in that room in the Port on Valhalla Basin, watching his own clone get murdered.

Murdered.

By the people he worked for.

Who had just screwed him again.

He’d been doing this a long time. He knew that Elise could have been working on her own. She could have made a back-door deal with one of the men on that island, and she needed to maintain her own cover.

But if that were the case, why hadn’t she just killed Zagrando and taken over the meet herself?

He had a hunch—a strong hunch—that she was following orders. And orders usually didn’t mean killing another agent. Usually orders superseded other orders, which sometimes led to the torpedoing of a case.

But courtesy between agents meant that she should have told him before they arrived on that damn island. Hell, before they traveled across this choppy water. Before they arrived on this stupid planet.

She hadn’t said a word.

Maybe that was her style. Maybe she didn’t share anything with anyone, just took matters into her own hands.

Or maybe she figured the men on that island—or their guards—would kill Zagrando for her.

There was only one thing she hadn’t planned on: She hadn’t planned on Zagrando walking away from her.

Leaving her behind.

Effectively signing her death warrant—if, indeed, she was still working for Earth Alliance Intelligence, and not working for herself.

He swallowed hard. Maybe this entire mess had made him sick. Maybe his body was just reacting to the betrayals. Over and over again, people in this business, this intelligence business, had screwed with him, lied to him, betrayed him.

He’d had enough.

He would contact Jarvis for the sake of his own conscience. Zagrando needed to find out if Jarvis had betrayed him, too.

If not, Zagrando had to let Jarvis know that Elise was tainted. Which meant that all her past work was tainted as well.

Zagrando glanced at the navigation equipment. He wasn’t far from his ship now. Hopefully, no one waited for him there.

He needed to be cautious. He needed to stay on his game.

He needed to get the hell out of this place.