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HELENA SLEPT, HER CHEST rising and falling, looking rather healthy for someone who’d been attacked. It wasn’t until Patsy moved around to the other side of the bed that she noticed the vicious bite below her jugular. A little higher, and it would have been all over. Patsy shuddered at the idea of being attacked by a space lizard. What a horrible way to die.
She’d make it quick for her; she wouldn’t suffer—much.
When the lizard doctor had asked for a blood donation, he’d implied Helena hovered on the verge of death. Patsy had figured she could suffocate her and let the assumption be she’d bled out as a result of her injuries. That wouldn’t work now.
However, she had come prepared. Always have a plan B. It would be a little trickier, since Helena wasn’t as torn up as she’d expected her to be, but she could make this look like death by dragon. She’d take and transmit a photo to satisfy Biggs that the job had been completed.
That damn Henry had almost ruined everything, insisting on checking on Helena, so she’d sent him to the wrong area. He’d become an impediment to the completion of her assignment. Sooner or later, she’d have to eliminate him, so hopefully he’d encounter a dragon who’d fry his ass and save a step.
A patriotic do-gooder with a hero complex, her ex-partner had insisted on accompanying her to Draco. In retrospect, she never should have agreed, but since space lizards creeped her out, she’d been glad for the company at the time. However, Henry had a knack for getting in the way. He always had.
When they’d partnered years ago, he had a penchant for showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time, forcing her to scuttle drops at the last minute. Still, he trusted her, and he’d never guessed she was a double agent, working for two governments, playing one against the other.
Biggs had figured it out. She sometimes wondered if he’d been the one responsible for her and Henry being compromised, ending their operative careers. After forced retirement, Henry had gone to work for the Secret Service, and she’d been placed with the president.
Her first day, she discovered who her boss was. Biggs had approached her, revealed what he knew about her double life, and proceeded to make her an offer she didn’t dare refuse.
Most assignments had been innocuous—pass on information to this person or that one or prevent information from getting to this person or that one, but there had been several jobs.
While Biggs considered Helena an airhead, and Patsy could concede she wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, she had liked her. However, she’d maintained an emotional distance because she’d known this day would come. The only surprise was that it had taken this long.
Patsy had been scared shitless the space lizards would discover the small arsenal she’d sneaked aboard the spacecraft from Elementa, but the weapons crafted from metals mined from the planet were invisible to the ship’s sensors. As a fallback, she’d packed a quantity of poisons and chemicals that when combined became explosive.
For this job, she’d open up the wound near the jugular, twist the knife to cut the vein itself, and voila! Death by dragon. She reached under her skirt and slipped a slender blade from its sheath.
