I couldn’t believe that Riccardo Silva had been less than five meters away, and I’d let him escape. I clenched my fists against the helpless fury and disappointment. Once again, I’d failed.
Alex was right, too. If Riccardo was here, then things were far worse than I had expected. Silvas rarely left their ships because they were hunted by the RCDF throughout the ’verse. I needed to leave, pronto.
But not before I cracked open the safe in the study.
“What do you know about Riccardo Silva?” I asked.
“He has a grudge against Bianca,” Aoife said. “And he maimed your brother.”
Bianca had told me that Alex and Aoife had helped her rescue Ferdinand, but this proved it. No one outside of family knew what had really happened to my brother. Most people didn’t even know that he’d been hurt because Father had sent him off-planet just days after his return.
I nodded slowly, thinking it through. “If Silva and House James are working together, then I have to warn Father and the rest of the House. We thought Silva had been hired for a single job, not a collaboration. I need to know what they’re planning even more than I did before.”
Because right now the pieces pointed toward open rebellion, if not against the whole Consortium, then at least against House von Hasenberg. I had to find out how extensive it was—my siblings’ lives depended on it.
“Pack your stuff,” I said, “but be quiet about it. Anything you can’t afford to leave behind should be on your person, if possible. I have to get one of my trunks to Chaos. It has too many useful supplies to be left behind.”
I stared at it, trying to figure out how to sneak it out. If I took it through the house, even with the vanisher, I risked getting caught leaving. Maybe the balcony? I switched my gaze to the door, considering it.
“How full is it?” Alex asked.
“Three-quarters.” I grimaced at him over my shoulder. “I brought a lot of stuff. I can carry it easily enough, but I don’t want to drag it through the house. Taking it over the balcony will be tricky—many of the weapons and electronics inside shouldn’t be dropped from the third story.” I headed off the obvious question. “And sadly, I didn’t pack a rope.”
“I can climb down with it,” Alex said. At my skeptical side eye, he smiled. “Have a little faith.”
“Okay. First we’ll get the supplies to the ground, so we can grab them on our way out, then we’ll hit the study after everyone is asleep. I don’t suppose one of you brought a codebreaker?”
“I have one,” Aoife said reluctantly, “but I still agree with Alex that we should leave now before they have a chance to try something else.”
I’d already decided the potential reward outweighed the risk, so I ignored the second part of her sentence. “You and Alex can hit the office while I’m in the study. If we’re going to be setting off alarms anyway, then we might as well hit both.”
“You’re not going alone,” she said, “but nice try. I can handle the office while you and Alex are in the study. Or, better yet, Alex and I can handle both while you wait outside.”
I laughed. “I don’t know what about our interaction so far makes you think that was even an option, but you get points for persistence.” I tapped my fingers against my lips. I felt like I was forgetting something. It took me far longer than it should’ve to remember Ying—I was a bad friend.
“I have to let Ying know what’s happening. I already told her to be careful, but I need to let her know I’m leaving.” And persuade her to leave with me.
As the plan ballooned in complexity, so, too, did the chance of failure. I had to get the three of us, my trunk, Ying, and her guard out of the house without getting caught, after stealing from two locked, potentially alarmed safes. No problem.
“Aoife, go pack what you need and pretend to go to sleep. When it’s time, can you loop the security video again?”
She nodded.
It was half past midnight. Late, but not late enough for sneaking around. “After you leave, we’ll turn out the lights so anyone watching will assume we’ve gone to sleep. Alex can take the trunk down and hide it on the ground. Then, after we’ve given everyone a couple of hours to find their own beds, we’ll crack the safes and head to Chaos.”
Aoife didn’t look entirely convinced, but she left for her room after a long look at Alex. He closed the door behind her, then turned off the lights and perfectly navigated through the dark room. He smiled when he caught me watching him and sprawled in the chair across from me.
It still made me very nervous that he knew part of my secret. I had to suppress the desire to tell him exactly how important it was that he keep quiet. He could destroy my life. He could destroy me. But if I made a big deal of it, I would draw even more attention to the very thing I wanted him to forget. I bit my lip and let it go.
I needed to warn my family that something was happening. I put on a pair of smart glasses because they produced less light than a com. They were already paired to my personal com, so I used them to set up a secure connection. I didn’t want House James to be able to easily intercept my messages. If they wanted to, they’d have to work for it.
Our sibling chat channel was filled with the usual gossip, but nothing like the bomb I was about to drop on everyone. I assumed either Alex or Aoife had already snitched about the attack to Bianca, so I decided to give my siblings all of the information I had. I summed up the hover bike failure, the weirdness from Chloe and Stephanie, and Riccardo Silva’s presence in one dense paragraph.
None of my brothers or sisters had posted messages recently, so I also included a paragraph about my plan to raid the safes and then get the hell out. No one was around to tell me not to do it, but in the unlikely event that I didn’t make it, at least they would have enough information to destroy House James on my behalf.
I knew what it was like to be the one sitting at home waiting for news and only getting partial updates—it sucked.
That done, I sent a formal note to Father, warning him about the new treachery taking place in House James. I had considered waiting until I left, but an early warning with little information was better than no warning at all. I told him I’d send an update once I learned more and to not send the RCDF while I was still here.
It was late in Universal Standard Time, so hopefully he wouldn’t see the message until in the morning when it wouldn’t matter anyway. Because when Albrecht von Hasenberg made up his mind, no amount of pleading or logic would change it. And I could absolutely see him sending in the RCDF and mucking up all of my plans.
Family taken care of, now I debated how I was going to alert Ying without alerting the household. I could send her a message, but it ran the risk of interception. I suppose I’d have to grab her on my way down to the study and her guard could meet us there. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best I could do.
Now I had to wait.
I looked through the display on my glasses to Alex lounging across from me. “You should get some sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
“I could say the same to you.”
I chuckled quietly. “I’m wound too tight for sleep.”
“Want to spar?”
“No.” Alexander Sterling already knew far too much about me. Sparring would be a very bad idea, no matter how much I wanted to see what he could do. I’d never fought with someone who could match my speed. It was nearly as tempting as kissing him again.
Clearly, I needed to keep my butt in this chair and my mind on the mission.
“Afraid you’ll lose?” His voice was soft, a low rumble of velvet and gravel.
“You won’t taunt me into it. But if it makes your ego feel better, then sure.”
His mouth twitched, like he was fighting a grin, before flattening into a pensive line. “Why can you see in the dark?”
If he’d been trying to blindside me, it worked. The casual reference to an ability I’d kept secret for nearly half my life still shocked me, and I struggled to keep my expression even, to not show the panic that caused my pulse to race.
I must not have been very successful because he frowned at me. “What’s wrong?”
Now it was my turn to shake my head. “Nothing.” I paused, then continued despite my earlier misgivings. “If you tell anyone, I’m as good as dead. You know that, right?”
He leaned forward, as serious as I’d ever seen him. “I did tell you that it would be mutually assured destruction. I know the consequences, perhaps better than you. I will not risk either of us.”
I still didn’t know if I could trust him, but at least he understood the gravity of the situation. I had to hope that he wouldn’t accidentally let anything damaging slip. “Thank you.”
He looked like he wanted to add something else, but he just inclined his head and went back to a relaxed slouch. I wished I could relax so easily. Anxious energy thrummed under my skin as I thought about all of the ways tonight could go wrong, all of the ways I could fail. The clock ticking through the seconds in the corner of the glasses’ display didn’t help.
I stood, too anxious to sit still, and crossed to the trunk that held all of my gear, the trunk Alex assured me he could climb down three stories of balconies to the ground. I swiped my right arm over the lock and the trunk opened. I removed the clothes and dropped them on the floor—the time for subterfuge was over. Alex needed this trunk to be as light as possible.
I unlocked the bottom compartment and pulled out the codebreaker, silencer, and vanisher. I also removed a blast pistol and a belt holster. Once the compartment and the trunk were closed and locked again, I dug through the clothes on the floor until I found a pair of utility pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of thick-soled boots, all in black.
Alex watched me without saying anything. Technically, he could carry the trunk down while I changed clothes, but I wanted to see how he did it, so I ducked into the bathroom without a word. I’d changed into a casual summer dress after dinner. It was one of my favorites and I hated to leave it behind, but if I took everything I liked, then I’d have two trunks full of stuff.
I stepped out of the dress and pulled on the far more practical clothes and boots. Clothes were a first line of defense for me. People drew many conclusions based on nothing but an outfit, a bias I ruthlessly exploited. Most of my outfits were carefree, frivolous, and very, very expensive.
Utility pants and boots were not. One of my masks stripped away.
I returned to the bedroom and dropped the dress on the pile of other clothes. I put the codebreaker, silencer, and vanisher into the cargo pockets of my pants, then slung the belt holster around my waist. The blaster went into the holster and I was ready to go.
The trunk was a meter and a half long, and nearly a meter deep and high. Packed as it was, it weighed almost twenty kilograms. Climbing it down would be tricky.
“Are you ready for me to take that?” Alex asked, seeing the direction of my gaze.
I glanced at him. He was still sprawled in the chair, but he’d changed into dark clothes and heavy boots. The short sleeves of his shirt stretched around his biceps, drawing attention to his exquisitely muscled arms. The man was a damn work of art.
One I didn’t want to see broken on the ground below my balcony.
“Can you climb it down, truly? You’re no good to me if you fall and crack your head. The supplies in the trunk aren’t worth your life.”
A slow grin broke across his face. “While I’m glad you value me more than your gear, your lack of faith wounds me.”
“What do you need me to do?”
He rolled to his feet, grin still in place. “Just watch.”
The thought of sending him over the balcony with a large, heavy box made the anxiety under my skin worse. “There’s still room inside if you want to store anything.”
“I’m good. I’ll carry my bag. Now stop stalling.”
He stopped in front of me, close enough to touch. We were shrouded in darkness, but it didn’t offer privacy. I could see him clearly, and I was struck again by his height and the breadth of his shoulders. My gaze fell to his lips. I could offer him a kiss for luck, to see if earlier was real or just a fluke.
I held back the words by the thinnest of threads. Instead, I said, “Please don’t die.”
He nodded, and I moved out of the way. He picked up the trunk, testing the balance, then crossed to the ornate glass door that led outside. I followed him out. The generous balcony was surrounded by a stone balustrade. I peered over the side.
Below was the second-floor balcony, an identical match to ours. The ground floor had landscaping flowers and shrubs near the building and grass leading out into the yard. Without a trunk, I could easily shimmy down to the next balcony and then to the ground, but I wouldn’t try it with an unsecured burden.
I heard the slightest brush of fabric on stone and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alex disappear over the rail. I stifled my cry and dashed to the side where he’d vanished. He hung from the bottom of our balcony by one hand, his toes on the railing below. His other hand held the trunk by one of the handles on the end.
Alex let go of the balcony and landed quietly on the balustrade below, perfectly balanced. He crouched down and went over the railing, hanging from the top by one hand. He tucked the trunk between his calves, then used his now free arm to climb down until he hung from the bottom of the first-floor balcony. He grabbed the trunk, held it out of the way, and dropped lightly to the ground.
He’d made it look so easy that I didn’t even have time to worry.
He disappeared around the corner of the house toward the ship. That hadn’t been the plan, but not having to return to this side of the house might be a good idea. He was gone for long enough that I began to wonder if he’d taken it all the way to Chaos, but then he returned just as quietly as he’d left.
I hadn’t thought too much about how he was going to climb up again. I should’ve sent him with the vanisher and he could’ve just come through the house, but before I could suggest dropping it down to him, he ran at the wall, vaulted off it, then turned and caught the bottom of the first balcony.
He pulled himself up without any apparent effort in a show of strength that did terrible, wicked things to my pulse.
He stood on the railing below and jumped up to catch the bottom of our balcony. My breath caught when his feet left the relative safety of the balustrade, but his grip was strong and sure. He heaved himself up, caught the top of the railing, and then he was standing in front of me, not even breathing hard.
Physical prowess was my catnip and all of the anxious energy pulsing through me had morphed directly into lust. When his grin turned knowing, I straightened my spine, pulled on my public mask, and gave him a dazzling smile. “Well done, thank you. Where did you hide the trunk?”
“On the way to the ship. I’ll grab it after we hit the study.”
“Sounds good. Now we wait.” Had he edged closer, or had I? Either way, Alex stood within reach, a temptation that was difficult to resist. The memory of our kiss lingered, no matter how I tried not to dwell on it.
I needed to clear my mind.
“I’m going to wait inside,” I said. “Close the door when you’re done out here. And thank you again.” I beat a hasty retreat before my libido made a fun—but unwise—decision.
I didn’t escape far, just to the sitting area inside the door. I slid down to the floor, then sat up straight, crossed my legs, and closed my eyes.
I heard Alex return inside and close the door. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Meditating,” I said without opening my eyes. “Would you like to join me?”
“Does it help?”
I didn’t know precisely what he was asking about, but the answer was the same anyway. “Yes.”
I heard him settle on the floor, then grunt. “My legs don’t bend like that.”
“Just sit any way that will be comfortable for an extended period of time.” Once he stopped moving I continued, “Have you meditated before?”
“No.”
“The goal is to quiet the mind, to be still and peaceful in the moment.” A bitter smile twisted my lips. “It’s never been hard for me, probably because my mind is mostly empty anyway, but others find it more difficult. Everyone has their own way of getting to stillness. A common beginner practice is to count your breaths. Breathe in for a certain count, out for the same count, slow and deep. Anywhere from three to eight is typical, so do whatever feels right. Try to focus solely on the numbers and if your mind drifts, gently pull it back to the count.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. My awareness of Alex made my own meditation far more difficult than usual, so I followed my own advice and lost myself in counting.
“Now what?”
“Now you’re meditating. Do it for as long as you like and stop when you’re done.”
“That’s it?”
I laughed quietly, eyes still closed. “That’s it.”
He made a noncommittal noise, but then settled back into silence. It took me a long, long time to find stillness.
Then it took no time at all for that stillness to shatter.