Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Read online

  Skeet let out a long sigh and brushed his hand over his greased hair, still unaccustomed to the fact that it wasn’t sticking out everywhere like he usually wore it. He’d done his hair and dressed up for this just like he’d been told, but he’d taken a risk and left the multiple piercings in his ears, small tokens that made him feel like he was still himself.

  He was suddenly aware of someone about his height standing beside him. Rather than turn or even make a move, he smiled to himself and continued to scan the crowd. “Remind me again what we’re doing here?”

  Ziva Payvan – the Alpha team’s lieutenant, his boss, and the woman he respected more than anyone else in the galaxy – scoffed and crossed her arms. “Someone’s got to be on protection detail for the director. Don’t ask me how they decided it was our turn. Trust me; there are hundreds of things I’d rather be doing right now instead of standing around here looking like an idiot.”

  This made Skeet smile again. After nearly eight years of camaraderie, they had begun to think alike. He turned to face Ziva and was rendered temporarily speechless by how stunning she looked in her eveningwear. She wore a modest but elegant floor-length black dress that draped over one shoulder, curved across her chest and disappeared under her opposite arm. The tattoos visible on her back and upper arms seemed a bit out of place at this event, but in Skeet’s opinion they complimented the dress quite nicely. Her black and red-streaked hair was woven and folded into a braid-like style against the back of her head.

  “Well,” Skeet said, turning his attention back to the party guests milling about in Officer Tachi’s ballroom, “you look like anything but an idiot.”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes, but smirked. “Thanks,” she muttered. “Where’s Zinni?”

  “I didn’t know when you’d get here, so I stationed her by the side entrance,” Skeet replied. “What took you so long, anyway?”

  “Just had a few things to take care of,” Ziva answered, refraining from elaborating any further. She unfolded her arms and slid her hands down to rest on her hips. Even in the formal dress, she looked formidable enough to make anyone think twice about approaching her in the wrong way.

  The vagueness of her response told Skeet not to push the matter any further. They may have faced life-and-death situations together on a daily basis, but their personal lives were a different matter. Ziva especially had always been a very private person, and while it sometimes drove him crazy, he respected that privacy. He reminded himself that, if it was anything important, she certainly would have shared.

  Skeet kept his eyes on HSP Director Emeri Arion as he mingled with the other guests. While the place was already crawling with security detail from every organization represented, the Alpha team had been sent along in plainclothes to provide expertise and a few extra sets of eyes. All three of them were packing, but to any onlookers they were just three more partygoers.

  The Royal Officer had yet to make an appearance at his own gala. He was due to present several awards in – Skeet checked the time – about ten minutes, one in particular to Director Arion for some miniscule thing he had no doubt already received similar awards for. Still, this was one of the biggest events of the year among the Haphezian dignitaries, whether it was because they were being commended or because they were looking for a good time. Skeet could honestly say he’d be enjoying himself if not for the clothes he was wearing. He gave his collar another tug and squirmed in his jacket.

  “You on the other hand might look like an idiot, the way you keep fidgeting like that,” Ziva said in a motherly tone. The corners of her mouth turned upward ever so slightly. It wasn’t often that something so insignificant could make her smile – she was clearly in a better mood than Skeet would have expected of her on an assignment like this.

  “Not everyone cleans up as nice as you do, Z.”

  “I didn’t say you don’t look nice,” she said. “Just try not to look like you’re dying.”

  “You two look like you’re having way too much fun.” They both turned to find Intelligence Officer Zinnarana Vax as she moved up to stand beside them. She too wore a long black dress, this one strapless. The glittering blue sash around her waist did a fantastic job of bringing out the brilliant cerulean in her eyes and hair, which she had left down. Zinni was much smaller than either of them, but what she lacked in size she made up for in attitude and brains. If they were smart, people treaded just as lightly around her as they did around Ziva. She was tough and intelligent, but wasn’t nearly as callous as the lieutenant. The two of them balanced each other out, and Skeet couldn’t have asked for a better pair of teammates.

  “You know we are,” Ziva replied, crossing her arms again. “See anything out of place?”

  “Not a thing,” Zinni said. “We’ve been here for close to an hour and everything seems normal.”

  “Except that,” Skeet muttered, perking up. He stepped away from the women, eyes fixed on the three agents dressed in HSP blues who were rushing from the hall. He turned to his left to see another pair listening intently to their earpieces before they too hurried off.

  Ziva and Zinni strode forward as well, with Ziva brushing past him and stopping a step in front of him. “This can’t be good.”

  Nearby guests had noticed the commotion and were chattering among themselves. Some were beginning to cluster at the bottom of the grand staircase, peering up in the direction the agents had gone. Whatever had them so intrigued was happening on the second floor of Tachi’s palace.

  -4-

  Main Hall

  Palace of the Royal Officer

  Haphor, Haphez

  The moment she heard the distant shouting coming from upstairs, Ziva Payvan removed her pistol from where it had been strapped to her upper ankle, well concealed under the flowing dress. Those around her scattered upon seeing the weapon, giving her plenty of space to press forward with Skeet and Zinni directly behind her.

  The remaining agents she could see from her current vantage point had also drawn their guns and were doing their best to round up the VIPs and lead them to safety. Ziva wished desperately for an earpiece or some other form of communication that would allow her to find out what had transpired upstairs.

  “Hey!” she barked at a pair of blue-and-gray-clad HSP agents who were hustling Emeri Arion out of the room. “Lieutenant Payvan, HSP. What’s going on?”

  For a moment the Blues responded with looks of shock and Ziva was afraid they would treat her as a threat, but the director quickly intervened. “They just found Tachi in his private quarters,” he said, lowering his voice as he drew closer. “He’s dead.”

  Ziva’s eyes darted toward the stairs. A trio of Royal Guard agents remained halfway up the flight of steps, hands extended in an attempt to calm the nervous onlookers and keep them at bay. The news was a blow to her. She’d never cared for Tachi – had every reason to hate him, in fact – but now, standing in the building where the head of all of HSP had just been murdered seemed surreal. She swallowed and glanced toward the dining hall where the VIPs were being corralled. In such a situation, it was now her team’s duty to escort the director off the premises and to safety, no matter what became of the other dignitaries.

  She took Emeri’s arm and faced the two agents, who were growing antsy. “We’ll take it from here, gentlemen.”

  -5-

  Residential Wing

  Palace of the Royal Officer

  Haphor, Haphez

  Kade Shevin sat on a chair someone had set up for him, surrounded by several of his peers. His shoulders sagged as he held a medipac to the lump on his head and pressed a cloth to his gushing nose. His left eye was swollen shut from the blow to his face. The culprit: a rock half the size of his head that the intruder had apparently taken from the garden.

  The last thing he remembered before being discovered by a fellow agent was an image of the intruder entering the palace. He had no inkling of how long he’d been unconscious and thus no idea how long the figure had been insid
e, but according to Zona it had been long enough to kill the Royal Officer with a professionally-placed shot to the head.

  “And you never saw a face?” Zona said, the fifth time he’d asked that question or one similar to it.

  “No!” Kade exclaimed, the same way he’d responded to every instance of the question. His voice was somewhat muffled by the compress over his nose. “All I saw was that it was someone about my height, maybe a little taller. It was so dark, and they had to have been wearing all black.”

  “He never spoke to you?”

  This time Kade resorted to a simple shake of his head so he didn’t have to taste the blood leaking down his face. It bothered him that Zona kept referring to the intruder as a male, though there had been no way to tell one way or the other. Whoever it was, however, was well trained in stealth and infiltration, had the signature of a professional killer, and was determined enough to proceed with their mission even after they’d heard Kade call for back-up.

  He tilted his head back long enough to rearrange the cloth over his face; it was so saturated with blood that he couldn’t even tell whether his nose was still bleeding. “I don’t know what else you want to hear – I’ve told you everything I know. I was out there, saw the intruder in the courtyard, went to investigate, and got hit in the head. Haven’t you found anything else to go on?”

  Zona sighed and wiped a gloved hand across his forehead. He was an experienced investigator in his mid forties, but the gray stripes running through his brown hair sometimes made him look older. They certainly did now as he took a moment to rub his tired eyes. The day had been long to begin with, but the unexpected developments had pushed everyone to the end of their ropes.

  “He somehow made it over the wall using a magnetic hook and grappling cable, all the while avoiding detection by any agents or security bots. There were plenty of tracks in the mud, but by the time we got someone out there the rain had done a fantastic job of washing away any distinctive tread marks. At this point it would be difficult to even get an accurate boot size out of them.”

  Kade shifted in the chair, arms tired from putting pressure on his wounds. “Any idea how he got up onto the bridge without me hearing?”

  Zona looked disgusted, and Kade wished he hadn’t made it sound like it was his fault any more than it already was. “There was no evidence of a grappling hook or other tool,” the senior agent responded, “but someone in decent physical condition would have been able to jump up and pull themselves over the railing. It would be quiet and wouldn’t leave any distinguishing scratches or marks.”

  “Fingerprints?” Kade ventured.

  Zona snorted. “Anyone with a brain stem would have been wearing gloves. We checked though and came up with several sets that match Tachi, his family, and the agents who discovered the body. There are a couple of partials we’re still trying to match, but chances are we won’t find anything of use.”

  Kade was crushed, both by the stares of his associates and by his own emotions. Not only was it his fault that the intruder had gained access to the palace in the first place, but this person had also managed to kill the Royal Officer and escape without leaving any evidence of their presence. Kade couldn’t help but have a secret respect for their skill, though he didn’t dare admit any such thing to Zona.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

  Zona sighed yet again and pocketed the gloves he’d been wearing. He extended a hand and helped Kade stand up. “Come on, kid. You could use some medical attention.”

  The hallway tilted for a moment as Kade searched for his footing. He was re-adjusting the cloth on his nose, which had nearly stopped bleeding, when he heard someone shout from the direction of Tachi’s private quarters.

  “Special Agent Zona! You’d better come see this!”

  The agents around him took off at a dead run, leaving Kade to stumble along behind them on tired legs. He entered Tachi’s room to find them gathered around a technician who was kneeling beside a trash receptacle built into the wall.

  “The only reason I found it was because I saw the gloves,” he was saying, indicating a pair of black gloves on the floor. “It was buried under some other garbage.”

  The item he referred to was a black stealth suit he had draped across his arms as if he were advertising it in a market. It was still damp from the rain and rumpled from being stuffed into the small compactor. There was no doubt in Kade’s mind that it had belonged to his assailant.

  “The cut is what I find most interesting,” the technician said, holding the suit up so everyone could get a better look. The other forensics techs swarmed him, taking photos and gathering data.

  “The killer is a woman,” Zona observed after studying the clothing for a moment.

  “Or a very oddly-shaped man,” one of the other young investigators quipped. He bowed his head and stepped away after receiving scolding looks from the rest of the agents.

  “Now the question is how she escaped the building without anyone seeing,” Zona said, stroking his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Unless…”

  “Sir!” another technician exclaimed, waving a compact fingerprint scanner through the air. “We have a hit on one of the partials!”

  He handed it to Zona, who studied it intently with a look of disappointment on his face. He held the device up for everyone to see, displaying the HSP spec ops insignia and redacted profile on the screen. Whether he was finishing his last thought or announcing it for the others to hear, he cleared his throat and continued, “… she’s one of us.”

  -6-

  HSP Headquarters

  Noro, Haphez

  The Royal Guard, in all of its illusive grandeur, was determined to keep any details of Tachi’s assassination to itself. It was a separate division of HSP after all, with its own procedures, responsibilities, and chain of command, but the agents had always been very open to receiving assistance from the rest of the parent agency. This secrecy was unusual and was thus becoming the topic of argument among the agency’s higher-ups; the last thing anyone had heard was that a crucial piece of evidence had been discovered, but what it was and what it pointed to remained a mystery.

  Ziva sat at one of the computer terminals in her team’s bullpen, watching it as if information would magically appear the longer and harder she stared. It wasn’t that the Royal Guard had blocked access to its findings – Zinni would have taken care of that long ago – but they had never even entered any data that could be retrieved. Anything they had discovered was being stored somewhere other than the main HSP databases, purposely out of the reach of anyone outside a very small, tight circle.

  The flight back to the spaceport city of Noro had lasted well into the night, and though she had been sent home on the director’s orders, Ziva had only been able to catch a couple hours of sleep before resolving to come in to Headquarters. Now it was mid-morning and the entire agency was hard at work searching for details regarding Tachi’s assassination. But there was frustration in the air as resources and ideas gradually dwindled. Emeri himself had been busy on comm since arriving home from Haphor, speaking to the Royal Guard’s powers-that-be from behind the closed doors of his office.

  Ziva cursed the Royal Guard under her breath and allowed an exasperated growl to escape her throat. This wasn’t working. Lack of sleep and lack of information didn’t mix. Heaving a sigh, she logged out of her secure account and opted to head upstairs to see if the director had been able to squeeze any reports out of their counterparts in Haphor.

  As she moved across the floor, she took a moment to observe all the people glued to their terminals. It was rare to have so many spec ops agents sitting idly at their desks. The majority of their time was spent out in the field, and even when they were present on the HSP campus, they could most likely be found at the canteen or shooting range – anywhere but their offices. But today wasn’t like other days; all hands were on deck, so to speak. The thought bolstered her resolve a bit as she slipped her access key out and wave
d it over the scanner to summon the elevator car.

  Lost in thought, it took Ziva a moment to realize the scanner was unresponsive to her key. Cursing the defective technology under her breath, she swiped it again. This time, after a short hesitation, the scanner buzzed and flashed an angry red light at her. Again she tried, then a fourth time, drawing the same results.

  She stole a glance over her shoulder, realizing she had attracted the attention of several nearby agents. They watched her warily, no doubt taking secret delight in watching the great Ziva Payvan struggle with such a simple piece of equipment. She swore and slammed her palm against the elevator door.

  After one last futile attempt and another sharp warning from the scanner, Ziva conceded and headed for the stairwell, settling on the fact that she could use the extra walking time to do some more thinking. The Royal Guard couldn’t hold out forever. It would only take one meddling news reporter to start a chain reaction that would spread across the planet in a matter of minutes. She hoped she wouldn’t have to wait that long, and anyhow she preferred gaining intel from more reliable sources.

  Despite her decision to take the stairs, the chime of the elevator bell still caught her attention just as she entered the stairwell. Out of habit and maybe out of spite, Ziva turned back to look just as three armed agents in full uniform stepped out of the car. They scanned the area until their eyes fell upon her and one of them gestured at her.