The detention area was small and dark with two cramped containment cells—only one occupied and lit. They rarely had need to incarcerate anyone, but suspicious activities in an off-limits location resulting in a physical assault on the acting commander certainly qualified.
And even more chilling, why had the mysterious lurker entered Lower Cave to begin with? What was he after? What was his goal?
She’d talked to the scientists on site as a group. They had no answers but informed her that nothing in the dig area appeared to have been disturbed. Everything was exactly as they’d left it at the close of shift the night of the incident.
“Good morning,” Sno’s deep voice greeted her, pulling her out of her deliberations.
He rose from the shadows where he’d been sitting on his cot, and the subtle cell lighting illuminated his face, painting its angles in light and shadow. Cassie scrambled to the floor and bounded within a whisker of the cell barrier, looking up at her handler and chattering happily.
“Hey there, Cass-cass. You’re not giving Dek any trouble, are you?”
“Not a bit,” Dek answered. He’d switched to addressing her as Dek the day before, and she’d allowed it. The frequent “a-coms” and “lieutenant commanders” in their sessions had started to get old. In turn, she now addressed him as Sno.
Cassie seemed to be talking to him in her own language of short, little barks.
Sno put his hands on his hips and smiled down at his partner. “That’s my girl. You keep up the good work.” When he raised his gaze to hers—still smiling—an unexpected flash of warmth flooded her cheeks.
What the Hades, Dek?
Yeah, okay. Those intelligent eyes and off-kilter smile could be disarming. In a way. But a man’s appearance had never been a trigger for her. There had to be something more…
“Any news from beyond yet?”
“Nothing.”
“Any chance I can get my com equipment back?”
Dek lowered her chin and gave him a ‘nice try’ look. “No.”
“I need to know what’s going on out there, Dek.”
“Did you hit me, Sno?” Time to get back to the point of her visits.
His eyes narrowed and his face set in a scowl. “I told you I didn’t.”
“You just avoided my question.”
He snapped his mouth shut, and his nostrils flared. “No, Dek. I didn’t hit you. I also didn’t see the person who did, as I’ve told you, many times now. Which leads me to believe your attacker was wearing stealth gear.”
She cocked her head. That part was new. Although, she’d already drawn her own conclusions about her assailant’s talent for going invisible. “Shadowskins.”
“Probably so.”
She leveled him with a searching look. “And were you?”
“Using stealth tech?” He met her gaze and set his jaw. “Yes. But not shadowskins.”
Huh. A direct answer. That was unexpected. “I need specifics.”
“The tech is top secret. I can’t disclose.”
“How did you obtain it?”
“It was issued.”
“By whom?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Do you work for the Alliance?”
“As I’ve told you before, the answer is ‘Hades no.’” He widened his stance and folded his arms. “Do you really believe your commander would authorize my presence here if I had any connection to the flippin’ Alliance?”
Good point. “Then what is your objective here?”
“You know I can’t discuss that.”
She shifted slightly. “So we’re right back where we started.”
“Looks like.”
She turned her back on him and paced two steps to the back wall of the observation area, considering her next plan of attack.
“Dek,” he muttered, her name barely a whisper on his lips. A soul-deep plea.
She shook off her innermost reaction, waited a beat before angling her body to look back at him.
“I can’t tell you what I’m doing here. Any more than you can tell me why an excavation site requires a fully-manned security team and an infrasound barrier to protect it.”
Dek stiffened, raising her chin. Nailed it.
Oh, yeah. He’d seen a lot in his short stint on site. And obviously, he was gathering intel. But for what purpose?
Sno folded his arms and paced his tiny cell. “As the a-com, you have to determine if I’m a threat or not. I get that. I’m the unknown in the equation here. I’m not part of your team.” He returned to the front of the cell and met her eyes. “This situation is a test of your leadership, and this incident has put a huge burden on your shoulders.” He took a half step closer, dangerously near the plasma barrier that separated them. “I can tell you this much. I’m not the problem here.”
She turned to fully face him. “You’re still suggesting I’ve got a bad player in my ranks?”
“It’s not a suggestion.”
Dek bit into her lower lip and clenched her jaw. He’d again hit a nerve. It was one thing for her to mull over that possibility herself, quite another for an outsider to make such an accusation.
“We’re done here.” She turned and strode to the exit. “Cassie, come.”
“Dek…wait.”
She didn’t respond.
Sno’s partner hesitated, chippering quietly.
“Go with her, girl.” The loyal little creature reluctantly heeded his order. She scaled Dek’s field uniform to settle on her shoulder with a dejected whimper.
Dek spared one last look back at her prisoner as she departed. Sno watched her leave in silence.
What if Sno is right?
She’d worked with most of these men for calendars, performed earlier missions with several, and arrived at Sarcassius Site D on the same transport as a half dozen others. They were a team. A close-knit unit. Almost family—petty jealousies and all. She didn’t want to believe she had a turncoat on her hands.
But her gut told her Sno wasn’t the one who’d assaulted her.
So really…
What if Sno was right?
“Have any luck this time, A-Com?” Garr called as she started up the path to SecCom.
“Working on it.”
“Why don’t you let me have a shot at the bastard?”
“Stay at your post, Sergeant.”
She picked up her pace, scrolling quickly through the status reports spooling on her wristcom. The results were completed on the footprint impressions—good timing—but there was no word on the environmental DNA samples that forensics had collected in Lower Cave at the time of her assault.
When she entered the lab a short hike later, the two men on the forensics team traded looks.
She studied each of them in turn. “What have you got?”
“The footprints around the dig aren’t Telon’s,” the team leader told her. “But we only have one definite match.”
“Who’s the match?”
The men exchanged looks again. “You are, A-Com.”
“Well, that’s a given. Who else?”
“We collected every print from points at the scene that weren’t compromised by the security team’s arrival. The gridded area and any prints in proximity.” The lead stuffed his hands in his lab coat pockets. “The only print we can identify is yours, A-Com.”