Brick didn’t enjoy chopping the guy short by jolting up a firm hand, but if he had the choice to save Evrest’s or Jayd’s stress level, there was no contest. “What I think he’s meaning to say, princess”—instead of press release platitudes in which you’re not going to have lasting confidence—“is that the guys aren’t going to take any stupid chances. And yes, they’ve been trained for stuff exactly like this. So unless your boy Carris has been secretly training as an expert parajumper…”
“Creator’s toes,” Iscah interjected. “He is right.”
Evrest stroked the back of a hand over his neatly trimmed beard. “Very likely, yes.”
“Well, don’t get excited on my account,” Brick groused. Jayd, now at the point of pacing off her tension, barely noticed.
“So if he is not leading the advance on Censhyr, where has he gone?” she asked.
“Shit.” Brick shook his head, fully humbled. The question should’ve been assaulting him already. It definitely should’ve been doing so in place of his time-waster of a pissing contest with Evrest.
A shrill alert from the radio patch broke through the air. “All units, this is Command. We have hit blackjack. I repeat, we have hit a perfect blackjack at the air strip. The house has won the game.”
Instantly, Iscah pumped a fist.
Though Evrest looked ready to, he only lifted a small smile while Oz’s and Jagger’s reactions crackled over the speakers.
“Good on you!”
“Creator be praised!”
Jayd stopped short, whirling around before her next pacing lap was done. “Wh-What is it? What has happened?”
Brick was semi-lost himself. “Unsure.” But as he cocked a fresh stare at Evrest, that awareness got more acute. “Cimarron? A translation, maybe?”
But Evrest was already rocketing back over to Iscah’s station, extending his hand toward the tech. By the time he got to her side, Iscah had slipped off her headset. She offered to him with a tearful smile.
“Command, this is Pit Boss,” he said. “Lüt vous plait, confirm that one more time.”
Brick expected Samsyn’s growl to roughen up the connection at first. But the guy sounded outright jovial, if not chest-beatingly cocky, as he responded.
“Affirmative, Pit Boss. We definitely have him. Pathetic prispoul was hiding next to the septic tank, beneath the plane’s lavatory. As if he thought we would not look there for his rotten form?”
“Excellent work, brother,” Evrest said. “Are you able to verify with visuals?”
“Transmitting.”
Samsyn’s concurrence had Brick taking the rushed route to Iscah’s console as well. But once there, he chose to hang back a little. Evrest was wound tight, and this was absolutely his moment of triumph. More importantly, keeping back meant he could be in the general vicinity of where Jayd had relocated. At this point, the periphery of her presence was better than nothing at all.
Though damn it…depending on what they were about to view on Iscah’s monitor, nothing at all might be his reality sooner than he thought. Or wanted.
Chapter Twelve
As Jayd approached the tech station at which Ev was bent like an anxious space program engineer waiting on a shuttle from the stratosphere, she wondered if she was the one returning from an accidental trip to those heights. Her head felt huge. Her knees were cotton balls. She honestly had no idea if her feet were still attached to her body.
As Iscah’s monitor pinged, the sensations worsened. In the next five seconds, she would know if she could breathe normally again or not.
How she wanted to reach out to Brick. To soak up his strength as the anchor it had so quickly become in her world. To feel his warmth as he squeezed her hand and to know that the connection would give her the fortitude to keep her head high, her intentions true.
But while he was so close, he seemed so far away. His sights stayed riveted on the large monitor. His hands remained at the small of his back, clasped tightly together.
Maybe, for now, it was a good idea to keep her attention focused, as well.
Besides, she still had Emme. The woman stepped up next to her and linked their elbows, lending much-needed commiseration in the seconds she needed it most.
“Dear Creator on High, we pray that you have enabled His Highness Samsyn to capture Trystan Carris by his filthy balls and drag him into the glaring light of Arcadian judgment.”
Jayd was saved from having to tamp a giggle when her maid’s conclusion punched the air at the same time as Iscah’s click on her comm wheel.
At once, a gritty picture filled the screen.
Also at once, no one had any doubt about the identity of the prisoner in her brother’s custody.
Thank every saint in the universe.
But that was not what blurted from her suddenly parted lips.
“Oh,” Jayd rasped. Just that and just once. But she did not have to worry about forming anything else, with Emme taking over quite perfectly on the duties.
“Oh, Highness. Creator be truly praised. They did catch the awful kimfuk!”
It seemed merciless to quell her responding chuckle. “’Twould absolutely seem that way, bonami.” Weirdly, she wondered less about a status update on the mission now, and more about the karmic balance that Carris’s capture seemed to knocked loose. Nothing else could explain the new freedom of Emme’s profanity button.
She had to get Brickham’s input on the matter.
But when she lifted her head and turned back toward him, he was no longer there.
He was not anywhere in the vicinity either.
The cement block returned to stand in for her head once again. Jayd let it guide her in a clumsy roll as she wheeled around, searching for him. But he was nowhere in the throng that had now closed in on Iscah’s monitor. She was stopped by many of them, clasping her for tearful celebratory hugs. Though she forced out pleasantries and smiles, none of the sentiments climbed from her lips to her mind. That, of course brought a new tidal wave of guilt—to this crowd, she was still their princess no matter what—but she could not spare even a corner of her mind for that consideration right now.
Where was Brickham?
And why did her senses not want to answer that?
How did they already pound with one sole suspicion? That Brick had only been biding his time until this moment. Waiting Trystan was finally in cuffs—which signaled the moment he could escape his.
The cuffs that might as well have her name engraved on them.
That, in some disgusting way, Evrest had locked down with resounding snicks.
Evrest.
She should have known that her bonsun brother, and the harmless conversation he had behested from Brickham, would be the explanation for her lover’s abrupt change. It was not about getting the intake table ready or focusing on the looming threat at hand. It was not even about them being back in a public situation together.
It was bigger than that.
Big enough to have Brickham activating all his sneaky spy wiles and slipping out of here during the single minute that everyone was distracted. The sixty seconds in which she had not been excruciatingly aware of his every move.
Except for the agony of this one.
And then the one that followed it.
And then several more, in which she tried talking herself off her own mental ledge. Perhaps he had not actually snuck away. Maybe he had sought out the facilities or finally gone to grab some food from the buffet line. She knew he had not eaten for hours. She had not pushed him to do so, out of gratitude that he had not foisted the same pressure on her.