Forget her? He wasn’t sure he could and didn’t like the idea of trying.

“What?” Mia splayed her arms. “I’m that terrible a sight?”

He was scowling, he realized, and forced his features to relax. “Sorry. It’s not you.”

The glint in her fierce blue eyes sharpened like a sword for attack. “Thinking about her?”

No need to ask who “her” was. “Yeah. So?”

Mia crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m disappointed in you, Jaxon. You’re letting your dick lead you around.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” he asked, arching a brow.

Slight catch of breath, as though surprised, then, “When you want to live to see another day, yeah, it’s a bad thing. She’ll kill you without blinking, without hesitating, and probably laugh while she’s doing it.”

“She’s not that bad.”

“Says the man who hasn’t seen everything she’s capable of.” Mia ran her tongue over her teeth. “I’ve seen her do things that would make your skin crawl.”

“Drop it, okay?” He wouldn’t share Mishka’s secrets, wouldn’t tell anyone why she acted the way she did. They’d pity her, and Jaxon thought he knew Mishka well enough to know that she’d prefer their fury over their sorrow. “You find out anything about your Arcadian-human halflings?” he asked, changing the subject.

Mia was determined to track those like herself, part human, part alien, and help them if needed. She’d spent most her life feeling different, disconnected from everything and everyone, and scared of her differences. She hated the thought of others suffering as she had.

She shrugged and allowed the subject change. “I’ve got a few leads.”

“And your brother?” Dare, Mia’s much-loved and fully human half brother, had been thought dead for years, murdered by aliens. Come to find out he’d been saved from another species of aliens, taken and used by Mia’s Arcadian mother, who had hoped to one day trade him for Mia.

“Same old, same old. He’s alive, he’s hiding from me, and hates me.” She shrugged again, expression curtained by hurt. A hurt she quickly hid. “I’ve tracked him twice and both times he ran from me without saying a word.” There was a heavy pause. “Le’Ace is bad for you, you know?”

“I’m headed to sector twelve,” he said, ignoring that last bit. “Jack’s allowing me to interview the newest woman inside her cell, rather than from a partition. I have orders not to kill.” He was babbling, he knew, but it kept Mia quiet.

“Way to ignore the question.”

Quiet for a little while, at least. “Drop it.”

“So it’s okay to pry information out of me but I can’t pry it out of you.”

“That’s right.” He stacked the folders on his desk. Didn’t need to, but wanted his hands busy. “If there’s anything new to learn about the Schön, I’ll learn it.”

Rather than leave, Mia strode deeper into the small office and dropped into the chair in front of his desk. Determination pulsed from her. “First, I’m going to tell you a little story.”

Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “This can’t wait?”

“No. Now shut it and listen.” Stretching out her legs, she slid down the chair, propped the back of her head on the back, and stared up at the ceiling. “Once upon a time—” she began.

He groaned.

She continued without reservation. “There were two teenage girls. Both had daddy issues. One spent a lot of time in a locked closet, alone and afraid, until finally running away from home at the age of sixteen. One was taken from home when she confessed to being raped by her own father.”

Just then he realized she was telling a story about herself. He knew a little about Mia’s past, about the abuse and isolation she had endured at her father’s hands, and knew she’d run away to escape it.

“These two girls never should have met, but they were both recruited to join a special boot camp. They became roommates, helped each other study and train. They soon learned they were to become A.I.R. agents.”

She glanced at him, and he nodded to let her know he was listening.

“For several months, the world was finally a happy place for both girls. They had purpose, friends, and safety. Or so they thought. One day, one of them was taken from the camp for actual field training. She showed the most promise.”

Mia, he thought.

“There, she met a very cute otherworlder boy. Like any girl would when charmed, she developed a crush on him and the two stayed in secret contact.”

Dread tightened his stomach.

“What she didn’t know was that the otherworlder was using her, pumping her for information about the camp and A.I.R. When the truth was learned, the girl’s instructor was sent to deliver punishment. Everyone thought the girl would be whipped or maybe even have her memory wiped and sent from the camp. But this instructor busted into her room, raised a pyre-gun, and fired.”

Not Mia, then.

Mia’s gaze fell back to Jaxon, hard, distant. “Elise died in my arms.”

To hold a dying friend, to know there was nothing to be done, was torture. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mia, I am. But I don’t understand what this has to do with Mishka.”

“Don’t you?” Mia’s voice rose an octave. “She killed Elise. She held that gun, her face devoid of emotion, and she squeezed the trigger while I begged her not to. Afterward, she walked away as if she’d merely come inside the room to invite us to dinner.”

Again he frowned. “She would have been a child, like you.”

“No. She was an adult.”

“That’s impossible.” His brow furrowed in confusion, and Mishka’s flawless face flashed inside his mind. Unlined skin, youthful blush. “Mishka can’t be more than thirty. If that.”

Mia popped her jaw. “She’s older than you think. A lot older.”

“Impossible,” he said again. “If she were thirty when you were in school, she would be forty or fifty now.”

“She was an instructor at the school several years before my arrival.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Had to be someone else who shot your friend, someone who looked just like her.”

“She’s a machine. She ages differently. Look at Kyrin. He’s hundreds of years old and he looks like he’s in his prime.”

“No,” was all Jaxon said. He didn’t know what else to say.

Mia shrugged as if she didn’t care whether he believed her or not, but the action was stiff. “Just think about what I said.”

He found that he could think of nothing else. If it had been Mishka, would he care?

She wouldn’t have delivered that deathblow because she’d wanted to; she would have been ordered. That he knew without asking. Most likely she’d been torn up inside, had probably sobbed afterward, had probably seen that girl’s dying face in her mind a thousand times in her dreams.

The vulnerable woman he’d held in his arms last week, moaning her surprised delight at every heated touch, had not found joy in death and destruction.

“You better head to interrogation before Jack pops a vessel,” Mia said, changing the subject. “No one’s been able to get a word out of the girls but you. Oh, and guess what? I’m going to watch from the two-way.”

“To make sure I tow the line?”

“You know it.”

“Just like old times,” he said. Only he’d had to watch her back then.

Her lips curled into a slow smile. “Pretty much the same. If we lived in Bizarro World, that is, and sometimes I think we do. Ready?”

He stood but didn’t move around the desk. There was a slight twinge in his ankle, but it was so minor he was able to ignore it. “You aren’t officially on duty for another month.”

“So. I’ve taken an interest in your case. Consider me your new shadow.”

Great.

“Let’s go, then.”

Side by side they strode from the office and down the bustling hallways of A.I.R. Jaxon nodded to Dallas as he passed him. They hadn’t been on the best of terms since leaving the compound.

Dallas refused to discuss what he and Devyn had done and said to Mishka after Jaxon had passed out. Jaxon would have asked Devyn, but the temperamental other-worlder had not made a reappearance.

Jaxon suspected Dallas and the team he’d put together—Mia, Kyrin, Eden Black, Lucius Adaire, and Devyn—were planning something. About the Schön, about Mishka, about both, he didn’t know. None of them trusted him with mission details.

And they were right not to. If they thought to hurt Mishka, well, he thought he might just fight against them.

“You and Dallas should kiss and make up,” Mia suggested. “With tongue. I mean, really. It’s the least you can do.”

“When he tells me what I want to know, I’ll plant a fat wet one right on his mouth.”

She rolled her eyes. “Liar. Not nice to get my hopes up like that. You didn’t used to be this much of a bastard.”

“So I’ve heard,” he muttered.

As they pounded out of the main sector and into an elevator, he knew the security system was taking their measurements, body heat, and electrical chemistry, making sure they belonged.

A minute passed, the walls jostling slightly.

Ding. The double doors opened, and they entered the foyer of the prisoners’ cells, a sort of holding room in case someone somehow escaped confinement. Two guards looked down from a raised glass partition as he and Mia endured retinal and hand scans. He’d submitted to so many over the years, they were second nature to him, as much a part of him as breathing.

“Weapons on the table, Agent Tremain,” one of the guards said.

Two at a time, he withdrew his blades, guns, and stars and laid them on a nearby tabletop. Though he thought he could have managed it, he didn’t try to sneak one in. Risking this interview—not gonna happen.

Buzz. The door opened and they were soon moving along another hallway. He frowned. The air was quite a bit colder than usual. Cold enough to chill his face and arms and cramp his lungs.

“Must be trying to slow the growth of the virus,” Mia said.

With as little as was known about it, the cold might help it spread, but Jaxon didn’t speak his fear aloud. Wouldn’t do any good and might actually cause panic.

A lab coat, gloves, and mask hung on the wall beside his target’s cell. He donned each item while Mia entered the room beside his. A room that provided her with a two-way mirror and sound track of everything that happened in the cell.

Jaxon mentally flipped through everything he knew about the victim. Patty Elizabeth Howl. Twenty-three. Had a boyfriend of one year, was in school to become an alien radiologist. Generally happy since being placed on antidepressants five months ago. Source of depression unknown.

She was pretty, short, and a little plump. Usually, she did not sleep around.

From the corner of his eye, Jaxon saw a man exit one of the other rooms. Though he hadn’t met the man, Jaxon knew he was a doctor. This wing of the cellblock had been emptied except for the women and those in charge of their care. Also, the man was wearing the same coat, gloves, and mask as Jaxon. He held a tray of red-filled vials. Blood? Probably.

Jaxon fought a wave of trepidation. At the very least, the women should have been taken to a laboratory and the tests done there. Safer that way. But there was no better security against alien powers than at A.I.R., and if the women proved to be bait for the Schön, there was a better chance of capture here.

Jaxon waited until the doctor had passed him before entering Patty’s prison. The door closed behind him automatically, and he took a moment to study the scene.

White walls, white floor: both speckled with blood. He frowned. She must have scratched herself. Even as he watched, dry enzyme jetted from tiny holes in the tiles, cleaning and sterilizing the foundation. A toilet and a cot were the only furnishings. Patty was sitting on that cot, rocking back and forth, arms crossed over her middle.

She’d torn at her clothing until all that remained were bloody tatters. Her dark hair stood in tangled disarray, some of the strands having been ripped out in chunks. There was a sickening gray tint to her skin, as if she were dying inside and the rot had just begun seeping from her pores.

“Hello, Patty,” he said, using his gentlest tone. Since his return, he’d found it harder and harder to adapt his relaxed, calm mask. He didn’t know why.

No, not true. He just didn’t want to accept the reason.

Mishka liked the real him, and he wanted to be the man she liked.

Pull yourself together, asshole. He blew this meeting, he wouldn’t get another chance. Guaranteed. He veiled his eyes with patience as surely as he’d veiled his nose and mouth with the covering.

Patty gave no reaction to his presence.

He remained by the door. The others had attacked him, coming at him like bullets from a gun stopped only by the glass that had separated them. “I came to check on you, see how you’re doing.”

Her attention did not waver from the ground.

“Is there anything I can get you? Anything that will make you more comfortable?”

Silence.

“I talked to Joe,” he said truthfully. The interview with Patty’s boyfriend had taken place earlier this morning. No new information had been discovered, but it had given Jaxon the link he needed to bridge the gap between himself and Patty. “He misses you.”

She swallowed.