Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) by T.E. Bakutis (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📗

Ava had only gotten engaged last week. Ryke had seen surveillance on Cole’s sister at least as recently as last week. Ryke strolled off before either Cole or Bharat could kill her.

The two of them sat in silence until Cole’s watchful gaze and Bharat’s sensitive ears confirmed Ryke and her reluctant bodyguard had left the party. Then, and only then, did Cole lean across the table and press both hands flat against it.

“How,” Cole said, keeping his breathing even, “did some dirt-sucking gutter-born learn all that?”

Bharat let Cole’s racist epithets slide as he tried to reason it out. Both his and Cole’s families lived on Senator Tarack’s private island paradise on Phorcys, just like all the families of Tarack’s contractors did. That way, Tarack could punish those families if anyone who worked for her betrayed her.

That way, she could murder them.

It was a shitty situation all around, but Tarack kept the island’s security tighter than the seams on one of the Supremacy’s bulwark cruisers. Yes, Senator Tarack threatened to kill Bharat’s family, but she’d also kill anyone else who threatened Bharat’s family. Any outside threat to her contractors’ families was a threat to her.

There was no way Ryke could have obtained footage of the small home where they lived, the garden Nadia made out back, the little river down which Gray floated paper boats. Unless, of course ... Ryke had turned someone else in Tarack’s organization. That made Elena Ryke a far more dangerous adversary than psych or Senator Tarack had led him to believe.

After he and Cole got back to Phorcys, Bharat was damn well going to question them about how they’d missed this little nugget. He would find Ryke’s mole and deal with them.

Or he’d simply take the desperate plunge he’d always dreaded, and go on the run with Nadia and Gray. Even though there was every chance they’d get caught. And if they did get caught trying to escape, Bharat would kill his own family quickly, painlessly, and without warning, before he’d let them be subjected to whatever horrors Tarack had in mind.

“Shit,” Cole said, with a shake of his head. “Maybe I do need that drink.” He looked past Bharat. “We could still track her down and kill her.”

“No,” Bharat said.

“I know,” Cole said, with a sigh. “Can’t move against her unless we’re sure she can’t retaliate. Fucking waste of time down here, wasn’t it? No way Tarack takes fourteen.”

Bharat shrugged. He didn’t particularly care what amount of money Senator Tarack would accept for information that would let Elena Ryke blackmail thirty-four sitting Ceto senators. He cared about finding out how Ryke knew where to find his family, and ending the life of whoever had made that possible.

He motioned casually with his head.

Cole slipped out of the booth. They would head back to the Star’s Landing starport separately, per protocol, to ensure Ryke’s people couldn’t ambush both of them. The moment one of them got attacked, their linked PBAs would warn the other, so short of a perfectly executed ambush that simultaneously killed them both, Senator Tarack would know someone had shot at her operatives. She would take vengeance. Vengeance was about the only thing Bharat trusted Senator Tarack to take.

Bharat sat in silence after Cole left. He even pondered ordering a drink. Finally, he slipped out of his booth.

To find a tall, tawny brown woman with platinum-blond curls leaning against the wall beside his booth. She had both thumbs tucked into her belt. She wore striped slacks, a dark blazer, and a leather flight jacket. She absolutely should not have been able to sneak up on him like that.

Bharat had his concealed pistol pointed at her about the same time she had her own pistol pointed at him.

“So that’s how you greet a fit woman in a club?” The woman smiled in a much friendlier manner than Ryke. “Where are your manners?”

Was this woman one of Ryke’s enforcers, here to threaten him or negotiate further? She didn’t look like one of Ryke’s people. Everything about this woman oozed confidence, but more importantly, elegance. She could even pass for an Advanced.

All the people he’d met down here — at least those working with Ryke — had the rough look of those who’d grown up fighting for everything they had. This woman, by comparison, could have stepped out of any prestigious academy on Phorcys. She’d obviously spent time on Bharat’s home planet.

“Can I help you?” Bharat said.

He didn’t try to escape. He might get the first shot off, but he might not. Also, gunfire would bring Ceto Security Division and a hundred panicked clubgoers down on his head, and while he’d make it out, that sort of scene would very much anger Senator Tarack. She expected her ops on Ceto to run quietly.

“You can help by pointing that gun somewhere else,” the woman said. “Sit down. Order a drink. I’m here on our business, not Ryke’s, and I have no quarrel with you.”

“We don’t have business,” Bharat said, not sitting down.

“Of course we do.” The woman holstered her weapon. “And as a gesture of goodwill, I’ve put my gun down first.” She spread her open hands. “See? Look how generous I am.”

Bharat pondered shooting her, but only for a moment. He wouldn’t shoot an unarmed person whose worst crime, so far, was making him look like an idiot. He didn’t know where this woman had come from, and he didn’t know what she wanted, but Senator Tarack would want to know. She’d review the archive from his PBA when he got back, and she’d want to see