Chapter 58

Colonel Charles had a missing operative.

In the message to Dusty, he included the name and background information of an agent that had failed to report in a week ago. Vera Charles’s last message had been sent from Cyrus, and she had indicated she was due to meet with Hiram and would report the next day, but she hadn’t.

Her cover had been as an agent for Connors Corp. selling wind generators. Fiaz and Hiram had been sourcing generation facilities for their farms and towns. Vera was supposed to go look at a location in Hiram’s kingdom but never reported back in.

The Colonel had warned her to be very careful as Fiaz and Hiram had their hands in just about everything illegal going on in Persia. He was deeply worried.

Dusty knew who Vera really was. “Oh, crap! How did they get Vera to agree to do this?”

“Vera? Do you mean Samantha’s cousin, Vera Connors? Wasn’t she on Earth working at Connors Corp.?” James asked Dusty.

“Yes, but somehow, she got herself trained as an undercover agent and was sent to Terra. I wonder if Prince Hamdan and Rashid know. I was under the impression that Hamdan was still her boyfriend. I bet the Colonel is very worried since she is also his daughter. Now the message makes sense.”

“She is a very valuable hostage. Did the Colonel mention that he was being pressured?” James asked, concerned.

Dusty shook her head. “No, he didn’t, but I bet he expects to be. Rashid and Anne would also be worried. Hamdan is nutty over Vera, and she is a Connors’ too. I can’t believe they let her go to Terra.”

“I warned them about Hiram more than two years ago when I found out about him and Hasid Merat being old friends. I’m sure Hasid killed Hiram’s father so that Hiram could inherit sooner.”

“Does he still haunt you?” James asked with some worry as she rarely mentioned the man she killed by name.

Dusty gave a wry grin, “No, sweetie, I’d shoot him again if I could. He may have been a handsome man, but he was one twisted son of a bitch. Everything I have learnt about what he did before I met him just makes me wish I had let him suffer more.”

“I should have shot him in the nuts and not the leg. The man had no conscience. I wondered for a long time how Hasid had fooled the entity into staying with him as long as he did.”

“It seemed very confused when it came to me. I was happy that when Lee upgraded my items, I was able to let him go. The new entity and Zed resonate with me much better.”

James wondered just how much the entity Dusty had inherited had suffered. It had been attached to her medallion for a very long time. James had let his first entity go, as it made her happy to retire from service. The entity from his first vambrace was very happy to be with him and Ada.

They had both had a good chuckle that Dusty had ended up with a new male entity and he, another female. Even the entities that were in the second vambraces had decided that the couple were well-matched with their entities and they had happily left them to it.

Thinking of Hasid and all he had learnt about the man had only made James glad that Dusty had killed him at the time. If Hasid had hurt Dusty, he would have been a dead man when James found him, and he would have hunted Hasid to the end of the galaxy. His job would not have stopped him.

He had already been in love with Dusty, even if she wouldn’t date him at the time. Now that she was to be the mother of his child, he suspected his protective streak would be even more pronounced. He had warned her that it was one of his shortcomings.

She was his soulmate, and he would protect her and his any way that he could.

The couple worked on their cover story.

In the last couple of years, they hadn’t done a lot of undercover work that lasted more than a week or two. They both reasoned that this probably wouldn’t be any different.

They needed to get in, find out who was doing what and get out again. Their job wasn’t to rescue the slaves. That would be up to UNSEC and the Islamic Federation to sort out.

They both worked on altering their features, so they looked more Persian. They studied the common facial and body shapes of people from the region that Fiaz came from. Most people in 2098 spoke a form of English, so the couple just needed the correct accent. They also had Ada and Zed to help with translations.

“Do you think you can handle making love to a Pathan look-alike?” James asked Dusty.

“Let’s see,” Dusty replied.

James changed, and Dusty gasped.

“Um, James, that is Hasid, not his brother Pathan.”

James frowned, “Really? Sorry, sweetie.”

Dusty contemplated his image and walked around him. “You’re a few centimetres taller and a little bulkier than I remember him being, but we can work with that.”