The betrayal Chapter 33 snippet

Stumbling down the stairway, Kate ran her hands through her hair. God, she thought, the other man’s blood was all in her hair and over his face. Wiping her face off on the sleeve of her leather jacket, she managed to get most of it off her face. What she didn’t get would have to wait for her to get to back to her fighter.

Reaching the first floor, she stopped and set her head on the corner of the banister. Things had to change some time, she mused to herself with a sigh, and otherwise she didn’t know how she was going to survive the upcoming war. Ever since she had arrived on Necko years ago, Death had been her steady companion and she sometimes wondered if it always would be.
God, she told herself as she stood back up. I really think that Reyes would have been better letting me die!

Bubbling up near the surface, the rage she kept bottled up nearly burst through her self-control. A sigh escaped from between her clenched teeth as she approaching the closet where she had left Kosloski. If the son of a bitch had moved, she told herself with a growl, she was going to have to kill him herself!

Opening the door with a start, she felt relief flood her body when he was where he left her. For once today, she told herself, something had gone right! Thank God for that that, because she honestly didn’t know how she would have reacted if it hadn’t gone right! She probably would have screamed and collapsed to the ground in a breakdown, but she wasn’t willing to totally agree on that yet.

“Can I get out of her now, Captain?” Kosloski asked, anger giving his voice an edge to it.

“Not yet,” she said.

“Where’s the sniper?”

“He was a pain in the neck,” she said. “But it’s okay now.”

“Don’t we need to move on?”

“No,” Kate said as she shut the door and locked the handle from turning. “There’s still the rest of the team to deal with, Kosloski. Just stay in here like a good boy until I get back.”

Turning on her heel, Kate started to make her was towards the door. She reached down and clicked on the com unit to listen to the team’s tac net. There was now way they could keep her out of it, she told herself, not with a receiver that was programmed into it. Even if they encrypted it, she could still hear what they had to say.

“Marklin,” a voice that sent a chill down Kate’s spine spoke in her ear. “Come in Marklin.”

It couldn’t be, she told herself as she stepped outside into the street again. I thought he was gone for good!

“Marklin, this is Benton,” the voice said. “Answer me!”

The voice in her ear made Kate feel like the world was closing in on her as she heard it. Graham Benton, she cursed in her head, why did it have to be that bastard? If there was anyone in the entire Intelligence field that hated her worse, she didn’t know of them.

Johansson couldn’t have found someone with a better reason to want me dead, she told herself as she looked towards the refinery.

Benton had hated her from the very beginning, she remember as she made her way towards the refinery. With her background as a former gladiator slave, he had found her being in the same organization as him to be a grievous insult. Pushing her way through the milling crowds, making sure she avoided the club area as she could head sirens in the distance, she shook her head at the memories.

The man had made her life on Arlington a living hell, he and his friends constantly trying to get her to strike him. He had always been higher ranked then her, until she had taken the fateful mission on Ireland. Once he had learned that she had been promoted ahead of him, she reflected, he had gone ballistic and tried everything he could to get her busted down in rank. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t until she left Intelligence to join the regular Fleet that she had been busted down to a ranking lower then his.

“Marklin,” Benton’s voice was near a yell. “I order you to answer me!”

“I’m afraid he won’t answer, Benton,”

“Almir,” he said, the recognition making his British accent colder then it normally was.

“Glad you could remember me, Benton,” she said as she reached the end of the street. The refinery would make a good place to settle this at, she mused as she stepped across the street towards it.

“I would never forget a slave like you anywhere,” he sneered.