"Not so bad, Right!" Jessica yelled. She threw something—he had no idea what—and after it hit the wall, there wasn't enough left to tell. "Thirty prisons were emptied. Not one, not two, not ten, thirty! RJ's army is now 15,000-plus strong. Armed, and scattered across the entire zone."
"We did manage to stop two groups," Right said on a positive note.
"We stopped one group," Jessica hissed. "The second group was all prisoners. Somehow, RJ warned her people, and got them out of there before we arrived. All we did was slaughter unarmed prisoners. That's always a challenge. When our troops actually ran into hers, the rebels killed twelve men and wounded six others before being killed themselves. There were only five of them, Right! FIVE! We only heard from fourteen of the prisons. I shouldn't have to do the math for you, Right. At over half the installations every single guard was killed before they even had a chance to call for help. We don't have the manpower to scour the countryside looking for these rebels. Every aspect of Reliance life on Earth depends on the military to control it. I'll have to pull the troops in and put them back on their regular assignments, or everything will fall apart. RJ knows that! I'll have to go to Jago and ask for more men. Ask him to pull them from other zones."
Clearly, this thought did nothing to brighten her day. She slung some other unknown object against the wall with similar results.
"How the hell do I stop her?" She didn't expect an answer, and Right didn't offer her one. She was drained. She'd been up for eighty-four hours straight. "I don't think I can take much more of this." She pulled the pouch from her pocket and extracted a pill.
"No, Jessica, don't!" Right jumped up.
Jessica laughed cruelly. "Don't worry, Right." She swallowed the pill. "You were right about that much. I am a freak." She washed the pill down with a glass of water that hadn't yet found its way to the wall. "See, I'm quite all right."
Cocky damned bitch. She knew damn good and well that anyone he told would laugh at him or have him committed.
"Should you take those if you're not wounded?" Right's voice held as much curiosity as it did concern.
"Who says I'm not wounded?" She just shrugged. "It won't hurt me, and I need the pickup." She smiled as the strength returned to her body. "Sometimes, I think it's all just some horrid dream. I keep hoping I'll wake up. I don't mean to take it out on you, Right. You just have the misfortune of being closest. Sometimes I think I'm going mad."
"Sometimes I'm sure of it," Right said with a supportive smile. "I understand the pressure you're under, Jessy. I understand it because I'm under it, too."
Jessica stood up suddenly and moved from behind her desk. She stood in front of his chair and looked down on him, sizing him up in a way that made him squirm.
She smiled. He wasn't at all bad-looking. She clapped her hands together in delight at her idea. Then she looked him right in the eyes, and without so much as a blink announced, "Let's have sex."
Right returned a look of pure shock. "You've got to be kidding!"
"What? You don't find me attractive?" She sounded hurt.
"I'd have to be dead not to find you attractive." Right pressed his hands together to stop the shaking.
"What's the problem, then?" Jessica leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips.
"Isn't this sort of sudden, Jessy? Shouldn't we . . ."
"Shouldn't we what, Right?" She knelt on the floor in front of him, and ran her hands up the inside of his thighs. "Wait for the moment to pass? Because that could happen, Right. The moment could pass, and wouldn't that be a pity? To think that you might never know the things that I might have done for you, Right. Things that you have never even dreamt of." She started to undo his pants. If he was going to resist, he'd already missed his cue. Her hands touched his stomach as she untucked his shirt, and any apprehension he'd had slipped away.
By the time they finished, Jessica Kirk owned him mind, body, and soul.
Right watched her, enjoying watching her dress almost as much as he'd enjoyed undressing her. He was smiling stupidly. He knew he was, and he didn't care.
Jessica finished dressing, sat at her desk, and started playing with her keyboard looking at file after file. She seemed to notice for the first time that he was still lying in the middle of her office floor naked. She raised her eyebrows as if she had no idea how he'd arrived there.
"Come on, Right. There's work to be done." She seemed to have found the file she wanted. "Get dressed and get in touch with Jago. Now that RJ has her army, we're going to have to have more manpower."
Right dressed hurriedly. He was angry, and he didn't look at her until he was pulling on his boots. She was looking over some chart. Business as usual. His breath caught in his chest at the thought. He finished pulling on his boots, and stood up. She still didn't look at him. He looked down at her, and the full impact of her use of him hit. He felt cold all over.
"You bitch." He cleared his throat to remove the choked sound from his voice. "You cold, calculating cunt."
"Is that any way to talk to a superior officer?" She didn't even look up. She just smiled smugly and continued looking at her screen.
He had never admitted, even to himself, that he had any feelings other than fear and respect, and at one time friendship, in regard to Jessica Kirk. But she was, among other things, at least half Argy, and she would have known how he was feeling even if he hadn't. She would have known that physical contact would have made those feelings impossible for him to ignore.
"Damn you, Jessy. I love you. You knew that. I don't want to think that this is all there will ever be,"
She was silent.
"It don't mean shit to you, do I?"
"Actually, I like you a lot, Right." She shrugged. "Serve me well, and who knows?"
He knew what she meant. "I'm not going to be a pawn in your game forever, Jessy," he promised. He turned on his heel and left.
Jessica turned her computer off. She hadn't really been looking at it any way. "I don't need you forever, Right. I only need you long enough to kill RJ."