Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 Read Free Page A

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    “I think everything will be just fine.” Ziva shifted her attention away from Hoxie and down to Baez just in time to see him wink at her. This is what he’d meant when he said everything would be okay? Why couldn’t he have just told her the former captain would be testifying? Why put her through this?
    She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken anyone to court. Her jobs more often resulted in death than arrest, even when the objective wasn’t necessarily to kill. But after thinking for a moment, she realized why the situation was playing out like it was. Convicted criminals were no longer allowed to know who the witnesses in their trials were – or even if there were witnesses – in order to prevent them from collaborating or changing their stories. It was a fairly new law, implemented about halfway through her career at HSP. It was effective too, considering she’d had no idea Hoxie would be there.
    All the noise in the room became a dull, mangled buzz in Ziva’s ears as she watched the guards position Hoxie on the small platform directly in front of the magistrates. She felt her skin crawl for reasons she couldn’t explain. Part of it was confusion as to why he was there, and part of it was the idea that he’d had a hand in everything that had happened to her, good or bad.
    “What I have to say is very simple,” Hoxie said after the Grand Magistrate had asked him a few basic questions. He pivoted on the platform to face Ziva directly, and she was glad. It was clear that Baez and the judges already knew his story, so there was no point in pretending they didn’t. Besides, she felt like she deserved a nice long explanation.
    “Ziva Payvan is innocent,” he said. “It was Nejdra Venn who broke into the palace and killed Ikaro Tachi that night at the gala. I was responsible for recreating Lieutenant Payvan’s fingerprints and DNA, and Captain Venn planted the items in Tachi’s room after murdering him. The purpose of the frame-up was to shift the attention away from Captain Dasaro and his plan to harvest all the niobi crystals in Argall. The idea was that authorities would be too busy chasing her to worry about what he was doing.”
    Short of Nejdra herself killing Tachi, this was all information Ziva had deduced before they’d even gone to Argall. Baez had told her that her involvement in the assassination had already been waived anyway. She waited for Hoxie to continue, hoping he’d give her some information she actually wanted – and needed – to hear.
    He droned on a while longer, explaining how he had been chosen to participate in Dasaro’s scheme due to his connection to Sergeant Loric during his time in the military. He and Venn had both been promised a share of the crystals harvested from Argall as payment, but he had opted out when Dasaro gave the order to murder all of the mining town’s residents. He’d dropped off the grid for several days before returning to Haphez and surrendering himself to HSP.
    Get on with it , Ziva thought, refusing to break eye contact with him. Get me out of here .
    Finally, Hoxie turned back to the magistrates. “Your Honors, under the capital punishment laws put into place by the Haphezian crown, Captains Dasaro and Venn would have been put to death as punishment for their crimes. Lieutenant Payvan was responsible for killing both of them, although it was deemed self-defense in Dasaro’s case.” He shot a reassuring glance over his shoulder. “Despite the circumstances surrounding Venn’s death, would it not be appropriate to assume that she would have been executed by a Cleaner anyway and that her murder was, in that respect, acceptable?”
    The room was dead silent for several long seconds as everyone mulled the idea over. The Grand Magistrate stared straight ahead, reading the holographic text that scrolled across his visor. Just when the silence had become nearly unbearable, he cleared his throat.
    “You’ve got an excellent point