Free Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 by EJ Fisch Page B

nervous civilians. A massive locker room lay down the corridor to her right, so she slipped inside and began navigating through the rows upon rows of secure storage lockers. It took a good three minutes to find the one she sought, a medium-sized space just outside the nearest security cam’s field of view. She glanced around and, seeing no one, pressed her thumb to the print pad and lowered her eye to the optical scanner.
    The locking mechanism released and the locker door swung open, revealing a deep space occupied by several large stacks of credits, two pistols, a pair of spare plasma cells, and a temporary false identity that would at least allow her to make it off the moon in an emergency. Skeet and Zinni had similar lockers somewhere in the room, though she had no idea where they were or what specifically they contained. HSP required its spec ops agents to keep an emergency cache somewhere in the galaxy, but these here on Niio had been mandated by Ziva herself. She had other stashes elsewhere, and she suspected her teammates did, too.
    Taking another look around, she slid her backpack from her shoulders and removed another pistol, submachine gun, disassembled rifle, and a variety of grenades that had once belonged in her home’s weapons cache. She had every intention of restocking that closet, but in the event that she did end up leaving the agency, she preferred to have ready access to her supplies from wherever she was in the galaxy.
    Just to be on the safe side, she took one of the stacks of credits and dumped it into the depleted backpack before shutting the locker door and sealing it with another thumbprint and retina scan. Finding people, particularly people who were just as good at disappearing as she was, often meant relying on outside resources. And those resources never came cheap.
    Ziva made her way out of the locker room and back out to the docks, sweeping her gaze around until it settled on a burly human man about her height who stood and watched as several containers were unloaded from a nearby ship. The tattoo visible above the collar of his jacket told her he was someone who could help. She made a show of advancing toward him, successfully attracting his attention. He kept a wary eye on her as she approached, patting the telltale bulge under his jacket that could only be a concealed sidearm. She opened her own jacket in response, allowing him to catch a glimpse of the pistol that dangled in her shoulder holster, and continued toward him without breaking stride.
    The man shifted his feet as she drew nearer, clearly unnerved by her display of audacity, and plucked his communicator from his belt. He began speaking in hushed tones, and with all the surrounding noise it was impossible for Ziva to hear the specifics of the conversation.
    “That’s right,” she called in Standard, keeping her arms at her sides but her palms open where he could see them. “Call your boss. Tell him I need to talk to him.”
    She stood motionless until he finished talking, maintaining a distance of a couple of meters. The man kept his eyes glued to her as he spoke, scrutinizing every inch of her, assessing the threat level she posed. He ended his transmission with an unimpressed grunt and turned, motioning for her to follow. “This way.”
    The two of them made their way through the crowd to the far side of the platform where another man similar in appearance waited beside an idling aircar. Ziva sensed movement in her peripherals and found two more men who had moved from their hiding places to flank her. The one she’d approached opened the door and waved her into the back seat before he and the pilot climbed into the front.
    She sighed and settled in as the car lifted from the platform and glided out of the port, soaring high above the tops of the towering buildings. Like Chaiavis, many of Niio’s structures were built upward due to the fact that most of the moon’s habitable space was already occupied. The layout of the