by R. M. Olson
Jez woke with a start and glanced around the cockpit, panic jolting through her.
Lena.
Then she remembered, and lay back with a sigh of relief.
Lena was gone. She’d faced her, finally.
And turns out, she’d maybe been wrong the whole time.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance she wouldn’t screw all this up. Or maybe—maybe she would, and somehow it would be alright anyways. Maybe instead of throwing her out, they’d stick around to help her clean up the mess.
It was a strange thought, and a not entirely comfortable one. She’d spent her whole life waiting to be thrown out. Her parents hadn’t been able to handle having her around past her fourteenth birthday, and Lena had spent the whole five years Jez had flown for her alternately insulting and threatening her.
And yet—
Masha. She’d never expected Masha to admit she was wrong.
She’d never expected, once she’d said what she’d said, to be able to take the words back. To tell Tae she was sorry, and she hadn’t really meant it, and now that she thought about it, she didn’t want to leave, she wanted to help him get his street-kid friends somewhere safe and let him get enough sleep for once in his life, she wanted to teach Olya how to fly and how to gamble and wanted to have Ysbel pull out one of her modded guns and threaten whoever was trying to kill her with violent death.
She wanted Lev to—
She paused a moment, the memory of his arms around her, her back pressed up against his chest, sending a sudden tingle through her entire body.
It still scared the hell out of her, to be honest.
But—
“Jez. Are you awake?”
She spun around as Lev ducked through the door. He looked tired, but less tired than he had, and there was something missing from his expression. It took her a moment to figure it out.
The guilt, haunting behind his eyes.
It wasn’t gone, not completely. But it wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been, once.
She found she was staring at him, and she pulled her eyes away, back to the controls.
He crossed the cockpit floor and stood behind her chair, peering down at the control panel.
“How’s she flying for you?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. “I—” her voice didn’t seem to be working. “Alright. For what she’s been through, she’s flying a dream. But Tae came in last night, before he want to bed. He said he thought maybe—he thought he could—” She wasn’t entirely sure why her brain wasn’t working, but somehow she couldn’t seem to make her words come out in a logical pattern.
“I know. I spoke with Tae before I came in here.” There was a smile in his voice. “I think we should have your angel running better than she’s ever run before.”
The Ungovernable would be her perfect self again. That was the only reason she was feeling the way she was feeling, the only reason why her brain had suddenly shut down.
“I—” She forced a jaunty tone back into her voice. “Well, she’ll be happy about that. Bet she’d kiss me, if she could.”
Lev had wandered over to the back of the cockpit, and was peering out the back window at the rich blackness of space spread out behind them. He turned, and her eyes snagged on his and caught fast.
“I’d like to kiss you,” he said quietly, and there was something in his voice, something affectionate and amused and at the same time, very, very serious. “If you’d like to, I mean,” he added.
No. Nope, nope, nope. This was a terrible, terrible idea. She was something of an expert at bad ideas, and this was probably her worst one yet.
She wasn’t entirely certain how she’d gotten to her feet. Her breath was coming much too fast, her body tingling with a mixture of panic and something else that she really, really didn’t want to think about.
She was not going to do this. She wasn’t a damn idiot, and she most certainly was not going to do this.
Her traitorous legs had already taken the few steps across the cockpit towards him. He turned, and she was suddenly very aware of how close they were.
Thing was, she didn’t do relationships. She’d never really done relationships. Wasn’t who she was. She didn’t mind finding someone for a few weeks here and there, someone who’d be waiting when she came in from a long run, and then when she got tired of them, she’d just not show up, and that was the end of it. But there was something about this soft scholar boy, with those dark, intense eyes that she couldn’t seem to look away from, and she was pretty damn sure that it wasn’t the kind of thing you could just walk away from after a few weeks.
No, this was definitely something very stupid, and she wasn’t stupid.
She was standing right in front of him.
He reached out gently, not taking his eyes from hers, and brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. His hand lingered in her hair for a moment, then brushed down along her jawline, and the touch was so achingly tender that she thought maybe her heart would stop beating completely. He tipped her chin up, ever so gently, his eyes asking a question.
No. Absolutely not. She was not doing this.
Her whole body was shaking.
She gave a tremulous nod, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, and the tenderness and the intensity in his eyes was making her drunker than she’d ever been in her life. He leaned forward, and he was close enough for her to notice his chest rising and falling far too quickly. And then he kissed her, gently, and her head spun and her heart pounded so that she thought maybe her whole chest might explode and this was the worst idea in the whole system but she didn’t want it to stop, ever. She was floating, and his fingers on the tip of her chin and his lips against hers were the only things anchoring her to the ground.
He pulled back finally, his eyes never leaving hers, and she realized she’d completely forgotten how to breathe. She felt a little like someone had just hit her across the back of the head with a spanner.
He looked almost as stunned as she felt.
She tried to open her mouth to say something, but the words didn’t seem to want to come.
“Jez—” he began, his voice unsteady. And then Tae’s voice crackled through their earpieces, and they both jumped.
“Lev. I’m worried about this connector in the power core. Would you mind coming down here? I need to see the specs.”
Her muscles remembered how to move, and she managed a shallow, shaky breath. Lev sighed shakily as well, and ran his fingers through his hair. He gave her a rueful smile.
“I suppose I should go. We’ve probably had enough core meltdowns for the present.”
She managed a nod. He paused a moment, then leaned in and kissed her again, lightly, his lips barely brushing hers. Then and he turned and slipped out the door, casting one last look at her over his shoulder as he went.
She dropped down into the pilot’s seat, feeling oddly weak.
Nope, nope, nope.
And yet …
She touched her fingers to her bruised lips, where he’d somehow managed to kiss her without it hurting at all.
She found she was humming to herself as she turned back to the controls, the giddy, intoxicating feeling of staring into his eyes, of his lips on hers, suffusing her chest like a heartbeat.
Masha sat in a chair in her cabin, staring blankly at the wall.
The date on her chip.
So somehow they’d found out, after all these years.
She was seven years old, on her way home from school. She’d seen the figures lurking in the alley close to her home, but it hadn’t frightened her. Her mama and papa weren’t afraid, they told her, and so there was no reason for her to be.
And she hadn’t been.
Until it had started.
She could still feel the splintery wood of the table against her small hands, smell the sickening scent of blood and burning, mingled with the scent of her father’s laundry soap wafting from the table cloth that covered her.
She
couldn’t remember the sight, not exactly. Just the sickness, the blurring in her vision, the vomit rising in her throat.
But she remembered enough to know that, even at seven, she’d understood her parents were far, far beyond saving.
She didn’t know how long she stood there after it was over, staring at the bodies, the blood spattering the floor and the walls. They hadn’t been quick about it. Her father had shoved her under the table when the figures had pounded at the door. “Stay out of sight, Mari,” he’d whispered. “It’s nothing. But best if they don’t see you here.”
But he’d been wrong. About the first part, at least.
She swallowed down the sick coating her throat, finally, and turned towards the door. Maybe the police. Maybe they could help.
But she hadn’t made it out the door. She couldn’t seem to leave them.
And the police had come anyways.
They hadn’t seen her there, hiding under the table. But then, they hadn’t been looking. They’d glanced around, at the blood and the bodies, like it was a normal sight, their faces slightly bored.
“Captain said clean this up,” said the woman who seemed to be in charge. “Don’t want to cause a stir in the neighbourhood.” She looked around, a slightly disgusted look on her face. “If they’d wanted to take them out, wish they’d chosen a cleaner way to do it.”
And then they splashed fuel over the floor, over what was left of her mother and father, aimed a heat-blast at it. The house ignited in a roar of flame.
She slipped out the back door as her home burned, wandered down the street until she found her way to a transport dock. She didn’t have enough money, but somehow she was able to convince the captain that her aunt was expecting her, and would pay for her passage.
Her aunt wasn’t expecting her, but she did pay for the passage, although she was slightly puzzled.
“Why did your parents send you, Mari?” she’d asked. “They usually call me first.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, Aunty. But don’t call me Mari. I don’t like that name anymore.”
“What should I call you, then?” her aunt had asked.
“Masha.”
When her aunt had come in, pale-faced and grave, a few days later, and told her there’d been a fire and her parents had been killed, she was very careful to act the part of a bereaved daughter. She mourned until it seemed that mourning was no longer acceptable, and then she went back to her schoolwork.
But she never, never forgot.
And she’d sworn, that first night, lying in her aunt’s guest bed and biting the inside of her cheeks to keep the tears from spilling down her face, the horror from choking her—she’d sworn that one day, the mafia and the government who had protected them would pay for what they had done. And they would never do it again, to anyone else.
She blinked out of her reverie.
It had been a long time. She hadn’t let herself think of that memory for a very long time. But she could still feel the splintery table leg against her hand, smell her father’s laundry soap mingled with the thick, sickly-sweet scent of blood.
She shivered slightly.
This crew. They’d listened to her. They’d agreed to come.
But none of them had seen what she’d seen, as a terrified seven-year-old, and then again, over and over, as she’d worked her diligent, competent way through the government ranks, biding her time.
And none of them—not Lev, not Ysbel, not one of them—had any idea what they were going up against.
There was a cold chill in the pit of her stomach, a chill she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
THE END
You can find the fourth book, Insider Threat, on Amazon here:
https://www.bklnk.com/B08F76MC75
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Read on for an excerpt from book 4 …
JEZ CROUCHED IN the entrance to the narrow alley. The bare cement of the streets was filthy from years of too many boots and indifferent street cleaners, and the faint scent of garbage wafted from the dark alley behind her, drafted in on the clammy Prasvishoni air.
She was grinning like an idiot.
Beside her, Tae was definitely not grinning, and Masha looked positively grim.
“He’ll be here any minute now,” Masha said, her lips thin. “Are you ready, Jez?”
“Born ready, you bastard,” she said.
“You remember the name of the student we baited him with, right?” asked Tae wearily. His wavy hair was falling over his eyes, like usual, and between that and his ragged street-kid clothes, which he’d started wearing again now that they were back in the city, he looked even younger than his twenty years.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I told you, I’m crap at remembering names, OK?”
“Yula,” Tae said through gritted teeth. “Her name is Yula. I swear I’ve told you that a hundred times.”
“Well, maybe I wasn’t listening,” she countered.
“Remind me why we’re letting Jez do this?” grumbled Lev through her earpiece. She grinned and hit her com.
“Easy, genius. Because this idiot likes women, and I’m basically the hottest person on this crew.” She paused. “No offence, Ysbel. You’re pretty hot too. But not everyone gets off on people threatening to blow them up.”
“I think you are the only person who gets off on people threatening to blow them up,” grunted Ysbel, from behind her.
“Also,” said Tanya over the com, “Ysbel happens to be married to me, and I promise you, Jez, I would do a lot worse to you than just blow you up.”
“OK, changed my mind,” Jez drawled. “Tanya’s also pretty hot.”
“Piss off, Jez,” said Ysbel in a flat voice. Her heavy outer-rim accent made the words sound like “Pees oaf,” but her tone made the meaning very clear anyways.
“He’s here,” Tae hissed. “Jez, go.”
She grinned at him, straightened, and sauntered out of the alley and down the street, then slipped into the side street they’d chosen for a meeting place.
A tall, thin man who looked to be in his early fifties came around the corner at a brisk pace. He had a sharp, predatory look to his face, and it sharpened further when he saw her.
“Hey, Professor Gurin,” she drawled. He glanced over at her, looking her up and down.
“Who are you?” he snapped impatiently.
“Me? I’m Jez. Friend of Yula. She said she was going to meet you here, discuss grades and whatever.” She shrugged. “Wasn’t feeling too good, so I told her I’d come in her place.”
The man cocked his head to one side, looking her up and down again in an appraising fashion. “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose I could arrange for a substitution. I suppose she, ah, informed you of our arrangement?”
Jez’s grin widened. “Yep. She told me that you were a dirty plaguer who sold grades for favours. And here’s the thing, I’m really damn good at favours.”
He was still looking at her, but his eyes had gone cold. “Really. And what kind of favours are you willing to trade?”
She sauntered over a little closer, letting her eyes drift over him dismissively.
Not much to look at, if she were being perfectly honest. But then again, corrupt mud-sucking bastards generally weren’t, in her experience.
“Well,” she whispered, “figure I could get you a couple favours with my boss.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And who’s your boss?”
She lowered her voice theatrically. “Marina Kaschak.”
His eyes widened, his expression going suddenly wary. “Marina Kaschak? The mafia avtoritet?”
“Pretty sure that’s what I said.”
The man glanced around him nervously. “I—Yula never told me—”
“Never told you she was friends with someone who was connected to Marina Kas
chak?” She tried to look menacing, but hell, it was hard to look menacing when you were trying not to laugh your plaguing head off. “And also that you were threatening to lower her grade until she could pony you up some favours?”
His face was slightly panic-stricken now, and she felt a warm glow in her chest. This was always her favourite part.
“Well, you scum-sucker, guess you should have asked,” she said, stepping closer to him.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice higher than it had been. She took another step, and he backed away from her.
“Me?” She was grinning so wide it hardly fit on her face. “Well, mostly I’d just like to do this.” She grabbed him by the front of the suit and slapped her open palm on the back of his neck. The small patch Masha had given her stuck to his bare skin, and there was barely time for the shock to register on his face before his eyes rolled back in his head and his body went limp.
“Got him,” she said in satisfaction, slapping her com. “Lev, hope this wasn’t anyone you know, because I’ll tell you, I’m going to have a lot less respect for your choice of friends if you say yes.”
“Jez.” He sounded faintly irritated. “Having taken a class from someone is not necessarily the equivalent of having that person as a friend. For the record, yes, I did know him, and also, I agree with your assessment of his personality.”
“And?” she prompted, leaning down over the professor’s prone form.
“And,” he continued, slightly grudgingly, “I may have once messed with his class files such that he ended up teaching an entire classroom full of students an equation that was an easily-broken code for a seditious message that got him called up in front of the university president.”
“See genius? That’s why I like you.” She rummaged inside the inside of the man’s jacket and carefully extracted a small, wrinkled card. “You just need the card, Masha?”
“No Jez. As I told you at least half a dozen times in the last fifteen minutes, I also need the chip from his com, and there should be an ID token somewhere on him.” She couldn’t see Masha, but she could picture the ice in her expression. She rolled her eyes.