by Jody Wallace
With a flick of the wrist, Tim shot her through the shoulder. She cried out and fell to her knees, grasping the wound.
Fuck relaxed responses.
Lincoln surged forward. He grabbed Randall, yanked him into the air with a flood of adrenalin, and hurled him into Tim. An EE-blast whined, blazing past Lincoln’s cheek.
Tim and Randall went down in a tangle of limbs. Lincoln was on them in less than a breath. He heard another cry of pain, but it wasn’t from Briar so he didn’t care. The sensation of his fist striking flesh, stopping only at bone, was more satisfying than he ever dreamed possible.
Laser beams shattered the pavement near him. Burned into the factory wall. Briar cursed and Wil yelled a warning. Lincoln’s fist struck something that crunched. A fist or boot collided with his ribs, but he was feeling no pain.
He got his fingers into someone’s beard and pulled hard enough to break a neck. He had no care for rules of engagement—he only sought to punish. A man shrieked in his ear before gagging into silence. A glimpse of baby blue coveralls nearly distracted him, but instead he picked a body part and squeezed.
Lincoln rose, his hands around Randall’s throat. The smaller man dangled from his grip the way Tim had dangled Pumpkin. Lincoln’s arm muscles screamed at him, but he shook that asshole until the man begged for mercy.
Instead of mercy, Lincoln gave him a shove into the battered wall and a sharp punch to the face. Randall collapsed.
He whirled to see what had become of the others. It was not a welcome tableau.
Tim pressed the barrel of Vex’s pistol against Briar’s temple. Three other men trained their guns on Wil, who lounged on the pavement as if resting after a series of floor exercises. His nose had become inexplicably bloodied. Blood from the shoulder wound dripped down Briar’s blue coveralls, which still had Lincoln’s blood on the sleeve from the train crash.
Briar’s face was paler than fresh hail, but her eyes were bluer than sapphires and her glower was hotter than a star. Her refreshed nanobots must be working overtime to keep her conscious.
“Are you finished?” Tim asked Lincoln with an evil grin.
Two other men were down—three, counting Randall—but they were still outnumbered six to three. If Briar had her gun, she would have shot Tim already, so he had to assume she’d been disarmed.
“I guess,” Lincoln said, hoping that the cats would try something, anything, soon. Had he created enough of a window? Evened the odds? Why weren’t the cats speaking to them mentally?
“Want to tell me why you have my friend’s blaster?” Tim asked, wagging the gun. “Maybe you remember him. Big bearded guy?”
“That’s nearly everyone on this planet,” Wil chimed in from the sidelines. “I think it’s something in the water.”
“How’d you get it, Oka?” Tim said more loudly.
“Found it. On the Express after a wreck.” A throb in Lincoln’s ribs indicated an injury that threatened to hinder his movements. Every time he twisted, it hurt worse. He’d never broken a rib. Was that what it was?
“I helped with that wreck. Some passengers ended up in Bunk Port instead of Green Port, yet my buddy went missing.”
“Sorry?” Lincoln said with a shrug.
It was possible the cats couldn’t sweeten combat situations. With no ship rats to stampede, what could they do? They couldn’t fire guns designed for humans, and hot-headed, angry people might be hard to influence. Perhaps they’d skipped to the purchase team to get help.
“If you tell me where he is, there’s a reward,” Tim urged them. “We take care of our own in Tank Union.”
Briar’s chrono crackled, and a cheery voice said, “The weather for today in Yassa Port will be seven degrees Celsius with a ten percent chance of hailers. The hailer moving across the Apestoso District has done significant damage to the pulp factories there.”
“Turn that off,” Tim ordered.
Briar slowly tilted her head until she could see Tim from the corner of her eye. She smiled. “No.”
Tim’s mouth kind of gaped. “I’m standing here with a gun to your head, and you’re saying no? To a simple request?”
“It’s not smart to be ignorant of the weather, Tim Danger Danger,” Briar said. “Hailers are very unpredictable. People go missing in them. Maybe that’s what happened to your friend.”
“Don’t call me that,” Tim muttered, bonking the pistol against her head. She winced and rolled her eyes. “You three had better start talking.”
“I would love to start talking,” Briar agreed. Her rapid changes of tactics were a marvel, but Lincoln had no idea what her goal was…besides frustrating Tim so much he murdered them before he got answers. “I can tell you all about the cryopod bay my client is servicing in the Oka Conglomerate and why it’s so very important for spare parts with this historical magnitude to be—”
“Oh, shut up,” Tim said, clonking her with the pistol again.
Briar jerked away from him, favoring her wounded shoulder. “Stop that!”
“I…okay,” Tim said with a frown between his brows. Lincoln tried not to let his gaze wander in search of the cat responsible for the nicening of Tim Danger Danger. “I guess it’s not necessary.”
“Damn straight it’s not,” Briar said with a disgusted exhale.
“Not necessary to kill us, either,” Wil piped up. “Or to sell my cat. Everyone knows he’s my cat and you stole him.”
“Like our buyers will care?” Tim said. “We steal shit and sell it all the time.”
“You work with Steven Wat to do this?” Briar asked innocently. “He has so much access.”
“None of your business.” Tim lifted his gun away from her head as if he was going to konk her again but instead seemed to…forget…he had it in his hand. “Now that you’re gone, Wat can convince Unker’s strip team to feed us parts. It’ll be easier.”
Gizem Station had been a hotbed of deception and violence. Everyone there had been lawless. Oka Conglomerate boasted one of the lowest percentages of corruption in the galaxy for a society its size. Lincoln had thought Trash Planet was on the low side of criminal activity, but every single place there were humans, there was cheating and murder.
“I keep meaning to mention. I don’t feel very good,” Briar announced before she collapsed onto the pavement.
Tim lurched toward her, gun first, on instinct. Luckily he didn’t fire, because Lincoln couldn’t reach Tim before the two chumps guarding the alley entrances shot Lincoln. Couldn’t use Randall and Tim’s bodies as a shield this time.
Or could he?
“She’s passed out. She needs a medic.” Lincoln began to inch closer to Randall.
“She doesn’t, actually, because I’m going to kill all of you.” Tim fluttered the gun back and forth like a conductor’s baton.
Lincoln’s anxiety and adrenaline surged again as he tried to fuel his brain to find escape routes. Hard to do when a murderer was staring at you, eager to kill you and your friends, and your best idea was a human shield. Sweat beaded his upper lip. In his head, he started chanting for the cats to do something.
“I’m famous. If you kill me, the consequences will be severe,” Wil said. The three men guarding him had kept him on the ground, and they, too, had some bloody noses and black eyes. Wil must know how to fight.
“Nobody’s going to know who killed you,” Tim argued, attention switching away from Lincoln and Briar. Perfect. Lincoln had nearly reached Randall, who hadn’t been that far away to start with.
Wil fingered his busted nose gingerly. “They’ll know who’s selling my cat.”
“Nobody cares about that.” Tim aimed a kick at the cat carrier, and when it landed, there was no answering meow. “If you could kindly tell me the truth about that part you tried to buy, I’ll kill you straight up instead of torture first. Do you have a gen ship and has it got sleepers? People pay a lot for that kind of info.”
“What? No,” Wil said, spreading his hands. Luckily Tim didn’t real
ize what it meant that the cat hadn’t complained about the kick. Pumpkin wasn’t in that carrier. Pumpkin was up to something. And when Pumpkin was up to something, it usually boded ill for some human.
“Can you prove it?” Tim sneered. One of the men poked Wil with the gun. To get him to prove it, apparently.
Wil tried. “Why don’t you believe Lincoln’s from Oka? Have you heard his accent?”
“I mean, yeah, he could be,” Tim said uncertainly. “He does talk funny.”
“The only sleepers in Oka are medical,” Wil said. “I know for a fact. I’m allowed to visit Oka whenever I please on a cultural visa.”
“Then I guess Oka’s gonna lose two losers today,” Tim said cleverly. “I’ll still get my money.”
When the word came for Lincoln to act, he was ready.
“Go!” bellowed Boson Higgs in his head.
Lincoln dove for Randall. Su kicked open one of the factory doors, her artificial leg exposed and gleaming, and blasted at people with an EE-rifle. From the fire escape above, Scrapper hurtled down on top of the men surrounding Wil. Some kind of jetpack on his back roared to life as he bowled them over.
A projectile nailed Randall’s body, and the guy convulsed atop Lincoln. Pain drove into Lincoln’s shoulder—the EE-blast had pierced them both. Blood exploded all over him as if Randall had been nothing but a balloon of bodily fluids.
Undeterred, he dragged Randall’s slippery body to Briar’s prone form. Wrapping his arms around the woman and the corpse alike, he rolled them all between two rubbish containers.
Yells broadcast down the alley, and running feet thundered past. “Catch him!” Wil shouted. “Su, you’re the fastest.”
“I got this,” Scrapper hollered, and the jetpack zoomed.
Tama darted into the hidey hole with Lincoln and Briar. Her eyes widened when she saw the amount of blood all over everything, but she grabbed Randall’s body and lugged it out of the way. An EE-beam splintered off the top of the rubbish container near her head, and she squawked.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she chanted, diving back to safety. “Got to get Briar bandaged. You too, huh?”
“Hit to the shoulder,” he managed, his vision distorting in and out. The cats had come through—but he wished they could have pushed the bad guys to leave them alone before anyone got shot. He’d need to have a word with Mighty about proper timing of…
And that was the last thing Lincoln remembered before darkness took him.
Chapter 12
Briar woke in the box factory med clinic on a stretcher, and the first thing she saw when she bolted upright was Lincoln’s half-undressed body on a stretcher next to her.
“I feel better,” she called to anyone who might be listening. Lincoln was…yes, his chest was worth seeing. The mostly healed pink wound on his shoulder matched hers, as they’d both been injured in the alley scuffle.
She remembered everything up until she’d taken a nap at the urging of an anxious black cat worried she was going to get herself shot again if she kept mouthing off to the man with the gun.
But nobody came, so Briar eased herself off the bed, poked her wound—her very first real wound—and tested her balance. Not too woozy. Hungry, though. They had a Plan B to enact, and she was determined not to miss out on a real heist. Or had she slept through it?
Had their tactical team of humans and cats robbed that dastardly buyer before he’d left Trash Planet? Or had they stolen it from Steven first, forcing that no-lipped, no-account moaner to explain it to an angry customer?
The med clinic was chilly, even for her, since she had on nothing but a clean grey undertank and shorties. She padded to Lincoln and rubbed his arm to see if he was ready to wake up. The floor was cold under her bare feet, and his skin was chilly like the air. She knew he didn’t like to be cold, though he hadn’t really said anything. It was a guess brought on by all the clothes he tended to wear and the occasional shiver and disbelieving glance at his chrono thermometer.
She needed to warm him up, didn’t she? As a friend.
“Hey, wake up.” She raised a hand to the face she’d like to kiss and patted his cheek. Not much stubble on the man. “Lincoln.”
His curly, black eyelashes fluttered before he opened his eyes. His irises were even darker brown than his skin. “Hi.”
She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. “Hi.”
“We got shot,” he said, tilting his chin to check his wound. “Think it will scar?”
“Oh, I hope so.” She turned so he could see the red, healing starburst on her pale shoulder. “We match now.”
“Yeah, we do. We do match.” He sat up a lot more judiciously than she had, looking down at his grey shorties and legs. He was shirtless, while she had on a skimpy tank that concealed approximately nothing.
So here they were, alive, barely dressed. So close. Touching close. She was going to keep her eyes above his waist if it killed her.
“Never been shot,” Lincoln offered.
“I’ve never been shot, either.” Briar bit her lip as the muscles rippled in his broad shoulders and torso. His body had little hair, nothing to come between her fingers and the delights of his nerve endings. She’d feel him shudder as she caressed every centimeter of that beautiful body. It was the survival rush talking—but it was also the fact that she really liked him.
He swiveled and probed a faded discoloration on his side. His bare thigh pressed against her hip as he swung his legs off the stretcher. “Healed my rib, too.”
Her cheeks heated as she failed to keep her eyes above waist level. But then she looked at his face, and he was looking back at her.
Briar didn’t like being at a loss for words, but the phrase, “Can I ravish you?” would just not come out of her mouth.
“Briar,” he said after a long and embarrassing moment. “It’s cold.”
“Yeah, um, our clothes? Probably bloody.”
Lincoln inhaled, long and slow, dragging her attention to his magnificent muscles. Then he blew out a breath. “Come here.”
She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and considered how she could possibly make this more awkward. “I’m already here.”
A smile twitched the corner of his mouth, and he smoothed his palms up her bare arms until he cupped her shoulders. She tried not to close her eyes and purr like a cat at his caress. “One thing I really like about you? You’re hot.”
Not what she’d expected. “I am, I mean…thanks?”
“Temperature.” Giving her plenty of time to squirm away, he parted his legs and drew her against him until they touched from shoulders to hips. His chilly skin seemed to cling to hers, like it needed her, and his big hands splayed possessively across her back. One dropped almost to her ass. “The cats are warm, but you’re…warmer.”
Oh, stars. Who needed poetry when you had Lincoln? She was going to combust. Or collapse. She was turning into jelly. He eased one hand up and buried his fingers in her hair. “I want more, Briar.”
She pretty much flung herself at him after that.
And no, he wasn’t a talker. She made up for it, especially near the end when there seemed to be some confusion about whether or not she could handle another go since the first time was so fast.
She wanted to handle everything Lincoln had to offer.
“I hate to interrupt you young people,” Javier said, arriving shortly after Briar and Lincoln put their underthings back on and started looking around for real clothes, “but there’s been a slight change of plans.”
“Plan B?” Briar asked, practically bouncing with excitement. This had been one of the best days of her life. Her whole life. Covert ops. Fighting. Spying. Tricking bad guys into telling you things. Getting actually shot, getting healed. And then…Lincoln. Nanobots were wonderful things. “It’s not over, is it?”
“Oh, Plan B was scrapped while the two of you were in recovery,” Javier said. A pair of protective goggles was strapped around his wrinkled forehead. “This i
s something else.”
“What about Plan C?” Lincoln asked. He pulled a grey shirt over his head. “Is everyone all right?”
“No one got shot but you.” Javier approached Briar, who had tied the string on a pair of soft pants, and reached for her shoulder. “May I, dear?”
She pulled the tank strap to the side to show the whole starburst. Javier’s eyes changed colors as he inspected it. “I didn’t know nanobots could heal a through and through this fast,” she observed.
“I’ve been working on some area-specific expediators, and I allowed Hoffman to replenish my supply of standard nanobots.” Javier’s warm, dry finger traced the boundary of her scar. “I believe I have a concoction that will encourage your skin to heal itself more completely if you’re willing to test it for me.”
“We like the scars,” Lincoln said gruffly. “A good memory.”
“Of getting shot?” Javier asked, eyebrows raised. “I have been shot more than once myself, and it’s not a pleasant experience.”
Briar blushed and accepted the warm shirt Lincoln offered her. “Tell us about the change in plans. What happened to Tim and his crew in the alley?”
“It’s my understanding that the cats practiced some memory removal and were able to erase the fight, if not much before it. The skill isn’t consistent.”
“So they won’t remember confronting us, but they’ll remember Wil talking to Steven about the part. And they’ll still want to know why he did.” Briar crossed her arms, feeling the tightness of the new scar. Instead of a reminder of being shot, it was more a reminder of what had happened soon after she’d gotten better. “They’re also going to wonder about their dead friend. Did we mess everything up?”
“You did not,” Javier said. “I cannot say the same for everyone.”
“Who did what?” Lincoln asked. They followed Javier out of the patient room and into the larger office. Su and Wil waited near one of Javier’s portable greenhouses, and when Su spotted them, she grinned.