by Kris Delake
Chapter 35
Jack felt trapped in the small room. He wanted to leave, but he didn’t want to head back to the crowds in Zaeen. He wanted to pace, but there wasn’t room for him to stand up. He needed to move, and Skye wasn’t even done eating yet.
Her point made the trapped feeling worse.
“You could just stay in the Brezev Sector,” she said, picking at her food. “No one would come here. You could start over.”
His sandwich sat heavily on his stomach. He could stay in the Brezev Sector or go somewhere else, but he was six-foot-six, for heaven’s sake. He would be out of place, and people would notice him—if he stayed in space, which he loved.
Plus running would mean looking over his shoulder. It would also put Rikki at risk. When Heller had asked Jack what Rikki thought about the changes in the Rovers, Jack had said, She has no idea what the hell you’re doing and she doesn’t care.
He hadn’t realized until just now that he had probably saved her life with that statement.
But if he ran away, he would put Rikki’s life on the line. The Rovers would go after her, thinking she knew where Jack was. And then they would hurt her, or Heller would.
Not that she couldn’t take care of herself. She could. But he didn’t want Rikki on the run as well because of something he did.
And he didn’t want to lose her friendship. She was family. If he ran, he would have to apologize, tell her he was never coming back, leave her to fend for herself, and vanish.
What kind of man would do that? What kind of person would do that?
Skye was watching him. She had finished most of the sandwich. “If you don’t disappear, you’ll have to do something. They’ll continue to come after you and there’s nothing we can do to protect you.”
He wasn’t sure if the we was the Guild or if the we meant her and him. He didn’t want to ask, either. He wouldn’t put her in danger just because she was with him. Unlike the assassins, unlike Rikki, Skye couldn’t fend off a trained killer any more than he could.
“I know,” Jack said. “I have to come up with something else.”
He deliberately avoided the we that she had used. But he did need some information from her.
“Would the Guild care that a Guild member has hired Heller?” he asked.
“Yes,” Skye said. “Of course.”
She was clearly thinking about it. She frowned, then slid her plate aside. “I had hoped to have all the information when I approached the Guild, but I could tell them that this is happening. They would do something about Heller.”
“He doesn’t rise to their standards for a target, though, does he?” Jack asked.
“It depends,” she said. “If he has been hired to harm someone important in the Guild, then yes, he would. It would be defensive. They would go after him and whoever else was plotting with him.”
“We can’t just speculate, though, can we?” Jack asked.
“I worry about the Guild doing the investigation,” she said. “I don’t know who is involved. After today, I think a lot more people are involved than I expected.”
“You don’t know who to trust,” he said.
She nodded. “We have to bring facts to the people in charge.”
Now was the time for him to ask about the word we. He wrapped his hands together. He felt nervous—he wasn’t sure why he felt nervous. Maybe because he felt like a lot was at stake with her answer?
He wasn’t sure.
“You mean you and me?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” she said as if it were the most natural thing in the universe. “Your people are coming after you, some of my people are involved, there’s all kinds of investigating to be done. Why wouldn’t you and I do the work together?”
A thread of joy started through him. He ignored it. He couldn’t be sidetracked by the idea of spending time with Skye, as enjoyable as he would find it.
Much as he desired it.
“They might catch us before we find out all of the information we need,” Jack said. “It’s dangerous.”
She grinned. “I’d love to tell you that danger is my middle name, but you’d know different. Still, I think it’s better for both of us if we go after this together. I mean, how are you going to let the Guild know if you figure out who is involved there?”
“I suppose,” he said. He hadn’t gotten that far mentally yet.
“And you know who to investigate from your side,” she said. “We have a lot of stuff to do.”
She sounded happy about it, as if a path made her more comfortable as well.
Still, he had one more question for her. “You spent all this time researching Zaeen. I can only assume it was to find your parents. Don’t you want to stay here and do that research?”
“You hate it here,” she said.
He didn’t like that answer. “That’s not a reason for you to leave.”
Her grin faded. She did stand up, and he envied that. Still, she didn’t have room to pace either. So she just grabbed the back of her chair and ran her hands across it.
“I’ve researched this place and them to death,” she said. “I could stay here for a year and not figure out what happened.”
“That’s still not a reason for you to leave,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I just… they left me, you know? And as a kid, I’d track them down and join up with them again, only to have them leave again. I started researching them, just like I had as a kid, and then I talked us into coming here, and I thought… I’m doing it again. I’m chasing them, and they don’t want me.”
Her voice didn’t break when she said that last bit, but it sounded odd, strangled, as if she had trouble getting the words out.
“And that’s if they’re alive,” she said. “If they’re dead, then what have I gained?”
He wanted to get up and hold her. But she had placed that chair—and the table itself—as a barrier between them.
“Knowledge,” he said. “You would know what happened to them.”
“Knowledge is overrated,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ve researched my history for more than twenty years and found nothing. I would love to have a name, an idea, a place to start with.”
She stared at him. Then she said, her expression bleak, “I have knowledge. I know they had a pattern. They had no idea how hard it was to raise a child. They had no one to help them and no money. So they’d drop me with so-called friends. Over and over and over again. They were going to send me to the Guild anyway. Their last friend did. They never came for me, they never paid my fees at the Guild, they never even acknowledged me.”
Her hands continued to run across the back of that chair. He understood the fidgeting. He had just done it as well. He wanted to take her hands and pull her toward him, but he couldn’t move in this tiny room.
“They’re the reason I’m trapped by the damn Guild,” she said. “I could have gone to school there, and if they had just paid the stupid fees, I’d be free. But I’m still associated in ways I don’t want to be because they abandoned me. So why am I chasing them?”
This time her voice did break. And this time, he couldn’t stand it. He stood, hit his thighs on the table, and winced as pain threaded through him. He managed to get around it, and he shoved her chair aside. He pulled her in his arms.
He had expected a fight, but she didn’t give him one. She buried her head in his shirt.
But she didn’t cry. Her breathing didn’t even change. He rubbed her back and after a few minutes, she relaxed against him.
How long had she carried that abandonment all by herself? When he talked with her about the Guild, she mentioned that she knew people, but she never mentioned friends.
He didn’t have a lot of friends, but the ones he had he valued above all else.
Skye was being his friend. He needed to value that as well.
“Maybe you just want answers,” he said. “Maybe you want to stop guessing about why they kept leaving y
ou behind.”
Her breath hitched. Then she stiffened, and stood, tilting her head upward so that she could look directly at him.
“Those answers can wait,” she said. “They’ve already waited for most of my life. What’s another year or two? Besides, if I help you and we solve whatever is going on with the Guild and Heller, then maybe I can get out of the last of my contract. I’ll be free to pursue the investigations I want to pursue.”
He smiled at her. “And I can help you.”
He was about to add, We’d make a good team, when her expression closed down.
She moved away from him. “One thing at a time, Jack. One thing at a time.”
Chapter 36
She didn’t want to think about the future. She certainly didn’t want to think about the future with Jack.
If he had asked her what was wrong, she would have answered him in less blunt terms. She would have said, Let’s survive this first.
But he didn’t ask, and she had the sneaky feeling that he knew what she was thinking. She didn’t like that.
She didn’t like it at all.
She had been alone her entire life. She wasn’t about to change it.
That didn’t stop her from wanting to help Jack. She would have done it even if it hadn’t benefitted her, although she didn’t tell him that. Let him think she was doing this out of self-interest. Both of their worlds were filled with self-interest, and he understood it.
Hell, she did too. It was, she once said to Guild Director Ammons, what made the universe tick.
The best way she could help Jack was to get them out of Zaeen safely. They needed to go to a system or an area where they could research everything without worries of getting caught.
They also needed a place that would allow them to talk freely about the Rovers and the Guild.
They needed to be alone.
It was impossible to be alone on Zaeen.
They left the restaurant and picked up supplies, including clothing. Over Jack’s protest, she bought a laser pistol as well. She had been trained to use one; it was time to have one with her.
They sped through the shopping, and didn’t worry about prices. Or at least, she didn’t. Jack occasionally made a few faces. He also complained about the fact that she hadn’t negotiated the ship.
But she hadn’t wanted to negotiate. She was pleased with the ship, which according to the registration was Hawk. She and Jack arrived at the port less than two hours after the purchase, and she watched the crew from the store load the last of the food on board.
The ship was huge, just like everything else on Zaeen. She wouldn’t have thought it built for speed except that she saw the additions to the engines as she walked around the ship.
Jack walked with her, looking up as she looked down. She would have thought that he would like Zaeen, since it seemed to be the only space station in the universe that could accommodate a man as tall as he was. But he had hurried them through the stores, and then he had taken one store’s offer of transport to the port without a second thought.
He wanted to leave immediately, but she wasn’t going to let that happen without all of the safety checks she could think of. Since Jack didn’t have any real piloting skills, she handled the actual examination of the practical things like engineering and the navigational systems.
She gave him the task of examining the communications systems, the nonship-related computer systems, and she also asked him to make sure that no one had placed tracking devices on the ship.
He had gladly taken that job. Although as she walked around the engineering area and looked at the cargo space, she also looked for tracking devices.
In one of her bolt holes, she had left a device that located tracking devices. She hadn’t ever used it on a job, so she had decided it was too much baggage.
She wished she had it now.
It took three hours to examine the ship. When she returned to the cockpit, Jack was there, folded underneath one of the navigational desks, his body tilted so that he could reach upwards.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
Instead of sliding out, he extended his left hand. He turned it upward, and then opened his fingers. On his palm, she saw dozens of tiny chips.
“Trackers?” she asked.
“The obvious ones,” he said, and slid out.
“You mean there were some that weren’t obvious?” she asked.
“Most of them,” he said. “I neutralized them. I don’t suppose you found any.”
“Just the ones I expected,” she said. “The ones that were built in.”
“What I found wasn’t built in,” he said. “They were added to the computer system. I also found some in the trays of food the catering service left.”
“I expected that,” she said.
“Me, too.” He slid out. His cheek had a scrape on the left side, and a scratch on the right. He’d clearly wedged himself into some very tight places.
“You want to double check the engine room?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t know what I was looking for,” he said. “You might want to check for more of these things.”
He held out that handful of chips toward him.
“If someone put those in the engine, the ship wouldn’t run,” she said. “I did check to make sure no one had tampered with it or with the controls. I reset everything to factory levels, then I customized it, and did it all again. I looked for add-ons and things missing. Nothing came up.”
“We’re not going to lurch when the ship leaves the port?” he asked with just the trace of a smile. This man was resilient, if he could smile about nearly dying just a few hours ago.
“Not if I can help it,” she said.
“Did you check the living quarters?” he asked.
“I thought you were going to do that,” she said, staring at those chips.
His smile grew. “I did. I meant, have you looked at them?”
“No,” she said, feeling wary. “Why?”
“Five suites, and eight single cabins. We could take a crew out in this thing.”
“It’ll fly with just the two of us,” she said.
He laughed. “You are determined to miss my point. This thing is amazing.”
“Oh,” she said with a bit of a smile. “It is.”
“I think we should just take it somewhere we haven’t been before, and try every one of the beds.”
She laughed and blushed at the same time. “You thought of that?”
“You haven’t?” he asked. Then he touched his forehead with the heel of his other hand as if he had forgotten something. “That’s right. You haven’t had the time to inspect the important stuff.”
“Jack,” she protested.
“I think bedrooms are important,” he said. “Although I do have a fondness for cockpit floors.”
Her cheeks grew hot. “We have to get out of here safely.”
“Yes, we do,” he said. “And then we’re on no timetable but our own.”
She hadn’t thought of that. It made her breathless.
“We have research to do,” she said primly.
“And I think we need some sleep,” he said. “But then.…”
She laughed again. “Then we’ll check out some of the other beds.”
“And maybe,” he said, “the cockpit floor.”
Chapter 37
The third bed they tried turned out to be Jack’s favorite. Not because it was the first bed he actually fit in, although it was, but because he learned something about Skye’s body that made her coo.
He wasn’t sure she was aware she had cooed. She probably would have told him that she “ooed,” but she had made a sound that was uniquely her and something she probably didn’t even know she could do.
Just the thought of that sound made him want to replicate it. He shifted slightly on the bed, so grateful that his feet didn’t hang off the end and that he didn’t have to worry about hitting his head on the low ceiling. The suite itself w
as magnificent, with built-in upholstered chairs, a table, and trim that looked like real wood.
He would have inspected all of it, if he weren’t so interested in the woman beside him.
She had a hand behind her head, her eyes twinkling as she smiled up at him. “We’re like teenagers,” she said.
“And that’s a problem how?” he asked. Then he frowned. “You’re not saying that I am a bit too excitable?”
She laughed, and slid her hand down his flank. That simple soft gesture would have made him hard if he hadn’t already been. She was like candy to him. Candy and alcohol and the best burgers in the universe, things he couldn’t get enough of.
He’d never felt like this about a woman.
She slid her legs around his hips, then used her heels to guide him. Her hands played with his back, her mouth found his, and he was lost in sensation. Skin against skin, the tip of him pushing against her dampness, his tongue exploring the inside of her mouth as if he’d never explored it before.
But he had: her taste was familiar to him already, and the lower half of his body knew exactly where to go.
He slipped inside her slowly, rubbing against that spot that made her coo, and she did it again while her mouth was against his. He pulled her closer, her feet pushed him upward, and the rhythm started. He could barely control it, hitting that spot one more time.
She made a different sound of pleasure, a new one, and he slid all the way in. He buried himself in her, not moving, feeling her around him. She disentangled her mouth from his.
“Don’t slow down,” she said.
He smiled. “But slow drives you crazy.”
“C’mon,” she said. “Not slow.”
But he ignored that. Slow made her even wetter, made her moan, made her tilt her head back so he could find that spot on her neck that made her grab him so hard he felt like he could fuse with her.
“Now,” she said, her head back, his mouth on her neck. He felt the words as she spoke them. “Please.”
The please got him. He moved in and out just a bit faster. Her hands grabbed his buttocks and pushed him deeper, and all idea of control left him. He started a rhythm that she matched, then she sped it up, he kept up, and her hands fell to the side of the bed. He’d obviously hit the rhythm she wanted, and that was the last coherent thought he’d had for some time, lost in her, the taste and smell of her, the feel of her against him, the thought of her—