Hunter

by Sharon Partington

  I loved her.

  God help me.

  Shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d tried to be so careful. How had I ever allowed myself to fall in love with this beautiful woman? How could I leave her now?

  How could I not?

  Chapter 14

  I woke with Joanna wrapped in my arms and the uncomfortable feeling that I’d just made a horrible mistake. What was I thinking? I couldn’t fall in love. I had to get her and my dad off of Jaraslad so I could get on with things.

  And where was she supposed to go? According to the news report back in Collinsville, the authorities knew she was with me even if they didn’t suspect her of anything. I’d told Constable Roy she was my hostage and, even though he knew I was full of shit, the GSF had no reason to disbelieve it. If push came to shove, she could probably claim she’d only helped me out of fear for her life, but they’d want to know how and why I let her get away. I didn’t think she was a good enough liar to get herself out of that one. And she had no family left she could go to.

  Now what?

  She’d have to stay on Jaraslad; there was no way around it. I couldn’t send her back to Lunar City, and she couldn’t go anywhere else.

  Wonderful.

  I sat up, scrubbing my fingers through my hair. Kenny had always been good at damage control. I’d run the situation by him. Maybe he could come up with a better solution.

  Joanna stirred and opened her eyes. She watched me as I stood to pull on my pants. “Good morning,” she said as she sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  “Morning,” I mumbled as I drew on my shirt. “You’d better get dressed.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I’m going to see if I can find out where the hell Kenny is.”

  “Gage—”

  I shook my head. “Don’t say it.”

  “There’s something between us, Gage,” she insisted. “I’ve felt it for days. I felt it last night. I don’t do this with just anyone, you know.” She lowered her eyes. “I think...I might be falling in love with you.”

  The words hit me like a slap in the face. She loved me?

  Sweet fucking Jesus, don’t tell me that. How had it all gotten so complicated?

  It took me a moment to find my voice, and when I did the words that came out of my mouth weren’t the ones I knew she wanted to hear. “You can’t stay with me, Joanna. I’m not...anyone you want to get close to.”

  “I know what you are, Gage. And I’m a big girl. Just give us a chance.”

  “I can’t.” How could I make her understand? There was an excellent possibility I’d be dead before all this was over. “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you what you want. Don’t ask me.”

  “So, this is it then?” she demanded. “You pack me off to your friend, Kenny, and wave goodbye?”

  “I have to see this thing through to the end, and I have to do it alone.”

  The words came out harsher than I intended and she nodded stiffly as she got up and dressed in silence. I sighed. All things being equal, I’d rather have her pissed at me than in love with me, but I still felt like a four-star asshole.

  “We should probably make sure your dad is all right,” she said as she pulled her hair into a pony-tail.

  “You go. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me around right now.”

  She wiped tears away and my “guilt meter” red lined at the critical level. “Will I see you later?” she whispered.

  “Sure.”

  She turned away from me and left the shuttle, and all the while that little voice in my head raged at me to go after her. To tell her I loved her too. To take her in my arms and have her make the universe right again.

  But I didn’t. Couldn’t.

  Because my father was right—about everything.

  Because every choice I’d made since leaving home had been the wrong one. Because every path I took led back to Corin Raas and that Androsian jungle.

  Because no matter how I looked at it, there was only one way this could end. And I loved Joanna too much to make her watch me die.

  ◆◆◆

  I stayed away from my room, preferring to spend the day aboard the Lady Kathy with a couple of premium bottles of Androsian Har’Garok and my own foul mood for company.

  Avoidance is highly underrated.

  My dad would probably want to go back to Earth as soon as he sobered up. Back to the farm and his comfortable, black and white life. Not that he’d be any safer there among his crops and cows than Joanna would be in Lunar City, but he wouldn’t care about that.

  Joanna....

  Apparently she’d follow me straight through the gates hell if I let her.

  I emptied my last bottle and left the shuttle in search of more. I wanted to get totally, royally, shit-faced blotto, and if I could still feel, then obviously I wasn’t doing it right. Maybe if I drank enough, the fiery Androsian liquor would kill me and I wouldn’t have to worry about Corin Raas or Delta Six or half a dozen years’ worth of accumulated guilt.

  I moved along the crowded circle towards the Orion. Drunken logic told me that the Orion was a bar. Bars had booze.

  Rachmar stopped me on my way in. “You drink enough already.”

  I slapped him on his massive chest. It was like hitting a rock. “No, Rachmar, my friend, I haven’t had nearly enough. I can still see, and still stand, and that means I can still drink.”

  I tried to push past him, but he stood in the doorway like a living mountain, the immovable object to my irresistible force.

  “Not here. Go home.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  The implied threat sounded ridiculous, even to me drunk as I was, but I’d gone too far to back down now. Rachmar shook his huge head and laughed. A rumbling growl, deep in his chest.

  “I like you, but make trouble here, and I will carry you to brig myself. Trust me, you not want that.”

  I toyed with the idea of forcing the issue, but at twice my height and four times my weight, Rachmar could snap me in half like a twig. Even drunk, I wasn’t that stupid.

  Score one for the immovable object.

  I wandered back up the circle. Past the bars and clubs, past the restaurants, heading toward the station’s red-light district. My body seemed to know where it wanted to go, so I let my mind go along for the ride.

  Someone called my name. Or more accurately Neil Owen’s name. At this point I wasn’t sure who the hell I was supposed to be; I’d answer to just about anything. Kali stood in the doorway of Mother Rheah’s. She wore this diaphanous green thing that looked like it was made from a handful of transparent scarves.

  “Want some company?” she asked as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

  I held her, mostly to keep from falling on my face. “Sorry, baby, but I’m in no condition to play.”

  “You don’t have to be,” she purred as she rubbed her body against mine.

  I chuckled and drew away. “If I’m gonna pay what you charge, I want to remember it in the morning.”

  “What makes you think you won’t?”

  I shook my head. “I’m way too drunk to give you the attention you deserve. What I really need is a place where I can pass out in peace.”

  “Come on in, you can pass out in my room.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked with a seductive smile as she pulled me inside. “Don’t trust me not to take advantage of you in your sleep?”

  ◆◆◆

  I woke to a throbbing head and a mouth that tasted like something foul and furry had crawled into it and died. Sounds filtered into my hung over brain. Female laughter and the irritating twang of a Lyrian water harp came through the wall from the room next door. The sounds seared through my fog shrouded brain like a flaming arrow. I buried my face in the pillow, gritting my teeth as I struggled with this almost uncontrollable urge to bust through the wall and shove that harp right up the ass of whoever played it. After a f
ew minutes, the music stopped, and my anger dissolved back into the churning pool of misery I was slowly getting used to.

  I lay face down on Kali’s bed, my naked body tangled in her scarlet satin sheets. They smelled of stale sweat and perfume. Pale light shone through the louvered blinds and shadows moved past the window. Kali’s room faced the circle.

  I sat up, fighting the stomach-churning head rush the movement caused. Kali’s green dress lay draped over the chair in front of a mirrored vanity overflowing with makeup, perfume, and other items essential to the female beautification process. My clothes lay in a rumpled pile on the floor.

  I didn’t think she and I had done anything, but I couldn’t be sure. The booze-induced fog shrouding my aching head blocked my memory of most of the previous night. I reached for my clothes and got dressed. My head felt heavy and thick. I silently prayed it would fall off and put me out of my misery. I left a hundred credit note on the dresser just in case, then I left.

  Muffled moans of pleasure and female laughter came from behind one or two of the closed doors I passed and a few sleepy girls lounged on the cushion covered floor of the brothel’s reception area. The Dorani enforcer manning the front door flashed me a lecherous grin as I brushed past him into the crowded circle.

  Yeah. You have a nice day, too, asshole.

  The walk back to my rooms seemed to take hours, and my head throbbed with every step.

  Joanna looked up from the vid-link as I entered. She came over and smiled tentatively, wrapping her arms around my neck.

  “Hey. You look like shit.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I removed myself from her embrace and shut the door. “I feel like shit.”

  “I was worried about you...when you didn’t come back last night....”

  “I crashed at a friend’s. Where’s my dad?”

  “He wanted a Terran news journal. He’s gone to see if he can find one.”

  “He doesn’t need a journal; the news agencies broadcast over the vid-link.”

  Joanna shook her head with a small smile. “I told him that. He said it’s not the same.”

  Yes, it was. It was exactly the same.

  “You haven’t checked your message,” she reminded.

  Right. The message.

  “Later. Right now I really need to shower and change.”

  “Speaking of changing,” Joanna motioned to her disheveled clothes. “I left the house in kind of a hurry....”

  I reached into my shirt pocket and drew out my credit chip, offering it to her. “There are shops on level nine. Knock yourself out.”

  “Thanks,” she said as she took it.

  “No problem.”

  I moved toward the bathroom. Her voice stopped me at the door. “We need to talk, Gage.”

  I closed my eyes. Please, let’s not revisit this again. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “I know the timing sucks, I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that—”

  “It has nothing to do with timing. I told you, I have to do this on my own. Now, let me shower and get my shit together. Go shopping. Have a blast. Clean me out—whatever.”

  I closed the bathroom door and locked it behind me then shed my clothes and turned on the shower as hot as I could stand. It pounded my shoulders and back, the steam drawing the pain from my head. Clearing the cobwebs. I filled my mouth with water, trying to rinse out the foul taste that seemed to have taken up permanent residence there and leaned my head against the shower wall, watching the water swirl down the drain.

  The outer door opened and closed, either Joanna had gone, or my dad had come back.

  I stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my waist. The ache in my head had diminished to a dull pain that was fairly manageable so long as I didn’t make any sudden moves. I studied my reflection in the mirror. The bruising on my face had gone from deep purple to a lovely shade of yellow and my eyes looked like a green, blood-shot road map. Joanna was right; I really did look like shit.

  I ran a comb through my wet hair and left the bathroom. The outer room was empty. I pulled on clean clothes, shook four or five enhancers into my hand and dry-swallowed them, grimacing at the bitter taste. Then I went to the message center. Might as well get take care of that damn blinking light.

  I put the ear piece in and turned the video option off then typed in the password and hit play. There were eleven messages, all of them requesting my professional services. None were from Kenny, which didn’t really surprise me. Kenny lived most of his life off the grid.

  I deleted the messages, without saving them. I had more than enough targets of my own to eliminate; I didn’t need to take on any more.

  My dad came back in with his news journal as I was taking care of the last message. He barely looked at me.

  “Kenny should be here soon,” I said. “He can take you wherever you want until it’s safe to go home.”

  He shrugged. “Your Aunt Mary’s been bugging me for years to come visit. It’s probably time I did.”

  “Great, the Altair system it is then.”

  “Sure it’s not out of Kenny’s way?”

  “Trust me, no place is ’out of the way’ for Kenny.” The slippery bastard would probably make two pickups and three deliveries on the way.

  My dad grunted and turned the page on the news journal. “I don’t see nothin’ in here about them findin’ four dead guys in your mama’s house,” he said, his voice dripping disapproval. “Nothin’ about me bein’ missin’ either. Roy musta fed them a pretty big bowl of horseshit.”

  A twinge of gratitude raced through me, followed by guilt. I’d allowed a decent man to compromise his ethics and his job so that I could escape with my dad. That he’d done it out of respect for their forty year friendship only made me feel like an even bigger shit.

  “If I hadn’t come back for you, you’d be sitting in a cell at the Western Rockies GSF garrison waiting to speak to your court appointed counsel. They were going to arrest you, Dad. For harboring a fugitive. For aiding and abetting. For who the hell knows what else. Or have you forgotten?”

  “They couldn’t prove none of that, and Roy wouldn’t have let them take me anywhere. And of course, your solution was much better, wasn’t it? But then, what’s a couple more added to the body count, eh, Gage? One or two more deaths on your conscience.” He looked back to his news journal. “A couple more added to that number you claim you can’t remember.”

  I couldn’t talk to him. Even if I gave him the bloody number, there was no explanation that would satisfy him.

  “What do you want from me, Dad? What do you want me to say? That I wish things were different? Okay. That I’m sorry I didn’t turn out to be the fine, upstanding, citizen you expected me to be? Fair enough. But that’s all I’m going to apologize for.”

  I stood up. “Know what? Do what you want. I brought you here because I felt guilty for leaving you to deal with my shit. I wanted to keep you safe, believe it or not, but apparently that was a mistake. I’ll tell Kenny to take you home.”

  I went into the spare room, closing the door behind me. Wishing I could slam it. Wishing I could break something. Or kill something.

  Joanna had slept in here the night before. I smelled her perfume. It reminded me of her and of all of the complications she presented, and I almost left. Except that it would mean slinking past my dad and I didn’t want to play that game. Instead, I lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling as I struggled to control my frustration. I closed my eyes as I tried to put these most recent developments into some kind of perspective.

  My dad preferred not to talk to me, which I guess was his choice, and being this close to Joanna, knowing I couldn’t have her, wasn’t something I cared to put myself through. I’d move my stuff onto the Lady Kathy.

  I was running again, and I knew it. Being my same old, avoidant self, dodging situations that would require me to make some kind of emotional investment. I’d been that way all my life.

  Hiding b
ehind my mother, my rank, my laser rifle. Disappearing into the dark when things got too uncomfortable.

  I was tired of running. Eventually I’d have to make a stand and deal with the inevitable.

  Eventually.

  But not today.

  My focus narrowed, all of the mental walls and gates snapping into place. There were things in my life I couldn’t control, and those things would have to be resolved another day. I could only deal with one crisis at a time, and right now the specter of Corin Raas overshadowed everything else.

  The outer door in the other room opened and I heard the sound of Joanna’s voice. I sat up as she came in, her arms filled with bags. She smiled as she set them on the floor in the corner and handed me back my credit chip.

  “I tried not to go too crazy.”

  “So, I’m not broke?”

  She laughed. “I think I left you a few pennies.”

  She went through the bags and began hanging things in the closet.

  I stood and walked to the bedroom door. “You can have your room back. I’m moving onto the Lady Kathy.”

  She turned to look at me. “You’re leaving?”

  “I can’t stay here. It makes things more complicated than they need to be.”

  She followed me into the other room, watching in silence as I stuffed clothes, weapons and ammo, enhancers, into my bag. My dad barely looked up from his paper; I might have been invisible for all the attention he paid me.

  I paused at the door outer door and looked back. Joanna sat at the table, across from my dad. She looked small and lost, and I wished there was something I could say to make her understand.

  “I’m sorry. I just...I have to end it now. Before it starts.”

  She closed her eyes, not bothering to hide her tears. “Don’t explain, Gage. If you have to go, then just...go.”

  But I didn’t want to go. I wanted her to stop me. To argue with me. To tell me to stay. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her until I stopped shaking inside.

  As I walked up the circle towards the lower rings, I told myself that I never should have let it get this far. She was better off without me and she’d figure it out soon enough and see that I was right.