Caught in Amber

by Pegau, Cathy

  “Can’t wait,” she replied. The comm beeped twice, signifying Guy’s disconnect.

  Sasha turned off the comm and set it on the table. She’d call Sterling later. Right now, she didn’t want to think about Guy. And she wasn’t ready to talk to Sterling after last night’s kiss. She knew she’d stammer and stumble, even over the comm. On second thought, she’d text him.

  * * *

  Sterling leaned against the idling car, waiting for Sasha as the sky darkened. They were due at the warehouse in fifteen minutes, plenty of time as long as she didn’t take much longer. Snow pellets pinged off the windscreen behind him. He crossed his arms over his chest and breathed in the frigid, mind-clearing air. He needed his wits about him tonight. Needed to put last night out of his head.

  He’d mentally kicked himself all the way back to his cramped room over the Revivalist meeting hall after leaving Sasha. Reacting to her was the wrong thing to do, no doubt there. He should have recognized her vulnerability before they even got out of the car. He should have let her walk up to her flat alone, as she’d wanted. He never should have let her kiss him and definitely never should have returned the kiss. At least he hadn’t accepted her invitation inside. That would have been a point of no return neither of them could afford to cross.

  The front door of her building opened and he ignored the hitch in his chest as she stepped out. Her red hair was swept back from her forehead, sleek, bordering on severe. The long, black leather coat she wore accentuated her slight build. High-heeled black boots would put her eye to eye with him. He’d noticed her attractiveness before, but now it seemed to scream at him.

  All the sensations from last night flooded his brain and sent a jolt through his body. The heat of her mouth, the way she fit perfectly against him, her rain-and-flower-scented hair. He swallowed hard and dug his fingers into his crossed arms as the thought of taking her back into her flat and finishing what they’d started gained traction.

  Not the time, boy. The voice in his head sounded like his father. That’s asking for trouble, sure as the sun rises. Sterling had to agree there. With great effort, he shoved the errant craving away.

  Sasha hesitated when she saw him, her hand on the latch. Sterling remained still as they assessed each other. Reassessed each other. How would the rest of their time together play out? The memory of the kiss couldn’t be completely wiped from his brain; he wasn’t that disciplined. The best he hoped for was that both of them would pretend it never happened.

  But that would be like pretending he didn’t have an artificial eye. He didn’t consciously think about it all the time—it was simply part of him. Like she was becoming part of him.

  He could almost see her give herself a mental shake as she shut the door and walked toward him, back straight and chin up. Was she having the same thoughts about him, or just hating him for everything he’d done to her so far?

  “Sorry I made you wait,” she said.

  He came away from the car and opened the passenger door. “Not a problem. I have sisters, remember?”

  She glanced at him as she ducked into the warm vehicle. “An expert on women, are you?”

  Sterling gave her a crooked smile. “Not even close.”

  Her cheeks pinked. She quickly settled into the passenger seat.

  He shut the door and moved to the driver’s side, muttering, “Not close at all.” He got in, checked traffic and pulled onto the street, determined to stick with the business at hand. “Your text wasn’t too detailed. What do I need to know about this warehouse? How many people are usually there?”

  Sasha shrugged. “I’ve only been there a couple of times. Three, maybe four men were hanging around.”

  “Armed?” He was sure they’d be carrying some kind of weapons, but whether concealed handguns or rifles made a tactical difference. Though no matter what they carried, he’d be out-gunned.

  “I don’t know.” She stared out the windscreen. “My memory on that is a little blurry.”

  Between the amber and her limited visits, that was no surprise. “We’ll just see what we’re getting ourselves into when we get there,” he said.

  “Right.”

  Sterling tried to assess her as he drove, but it wasn’t easy to read more than her frown. He wore the same expression. Her part in all of this was taking longer than either of them had bargained for. Much longer. And they both knew the only way to get Kylie out was for him and Sasha to play along with Christiansen’s game. The question was, how far would it need to go before he could get them both out?

  “Listen,” he said, keeping his tone as reassuring as he could, “I know this isn’t how we planned things, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your sticking with it this far.”

  “I’m not doing it for you.” She slanted a quick glance at him then returned her attention to the road ahead. “I’m doing it for me. And maybe your sister. That’s it.”

  He was surprised that her words made him mentally flinch.

  She crossed her arms, and they fell into uneasy silence for the rest of the trip.

  Heavy civilian traffic thinned out as they drew closer to the port. The road split, carrying passenger traffic to one side of the Hub Station complex and commercial cargo traffic to the other. Air and ground lorries made up most of the vehicles traveling in that direction. With the 250,000-square-meter commercial port operating twenty-six hours every Nevarro day, megatonnes of cargo shipped to and from Pandalus between on-planet sites scattered across the two main continents.

  Nevarro itself was little more than a flyover planet for most system traffic except keracite ore product haulers. The continents’ shuttle stations catered to local passenger traffic more than interplanetary or interstellar travelers. The environmentally hospitable and highly populated Core planets had facilities for larger vessels traversing the forty light years from Earth and beyond, but people and products typically landed on one of those before being reshipped on smaller crafts to outlying worlds like Nevarro. You had to want to come here, and it was a long, uncomfortable ride.

  As such, it was the perfect place for Christiansen to set up base: out of the way, on a planet whose government was more concerned with ore production than the people living there.

  The headlights picked up two enclosed guard sheds flanking C gate, one of four entrances at each cardinal point. A five-meter-high fence with security towers spaced every hundred meters encircled the port. Access by air lorries required specialized—theoretically secure and unbreakable—codes to pass through the airspace within the fence. One hundred fifty warehouses surrounded the five landing pads, with a security and customs building in the center. It was manned by officials who were supposed to regulate what was brought into and sent out of the port, but Sterling knew how things really worked.

  Little had changed in the past fifteen years, when he’d last been here to help run a sting operation with the local law. It was still the grimy, no-frills industrial site where he and his team had taken down a med supply profiteering operation. That bust had helped him get a position with the CMA. He wondered how participating in this unofficial, unsanctioned case would affect his career. Among other things.

  He stopped the car and lowered the plasti-glass window when the guards emerged from their respective sheds.

  “IDs, please,” the man on Sterling’s side said. The other guard slowly walked around the car, sweeping the vehicle with a wand scanner.

  Sasha handed Sterling her card as he fished his own from his coat pocket. The guard took them both and ran them through a reader embedded in the glove on his hand. The device beeped with each pass, and the man handed the IDs back to Sterling.

  The other guard looked inside the rear windows then nodded to his partner when he returned to his shed. Two guards per gate seemed like light security at first glance, but Sterling knew there were plenty of electronic
sensors, cams and autonomous, unmanned rovers on the grounds.

  “There’s a flight scheduled off pad two in about forty minutes,” the first guard warned, “so that area’s pretty busy. Watch out for loaders on the roads.”

  Sterling thanked the man and handed Sasha’s card to her. He closed the window then drove forward when the gate swung open. The main road split, encircling the five landing/launch pads at the center, and became a network of smaller roads accessing various-sized warehouses. All five pads were lit but only two had ships on them, loaders buzzing about in a manner of organized chaos. Many of the warehouses had lights on as well. The shipping business didn’t quit for the day at eighteen hundred.

  “Guy’s building is number one-twenty-seven,” Sasha said.

  Sterling nodded and glanced at the map on the dash screen. The Hub Station transmitted flight information on a dedicated wave for drivers and pilots. Bad for business if ships and lorries got lost or smashed into each other. Warehouses and pads were numbered, and the display showed real-time movement of loaders and personnel as well as a countdown to the next launch or landing.

  Following the side roads to Christiansen’s two-story building, Sterling parked in front and shut off the car. There were no windows, only a heavy-duty, overhead rolling door in front for lorries and loaders, and a regular door on the side for people.

  He looked at Sasha, the near-blinding glare of the warehouse’s floodlights washing out her fair features. “Ready?”

  She turned toward him, her face unreadable. Just a mask, a hardness he couldn’t see through. Was she nervous? Scared? Now that he’d promised himself to be more aware of her reactions and emotions, she’d decided to make an effort to conceal them. She was protecting herself from Christiansen and, if he had to admit it, from himself.

  “I’m good,” she said, her voice low and in control. “Let’s get this over with.” Without waiting for him, she got out of the car, slammed the door and headed toward the side entrance.

  Sterling rubbed under his artificial eye to activate the recorder then gave himself a mental shake before following. It was time to slip into his role as fledgling drug dealer, not try to suss out her feelings.

  At the door, Sasha waited with her hands shoved into her coat pockets. Sterling glanced up at the building. Security cameras at the corners and over the door. The admit panel beside the door showed one glowing red light above its reader and a flat alphanumeric key pad. He swiped his card but the light remained red for several seconds.

  Sasha grabbed his arm when he moved to pass the card through the reader again. “Don’t bother.” She looked down at the contact between them and let him go, as if her fingers burned. Sterling didn’t let on to the twinge he felt in his chest. “He has people and programs checking your ID. Probably waiting to see what you do. Guy hates impatience.”

  Before she finished speaking, the red light turned green.

  “You remember more than you realize,” he said.

  “Unfortunately,” she replied, and yanked the handle.

  Inside, a bright, narrow hall led to the warehouse, where the shouts of men competed with the rumble of loaders. Sterling pulled the door shut behind them. The lock engaged with a click he felt rather than heard.

  “Stay close,” he said as he moved past her to take point. “And get your hands out of your pockets. Wouldn’t want anyone to think you have a weapon.”

  “Do you have one?”

  The enforcement-grade stunner in his ankle holster wasn’t lethal, unless he managed a head shot, but it would buy them time if needed. It was coated to deflect a security scan, which he assumed Christiansen employed. His pulser wasn’t, so he’d left it locked in his room.

  Sterling closed his hands and spread them open again, cracking his knuckles as they reached the end of the hall. “We’re covered.”

  The rumbles and shouts were louder here, and the smell of hot engine lube and dust wafted between the islands of colorful shipping containers. To their right, along the wall of the hallway, an open staircase led to the second floor.

  “Guy’s office and the security control room are up there,” Sasha said. “There’s a packaging area at the back of the main floor.”

  “Remember anything else?”

  She shook her head. “I was only here a couple of times and not particularly interested in the business end of things then.”

  Sterling wanted to reach out to touch her, to let her know he understood where she’d been then and where she was now. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back. “Right. Do we go up or wait here?”

  A door slammed closed overhead, and Marco Delhomme came into view at the top of the stairs. He smiled down at them. No, not at them. At Sasha. Sterling flexed his hands and his knuckles cracked again, even as he kept his expression neutral. Beside him, Sasha tensed.

  “Right on time,” Delhomme said as he descended. Dressed in black down to his pointy-toed boots, his footsteps rang on the metal stairs.

  “Is Guy here?” Sasha asked.

  Sterling studied Delhomme’s face. A grimace furrowed his brow for a millisecond before he recovered and forced a grin. “Yeah, he’s on a call. Asked me to give you a quick tour until he’s ready.”

  Sasha had said Christiansen was wary of Delhomme. Was there trouble brewing in drug-dealer paradise?

  Delhomme led them into the warehouse, turning down long aisles of shipping containers stacked five meters high. “These over here,” he said, gesturing to the right, “are headed back out. The other side still needs to be repackaged.”

  The sound of loaders and workers became more pronounced. Two loaders followed the direction of three men standing on the floor, maneuvering containers to a spot closer to the large overhead door. Everyone wore hardhats, but the men shouting directions also had pulse rifles slung over their backs as they consulted handhelds. Having a supervisor wielding a weapon certainly prevented slacking off on the job.

  “We third-party ship everything from mining equipment to food supplements to tech components. Product goes out across the colony in one hundred different ways.”

  Sterling took in the size and dimensions of the warehouse and how the containers were laid out. Unless there was more underground, which was unlikely, given Station regs and building codes, this wasn’t the main site. “You don’t manufacture here, do you?”

  “Nah,” said Delhomme. “That’s done off-site in a sterile environment. Wouldn’t want the customers getting some kind of bug.” He glanced at Sasha and winked. “Right?”

  The mask she’d erected before leaving the car slipped, allowing a small wince. “Right,” she said in a voice almost too soft to hear over the noise around them.

  “We repackage here to fit specific containers. Size and configuration is unique to each retailer.” Delhomme led them down another aisle that ended at an interior door guarded by a large man with a pulse rifle in his hands. “Guy will tell you what works best.”

  “I have a few ideas,” Sterling said.

  Before reaching the end of the aisle, Delhomme stopped and turned to him. “I suggest you listen to Guy.”

  Sterling felt more than a stab of discomfort at letting anyone, particularly a drug dealer and his dog, dictate to him. “So it’s his way or no way? That’s not the impression I got last night.”

  Delhomme stepped forward, encroaching on Sterling’s space. Sterling didn’t move. He just raised his head enough to look the taller man in the eye. “Don’t torque me, Hollings. I’ve been with Guy from the start, doing things no one else would do to keep the operation running. He listens to me, and if I think you’re too much trouble you will have problems. You just shut the fuck up and do what you’re told.”

  Sleazy son of a—

  “Nate,” Sasha said as she took his upper arm, stopping him from hitting Delhomme for the sheer joy
of seeing him bleed. “Let’s just talk to Guy, all right?”

  He breathed slowly through his nose and released the tension in his arms and hands. The man was an ass, a bully who used his position in the organization to cower and intimidate. He’d tried it on Sasha the other night and was trying it on Sterling now.

  He patted Sasha’s hand, grateful she was there to rein him in. “I’m good.”

  She hesitated before releasing his arm. “Why don’t you show us the packaging room, Marco? I’d like to see how that works.”

  Delhomme stared down at Sterling for another three heartbeats before easing back. “Won’t be too much for you, will it?”

  Her cheeks reddened. The man was on a roll if his goal was to get them both angry. “Rehab chip eliminates the cravings. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so.” Delhomme turned his back on her to head to the packaging room and missed the sneer that crossed Sasha’s face.

  It was Sterling’s turn to play pacifier. “Easy,” he said for her ears only. “We can’t kill him yet.”

  “Yet.” She followed Delhomme, her gait stiff.

  Sterling couldn’t help but smile at her response to his half-serious remark. But any dirty work, should it become necessary, was his job.

  “Tour’s gonna have to wait,” Delhomme said, holding up his comm. “Guy’s ready to see you.”

  “We don’t want to keep the man waiting, do we?” Sterling looked for a reaction to his borderline sarcasm and was rewarded with a slight narrowing of Delhomme’s eyes. “Lead the way.”

  Delhomme shoved the comm into his pocket and came close to bumping Sterling’s shoulder as he moved past. Sterling glanced at Sasha. Their eyes met. She gave a small shake of her head.

  Don’t take the bait, the gesture said.

  He knew she was right and mentally applauded her for succeeding where he had failed. Sasha and Kylie both needed him to stay sharp and keep his dislike for Delhomme in check. Now wasn’t the time to start a fight, but Sterling promised himself the man would not come out of this unscathed.