Runner: The Fringe, Book 3

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  Tears threatened as she slumped to her bunk.

  Clenching her fists, she dug what remained of her chipped fingernails into her palms. Another pity party wouldn’t help one iota. Her face, raw from crying, couldn’t really stand any more salty tears. Nor could her self-esteem.

  “I’m a smart woman. I can find my way out of this.”

  Foster Nash. No hope there. Not a chance in the Void he’d let her go. It wasn’t about money for him; it was about reputation. Only a handful of men on the Fringe could lay claim to the status of triple-platinum Runner, bounty hunters who never lost their prey. He’d earned his rating, and he wouldn’t let anything interfere with keeping it.

  Jynx hadn’t been living on the Fringe long, but it didn’t take long to understand a whole different world operated here. On her home world of Banna, everyone followed the letter of the law because every aspect of life was rigidly controlled. IWOG consumers gave up freedom for safety. Or that’s what she’d thought once upon a time. What she really gave up was her privacy.

  Here on the Fringe, the local law was an amalgam of IWOG and WAG. Confusing, conflicting. Fringe players lived by their wits. Hustlers and whores, Runners and thieves, everyone looking for an edge. As a born-and-bred IWOG consumer, Jynx found her learning curve brutally short and nasty. Within days, she knew which way the wind blew. Still, even after three weeks, she’d been fooled by a fat innkeeper.

  “Reputation matters, girl. You? Nobody knows. No bonafides, no vouch, so I gotta charge you the higher rate.” Into his greedy palm she slipped the last of her script. “Man’s gotta take care of his own out here.” He tucked the crumpled paper into his straining trouser pocket. His gut was so big he couldn’t see that he wore two different colored socks. She didn’t argue. She’d been so happy to find a room, she might have slept with the man in payment.

  Her joy hadn’t lasted long. While she dozed in fitful bursts, Foster had suddenly been there, yanking her out of bed and handcuffing her. No doubt that self-serving innkeeper sold Foster her location. He had to. Where else would Foster have gotten a keycard to her room?

  Jynx stood and inspected every inch of her cell. A common criminal might slyly work their way out. A surgeon turned general practitioner turned epidemiologist? Not likely. The problems she solved were medical, not criminal. No wonder he’d taken her into custody with hardly a struggle.

  “I could have just stepped from my lab into his ship and saved everyone a bundle of time and money.” Frustrated, she wished she’d had a bit more time to acclimate to the Fringe. Wished she had just a bit more script in her purse when she’d fled. Wished she’d been wearing anything but a clingy dress and barely there sandals. With only the contents of her purse, she’d run for three weeks. All in one breath that seemed both long and short.

  To her credit, she defied any woman to do better than she did with what she had. Three weeks on a paltry two hundred in script? Most days she spent that much on transport. The day she ran, she’d planned on meeting Brandt for lunch. A bit lost after their brief night of drunken passion, she wasn’t sure if she’d been embarking on the love of her life or a “hey, things happen” speech. Either way, she never got to meet up with Brandt. He was dead by the time she stepped from the shuttle trans to the industrial complex that housed the lab.

  “I saw them kill him.” She bit her lip, still shocked at what her psi ability had revealed.

  Brandt shared her rare and strange gift—the ability to project. While she sat in the trans, Brandt reached to her mind, she to his, and she found herself looking out through his eyes just in time to see an IWOG officer raise his gun and fire three rapid shots.

  Horror flung her from Brandt’s mind. She hung in limbo for a few moments, trying to recover, then forced her way into the IWOG officer’s mind. She watched through his eyes as he systematically strode through the lab, killing everyone.

  As the officer ran from the building, he set off a series of explosives. She felt a surge of sexual excitement in him as he watched the fire destroy the entire structure. His perverse pleasure so shocked her, she broke the connection and jumped back into her own mind with a disorienting jolt.

  She exited the trans and immediately entered another going in the opposite direction. Terrified, she’d ridden to the commuter hub and boarded the first flight off Banna to Corona, a Fringe planet. While inside the IWOG officer’s mind, she’d found out his orders were very clear—destroy the lab and everyone in it. He’d succeeded. Except for Jynx herself. Her only hope was to disappear before anyone noticed she was still alive.

  While in the bustling space port, she’d been horrified to find Roberts on every com unit, decrying the destruction of the lab as an evil terrorist attack. “They will do anything to destroy our way of life,” Roberts said.

  For the first time, Jynx noticed something that those around her didn’t. They was a very vague word. They who? WAG citizens? Fringe players? Crimes like this were always blamed on the nameless, faceless they.

  Frightened IWOG consumers were calmed by Roberts’s cultured, caring and carefully modulated voice. “This vicious attack will not go unpunished. We will find the terrorists and bring them to justice.” Roberts extolled the doctors and lab personnel as dedicated civil servants who worked tirelessly to cure the Tyaa plague. “Their lives were not lost in vain. It is a credit to them that they managed to succeed in their mission. We now have a cure.”

  Spellbound, Jynx watched Roberts’s beaming face. Of course they had the cure. They’d discovered it months ago. They’d been refining a delivery system in an effort to inoculate all the civilized worlds in the Void. Reports of the plague were rare, but over ten years, it had slowly seeped from Tyaa to gain an ever-greater foothold in the surrounding planets. Quarantining entire towns had been the only way to stop the progress of the disease.

  Jynx had left behind her general medical practice to focus her considerable talent on eradicating the Tyaa plague. Three years of her life for what? Why was Roberts lying? Why had Roberts ordered the destruction of the lab? Jynx didn’t hang around to ask. She’d fled Banna before anyone knew she was still alive.

  So far she hadn’t hurt a soul. She hadn’t so much as inconvenienced anyone. She’d gone out of her way to slip by unnoticed until she could fully understand what a life on the run in the Fringe entailed.

  Determined to escape, she made another circuit of her cell.

  “Only way out is with one of these.” Foster jingled a set of six keys on a loop attached to his belt with his right hand. In his left, he carried a tray of food. “Trust me, you have a better chance of teleporting yourself planet-side.”

  He tucked the keys deep into his right front pocket and winced. Carefully, he withdrew his swollen index finger.

  “I could look at that for you.” She nodded at his finger.

  With a seductive scowl, he asked, “You interested in my pants or my shiny keys?”

  Ignoring his blatant posture, she said, “Your finger. Even from here I can see you’ve been bitten and that the wound is infected.”

  “What’s it to you?” He lowered the tray to the front of her cell, then pushed it under the door. A notch in the durosteel bars made a perfect hole for the passing of the tray along the textured metal floor.

  “I am a doctor.” Once he backed away from the front of her cell, she picked up the molded plastic tray and set it on the battered tabletop. Even though the round metal table was bolted to the floor, it wobbled as if someone had worked desperately to pry it loose. Idly, she wondered why. A weapon, perhaps?

  “Epidemiologist. One who studies the origin and spread of disease. I know that because I looked it up.”

  Surprised, she considered him through the bars. “I’m classified as an epidemiologist when that’s not exactly what I do.” She nodded to the green tray. “Thank you, for the food.” The garishly bright meal looked edible. It smelled a bit odd but not disgustingly so, just different, somewhat pleasing. “Whatever Roberts told you, I trained
first as a surgeon, then a general practitioner.”

  Settling herself to the bolted-down chair, which also wobbled, she took a bite and closed her eyes. Delicious. After the horrid fare she’d been eating for three weeks, this practically rated five stars.

  “I can set broken bones, stitch up wounds and bring a child into the Void. Not that you would be in need of the latter.” She nodded to his finger again. “I can take a look at that fight-bite and possibly help you.”

  His startled gaze revealed her guess correct; he’d been injured in some kind of physical altercation. She’d certainly seen enough of those types of wounds during her residency in the seedier part of Banna.

  Recovering his take-charge attitude, he lowered his voice to a mildly curious yet boldly flirtatious edge. “And in exchange?”

  “I want to take a shower and wash my clothes.”

  A lusty smirk darted across his face. “I’d like nothing better than to toss you into the shower. Making your dress disappear for a few hours also sounds like nothing short of fun.” He stretched, displaying the muscles from his neck to his knees, but mostly ensuring she noticed the bulge in his tight pants. “Problem is, you’re in there, and I’m out here.” He shrugged his massive shoulders, settling himself into a solid, immovable block. “That’s the way things are gonna stay.”

  Ignoring his sexual tone and provocative display, she kept her manner civil. “That’s fine. I noticed the cell at the other end has a shower. Mine doesn’t. Put me in that cell, and I’ll gladly look at your finger.”

  He considered her request for a long time. He looked at her, the cell at the far end, and back at her. She knew he ran it through his mind again and again, looking for an edge.

  “Mr. Nash, you know I do not have a weapon.” Using her most practiced doctor tone, she pointed out the obvious facts. “You are transporting me to a brutal death. Even were I to somehow elude you, I couldn’t fly your ship. As you so aptly put it, I’m dead in the Void. I’d like my last week to be as pleasant as possible. I’m not demanding silk sheets and a handmaid, only that you move me to a cell with a shower.”

  He left without a word.

  Disappointed but not surprised, she continued to eat, savoring each bite of her meal. For all she knew, it could be her last. She didn’t think Roberts would care if her jailer fed her or not. After she finished every last morsel and ran her finger around the edges of the five compartments, she washed her fork and tray in the small bathroom sink, then slid them under her cell door.

  “A criminal would have tried to keep the fork.”

  Startled, she glanced around. A smooth black lump on the ceiling in the center of the hallway between the six cells had to be the com unit. Lifting her face, she addressed the com as if Foster stood in front of her.

  “I considered it. However, your finger is infected, not your brain. You would know if I didn’t return the fork.” She turned away, washing her face and hands in the sink. “I sincerely doubt I could free myself with a fork. You could perhaps turn it into a deadly weapon. I could not. The only use for a fork I know of is to eat with it.” She paused. “Oh, yes, and to use it to subdue a particularly tight knot.”

  With a seductive beat, he said, “I could watch you if you took a shower.”

  The bass of his voice made the entire ship throb, causing vibrations to run up her body and stroke the sensitive spots with a curious heat. The thought of him watching her was not as unappealing as it should have been.

  Dismissing the notion, she finished washing up. “Your reputation is such I would expect you to watch.” Drying herself with a small cloth, she turned and faced the com. “I find, given the current scope of my life, you watching me bathe is the very least of my concerns. You and your lecherous nature are not my biggest worry. Roberts is. With a few choice words and the gentle twisting of circumstance, my lifetime of good works is forever tarnished. I am hunted for a crime I did not commit.”

  “All I care about is my contract.” His low voice boomed, rumbling up her body in pleasurable waves.

  “Fine. You don’t believe me or don’t care. I am a hapless pawn, but you are a willing rook, played by a foul hand.” Carefully folding the washcloth so it would drip-dry over the sink edge, she turned her back on the com. “You are a glorified meatbag. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “I am not a meatbag.”

  Dark and furious, his voice blasted her ears. Every speaker on his ship echoed his anger at being called a mindless mercenary. She didn’t need to see his face to know she’d touched a nerve.

  “I am one of six triple-platinum Runners on the Fringe. Do you know what that means?”

  Pushing down her fear, she tidied her cell. “I know who you are. I know every contract you’ve ever signed you’ve delivered on.” Nodding at the com unit between the cells, she made up her bunk. “You will deliver me to Roberts. Of that, I have no doubt. So that means I must worry myself over Roberts, not you.” She shook her head as she carefully sat on her newly made bed. “I’ve hurt none, survived many. I will survive you.”

  “You won’t survive Roberts.” His voice held no emotion at all.

  “That remains to be seen. The point is, I will survive you. Roberts wants me alive.” Jynx stared up at the com. “Correct?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Fear began somewhere in the pit of her belly and worked out along her limbs. She shouldn’t have deliberately antagonized him by calling him a meatbag. Not when he had a formidable reputation to live up to. Especially not when he had total control over her.

  “Mr. Nash?”

  Resounding silence was her only answer.

  Chapter Four

  Foster crossed his arms as he glared at Jynx over the audvid. True enough, Roberts wanted her alive, but she seemed a little too smug with the information, so let her worry.

  She’d removed the colored contacts, and her widened eyes were a startling shade of violet, made more so by the lilac shade of her clinging dress. He’d never seen eyes that color. No wonder she’d covered them up with lenses. Man, woman or child would remember someone with eyes that unique.

  “Fine,” she said softly. She didn’t seem to be looking for a way out any longer but for something to do. After a while, she closed her eyes. She smiled, frowned, drew her eyebrows up then down, oblivious to the fact he watched her.

  After several long moments, he asked, “What are you doing?”

  Rather than startling at his sudden intrusion into her privacy, she answered, “I’m remembering,” as if she’d known he was watching her.

  “Remembering what?” Despite his resolve not to get to know her, he had to ask. She didn’t behave like any package he’d ever delivered.

  “All the times in my life. The people. Everything I’ve accomplished. Mistakes I’ve made. Things I wish I’d done.”

  “Why?”

  “What else is there for me to do?”

  He watched her for a bit longer, then turned his attention to the console. Not much on the scanners to worry about. Even Berserkers would think twice about attacking him. He and his ship were too dangerous to tangle with. The vicious pirates would attempt to commandeer his ship only if they were in dire straits. No two ways about it, they would lose.

  In the twenty years he’d been a Runner, he’d been attacked three times, but not once since he’d acquired and upgraded the Damn You. His ship had a rep almost as bad as his. The sleek, shark-like shape was distinctive.

  Foster bought the ship six years ago from Michael “Overlord” Parker. She’d been a slaver ship back then and didn’t have much in the way of electronics, but she was fast. Over the years, Foster added every conceivable gleep to her array. Taking up the Damn You was the first of many deals he’d made with the notorious Michael “Overlord” Parker. One of those arrangements was responsible for his injured finger.

  Darting his gaze back to the cell audvid, he found Jynx still sitting quietly on her bunk with her eyes closed. Whatever she thought of made her l
augh, wince, then touch the tiny scar over her right eye. What had caused that almost imperceptible flaw in her perfect skin, and why hadn’t she fixed it? Couple hundred credits and thirty minutes and poof! it’d be history.

  He couldn’t believe she sat so peacefully. She should be terrified out of her mind. In all his years as a bounty hunter, he’d never had a package behave like she did. Calm. Accepting. Speaking in her cultured voice. Most prisoners rattled the bars, yelled, screamed and tried every trick in the book to escape, but not Jynx Brennan.

  He considered her request to be moved to the bigger cell. He saw no edge but that she would be more comfortable. And he could watch her shower. She didn’t seem to care if he did. Or did she think she could sway him with her body?

  Before refusing to apprehend women because of the inherent dangers in doing so, he’d handled plenty of beauties who’d tried the same trick, preening and pouting and seductively showing him enticing bits of flesh. All in the hopes of luring him into letting them go. Back then, keeping the little brain in line had been next to impossible, hence his no-female policy. But he was older and wiser now. Did Jynx really think he’d fall for such a pathetic ploy?

  “Time to find out.”

  “Here’s the deal, Sweets.”

  Jynx opened her eyes and turned to find Foster standing at the door of her cell with two sets of cuffs. He wore tight faded jeans, an even tighter green motton T-shirt, battered tennis shoes, and his thick black weapon-riddled leather belt, slung low, outlining his swaggering hips.

  “Stand. Press your back against the bars. I’ll cuff your wrists and ankles.” His cold voice frosted her ears while causing a curious heat to coil in her belly. “Once I secure you, I’ll enter your cell, pick you up, then move you to the other cell. You so much as blink funny, and I’ll throw you on the floor, then shoot you. Got it?”

  “I’m not going to cause you any trouble.” Jynx stood and backed up to the bars.