by Calinda B
* * *
Bronc Berenson regarded Tal Darkrunner across the desk in the man’s private office. The ganger lord was not as tall as he, and certainly not as broad, but in his long, black leather duster, fitted pants and boots, he gave the impression of lean, tightly coiled power. Every centimeter of it lethal.
His ebony hair hung around his angular face and broad shoulders in braids, and though Bronc would have bet the man rarely saw the sun, his skin was a rich olive—the un-inked portions at least. His hands, face and throat were all marked with ornate tattoos black as his hair. One cheek was nearly covered, the other bore only a small symbol.
His hands, adorned with rings and cuffs, were inked across the backs and down the back of each finger. He looked like exactly what he was—a dangerous man. And no mere thug.
His eyes, a startlingly pale, crystalline green in his dark face, glittered with intelligence and an unholy power. Those eyes said he’d dare anything to get what he wanted, and brook no resistance from anyone in his path.
Darkrunner’s face was expressionless as a mask as he gestured Bronc to a chair and dropped into the chair behind the big desk. Polite as one of Stark’s business associates, although no one, least of all Bronc, would make the mistake of thinking this man anything less than deadly.
Which was why they had to get him out of New Seattle—fast.
Bronc had expected to step into another sort of room entirely for his private audience with the ganger lord, one that held restraints and whips, with dried blood and other substances on the floor. A place where the ganger dealt with anyone who dared to disobey him in his dark, dirty kingdom.
Bronc counted himself lucky he hadn’t been invited to that other room—because he had no doubt it existed somewhere in the huge building. And although he had no illusions about walking out of here safely just because he was on a peaceful mission, he didn’t want to call in reinforcements unless absolutely necessary.
He’d hate like hells to set off a war in the streets of New Seattle. Not only would it hurt innocents, if there was such a thing in this city, it might cause the very event he was trying to prevent—death or injury to Logan Stark.
But instead, he found himself invited into a prosaically luxurious office, much like any wealthy businessman might have. Okay, everything in the office was either black, or gaudy as the club outside, but it was luxe.
He sat in a comfortable leather chair. Darkrunner faced him across a desk gleaming with precious woods and surrounded by sleek, efficient tools of business. The ganger should have looked out of place, but such was the force of his personality that he fit here among the computers and holoscreens, just as he did out in the garish club.
The office was shockingly quiet. The floor vibrated with the drumbeat of the club band on the other side of the wall, but no noise penetrated this sanctum. When Darkrunner spoke, his low, husky voice was clearly audible.
“Talk to me,” Darkrunner said. “Tell me about this woman.”
Cautious relief whispered through Bronc. The ganger was sniffing the bait.
“She’s Serpentian. Going by the name of Slidi, she worked retail at an exclusive spa boutique here, called Maitresse. Kind of place wealthy women shop and are pampered. She dropped out of sight a few months ago after stealing a large amount of credit from the owners, and reappeared on Frontiera, as the mistress of Mulos Vadyal, a known slaver.”
“Why was she fixated on Kiri?”
“Actually, her obsession seems to be with Logan Stark,” Bronc said baldly. “She tried to seduce him when he brought one of his mistresses to Maitresse. He refused her; it pissed her off a bit more than normal, because she went after the next woman he brought in.”
Bronc didn’t say this had been Kiri te Nawa, but he didn’t have to. Darkrunner’s face tightened at the mention of the woman he’d wanted being pampered by Stark.
“How do you know it was her who went after Kiri?”
Bronc shook his head. “She confessed, in front of a whole room full of witnesses. Weird, but she seemed more intent on letting Stark know how much she hated him than anything else. Guess she thought she had nothing left to lose—or she’s got a circuit loose. She was about to be convicted of murdering Vadyal, running slaves and a host of other shit. Seems she enjoyed mistreating Vadyal’s captures in a number of ways. Ms. te Nawa’s damned lucky you got her away from the woman.”
Of course Darkrunner had done this by drugging Kiri and put her on a slow freighter to Frontiera, thus expressing his displeasure at her choosing Stark over him, but still, he’d saved her.
“So you had this Slidi and let her slip,” Darkrunner jibed.
“Wasn’t LodeStar Security who lost her,” Bronc said. “IBI.”
“Oh, that’s even better. How the hells did she manage to escape them?”
Bronc grimaced. That had been a nearly unbelievable slip on the part of the InterGalactic Bureau of Investigation. No doubt at least one agent had already lost his or her job because of it.
He took a drink of his ale and set it aside, not without regret. It was one of his favorites, and he’d like to sit and enjoy it. He hadn’t had much chance lately.
“She seduced one of the guards on the transport,” he said. “Then killed him. She’s beautiful and she’s a sociopath. That combination can take a woman a long way. The oversight agents didn’t discover her escape until she was long gone.”
Darkrunner sat very still, peering out at Bronc from the shadow of the braids hanging around his face. “Any idea where she is, or where she may go next?”
Satisfaction warmed Bronc’s chest, but he merely shrugged. “Suspect she’ll head for one of Vadyal’s homes on Serpentia or his casino called the Pleasure Palace, currently moored off Frontiera.”
“The IBI must have a watch on those places.”
“They do. Like I said, they’re after her. I’m sure they’ll catch up sooner or later.”
“You don’t think she’ll come here?”
Bronc had been waiting for this. He nodded. “Matter of fact, this is the first place she came. But she’s not here any longer. She was last sighted entering a hangar at the space port, place that runs low-end transports and charter flights. She didn’t walk out, so we assume she slipped the planet.”
Then Bronc waited while Darkrunner considered this information. Bronc took another sip of his ale and then set it aside with distaste. Just as he’d feared, it was now warm.
“Why doesn’t Stark have you chasing her?” Darkrunner asked, regarding Bronc from under his lashes. It was a look as beguiling as any Bronc had seen.
Bronc shrugged. “Like I said, he and Ms. te Nawa have split up. He didn’t share why, and it’s not my business to ask. But I hate like hells to see this vicious bitch get away free.
“Believe me, if I were free to do so, I’d be chasing her, as fast as I could. Since I can’t, and I’m here on business, thought I’d drop a word. Your choice what you do with the information.”
He rose and nodded to the ganger, who remained in his chair, watching him with those eerie eyes. “Thanks for listening. Oh, and one other thing. Slidi worked with one of your rivals while she was here … a Mordacent or some name like that.”
“Mordacity,” Darkrunner said. Although he couldn’t see it, Bronc swore a charge of electricity filled the room, emanating from the ganger. The man’s face was taut as a statue.
Bronc shrugged indifferently, but inside he was doing a fist pump. That name had definitely caught the ganger’s interest. “Yeah. Anyway, if you find her, maybe you can get some intel. Never hurts to know your enemy, right?”
“I’ve listened,” Darkrunner said. “And I’ll consider what you’ve said. What I’m wondering is why you’ve come.” He gazed up at Bronc, and his eyes seemed to take on a deeper hue, almost blue in the shadows of his black hair. “Are we to be friends now?”
Bronc blinked to counter the urge to keep staring into those eyes, and forced his own gaze away. Fuck. No wonder the guy was so successful at what
he did. He radiated a stealthy power.
All right, time to open a vein—metaphorically at least. Anything to keep the ganger from learning why he was really here.
“Because I hate slavers,” Bronc told him, his deep voice grating. “The fuckers took my own brother, Bart. And I’ve heard rumors that Vadyal’s gang was involved. I want this bitch and all her slimy hangers-on dead. And if it takes her a long, long time to die ... if she screams and begs for it in the end ... that’s okay with me too.”
Darkrunner’s brows rose. He nodded with what almost looked like respect. “Understood.”
Bronc nodded curtly and turned for the door.
“However,” the ganger said behind him, “If I find out I’ve been lied to ... there won’t be enough of you to gather for cremation. You get me?”
Bronc looked over his shoulder. “I get you.”
He walked out the door with his back itching, as if there were a laser pointed at it. Probably was. And he made a quarking big target.
Darkrunner didn’t bother to say goodbye, but then Bronc hadn’t really expected him to. He’d given the ganger a great deal to think about.
He walked back past the Mau guard lurking outside, through the crowded club, wincing at the intense blast of the music, the humid heat and smells of the worked-up crowd.
The elevator zipped him up to the landing pad on the top of the building, where his unmarked LodeStar cruiser waited. He boarded and nodded to the pilot and the four heavily armed LodeStar employees seated in the cabin.
He stopped just inside the door, waiting for the holovid scanner. It showed a virtual readout of his body, from head to toe. After a sec, the scanner having found no spybots planted on him, a green light flashed. Only then did Bronc move to one of the leather seats. He sank into it with a silent groan, suddenly exhausted.
“Think he’ll go for it?” the oldest man asked as Bronc strapped in. Gray-haired and square-jawed, Rak had been with LodeStar a long time.
“You were listening in, what do you think?”
“Sounded interested to me,” Rak said as the cruiser leapt under them, rising into the black night. “His kind don’t give away much.”
Bronc nodded. The ganger was indeed a man who didn’t reveal himself, but Bronc’s instincts said their plan was working. “I think he bit. We’ll know in a day or two.”
“I hope he goes for it,” Opal said, looking down at the lights of the city below as the cruiser gained altitude. Stark’s attendant and bodyguard on his cruiser, the silver-haired woman had also been with LodeStar for years.
Bronc looked down as well, his gut tightening. “I hope so too.”
Because somewhere down there beneath the garish lights, the streamers of fog and rain, was Logan Stark. Completely on his own, and for some strange reason, not himself. Lost, or hiding in one of the deadliest urban jungles on this planet, away from all the wealth, stature and people who could keep him safe.
“If Darkrunner finds Stark before we do ...”
Opal didn’t finish, but then she didn’t need to. If the ganger found Stark in his present state, whatever it was, it would be the perfect opportunity to finish his rival, for good.
“We’ll know soon, one way or the other,” put in Cork, a young but sharp ex-IGSF soldier. “If Darkrunner goes for it, he’ll do it within the next day or so, don’t you think?”
“He’ll go for it,” Rak said grimly. “The slimer won’t miss a chance to get Ms. te Nawa back. I escorted her to his club one night, and I saw the way he looked at her. You’re right about him, Bronc. He’s just the kind to think a flash move like presenting her with that Serp’s bloody corpse will get her back.”
“Let’s hope you’re right about Ms. te Nawa, too,” Opal added darkly. “That it won’t work.”
Bronc hoped he was right, too. When they found Stark—he wouldn’t let himself consider any alternative but his boss’s safe rescue—the man was going to need everyone who cared about him. And that included his woman. They might be estranged, but Bronc was sure Stark was in love with her. He’d seen the way the man looked at her when they brought her brother home to her, as if it was all he could do to walk away and leave her.
Bronc just hoped she was still in love with Stark.
Tal Darkrunner might be an outlaw, but he was charismatic as hell. Beautiful in his own way, from his crystalline eyes to those beringed hands that promised every kind of wicked pleasure.
Hells, if Bronc wasn’t hopelessly moonsick over another man, he’d go for the man himself, and for the smaller blond man with the streaky, flyaway hair and pretty brown eyes seated at Darkrunner’s elbow in the club. Darry Wazo, according to Bronc’s intel, was one of the gang leader’s trusted insiders, along with Trix Benali, the little strawberry blond woman on Darkrunner’s other side. Bronc would bet the three of them were intimate in other ways, too. Something about the body language between them.
The mind-picture that built sent heat arrowing down in his groin.
But only for a sec, because he’d never have anything to do with the kind of slime that had built an empire preying on the foolish and unfortunate. Darkrunner might be sexy, but he was like a drug promising sweet oblivion, only to drag his unwary victim into the depths with him.
He wasn’t as bad as the slavers, but in Bronc’s opinion, he was only a shallow step up.
Chapter 2
Tal paced back and forth in the dark room deep in the bowels of his lair. His long, black leather duster swirled about his legs with each stride, giving him the appearance of a great raven ruffling its wings to take flight.
The chill air was rank with sour fear-induced sweat.
The thud of Tal’s boots on the hard floor punctuated the ragged breathing of the prisoner. The skinny human hung from his wrists, bound with flexible chainrope that had been looped over a hook under a hover platform, and then raised so the man’s toes just brushed the floor. A floor splattered with old, rusty stains.
Darry stood before the prisoner, a long whip coiling from one hand. An ancient device, but one that still wrought pain and fear in its recipient. Of course the process of intimidation began when the prisoner was grabbed and hustled into one of Tal’s unmarked cruisers, then dragged into this room.
The room hadn’t been used for its apparent purpose in a very long time. Hadn’t been needed. Tough, street-hardened beings had been known to piss themselves when the door creaked shut behind them and to start talking the minute the whip came out. The harder cases received a patch of a drug that freed their tongues.
Tal had others who usually handled the work here, but this case he wanted kept very quiet, so he’d asked Darry to step in. Neither he nor Dalg would repeat anything they heard.
The prisoner’s reddened gaze darted from the whip to Tal and clung. He was at least clever enough to recognize the greatest threat in the room, if not smart enough to tell the truth the first time Tal asked.
And another time Tal might have waited with greater patience, would have let the man remain safe in his own small, shabby domain until he was ready to tell Tal everything he wanted to know. But not this time. He needed answers now, tonight. Time was of the essence if he was going to catch a female who was already half a galaxy ahead of him. And this miserable street rat was stonewalling him.
“All right,” Tal said, stopping with his back to the man. “Enough of your lies. Now once again—five nights ago, you helped a woman find a space charter to take her off planet.”
“Did I?” the man quavered defiantly, a sneer in his voice. “I don’t remember.”
Tal scowled and gestured. Behind him, the whip cracked, and the prisoner cried out, the chainrope creaking as the whip slashed the air before him. Darry cracked the whip again, leading to another yell, this one louder. Tal rolled his eyes. Fuck, Darry hadn’t even hit the man yet.
He turned with a threatening flourish.
“My associate can keep this up for a long time,” he said. “The question is, can you?” The skinny
human was shivering now, each breath audible. But as Tal faced him, he sneered defiantly—or tried to.
Great God Beyond, deliver him from heroes. Tal paced closer and reached out to grasp the man’s whiskered chin in one hand. “I’m going to share something with you, Bill. You don’t mind if I call you Bill, do you? Since we’re so intimate here.”
Bill swallowed convulsively, his gaze riveted on Tal through the greasy strands of his hair.
Tal narrowed his eyes and Bill stared into them, the sneer slipping from his face.
“The Serpentian I’m after,” Tal went on, “the redhead. Beautiful, isn’t she? And I’ll bet she cried alligator tears all over you, told you how frightened she was of the bad men who were after her. Maybe she even let you fuck her, out of gratitude for being her savior. Told you what a brave one you are for daring to go against a powerful, evil man.”
“Wait. How’d you know?” Bill’s scraggy brows shot together.
“Because I know how that kind of woman works on a man.” He ought to, he’d fallen prey to one once himself. And it had cost him a fuckuva lot more than this one would cost Bill.
His own seduction had cost him what little credit and reputation he’d managed to scavenge by the time he reached adulthood while surviving in these slums. It had cost the lives of beings who had called him friend, even brother. It had also cost him every shred of his self-respect.
The man he was today had been formed in the crucible of absolute betrayal.
“Now I’ll tell you the truth, Bill. She’s a lying, cheating slut. And she’s a killer.”
The man jerked, his face contorting like a small child who’d been told a promised treat was only stardust.
Tal tightened his grip on the man’s jaw. “She’s snake mean, Bill. She’s tortured and killed innocent beings captured by her own gang of slavers. Oh, yes. You’re lucky you aren’t better looking. She might have thrown you in the hold of that ship the way she did to my woman.”
“No...” his prisoner mumbled. “No, she was ... escaping from creditors, because she couldn’t pay the shakedown on her little store. She told me.”