Stowaway

by Becky Black

  Kit had to fight an urge to wrap his arms and legs around Raine, wanting to hang on to the strong man and feel safe after being so scared for so long. The urge confused him. It made no sense. He should be afraid of Raine. He was a cop. Chief of security, whatever; it meant the same.

  But none of the other cops had kissed him. And what a kiss. Clumsy, perhaps, bumping noses until they found the right angle, Raine pressing too hard, too demanding, lost in the passion. Clumsy but so good Kit wanted to lose himself too. Raine’s tongue deep in his mouth, Raine’s hands in his hair. He didn’t want to open his eyes. Time would start again if he did. But he had to. Had to let his gaze slide away to the elevator’s control panel and the indicator showing them passing levels and sections.

  In his mind, he made Raine a silent apology. Raine was hot, and he seriously needed to get laid, a problem Kit might otherwise have been happy to help him with. But not today.

  Now! Kit reached out and smacked the Emergency Stop button. The elevator stopped with a jolt that jarred Kit’s spine, but he regained his balance and shoved hard. Raine stumbled back, got his feet tangled together, and fell, crashing against the opposite wall. He cursed, surprisingly mildly.

  The doors were open. As Kit had hoped, the elevator had stopped close enough to a floor that it had triggered the outer doors to open too. The car was a meter away from the deck, but he jumped down and hit the ground running. He sprinted off down an empty corridor.

  No more elevators. Find a repair shaft with a ladder in it. He had to get back down to the cargo hold and vanish.

  * * *

  The stowaway jumped out of the elevator before Raine even hit the floor. By the time he’d clambered out into the corridor the man was out of sight. But somewhere ahead, Raine heard running footsteps.

  “Raine, you okay?” Warner’s voice came through on his comms as he took a breath, regaining his composure and willing his cock to go the hell down.

  “I’m fine,” he said as he strode off. “He got away from me.”

  “So I saw.”

  He had a flutter of panic, wondering if someone had installed cameras in the elevators and not told him. Or if he’d left his comms channel open when he threw the man he was arresting up against the wall and shoved his tongue down the guy’s throat.

  “He came out of the elevator like a cork out of a bottle,” Warner said. “But I’m tracking him on the cameras. Take the next right.”

  He followed her instructions, speeding up when she told him the stowaway had found a maintenance access shaft and climbed inside. Damn, those things were a labyrinth.

  “Scan for body heat in there,” he ordered. He’d had too close an encounter with the guy’s body heat already. No scanners involved. What the hell was he going to put in his report? “The prisoner escaped from custody while I was distracted by sexually assaulting him”? What the hell had come over him? The man wasn’t all that good-looking, was he?

  But the hair… Something about the hair. Thinking of it made Raine’s softening cock start to stiffen up again, and he growled a warning at himself to keep his mind on the job.

  “I’ve picked him up on the scanners,” Warner reported. “He’s heading down.”

  “He’s probably intending to go to ground in one of the cargo containers.” Once he got inside one and out of range of the cameras on the door, he’d have a hundred places to hide.

  “It would take us days to find him in there.”

  “I know that.” He regretted his snappy tone at once. She didn’t deserve the rough edge of his tongue. The only person at fault here was himself. He could be walking into security with the guy in handcuffs right now if he hadn’t lost control. He took a deep breath and spoke in a more even tone.

  “Get a squad into position to cut him off before he can get inside a container.”

  “Right, Boss.”

  He found an elevator and headed down to rendezvous with his squad. At least when they caught the man this time, Raine would have chaperones, so he couldn’t behave like a lunatic again. He closed his eyes as the elevator swished away, trying to regain full control of his emotions. Breathe deep. Become calm. See the sand and the sky and be there in the silence. Forget the anger. Forget the lust. Do the job.

  With his eyes still closed, he took his gloves from his pocket and put them on, hands chilled after sweating. It had been an instant of weakness, no more. The stowaway had taken advantage, seen a way to distract him. He couldn’t claim he wasn’t at fault, but he hadn’t initiated the kiss.

  He’d sure as hell responded. Growing hard in an instant—which never happened to him. He just wanted the guy so bad. The musky smell of him, a few days unwashed, had an excitement to it. Not since the old days out in the desert… Stop.

  Sky. Sand. Heat. Calm.

  His eyes snapped open as the elevator doors slid back, and he strode out to meet his squad. They waited in the long, bare corridor that held the doors to the detachable containers holding cargo and stores.

  “You’re ahead of him,” Warner reported. “He’s two levels above you, still moving down.”

  Raine glanced up instinctively, then looked at the access panel in the bulkhead where the stowaway would have to emerge to come out on this deck. It came out right beside the door into the container Raine had first seen him in. Did he already have a hiding place in there?

  “Knox, Munro, get inside the container. One of you go up a level, one down.” Each of the huge, detachable containers had three levels. “Don’t go too far in case he passes this one.”

  “Right, Boss.” They headed into the container. Meanwhile, Raine hid himself and the rest of the squad in service alcoves along the corridor. They could stay entirely out of sight while Warner kept him updated with every move their quarry made. In a moment, she confirmed he was coming out of the access hatch Raine had expected.

  “Got him on camera again,” she said, voice soft as if afraid the fugitive would overhear, though their earpieces fitted snugly and no sound leaked out. “FYI. The bridge is monitoring us.”

  And the captain herself would be on this watch, Raine knew. Okay, better end this quick. And hope she never found out about the way Raine had acted in the elevator.

  “He’s heading into the cargo container,” Warner said.

  “Wait for it,” Raine whispered to his squad. If they went too soon, the stowaway might double back out of the door and run for it. Raine wanted him trapped between the men already inside and the squad out here, leaving him no place to go but into Raine’s arms, ah, their arms. Arrested.

  “He’s five meters inside,” Warner said.

  “Go!” Raine snapped out the order.

  They ran, feet pounding on the metal deck, piling through the narrow door into the container. The stowaway stood at the top of the steps leading to the bottom level. Another set led to the upper level, but neither was an option for him, because of Munro coming up and Knox coming down. Raine’s squad cut off his retreat. Trapped, he stared around, eyes huge in his pale face.

  “Give yourself up,” Raine ordered, approaching him slowly, not wanting to panic him. “You won’t be hurt.” Or indeed kissed. He had to give up, surely. Nowhere to go. Munro passed the landing and headed up the last flight, closing in. Abruptly, the stowaway spun away from Raine and ran straight at Munro, taking off down the steps at a dead run. What the hell? Raine ran after him and saw him grab the handrail and vault over it. Oh hell, no, don’t do that! Munro made a grab at him, missed.

  It would have worked, jumping onto the lower flight, passing Munro—if the man could have kept his footing after dropping nearly three meters onto a metal staircase.

  He couldn’t. He yelled and went tumbling down the steps. No! You idiot! Raine pelted down the steps, jumping past Munro, who’d fallen over cursing when he made his grab and found only air. This was turning into one pig of a day. First grope a prisoner, then lose him, then finally kill him. Nice work, Chief.

  He swung around the landing and raced down
the lower flight. His quarry lay at the bottom of the steps, arms and legs sprawled around like a swatted insect, but moving. Raine first sighed with relief and then gave a shout of annoyance. He was trying to get up. Instincts taking over, Raine jumped the last few steps and slammed the man to the deck, a knee in his back, grabbing for his wrists.

  “Get the fuck off me!” The man struggled under him. “I can’t breathe!”

  Possibly, but Raine wasn’t ready to give him the benefit of the doubt yet. He pulled the cuffs from his belt and slapped them round one wrist and then the other. Only then did he take his weight off his prisoner, who went on wriggling around, hauling at the cuffs.

  “Stop it.” Raine crouched by him, breathing hard. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

  “I am hurt, you bastard.”

  Raine felt a moment of guilt but shook it off. Nobody had forced him to make that stupid jump. And he couldn’t be too badly hurt, because he was fizzing with rage, face flushed and eyes narrow and furious.

  “Then keep still. We’ll take you to the infirmary in a second.”

  The rest of the squad arrived, going more slowly down the steps than Raine. Sensible if they didn’t want to break their necks. Still, he gave them a look as he stood. A Boss Special, he’d heard them call it.

  “Today would be good, people.”

  “Saw you had it handled, Boss,” Munro said, grinning, none the worse for his fall on the steps.

  “Get him on his feet,” Raine said. A couple of them hauled the prisoner up, and he yelled when he put his feet down. They had to hang on to his arms when he lifted his left foot up, wincing.

  “Can’t put any weight on it?” Raine received only a pained shake of the head in reply. “Okay. Sim.”

  “Boss?” Sim loomed over him. The stowaway stared with alarm at the man everyone called Big Sim for the obvious reason.

  “Carry him.”

  “Boss.” Giving the prisoner no time to resist, Sim grabbed him and slung him over one huge shoulder. Though this quelled most people’s resistance once and for all, it seemed to reactivate this man’s anger.

  “Hey, put me down, you great big—get your hand off my ass!” Sim ignored the words, hauled on the man’s belt to adjust his hold, and started to carry him up the steps. Raine followed a few steps lower down, which brought him head to head with the prisoner.

  He glared at Raine and tried to flip his hair back off his face. Seeing him like this—upside down, flushed bright red, eyes narrowed, hair as tangled as a bird’s nest—the moment in the elevator seemed even more like an instant of madness. The guy was a scarecrow. While they were at the infirmary, Raine should ask the doctor for an eye exam.

  * * *

  Sim set Kit down on a bed in the infirmary and moved back, but he stayed close enough to quell any trouble. He needn’t have worried; Kit had lost his enthusiasm for making trouble. Between his ankle and bruising, he felt like lying here and sleeping for a week. Maybe he’d wake up in his hiding place and getting caught would all be a dream.

  A man started running a scanner over Kit. “I’m Doctor Skerritt,” he said. “Lie still, please. Did you hit your head?”

  “No.” Kit didn’t look at the doctor; he looked at Raine, who’d followed them in and stood at the doctor’s shoulder, watchful and wary. At a signal from him, Sim moved farther back and stood by the door.

  “The ankle isn’t broken. It’s badly sprained, though.” The doctor injected something to numb the pain, and a nurse started taking Kit’s shoe off. “You won’t be going anywhere for a few days.”

  “He won’t be going anywhere except the brig for some time,” Raine said.

  What a dick.

  They must be too far out to send him home. They could hardly turn around; they had schedules to keep. But would they hand him over to some ship heading to Drexler?

  The brig might be preferable, especially if he had Raine watching over him. After the way he’d responded to the kiss, the classic “seduce the guard” tactic would be a shoo-in. When the doctor moved away to tap information into a terminal, Raine stepped closer and reached for Kit’s hand. Entirely on instinct, Kit let Raine take it, wishing Raine’s gloves were gone, wanting skin-to-skin contact with him again.

  Raine swiped his Link’s scanner along Kit’s hand. “Thank you,” he said, stepping back and speaking into the comms. “Warner, I’m sending our guest’s fingerprints through. Run them through the police data from Drexler, please.”

  “Jerk!” Kit shoved his hand under the sheet on the bed, flushing and cursing himself for a fool. Did you think he wanted to hold your hand, idiot?

  Raine didn’t react to the insult. He wore a closed and guarded expression. No wonder, since he’d revealed too much already in the elevator. Too late to mend it. Kit smiled to himself. I know you now, Raine 3rdM. I know what you want.

  “Hello, Chief. You certainly livened up a dull afternoon on the bridge.”

  “Captain.” Raine snapped to attention as a woman came in. Short and in her fifties, with hair cropped like most spacers, she wore the crew uniform somewhat more casually than Raine. Raine relaxed his stance a second after going into it, but he stayed tense, and Kit decided he must be fighting the urge to salute.

  “Good work catching him.”

  She wouldn’t be saying that if she’d seen what happened in the elevator.

  “Ms. Warner coordinated the pursuit,” Raine said.

  “Excellent. Pass on my appreciation.” She turned to Kit. “I’m Captain Victoria Dryden. I’m in command of this freighter.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” His casual greeting produced a smile from her and a frown from Raine. “What’s your name?”

  “Kit.” They had his prints; they’d have his name any second. No point in staying anonymous. Anyway, he needed a different approach with her. She was the captain, but she was also a middle-aged woman. She might even have kids not far from Kit’s age. “Please don’t send me back.” He wouldn’t survive in prison.

  “We’ll get to that. How did he get hurt?”

  “He fell down some stairs.” Raine grimaced. “I know how that sounds, ma’am.”

  “Quite,” she said. “Did you fall down some stairs, Kit?”

  He could stir up trouble for Raine, accuse him of brutality, he supposed. But what would it achieve? “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, then. How did you spot him, Mr. Raine?”

  “I saw him in a stores container on the monitors. As you see, he’s wearing a uniform of the ore plant admin people. That fooled me at first. But I saw him again, and I got suspicious.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t recognize him, and it appeared to me he was walking around checking things but not doing any actual work.”

  “Ah, and you knew the ship already had a full complement of people who walk around checking things and don’t do any work.”

  Kit chuckled. Oh, yeah, this lady knew about the world of business.

  “Be quiet,” Raine ordered him.

  “Calm down,” Dryden said. “It was a joke. Laughing at the captain’s jokes is not only permitted but in fact encouraged.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course, ma’am, very funny.”

  She caught Kit’s eye, and he thought he saw her give a tiny eye-roll. He gave her a smile in response. We’re all pals. You wouldn’t send poor little Kit back to a horrible fate, would you?

  “Christopher Miller.” Kit’s head snapped around at the sound of his full name. Raine looked up from his Link, and there was a kind of sadness in his eyes. Disappointment. He turned to Dryden. “He was in custody on Drexler awaiting trial for theft from the company he worked for. He escaped.”

  “I was framed.”

  Raine ignored the protest. “No previous criminal record. No record of violence. Just a thief.”

  “I’m not a thief.”

  The disappointed look again, and this time it made Kit furious. Raine didn’t know the facts—didn’t want to know the facts
—but he stood there passing judgment anyway. He tried to sit up, but the pain of his bruises and leg made him flop back down.

  “Thank you.” Dryden’s voice was cooler and more serious than a moment ago. “Okay, what to do with him? The usual procedure is to put a stowaway to work until we can put him off the ship.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend letting him roam loose, ma’am. He could be a saboteur or spy from a rival company.”

  “I don’t think any of our commercial rivals have declared war on Colonial Freight yet. Anyway, if they wanted to spy on us or sabotage us, they’d get a regular crewperson onto the roster. It makes no sense to put a stowaway on board who’ll probably be locked up when he’s found.” She turned to Kit. “Are you prepared to work, Mr. Miller? Work hard?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And follow all the rules and restrictions we’ll have to place on you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m not here to make trouble, I swear. Things…ended up this way. Nothing I ever planned.”

  She turned back to Raine. “Then I’d rather have him earning his keep than sitting idle in the brig. I believe the galley is short one junior steward’s assistant this trip.”

  The galley. That’s what they called a kitchen on a ship, wasn’t it? “Junior steward’s assistant” probably fell somewhere behind the ship’s cat in the hierarchy on board, but it had to be better than sitting in a cell for however long it took before they kicked him off the ship.

  “It involves plenty of scrubbing and elbow grease, Mr. Miller,” Dryden said. “Something I don’t expect to hear a word of complaint about.”

  “You won’t. Thank you, Captain.” He glanced at Raine, who was scowling at him.

  “Where’s he going to sleep?” Raine asked.

  “I thought the bunk room the men of your squad sleep in,” Dryden said. Raine stared.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Where better to keep an eye on him?”

  “But…” Raine stopped, regarding Kit with narrowed eyes, clearly unhappy with this arrangement. Kit grinned, hoping to make him even less happy.

  “Yes, Captain. But I think there’s something else we can do to keep an eye on him.”