Ashore

by Isabelle Adler

  Instinctively, Matt and Ryce moved to stand back-to-back just as the men charged at them. Matt ducked and kicked his opponent in the knee while Ryce swung the bag with the heavy tool kit, aiming at the other guy’s face. It connected with a satisfying thud, and the man grunted in pain. Matt’s attacker staggered, but the tattooed leader sidestepped him and threw a punch that Matt blocked at the last moment. The impact made his forearm go numb, and he hissed. The guy was definitely stronger, and all Matt could do was stay out of the range of his blows, dodging and ducking while trying to score a kick where it would hurt. He wasn’t above fighting dirty—not when he was reasonably sure his life depended on it—but he had to admit he was out of practice, and he wasn’t always quick enough. Some of the heavy hits found their mark, and pain blossomed where they landed.

  Matt’s first attacker left the leader to finish the job and rounded on Ryce with his other pal. But unlike Matt, Ryce’s close-combat training was apparently still fresh in his mind. He was deceptively lean, his fine elfin features giving him an almost fragile appearance, but Matt knew very well he was much stronger than he looked. His attackers, who must have pegged him as easy prey, fell back under the onslaught as Ryce went on the offensive, his every move calculated with deadly precision to inflict damage. It was like an exotic dance, and Matt would have paused to admire the sheer beauty of it had he not been otherwise occupied. Soon, one of Ryce’s opponents sagged to the floor, clutching at a broken arm, while the other hunched over as Ryce’s fist drove right into his solar plexus. The man wheezed and fell to his knees, coughing violently.

  Seeing that, the leader grabbed Matt by the shoulder, easily crushing his resistance, and threw him across the floor, momentarily stunning him. The blade of an electric knife flashed in his attacker’s hand as he lunged at Ryce’s back.

  There was no time to think, just to act. Without bothering to get back up, Matt rolled across the floor and grabbed the man’s ankle, yanking it as hard as he could in a desperate attempt to slow him down. The guy staggered with a curse, the knife slicing a wide arc through the air as he struggled to keep his balance. Ryce spun around and ducked beneath the guy’s raised hand, evading the glowing blade, just as his opponent managed to shake his leg free and kick Matt in the face.

  For a moment, all Matt could see were bright stars dancing before his eyes. Sadly, those weren’t the kind of stars he was so fond of gazing at. Then the pain finally caught up with him. It felt as though his face was going to explode—if it hadn’t already. Through the daze, he could still hear grunts and the sounds of flesh colliding with flesh, and he scrambled on the floor that was slippery with something wet and sticky oozing from his nose. He opened his eyes just in time to see Ryce grapple with the larger man, locking his arm in a weird angle as the knife trembled between their bodies, threatening to sear fabric and skin. With a sickening cracking sound, the thug’s arm gave, and the knife toppled to the floor.

  Ryce applied pressure to the man’s broken arm, forcing him to cry out and fall on his knees.

  “What was the message?” Ryce asked in a voice that was dripping ice.

  “Drop out of the race or you’re dead,” the tattooed man panted.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Ryce released the guy’s arm abruptly, sending him sprawling awkwardly, and kicked the knife into the far corner of the chamber. He then helped Matt to his feet, throwing his arm across his shoulders.

  In any other circumstances, Matt would have been embarrassed to be toted around in this fashion, but right now, he was too disoriented and too much of a bloody mess to care. He hobbled alongside Ryce as they hurried to the control panel, opened the door to the dock, and made their way to the safety of Lady Lisa, leaving Stahl’s buddies to fend for themselves as best they could.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “OH MY GOD, what happened to you?” Tony exclaimed as Ryce led Matt through the main hatch aboard the Lady Lisa. Ryce’s quick call to her commlink had woken her up, and she was staring at them, still bleary-eyed from sleep, her hair hanging loose over her shoulders. It was the first time Matt had seen her without her neat braid and in her pajamas. Nonetheless, the call had alarmed her enough that she also had her gun at the ready.

  Tony lowered the weapon as they shuffled aboard and helped Ryce usher Matt down the corridor to the infirmary.

  “We were ambushed.” Ryce lowered Matt gently onto the cot, shoving a plastic-covered pillow under his head. “I wasn’t hurt, but Matt was injured while trying to prevent another guy from knifing me.”

  “Why would Griggs’s people try to knife you?”

  “These weren’t Griggs’s people.”

  “Boy, do you have a knack for getting yourself into trouble.” Tony sighed. She nudged Ryce aside and used a roll of gauze to swab the blood off Matt’s face.

  “Is my nose broken? It feels broken,” Matt mumbled around the gauze. It wasn’t his first time being kicked in the face, but he’d almost forgotten how fucking painful it was. His entire face was throbbing, and it felt as though his nose now took up at least two-thirds of it. The steady trickle of warm blood into his mouth wasn’t helping. The metallic taste of it stirred up unpleasant memories, and for a brief moment, he had to suppress irrational panic. He winced as Tony carefully probed the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones.

  “Surprisingly, no,” she said. “You were lucky; no bones seem to be fractured. But I wouldn’t count on you landing any modeling jobs soon. Let’s get you cleaned up and see if I can find something to reduce the swelling.”

  She insisted Ryce tell her what happened while she tended to Matt, staunching the nosebleed and placing a cool pack over the bridge of his nose.

  “Stahl’s the bastard who flies the Waxwing jet?” she asked when Ryce was finished. Her mouth was set in a hard line. “Sounds like he went to a lot of trouble to rough you up.”

  “If he did, this just means he’s worried about the possibility of losing,” Ryce said. “That speaks of his insecurity. If he was so sure of his superiority, he wouldn’t have felt the need to warn me off. He knows I can beat him.”

  “He wants you to drop out of the next race, so he probably intends to participate in it,” Matt chimed in. The pain made it difficult to focus on anything else, but he welcomed the distraction. “We already know he won’t stop at anything to win. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea for you to go through with it.”

  Ryce was silent for a moment, simply looking at him. Matt was already bracing for a snappy response, but finally, Ryce just sighed wearily.

  “I don’t think I can come up with a better one. The race is already set for the next morning. Think what they might do if I don’t show up. Besides, your entire plan for rescuing Val from the Medusa hinges on my participation. They would assume you’d be watching the race too, not crawling around their ship. Sometimes, there just isn’t any easy way out.”

  Matt bit his lip, which was a bad move, considering how bruised it already was. Ryce was actually being reasonable about this—not cocky, or overconfident, or dismissive. There was nothing Matt could say to counter that, and he knew it.

  He docilely waited for Tony to stuff his nose with cotton pads and feed him some painkillers. All he wanted was to pass out in his bed and worry about everything else later. He just hoped the painkillers were potent enough to shut him off for a few hours of dreamless and sensation-free sleep.

  “Are we all set for tomorrow?” he asked just to shift his thoughts onto something other than the current state of his visage as he eased himself off the cot gracelessly. Tony only nodded, watchful like a parent whose child was taking their first baby steps.

  “There are some minor adjustments to be made on the jet, but other than that, everything is ready,” Ryce said. “We should all get some sleep.”

  “Just be careful when you’re working on the jet tomorrow,” Matt admonished as Ryce helped him to his room. The painkillers were thankfully kicking in, and the agony receded to a dull pound
ing behind his eyes. “Who knows what this Stahl is capable of, and who he’s gonna send after you next. You shouldn’t go there alone at all.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ryce said, guiding Matt into his cabin and onto his conveniently unmade bunk. For the first time in his life, Matt was happy he was such a slob. “That transport bay is always teeming with people. He’d be foolish to try something with so many witnesses around. I’m more worried about you right now, to be honest. How do you know you’re not concussed?”

  He hovered over Matt’s bunk, looking at him with concern, even as Matt tried and failed to curl up in a position that would bring him some sort of comfort. His fatigues were dirty and bloody, but washing and changing would have to wait till he felt he could stand on his own two feet again without falling over.

  “I’m all right. Nothing’s even broken. Besides, Tony gave me the all clear. I just need to rest a bit, and I’ll be as good as new in the morning.”

  “It’s almost morning already,” Ryce noted. “Are you sure you’re going to be up to breaking and entering?”

  “If you can do your part, I can do mine,” Matt said, closing his eyes. “See you tomorrow, okay?”

  “See you,” Ryce said after a heartbeat. Matt heard the door slide quietly behind him even as he drifted off into numbness.

  MATT WOKE UP well past noon and stared blearily at his commlink for a few moments, trying to recall where he was and what had happened to him. It was much worse than one of his usual hangovers. At least then he’d have had the advantage of drinking himself into a stupor before passing out. Somehow, painkillers didn’t have quite the same effect.

  He dragged himself into the shower to change out of yesterday’s smelly clothes and wash up. A glance in the mirror showed his face was still a bit swollen (and tender to the touch), and he sported two impressive black eyes. But it actually looked worse than it felt, which was a good sign in his book.

  Freshening up and popping two more painkillers went a long way to improving his mood. He checked in with Tony, who again made sure no bones were broken and gave him a fresh cooling pack. He sat down with her, working out the details of the plan.

  Their best bet was sneaking aboard the Medusa in the middle of the night. As Matt and Ryce had witnessed last night, there weren’t a lot of people hanging out at that particular dock during those late hours, and Ryce’s device would deactivate the cameras while they broke in. They went over the blueprints of a Javelin yacht, though these were generic schematics Ryce had pulled off the web. It stood to reason Griggs would have made custom modifications on those, but at least it gave them a rough idea of where they were headed.

  Matt would have preferred going in alone instead of putting Tony in danger, but he couldn’t dissuade her from accompanying him. And as far as backup went, he could hardly wish for someone he trusted more, or who was handier with a loaded weapon.

  There wasn’t much to do until then. Matt tried to occupy his mind and hands with routine maintenance, which he’d neglected over the course of the last few days. But he had a hard time concentrating on even the simplest task, so he gave up on that eventually. No new messages came into his inbox. It appeared the IMA were still biding their time on deciding whether to hire them, and even Nora seemed to ease the pressure. Ryce was conducting a final inspection of his jet, but he was due back soon, and Matt resisted the urge to check up on him every few minutes. Whatever he’d said about being safe while working on the jet, Matt doubted this Stahl fellow was reasonable enough to adhere to any assumptions.

  He moped around on the bridge until he couldn’t take the waiting any longer. Patience, like so many other virtues, was not an attribute he could boast.

  Matt certainly drew attention on his way to the transit hold where the jet was stowed. Passersby flinched and did double takes, some even shying away as he strode down the corridors.

  “Haven’t you people ever seen someone who got sucker punched before?” Matt muttered, annoyed.

  The Sparrow aerojet was even more battered than the last time Matt had seen it. Sand particles had grazed the hull, leaving tiny scratches in the paint. But performance was more important than appearance, and the little jet had proved its capabilities in Ryce’s hands.

  As he approached, Ryce hopped down from the cockpit and dusted his hands. After all the side glances he’d been receiving on the way there, Matt was grateful to see a smile light up his handsome face.

  “Are you here to escort me home?” Ryce teased, locking up the jet and making a final walk-around.

  “It’s probably gonna be the other way around,” Matt said. “The way you gave these guys a bashing, it was awe-inspiring. I still haven’t thanked you for saving my neck last night.”

  “I should be thanking you too, then.” Ryce came up and took Matt’s hand into his. Matt was a little startled by the gesture; Ryce wasn’t one for public displays of affection. But it made the touch that much more meaningful, and Matt held on to his hand a bit tighter.

  “As much as I’d like to take credit for contributing, all I did was get the crap beat out of me.”

  “No shit,” a gruff voice said behind them.

  Matt turned quickly, berating himself for letting his guard down enough for someone to creep up on them like that. Being besotted had never saved anyone from being shot in the back.

  He found himself face-to-face with a tall, rangy man wearing a dark military-style jacket and cargo pants, and his slim hope of it being Cobb, come to dispense his advice again, evaporated. The stranger was a pilot too, judging from his adapters, but he was younger than Cobb and wearing a scowl that made it perfectly clear he wasn’t there to offer encouraging words of wisdom. Matt’s hackles instinctively rose at the dangerous gleam in his eyes.

  “I see you chose to ignore my message,” the guy said.

  Matt resisted the urge to step between him and Ryce. He was damned if he’d give Stahl the impression they were afraid of him, even if every nerve in his body screamed to get the hell away.

  “You shouldn’t let others do your dirty work,” Ryce said coolly, his usual haughty mask replacing the earlier genuine smile. “It doesn’t have quite the same effect.”

  “Well, I’m here now,” Stahl said with disdain. “You think you can snag that prize? Think again. You race tomorrow, and you won’t be leaving the fucking canyon.”

  “If the canyon isn’t big enough for the two of us, I suggest you sit this one out,” Ryce retorted.

  Matt shot him a warning look. It was a bad idea to antagonize a bully without knowing if he had the means to retaliate—like another squad of goons hiding somewhere in the depths of the hold, just waiting for a sign to pounce.

  “First of all, let’s all chill,” he said in the most pacifying tone he could muster. “Since you asked so nicely, we’ll consider it, how about that?”

  “You. I know who you are,” Stahl said, turning to Matt. “Heard all about you from a friend of yours. He’ll be mighty pleased to hear you got that pretty face bashed in.”

  “Oh yeah? Which friend might that be?”

  “Dylan Rodgers.”

  Hearing that name was like a punch in the gut. For a second, Matt couldn’t hear anything else above the white noise in his ears.

  Ryce moved closer, touching his arm discreetly. As light as the touch was, it stemmed the flow of bad memories, grounding Matt in the here and now, and it was all he could do not to reach for Ryce and grab him like a lifeline.

  “I used to pilot one of his ships,” Stahl continued. “Think he’d like to hear about where you’ve been hiding?”

  “Rodgers is in Federal prison.” It was a miracle Matt’s voice wasn’t quivering with tension. “My whereabouts are the least of his concerns and will stay that way for a very long time.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Stahl’s knowing smirk sent an unpleasant shiver down Matt’s spine.

  “We’re done here.” Ryce stepped up between them. “I suggest you leave now, before I fi
nd an excuse to call Station Security.”

  Stahl gave him a once-over and spit on the floor in contempt, barely missing Ryce’s feet.

  “You mark my words, bitch. Show up tomorrow and you’re roadkill.”

  They watched in silence as Stahl stalked away.

  “Are you all right?” Ryce asked quietly. “Don’t let the bastard get to you. Rodgers is behind bars; he was only trying to mess with your head.”

  Matt let out a laugh that was entirely too unconvincing.

  “I should be the one telling you to ignore him.” He shook his head. Ryce was right. Stahl was just a bully trying to screw with him, and he wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. “But I’m not sure I can. Perhaps it’s better if we listened.”

  Ryce pressed his lips into a hard line.

  “He’s a tough guy who tries to get all alpha-male on me for stepping on his toes. He’ll have to do a lot more than sending hired thugs or get into a pissing match to scare me.”

  “It’s not the thugs I’m worried about,” Matt said. The image of the tiny Finch jet exploding against the canyon wall while the racers simply sped past was still too vivid in his mind. Ryce was as excellent a pilot as they came, but even he couldn’t anticipate every move his close opponent might make—especially such a vicious and unscrupulous opponent as Stahl.

  “We should get back,” Ryce said in a more reserved tone.

  They returned to Lady Lisa without incident, and without exchanging another word about tomorrow’s race.

  Chapter Eighteen

  INSTEAD OF GIVING Ryce some time alone to cool off, Matt trailed determinately behind him to his cabin. The pills were beginning to wear off, and the pain was once again spreading across Matt’s face and into his brain. Fuck, this was absolutely the worst possible time to be nursing a persistent headache and bruises. Way to keep a low profile and not attract attention.

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Matt said once the door to Ryce’s cabin closed behind them, before Ryce could round up on him. “And before you get all defensive again, I know you can take care of yourself, but shit happens. We’re already too deep in it.”