He squeezed her hard, trying to mentally erase that last part.
Their story probably ended with help, protect, fuck, and he wasn’t sure he’d done any of that except for the fuck part.
“As usual, you hit the target first, Ganavan. And it looks like you went about it in a pretty Shade-y way,” said a deep voice he hated to recognize.
Shade froze. No. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.
His whole body seemed to involuntarily curl around Tess.
Solan chuckled as Tess jumped back from Shade’s arms, breaking his grip. Confusion flashed across her face, and then her eyes widened when she saw the gun trained on her chest.
Turning to face the other hunter, Shade grabbed on to Tess’s wrist from behind and kept himself in front of her. He’d been an idiot to leave this morning without arming himself, but he hadn’t wanted Tess to question him. Unless you were military, private security, or a hard-core rebel, you didn’t walk around with a gun.
Solan kept his firearm raised. Over the centuries, humanity had tried all sorts of laser-based weapons, only to decide that plain old guns were still the best way to kill people. Accurate. Long-distance. Deadly. They were hard to deflect. Bullets just went through shit.
Shade’s gut clenched. A bullet would go through Tess.
“What is he talking about?” Tess asked with quiet urgency. She tugged on her wrist.
Shade didn’t answer. His eyes darted around the platform. Where there was Solan, there was Raquel.
“So helpful of you to do all the work.” Raquel stepped out from the shadows behind the ship. As usual, she wore a tight black catsuit with a low-slung utility belt. Shade hated that belt. It was basically an exercise in how many illegal weapons a person could fit into a small space. “Just like last time, when I burned off your hair.”
“It wasn’t that long to begin with,” Shade ground out.
Raquel strode over to Solan’s side, making one more armed body between Tess and him and the elevator tube. Solan stood a head taller than his wife and was as black as she was white. They prided themselves on being able to hunt day and night—one of them always blended in. Solan knew his way around guns and sometimes shot with both hands. Raquel chose tranquilizers over bullets, but she could move like the wind and kick like a turbo blast.
Tess started tensing more and more behind him. Shade could hear her breathing turning shallow and fast. His guilt conjured up the cold rolling off her in waves.
Facing the bounty hunters, Shade felt his lips pull back in a snarl. The last time they’d fought, Solan had stolen his prize while Raquel had gone at him with her steel-tipped boots. Shade could handle a gun, but he was more hands-on, and you couldn’t exactly shoot your colleagues, no matter how underhanded they were. Despite two cracked ribs from one of the more vicious kicks Raquel had gotten in, he would have beaten her and maybe gotten his target back if she hadn’t pulled that mini firebomb out of her belt and thrown it at his head.
“Quite the prize,” Solan said, trying to get a better look at Tess. He cocked his gun, and Shade felt fear blow through his chest.
She could die.
And she’d hate him if she lived.
“He said alive,” Shade growled, trying to stay in front of Tess.
“He said there’d be a bonus for a live capture.” Solan started slowly walking forward. “The way I see it, there’s already more than enough. No reason to risk the hunt.”
“Shade?” Tess whispered his name. The hurt and betrayal in her voice clawed him open and bit with sharp teeth.
He wasn’t the only one to hear it. Raquel laughed. “Aww. Poor little girl didn’t know she was in bed with the big bad wolf.”
Tess jerked hard on his grip.
Not taking his eyes off the hunters, Shade started squeezing out one of the oldest codes known to man against Tess’s wrist, hoping there was a tiny percent chance she knew Morse. Safe he pulsed out, even though she wasn’t. He meant with him. She was safe with him.
Tess wrenched her arm from his hand.
“Stay behind me,” Shade snapped, twisting to reach for her again.
“Don’t touch me!” she snapped back.
Her horrified expression was enough to keep him from putting his hands on her again. He turned back around, his teeth grinding. He wouldn’t touch her, but he wouldn’t let Solan get a line on her, either. The other man would have a lot of explaining to do with the higher-ups if he blew holes in a fellow select hunter, and the mountain of shit a move like that could pile up on him would keep Solan from taking the shot.
Shade tried to inch them toward the Endeavor’s open door without touching Tess. They weren’t that far from it, but Solan was a good shot. With the climb up…
Why the hell didn’t she ever put down the stairs?
Tess came out every morning, gave him coffee, and talked about stuff most people didn’t dare open their mouths about, making him crave their next conversation until he could barely sleep, but she didn’t use the stairs. Unless Shiori came out, everyone pretended the damn ship didn’t even have them.
His palms started to sweat.
“Time to move out of the way, Ganavan,” Solan said with a flick of his gun. It was a Redline, Legal Weapon 10. Shade had two, and he knew the recoil was so strong that it was hard to get multiple shots off fast.
“No.” Shade shook his head. For Solan and Raquel, this was just another job, part of a long string of them. Not for him. “Not this one. Move on,” he said.
But even as he said it, he knew this wasn’t just another job for any of them. Thanks to Bridgebane’s ridiculous bounty, Tess was the monetary mothership, and there was no way these two were backing down.
“You’re outnumbered,” Solan informed him, as if Shade couldn’t fucking count. “Either we brawl again like last time—and we all know how that turned out for you—or we go in on this one together, like we talked about.”
“You talked. I shut you down.” But he obviously hadn’t thrown them off the scent like he’d hoped. Or he had, but only for a few days.
Raquel narrowed her eyes, and Shade could read her like a book. She was thinking about which one of her hidden gadgets she could throw at him without getting herself into too much trouble. There wasn’t always an easy distinction between incapacitating and lethal. So far, though, Raquel had figured it out.
Shade cracked his knuckles and loosened up. He hated hitting a woman, but he could make an exception for Raquel. She seemed more like a machine to him than anything else.
“I got here first,” he reminded them, because that was supposed to mean something in this profession. It was his final effort to avoid a fight.
“Don’t be a bastard,” Raquel spat. “You’ll still be the top hunter, and two hundred million is more than enough to share around.”
Behind him, Tess gasped. The sound sliced right through him. He could imagine what was going on in her head right now, and it made his insides curl up in disgust.
“You’re…Dark Watch?” Tess sounded as though she’d never heard something so horrendous in her life.
“No!” He would never be that.
Solan snorted. “Then what do you call it when you’re on Bridgebane’s payroll, just like the rest of us?”
At that, Tess’s breathing turned so hard and erratic that Shade could feel it punching into the back of his neck.
Don’t lose it on me now, baby. He still had to figure this out.
“I can’t…” Tess didn’t finish, and an audible shudder leaked from her mouth.
His stomach sank. This was not going to end well.
Over his shoulder, talking fast, Shade said, “Listen to me, Tess—”
“No!” He caught a flash of her eyes—two bright-blue bombs ready to blow.
“Tess, listen—”
“You listen to me, Shade Ganavan.
” She uttered his name like a curse. “I will hate you until the day I die.” She rammed her hands hard into his shoulder blades, shoving him forward a step.
She ran just as Solan sent off his first shot. Shade lunged after her, trying to stay in between them enough to mess with Solan’s aim and shield Tess.
Fiona suddenly curled her upper body around the doorway and started spraying Grayhawk bullets all over the place. Solan and Raquel ran and dove behind the supply crate that Shade had left on the dock, and Tess sprang toward her ship. As if by magic, Jax appeared. She raised her arms, and he hauled her up, throwing her away from the opening and out of the hunters’ line of sight.
From the cover of the crate, Solan started firing back at Fiona. His angle was nearly impossible for aiming inside the ship, but dents started showing up on the outer hull near the door. With only her arm and one eye visible, Fiona kept hammering off shots that pinged off the big metal box. Out in the open, Shade figured it was only a matter of seconds before he caught a ricochet and got hit.
Something seared his skin. Shrapnel? He reached up.
No, Raquel and her fucking darts. Unlike Solan, she never missed. He ripped the tranquilizer from his neck.
Shade knew he was practically in the cross fire, but he had to tell Tess. She had to know…
Safe.
He staggered, the strong sedative hitting him fast. Gunfire roared on his left.
“Tess!” he croaked, reaching for her. His hand wavered in front of his face.
From just a few feet away inside her ship, Tess stared at him, her fiery eyes gone cold, her beautiful face turned to rock.
“In or out?” Jax yelled, his eyes sweeping back and forth between Shade and Tess.
If Tess hesitated at all, Shade didn’t see it. “Leave him with his friends,” she answered, stepping back.
Shade felt himself crumbling, falling apart. It wasn’t only the drug. He’d lost. He’d lost everything. Again.
A ball of fur streaked past Tess’s legs and jumped off the ship, landing like a gray torpedo on the platform and racing away from the noise.
Panic replaced the hatred on her face. “No! Bonk!” she yelled, lunging after her cat.
“Stop!” Jax’s bellow probably wouldn’t have stopped her, but his hand grabbing the back of her jacket did. He jerked Tess back.
“Bonk!” Her frantic shouts rattled like a nightmare in Shade’s spinning head.
With the last of his strength, his knees giving out, Shade lurched toward the exterior lock—because he was the asshole who’d programmed his own handprint into Tess’s new door. But before he could lock her in himself, Jax slammed his palm down on the interior control, still gripping a struggling, screaming Tess in his other hand. The door whooshed shut, ending Fiona’s hail of bullets toward the other hunters and cutting Shade off from the woman he’d fallen for so hard that he’d ruined his life.
He wanted to howl in misery, but his mouth wouldn’t open for anything other than breaths. He fell onto the platform, darkness crawling over him, empty and void like space.
He heard the ship take off, felt the slap of hot air and the vibration of the engine as Tess flew out of his life.
Two shadows loomed over him. Raquel gave him a good kick, and he heard his own groan as if from a mile away from this place.
He wasn’t military—exactly—but he was close enough. There were a hundred ways to spin what he’d done as treason. It wouldn’t be hard, because it was.
“The next time you fuck up a hunt like that just because you want the bigger prize all to yourself, we’ll report you for obstruction,” Solan announced.
Shade huffed, a weak sound that reflected the current state of his body. Leave it to the Heartless Duo to think he’d been holding out for the bonuses and not even realize he’d been protecting Tess. That was a relief, he supposed.
He should have known they’d come. No story, not even one about his precious docks, could have thrown them off for long or kept them from wondering why Shade Ganavan was ignoring the biggest hunt of their lives.
They’d probably been on Albion 5 just long enough to track him to this platform, wait for the cover of dark, and then try to ambush Tess when she came back. Only she hadn’t come back. She’d stayed away all night and then shown up at daybreak. With him.
“There was plenty for everyone on that one, even without the live capture or the stolen goods,” Raquel said in a fury. “Now, no one has anything. Bastard.” She plugged him with another dart.
Chapter 21
Fiona raced off as I stumbled back from Jax, shaking. My heart felt ripped out, shattered, crushed. Bonk was gone; I’d lost him. And Shade…
Horror overwhelmed me, tearing through my chest and shredding what was left of it. The ghost of Shade’s touch haunted me. I could still feel him pushing into me, holding me close.
Touches. Kisses. Words that had wrapped around me like promises. Lies.
I curled in on myself. Everything burned. My breath came out in harsh pants, shuddering from my lungs and then sawing back in. My head swam. I couldn’t… This couldn’t…
I blinked hard, trying to clear my thoughts. Trying not to feel Shade anymore. His hands, his mouth, his warmth.
“You’re hurt!” Jax said.
Confused, I uncrossed my arms and tried to straighten. The pain and weight of my awful mistake were so heavy that it was hard to move. Time seemed to advance in slow, straining increments, and it was all I could do just to get from one devastated heartbeat to the next.
So much had happened in so little time, and it all clanged inside me, jarring and discordant. Shade smiling. Bonk purring. Vitamin D. Hot kisses. Shade’s whispered Come back. Bonk curled up in my lap.
Pull it together. Pull it together, Tess.
I was rocking. I forced myself to stop. I had to figure out what Jax was talking about.
Almost as if from outside of myself, I took stock and found my right hand slicked with blood. It trembled as I lifted it. My hand was fine, besides being wet and red. I glanced at my side, where I’d been clutching myself. It turned out that Shade’s betrayal wasn’t the only thing burning like a deep, searing cut. A bullet had grazed me, slicing a line through my jacket and dress.
Jax dove in for a better look.
“Flesh wound,” he and I said at the same time, his voice filled with relief and mine fighting its way past the tears in my throat. It wasn’t the gunshot injury that hurt.
The Endeavor lifted off, making us both lurch.
My eyes widened, meeting Jax’s. “Who the hell is flying the ship?”
“Miko?” he guessed. “Or maybe Fiona.”
Well, I sure hoped it wasn’t Shiori. We raced toward the bridge together and burst like a terrified storm through the doors.
“Thank the Powers!” Miko backed off the controls, looking pale and wide-eyed. Her hand shook. It was hard enough to navigate the maze of docks and interwoven platforms with two hands, let alone one. And we hadn’t even gotten to the traffic of the spheres.
Jax ran to his console, and I stumbled over to mine. I took the controls, but my hands rattled too much to steer.
“Jax!” I barked.
“I’m on it,” he answered. I wasn’t sure he was entirely steady either after everything that had just happened, but he was a hell of a lot better than blind, one-handed, or bleeding and quaking. Fiona hadn’t tried. She knew her own equipment inside and out, but she was clueless when it came to a flight console. Too many buttons she’d never tried to memorize.
As soon as Jax took over, Miko threw her arms around me.
“What happened?” She sounded both outraged and scared as she drew back.
I didn’t know how to answer. So much had happened, and it was all so raw.
“Men are assholes,” Fiona said.
Jax grunted, seeming like he
wanted to take exception but was too busy making sure we didn’t hit another ship as he guided us through the troposphere.
Shiori, who was sitting in the navigator’s chair, took exception for him. “You are unfair to one who has always been good and honest with us.”
Fiona grunted, as though she wanted to take exception. I had to agree. Jax was good—no doubt about it—but if he were honest, even with himself, he and Fiona probably wouldn’t have been in separate bedrooms for the last few years.
Fiona inserted herself between Miko and me, the bridge’s medical supplies already in her hands. I shrugged off my jacket, wincing at the movement, and then let Fiona cut a big hole in my ruined dress.
Her brow furrowed as she squirted me with saline.
Shit, I knew that look. It meant stitches. I sat, keeping my arms crossed over my chest and hoping she’d miss the lingering needle marks. Her attention was on my waist, and she didn’t look up.
Miko joined her grandmother at the navigation controls. “As soon as we reach the thermosphere, I’ll activate the coordinates for Starway 8.”
“No!” Everyone looked over at me like I was nuts. “Jump us to Flyhole. We’ll get lost in the crowd while I sweep for tracking bugs.”
Jax’s face turned thunderous. “You are not going on a fucking spacewalk with a hole in your side!”
“It’s a scratch,” I said. “And I’m not leading bounty hunters to the orphanage.”
His face reddened, except for the scar on his cheek, which whitened instead.
“Jax!” I flung my hand toward the window.
His eyes snapped back to where they should have been, and he quickly adjusted our course out of the way of the huge transport that was bearing down on us.
“Argue when we’re in the stratosphere if you want, but we need to sweep the exterior for bugs, and you know it.” At least Shade had never come inside—something to be grateful for. But he was way too smart not to track the ship, and those other two hadn’t looked dumb, either.
I gritted my teeth when Fiona stuck the suture needle in and then grimaced at the pull of thread. She did it again, and the pain actually helped to focus my thoughts and settle me. Every sharp prick drove Shade farther from my heart. Each painful tug erased his touch. This was my reality, and I didn’t even have a shot to numb myself to any of it. I was stupid to have forgotten.
Nightchaser Page 22
