Everything had been filmed, Mattie was sure, and her membership with Sector Force would clear her since it was self-defense. But she wondered how much trouble Red was going to be in, what his background was.
She had no idea and right now she didn’t much care. He had put Carson at risk and clearly not known the dangers.
But on the other hand, when pushed, he had risked his life to defend Carson. And that much alone was worth something to her.
CHAPTER TWO
MATTIE SAT in the polished and very clean Bodie Station police interrogation room with its white walls and metal table. It smelled of cleaning solution and some sort of bad cologne.
She calmly and frankly answered all the questions that needed to be answered from the five or six people that faced her at different times.
She waited patiently the time needed for the locals to check her credentials with Sector Force Three, watched the recording of the entire fight to explain to the locals what was going on and what had happened from her point of view, from the moment Carson and Red entered the large area to the moment the fight was over.
She told them nothing other than she worked with Carson and the threat was against him, which was why she was here in the first place.
Seeing Carson again smile at her with that huge pumpkin smile made her sad. Seeing Red again just made her shake her head.
As they went through the recording a second time she watched Red. He never flinched under fire and never missed. He was good, of that there was no doubt.
And extremely well-trained and experienced.
But it sure didn’t explain his reaction to Carson’s death. Someone that good, that well-trained had seen a lot of death, just as she had. His reaction was not a normal one.
But with what she faced in her coming mission, the question of his reaction was going to have to wait.
After the recording, she answered the same question a dozen times put to her a dozen different ways. No, she had no idea why they were after her and why they would want her or Carson or the Red person dead. She only met Red just a moment before the fight broke out. Carson had told her he feared for his life, but had not said why.
Finally, after three hours they let her go, asked her to stay on the station while they investigated more and then gave her all her things back, including the data disk that Carson had given her right before he died. It was more than likely encrypted so even if they had tried to access it, they would have had no success.
At the moment they refused to give her back her guns, but that didn’t much matter since she had others carefully hidden in her luggage and clothes. Luggage she hadn’t even unpacked yet, but had simply stored in rental lockers near the docking port.
She had no idea what was going to happen to Red and honestly, even if she found him so attractive as to be sinful, she had no desire to see him again anytime soon. Part of her blamed him for Carson’s death even though she hadn’t been able to protect Carson any more than Red could.
In the police station she made arrangements to have Carson’s body taken care of and his personal belongings shipped back to Sector Force headquarters. It was all that she could do for him at this point except complete their mission and make sure those who ordered his death met their own in a very similar, but slower and far more painful way.
She left the police headquarters and, keeping a clear eye on anyone that looked threatening, she headed for the docking area to get her luggage. A safe distance back, two of the local police in tourist clothing did their best to not be noticed while following her.
She gave them the honor they deserved and pretended she didn’t see them as well. It was just easier to play along with the local authorities in most cases. You never knew when they would come in handy. Sector Force like her worked alone, were highly trained, and could bring in local help where needed.
Local police and authorities didn’t much like Sector Force, but almost every system in this sector had signed onto the treaty allowing them wide powers.
She reached the locker where her bags were stored and opened it, pulling her shoulder bag and light suitcase out.
“You need some help with that?” a voice said to her left.
She knew the voice instantly and was proud that she hadn’t jumped in the slightest, even though he had moved up toward her silently from around a corner.
But what she couldn’t control was her heart beating faster and the heat in the locker area going up. She really needed to watch herself around Red. He had an effect on her that no man that she could remember had ever had before.
“No thank you, Mr. Simms,” she said. She kept her voice as low and as cold as she possibly could. She purposely did not look at him for fear of her own reaction and her attraction to him. Instead, she made sure her bags had not been tampered with in any way, then slung the one over her shoulder and picked up the second one.
She turned and started off toward the hotel resort section of the Bodie Space Station and, even though she didn’t want him to, he stepped into pace beside her.
His long black coat made faint swishing sounds as he walked, but his boots made no sounds at all on the hard surface. The man was good at moving without being heard. That impressed her, among many things that impressed her about him.
She glanced back. The two police officers following him had now joined the two following her. They had a real parade going on here.
“I’m sorry,” Red said, his voice low and soft.
She just kept walking, keeping her eyes forward and scanning for possible problems. Red was trying to apologize, but she was damned if she was going to let him.
“How long had you known and worked with Carson?” he asked.
It was none of his damn business, so she just kept walking.
She could hear him take a deep breath, almost like a shudder, like he was trying to come to grips with something he didn’t want to face.
“I knew Carson since we were in the fifth grade together,” he said. “He was my best friend ever since.”
Now she looked over and up at him.
He was even more stunning than she remembered and her reaction was just as strong. But his gaze was directed forward and she could see the pain in his eyes.
“That’s why he called me when he thought he might be in danger,” Red said. “He knew I would protect him and I didn’t. He just never told me the scale of the problem he was facing.”
“I don’t think he actually completely understood it himself,” she said. “If I had realized there was any chance they had traced back his investigation, I never would have agreed to meet him like that, out in the open.”
“He was so damned good at covering his tracks,” Red said, nodding slightly. “I would have never expected it either. Whoever you were going after is good, very, very good. And not afraid of anyone or anything, clearly.”
“Your best friend?” Mattie asked, looking at Red for a moment as they walked. She wanted to see if there was any chance he was flat telling her a lie. She didn’t trust anyone at this moment, least of all him.
He nodded, not looking at her and again she could see the pain.
Clearly real pain.
“We made a hell of a team for years,” he said. “Muscle and Brains. That’s what our friends and family called us. I have no idea how I’m going to comfort Karen when I see her next time.”
“Karen?” Mattie asked.
“His wife,” Red said. “I contacted her just a few hours ago, but she didn’t respond.”
“I didn’t know he was married,” Mattie said, feeling shocked and even more saddened by Carson’s death. “More than likely Sector Force contacted her the moment they learned what happened and have her under protective custody in case anyone goes after his family as well.”
“Good,” Red said, nodding.
“I’m sorry,” she said, stunning herself that now she was the one doing the apologizing. She never did that, ever.
He only nodded.
They wa
lked in silence together through the large ornately decorated hotel lobby to the front desk and she registered in a top-level suite. Chances were she would be here a few days and she deserved as much.
As she turned away from the desk and walked toward the lifts to take her to her suite, Red walked with her.
She wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but she knew that right now, even as wonderful as he looked and how attracted to him she felt, she wanted to just spend some time alone and try to figure out what went wrong.
And she needed to go through the information that Carson had given her to really understand the threat.
As they neared the lifts, he stopped and turned to her. “I’m in Suite 1290. I’m going to review the information that Carson had that got him killed. If you would like, we can meet for dinner and talk about the next step in finding his killers.”
She had completely forgotten that Carson had given him the same data as he had given her.
“I work alone,” she said as the lift opened.
He stood his ground and nodded. “I know that. All Sector Force enforcers do. But I can tell you this much. I am going after my friend’s killers. I’m going to track them down and make them pay. And there is nothing going to stop me.”
He pointed across the large foyer at a restaurant seemingly hidden in what looked like a forest of some sort of oak trees. “I’ll be in that restaurant in three hours having dinner. I know you work alone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t both help each other in the planning once we both understand what Carson got into.”
She nodded and got on the lift.
The last thing she saw as the doors closed was his strong back as he turned and walked away toward a different set of lifts, his long black coat swirling silently around him.
He was so handsome in his long coat and strong stride that her breath caught.
Part of her really wanted to work with him, part of her really wanted much more than just work. But she had told him the truth. She worked alone and more than anything else, she first wanted to find out what Carson had found that had gotten him killed.
Then, and only then, would she consider her options.
And if Red had a part in those options, even for one night.
CHAPTER THREE
THE SUITE WAS LARGER than some homes she had seen. Everything, every detail seemed to be soft and plush, with thick tan carpet, thick blankets on the huge bed in the bedroom, and wonderful thick towels stacked beside a large hot tub just off the main room.
There were two different seating areas in the huge main room, both with overstuffed chairs and couches that were in varied soft hues of tan and brown. One seating area faced a large screen on one wall, another faced a massive fireplace of light and tan stone that towered over one part of the room.
Another screen covered a wall near the foot of the massive bed in the bedroom and yet another screen was tucked off to one side so it could be seen from the hot tub.
The entire room had the very faint smell of vanilla and baking cookies. A nice touch that made her realize she hadn’t eaten anything in hours. She was going to have to do something about that after she learned what was going on.
A number of desks were placed into various areas of the suite and she piled her luggage on one of them.
All the softness of the colors and fabrics were designed to counteract the most impressive aspect of the suite: The ceiling. Or better put, the lack of ceiling.
Above the warm room was nothing but the rich blues and browns and reds of the swirling clouds of what looked like a curtain amid the stark and cold blackness of space. Even as tired as she was, the view stunned her.
The colors of the nebula curtain seemed impossibly vivid and bright, as if illuminated from behind by a hundred stars.
With the lights low, it would be easy to just feel like a person was in the folds of the nebula.
The area near the hot tub seemed to be completely open to space with windows that looked out in three directions and up at the nebula curtain around the station. A person could sit in the tub and seemingly float in the clouds of colors that filled the surrounding space.
Now she really understood why someone came to this resort. In all her travels around this sector, she had never seen anything like this before.
All she really wanted to do was sit in that hot tub full of slightly-too-hot water, order room service, and then fall into that huge bed and take a very long night’s sleep.
But there wasn’t time for that now.
She needed to know what was going on, why Carson had been killed, and she needed to know it now, before she did another thing.
She moved over to a control panel on one wall and quickly found the switch to make the ceiling go opaque. Then she took a small device from her bag and did a quick scan of the room, the bedroom, and the bathroom area for any hidden listening or camera devices.
As she had hoped, the suite was clean.
That was an advantage of not making a reservation. No one knew what room she was going to be in or when or even if she planned on staying in this resort.
At some point she would have to go to Carson’s room and get his stuff, but she would cross that bridge when she needed to.
She plugged the scanner into another small device from another pocket of her bag and clicked it on. The two of them together blocked all attempts to listen or watch anything going on in this room.
Then she pulled the data stick from her pocket and plugged it into her data pad.
She sat down on the soft, deep couch, put her feet up on the coffee table and perched the data pad on her lap and slowly started through the information that Carson had found.
Forty minutes later, her hands shaking, she finished. There were parts of that information she needed to watch again, maybe even two or three times, but first she needed to take a shower and get something to eat.
She clicked the intercom to the main desk. “Connect me to room twelve-ninety please.”
Red answered after a moment with a curt, “Yeah.”
“Forty-five minutes in the restaurant,” she said.
“Okay,” he said flatly and hung up.
She had a hunch he had just gone through the same data she had and was feeling the same way about it all. This was one job she couldn’t tackle alone and she knew it.
And she guessed he knew he couldn’t do it alone either.
With this task, she wasn’t afraid to admit it. There was far, far too much at risk. And if she had to, she would call in more Sector Force agents.
She quickly set up her data pad to encode all the information on Carson’s drive into something that could only be deciphered at Sector Force Headquarters. Then she sent it.
It would take the Sector Force Three hours to go through it and even longer to study the data and get prepared in case she called them in.
Then she sent off an urgent query for as much information about a Red Simms as they could provide. That part would take hours to get back to her, but at least after dinner she would know more about the man that she was going to have to work with.
It was going to be her and Red trying to save both the Sector Force and many more lives through the known sectors. It was no wonder Carson had called his friend to come and help protect him. Now she too was going to need all the help she could get.
It was going to be two of them against what seemed, from what Carson found, to be an army possibly with a fleet of ships. She wondered if Red was going to be willing to even go against those odds. She had a hunch he wouldn’t even hesitate.
She had that much of a sense of him.
She turned and strode toward the bathroom. She needed a hot shower and a change of clothes and then a good dinner with the most handsome man she had ever met.
If she was going to take on a suicide mission, she might as well be fed and have great company.
CHAPTER FOUR
RED HUNG UP the phone and stared at it for a moment before turning back to watching the last of the
data that Carson had found. The information that had gotten him killed.
Clearly Mattie had gotten completely through the information and had come to the same conclusion he had come to already. They were both going to need help, and maybe a lot of it.
And they were going to have to work together. Something about that idea both excited him and worried him. He wasn’t one to trust anyone, let alone a Sector Force Three agent, but she had to be the most alluring and attractive woman he had met in years.
He stopped and stared off into space at the oranges and blues and reds in the curtain pattern of the nebula.
The room around him was a beautiful two-bedroom suite with a huge living room, huge hot tub, and an enclosed deck with a private heated swimming pool that allowed the guests to swim under the stars and the fantastic colors of the nebula filling the sky overhead. It was the largest and most expensive suite in the entire complex and he could care less at the moment.
He had originally booked it when Carson called. He had been thinking they would sit around and talk and enjoy it. Money didn’t matter to Red, since he was one of the richest men in this sector, and maybe many sectors, thanks to his family money and some really well-timed investments of his own. Plus the business that he and Carson had started had made him yet another fortune.
But right now, instead of enjoying all this and the beauty that surrounded this incredible suite, all he could think about was losing his best friend, how stupid he had been to let that happen, and how angry he was at everything. All he wanted to do was punch things, but he had learned a long time ago that made no difference at all.
If he had just brought Carson to this suite, kept him here, instead of allowing him to go out into such a public place as that shopping area. And if Carson would have just told him a little more of the problems he had discovered. It had taken a lot for Carson to call him and ask for his help.
And Red had failed him completely and totally.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to stay controlled.
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