Ben Halsey’s death was a separate incident. And J.M.’s and Jonathan’s refusal to see that put Trip in increasing danger. Because Devin couldn’t discount that whoever killed Halsey was after Jonathan Macy Guthrie III—and was likely still after him. And had a twelve-hour head start.
Obedience warred with responsibility, loyalty with protection.
There was Baris–Agri. The Galenth Fund. His parents …
And his nineteen-year-old nephew, with no idea that a killer was tracking him.
Devin shoved himself to his feet as Barthol placed the coffee tray on the low sofa table. “None for me.”
His father’s voice stopped him at the library’s doors. “Where are you going?”
He turned slightly, as if not fully facing his father could somehow buffer the wrath he knew would come. “To find Trip. Somewhere between here and Calth sector.”
“Devin Jonathan! You can’t be serious—”
“I am. You can sit here and wait for Tage to contact you, but every minute you do is one more minute Trip is out there, chasing this crazy scheme of his, with whoever killed Halsey right on his tail.”
His father’s eyes narrowed. “I will not have you use this as an excuse to run out on your obligations.”
Excuse? Obligations? “You already have Nathanson and Torry handling my projects—”
“And your wedding?”
Devin stared hard at his father. “I think Trip’s life is more important.”
“Our barristers will handle his arrest. Your job is to marry the Embersons’ daughter.”
His job. The ludicrousness of it almost made him laugh out loud. His job—the youngest, least important Guthrie son’s job—was to be put out to stud to a social-climbing Garno family, while the next Guthrie heir’s life was in danger.
He raised his chin and said a word he had never before uttered to his father. “No.”
His father’s lips thinned. “Devin Jonathan Guthrie, how dare you defy me!”
“I’ll need the Prosperity. I assume she’s fueled and we have a pilot available? That will get me there quicker.” He wasn’t one hundred percent sure where “there” was, but based on conversations he’d had with Trippy right after the erroneous news of Philip’s death was released, he had a strong suspicion Trippy was heading for the border of Aldan and Baris sectors.
His father glanced at Jonathan. “Alert our pilots. Devin is banned from using any Guthrie stellar transport until I say otherwise. And you,” his father said, turning back to Devin, “will stay here. And do as you’re told.”
Small tendrils of hot anger coiled beneath Devin’s skin. It was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling. He tried to tamp the anger down, but some escaped, adding a bitter note to his answer. “No. I will not.”
He swiveled abruptly away and, ignoring his father’s command to return to the library, headed doggedly across the grand salon for the closest set of elevators and his suite, his fists clenched so tightly by his side that his arms shook.
——————
Devin was sealing his duffel when a soft rapping sounded on his door. He left the suitcase on his bed, then crossed his small living room, his footsteps hard even against the plush carpeting. Shoulders tensed, he yanked the door open, expecting Jonathan or Ethan. Or even Valerie, because he wouldn’t put it past J.M. to use a mother’s tears to try to stop him.
But it was Barthol, alone in the hallway.
“May I come in, Mr. Devin?”
“If my father sent you—”
“He didn’t.”
Devin stepped back warily, noticing a black box tucked under the chief steward’s arm.
“I thought you might need this,” Barthol said, as Devin closed the door behind him. He held out the box.
Devin took it, recognizing what it contained as Barthol named it: “It’s a Carver-Twelve. Admiral Guthrie gave it to me.”
“Philip gave me one too.”
“But I doubt you brought it. And if you’re going to catch up to Master Trip, you’re not going to have time to stop at your residence in Garno to get it.”
Surprise and relief surged through Devin. “You don’t believe Tage has him either.”
Barthol stepped by him, hands behind his back, pacing the room as he spoke. “Miss Thana wasn’t the only person Master Trip confided in about his concerns for his uncle Philip. And ImpSec would not leave a deskcomp behind. Nor would they be holding a Guthrie for this length of time without contacting Mr. Jonathan or your father. It’s simply not the way we—they—operate.” He turned to face Devin.
Devin didn’t miss the deliberate correction from we to they. “You were with Imperial Security?” That didn’t totally surprise him. Many of GGS’s security personnel had been. But Barthol?
“Yes and no. My division was Special Protection Service: SPS.”
That surprised him. “Executive protection and political assassinations.”
“Yes.”
Devin’s eyes narrowed. “Are you working for Tage or for my father?”
A corner of Barthol’s wide mouth quirked up. “Barrister Tage lost my allegiance years ago. The man is a dangerous and despotic megalomaniac. As for your father, more than twenty years ago I took an oath to protect the Guthrie family. It’s one I still follow—your father’s firing of me ten minutes ago notwithstanding.”
“He—”
“Also banned me from GGS transports. However, I took the liberty of booking passage for two on a commercial flight that leaves the spaceport in one hour fifteen minutes. We have not been banned—yet—from any of the ground vehicles. If you pack a duffel now, we may well make it to the spaceport before your father realizes that oversight.”
“Barty …” Devin hadn’t called the man that since he was a child. “I’m appreciative. Touched, honestly. But do you have any idea of what we could be getting into here?”
Barthol adjusted his jacket, which, Devin realized, was black with a black shirt underneath—not his uniform. The edge of a shoulder holster peeked out. He acknowledged Devin’s appraisal with a slight nod. “A lot more than you do, Mr. Devin. Shall we go? We have at least two days of travel ahead of us.”
Pops was right. “Tomorrow” was now well into day four. And Frinks’s Takan thug had taken to following Kaidee damned near everywhere, as if she didn’t realize she had three days left to come up with thirteen thousand credits. She refused to flinch every time she saw him behind her, but her insides churned like an old sublight drive gone bad. Her appetite was gone. Just as well. Food cost money.
Kaidee considered selling the Rider’s prepaid docking bay space, but that would mean she’d have to put the Rider somewhere else, and she couldn’t drift aimlessly off Dock Five. There were fuel costs and fees associated even with that. She had to breathe air, she had to eat food when her ship’s meager stock ran out, and she had to make sure her ship’s toilets flushed.
There were also abandoned docking rafts out in the 501, a mined-out asteroid field about a half shipday from Dock Five—if the Imperial grunts let her get that far. There wouldn’t be any food, but there might be some power she could filch. If she didn’t get raided by pirates first.
You’re going to get raided by pirates either way, a small voice warned her. The irony of that didn’t escape her.
She damned the fact that Kiler had never renewed the passenger certification for the Rider. They’d discussed it, but it took money—a lot of money.
Hauling cargo’s a hell of a lot more reliable, he’d said. And you don’t have to worry if the containers are comfortable.
No, but a passenger certification would have provided her with an alternate means for an income. And a means to be long gone from Dock Five by now.
But she didn’t have even the funds to pay Frinks. She was sure, with the current situation on dock, the cost for certification had probably tripled.
She stopped again at the Free-Trader Collective offices and tried not to look desperate.
“W
e don’t know any more than you do, Captain Griggs,” the round-faced man at the front desk said. His gray shirt bore the CFTC logo. His pale eyes looked tired. “The lanes open tomorrow. That’s all we’re told.”
But they wouldn’t open tomorrow. The Imperial destroyers were still out there. She was still stuck here, along with hundreds of other increasingly unhappy and agitated stationers—many also in financial straits.
But none, as far as she knew, with a hulking eight-foot-tall Taka shadowing them.
Her last chance would be to hop a commercial passenger shuttle to Starport 6. It would mean losing the Rider, but, if it came to that, it was honestly better than losing her life. But she was saving that for her very last-chance effort. She’d hate to be on board a shuttle only to see the lanes open and freighters streaming away from Dock Five.
Her ship was all she had left. Even her pride was gone. Hope had fled more than a year ago, with Kiler’s death in Port Chalo.
She hit the next—perpetually nonworking—bank of escalators and used them as stairs down to Green Level. Four Englarian clergy—two shorter humans, two taller Takans—in their usual sand-colored robes were in a circle, holding hands, praying a few steps from the base of the stairs. Maybe it was some special religious holiday—she never could keep up with the Englarian ones—or maybe, like everyone else, they just needed answers. She knew the feeling. She hadn’t talked to Pops since Trouble’s Brewing. She didn’t want to bother the man. But she knew he had connections—connections that should scare her.
Still, Frinks and Orvis scared her more.
There was a job board at the other end of Green—hourly odd jobs and daily work. Postings were filled as soon as they came up, but maybe today there’d be something no one else wanted. At this point, providing it didn’t require her to remove her clothes or someone else’s, she’d do anything. A couple hundred credits wouldn’t satisfy Frinks, but it might buy her another day. She needed that day.
The corridors were crowded—they were always crowded—and, as was happening more and more, people in the corridor were arguing. Kaidee slowed her pace, hearing the shouts before she saw the pushing and shoving. She tried to sidestep the problem, but the ring of onlookers was large and growing as some people shouted encouragements, others laughed, and someone actually threaded through the crowd taking bets as to which one of the malcontents would hit the decking first.
The lunatics are running the asylum. She was skimming the bulkhead, looking for a place to squeeze through, when a familiar face caught her attention. A face that shouldn’t be on Dock Five—not ever. She blinked, staring. She could be wrong. She had to be wrong.
She wasn’t.
What in hell was Trippy Guthrie doing on Dock Five?
She recognized him immediately, even though it had been almost two years since she’d last seen him. He was around seventeen at that time—a friendly, intelligent kid. The young man she stared at now was a little taller, a little more broad-shouldered, but he was definitely Trippy. She’d know the Guthrie good looks anywhere, and Trippy had them by the handful, from his shiny dark hair to his lean, square-jawed face to the long dark lashes that shaded bright-blue eyes.
Plus, with his light-tan suede jacket and what looked like a leather backpack, he was far better dressed than anyone on the docks.
Was one of Guthrie Global’s yachts stranded here? There was no other explanation. Because Guthries didn’t belong on Dock Five.
She scanned the crowd around Trip, looking for Ben Halsey. If a GGS ship was here, then Halsey would be right on Trip’s heels. Or Rallman, if Halsey was sleeping. But she couldn’t spot Halsey. She couldn’t spot anything that might be GGS security.
A trickle of alarm ran up her spine.
“Trippy!” she called ineffectually through the shouts and jeers. She tried to elbow her way past a knot of drunken spacers, but they pushed back, and for a moment she lost sight of him. She shoved harder, squirming through, and saw him again, because he was tall—over six feet, she judged. She picked up her pace, trying to keep up with his long-legged gait as he suddenly moved away from her—or from someone coming after him?
His wide-eyed expression said as much.
Shit. Where in hell was Halsey? Or Rallman? Or whoever was assigned to Trip now?
She flicked the safety off the L7 laser pistol at her side. Something was very wrong.
He turned the corner into a cross corridor and, moments later, so did she, but she slammed against a wall of spacers moving in the opposite direction and had to backtrack and then dodge sideways. By the time she reached a clear spot in the corridor, he was gone.
She spun around, hand still on her pistol. Dark-haired men were common, but there was something about a Guthrie, something in the set of their shoulders, in the straightness of their spines. … It was as if they were handfed prowess for breakfast from the time they were born. Even ten-year-old Max had had it. Even Ethan had it—though on him, it was a waste. Jonathan, being the eldest, practically oozed it, as did Philip. And Devin … Trippy had his father’s mien, but he had his youngest uncle’s shy smile and intense, penetrating gaze.
Of all the Guthrie brothers, Devin was the enigma. Part of her might even admit she missed him. The other part of her—the realist, the one who barely survived a fiasco of a marriage to Kiler—would tell her she was clearly out of her mind to even let Devin into her thoughts, let alone her fantasies.
Idiot. This was no fantasy. This held the potential for very real trouble, unless … She scanned the crowd. Not a Guthrie anywhere in sight.
Shit. That was not good news.
She was probably wrong. It probably wasn’t Trippy. But she knew it was.
And with Imperial destroyers sitting out there and the likes of Horatio Frinks in here, that fact worried her. She changed direction back to Pops’s with more than her own troubles on her mind.
——————
“A luxury star yacht?” Pops looked up from his deskcomp as Kaidee crossed her arms over the high back of the empty chair opposite his desk.
“There can’t be that many on Dock Five.”
“Actually, there are four or five here regularly—not that you’d know what they are. Most are pirate rigs, heavy-duty conversions.”
Actually, she would know what they were, but that wasn’t the topic. “No conversion. This would be either a PanGalaxus Splendera or a BGR-750. Or something top of the line like those.”
“I don’t have access to every ship that makes dock here, Kaid. Just my clients’.”
“Don’t know why, but somehow I thought you’d hear if there was a Splendera on dock.”
Pops sighed, but he was grinning. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It is.”
“The answer’s no. I’m sorry. And, yes,” he continued, because Kaidee did little to hide her disappointment, “I would tell you. You’re good people, and I know you wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.” He glanced back at his screen, then up at her again. “There are two pirate rigs stuck here with the rest of us, but no PanGals or BGRs or anything of that caliber. So.” He raised his chin. “Why is it important?”
Kaidee leaned a little more heavily against the back of the chair. Pops trusted her. She had to do the same. “I saw Trippy Guthrie on dock not fifteen minutes ago, and not a GGS bodyguard in sight.”
“I get the Guthrie part. Who’s Trippy?”
“Jonathan Macy Guthrie the Third. The old man’s grandson—eldest grandson. Son of the eldest. All that stuff.”
Pops let out a low whistle. “How do you know the Guthries?”
“Kiler and I flew for them for five years.” Pops’s eyebrows shot up into his bald pate as Kaidee continued. “Trip used to like to hang out in the cockpit of the BGR, to get informal flying lessons. He’s a good kid. A real good kid. He doesn’t belong here. And it looked like he was just figuring that out.”
“You think he’s a runaway?”
Kaidee narrowed her eyes,
thinking. “He’d be in his first year at Montgomery University. So, no, I can’t see him running away. He’d have too much freedom there, even with his required bodyguards. Granted, he has a strong adventurous streak—he’s like Philip Guthrie in that. That’s why they put Ben Halsey on him. Halsey’s ex-ImpSec and real seasoned.”
“You’re worried.”
Kaidee nodded reluctantly. Like she didn’t have enough problems? “Yeah.”
“Young men his age often do stupid things.”
“Like borrowing one of Grandpa’s sailing yachts, loading it with friends and beer, and partying for three days straight? Absolutely. But they don’t end up on Dock Five alone.”
Pops blew out an exasperated sigh between thinned lips and poked at his compscreen for a few minutes more. “Nothing, Kaid. Sorry. Not a ship that I’d think would be associated with GGS or even a university transport. He must have gotten here by freighter or commercial passenger shuttle.”
“Can you, um, access passenger records?”
Pops snorted. “You do have a too-high opinion of my abilities. But if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
She nodded her thanks. She in no way saw herself as the savior of wayward university students, but people had watched after her when she was that age and crazy and had saved her unruly ass more than once. And if there was a problem with Trip’s over-domineering family, Kaidee felt fairly sure Trip wouldn’t see her as one of the oppressors. She’d get him to tell her what the problem was, and they’d solve it together.
Then she’d deal with the rest of the thirteen thousand credits Frinks wanted.
Maybe Trip would give her a loan. Then again, given the trouble Kiler had caused, maybe not.
She threw one last question at Pops before she left his office: “You have any need of a Welcran data-booster system? Slightly used? Or”—she hesitated, her mind running over how much of her ship she could gut without putting herself in a serious hole—“a Gartol sublight regulator? It’s only two months old.” It made her sublights run so sweetly, but it could also garner her a couple grand. She still had the older unit. She could reinstall that. And hope it didn’t break down again.
Rebels and Lovers Page 5
