Her brows dipped, her eyes narrowed, and he knew he’d gone too far. A couple’s financial issues were personal. Their problem. Not some stranger’s, even if that stranger was a former employer, a friend who was irrevocably—
“Kiler’s dead. He was doing repair jobs for extra money and was killed in an explosion.”
Devin stopped breathing. He stopped breathing, thinking, anything, because the only thing he was aware of were her words. And they encompassed his entire world at that moment.
Kiler’s dead. Makaiden’s husband was dead.
She was … not married. Not anymore.
His heart surged. But laughing with joy, he suspected, would not be an appropriate response. “Makaiden. I’m sorry.”
She looked away from him with a half shrug, half sigh. Her fingers slid from his and, after a few seconds, she pushed them through her hair. He wanted to pull her hand back. He wanted her warmth.
“Sorry doesn’t begin to cover it,” she said, and he desperately tried to read the odd tone of her voice. Grief? Fear? Grief would make sense. Fear didn’t, unless it was fear of being alone and destitute.
He could fix that.
“My condolences.” Barthol’s voice held exactly the right amount of respect and concern. But then, he was Barthol. The enigmatic Guthrie steward and former ImpSec assassin with impeccable manners.
Makaiden shoved herself to her feet, then paced away from the bed, shoulders hunched. “Everything Norga told you is true. We had financial issues. Kiler … got involved in things, with people he shouldn’t have. My fault. I just thought he … Well, I didn’t ask enough questions. But that’s my problem.” She turned back. “You have to get Trip somewhere safe until you can get him home and find out who killed Halsey and why. And safe, obviously, is nowhere around me.”
“I was very safe around you,” Trip said slowly. “And, uh, I’m sorry. About your husband. I liked him.”
“Thank you.” Makaiden slid her hands into the pockets of her pants, looked at Trip for a moment, then down at her boots.
She’s bailing on us. Devin knew the signs, read the discomfort and capitulation in her body language in the same way he had in dozens of financial negotiation meetings over the years. Except in those same meetings he was completely sober and fully alert. Not muzzy-headed and half blind.
All he knew was he couldn’t lose her. Not now. He’d just found her again, after all those years. The fact that his reason for being here was to find Trip and bring him home slid into the background. Kiler Griggs was dead. Makaiden suddenly was a dream within reach. He painfully pushed himself up on one elbow. “Makaiden—”
“There’s a guy who has a repair shop on Green Level. Popovitch Expert Repair Service. You can trust Pops, and he knows things, people who might be able to help you. I don’t know,” and this she directed to Barthol, “how much you know about Dock Five. How current your info is. Pops has been here a long time.”
“I appreciate that. And your concern for our safety.”
If Devin could have managed it, he would have hurled his pillow at Barty. Don’t tell her you appreciate her concern. Tell her she has to stay!
“But, Captain Griggs! What if that striper tries to blackmail you?” Trip stepped toward her, hands splayed, and Devin thanked God and the stars that someone in the room had a modicum of sense. “You need our help.”
“I need, Master Trip, to get my ship working so I can pay off Kiler’s debt. Tage has to lift that embargo soon, and if I’m anywhere but on my ship when that happens, I’ll miss a bunch of opportunities.” She reached out and took his hand in an affectionate gesture. “I’ll be fine. Nobody gets on board the Rider unless I let them. You take care of Barthol and your uncle.”
Trip’s uncle didn’t like the sound of that. “Makaiden …”
But she’d released Trip’s hand and was headed for the door, determination in the hard set of her shoulders. She thought she was protecting them. But he couldn’t lose her now.
“Makaiden, wait.”
She reached for the palm pad, clearly with no intention of waiting.
Devin sucked in a hard breath and pushed everything out of his mind except that he was a Guthrie. “Captain Griggs.”
That got her attention. She turned.
Please stay wouldn’t work, even though that was on the tip of his tongue. Please stay might have her asking why, and he wasn’t ready to answer that out loud, if she even believed him—
I’ve been irrevocably intrigued by you for years.
—and especially not in front of Barty and Trip. Moreover, please stay didn’t erase Kiler’s debts or her shame over them. But that did provide him with something workable. He jerked his chin toward Barthol’s DRECU on the small table. The room spun. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Get me the exact figures on your ship’s …” His mind hazed. What was the term? Oh. “Lock lien.” That was it. “It won’t take me more than fifteen, twenty minutes to transfer the funds to pay it off.”
She stared at him.
He waited for a smile, something that said she realized how brilliantly he’d solved her problem.
She stared at him.
He’d been too abrupt. He saw that now. It was so easy for him to talk about money that he often forgot not everyone felt that way. “I—we owe you. You helped Trip—”
“You think I did that for some kind of reward?”
He wished he had his glasses on. She sounded angry, but without them he couldn’t see the small nuances in her expression. “I’m sure that wasn’t in the forefront of your mind—”
“What was in the forefront of my mind was that a bunch of thugs were beating the crap out of some kid. A kid I like, and not because of his bank account.”
“That doesn’t preclude the fact that you helped him. Therefore, we owe you.” It seemed logical enough to him. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Mr. Devin. Say thank you.”
“What?”
“Say ‘Thank you, Captain Griggs.’”
He didn’t understand her point. “Thank you, Captain Griggs.”
“You’re welcome. Now you don’t owe me anything.” She slapped at the palm pad, then disappeared through the opening door into the corridor, leaving him bereft and thoroughly confused.
He sat up straighter, only to have Barty’s hand firmly force him back down. “You’re bleeding again. I need to redo that dressing.”
Devin’s head hurt. Actually, more than his head hurt if he wanted to be honest about it, but he didn’t want to be honest about it. He also didn’t want to be listening to Barthol detailing plans to leave Dock Five, as much as he knew his primary responsibility was to get Trip safely back to Sylvadae. Instead, Devin wanted to be tearing down the corridor after Makaiden.
He doubted he could walk across the hotel room without falling over. Pulling on a clean shirt had left him gasping.
Then Barty said they were leaving. Now.
“It’s been two hours forty-five minutes.” Barty had a duffel open and was quickly but neatly putting things inside. “We need to be far away from here by the time that striper or her friends regain consciousness and, if they’re so inclined, give out descriptions of their attackers.”
“How far away can we possibly get?” He gingerly pushed himself into a sitting position, dragging the bed pillows behind him as he did. His desire to be with Makaiden warred once again with his obligation to Trip and the family. That made his tone turn petulant. “This is Dock Five. The flight you booked doesn’t leave for two days.”
“Exactly my point. We only need to keep moving for two days. There are a few hotels—that’s a loose description, of course—that have a room available. One for tonight. Another for the following night.”
Trip had taken over one of the desk chairs and sat backward on it, his long legs out to either side, his arms folded across the chair’s back. His chin rested on his hands. “That means Captain Griggs is in danger. They don’t know our real names, b
ut they know hers, what she looks like.”
That thought had plagued Devin ever since Makaiden walked out the door ten minutes before, ever since his money failed to keep her with him. He had two more days to keep trying.
“Aside from the fact that her ship is in a defensible position,” Barty was saying, “they’re not going to challenge Orvis to get at her. In a convoluted way, her debt—”
“Her husband’s debt,” Devin said.
“—assures her safety.”
Did she know that? Was that why his offer angered her? His thoughts turned in circles so that he was only peripherally aware of Barty digging around in a small blue med-kit—until something stung the side of Devin’s neck.
“A small stimulant,” Barthol told him, tossing the thumb-size hypo back into the kit. “It should kick in in about three to five minutes.” He lifted his chin toward Trip. “Help your uncle get on his feet. I’ll get his jacket.”
Devin waved away Trip’s outstretched hand, already feeling the stim’s surge of energy. Teeth gritted, he swung his legs around to the edge of the bed. The room tilted, but only slightly. Not bad.
“Please let Trip help you up. You’re far from one hundred percent right now.”
“I can do it.” Devin leaned on his good arm and tried to push himself off the bed. His left knee buckled.
“I may have to shoot your uncle if he doesn’t listen to me,” Barty grumbled, grabbing Devin around the waist.
“Trust me. The way I feel right now, it would be a great kindness.”
“Trip, take our duffels, will you? We’re not going far. Just down two levels to Yellow.”
“Yellow? Oh, hell.” Trip slung the duffels’ straps over one shoulder with ease. “We’re going back to Pisstown.”
Kaidee shoved through the stairwell door at the far end of the hotel corridor, anger and shame roiling through her as she listened for footsteps behind her and tried hard not to listen to the running commentary in her head. He offered you a way out of debt. A legitimate way out. And you turned him down. Rudely.
Well, yeah, she was fairly good at being rude when she wanted to be. Another thing she’d learned from Kiler.
The problem was that Devin had once again proved how decent and honorable he was by trapping the striper at her own game, saving Kaidee’s ass, and then taking a knife in the shoulder as a thank-you. And Kaidee felt like a complete shit for wanting to be rude to him. But, yeah, she did want to, because, truth be told, his offer hit too close to home port. Too close to her own inner desires. Too close to things that ran through her head when she stumbled over Trippy Guthrie: maybe the kid would give her a loan.
Okay, she’d discounted that idea quickly. But it had surfaced and then Devin had echoed it, and it felt as if he’d read her mind or, worse, the darkness of her soul—something she never wanted him to see.
She needed money—but not that way, not from Devin guessing almost so accurately at her motivations. How long, then, before he believed she was involved in the whole “get Trippy” scheme? Not long, if he probed any deeper into Kiler’s debts.
She had to stay away from him. She couldn’t bear the further disappointment in his eyes when he found out. He already knew far too much about her, and none of it was good.
She reached the main lobby level and stopped, catching her breath. She leaned her hand on the stairwell door. For three seconds she reversed her decision completely, thought of turning around, running back up three flights of stairs and admitting, pleading, that, yes, a loan—she’d make sure it was only a loan—would really help at this point. She could get Frinks off her tail and maybe even renew the Rider’s lapsed passenger certification. That would give her options besides cargo, help her through the lean times, which she knew were far from over.
But she couldn’t do it. She pushed open the stairwell door—slowly enough to be cautious but firmly enough that there was no doubt as to her direction. Out. Back to her ship. Away from Devin Guthrie and his smoky-blue eyes and strong firm fingers that held hers with surprising tenderness.
Idiot. The man was half drunk and thoroughly in pain. There was no tenderness, and she was a fool to even think there could be. He was a Guthrie, probably tagged to marry some socialite from Sylvadae, just as his brothers had. If he wasn’t married already.
And Kaidee Griggs was an itinerant freighter operator and a thief’s ex-wife. At best, she was a former GGS employee—and one not worth rehiring. She heard that clearly in the harsh way he’d said “Captain Griggs” as she left his hotel room.
Sounds from the lobby filtered in past the door’s edge: a man’s voice, high-pitched, whining about systems errors slowing down the slagging computers again. A soft thud, then a barked command: “Put that suitcase back on the pallet!”
A scraping noise of something dragging over the decking. A muted thud of a door closing. A soft laugh.
She shoved past the partly open door and slipped down a dimly lit side corridor leading away from the lobby, praying there were no stripers scanning the crowds on Blue for her likeness. Orvis, Frinks, and now a Dock Five striper all had reason to view Makaiden Griggs with an unhealthy interest.
What a lucky girl she was.
Hand on her L7 stunner, she exited and cautiously wove her way through clumps of freighter crew and dockworkers. If there was trouble, it would be at the Rider’s hatchlock. If there wasn’t, there was no way she was leaving her ship again. The Empire had to lift the embargo soon. She wanted to be in the pilot’s seat filing her flight plans out of here when they did. If they didn’t, she could starve just as easily on board her ship as in Dock Five’s corridors. And a lot more comfortably.
Though she had lied to Trippy: the Rider wasn’t as secure as she’d said it was. Her ship could be breached, because she’d been forced to strip out and sell that top-end security system Kiler had installed.
That bought her some fuel, some water, and allowed her to make an additional cargo run a few months back.
She hoped now it hadn’t also sealed her death warrant.
Pisstown. Devin had wondered about Trip’s odd descriptive and wondered even more when Barty neither contradicted nor corrected Trip’s crude phrasing. Now he wondered how people—well, humans—even breathed on this level without falling to the decking, retching.
He pushed down the bile rising in his throat. It tasted all too familiarly of Lashto brandy. His chest hurt, his shoulder throbbed, and as a headache hovered somewhere between his eyes, he realized his glasses’ frame must have twisted during the fight in the hotel’s cargo office, and his eyes were forced to strain to adjust to the now-crooked lenses.
Yet, in spite of all that, he couldn’t stop thinking about—worrying about—Makaiden. Once they had Trip settled in wherever Barty was leading them, he’d—
“Uncle Devin.” Trip’s voice was soft, but his grip on Devin’s arm was tight. “I think that’s one of Fuzz-face’s friends. Over there by the escalator.”
Shit. It was the curly-haired man in the dark jacket who’d wrestled with Barty earlier. Only now he sported the beginnings of a black eye—an eye that, fortunately, wasn’t looking at them. Yet.
Barty plucked his DRECU from under his jacket and brought it up in a quick motion, then down again. “There are databases I may still have access to,” he said, nudging Trip toward a corridor on the right.
“We’ll run this image once we obtain our new hotel room. This way. Now.”
Devin kept his hand on his Carver as they twice had to backtrack and try an alternate route to the hotel Barty had chosen. They spotted the curly-haired man once more. A group of stripers, talking and laughing, forced their other rerouting. By the time they hurried through the hotel’s narrow doorway, Devin had almost gotten used to the stench that was Pisstown.
The hotel lobby—if it could be called that—was a brightly lit enclosure a bit larger than the living room of his suite at his parents’ estate on Sylvadae. But there the similarities ended. The lobby decking was c
overed in a stained dark-yellow carpet. The walls, also yellow, were bare. One industrial-looking spotlight dangled over a lumpy bright-red couch that flanked the wall to his right. Another illuminated the registration counter.
“No vacancy.” The woman behind the counter—the lobby’s only occupant—had short-cropped orange hair and purple stars tattooed down the left side of her wide face. Devin judged her to be somewhere between twenty-five and forty-five in age and easily triple his weight. Her short-sleeved white shirt—oddly pristine—had Happy Hours Hotel stenciled on the front. Her gaze was glued to a mini-vid player just below the level of the counter.
Barty stepped closer to the edge of the counter. “I’m Bart Mikmin. I reserved a room an hour ago under Mikmin Repair and Supply.”
Purple Stars glanced up, her gaze darting from Barty to Trip to Devin, then back to Barty again. “No vacancy.”
Devin pursed his mouth in frustration, suddenly understanding the game. He palmed a twenty-credit chip from his pocket, then leaned on the counter, realizing too late that the countertop had large sticky patches that pulled at the edge of his jacket sleeve. He let the blue edge of the chip peek through his fingers, careful not to let his skin come in contact with whatever coated the counter. “Maybe the computers are slow again and the reservation just came in.”
With a sigh, Purple Stars swiveled toward the deskscreen.
Barty angled slightly so that the hotel’s narrow doorway was in his line of sight. Devin fought the urge to keep one hand on his Carver. So far this had been a frustrating, exhausting, and damned near deadly day. And it wasn’t over yet.
Purple Stars was poking disinterestedly at the touchpad in front of her. “M-I-C-K-M-A-N?”
“M-I-K-M-I-N,” Barty corrected.
Devin let the chip drop onto her desk’s touchpad.
Fleshy fingers with bright yellow-painted nails snagged the chip in a practiced move. “Yeah, slaggin’ system’s slow today. Room 109.” Something whirred behind her. She plucked the keycard from the tray and dropped it on the counter in front of Devin. “Corridor on the left. Checkout’s at first shift bell or you’ll be double-charged.”
Rebels and Lovers Page 12
