Derek didn’t say anything for a few seconds, only watched her with narrowed eyes, as if attempting to discover what she was really up to. At length he gave the smallest of shrugs, then said, “Thank you. I’ll admit I could use some sleep. But make sure to wake me if anything changes.”
What exactly he expected to change, when they were out in the middle of the Solar System’s equivalent of nowhere, she wasn’t sure. Rather than argue, though, she replied, “Sure. Let me take care of that bed for you.”
So she knelt and pulled out one of the storage drawers under the bed, extracting a set of fresh sheets, and went to work stripping the old ones off the bed and putting on the fresh set. They really hadn’t been due for changing, as she’d swapped them out only a little more than a week ago, but no way was she going to have him lying on sheets she’d already slept on.
During this procedure he lingered in the doorway, as there really wasn’t enough space in the chamber for him to be there while she worked. “Thank you,” he said again, as she twitched the thin synth-cotton coverlet in place, then stepped away.
“It’s nothing.” She had to walk past him to get out of the room and into the equally cramped corridor, and something about being that physically close to him as she squeezed past made her want to hold her breath, as if she thought he would reach out to touch her. That was stupid, though. Except for that one admiring glance, which she’d probably imagined, he’d been completely neutral, completely correct, with her.
His mouth opened, as if he’d meant to say something else, but then he closed it again, instead giving her a nod. Once she was out in the corridor, he pushed the button to shut the door.
So much for him being hot for your body, she chided herself, grimly taking the few strides it required for her to get back to the cockpit, after which she settled down in the captain’s chair and stared out into the darkness. Everything seemed calm and still, their speed not great enough to show the stars actually moving, although they were still traveling at many thousands of miles per hour. Realspace, of course; the Avalon, being an intra-system ship, wasn’t even equipped with a subspace drive. She’d often wondered what it would be like to pilot a real ship, one that could take her far away from Gaian space so she could see worlds she’d read about but had never visited: Eridani, Nova Angeles, even dry, dusty Iradia.
The chances of her getting to any of those places were probably a lot lower than her chances of ending up in a Consortium prison somewhere, and she sighed. Unlike Derek’s former associate back on Gaia, she certainly didn’t have friends and family in high places who could bail her out. She had no one at all.
Those were the sorts of thoughts she generally wouldn’t allow herself to entertain, as she knew they weren’t at all productive. But now, with an escaped convict sleeping in her room, and a GDF squadron hastening to intercept them — whether or not said squadron really did have members of the underground sprinkled among its ranks — she thought she’d earned some good old self-pity. Really, she still hadn’t quite determined why the universe apparently had it out for her, but even the most impartial of observers would be hard-pressed to deny that her whole life had been one spectacular run of bad luck after another.
Cassidy pulled in a breath, then another. Okay, sure, things had never been easy, but so far she’d survived everything thrown at her, and she’d survive this, too, no matter what happened. Anyway, she was sick of the Titan run, sick of the endless weeks with no company other than the “entertainment” the Consortium beamed out to every planet, station, and ship in the system. Trying to lull the population with a steady stream of carefully edited news, interplanetary sports, vapid “reality” shows, ongoing serials with plot lines so improbable she couldn’t believe anyone took them seriously? That was about the size of it. So maybe having the Avalon impounded would be just the kick in the pants she needed to change things, to get out of here and start over fresh.
Very brave, she told herself. If dumping the supply gig and hooking up with some random guy so you could get set up with a homestead on a colony far away from here is so great, why haven’t you done it before this?
Inertia. Entropy. The irrational fear that the shade of her father would rise up and chastise her for getting rid of the Avalon, the only thing he’d ever seemed to care about all that much?
Who knew? In the end, it really didn’t matter, because she was here now, and she would have to deal with the situation one way or another. At this point, about the most she could probably hope for was not getting vaporized when the GDF squadron finally did show up. Its pilots weren’t really known for their restraint.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, brooding, until her eyelids drooped and she fell asleep, the blackness of space and the darkness behind her eyelids blending and becoming one. All she did know was that she dreamed fitfully, nightmarish images of hands coming out of the dark and grabbing her, and behind it an incessant, low-pitched chug-chug-chug sound, which her mind told her was the processing plant, chewing up bodies, and the hands were reaching for her because they were going to throw her down into the blackness to be processed with all the other corpses. Their fingers were cold because they actually belonged to the dead, and she tried to scream, tried to claw herself free, but they were too strong —
“Cassidy!”
A male voice, one she didn’t recognize at first. She blinked and saw Derek Tagawa peering down at her, brow creased with concern.
“Are you all right?”
Was she? She reached up and touched a hand to her forehead, which felt clammy with cold sweat. “I — I’m fine. Just a bad dream.”
He continued to stare at her. “Now I really feel guilty for taking your bed.”
“Don’t,” she said. “I probably would’ve had bad dreams no matter where I was sleeping, after those stories you told me.” To change the subject, she went on, “Have you heard anything?”
He shook his head. “No, but it’s only been about six hours. As I said, they’re going to wait until they’re almost in range before they try reaching out.”
“Then you should’ve slept a little longer.”
“No point.” Although she hadn’t invited him, he sat down in the copilot’s chair as casually as if it belonged to him. “That’s about all I can manage on a good day anyway. But maybe you should get some real rest.”
And leave him up here unattended? No way. “I’m fine.”
Those dark eyes, such a dark brown they were almost black, scanned her face. Looking for a lie? Maybe. “I wouldn’t do anything to your ship.”
“Did I say you would?”
“You didn’t have to.” He leaned forward then, staring into the darkness. Why, she wasn’t sure, as there wasn’t anything to be seen out there. Just millions of miles of empty space. Somewhere in that space was a squadron of GDF fighters hastening toward them, but those ships weren’t all that big — the sensors would pick them up long before they could be detected by the naked eye. Then he turned back toward her. “What do you do to keep yourself amused out here?”
She blinked at him. That wasn’t some kind of oblique come-on, was it? No, of course it wasn’t. With a shrug, she replied, “Watch vids. Read. There’s not much else to do. Well, yoga.”
“Yoga?” he repeated, one eyebrow going up in apparent amusement.
“What’s so funny about that?” she said with some asperity. “I have to do something to stay in shape, and you might have noticed that there really isn’t room for a track or a weight room in here.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that you don’t seem much like the ‘inner peace’ type.”
Was it that obvious? Probably. She doubted she came off as very zen to anyone who met her. “I’m not. To tell the truth, I probably couldn’t even name the positions correctly, since I learned them from watching vids. But the exercises are very effective.”
“True.”
Her imagination must have decided to play with her mind a bit more, bec
ause she could have sworn that his gaze traveled swiftly over her, as if seeing the shape of her body under the baggy coveralls she was wearing. But that, she thought, was flattering herself. She looked like complete ass right now, and she knew it. Her meager wardrobe did contain a few nice gowns and one tailored skirt suit for when she had to do something official, like go to the Consortium’s Division of Shipping to renew her transport license, but she certainly wasn’t going to waste time getting dolled up when she was only sitting on her ship with no one to look at her.
Well, there was someone here now. And she was almost positive he had been looking at her, although his attention flicked back to the window quickly enough as her own gaze sharpened on him.
“Anyway,” she said, deciding to let it go for now, “there’s an entertainment console in the smaller bedroom. I use it as my study now. All the books are on my handheld, and I’d rather not loan that out, if you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not,” he told her. It was never polite to point-blank ask to use someone’s handheld, as they generally contained a good deal of personal information. “I’ll check out the console.”
She realized then that his clothes were sleep-rumpled, his hair mussed. Since they had plenty of time, he might as well take the opportunity to freshen up a bit. “Go ahead and take a shower. It’s steam only, but it’s better than nothing. And there’s still some of my dad’s old stuff folded away under the bed in the second bedchamber. He was about the same height as you, so it’ll kind of fit, although it’ll probably be baggy. But at least it’s clean.”
“Thank you,” Derek said, and it sounded like he meant it. Well, he was probably aching for a chance to wash the dirt of that prison off his body.
And she’d just have to do her best not to think about what that body might look like, once it was out of its baggy prison garb….
CHAPTER FOUR
A steam bath was still heaven compared to the luke-cold two-minute showers he’d been allowed once a week back on Titan. Derek stood in the tiny compartment, so cramped he could feel his bare ass touch one metal wall, and let the hot steam scrub off the stink of the MaxSec, a mixture of male sweat, greasy hair, and desperation. Even here he couldn’t luxuriate for as long as he liked, since the shower unit had a timer set to a precise seven and a half minutes, but it was worlds better than anything else he’d had in years.
When he was done, he took one of the thin towels from its rack on the wall and wrapped it around himself, then shot a quick glance down the corridor. The back of Cassidy’s head was to him; it appeared that she was looking down at something on the console, so it seemed safe enough to slip out of the shower unit and into the second bedroom. This one was even smaller than the one he’d slept in, just a narrow bed with more storage drawers underneath it, and, as she had said, a screen built into the wall opposite the bed. The remote was still sitting there on top of the thin blue coverlet, so he picked it up and turned on the vid.
He’d never had much time for watching shows, so most of what he scrolled through as he flipped past the channels would have been foreign to him anyway. But it seemed even more alien and strange after being away from Gaia for so long, after seeing only the faces of the guards and his fellow prisoners. The clothing seemed overly structured and uncomfortable, the women’s faces so painted they didn’t quite appear human anymore. Was that a new fashion, or had they always looked like that?
In contrast, Cassidy’s face flashed into his mind, the wide hazel eyes, the full, pretty mouth. If she wore any cosmetics at all, they certainly weren’t obvious. He liked that. He liked that he knew what she really looked like, and not what she wanted him to think she looked like, which appeared to be the intent of the women on the screen before him.
He found what purported to be a news program, although it didn’t seem to him as if any of the news being reported bore much resemblance to the truth. Yes, he’d been locked away for two years, and had no idea of what sorts of events might have transpired in his absence, but he did know that the report on the regrowth of the polar ice caps was dead wrong. After years of heavy lifting, the ice caps weren’t melting anymore, but that was not quite the same thing as saying that the ice was “re-establishing itself at an encouraging rate of two percent each year.” And the report on the Asian rehabilitation project was absolute bullshit from beginning to end, but he supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything else.
He changed the channel in disgust, searching for something — anything — of substance, but there wasn’t much to be found. At last he came to a film he’d loved as a kid, about a group of misfits working as asteroid miners. Highly embellished and bearing only a passing resemblance to the truth, but the actors were good, and listening to dialogue he hadn’t heard for more than twenty years made a rush of nostalgia go over him. Since Cassidy had made it clear that he should be entertaining himself and not expecting her to do it, he settled in to watch the film. At least it would take up a few hours, and it meant they’d be that much closer to the rendezvous with the GDF squadron from Ganymede.
He couldn’t help the shiver of anticipation that went over him then. Everything so far had gone more or less according to plan, but in this he was trusting the contacts of his contacts to make sure he got through the encounter unscathed. No reason why they shouldn’t, but still….
He’d be very glad when it was over.
* * *
Even from the cockpit she could hear the comm beeping in her bedroom, as Derek hadn’t shut the door when he came out. She wanted to curse at him for not answering it, but she realized that was partially her fault. After all, she had told him to go and entertain himself with the vid, like some kid she didn’t want underfoot.
Okay, he certainly wasn’t a kid. But he made her nervous…not because of anything he’d said or done, but because of the way she seemed to react to him. She’d admit she wasn’t all that experienced with men. Even so, she could handle herself in normal situations, like in a bar or a club. That was easy. Her expectations had never been any higher than an hour or two of fun with someone she’d never see again, and even those were few and far between. Still, it was a regular sort of transaction. A few drinks, maybe dinner, and then she’d be in his hotel room, and then she’d leave and come back to the Avalon. Simple.
Now, though, with probably the best-looking man she’d ever met trapped in this freighter with her, she didn’t know what to do. She still wasn’t sure she believed every aspect of his story, but then again, if he’d really been a cold-blooded killer, he would have gotten rid of her once their course was set and they had nothing else to do but twiddle their thumbs until they got to the rendezvous point. And even if he wasn’t a killer, he was much bigger than she was, taller than she by almost a foot, and probably massing at least thirty kilos more than she did. If he’d had any need to scratch a biological itch after more than two years in the MaxSec, he could have taken her, and she couldn’t have done much about it.
But he’d done none of those things, had acted like a gentleman, and so of course she’d made sure to send him away so she wouldn’t have to deal with him.
Smooth, Cassidy.
She got up out of the captain’s chair and hurried back to her room. The comm kept beeping away, and she knew it wouldn’t stop until she answered it, as this one had never been set up with an automated response system.
Pushing down the button to open the line, she said, “This is Freighter Avalon.”
A brief hesitation. “Avalon, permission to speak to your passenger.”
No names. Well, that made sense if, as Derek had said, there was a good chance their transmissions might be monitored. “One moment,” she replied, and pressed the “hold” button.
The door to the second bedroom was ajar, so she wondered how he couldn’t have heard the comm going off across the hall. She had her answer when she peeked inside, ready to give him a ration of crap for not answering the call he’d been waiting for.
Although the vid was stil
l blathering away, he’d fallen asleep on the meager little bed, long legs half hanging off the edge, head smashed into one of the flat pillows. He looked so oddly adorable like that, Cassidy hesitated to wake him up. But then she realized he’d probably be more than a little irritated if she told him later that she’d allowed him to miss the call just because she wanted to let him sleep.
So she stepped into the cabin, laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Derek.”
He started awake immediately, eyes wide and staring, until he seemed to realize where he was, who was shaking him. “What is it?”
“Your call.” She jerked a finger toward the captain’s cabin.
No reply except a hurried nod, and then he was on his feet, moving quickly to the other room. She waited in the corridor; it wasn’t as if he was so far away that she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Tagawa.” A pause, and then he said, “Understood. We’ll be ready.”
And that seemed to be it, because after that he came to the doorway and stood in it, looking down at her. “We’re set.”
“Set for what?”
“For the rendezvous. We’re to continue on our current course. Intercept should be in about two hours.”
“That fast?” She’d underestimated the speed of the squadron. Then again, it wasn’t as if she was exactly privy to all the latest upgrades and improvements in the Consortium’s defense fleet.
“That fast,” he replied, and a certain twinkle danced in those dark, dark eyes. “Are you ready for this?”
She had a stock answer for that question, and she handed it to him now. “Honey, I was born ready.”
* * *
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