Tavish caught her breath as she began to make out the details of the pirate captain. His athletic form was complemented by a husky voice that had probably charmed countless women into his bed. Nathan Macleod was not what she’d expected of a pirate. His clear, cultured words had a distinctive flavor she couldn’t place. His clothes were the same serviceable, fashion-challenged clothing that everyone else seemed to be wearing.
He stepped closer to the light, and she bit back a gasp. His silky, dark brown hair brushed his shoulders. He kept it away from his face with a faded black bandanna stitched with swirling silver designs. A silver hoop earring glinted in his left ear.
Xave chuckled. “Takes the pirate thing a bit too seriously, doesn’t he?”
She couldn’t answer. She was too busy staring at the swirling silver designs visible on the bandanna. Something about them jogged her memory. She half stood up before Xave tackled her back to the ground, getting a firm grip on her arms.
“What are you doing?”
“I know him.”
“What?”
“I know him!”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, but I do.”
Xave’s arms clamped down harder on her body. “It doesn’t matter. Stay down.”
“Look! Mendez is going to run!”
“Fuck.”
Mendez had pulled something about the size of a data card from his knapsack. He waved it in the air and gestured wildly to the ship. Macleod kept shaking his head, arms crossed over his chest.
Tavish frowned. “What are they saying?”
“Macleod isn’t saying anything. And Mendez’s babbling so quickly, I can’t even tell what language he’s speaking, let alone what he’s saying.”
“Let me go out there.”
“What?” Xave’s expression turned stormy. “You’re insane. I’m not letting you anywhere near there.”
“C’mon, I’ve got a better chance of getting in and out. And you’re right here if I get into trouble.”
He shook his head. She knew he was right. It would be suicide to run out there. But she had to get a closer look at Macleod. She had to.
“I’m sorry, Xave.”
Before he could react, she shoved him. He overbalanced, and they tumbled to the tarmac. Squirming out of his grip, she bolted from cover into the open. Seconds later one of Macleod’s men materialized out of the darkness and pressed a railgun to her temple.
“Don’t move.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“What did you catch, Cian?”
Cian the pirate looked her over. “A woman.”
“Interesting,” Macleod drawled. “Bring her over.”
Tavish exhaled in a rush when she drew close enough to see the details of Nathan Macleod. His hair was dark red and not brown, the same dark red as her own. Skimming over his fit body, she found herself staring into intelligent green eyes.
She forced herself to continue breathing normally. “Holy hell.”
If the obvious similarities in their physical features shook Macleod, he hid it well. “Aren’t you a pretty piece?”
“Biggest waste of credits I’ve ever come across.” Mendez sneered.
Macleod lifted an eyebrow. “A working girl, then?”
Heat bloomed across her cheekbones. “Not anymore.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tavish.”
Macleod stilled, his face paling a few shades. “Do you have a surname, Tavish?”
“None that I can remember.”
“Can we get on with this, Macleod?” Mendez snapped. “I need a ride off this rock.”
Macleod snorted. “Not on my ship.”
“Why the fuck not? You know this card is worth more than the cost of taking me where I want to go.”
Macleod jerked his head in Xave’s direction. “You’ve got a bondsman tailing you, Mendez. I don’t tangle with bondsmen, especially when they work for Warrick Stone.”
Xave stood, still several yards away from the Quick & Easy. He carried himself loosely, but everything about him screamed ready for action.
“Does he have a name?” Macleod asked Tavish.
“Xavier Kovuchenko.”
“Thought so.” Nathan lifted his chin and called out to Xave. “I have a feeling we both want the same thing, Kovuchenko.”
“Is that right?”
Nathan swiped the data card from Mendez’s hand with sharp accuracy. “This is only the beginning of what the Alliance is hiding.”
“Then I need the data and the cockroach you got it from.”
“For who?” Nathan challenged. “Warrick?”
“A man like Warrick has connections.” Xave crept toward them. “Connections are going to get me what I’ve wanted my whole life.”
“And what’s that?”
Tavish inhaled sharply. Duty and longing warred inside Xave. His eyes drifted from Nathan and the data card to Tavish. She knew what this meant to him, to all those whose lives had been ruined by Alliance orders given in secret and cloaked in lies. She couldn’t let Xave lose it all because of her.
The longer he watched the exchange between pirate and bondsman, the more Mendez began to sweat. Great rivers of perspiration soaked his shirt. His piggy eyes darted back and forth between Macleod and Xave, as if uncertain which one posed the bigger threat.
“You double-crossed me,” he hissed at Macleod.
Nathan shot him a sardonic grin. “Pirate, remember?”
“Orders, Captain?” Cian’s voice came from somewhere behind Tavish.
“Wait.”
The tension rose to a crescendo and exploded before she could duck.
Mendez lunged at Cian’s weapon, surprising the pirate and causing the railgun to fire. Macleod pivoted around Tavish, shoving her to the ground. Somewhere nearby, Xave’s anguished roar made Mendez turn and make a dash for the darkness.
Xave lunged from the tarmac, daggertail snaking through the air. Mendez pulled up short as though he’d run into an invisible wall. He grabbed his throat and gagged. Blood seeped through his fingers. The vicious serrated edges of Xave’s daggertail ate into his skin.
Tavish struggled to rise, to follow the action, but a burning sensation in her side made her vision go fuzzy and her breath catch like fire in her throat.
“Xave?”
He gripped her hands, tugging her into his lap. “I’m here, Tav.”
“Don’t leave me behind, Xave.”
His lips pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “Never.”
She struggled to say more but sank instead into the blackness.
Chapter Eighteen
Xave drew his railgun and leveled it at Macleod, the muzzle trembling with his rage. “Give me one reason not to blow you off the planet.”
Ignoring the weapon pointed at his face, Macleod sank to the tarmac beside Xave and probed at Tavish’s side.
“Don’t touch her!” Xave snarled.
“She’s not dead, Kovuchenko. Pull your head out of your ass and pay attention.”
Xave blinked in surprise at the pirate captain. “Who are you to her, anyway?”
Macleod motioned to Cian. The other man disappeared into the ship. When Macleod finally met his gaze, Xave knew.
“You’re related to her somehow.”
“I’m her brother.”
Stunned, Xave remained silent.
“I didn’t know until she said her name.”
Cian returned with a med kit and loaded a hypo.
“The Tavish was the slave ship that abducted us from the Terran system. She was seven. I was eleven.” He clenched his fists until they shook with anger. “I tried to keep them from leaving her here.”
“Eleven is too young to stop a band of slavers.” Xave tried to stanch the flow of blood as Cian dosed Tavish with an antibiotic laced with sedative
A grin twisted the corners of Macleod’s mouth. “I amused the captain of the Tavish with my efforts. He kept me aboard an
d trained me to join his crew.”
Xave’s eyes narrowed, taking in the curling lip and burning anger behind Macleod’s gaze. “I don’t imagine killing him ended the rage.”
“No.”
“Did you never think to look for her?”
“I couldn’t imagine her surviving this long.”
“You did.”
“So it would seem.”
“That’s why you want the data. To expose what really happened to the settlements.” Xave left the rest unsaid.
“She needs medical attention.” Cian prodded the edges of her wound. “The sooner the better.”
Xave stirred from the ground, cradling Tavish against his chest. “I would say good-bye, but I have a feeling we’ll be meeting again in the future.”
Macleod laid a hand on Tavish’s brow. “I’ll find her.”
“I’ll be back for that space trash in a moment.” Xave turned toward the Daggertail.
“Wait.”
He turned back to Macleod, frowning, until he realized what the pirate held out to him. Mendez’s tiny data card gleamed in the dim light. Xave reached for it slowly, uncertain of Macleod’s motives in giving it.
“I owe her,” he said simply.
* * * * *
Xave hadn’t bothered to send a comm to Warrick after setting the autopilot for Hyperion 4. The ship’s beacon would notify him of their arrival. There would be time enough for the reckoning when he debriefed. Until then he wanted to spend every second with Tavish, as if he might somehow hold her inside her body by his own strength of purpose.
She was deathly pale, her skin clammy to the touch. He smoothed a stray strand of dark hair away from her face. She stirred beneath his touch. Green eyes blinked slowly, focusing on his face in the dim cabin.
“Xave?”
“Hush, save your energy.”
“Is it bad?”
“I won’t know until Doc has a look at you. I’m no good with injuries.”
“Probably because you don’t get them.”
His mouth quirked. “Might be.”
“Where’s Nathan?”
“The Quick & Easy left Janus 5 when we did. I don’t know where he was headed.”
“I wanted to talk to him.”
“I’ll find him for you later.”
She sighed, her breath whispering over him like a caress. “How can you always be so certain?”
“I’m not. Not always.”
“When? I’ve never known you not to be a hundred percent sure of yourself.”
“I’ve been too much of a coward to tell you that I love you, Tavish.”
She blinked several times, her sluggish thoughts taking a moment to process his declaration. “You love me? God, Xave, I’ve been such an idiot.”
“Only when you left my side out there and got yourself shot.”
“No, with all of this arguing and fighting about what I am.”
“It doesn’t matter about the past. Everything you’ve been through made you who you are, and I love that woman. The fact is that you are mine. And you’ll stay that way until we’re both old as dust.”
Her face softened, sensual lips curving into a smile. “I love you too, Xave.”
He stroked her face with his fingertips, lingering over the bow in her upper lip and the tip of her nose. She was perfect. Never had another woman managed to have so much fire and zest for life.
“Nathan is my brother.”
“I know. He told me.”
“Why didn’t he come for me?”
“He was eleven when you two were separated.”
“But after that. He’s a pirate. He has a ship.”
Xave sighed. He had no desire to try and explain the guilt complex he suspected rode Captain Macleod like hell’s angel. “Sometimes it’s easier to forget than to face something you think was your fault.”
“He thinks it’s his fault I ended up at Louie’s?”
“Probably.”
Her face eased into a soft smile. “Then I should thank him.”
Xave quirked an eyebrow.
“If I’d never gone to Louie’s, I never would’ve met you.”
Her simple justification threw everything into perspective, stunning Xave to silence.
“I don’t remember him very well,” she said after a moment.
“It was a long time ago.”
“I remember that bandanna he had on his head, though.”
“Bandanna?”
“Our father gave that to him not long before the raid.”
“Every father should leave a remembrance for his son.”
She touched his hand, her cool fingers brushing the lines on his palm. “Your father gave you an incredible gift when he passed you those genetic enhancements. Don’t ever think otherwise.”
Her words touched a place deep inside that was still raw after thirty years of living on the fringe of society.
She chuckled, the sound wheezing through the cabin of the Daggertail and drawing him away from his personal reflection. “Nathan liked to climb trees. I followed him one day and got stuck.”
“Did he help you down?”
“No, he left me there.”
“How brotherly.”
She managed a snort. “You were obviously an only child.”
“My parents didn’t stay together long enough to have any more children.”
Her hand reached up unsteadily and cupped the side of his face. Xave caught it and held its frail softness against his skin. “They broke the mold after you, Xavier Kovuchenko. You’re my one-of-a-kind hero.”
Her words made something swell inside him until he felt as though he would burst.
Her eyes fluttered closed. “I’m so cold, Xave.”
Desperation hit him hard like a kick to the gut. He settled on the bench and gathered her up as gently as he could, trying to warm her with his body heat.
“Hold on, Tavish. We’re almost there. Doc will fix you right up.”
“Tell Warrick to stay…” She groaned. “Tell him to stay away when I’m naked.”
“Warrick saw you naked?” Xave asked, his voice rough.
“He saw, but he didn’t see. That’s a cold man.”
“Yes, he is.”
She drifted off, her breathing shallow but steady. Xave held anxiously to his hope, wishing he’d had a decent med system put into the Daggertail. When your body healed so much faster than the average human, it seemed unnecessary. He vowed to change that as soon as they arrived back at base. Keeping tabs on Tavish was a full-time job. And with her luck, he’d need an entire med lab to avert constant disaster.
His thoughts ran in circles. Thoughts of Tavish, of her newfound piratical brother, of Warrick and the hell he would have to pay when he turned up with Mendez’s corpse. He hoped the data card would suffice for a live capture. But would it hold the truth he’d sought for so long? Around and around it went, until the control panel bleeped and signaled their approach into Hyperion 4’s airspace.
Chapter Nineteen
The bright lights of the medical wing seemed harsh after the neon night world of Janus 5 and the dim interior lights on the Daggertail. Xave had long ago stopped counting the floor joists he crossed every time he paced from one end of the corridor to the other. Time had lost meaning. The entire galaxy had paused. Nothing would begin again for him until he was certain Tavish would be able to push open the doors of the surgery suite and walk her sweet ass into his waiting arms.
“Xave?”
“Now isn’t a good time, Lola. I would have thought you could sense that or something.”
She sighed and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. She wore a troubled expression on her pretty face, and a shadow dimmed her cobalt eyes. He refused to contemplate the possibility that her precognitive talents might’ve given her some kind of insight into Tavish’s situation. Or that Lola’s insight might put a negative slant on things if she vocalized it.
“Warrick sent me.”
“Ho
w nice of him.”
“Guess he figured I might stand a chance of having this conversation and leaving alive.”
“That bad, huh?”
“With your current mood? I’d say everything is bad.”
Xave stabbed his fingers through his thick hair. “Doc’s been in there with her forever. You’d think I’d know something by now.”
“It hasn’t been that long. You’re just hypersensitive.”
Xave shot her a quelling look. “I mean hypersensitive right now, Xave. Not all that extrasensory bullshit. You’re taking everything personally. You’ve got to relax.”
“I can’t relax, Lola. Not when Tav’s in there and I’m out here.”
“Well, Warrick requests a little meeting right now.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“As he put it, you’ve got nothing else to do, and your pacing is giving everyone a headache.”
“I’ll tell him where he can shove his headache too.”
Lola’s tone grew disgustingly cheerful. “You do that. Just go do it in his office, so he knows I did my part.”
Xave shoved his way out of Meddac and stalked down yard after yard of dim corridor, grumbling dire threats beneath his breath. When he reached Warrick’s private quarters, he was spoiling for a fight.
The doors swept open in front of Xave. Stepping through, he opted to lean against the wall instead of collapsing into an overstuffed chair.
“I’ve got a good idea what you’re about to say, Warrick,” Xave said before the other man could speak. “Considering my decision to bring Mendez’s corpse in lieu of the live capture you asked for, I think my resignation from Stone Cold Bondsmen is in order.”
Warrick’s dark eyebrows lifted, one arching a fraction higher than the other. It was the most emotion Xave could imagine the man ever giving away.
Deciding he had nothing to lose, Xave forged ahead. “I looked at the Alliance data on Mendez.”
“Did you?”
“The Alliance never required a live capture. They’re willing to pay the extermination fee in lieu of live capture and return. The live capture was your stipulation. Was it because of the data card Mendez was carrying, or did you have some other information you intended to get out of him?”
Warrick’s upper lip curled. “Since Mendez is dead, it doesn’t matter. Your decision makes your question moot.”
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