Not likely at the moment. She was as closed off as a prison planet.
Time to use the race for what he’d intended—catching Chaf. Once he’d ordered Willa into their room, he and Chaf had briefly tussled. That had ended once Chaf’s partner had hit the scene, and Stratton’s fear of the Caringa had kicked in. Annoyed and embarrassed, he’d conceded defeat but had promised victory by the next checkpoint.
He hoped.
Willa had risen early and dressed with hardly a word to him, with her hair pulled back in that ponytail that screamed “back off”. No problem. They were race partners, not crusaders for galactic peace. Harmony wasn’t necessary for racing.
He and Willa exited the hotel in silence. Breathing in the clear Aga air, he clambered into the passenger seat of the quad rover without protest, never uttering a word on the trip back to the moon base where the Anomaly was housed. Sleep deprivation stole his energy, frustration at his inability to capture Chaf mocked his intelligence, and lust temporarily waylaid the rest of his attitude.
That kiss last night had blindsided him. Willa had approached their embrace with the same sass and bravado she’d shown in all their other clashes, yet there had been a distinct moment when she’d surrendered, ever so briefly. That moment had hit him hard and had played havoc with everything he’d thought he wanted from life. Oh, he still meant to bed the woman. How could he not when every glance at her curves set his body on fire? Nothing else could come of their liaison.
And yet he had a job to do, damn it, one that he loved. Domestication had never been part of the plan. Not once in his entire life had he envisioned himself tied to a woman or toeing a line that began and ended in a quaint house on some pleasant moon. And now…now nothing. One kiss didn’t change his mind. One kiss didn’t promise him a lifetime of love and belonging. After he took Chaf’s lying ass to the Alliance headquarters at the first opportunity, he’d tell Willa good-bye at whatever point they were in the racecourse. He’d find his next assignment, and life would go on.
She’s a means to an end and bedtime entertainment, Sin. Don’t make it complicated.
Easier said than done. He rubbed a hand over his head, determined to move past this rough patch. The quickest way to do that was to keep Willa on the defensive, make sure she went back to being pissed off at him so that they both focused on getting to the next waypoint—she for the glory and he to nab Chaf.
The towers of the moon base rose in the distance, their red lights a startling contrast to the complete darkness of the early morning. Since he and Willa had arrived around four in the afternoon the day before, their departure time today was just after four this morning. Much too early to be awake unless there was the possibility of a sexual tumble. Stratton clenched his jaw. And his thoughts had come full circle, back to Willa.
Unacceptable.
With a growl, he twisted in his seat and bit out, “Did you receive instructions for the next leg?”
She kept her gaze on the shadowy road, but her brows hit her hairline. “Oh, now you decide to talk to me? You must not be much of a morning person.”
“If there’s something that holds my interest, I’m alert.” He gripped the metal bar on the dash with one hand while he braced the other on the headrest of her seat. “So, will you tell me, or is it a surprise? I’d kinda like to know, seeing as how Chaf and the others will be on our tail before long.”
“I’m not helping you if you continue to be crabby. If you’re so curious, look it up.” She maneuvered the quad rover smoothly into the moon base, weaving through the bustling staging area and attached hangar.
Stratton mentally counted to ten and fumbled for the datapad. A few screens and two misdirects later, he frowned at the coordinates. “The next checkpoint is Megaris-8 in the Sybaris Belt. Does the Universal Racing Association know how dangerous that area is?”
That field of asteroids was a frequent hideout for thieves and murderers, not to mention the Belt itself was almost impossible to navigate. Many a man had taken his craft into the Belt only to be destroyed in the constantly moving field of rock. If the asteroids themselves didn’t destroy a ship, then the thieves and murderers would.
Willa laughed as she glanced over her shoulder in preparation for backing the rover up to the Anomaly. “I guess they’re not concerned if they assigned it as a checkpoint.” Finally, she transferred her gaze to him. “Don’t worry, Ace, I’ll get you through in one piece. The Sybaris Belt is child’s play. I learned my way through it before puberty.”
Her personal history piqued his curiosity, made him want to whisk her away from everything in order to concentrate only on her, to find out how she became the woman she was now. But running his yap didn’t pay the bills or fill the coffers. Hunting a bounty did. “I don’t think you understand.” His stomach knotted with anxiety. “I know a guy who landed on one of those asteroids, and he was beaten so severely he couldn’t use his left arm afterwards. I can’t allow us to land anywhere within the Belt.” Inwardly, he cursed himself to the farthest reaches of the galaxy for being a fraud and an idiot. After one brief kiss, why did he feel the compulsion to protect this woman who treated him with no respect?
“Aww, poor Stratton. Are you afraid the ship will get dinged?” She parked the rover at the rear of the ship and nodded at one of the dock monkeys.
Forget the ship; his pride just took a hit. “Actually, I’d like to keep my hide intact, thank you. Some of us need to work for a living.” He knew it was the wrong thing to say when her expression closed and darkened and those lush lips pressed into a thin line. Then he went in for the kill, the ultimate motivation that would keep Willa focused on the race. “Don’t worry. I’m sure your father will love to take care of you until some poor guy decides he wants to marry you.”
She gave him a hand gesture that universally meant he should go pleasure himself. “Get your bald-headed ass into the ship. We leave in ten minutes.” As she climbed out of the rover, she leveled an icy glare at him. “We’re going to Megaris-8, we’re going to hit the next marker and damn it all, we will finish in the top three. I dare you to see if we don’t.”
Once she’d stormed onto the Anomaly, Stratton grinned. That’s my girl. Flipping a switch on the dash of the rover, he watched as the back door to the ship slid noiselessly open; then, after crawling into the driver’s seat, he drove the rover into the hold. Yet the unease in the pit of his stomach wouldn’t dissolve. Megaris-8 had always been a hotbed of criminal activity, and as much as Willa could kick some serious tail if she had to, he didn’t know how she’d react if attacked by a band of thugs.
Hell, even his considerable knowledge of the criminal network wouldn’t be a help. Hardened thieves that hung out in the Belt weren’t exactly inclined to negotiation.
Once he’d eased out of the rover, he closed the cargo door. Afterward, he moved to a cabinet and pulled out two HEPPs. Better make sure they were fully charged. He couldn’t collect his bounty as a dead man.
Stratton’s feet slid off the console where he’d propped them, and the subsequent crash jolted him fully awake. They’d been traveling for the better part of two days. Most of that time, Willa had chosen to withdraw into herself, not predisposed to talking, not even when he’d done his best to tease her. That had made for an extremely boring trip he’d spent in fitful dozes.
“Welcome back, Ace.” Willa nudged his leg with her foot. Barbs of energy shot straight into his groin. “Hope you got enough beauty sleep— we’re about to enter the Sybaris Belt.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Stratton rubbed his eyes, dashing the last of the sleep away, then repositioned himself in his seat.
“Not my problem. You’re the navigator, remember?” Her eyes sparkled like sunlight on the river back where he’d grown up. “Time to employ your HUD.”
“My what? I haven’t heard that term before.” It was damned annoying that she knew more about the ship than he did. Of course, this kind of stuff was her whole life, whereas he’d actually l
ived his.
She huffed her displeasure. “Your HUD, or Heads Up Display. We use it when maneuvering through tight spots that require intricate knowledge of the placement and movement of objects in relation to our ship.”
“And this technology isn’t available on the display screen of the ship console?”
“It is, but this particular way of navigation lets you really get into the nuts and bolts of complex work of steering through tight spaces. We’ll need it for the asteroid belt.” She slipped her helmet over her head, then pushed the visor down. “Learn it, live it, love it, Sin. This baby can be your only chance if you get into a bind in tight quarters.”
“Is this something your father taught you?” He donned his own helmet and clicked the visor in place.
“Yes. He used to pop it on my head and put me in the yard while my brothers threw soft-sided balls at me from all directions. My job was to try to run the gauntlet without being hit. Later, I advanced to rocks.” A trace of humor wove through her voice. “I like hands-on learning.”
“I can see that.” Hooking up his slick suit, he felt the immediate cooling of the life-support system waft over his skin. “How do I work the HUD?”
“There’s an activation button above your left ear on the helmet itself. Push it, and a display screen will turn on. If you’ve entered the checkpoint coordinates into the ship’s computer, you’ll see the waypoint as well as every asteroid in our vicinity.”
A sense of doom settled over him. “Uh, first problem. I don’t remember entering the coordinates.” In fact, he’d pretty much balked at doing it, feeling that being the navigator was beneath him and that he’d do it later.
“Damn it, Ace, it’s a fairly important job.” Disappointment dripped from her statement. “If you keep pussyfooting around like this, I’ll file an appeal for a new partner.”
For the first time, he understood how much the Nebulon Trike meant to Willa. “I’m sorry.” He pressed the activation button, and instantly the interior of his visor danced with brilliant-green 3D images. Digital asteroids moved across the screen. A tiny, red beacon flashed while a constant stream of data in the right-hand corner updated information in a real-time readout. “What the hell?” And then he realized that, despite his blatant disregard for the race, she’d gone ahead and inputted the coordinates.
“You might not care, but I do. With or without you I intend to finish this race. That’s my choice. You need to decide what’s yours.”
“It won’t happen again. You have my word.”
“As much as that means.” Her fingers tightened on the steering mechanism.
“I promise.” He reeled as he realized he meant it. If, by the end of their time together, he’d done one thing to make her think of him as something other than a screw-up, he’d be better for it. “I assume the beacon is our checkpoint on Megaris-8?”
Pregnant silence filled the cabin, and for one terrifying moment, he thought she’d keep him in frosty stasis. Finally, she drew in a deep breath and let it out, the sound magnified and crackling over the helmet intercom. “Yes. There’s a small settlement on the north side, fit with an atmospheric shield to support life. I’m sure we’ll find the marker there.” She fiddled with a button on the console. “It’s very bleak, from all I’ve read.”
“Parts of it are.” He’d visited various livable asteroids in the Belt several times. One of the first things he’d learned in the bounty-hunting business was that criminals flocked to others of their kind, and to find one, you had to assimilate into that society. Many bizarre weeks had been spent living among the riffraff of the Sybaris Belt.
Not the best environment for a woman of Willa’s caliber.
“Once we land, I want you to remain inside the ship until I can scout around and confirm the area is secure.” His body naturally leaned into the patterns Willa created as she expertly wove between the floating rocks.
“I can protect myself, thank you. Don’t treat me like a blown-glass collectible, Stratton.”
“Why, because that would conflict with how your father treats you?” He ground his teeth when she cursed in Lingorian. Thanks to the universal translator, his face burned from being called a castrated cattle herder. “Fine. What would you like for me to do right now, kita?” The woman grated on his nerves with her aloof attitude.
“Make sure we’re maintaining our course. Never lose sight of the beacon, and above all, don’t panic when I do this.” With only those words for warning, she jerked the wheel, and the Anomaly quickly went into a long series of rolls.
Stratton’s stomach dropped into his shoes, then, just as fast, came back up to lodge in his throat. He clutched at the edge of the console, the armrests of his chair, anything to give him a sense of balance as his equilibrium spun as fast as the ship.
The crazy bitch is going to kill us!
Chapter Five
Stratton’s stomach pitched in time to the barrel roll and continued the motion minutes after Willa evened out the ship. “Why the hell did you do that?”
A naughty grin slid across her lips and animated the visible lower portion of her face. “That was showing and preparing you for what’s to come.” Her slender hands tightened on the half-moon wheel. “It was also a modified Lingorian corkscrew. Chances are I’ll need to employ more of them.”
He nodded, wincing at the residual queasiness. “Thanks for the warning.” Another couple of those and he’d be chucking his stomach contents onto her boots. One by one, he pried his fingers from the armrests and focused on the shifting images on his HUD visor. “What do you need from me as nav?” For one tiny moment, he wished she’d need him for something other than race-related duties. Two seconds later, he buried the thought under reminders of exactly why he was in the Nebulon Trike.
Money. Cold hard cash that would always do what he wanted and would never leave of its own accord.
Briefly, she glanced at him, her eyes hidden behind the smoky visor. “You taking this seriously is the first step. Thank you.” She gazed ahead once more. “Call out locations and coordinates. The basic thing is to keep up the chatter so I have an idea of what’s going on. If the asteroid field is boring, start talking about your life. Sometimes the sound of another being’s voice relaxes me enough to handle a stressful situation.”
“Looks like Megaris-8 is toward the end of the Belt. Smaller rocks are constantly floating around it, so running the gauntlet will be tricky.” His stomach churned, only not from sickness or the corkscrew. Unease had set in and gained a foothold.
“Nothing worth doing is ever easy.” A thread of amusement underlay the statement.
Offhand, he wondered if she’d ever shared a genuine laugh, ever chuckled at stupid things that made no sense, like a normal person. Did she ever lose that tight control?
“You’re right.” The colors on his visor blurred as memories came flooding back.
Hadn’t he learned too many times to count during his life that nothing came easily? Like the time when he was eighteen and fought off a couple of six-armed Caringa fighters who’d molested a barmaid, his first successful bounty at twenty-five that netted him money to buy his first ship, the female alien he’d fallen for at thirty-two who’d broken his heart and had left him bitter for several years afterward. All very different memories but ones which had formed him into the man he was today—pushing thirty-seven and absolutely sure of who he was and what he wanted from life.
“Hello? Need some feedback here.” Willa nudged him with a finger. “No daydreaming right now.”
The sound of her voice yanked him into the present. Stratton cleared his throat. “All right, there are several small asteroids off our port bow. No more than two feet in length. One larger rock on the starboard. Proceed with caution.”
“Aye, I see ’em.”
Stratton kept one eye on the HUD images and the other on Willa as she handled the craft. Her hands moved from the steering mechanism to various buttons on her console with the confidence and ease of long p
ractice. Her lips curled in a soft smile; obviously, she was enjoying herself.
Willa seemed to be in her element as a pilot. As he watched her, he mentally kicked himself for not taking being a pilot more seriously. He’d taken the talent for granted, used the piloting knowledge as a means to an end. She handled the ship with the tenderness and care of a skilled lover and with a complete affinity for the ship. Never had he met a woman so at home in a spacecraft, let alone one who took on his arrogance and pride. True, he hadn’t revealed nearly all of himself to her. Even still, she’d thrown what he’d given her back in his face with a challenge of her own.
What was he supposed to do with that?
He frowned. Focus on the Belt, Sinnet. Women leave. Willa would be no different if emotions got involved.
“Keep an eye on the larger ones. I’ll try and outmaneuver the little guys.” She moved the ship through the living obstacle course as if she’d done it a million times.
“Will do.” Green images popped up on his visor, and he called out the coordinates she’d asked for. Midway through the run, a preliminary thrill of victory crept up his spine only to be doused by a hearty wash of cold fear when the next set of images came through. “Holy hell. Various-sized asteroids on both the port and starboard. Computer is indicating they’re even on top of us.”
As if to emphasize the dire statement, a warning alarm went off in the cabin, and a schematic of the Anomaly flashed onto the windscreen with blinking red Xs where the craft had been struck with space rock.
“How bad is the damage?” She jerked the wheel, and the Anomaly careened high on the starboard side. Another pull sent the ship sailing back.
Stratton touched the windscreen, and the image of the ship magnified, with more than a few places flashing red. “The hull has taken a few direct hits. Nothing major, but we have an engine on the fritz.”
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