“Maybe,” he muttered, “but I’ll bet they weren’t do-it-yourself jobs screwed together by a farmer.”
I suppressed a smile as I helped Joanna stow the food baskets across the aisle then seated her across from my dad and made sure she was strapped in securely.
Roy stood at the bottom of the gangway as I came out to say good-bye. My dad’s friend had laid his ass on the line for me; ‘thank you’ didn’t seem like nearly enough.
He watched my approach in silence and I offered him my hand. “I owe you.”
He shook his head as he took my hand. “That’s okay, boy. Just keep your dad out of trouble and bring him back safe when this is all over.”
God only knew when that would be. “I’ll do that.”
“And tell him not to worry about the house. I’ll take care of it.”
“And the four guys I terminated?”
“Your dad was out when we got there. They nosed around. They left. What happened to them after that, well....” He shrugged.
I smiled faintly then nodded and entered the ship, hitting the sealing mechanism. The gangway slid up and the doors shut with a solid and satisfying thunk. I entered the cockpit and started the engines, maneuvering the shuttle out of the barn and into the yard.
Roy had gone to stand on the front porch with Walter and his wife. I waved to him then hovered for a moment before rising into the sky.
The Lady Kathy was easy and smooth to fly. Which was a good thing, since I kept one eye on our tail until we were safely out of the solar system. Once I was sure the Home System Security Agency hadn’t pegged us on our way off world I breathed a small sigh of relief and turned on the autopilot, settling back in my seat, closing my eyes. I switched the intercom to the main cabin on. Joanna was asking my dad about Meyer’s Landing and the farm. He seemed a little surprised that she’d care to know anything about a rinky-dink little place like that, but he didn’t seem to mind answering. After a while he even started telling her stories about me when I was a kid.
I couldn’t believe he remembered half that shit. He’d always appeared to be too busy with the farm to pay attention to my adolescent adventures—unless they landed me in trouble. I heard something in his voice as he talked about me. Something bordering on pride.
That couldn’t be right. So far as I knew, my dad had never been proud of me a day in my life.
The conversation shifted to old girlfriends, not that there had been many of those. I’d been a shy, quiet kid growing up—more interested in sports than romance. Still, listening to my dad outline my adolescent love life did bring back a few fond memories. I shook my head wryly. How was it he could remember the name of my first teenage crush when I couldn’t? I never realized he’d been that plugged in to my life. He’d never appeared to be. Apparently Joanna was learning more about me than she bargained for.
I sighed. Joanna. Shit. What was I going to do about Joanna?
I couldn’t deny the attraction I felt for her and, despite the underlying shared irritation, I could swear there were moments when I thought that attraction might be mutual. I’d managed to acquire a fair number of skills in my life, but when it came to understanding women I was hopelessly out of my depth. The only other woman I’d ever been seriously involved with was Gina, and she’d never had much trouble making herself understood. Her way or the highway—not much room for misunderstanding there. Joanna appeared to operate on a subtler level, and whatever signals she might be sending, I was having trouble receiving them.
I shook my head. Jesus, what made me think she was sending me any kind of signal at all? If she was smart, she’d stay away from me.
◆◆◆
Except for a few brief excursions to Lunar City, or Terra-Luna, my dad had never been off planet—he hadn’t run into many Doranis, Sorrellians, or Lyrians in his day. He’d never been exposed to the bizarre mix of cultures and languages that flourished on the Jaraslad station, and he was in for quite an education. He sat in the copilot’s seat as I hailed the station from just beyond the sector six marker buoy.
“Jaraslad Control, this is the private Terran shuttle Lady Kathy requesting permission to dock.”
There came a brief burst of static. “Lady Kathy, you are cleared to dock at bay twelve on the upper rings. Confirm?”
“Roger that. Bay twelve, upper rings.”
I maneuvered the shuttle around the station, moving slowly to give my dad the best possible view.
Jaraslad was an impressive sight if you hadn’t seen her before. Her central tower and slowly spinning concentric rings were lit from within and flickered blue and white against the pale green backdrop of Rhysa six. We passed half a dozen freighters and three passenger liners, and I smiled at my dad’s awed expression as we pulled into bay twelve. I set the shuttle down on the landing pad. The outer bay door slid down and the light above it turned from red to green as the compartment pressurized. Behind me, I heard Joanna packing up the stuff in the main cabin.
“Welcome to the Dorani Sector,” I said as I powered down the engines.
“Come here a lot?” my dad asked as he followed me into the main cabin.
“Now and again. Come on, I’ll get you and Joanna settled.”
The outer circle was as crowded as ever and I kept my eyes open for blue and gray DSS uniforms. The blond hair and green eyes I’d adopted would have to change, as would my address. I’d have to pay Bardol Vashin a visit and see if he had a different combination of enhancers. And I’d need a new alias. My mind formulated a steadily growing to do list that increased in complexity with each item I added. I’d always flown by the seat of my pants, making things up as I went. Adapting to changing circumstances. Going with the flow.
I was beginning to realize a guy could get himself killed that way.
I entered the code into the auto-lock on the door to my rooms. It slid open and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Station security hadn’t changed the code, which meant they hadn’t unraveled my Neil Owen alias yet. I still had a little breathing room. I hit the light sensor, my gaze sweeping the disheveled space. Everything looked exactly the way it had when I left. The bed was still unmade. The vid-link flickered in the corner. The green light flashed on the message center.
“Nice place,” said my dad as he looked around the messy room.
“Yeah, well, I’m not here much.”
“You have a message,” he said nodding to the flashing light.
“I’ll get it later,” I said, tossing my bag onto the bed.
“Maybe it’s from your friend, Kenny,” suggested Joanna.
And maybe it’s from somebody who wants me to kill their grandmother. “It can wait.”
Joanna shifted her gaze to the floor.
“So, what happens now?” asked my dad.
I zipped opened my bag and pulled out my blaster, ejecting the empty charge and inserting a full one. I wished I had my own weapons, but they were sitting at Joanna’s. Which seriously pissed me off. If she’d stayed in Lunar City, like she was supposed to, I’d have found some way to get them back, but that was a little difficult what with her tagging along with me. The GSF would be watching her house, if they hadn’t searched it already, and they were much more on the ball than a nosy neighbor or two. Besides, Earth and Lunar City were so far down the list of places I wanted to go back to, that they didn’t make the list.
I guess it wasn’t a total wash. Agrakh would be happy to see me; I was turning out to be his best customer.
I stuck the blaster into my belt and looked over to where my dad stood by the view port. Fuck. It was time for me to make good on our deal.
“Let’s go eat and then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
He looked at me doubtfully. “No bullshit?”
“No bullshit,” I agreed. “But you’re not going to like what you hear, Dad. I can guarantee it.”
“I don’t have to like it, so long as it’s the truth. I’m tired of the lies.”
Yeah, well, we’ll s
ee.
My dad had never seen anything like Jaraslad and I thought he’d give himself whiplash the way he kept looking around. He and Joanna decided they wanted to try the food at a Sorrellian grill that advertised something called spiced Ta’garth steaks. I’d seen live Ta’garth once on Sorrellis Nine—they looked something like a cross between a large spider and a German shepherd.
Like my flight experience, that was another little thing best kept to myself.
I didn’t eat much. My dad and Joanna chattered back and forth, but I barely heard them as my mind carried me through dinner to the turbulence I knew was coming. I’d promised him the truth, but I wasn’t sure there was a way to say it that didn’t lower his opinion of me further.
After dinner I introduced them to the Orion. It was loud and familiar, and if my dad decided to hit me, at least it would go mostly unnoticed. I left my weapons with Rachmar and the three of us passed through the beaded neon curtain and into the bar. I kept one eye open for DSS uniforms as we made our way to a table in the corner. Kayla was off and a perky Terran waitress with rainbow colored spiked hair and green eyes took our order. She wore a tight black leather bustier-skirt combo and boots so high I was surprised her nose didn’t bleed. Once she’d brought our drinks, my dad settled back in his chair and looked at me.
“All right. Let’s hear it.”
I briefly sketched out the episode at the refugee camp and the ambush of my patrol. “I knew there was no way they could know for sure if they got us all,” I finished. “Kenny and I hid in the remains of the camp and waited for them to leave. They must have come back later to recover the bodies.”
My dad nodded. “And then what?”
“We made our way back to Lachra. Kenny contacted his father, and he smuggled us off the planet.”
“And that’s when you decided to kill folks for a living?”
“I wasn’t left with many options. I owed Kenny’s dad, big time, for saving my ass and he wasn’t a man you said ‘no’ to. I wasn’t in any position to bargain when it came time to choose a new profession. He knew people who needed things done; I needed to clear my debt.”
“Which brings us back to how many. How many have you killed, Gage?”
“You’ve already asked me that.”
“You’re not gonna tell me?”
“No, I’m not. It doesn’t matter how many.”
“It does to me. I want to know.”
“Why? What difference will it make? One or a hundred, knowing the number won’t make them any less dead.”
“Maybe not, but I need to hear you say it. If you can tell me how many, I’ll know you haven’t gone so far into the dark that you can’t come back. I’ll know there’s a piece of your soul that’s still your own.”
I couldn’t look at him. I’d promised him no bullshit, but it was bad enough I knew how many deaths I was responsible for, how could I justify the number to him?
“I don’t know how many, Dad,” I lied. “More than I care to remember.”
I felt every second of the silence that stretched between us. Joanna tried to take my hand under the table, but I drew it away and forced myself to meet my dad’s eyes. He wore the same closed, cold expression he’d worn when he’d told me about my mother’s death.
“More than you care to remember,” he repeated. “Well, I guess that tells me what I wanted to know then, doesn’t it, boy?” I didn’t reply and he shook his head in disgust. “I saw you, the other day, when you went out to visit your mama’s grave. I keep thinking about what she’d say about all this, if she were alive. You know what? For the first time, I’m glad she’s dead. She’d be horrified to see the monster her blessed boy’s turned into.” He pushed himself away from the table as he got to his feet. “Whatever happened in that jungle happened; get over it and move on. Don’t give me that bullshit about how scarred you are, or how you made the only choice you could. There had to be another way. There’s always another way.” He looked at me, his eyes bleak and cold. “Always.”
I let him leave even though that little voice in my head urged me to chase him down in case he got lost. He shoved his way to the door and I sat for a long time, staring at his empty chair. I vaguely heard Joanna say something about going to find him, then she got up and left too. The noise, the music, the laughter—it washed over me, but didn’t touch me.
All I could see was the contempt in my dad’s eyes as he told me I was beyond redemption.
◆◆◆
I sat in the Lady Kathy, trying not to think. It had been four hours since I’d watched my dad storm out of the Orion. Joanna had caught up with him and convinced him to return to my rooms; how she’d managed to find them without me I had no idea. I’d gone back there, briefly, but my dad wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t even look at me.
So I did what I always did when there was trouble between us. I left.
I thought about what he’d said to me. About there always being another option. It was easy enough for him to say that; he’d never found himself in a situation that was so out of control. What would he have done? What choices would he have made? He’d never known the guilt of watching friends and comrades shot to death all around him. He’d never had to pick his way through the emotional mine field it left behind or spend hours, days, second guessing every decision he’d made. Wondering if maybe he’d done this instead of that it would have made a difference. He’d lived in the same small community all his life, where every decision he made was black or white. He would never understand that there were some places where those rules didn’t apply. Some places that were so twisted and shadowed, the only rules that mattered were the ones you made up yourself so you could stay alive another day.
Footsteps echoed on the gangway, and a moment later Joanna stuck her head in the door. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Seemed like she spent most of her life lately asking me that question.
“Fine,” I lied.
“Your dad’s sleeping. I had a runner bring him a bottle of Terran whiskey. He passed out about half an hour ago.” She sat in the seat across from me. “Give him time, Gage.”
“We don’t have any more time,” I said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in my voice. “We’ve been fighting this same battle since the day my mother died, this is just one more variation. He’s always right. I’m always wrong. I’m not going to fight him anymore. Nothing I say will make a difference to him anyway; I’ve been a disappointment to him all my life. This is just a perfect example of why that is.”
I looked past her, down the gangway. She’d left the bay door open and voices drifted in from the circle. Part of me watched for uniforms and itched to close the inner bay doors. The other part of me was fixated on my daddy issues.
“I always envied what Danny and your father had,” I continued. “That closeness. My dad and I never had that. I couldn’t please him. No matter what I did, it was never good enough. He’ll never see me as anything but a screw-up. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Don’t ever kid yourself, Danny and my dad had their moments. They loved each other, yes, but there was also this stupid...macho, father and son bullshit going on that I never understood.
My dad was thrilled when his son joined the GSF. I think Danny did it more to make the old man proud than because of any great, burning desire he might have had to be a soldier. When my dad got sick, he made us promise not to say anything to Danny. He didn’t want his soldier son running home because his dad was ‘under the weather’.” She hesitated. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that no family’s perfect, Gage. We all have our little problems to deal with.”
“How many families do you know who have a hitman in the family tree? I couldn’t tell him, Joanna. He asked me for the truth and I couldn’t give it to him. So now, not only am I killer, but I’m a liar too.”
“It’s just a number, Gage. That’s all.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a body count. One that I’m personally responsible for. Want to
know how many I’ve killed? Fifty-four. Fifty-four living, breathing, people. Sorrellian, Lyrian, Terran— doesn’t much matter to me. Throw enough credits at me and I’ll kill whoever you want.” I closed my eyes against the surge of self-loathing that rose to choke me. “Christ, I was better than this,” I whispered. “How did I ever end up here?”
She left her seat and knelt in front of me. Her lips brushed my ear, and I shivered as that little cautionary voice whispered through my head.
This was a mistake. A big one.
“Joanna,” I gently removed her arms from around my neck.
She caressed my cheek. “Shhh...don’t say it.”
“This...is a really bad idea,” I said, my eyes searching hers.
“I know,” she whispered as she leaned into me, her lips brushing mine.
I closed my eyes as I pulled her close, feeling the warm, tingling rush as my body responded. I moved my hands up her back to twine in her hair.
This was stupid. Really, really stupid....
◆◆◆
I held her, feeling the warmth of her body next to mine. Losing myself in the scent of her hair. The faint, musky perfume of her skin. At some point we’d surfaced from the lust-fuelled fog we’d been immersed in and I’d dragged down cushions and blankets from the overhead storage compartments. At least we weren’t rolling around naked on the shuttle floor anymore.
She sighed, snuggling against me and I shifted my body, turning to draw her into my chest. Holding her close as I tried to sort through the tangled mass of emotion I’d suddenly become.
What had she done to me?
In the space of less than a month she’d managed to penetrate the walls and defenses of my internal fortress. She’d shaken my equilibrium to its foundations, and as much as I tried to deny it, I felt centered and complete when she was there. She had this way of soothing the chaos that surrounded me, and her body felt warm and familiar in my arms. Like it had always been meant to be held by me.
I closed my eyes as I was forced to admit the terrible truth. What I felt went way beyond simple physical attraction.
Hunter Page 16
