“Fancy a look at the merchandise?” Trickster sleeked back his greasy hair like a rat grooming his whiskers.
“Already got two whores on my ship. Don’t reckon I need another.” How had Kraft fallen to this? Jace forced himself to shrug and turn away. He had to grit his teeth not to look back.
“Ah, but these are double-skilled whores you can afford.” Trickster lured him back. Jace pretended to consider the offer.
Trickster pointed to each woman as he listed her skills. When he got to Kraft, he said, “This one can cook.”
What I wouldn’t give for a decent meal.
When Jace hesitated, Trickster licked his thin, chapped lips and trilled, “Let you have her for a fair price.”
“A cook for a fair price?” Jace shook his head. “I can’t afford a cook. Besides, I’m out two fighters and you know it, since you’re the one who stole Moore and Fellows from my employ.”
Jace glanced at the two men who now stood as part of Trickster’s personal guard. The turncoats met his gaze with cool aplomb. No doubt they told Trickster he’d not made Payton or her daughter his whore, and that he took a strong exception to them trying to do so. Too, they must have told Trickster that he longed to find a good cook.
Coldly, Jace said, “You offer me a boatload of women worth nothing in a fight.”
“Men to fight are a dime a dozen. But women, ah, they can warm the bed,” Trickster said. “And this one can cook as well.”
“Bit tall, don’t you think?” Jace looked Kraft over with the discerning eye of a bidder at auction.
“In proportion. Worthy of a man of your stature.”
The diminutive scrimshanker buttered him up better than breakfast toast.
“I don’t much like the idea of having to subdue my bed warmer every night,” Jace said. “Even if she can cook.”
“Look. See how docile she is?” Trickster pulled Kraft forward, and she came willingly. She stood straight, towered over Trickster, and tilted her head up slightly toward Jace. He didn’t see even a flicker of recognition in her glazed eyes.
“She’s docile because she’s drugged.”
“A bit,” Trickster admitted. “And it doesn’t take much. You can well afford her.”
“Can you cook?” Jace asked Kraft.
She swore up a furious streak in German before Trickster could stifle her with a pinch to her arm.
“Feisty.” Jace shook his head and turned away. “Don’t need one like that.” He stalked off. If he were too eager, Trickster would smell it. Mercifully, Garrett and Heller remained silent.
Jace heard Trickster slap Kraft. Hard. He cocked his head over his shoulder, anticipating the pleasure in watching her rip the weasel apart. But she didn’t. Kraft shook her head and stood even more ramrod straight. She must be drugged out of her mind. Barehanded, Kraft could yank Trickster’s head right off his scrawny neck and make him do the unspeakable to his own ass.
“She’s upset you even ask,” Trickster said. “She is the finest cook on the Fringe.”
“Really?” Jace didn’t believe Kraft could boil water, let alone claim fame as a cook, but he turned back to Trickster with bored indifference.
“You ever heard of Fairing’s cook?” Trickster asked.
“Since Fairing is the most epic thief who ever worked the Fringe, I’ve heard of him,” Jace said. “Fairing’s cook is almost as epic as Fairing himself.”
“This cook-whore is Fairing’s cook.”
Jace felt his eyebrows rise almost to his hairline. “Not only do you want me to believe she can cook, but you want me to believe she’s Fairing’s cook?” Trickster wouldn’t know the truth if he saw it crap in his hat. “If you’re going to lie to me, Trickster, at least make it passable.” Turning on his heel, Jace stalked off. “Especially since there’s no way to confirm your tale since Fairing died a year ago.”
“Fairing speaks from beyond the grave,” Trickster said.
“And his ghost speaks only to you?” Jace asked.
“To any who have this.”
Trickster waved a paper at him, coyly, like a hanky. He smiled with dark malevolence when Jace reached for it.
Jace read over the holodigitext quickly. The document could be forged, but he didn’t think so. Compelling enough as she was, Captain Kraft was more so when he discovered she was, without a doubt, Fairing’s cook.
“How do I know she’s not riddled with disease?” Jace forced himself to dicker over her finer points as a commodity. He didn’t want Trickster, or any other man in the room, to have any notion that he cared about her.
“By this.” Trickster handed him a clean bill of health from an IWOG hospital.
“How’d you get this on a cook-whore?” Jace asked.
“There’s a doctor at the Kali hospital who has a predilection for the exotic, shall we say.” Trickster flashed him an oily grin. “My doctor provides this service for me in exchange for that which satisfies his rather strange appetite.”
“Please, don’t unpack that.” Jace had no interest in some IWOG doctor’s perversion. “How much do you want for her?”
“A pittance, really. I have too much stock as it is.”
“Fifty.” Jace appraised Kraft with a cold eye.
“For a cook?” Trickster asked archly. “Try five thousand.”
Jace turned on his heel and strode away. Trickster’s smarmy, conciliatory attitude became clear—the fetch wanted as much for Kraft as he’d just paid for the salvaged goods.
“Three thousand!” Trickster shouted.
Jace stopped but didn’t turn around. A two thousand drop in a breath meant Trickster wanted more out of this than money.
“One hundred,” Jace countered.
“Two thousand.”
“No way.” Jace walked to the door of Trickster’s lair and turned back like an afterthought. “Two hundred.”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“Five hundred.”
“Fifteen hundred,” Trickster said definitively. “I won’t go any lower. That’s a bargain for a cook. Especially this cook.”
Jace looked Kraft over again. Like an oddly dressed tin soldier, Kraft stood boldly proud despite the garish makeup and skimpy clothes. Oblivious because of the drugs, she seemed impossibly vulnerable. He shuddered at the thought of what Trickster would do to her if he didn’t buy her. A surge of protectiveness mixed with a feeling of obligation swept him. By her honor, he stood here now. By his honor, he vowed to repay her even if he couldn’t afford her outrageous price.
“Deal.”
Chapter Six
When Kraft woke up, she saw a gun metal gray ceiling crossed with exposed plumbing, duct work, stabilizer struts. A ship? The air tasted sharp and antiseptic. She touched her body. She didn’t have any blades and barely had any clothes. Below her, she found a cold metal table.
Shivering, she took a deep breath and tried to read the table. Confusing images and emotions assaulted her—blood, pain, fear. Overriding them all she felt one word, safety, echo in her mind.
“She’s coming around.”
Kraft rolled her head toward the lyrical voice. Her blurry vision finally focused on a tiny woman with strawberry blond hair and a sleek, cat-like face.
After speaking into the wall com, the woman gazed back at Kraft with naked curiosity and approached. “How do you feel?”
When the woman leaned over her, Kraft shoved her away and leapt off the table. She grasped frantically for a weapon because she felt too shaky to fight hand-to-hand. Yanking open a drawer, she found a scalpel and brandished it.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The woman held up her hands and backed toward the open infirmary door.
“You got that right.” Kraft looked down. “What the hell am I wearing?” She kicked off the ridiculous beaded slippers, flexed her feet and got her bearings for a fight. “Where am I?”
“In the infirmary,” the woman, a doctor, said.
“I grasp that part, I mean where in the Void�
�”
“You’re on my ship.” Jace entered the room with his gun drawn.
Confused, disoriented, the last month a total blur, Kraft felt the scalpel tremble in her hand as the ravages of powerful drugs coursed through her veins. Her gaze and hand wavered between the targets the doctor and Jace offered.
“I let you go.” Kraft tried to comprehend what was going on. “Why are you doing this to me when I let you go?”
“I’m trying to help you,” Jace said. “Put down the scalpel.”
When she hesitated, he pointed his gun right at her head. The ancient Sod Buster clicked with a resounding boom when he pulled the hammer back.
“Stand down, Captain Kraft. Don’t make me kill you to protect my crew, because you know I will.”
Kraft struggled to understand the confusing images clouding her mind. She had vague memories of blood and horror. Death like a stench she couldn’t ever run from. The scalpel clinked to the floor as she lifted her hands.
“By my honor, I stand down.”
“Are you decent?” Jace asked through the closed door.
“Bit of a problem.” Kraft tugged at another lacy shirt that barely covered her bellybutton.
“What’s that?”
“None of this fits!” Kraft discarded the shirt and realized it was the last one. “Captain Lawless?”
“Yes?”
“I’m asking an awful lot, beggars shouldn’t be choosers and all, but, can I have something of yours?” Besides Heller, Jace was the only person on the ship with clothing that would fit.
“So you can read it?”
In her current condition, she didn’t think she could read a book, let alone anything else.
His knock against the metal door resounded in the empty storage room. “Are you going to answer me?”
“What if I could read your clothes?”
Without a word, he walked off.
Naked, Kraft waited in a room now strewn with shirts and skirts. She appreciated Payton and Charissa’s offer, but most of their clothing flat-out didn’t fit her foot-taller frame.
She heard Jace approach. He tapped twice with his knuckle then opened the door just enough to drop a bundle of clothes.
“Try those.” He pulled the door shut.
Kraft picked up a homespun cotton shirt, thick and heavy, dyed in the spring with yarrow root. Youthful hope radiated from soft yellow contours and handcrafted wooden buttons. When she slipped the shirt on, Jace’s scent surrounded her. He hadn’t worn this in almost a decade. He’d kept it neatly folded in the back of his drawer, like a memory preserved.
She lifted up the brown trousers which were just as faded and worn. She pulled on a dream turned nightmare. Visions of fields filled with rolling grain, and then a woman of home and comfort with three children at her side. Then came a burning sickness. Death. The destruction of all he loved. The resounding echo of her vision in her own heart literally floored her.
Jace must have heard the crash from the other side of the door. He tapped twice. “Kraft, you okay?”
“I’m getting there.” She stumbled to her feet and buttoned up the trousers. She wondered how much of what she’d felt was real and how much had been perverted by the drugs. Everything had a surreal chemical edge. Time seemed like salt water taffy in the sun…
“Are you decent?” Jace asked through the closed door.
“Debatable, but I’m dressed.”
The storage room door creaked open. Jace wore almost the exact same outfit as she did, but his shirt was battered blue and his trousers were made of denim. He looked at her for the longest time, and she almost lifted her hands to protect herself. How could that man, with his gaze alone, make her feel utterly vulnerable? She chalked the unfamiliar feeling up to the drugs she’d been injected with for the last month.
His clothes fit her well. The shirt strained a bit at her bust and the pants a bit at her hips, but they were about the same size in most places. Kraft took hard-and-fast notice of where they differed.
“I wanted to get into your pants, Captain Lawless, but this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
Jace startled back a step. He seemed amazed she hadn’t lost her sense of humor. He suppressed a burst of laughter by turning away and coughing hard. Having composed himself, he turned back, but kept his attention on her bare feet. “We’ll have to get you some shoes.”
“Tell you what, at this point in my life, I’m grateful I still have feet.” Her attempt at humor compelled him to meet her gaze. She smiled, but it felt forced, and if his worried brow was any indication, he noticed.
“You’re safe.”
A thousand questions swirled in her mind, but in the end she shrugged and asked, “Why?”
“You can cook, right?”
Caught off-guard, she laughed. “From captain to cook? I’ve had quite a tumble from grace.”
“But you can cook.”
The look on his face brimmed with so much hope, a genuine smile lifted the edges of her lips. “That I can do.”
“Then that’s why.” He leaned casually against the doorframe.
“You needed a cook?” She knew there was far more to his helping her than he would ever admit to.
“Yep. Good cooks are rare. Fairing’s cook even more so.”
Shock made her drug-ravaged nerves tingle. “Who told you that?”
“Feller by the name of Trickster. He gave me this as proof.” Jace pulled a folded paper from his hip pocket.
Pleased to see a well-worn friend, she clutched the paper tightly when he placed it in her hand. “Can I keep this?”
“Then it is yours?”
Caught, she looked up into his exotic-sunset green eyes. “You are so much more than pretty.” She dropped her gaze to the paper. “What do you want for it?”
“Cook for me and my crew, and it’s yours.”
“How long will I be beholden to you?” Despite her best efforts, her husky voice sounded suggestive.
“It’s up to you.” He shrugged, pulling his soft blue shirt tight across his shoulders. “Whatever you think is fair.”
“What latitude.” She couldn’t help but feel suspicious of his generosity, but trying to read him would probably be a waste of her time at the moment.
“Honor among thieves.” His slight smile made her shiver.
“You don’t owe me,” she defended, dropping any suggestive tone from her voice or posture.
“No, I don’t, do I?” He turned and walked away.
She followed behind, mumbling, “Looks like I owe you.” She tucked the paper into the pocket of her borrowed shirt.
“He gave me this too.” He handed her another paper.
Kraft unfolded a report from an IWOG hospital. Her heart almost exploded. How had they gotten her in there without bells and whistles going off everywhere?
“Trickster said he got that in some kind of hush-hush deal with an IWOG doctor at a hospital in Kali.”
“Oh.” Kraft thought that explained why she wasn’t being tortured at this very moment.
“Next stop, you can get your face cleaned up.” Jace pointed to a bathroom.
“What did that weasel do to my face?” She stomped to the mirror, took one look and reeled back. “How the hell did you recognize me under all this crap? I look like a whore!” She turned on a small trickle of water and scrubbed her face clean with the bar of harsh hand soap.
“It’s your eyes,” he said softly. “Hard to forget.”
Looking at his reflection in the mirror, she gave him a speculative once over. Captain Jace Lawless expected her to cook, but what else did he have in mind?
Chapter Seven
Kraft worked behind the stove with skilled and fluid movements, but she shook with fine tremors. As he watched her select tidbits from the meager pickings of freeze-dried food, an explanation for her trembling struck him.
Jace touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
Jerking back, overcorrecting, she stood tall and offered him
a wan smile. “Welcome to the wonderful world of withdrawal.”
He leaned close. “Payton might have something to help, and we can live one more night without—”
“No more drugs.” When she shook her head, her linen-bound hair danced across her back and teased the edge of her fanny. “And I think you’re in dire need of a decent meal. You were practically drooling when you asked me if I could cook.” Her rolling chuckle enveloped his whole body.
“It has been a long time.”
“For a lot of things.” She winked and turned her attention back to the stove. “Besides, the only way I’m ever going to get better is if I eat.”
He leaned against the counter and wondered how this was ever going to work when Kraft could read him. He feared she found something dark in him, because every time he touched her, she withdrew. As much as he wanted to ask, he didn’t want to know.
The delectable aroma of her cooking had been like a siren call through Mutiny and everyone gathered in the galley, holding plastiware plates in drooling anticipation. His crew gave Kraft speculative glances, and he knew he’d have to explain, but he hoped to do it after everyone had a full belly.
Kraft served up plates that were fairly snatched from her hands. When she handed Jace his plate, she said, “You’ll know soon enough if you made a good deal for me or not.”
He sat at the head of the table on a wobbly wooden bench.
Around a bite of food, Charissa gushed, “This is so yummy!”
“Magnifique!” Payton exclaimed, nodding agreement to her daughter.
“Fabulous,” chimed in Bailey, lifting his fork to Kraft like a salute.
Garrett, his mouth too stuffed to comment, rolled back his eyes and moaned.
Jace took one bite and knew fifteen hundred for her was an insult. He hadn’t tasted food this wonderful in a decade. How could Kraft make the same freeze-dried dreck they’d been gagging on for months taste like this?
“It’s extraordinary.” Jace turned from his place at the head of the table to face her.
Thief: Fringe, Book 1 Page 4
