Runner: The Fringe, Book 3

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  Overwhelmed by his size and hostility, she carefully inspected his finger. “This might hurt.” She lifted his index finger. When he didn’t flinch, she smiled. “Much better.”

  “Now that you’re satisfied”—he yanked his hand back and nodded to her tray—“finish eating. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  Dismissing her, he marched to the cell room door, punched at the wall com, exited and kicked the door closed behind him.

  Jynx peered up at the com unit between her cell and the five others. The chunk of molded black plastic didn’t whir or hiss or give any indication it was active. Until Foster spoke. His booming voice had startled her at first. It was like IWOG leaders commandeering every com unit on Banna. His powerful voice shook her in places she didn’t want to think about. She suspected that he hadn’t been watching her. A bit but not lately. Not since she’d tended to his finger.

  Why did he tell her twenty minutes? Would she have twenty minutes to complete her morning ablutions in privacy, or did he mean that he would be carefully observing her for the next twenty minutes? She didn’t know. He could be playing her in a hundred ways, and she’d never see it coming.

  Relying on her own sense of fair play, she answered him honestly, no matter what he asked her. It seemed to infuriate him. She didn’t answer the way he expected, so he discounted her.

  She finished her breakfast, showered, put on her white lace bra and panties, then her clinging lilac dress, all the while wondering if he watched.

  Precisely twenty minutes later, Foster returned. It’d been hell keeping himself occupied and his hand away from hitting the audvid for twenty minutes. He managed only by telling himself it was the right thing to do. Actually, he tried desperately to keep his big head in charge.

  He well remembered being a lonely IWOG boy on a dateless Friday night. He knew all about those special channels on the Tasher and how to access them without anyone finding out, especially his parents. Forty years old and just the thought of watching her in the shower made his jeans swell. To actually do it…

  Jynx, wearing her clingy lilac dress, sat on her bunk with her hands in her lap. Underneath, he could see tantalizing hints of her lacy white bra and thong panties. Her feet, clad in a pair of his socks, swung back and forth. As soon as he entered, her otherworldly eyes followed his every move as her honey-wet hair clung to her head and hung in moist wisps around her shoulders. Now that the mascara was washed away from the roots, her strands gleamed from root to tip.

  “What do you do all day?” she asked.

  “What do you care?” He scooped up the tray and flipped the fork to his back pocket. He knew he should leave, but he didn’t, mainly because he liked talking to her. Even if she had a way of pissing him off to high heaven, he still felt something compelling him to be near her.

  “I’m just curious.” She shrugged and swung her feet back and forth. “Actually, I’m bored, and I wonder how you cope with being out here all alone for the most part.”

  “There’s plenty for me to do.” He could write a big, thick novel on how a man could entertain himself. If he called himself an expert on anything, self-entertainment would top the list. Wicked self-entertainment staring at Jynx had pretty much filled his mind since the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Beautiful, blonde, busty, and so fine he wanted to possess every inch of her.

  Jynx was a lovely IWOG lady who personified the girls he’d lusted after as an impressionable IWOG boy. She was every masturbatory fantasy brought to life. Older and wiser and a grown woman in all respects, but still, she embodied what he considered female perfection. She was also his prisoner and fully at his mercy. He tried not to think about the bonus in his contract.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

  Her soft voice compelled a hundred naughty thoughts to spring instantly to mind. “You can just sit tight, basking in the glow of accepting your fate.”

  She frowned and looked down at the floor. “What is it about me that you hate so much?”

  “I don’t hate—” He cut himself off from revealing too much. “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”

  “What have I done now?” She sounded totally bewildered.

  “You have to be one of the slickest players I’ve ever met.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This isn’t going to work. I’m not buying your innocent act. I don’t hate you, but I’m not about to trust you either. Fixing my finger was real smooth, but it isn’t going to get you anything.” Why did she have to look so earnest? All at once, he thought of a beautiful bird locked in a cage, slowly dying from confinement. He felt guilty and ashamed for being the one who’d locked her up.

  “I haven’t asked for anything but this cell with a shower, and by the way, you’re welcome.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sure you just forgot to thank me for ministering to your injury.” Her voice echoed slightly in the empty cell room but still ran over his ears like warm honey.

  “Oh, yes. And just how would you like me to show my gratitude?” Here it comes, he thought to himself. Sure enough she’d want something for helping him. She’d want something big.

  “I’d like you to say thank you.”

  “That’s all?” Not a chance in the Void that was all she wanted for helping him.

  “Yes.”

  He pursed his lips as he considered her. “Fine.” He pitched his voice nasty and low, hitched his thumbs into his jeans, and drawled, “Thanks, Sweets.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  To his shock, she seemed satisfied. No way was that all she wanted. “Are we done now?”

  “Yes. Unless you’d like to bellow at me some more.”

  “I haven’t been—” He realized he had been bellowing at her. He took out his frustration on her when it wasn’t her fault that he’d locked himself into a contract he couldn’t get out of. Roberts played on his greed, and it pissed him off that he hadn’t seen it.

  Ever respectful, Jynx peered up at him with a mixture of fear and curiosity as she waited for him to finish his thought.

  “If you were at home right now, what would you be doing?” he asked, knowing that he probably shouldn’t.

  “I would probably be in the lab.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Refining the delivery system for the Tyaa—”

  “You admit you had a hand in—”

  “The Tyaa plague inoculation!” She shot to her feet with her fists clenched. She took a deep breath, deliberately relaxed her hands and lowered her voice. “I didn’t create it, Mr. Nash, regardless of what lies Roberts has filled your head with.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “I helped find the cure, then developed a way to inoculate entire planets. If you are looking for someone to blame for creating the plague in the first place, you best take a long, hard look at your employer.”

  “Roberts isn’t a doctor.” He shouldn’t even be discussing the matter, as it didn’t matter, but her compelling earnestness made him linger.

  Her brows lifted pointedly. “Roberts headed up the IWOG Research and Development branch ten years ago, when the Tyaa plague suddenly arose.”

  “So?” He tried to sound bored, but a ripple of unease filled him.

  “Roberts oversaw the development of biological weapons. The IWOG military released the plague on planet Tyaa without having a cure, because Roberts lied and said they had it, but it turned out they didn’t. Of course, by the time they realized the error, it was too late to take it back. They opened Pandora’s box.” She grimaced as if she were somehow responsible. “I only wanted to right the wrong.”

  “Why? What the hell do you get out of it?”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice.” She cast him a helpless glance. He saw no resentment. He saw only that insufferably calm acceptance. “They drafted me into service. Once the truth became clear, that my own people, through avarice, would not only create but distribute something so horrific…” She shrugged helplessly. “I
just wanted to stop what they started.”

  He must be going insane, because he believed her. Actually, he believed more that Roberts could be that vicious. Rotten Roberts didn’t get such a nickname from playing a nasty game of poker.

  “You give me one good reason why Roberts is blaming you for all of this.” He shouldn’t have asked. No matter what she said, it wouldn’t change what he had to do.

  Jynx laughed softly. “Because I’m the perfect patsy. There are very few people outside the medical community who know me, since I never had much a social life. You know how simple it is for the IWOG to distort, destroy or manipulate bonafides. Who would ever believe me?”

  “Why should I?” He kept his tone light and indifferent when he felt anything but.

  She lifted herself up and looked right into his eyes. “Why would I lie to you, Mr. Nash? I know even if you changed your mind about me, you will still honor your contract with Roberts.”

  He saw in her eyes that she knew he had no choice but to deliver her. Her acquiescence irritated him beyond what he thought was reasonable.

  “True enough. So what’s the point?” His cutting voice actually made her drop her gaze to the floor, making him feel like the worst kind of bully.

  “I want someone to believe me that I didn’t do these horrible things. I just want one person to know that I—” She bit her lip, fighting back tears. After taking a warbling breath, she lifted her gaze. “I am going to die for something I didn’t do. I would like at least one human being besides myself to know that I am innocent.” Violet eyes with a film of tears looked up from her impossibly beautiful face. “I guess I want to convince you because you are the only person here.”

  He turned away before she could see any hint of compassion on his face.

  Chapter Seven

  Foster left without a word.

  Jynx gritted her teeth and held her tears at bay. She’d cried more in the last month than she had in her entire life. Tears wouldn’t help soothe the hurt of losing everyone close to her. Not a soul worried about her when she worried frantically about the whole of humanity. Because of Roberts, everyone in the Void utterly despised her.

  Roberts had nonstop media coverage plaster her face everywhere, branding her a terrorist. Convincing Foster Nash of her innocence was nothing more than a way to make herself feel better, since it wouldn’t change a thing.

  “Live or die, even with a thousand lifetimes, I can never overcome my reputation.” Desperate to find something to occupy her mind, she looked about her cell. What could she do?

  Entertaining herself seemed impossible, but she had to find something to think about other than her own death, her brief night of passion with Brandt, or convincing the intriguing Mr. Nash that she really wasn’t the insane lunatic that Roberts insisted she was.

  Jynx sat immobile on her bunk as she looked to the door Foster had exited through. When he’d walked away, she watched his butt with the same fascination he seemed to have for her breasts. Indulging herself, acknowledging her interest as far more than cursory, she couldn’t help but immediately think of his blue eyes. Never-Fail Nash had eyes as open, trusting and compelling as a child’s. He seemed to know it and resent it. The rest of his face tried to make up for the compassion in his gaze with lowered, ominous brows and a tight little frown. To most the disguise would be effective, but not to her. She didn’t have to slip into his mind and look out through his eyes. She could see everything clearly by looking in.

  Never-Fail Nash didn’t like that he had a base nature of compassion. He liked it even less that she could see his gentleness and had the ability to speak directly to it.

  He accused her of playing him when he knew in his own heart she wasn’t. She had no reason to lie, and he had every reason to doubt her, but he didn’t. Ruthless, brutal, vicious—the legendary Never-Fail Nash hid a marshmallow heart behind a thick coat of bulging muscles and naked hostility.

  Trust is for suckers, he’d said, yet he trusted her. She knew the truth with a glance. She didn’t envy him the conflict he felt. He trusted her, but he had to deliver her to Roberts. If her reputation could never be saved, his reputation would perish in flames if he helped her. The legend of Never-Fail Nash rested squarely on her shoulders.

  “I’d have to kill him to get away.”

  Foster would pursue her until she died or he did. She could never kill anyone to save herself. Not even Roberts. Since she couldn’t kill Mr. Nash, she accepted the fact that he wouldn’t kill her either. Roberts would kill her. Personally. There wouldn’t be torture or confinement or a lengthy trial. Roberts wanted her alive to kill her. Probably live on the Tasher with trillions of IWOG consumers watching, every channel riveted to the drama.

  “A very bloody and public execution.” Just the thought of it made her shiver. She touched the side of her bra. She had a way of denying that sick pleasure to Roberts, and she would when the time came. She pulled her hand away and cast a guilty look at the com unit. Hopefully, he’d not seen that telling gesture.

  The entire scheme fell apart if there was any doubt about her death. Roberts would likely shoot for her heart so her face would still be presentable for the media. No doubt Roberts would plaster even more pictures of her dead body around, proof the evil menace had been destroyed. Roberts gets the credit, moves up in rank, and all it cost was one clueless IWOG doctor. Who the hell would ever believe her that it was all a vast conspiracy?

  Work and sleep had taken up most of her time in the last three years. Welcome to the IWOG Military. Check your personal life at the door. They’d drafted her into service with a twenty-four-hour warning. Sadly, that was all it took for her to wrap up her life. She said good-bye to everyone in the hospital, and they wished her well with a hurried indifference.

  “And now they are all dead too.” A freak accident with the heating system wiped out everyone in the hospital. But the more she thought about the timing of that accident—two weeks after the lab explosions—she doubted it was any kind of accident at all.

  She didn’t want to think about the past anymore, because she couldn’t do anything to change what had happened. Her total lack of control over everything in the future also frustrated her. At the moment, she didn’t even control her own air. Foster could shut it off, and she’d be dead in an hour or so. Roberts wouldn’t like that, but at least Roberts would still have a corpse to show off. Technical digital trickery could bring her corpse back to life so Roberts could shoot her down. All of it well documented for the media.

  “I don’t want to think of this anymore.”

  Casting her mind back to when she was a child, she looked at the contents of her cell with a different eye. Picturing herself as an eight-year-old, she decided to make a fort.

  Pulling the mattress off the bunk, she used the bendy foam to fashion a wall between the bed frame and the table, then covered the whole thing with the blanket. Twirling her flannel robe around her shoulders like a cape, she crawled into her fort.

  Foster recoiled from the image on the holoplas. He hadn’t believed Duster. After tapping up every media channel it didn’t take long for the truth to sink in.

  “You’re sure it’s—”

  “It’s Jynx Brennan. If you have her, you’re a target for every bounty hunter out there.” Duster popped a crackleseed between his teeth.

  Foster fought down his shock. Bouncing his gaze from the live audvid with Duster to the news channels, he swallowed hard. “Not just IWOG but—”

  “Every media channel on the Tasher.” Duster popped another seed. “Jynx Brennan is, at the moment, the most despised human being in the universe.” Duster shot him that narrow-eyed wink. “What are you going to do with her?”

  Composing himself, Foster shrugged. “What can I do?”

  “You’re going to deliver her when I’ve told you what Roberts is saying is total crap?” There were touches of shock and disgust around Duster’s grim-set mouth.

  “Truth isn’t the issue,” Foster defended.r />
  “Reputation.”

  Foster nodded and barely refrained from wincing.

  “You’re a better man than I.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Dunno. If it were my rep on the line…I still don’t know.” Duster sat back with a sigh. “All I know for a fact is that I’m real glad I’m not you. How the hell did Roberts ever con you into this?”

  “You know me. I don’t pay much attention to the media. I had no idea Roberts had done this to Jynx—me.” Thankfully Duster didn’t notice his very telling slip.

  “I’ll bet Roberts offered a pretty sweet contract.”

  “All told about 10Mil.”

  Duster whistled. “That’s half what they want for Michael’s head. That should have tipped you off right there.”

  “Dur-hey. But I didn’t think about it long term. I thought of that quick Mil in ten days.” He’d been suckered in by the flash of swift and easy credits.

  “What’s she really like?” Duster leaned closer. “I mean, besides the obvious that she’s a looker and a half.”

  “She’s…nice. Says please and thank you and you’re welcome.” Foster continued to tap up data as he popped his bubblegum.

  “Why do you sound so pissed off about it?” Duster asked with a surprised chuckle.

  “Because it’s driving me insane. Sounds contradictory, but I wish she was a loudmouth psycho. It’d make my job a lot easier.” He couldn’t help but remember Jynx pointing that out to him.

  Duster laughed. “You want her to act like Mary? Kneeing you in the nuts and biting your finger?”

  “Maybe not that bad, but it would certainly make me feel a hell of a lot better.” Foster whisked his hair out of his eyes.

  “You know, you could always back out.”

  Foster shook his head, dumping his bangs right back into his field of vision. “Not unless I’m dead. My whole reputation is hanging on this woman. If I back out, I’m dead in the Void. Who the hell would hire me? Even you would think twice about trusting me again. I’d go from being a triple-platinum Runner to—”