“Foster.”
He recoiled. Jynx sat atop a wriggling body and turned her head toward him in the dark. Night-vision contacts made her eyes shine metallic green as her hair glowed preternaturally bright.
“I know it’s you. I can taste you from here.” Jynx tossed her head back, then crushed the slight wiggle of the body below hers.
“Jynx?” By all that was fair, Jynx should have been astounded at his arrival. Instead, she gazed at him, obviously pleased he’d finally shown up.
“It’s me. Guess who this is?”
Since his contacts made everything in the room monotone green and black, Foster peered closely as he jammed a break to the durosteel bars that separated him from Jynx. Popping with a metallic snick, the device deactivated the lock. Foster yanked the door open and joined Jynx on the floor.
“Roberts.” Foster couldn’t believe it. Where his plan could go wrong in a million ways and did, it went right in a way that shocked him profoundly.
“Jynx Brennan, space doctor.” Grinning impishly in the dark, Jynx asked, “How’s Mr. Nash?”
“Mr. Nash is shocked right out of his skin, Sweets. Never met a woman like you. Bold and brazen and don’t it beat all that you go me one better every damn time.” Even though Jynx couldn’t see him, she worked with him to take Roberts into custody, almost as if she felt him in the dark.
“That door, that one over there.” Jynx pointed with an accuracy that astonished him. “She’s been trying to get there. Her personal transport is waiting to take her to Banna to receive an award for killing me. Did you know that? That I’m dead?”
“Yeah. Saw the vid on the trans, but I knew it wasn’t you. The eyes were all wrong.” He stood, pulled Jynx to her feet and kissed her. Peace stole over him as soon as their lips touched. On a long, deep sigh, Foster pressed a dozen kisses to her forehead as he crushed her to his embrace. He thanked every god in every pantheon that he knew for allowing him to hold her one more time.
Roberts spit the covers out of her mouth and took a gasping breath. “What in the hell are you doing here? You’re in violation of the contract, Nash. I’m going to have you—”
Ripping a strip off the sheet, Foster gagged Roberts. “I promised to deliver her, but I didn’t say anything about not stealing her back.” Foster pulled Roberts to her feet and leaned into her, right up into her fury-gripped face. “Told you security on this place blows. You got to kill her, but I get to keep her.”
Struggling, trying to wriggle free, Roberts spit and hissed behind her gag.
“Don’t worry,” Foster said to Roberts, “we’re taking you with. You’re our get-out-of-jail-free card.” Jamming his gun into Roberts back, he forced her to the door. Jynx followed behind him.
“How can you see in the dark?” Jynx asked.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing. Night-vision contacts. Very handy. Just put your hand on my belt and follow along.”
“I got used to finding my way in the dark on your ship.” Jynx put her hand on his ass. “And I’d rather touch you here.”
“Damn, woman, not now!” He laughed but let her put her hand anywhere she wanted. “What the hell were you doing pounding on Roberts?” In a million years, he never would have expected to walk in on that scene. Jynx Brennan involved in a fistfight with, of all people, Victoria Roberts. More astonishing was that Jynx had won.
“She decided she was going to kill me, then keep me on life support to get my child.”
“She just up and attacked you?”
“Well, no. I did call her a gaping hole.”
As they made their way up the stairs to the roof, Foster chuckled and asked, “Why did you call her that?”
“That’s what she is. Nothing could ever fill up that emptiness in her.” Jynx pinched his bottom smartly, then demanded, “Now you explain why you slept with her.”
“Ah, truth time. Long story short, I was drunk. She was there and willing, and I didn’t look too deeply. Trust me, it’s not a mistake I would ever repeat. Just about scrubbed my skin off in the shower the morning after I woke up in her bed.”
Roberts stumbled, her high heels no doubt making the endless flights of stairs difficult to maneuver.
“Wait.” Foster stopped, reached down, took Roberts over his shoulder, then continued up the stairs. “Faster this way.”
“You are such a caveman.”
When they reached the top, Foster stopped and put Roberts down.
“Wait.” Jynx touched his arm.
“Why? What are you doing?”
“I’m going to read her, see what’s out there.”
Foster felt Roberts stiffen in the dark, then tremble in pain.
“Two guards, flanking the door. Two more in her craft, waiting to take her to Banna.” Jynx scrunched up her face.
Beyond the door, Foster heard two rapid shots. Gripping his gun, he kept it riveted on the door. “What the hell?”
“That takes care of the guards by the door.” Jynx’s brow furrowed as she concentrated. “The two in the shuttle are coming out to investigate.”
Two more rapid shots.
“Down they go.” Jynx closed her eyes in concentration.
Foster cast her a shocked look he realized she couldn’t see. “You made them shoot each other? I thought you couldn’t do that.” Yowza. A week away from her and she stunned him yet again.
“I found out I could if I pushed very hard. They’re not dead, but they are in a lot of pain. We should hurry, as they’re trying to call for backup.”
“If you can, don’t let them.”
“I can do that.”
“Jynx, you’re not going to like this, but we have to kill them. I can’t let anyone see that you’re still alive. We can’t let anyone see me or Roberts.” For a moment, he thought she would refuse, but she surprised him again.
“I know.” Her voice was soft and filled with regret. “But if I’ve learned nothing else from being on the Fringe, it’s that sometimes it’s kill or be killed.”
Foster nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Got to do what you got to do to survive.” Foster considered her. The last bit of that IWOG lady died right here in the stairwell. “Stay here, keep an eye on Roberts.”
Pushing open the door, Foster made his way onto the roof and quickly dispatched the four guards. He knew he was right to do so, but that didn’t make killing innocents any easier. When the coast was clear, he took Jynx and Roberts into the waiting craft. He secured Roberts in the back and took Jynx to the bridge.
“Shouldn’t I keep an eye on her while you—”
“Not a chance.” Foster scooped her into his lap. “You’re staying right here with me.” Kissing her neck as he swiveled the chair left and right, checking the clearance, shutting down any visual or com feed, he couldn’t help but laugh at how it all came together. “Thanks to you.”
“What?”
“You, my lovely lady,” Foster said, kissing her soundly. “You made this a hell of a lot easier than it should have been.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Waiting until the city of Borealis on Corona went into full night, Foster landed Roberts’s ship, carefully transferred them under the cover of darkness to the Damn You, then took off.
He hadn’t said much. Just held her on his lap. In a way, she was relieved, because she didn’t know what to say either. It still felt unreal. A part of her thought she would wake up in her cell on Juno with the realization this was no more than a dream.
Once he set his ship to Windmere, Foster picked her up and turned her into his embrace.
“I missed you so much. Only a week, I know, but it felt more like a hundred years.”
“I missed you too.” Her voice came out muffled against his chest. “I started to lose hope.” She hadn’t felt entirely safe until this moment, when she was back on the Damn You with Foster Nash holding her in his arms.
“I am so sorry. I had to do what I did. Swaggering like an ass and manhandlin
g you, playing everyone including you. Please forgive—”
Lifting her hand, she shushed him. “I forgive you.”
Holding her face, he kissed her softly. “On Juno, I was too afraid to actually say what I felt. I only mouthed the words to your lips because I couldn’t say it, then let you down. Contracts matter to me, Jynx, and I’ve never failed on a one of them. To even imply one with you, then not live up to my word? I couldn’t do that to you.” He took a deep breath. “I love you, Jynx.”
Jynx wrapped her arms around him and hugged him as hard as she could. “I love you, Foster Nash. I thought I could never intentionally harm another person, but I discovered I could. I hurt you. Once I accepted that, I realized I could hurt to protect myself, my child, and even you.” Taking a deep breath, Jynx said, “I’m not the same woman I was.”
“Don’t I know it. I still can’t believe I walked in on you whaling the tar out of Roberts.” Foster laughed as he checked the audvid to the cells.
A burst of expletives assaulted them until Foster turned the sound off.
Jynx looked over to find Roberts silently ranting and railing against the bars of the number one cell. Red in the face, Roberts looked utterly mad as she snarled at the com unit in the center.
“See that? That’s how I thought you’d react when I took you into custody. Before you, I thought that behavior was normal.”
Jynx considered the pointless display. “No wonder you took the time to get to know me. I was so curious to you. So different. You couldn’t help but stop and stare.”
“Yeah.” Foster met her gaze with naked honesty. “Never met a woman like you.” He nodded to the audvid. “Her face looks like someone went at it with a cheese grater.” He shook his head. “You amaze me. Every time I think I’ve got you figured out, you go me one better.”
“I wanted to hurt her the way she hurt me, and it frightened me that I could be like that. I pushed into her brain so hard that her whole mind lay open to me. And I realized I could push her body too. It terrified me, how much power I had. How good it felt.” Jynx shook her head. “She almost got away when I realized, because I pulled back—from her and the truth in myself. It’s a hard quality to accept, that I could kill to survive.”
“She scratched your face.”
Jynx touched her cheek, remembering how Roberts’s nails broke away against her face. “At that point, she realized I could kill her. Her mind went cold with terror. For the first time in her life, Roberts finally got a taste of what it was like to feel powerless. I almost killed her in my rage.”
“Why didn’t you? Not a soul would blame you. Least of all me.”
“Because, and admitting this is somehow worse, I wanted her to suffer. Death would have quickly ended her pain. Letting her live, finding a way to truly pay her back—I wanted that more.” Jynx turned away, ashamed. “I want to hurt her the way she hurt me. The way she hurt you. The way she wanted to hurt my unborn child.” Hanging her head, Jynx said, “I’m no better than she is.”
“That’s not true. Hell, Jynx, you showed incredible restraint.” Foster wrapped his arms around her. “Believe me, I’m having to exercise a lot of it myself at the moment. I want to blow Victoria Roberts away, then toss her lifeless body to the Void like so much garbage.”
“Why? I mean, I guess I know why, but—”
“For what she’s done to you, but more so me. How’s that for a painful admission?” He sighed into her ear. “I’m a lot more pissed about what she did to me than what she did to you.”
“No, I don’t think you are.” Jynx turned and considered his short hair, his injured arm, the uniform he wore, one that stripped him of his individuality; then she settled on his eyes. “You hate what you had to do, but Roberts didn’t force you into the contract. You see your own culpability, and that’s what really angers you.”
“Yeah.” Foster didn’t flinch back from the truth.
“You didn’t look too deeply before you leapt.”
“No.”
Jynx nodded. “Me either. I’ve made decisions that have shocked me in retrospect.”
“Hindsight is always crystal clear.”
She nodded. “But through it all, I held to myself, my core beliefs, until I met you. You woke me up in a way—I don’t mean physically, the feelings in my body. Which,” Jynx said with a smile, “were legendary. I mean my emotions, how I feel about myself and the world around me. On Banna I existed, but I didn’t really live. I worked, I consumed, just like everyone else. I didn’t pay much attention to my life after my family was gone. I just went on. Plodding, I guess. I’m babbling, I’m sorry, but it’s been so long since I talked to you. And I missed you and—”
Foster shushed her. “You’ve got a lot going on in that spectacular head of yours.” Pressing close, he bit his lip, flashing her that charming and seductive boy-next-door-all-grown-up grin. “I’ve got an awful lot that I want to tell you, things I think you know, but I want to be clear about them all the same. This isn’t a garden party, so as far as etiquette goes, I don’t think there is any. But right now, I want you in my bed. Say no if that’s a place you don’t want to go.”
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait.”
“Yeah?” He kissed her so softly, he almost tickled her lips.
“What are we going to do with her?” Jynx nodded to the main console and the audvid of Roberts still ranting silently up at the com unit.
“Dunno yet. Got to think about it. We won’t do anything you’re not okay with. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Standing together, holding each other, Jynx finally let the last of the tension seep from her body. She almost sagged into his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m exhausted, and I haven’t even looked at your arm and—”
“It will keep.”
“No. Come on.” Determined, she took him to the infirmary.
“The ship—”
“Will deafen us both if she gets loose.”
Rather than letting her cut the uniform away, Foster stripped out of it because he thought he might need it again someday.
“Thank heaven that’s off you.”
“Creep you out to see me dressed like that?”
“Yes. And your poor hair.”
“I haven’t had hair this short since I lived on Banna.” Running his hand over the stubble rough of it, he lifted her hand to it too, playful at first, then serious. “My face feels harder.” He pressed her hand to the now pronounced after-five shadow. Pointed hair rasped her tender palm. “Caveman growing back as we speak.”
When he let her hand go, she trailed her fingers down his chest, to the red silk boxers around his hips.
Lowering his dark brows to a broad V, Foster said, “Careful. Don’t push the caveman too far. Critical mass is very close. I’m so one step from an animal, it’s not even funny.”
“I see.” Jynx pulled her hand away from the waist of his boxers. “You look so different. And your eyes. Those contacts. If I had seen you, I wouldn’t have recognized you.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I smelled you and felt you in the dark.” Bowing her head, Jynx ministered to his wound with gentle hands. “The only good thing about a laser blast is they cauterize as they tear.” She cleaned the wound, then applied salve and gauze. After kissing it softly, she lifted her face. “All better. No lollipop, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t want a lollipop.” Foster pulled her into his arms, rubbed his face along her neck, tilting his lips to her ear. “I want you.”
“I want you too.”
Foster sat on the infirmary counter in his boxers as he held her in her drab gray jumpsuit. Fiddling with the front zipper, he pulled it down, kissed the exposed bit of flesh, then pulled away. “Crud.”
“What?”
“Willing to do that tender bit to my arm again?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Wanna get wet with you.”
“I’m already there.”
Foster groaned a
s he considered her with a hungry gaze. “I meant wash off this still-clinging cologne on my body, wash away the scent of IWOG on me and you.” Foster zipped her back up. “I want to smell you, not—I want to haul you into my shower and wash the last week away.”
“No.” Foster pulled her hands up and kissed them. “I just want to hold you.” Snuggling her down into his bed, he sighed as he wrapped her tightly in his arms. Water still dripped from her hair, and he brushed it away.
“But your arm.”
“It’s fine. It’ll keep until morning.” Sweeping his fingertips to her face, he touched her with fragile care. “On Juno, when I kissed you good-bye and held you, I was so afraid I’d never get to hold you again.” Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes against sudden tears. “Never in my life have I been so afraid as I was at that moment.” He rubbed his nose to hers. “Even though you’re here, back on my ship, safe with me, I still don’t want you out of my sight for a moment.”
“You could carry me around again.”
“Don’t tempt me, Sweets.”
“I wouldn’t dare, Mr. Nash.”
“Damn, woman. I’m trying desperately to keep the animal at bay, and you keep trying to bring him out.”
“I like that animal. But then again, I like the marshmallow too.”
“No one’s ever seen that in me. Not a soul ever took the time to see beyond the outside.”
“You have a rather distracting outside, Foster.”
“Yeah? Well, lots of ladies have been all over the outside of me, but you’re the only one who cared to see inside. At first it scared the hell out of me. That you knew me like that. Knew the ruthless bastard was just this part I played.”
“You play it very well. For a brief time, I almost did believe it, especially when you were so cutting to me.”
“I’m so—”
She shushed him with a quick kiss. “I know. It was all an act. I understand now what you were trying to do. You were trying to make me hate you so Roberts wouldn’t suspect anything. That’s why you fondled me so aggressively on that gauntlet. Who would ever suspect that a man who behaved like that was actually hopelessly in love?”
Runner: The Fringe, Book 3 Page 24
