by Cathy Pegau
He nodded once, kicked Finn’s feet aside and sat. Free drinks soothed a lot of ruffled feathers. Natalia doubted it would work for hers or Finn’s.
She pivoted, coming eye to eye with Gennie, who still held her sleeve. There was an odd mix of anger and excitement on her face, in the shine of her eyes. Neither spoke. Natalia eased Gennie’s hand down, her palm hot against Gennie’s cool skin. Their stunned coworkers looked on, wordless as the drama wound down. Natalia snatched her coat off the back of her chair, her hard hat off the table, and left The Hole.
Not until she was out in the breath-taking cold, focused on getting away from Finn and Gennie and the whole ugly mess she’d made, did Natalia hear Gennie coming out behind her. She winced, loathe to talk to anyone, let alone the person responsible for her loss of control.
Don’t blame her, or the whisky, or even Garces. This was all you.
“Natalia, wait.”
Damn it.
She stepped down into the street, shrugging into her coat and pretending she hadn’t heard Gennie call. The patter of Gennie’s footsteps along the walkway increased. Short of breaking into a run, Natalia couldn’t avoid being grabbed and spun around. The two of them stood between The Hole and the company store, breathing fast and glaring at each other.
“What the hell was that about?” Gennie asked.
“Leave me alone. I don’t feel like talking.”
“Tough.” Gennie crossed her arms over her breasts, tucking her hands against her body. She’d followed Natalia without her coat. Good. That meant she would get cold and head back inside sooner rather than later. “Why did you hit him?”
Natalia’s jaws tightened. “He shouldn’t have treated you that way.”
The anger in her eyes softened a micron. “I had it under control. I can take care of myself. Have been for a long while now.”
Of course Natalia knew that. Genevieve Caine hadn’t risen in the ranks of the amber-dealing underworld by being soft and easygoing. The woman had to be tough, had to have a considerable amount of hardness to survive and succeed in that life. So what had prompted Natalia’s irrational need to protect her from the likes of a handsy pirq miner?
“You’re my responsibility,” she said. “I brought you here. It’s my job to make sure you don’t get hurt so we can get this done.”
Gennie’s anger returned in a flash. “You didn’t bring me. I came on my own accord.” That wasn’t quite true, since Natalia had essentially told Gennie to meet her in Grand Meridian or the deal was off. “Even so, no one asked you to play asshole alpha agent and save my poor little self, so knock it the fuck off.”
“I wasn’t trying to save you.”
“No? Then what were you doing?”
Desire filled Natalia with such speed, such intensity, that she had her hands on Gennie’s shoulders and was pushing her against the nearby wall before she could take another ragged breath. She covered Gennie’s mouth with hers, tasting the tang of beer and heat of her anger. She pressed their bodies together. Gennie raised her hands, perhaps to shove Natalia away, but her palms rested on Natalia’s shoulders, fingers curled into the heavy canvass of her coat. Natalia grasped Gennie’s wrists lightly. If she wanted to, Gennie could have pulled out of the hold, but she didn’t. She parted her lips and slid her tongue along Natalia’s.
In that instant, Natalia knew they were both lost.
* * *
Gennie should have pushed Natalia away, but God help her, the woman was making her insides melt. She spread her feet, allowing Natalia to press her thigh between Gennie’s legs. Instinctively, Gennie rocked against her, the angle and pressure perfectly placed. Natalia nipped Gennie’s lip and pressed harder.
What was she doing? This was not good. Or rather, it was amazing, but this was neither the time nor place. Lusting was one thing; acting on it was not smart. She was supposed to be finding evidence against the Reyeses, getting her kids off Nevarro. Not up against a wall with a gorgeous blonde sucking the breath out of her. Certainly not thinking about naked bodies doing a hell of a lot more than kissing.
“We shouldn’t—” Gennie paused to take a breath, long enough for Natalia to claim her mouth, stopping her words and blurring coherent thought.
Natalia trailed searing kisses along Gennie’s neck, tickling the fine hairs behind her ear. She licked the sensitive skin there, her tongue warm and wet. “Tell me you haven’t been thinking about this.”
Gennie couldn’t deny it, because she’d been fantasizing about Natalia ever since The Carmen. She swallowed the lie that lodged in her throat. Natalia would see right through it.
“Tell me,” she continued, her voice low and rough, vibrating against Gennie’s throat, “you don’t want this.”
Natalia drew her fingertips along Gennie’s biceps, across her shoulder and around to the side of her breasts. She kissed Gennie again as her fingers skimmed over her nipples, making them ache more than the biting cold.
A soft whimper escaped Gennie’s throat. The sound and her lack of resistance encouraged Natalia to continue. One hand went to the front of Gennie’s trousers. Gennie squirmed, though whether from the pathetic effort to avoid contact or the need to bring her hand closer, she couldn’t say.
Natalia dipped her fingers into the waistband and gently massaged her lower belly. Gennie covered her hand, increasing the pressure. She popped the closure of her trousers and eased Natalia’s hand down until her fingers skimmed the top of Gennie’s bare mons. Natalia gasped into Gennie’s mouth.
Fingers and lips teased and tasted. Natalia stroked her, up and down, in tight little circles that had blood rushing through Gennie’s head and a tingling need growing in her groin. She rocked against Natalia’s hand, her breath coming faster until she felt like she was being lifted off the ground and sinking into it at the same time.
“God a’mighty, get a room,” someone shouted from the street.
Natalia broke the kiss and buried her face against Gennie’s neck. Her hands stayed put as the two of them caught their breath. With more willpower than she thought she’d ever possess, Gennie stopped moving her hips, but God help her, she wanted to finish the ride.
Until she looked at the person who had called to them. A woman walking with a child of seven or eight. They moved on, the woman shaking her head as she ushered the boy away.
Guilt scorched Gennie’s cheeks. “We shouldn’t be doing this.” She spoke softly, her voice catching in her throat.
Natalia leaned back just enough to look into Gennie’s eyes. “Why not?”
“Th-this isn’t why we’re here.”
Her kids were her priority. Forgetting that—forgetting them—was inexcusable. She had to keep her head clear, but Natalia made it difficult to think straight, to say the least.
She couldn’t tell Natalia about the children. Not yet. Perhaps never. They were her concern, not the CMA or anyone else’s. If she found out about the twins, Natalia would start asking questions about them and Gennie’s life with Simon that were irrelevant. The kids had nothing to do with what was happening in Grand Meridian, and the fewer people who knew about them and their whereabouts, the safer they’d be.
The less Natalia Hallowell learned about her life, the better off Gennie would be. Knowledge was power, and sharing personal information required a level of intimacy Gennie wasn’t prepared to tackle.
The CMA agent studied her face. Even if she didn’t understand what was going on, Natalia recognized deceit when she saw it. Reluctant acceptance settled in her eyes. Her acknowledgement of the excuse was a relief to Gennie, but at the same time it made her chest ache. She didn’t want to lie to Natalia, yet she had no choice.
Natalia withdrew her hand from between Gennie’s legs. “I don’t need to know all of your deep, dark secrets,” she said, “but a certain degree of honesty would be nice.”
> She stepped away, and Gennie immediately regretted the loss of her body heat. She crossed her arms over her breasts, irritating her aching nipples.
“Let’s find what we need and get the hell out of here. Go get your coat before you freeze.” Natalia bent down to pick up the blue hard hat she had dropped at some point. “I’m gonna get cleaned up before supper.”
Gennie watched her head to the rooming house, back straight, arms swinging stiffly at her sides, the hard hat smacking her thigh with every other step.
It was better this way. Better that she and Natalia concentrate on the Reyes Corporation and what they were doing, not on each other.
Gennie adjusted her clothing and secured her trousers.
Better, but far from satisfying.
Chapter Nine
Natalia ate a late supper alone in the dining hall. Most everyone had finished an hour before, while she dawdled over cold meat and carrots. Playing with her food after a long, cold shower when she’d returned to the rooming house was a cowardly effort to avoid Gennie. She’d show up at their room, and they’d have to deal with the fallout of what had happened. Eventually. But not tonight, if Natalia could help it.
The sudden turnaround in Gennie’s behavior was confusing and frustrating. Mostly frustrating. First, she’d been as ready and willing as Natalia. Then, with a couple of words from some random woman, she had pushed Natalia away. She’d been about to suggest they continue up in the room, but the look in Gennie’s eyes stopped her. Gennie hadn’t been playing coy. She was genuinely upset and hiding something. Natalia was no closer to understanding why and what than she had been two days ago.
She flexed her aching left hand. It throbbed, despite using the pain meds and anti-swelling ointment she’d found in the medkit in the room. Finn’s face was probably just as bruised and he may have lost a tooth or two—not that she cared.
She had to admit, being rebuffed had hit like, well, like a punch to the jaw. She knew, deep down, Gennie was attracted to her too. What was going on with the woman?
She wants to find evidence against the Reyeses and leave the planet, that’s what was going on.
Gennie had the right of it not to complicate matters by throwing sex into the mix.
But damn the void, that was not going to be easy. Not after Natalia had gotten another taste of her, got to feel the soft, warm flesh of her belly and the heat of her core.
Get your shit together, Hallowell. You need to do this and do it right.
Which meant not getting personal feelings embedded with professional goals. But where did Natalia Hallowell the agent end and Natalia Hallowell the woman begin? She’d never had trouble separating the two before. She couldn’t afford to do so now.
Her job didn’t depend on bringing charges against the Reyeses, but she had to prove to herself she still had what it took to be a good agent for the miners of Nevarro. It also wouldn’t hurt to show Garces he was a useless bastard when it came to supervising field agents.
So fine. No more touching or kissing. If she thought of Gennie as Genevieve Caine, a woman who thought nothing of drugging and tying up a Colonial agent to further her own agenda, then it would be easy.
Natalia picked up her tray of congealed gravy and limp carrots and delivered it to the dish station. It was only twenty-one hundred when she headed back to the room, hoping Gennie wasn’t there, or was already asleep. If she played it right, the two of them could enact a mutual agreement not to pursue anything of a sexual nature.
She could do that.
Natalia opened the door to the room, but the lights were out. She shut the door quietly, in case Gennie was sleeping, and navigated to the bedroom using the ambient light coming through the window. She stood just inside the doorway, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darker bedroom, and listened. A soft purr of regular breathing came from Gennie’s bed, and the outline of her hips and shoulders rose beneath the covers.
Natalia forced herself not to think about Gennie lying there as she stripped off her clothes and donned her shorts and sleep shirt. Sliding beneath the cool covers, she turned her thoughts to the Reyeses and how to unearth evidence against them.
It was a long while before she finally fell asleep.
* * *
Even with the knowledge of what the CMA required when it came to filing permits and operations reports, Gennie was having a hell of a tough time concentrating on the Grand Meridian documents the following day. Mac’s SI system was so out of date it took the collating program she’d installed almost as long to run as it would have taken her to search each bit herself. But any increase of speed was better than nothing.
Gennie swallowed the last of her coffee and rose to refill the mug. Her stomach rolled from the last three cups she’d downed, but unless she could find a stim to stay awake, the coffee would have to do. She’d slept poorly last night, waking from a doze just after Natalia sneaked back into the room. She pretended to be asleep while Natalia settled into bed. Unfortunately, pretending was the closest she got to actual sleep for the next six hours.
She and Natalia had hardly said two words to each other as they prepared for work then ate breakfast that morning. Well, two words that weren’t related to the Reyes case. On that, Gennie got an earful and a list of what to look for. That was fine. She just wished there was some way to find a happy medium with Natalia.
Not when you come off as a tease. Not when you’re hiding things from her.
She promised herself she’d stop encouraging Natalia, or at least try, but Gennie wouldn’t compromise on her determination to keep personal information to herself.
As the SI chugged along, doing her bidding in the system’s background while the screen showed a CMA formatting how-to Mac had suggested, Gennie sorted the synth papers from the filing cabinet. She made note of purchase orders, shipping dates and personnel schedules. This cabinet only held the information from Tunnel Four. Once the app finished running, Mac’s SI should dig up something from the three other tunnels at the site.
The biggest question Natalia had, aside from what Reyes Corporation was actually doing at Grand Meridian, was why they were shipping to the Juneau System. It was an out-of-the-way group of three planets that, like most other worlds, received regular shipments of processed keracite and fuel cells. What could Reyes be sending them straight from the mines?
Natalia’s research into shipping schedules before they arrived at Grand Meridian hadn’t yielded anything unusual. Reyes must have been using standard shippers. If they were shipping raw ore without telling the shipper, that would get them into a sizable amount of trouble. Plus, ore was a significant payload. Someone would have questioned the tonnes of cargo.
The SI beeped, telling her its long, slow search had finally finished. Gennie brought a few papers over to the desk and sat down. Luckily the boss was running around with an inspector today. Having her in the office to monitor the radio and fill out, sort and file mindless paperwork freed him to do other necessary work he hadn’t had time for previously. His being gone certainly made her job easier.
The program had spit out a comparison of all four tunnels’ productivity records, personnel hours and numbers, and requisitions for the past three months. Gennie copied the information to a data stick; she’d take it to Natalia so the CMA agent could analyze it as well. Gennie might be able to discern pattern glitches, but Natalia knew what was supposed to be going on in pirq sites and could spot anomalies.
An hour and a half into poring over seemingly endless pages of numbers, one of the personnel reports didn’t read right to Gennie. She shuffled back through the synth papers, matching report numbers to what she saw on the SI. No, she wasn’t imagining it. At all four tunnels, at a somewhat regular pattern of every few weeks, the night crew increased its personnel yet didn’t increase productivity.
How could that be? Why work veins
for only a few days at a time on such a regular basis? Why keep going back if keracite extraction wasn’t feasible?
The CMA required head counts of all personnel in tunnels, in case of a collapse. The pirqs used the old tag system, and newer miners’ hard hats were embedded with locators that automatically registered who was where. Or at least where their hard hats were. The same miners’ names came up every time, a half dozen men and women who seemed to float from tunnel to tunnel.
Gennie narrowed her search to the most recent three-week period in which the extra crew was reported. Ore production hadn’t changed significantly, and shipping schedules weren’t off in any way. If things weren’t going out at odd times, what about coming in? Was Reyes smuggling something to the pirqs?
Amber was high on that potential list. The drug was second only to keracite as Nevarro’s highest-yielding product. If pirqs were importing rather than exporting, what else could they bring into a mining site without wanting anyone to know? And Simon Reyes had had a very close connection to Guy Christiansen.
Had that been Simon’s plan for his post-cage-fighting career? Amber dealing? The lure of the money was certainly as addictive as the drug. The idea shouldn’t have disappointed her, but it did. It was bad enough, should they question her, that she’d have to lie to her children about her own involvement in the trade. Would she have to lie to them about Simon too?
She’d damn him and Christiansen if it wasn’t so hypocritical to not include herself. What sort of effect would her and Simon’s proclivities have on the kids, whether they learned of them or not? Sometimes, she didn’t want to think about it.
Gennie tapped into the inventory files and focused on shipments coming into Grand Meridian. Cargo manifests listed everything a mining site might need, from foodstuffs to machine parts. It would take forever to read through every single one, search for patterns, then recognize something out of the ordinary.
Putting her programming skills to work again, she set up a separation of items by description and frequency of shipment. Even that proved to be too overwhelming to peruse when Mac could walk in at any minute. Gennie copied the list to her stick. She and Natalia would have to look at it later.
