“Huh,” the captain grunted. “Well, you’ve got about a minute left. Anything else you want to add?”
“I, ah…” Zosha searched for the right words that would convince the crew not to kill her immediately. “I’m good a cracking encryptions? And getting through security systems? And, well. I obviously have light fingers. I’d owe you a favor, and I promise I never meant to hurt any of you, I just needed to get out of Dalos XI.” She stopped herself from adding please don’t kill me to the end of that. Negotiating for your life was one of those weird things Zosha had found that it wasn’t good to look to desperate during. There was no way to tell when the person you were telling all about your five sick children would get bored and just shoot you in the head.
The captain scratched his chin and stared at her. “I think this is one of those things people are always telling me to think through.”
Dominic guffawed. “Sorry, lady, it looks like Leo blindly trusting a pretty woman that comes out of nowhere and demands a ride is something that only happens one time.”
Annie smirked and kissed the captain on the cheek. “I say we watch her while she’s onboard and then drop her when we stop to refuel. That way we get rid of her without having to kill her or delivering her into this Lan Doro’s hands.”
“Sounds good,” Captain Ingram said. “Anyone else?”
“I say we space her now,” Hyde said. “That way we don’t have to worry about watching her.” Zosha stiffened.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Rick said. “I can watch her until we get to a depot.”
“Look, Rick, I’m all for you getting your dick wet, but time and place, yeah? I will personally buy you an hour with a nice girl on Gamma, but she,” he said, nodding at Zosha, “is getting of this ship now.”
Rick walked slowly around the table to stand next to Hyde. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything,” Hyde responded, shifting in his seat so he was facing Rick instead of the table and crossing his arms. “I’m saying that not all of us are willing to risk our lives for a nice set of tits. It was stupid when the captain did it—no offense, Annie—and it’s stupid now.”
“Hyde—” Rick began.
“I agree,” Dominic said quietly. “We’re smugglers, not a ferry for girls with notorious criminals chasing them across the galaxy. Besides, we need to lay low after the Edge disaster. You heard her, what happened with Strathmore turned the collective criminal underworld of the galaxy upside down. We’ve been lucky to escape the blowback this far. Putting ourselves in the path of another murder-hungry whack-job, especially for some random dame, is the kind of shit that gets people killed.”
Rick glared ferociously at Hyde and Dominic. It was the kind of look that would have had the worst men in the worst parts of Lytos scrambling for cover. Hyde and Dominic just looked indifferent.
“Captain?” Rick asked, not looking away from the two men.
“I’m thinking,” the captain answered.
“Don’t you think we owe her safe passage, in a way?” Annie murmured to him.
“Two things on that,” Hyde drawled, still looking at Rick. “The first is that is some roundabout thinking that assumes we give two shits what we owe anyone. The second is that if you’re thinking we owe her because of the reason I’m thinking you mean, then I’d like to point out that the blame for that falls on your daddy, and, if we’re talking people in the immediate vicinity, you. We don’t owe her anything. You might owe her something, if you wanna let your guilt complex take charge, but by that logic you still owe us. I suggest you pay it back by getting her off this ship by way of the airlock.”
The captain curled a protective arm around Annie’s waist. “Watch yourself. Annie has more than proven her worth in this crew.”
Hyde snorted. “Hate to say it, Captain, but her doing time on her back for you doesn’t help the rest of us.”
A thunderous look spread across Captain Ingram’s face, and it looked like the only reason he wasn’t jumping across the table at Hyde was the fact that it would displace Annie. Rick looked, somehow, even angrier. Even Dominic’s brow furrowed slightly. Annie, for her part, only raised an eyebrow.
“Hyde, you thrice-damned son of a pox-ridden—”
“I’m ten minutes late to the family meeting,” a familiar voice said from right over Zosha’s left shoulder, “and you all are already trying to kill each other.”
If Zosha had been a little less involved in the conversation in front of her, maybe she would have hear him approach. But she was, and she didn’t. As it were, she found herself in a situation where there was, suddenly, a person who could potentially harm her close behind her in a situation where her nerves were already thrumming with fear and anxiety. She’d stopped getting into situations like this as often once she began to truly excel at thievery, but the scenario was a familiar one, and she reacted the way she usually did. With a startled yelp, she turned in her seat and drove her elbow directly into the mystery person’s groin.
The broad blond man behind her went down with a pained gasp. Zosha had leapt out of her seat and hopped back several feet before his knees hit the ground. The entire room was silent apart from Zosha’s breathing, heavy from shock, and the groans of the man on the ground.
Dominic and Hyde looked at each other for a moment, then turned to the captain.
“Alright,” Hyde said. “She can stay, but only until the depot. After that, if I ever see her again, I reserve the right to break her in half.”
“Fuck… you…” the man, who Zosha assumed was Custer, gasped out.
The captain relaxed. “Good to know you’ve seen the light. Annie, can you show her to Rick’s quarters? I need to talk a few things over with the rest of the crew.”
Annie nodded and slid off his lap. She walked to the door and Zosha followed, stepping carefully around Custer.
“I’d apologize for Hyde and Dom,” Annie said as they walked down a hallway, “but I can’t blame them for worrying about the repercussions of letting you live, so I’ll say instead that I hope you prove them wrong.”
“Thank you, I think,” Zosha said. “Although I’m a little surprised you’re sticking up for Hyde after what he said.”
Annie laughed. “What, the comment about my back and whose sheets it’s been on? I’m more than used to that. If there’s one thing I’ve found that holds true in every corner of the galaxy it’s that when a man gets riled up and there’s a woman involved, inevitably her sex life is going to be used against her. I’m important to this crew and Hyde knows it. God knows those boys have spirit and muscle by the score, but I’m the one that can plan out the best place to apply that. If I was really insulted, I’d make sure to get back at him, but once he cools down he’ll feel bad about it, in his own way.” She stopped in front of a door and started to punch in a code. “This is Rick’s. He and Leo fly this bird in shifts, so he’ll probably be down to get some rest as soon as their little meeting stops.”
The door whooshed open and Annie gestured for Zosha to walk inside.
The room was plain in a way that made Zosha tense. It was all shiny metal and bolted-down furniture. Logically, she knew that all space ships has rooms like this, but on Lytos rooms like this were for people who needed to be able to get a little rough and clean up quick. Apart from a shirt tossed over the back of the desk chair and papers strewn across various surfaces, it was tidier than Zosha had come to expect from a single man’s living quarters. She dropped her pack and kicked it into a corner, then hovered awkwardly, unsure of what to do next.
“So, ah…” she started, more than a little on edge. All the nerves and anxiety and fear had gone from a broad, frenzied tidal wave of emotion to something like a tightrope in a void; it was compact now, and focused, and despite it being smaller then before it was still the only thing she could focus on without losing balance. Less of a bruising pain and more of a precise cut. “What did you mean when you said you owed me?
I don’t think I’ve ever met any of you before, and I don’t do much business with smugglers.”
Annie tilted her head one way and then the other, mulling it over. “You said you were caught in the crossfire of an internal conflict caused by the ripples that Strathmore’s death caused,” she said finally. “If that’s true, from a certain way of looking at it, we owe you because we’re the one that caused those ripples.”
It took Zosha a minute to realize what she was saying because of the sheer impossibility of it. “I think I’m interpreting that in a way you don’t mean,” she said faintly.
“If you’re interpreting it as me telling you that we’re the ones who killed Strathmore, then congratulations, you’re on the right path,” Annie said, calm as you please, like she hadn’t just told Zosha she was at least in part responsible for shaking bits of the galaxy apart at the seams.
“I… see,” Zosha said because the silence felt too heavy and she was short on words.
Annie sighed. “It’s like this. My daddy was a gambler. One day he made a very big mistake and lost to a very bad man, and the short version of what happened after that is that I ended up at the altar with Strathmore. I decided to take my chances making a break for it, and Leo and the others rescued me. Strathmore tried to get me back; they stopped him. Permanently.”
“How?” Zosha asked. “Not to cast aspersions on the fighting prowess of your crew, but Strathmore had an army on that ship.”
“And that, I imagine, is what the boys are deciding whether or not to tell you about,” Annie replied. “Now that that’s out of the way, can I get you anything? A change of clothes? Food? You didn’t get a chance to eat while you were at the table, but I’m sure there’s something left.”
“That’s okay,” Zosha said with the awareness that she had just learned something huge and was now having to ignore it thrumming in her mind. “I have nutria-packs.”
Annie scrunched up her face. “Ugh, those things should be a violation of at least twenty human rights laws. Suit yourself, though. I need to go back and make sure my idiots haven’t killed each other yet. Rick will be down soon. And,” she added, her face softening slightly, “don’t worry about him. He’s not about to let you hurt any of us, but he’s surprisingly decent for one of the Breakwater boys.”
Zosha nodded, refusing to let herself believe it. Annie walked back out into the hallway, the door closing behind her with a beep. Already suspecting what would happen, Zosha tried to open the door only to find that she was locked in. She weighed the knowledge that she could break out much more easily that she had snuck onboard against the knowledge that they would only catch her again.
She walked to the bed and sat on the edge, exhaustion crashing over her as the last of her adrenaline wore away. The panic and worry was all still there, but now instead of motivating her to move, to fight, to escape, it just wore her out. She let herself fall back onto the bed. Annie’s retreating footsteps had been audible even after the door closed, she reasoned, so she’d be able to hear anyone approaching. Comforted, she closed her eyes, just for a second.
She floated back to awareness when she felt something nudging her shin. She blinked, frowning, before the memories of where she was and why surfaced. A new wave of alarm swept over her, forcing her completely awake. She held herself perfectly still, eyes wide and locked onto Rick, who was standing by the bed where her legs still hung over the side.
“Hey there,” he said, voice soft like he thought she might run for it. She couldn’t fault him for it; if she thought it would work, she’d have tried it in a heartbeat.
“…hi,” she answered when enough time passed that it became clear he was waiting for some kind of response. He backed away and she sat up slowly.
“I’m sorry for waking you,” he said. “I just have a few things I need to go over with you. After that, you’re free to roam the ship. Although if I were you, I’d stay away from anywhere you think Custer might be.”
“He’s not, like, plotting his revenge, is he? Because I swear that was just a reflex.”
“Well, your reflex is the funniest damn thing I’ve seen in months. Watching Custer get what’s coming to him is always satisfying. I’ll say this, though: he’s got a history of going starry-eyed over girls who cause him significant amounts of pain as a first impression.”
Zosha added that to a mental character profile that was, in her opinion, not to attractive. “God, why?”
“Look, the man’s defining characteristic is ‘masturbates with his robot hand.’ I don’t know why Custer does shit and, frankly, I’m happier that way.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Zosha allowed. “Alright, what did you need to talk to me about.”
“Right. Ah,” he coughed. “You may want to be comfortable for this. Do you want to change out of that suit?”
Something went cold along Zosha’s spine and she stiffened. “Why, Mr. Chapel, that’s quite forward of you,” she said, voice sweet and artificial smile in place. “And here I thought you might be the gentlemanly type of smuggler.”
Rick raised both hands in a placating gesture. “Not like that. I like my women willing and enthusiastic. But this is going to be a weird conversation to kick off a long couple of days, so you might want to change into something less… that.”
Zosha cast a longing look at her bag. “Will you at least turn around?”
Rick made an assenting noise in the back of his throat and turned. Zosha practically ripped her suit open in her haste to get it off. It did its job adequately but not comfortably, and the sooner she was in something that didn’t feel like it was squeezing her to death quite so much the better.
“Alright, done,” she said once she had changed into her more casual clothes. Rick turned around, his eyes lingering on her newly revealed collarbone. She had opted to just zip a jacket up over her bra instead of putting on a shirt and she could practically see his eyes darken when he realized it. It was half a test to see if he was as good as his word and half a ploy. Men tending to be looser with both money and information when they thought they were about to get something they wanted in return, and all Zosha had to do was be the thing they wanted. There was a third reason floating around the back of her mind, but she was waiting until she felt she could trust Rick more before allowing it to influence her.
Rick cleared his throat and dragged his eyes up to hers. “Alright then,” he said, a bit huskier than before, “you may want to sit down for this.”
Zosha raised an eyebrow and sat on the edge of the bed. Rick tossed the shirt that was hanging off his chair into a corner by the closet and took a seat.
“So, I’m assuming you’ve heard of bear shifters,” he said.
Zosha nodded and tried not to speculate on where this was going. “Of course. I’ve never met one, though.”
“Funny story, that,” Rick said, scratching the back of his neck. “Actually, you’ve met five.”
Objectively, Zosha meeting people from a species she had been previously aware existed shouldn’t really compare with the shock of finding out she had accidentally stowed away on the ship of the ragtag crew that had killed the galaxy’s most feared dictator, and yet, somehow, it did. She sat for a minute, processing, until everything whited out into a haze of acceptance that the universe was a vast place with many, many things she could never hope to understand or control.
“That’s wonderful,” Zosha said in a voice that sounded generally like her trying to impersonate herself. “That’s just… wow.”
“Surprise,” Rick said, wiggling his fingers. “Are you okay?”
“I think I might be in shock,” Zosha said cheerfully. “It’s not a thing I go through a lot, but I’ve just received an awful lot of surprising information and it’s been a really stressful few weeks. I expect I’m going to have a truly spectacular meltdown when it wears off.”
Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) Page 15
