Protector (The Vigilante Chronicles Book 7)

by Natalie Grey

  “Yes,” Aliana agreed, “you should have.” There was a pause, and she added delicately, “You also should have said something about it that time he stole my ship and left me penniless on a remote station instead of taking a job with him and letting him get away with it.”

  Ria scooted out from under the desk and looked up at her gravely. “Yes, I should have. I’m sorry.” She heaved a sigh. “Thank you for just saying it. It was hanging there.”

  “Mmm.” Aliana shrugged.

  “Excuse me,” Barnabas broke in, “but I’m holding a live booby trap.”

  “Oh! Right.” Ria dove back under the desk. “Sorry. Oh. Oh! Okay, that came off easier than expected. Let me just get the fuse out and—okay, we’re good. You can set it down.” She came out with a smear of grease on one cheek. “That should be all of them. Let’s reset the passcodes.”

  Barnabas handed Ria his handkerchief. “Oh, no, keep it. It’s no trouble. And it sounds like Tafa and Gilwar are finishing up as well. I wonder how Shinigami is doing?”

  “The AI?” Aliana asked.

  “Oh. Right. Yes. She’s, uh—she was crunching numbers for something. Also, I wonder how Shannon is doing.”

  You could have given me literally any name, Shinigami said, and you chose Shannon?

  What’s wrong with Shannon?

  I don’t know, it’s just not very…you know. I want to be something really cool-sounding. Like Optimus Prime!

  A name starting with S-H.

  Oh. Right. Well, I don’t know!

  How’s it going?

  Ugh. This dude is a gigantic douche.

  * * *

  The problem with Lawrence, Shinigami reflected, wasn’t so much that he was a douche.

  It was that he was the biggest douche.

  “Perhaps you’d like to see the ship now,” he suggested. “The living quarters are quite nice.”

  Also, he was a sleazebag. Shinigami found herself wondering if she could put him in a room with Tabitha and watch the man get the living shit kicked out of him while being insulted in exceedingly indelicate Spanish.

  In any case, while Lawrence clearly saw Shinigami as a new mark, he also wanted to hurt Aliana, and she did not approve of that.

  She deflected his transparent offer as well as she could. “Oh, you should see my flagship.” She’d been coming up with increasingly outlandish stories about her business and living situation. “Have you ever seen Yofu marble?”

  Lawrence sat back, blinking. “I, uh…no, I don’t think I have.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Shinigami cooed, letting the fake Russian accent ripple through her voice. “Blue-green, and so beautiful. I decided to panel my shower with it, and I liked it so much that I put it in for the floor of my entertaining room.”

  “You have an entertaining room on your flagship?” Lawrence asked dubiously.

  He was sensing that something was wrong. Shinigami covered her tracks by laughing.

  “Of course! I’m not an animal.” She nudged him with her elbow. “In my circles, a businesswoman really needs to make her partners feel special. Deals like ours—well, they don’t come up every day, yes? The Yofu marble, I turned into a very select market. I’ve only sold it to a few. The rest are beating down my doors, but only I have the mines.”

  He was practically drooling as he tried to formulate a plan. “I…see.” He seemed to have come to a decision. “I know I could never hope to buy any—you’re so clever about that—but could I at least see it?” He leaned close. “I don’t want to say Gianni has lost his touch, but these drinks aren’t as good as they were last time. I can mix a much better martini than this.”

  “You think so?” Shinigami held her glass up in mock surprise. “I thought this was good!”

  “It doesn’t hold a candle to what I can make,” Lawrence assured her. “Shall we?”

  “Okay, just let me finish this one.”

  “I promise you don’t want to drink anything lesser.” He reached over to take the glass out of her hand.

  Help! Give me some way to stall him!

  I’ll take their payment systems out for a few minutes, Tafa told her.

  Ask him about the woman, Gilwar added. Play the jealous potential paramour. From what I saw, he is clearly attempting to woo you.

  And I thought I was a buzzkill, Barnabas said drily.

  Shinigami suppressed a snort of laughter as she looked at Lawrence gravely. “I would, but… Can I be honest with you?” She leaned forward, touching his arm lightly.

  “Of course.” He took her hand and played with it.

  “It’s…well, the woman I saw you with.” Shinigami looked away, pretending to be resolute. “It seems as if there was something between you.”

  “Oh.” She saw him consider what to say, then he threw Aliana under the bus with as much sleazy conviction as he could muster: “Aliana was a very valued employee, don’t get me wrong. I quite care for her. I like to think of my crew as my family. You understand, I’m sure.”

  Shinigami nodded. If she spoke, she would tell him exactly what she thought of him, and she couldn’t do that just yet.

  “Aliana developed feelings for me,” Lawrence continued. “Feelings I simply couldn’t reciprocate. I had hopes that we could move past it, but she was determined to have a relationship. The whole situation got quite ugly, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh.” Shinigami tried to think of something to say that would keep him talking. What did self-absorbed con-artist humans like to talk about? They tended to keep the other person talking.

  She was going to have to out-con-artist the con artist.

  “So…is there someone special in your life, then?” She gave him a look from under her lashes. “I don’t want to misread the signals you’ve been giving me.”

  Something in Lawrence’s eyes flickered. “And you haven’t been. My life hasn’t always been conducive to a settled relationship. I am always seeking someone special, however—for whatever life brings.” He gave her a smile and kissed her hand again. “I will be right back. I have to settle the check.”

  Shinigami leaned back in her chair and considered her options as he wandered away. She saw him go to the back, where the manager had gone.

  A couple of minutes later she realized what must have happened. Lawrence hadn’t come back, but all the managers had.

  Shit.

  What is it? Barnabas asked.

  Unless I’m wrong, Lawrence is on his way right now. Get that ship out of the dock!

  Chapter Sixteen

  “See, the thing is,” Aliana maneuvered her way around a corner, sweating as she tried to maintain her grip on a trunk of Lawrence’s clothes, “he was always so charming.”

  “I know,” Ria said glumly. “And he is so good at stringing people along. I talked to the rest of the crew, and he’d been doing it to all of us. Everyone! Even John was in love with him by the end.”

  Aliana gave a snort of laughter, then dropped her end of the trunk. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘by the end?’”

  “Oh.” Ria let her end down carefully and stood up, rubbing her back. She sighed. “He…he fired almost everyone two weeks ago.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, we hadn’t gotten a lot of jobs lately.” Ria hunched her shoulders. “Honestly, I think it was just too much work for him to keep finding them, you know? He wanted something easier.”

  “He’s always looking for something easier,” Aliana said darkly. “So why didn’t he fire you?”

  “He can’t keep the ship flying without me,” Ria explained. “He hasn’t spent any money on repairs, even the repairs we were saving for when you left, and it’s… It’s fixable, Aliana, it is, but I need parts to do it.”

  Aliana groaned and tipped her head back against the wall. “Did he spend all the money, do you think, or was he just hoarding it?”

  “I think he spent it all.” Ria patted the top of the trunk meaningfully. “Sorry,” she added.

  “No, it’s not…
it’s not your fault. It’s just, why do awful people get to screw up, and nothing you can do will undo what they did, you know?” Aliana gave the trunk an annoyed look. “And this is all worthless junk, too. Well, setting it on fire will help me feel better about it, at least.”

  “Feel better about what?” Barnabas asked, coming around the corner.

  Aliana blinked at him. She hadn’t heard him approach. She shrugged. “Lawrence cleaned out all the accounts, because of course he did, and now there’s no money for all the repairs he didn’t do.” She shook her head. “We’ll make it work. There’s always a way to trade labor or something for advance money, you know? And once we’ve gotten the ship purring like a kitten again, we’ll be back to building up those reserves.”

  “Oh,” Barnabas said neutrally. “We found the accounts he switched out of your name. There’s still quite a lot of money in there.”

  “There is?” Aliana felt her heart leap. “Oh, thank God. That’s amazing. Can you…can you get them back?”

  “Banking systems are a bit complicated, but we did manage to transfer the money to new accounts.” He gave her a smile. “I’ll get that,” he added. He picked up the giant trunk with relative ease and carried it off on his own.

  The two women stared after him.

  “Aliana,” Ria said.

  “Huh?”

  “Those accounts were empty. I’d bet anything.”

  Aliana looked at her. Deep down, she knew that Ria was right. Lawrence was terrible with money—or, rather, he was very good at spending other people’s money. There was no way her carefully-accumulated nest egg was still there.

  Which meant that Barnabas had either given her money Lawrence stole, or…

  She bit her lip. “I’ll pay it all back.” It was really the only thing she could do.

  “Are you sure he’s going to be okay with that?” Ria asked doubtfully. “He did it as a gift.”

  “Yes, but it’s too big a gift,” Aliana replied firmly. “He’s already helping me get the ship back. I’ll just tell him I appreciate it, but—”

  “I don’t think he’d give you money he couldn’t afford to spend,” Ria added. “And I bet you that if you ask him about it, he’ll swear he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Aliana, who is this guy?”

  “I told you who he was.”

  “Yeah, I know, but…who is he?” Ria shook her head. “I mean, how do you know him? Why’s he doing all of this for you?”

  “He doesn’t like injustice.” Aliana marched back into the captain’s quarters and loaded her arms with Lawrence’s clothes. “So he’s righting a wrong he saw. And my uncle asked him to look after me.” She rolled her eyes. When Barnabas had said that, she’d wanted to sink through the floor.

  Based on how successfully he was embarrassing her, Carter was going to make a spectacular father.

  “Uh-huh.” Ria didn’t sound convinced, but she grabbed an armful of clothes as well and followed Aliana into the hall. “That sounds like it—because your uncle asked.”

  Aliana was about to tell her that if she kept giving sass, she could kiss her year-end bonus goodbye when they rounded the corner and ran smack into Lawrence.

  “What. The hell. Are you doing.” His eyes were burning. “You sent some stupid—actor—to distract me, and it nearly worked. You looked so hurt when I walked away, but you were just setting me up, weren’t you?”

  Aliana stared at him wordlessly. Her heart was going double-time now.

  She had to think. She had to get him off this ship—

  “Get off my ship,” Lawrence told her.

  “It’s my ship,” Aliana retorted. She wasn’t sure where the confidence came from. Maybe she was pretending to be as self-assured as Barnabas. Whatever it was, she wasn’t the slightest bit worried. She looked at Lawrence and wondered why she’d ever been afraid of him.

  “It’s not your ship,” Lawrence spat, leaning close with a cruel smile. “You just left it out there for someone to take, and I took it.”

  “And I,” Aliana said, “took it back.”

  He gave her a long look, then he pushed the side of his coat back and pulled out one of his pistols.

  Ria gave a tiny strangled noise, and he shot her a hard look. “I know you helped her. Don’t you dare try to run!”

  Aliana blinked and then, overcome with some sort of reckless certainty, tipped her armful of clothes forward. He reached out automatically to take them and she took the gun out of his hands, dropping the magazine and throwing it over her shoulder whimsically.

  “This ship,” she said simply, “is in my name. You pulled some technically legal shenanigans in order to steal something that wasn’t yours. Now you can try to prove the ship was ‘yours,’ but I’m going to tell you right now that you won’t have much luck.”

  He stared at her, his arms full of clothes. “What?” he managed finally.

  “She means,” Ria said, “that you’ve screwed over so many people that when she says you stole her ship and changed the registration illegally and a bunch of other people come forward to tell the judge what you stole of theirs, no one’s going to doubt her. Because you did steal it. You married her so you could steal it.”

  “Yeah, thank you, Ria; that’s enough now.” Her pride was taking a beating from this. Aliana looked at Lawrence. “So that’s where we stand. You thought you could just keep conning people and they’d all run away with their tails between their legs, and you know what? I did.” She smiled. “And now I’m back. So you get off my ship.”

  He almost growled at her, he looked so angry. “I should have you arrested. I could shoot you for trespassing, you know.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Barnabas murmured nearby. When all of them jerked around, he gave everyone a careless smile. He was leaning against one wall, arms crossed. “I think you’d find that was a very bad plan.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Lawrence asked. “And why is that? You think you’re someone special in that suit?”

  As tempting as it was to let the two men posture at one another, Aliana was done letting other people deal with her mess.

  “Hey.” She grabbed Lawrence by the shoulder and swung him around. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re on a ship registered in my name and you’re pulling guns on my crew. Get. Off. My. Ship.”

  His chest was rising and falling quickly, and she could see the pulse beating far too quickly at his throat. He was furious, but he also didn’t know what to do. She’d never stood up to him like this before.

  She wondered if this was the first time he’d seen someone again after he’d screwed them over.

  Aliana had a thought. “And by the way, don’t try to find someone else and screw them over.”

  Ria and Barnabas tilted their heads to the side almost identically.

  “You don’t get to do that anymore,” Aliana said. “You like to make up stories and con your way into people’s confidence. If you’d put half of that effort into building your own company you’d have a few ships of your own by now, but you’re lazy, and you’re cruel. Stop doing that. If you do that again, I’ll find out, and I’ll make sure you give back everything you stole. Make you work off all of the debts you’ve ever acquired. So consider this your one chance. And get off my ship.”

  He gaped at her for a moment, then looked at the others with a little laugh. Aliana could see him getting ready to play off the whole incident: look how crazy she is, overreacting like this.

  But when he saw the looks on their faces, he didn’t even try. His mouth compressed to a thin, angry line and he turned and strode off, dropping shirts as he went.

  It wasn’t the most dignified exit, especially when he ran into the woman with the black hair. He stopped in his tracks for a moment, and she gave him an ironic two-finger salute before strutting up to Aliana and shaking her hand.

  “You told him off good. I’m…Shannon.” She gave Barnabas a look Aliana couldn’t interpret.

  “Hello,” Aliana said
nervously. This woman was incredibly beautiful, and something about her just screamed “don’t fuck with me.” “Thank you very much for helping me.” She looked around. “Thank you all.”

  “Well, I, at least, owed you.” Ria gave a shrug. “Don’t know why the rest of them are here,” she added meaningfully, “but I’ll be doing a proper inventory, and I’ll get back to you about the parts we need, boss.”

  “Sounds good,” Aliana replied. She felt almost giddy as Ria walked away, and then she looked at Barnabas with a sigh. “Okay, okay, I know, he had a gun. It was stupid to just tell him off and throw him out, but—”

  “You seemed like you had it under control,” Barnabas explained simply. “I would have intervened if I had thought it was necessary, but I didn’t.” He hesitated for a moment. “How do you feel?”

  “On top of the world!” Aliana burst out. “I told him off! I did! And he’s not going to be a good person overnight, I know that, and maybe he won’t ever be, but I told him off and I didn’t let him intimidate me and I meant it—I’ll make him own up to what he did if he’s a jerk again.”

  Barnabas was giving her an almost quizzical smile. “I know. I know you will. Ah…” He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his head for a moment before smoothing his hair and adjusting his cuffs. “Well, if everything seems to be good here, we’ll head out. Tafa. Shannon.”

  “Oh. Right.” Aliana nodded. “Thank you. So much.”

  He had been walking away, but he turned to give her a smile. He nodded once and headed off, stopping only when Aliana ran after him.

  “Wait!”

  He turned. “Yes?”

  “I just, uh—” She wanted to hug him. She settled for sticking out her hand, but when he reached out to put his in it, still smiling bemusedly, she threw caution to the winds and wrapped her arms around him. He went rigid in surprise for a moment, then the dark-haired woman hissed at him and he hugged Aliana back. She sensed that he wasn’t used to being hugged.

  “Sorry,” she said, flustered. “’Thank you’ didn’t seem like enough. Not that hugging you is enough, but, uh—you know.” Stop talking, you’re not making any sense. She sensed she was blushing. She gave him another nod, then turned and jogged away before she could say anything even more stupid.