Dealers' Choice - Susan Hayes Page 0,60
research station.”
She didn’t mean to, but she took a little nap after that, and when she came awake again, they were on the move.
Ward walked beside her now, and when he saw her looking at him, he smiled, then reached down to grab something resting on her stomach. It was the device he’d given her, the one that stopped her chip from exploding. “I thought I told you not to let go of this.”
She held out her hand and he placed it gently inside, closed her fingers around it, and squeezed lightly. “We’ll discuss your punishment later.”
“Punishment?”
“Oh yes. Or did you think we were going to overlook the fact you snuck out on us? Then you followed the enemy into a firefight with no weapon or armor, and we definitely need to discuss the fact you went on the attack and got yourself shot in the process.”
“You done?” Vic growled at him. “let’s get her fixed up, first.”
“Right. Sorry.” Ward nodded. “I’m just glad you’re okay, little star. I thought we’d lost you back there and it…” he shook his head and moved away. But not before she sensed what he was feeling: a grief so powerful she could feel it even through the drugs and distant pain.
“Wolf? Come back, please.”
She waited until Ward was in sight again before she explained. “I felt the same way when I came to on that shuttle, tied up, alone, and scared. I agreed to help Vivian and the Gray’s, but that was only because if I said no, they were going to throw me out the airlock.” Suddenly she needed them to know that. In case Vivian said something to make them doubt her intentions.
“Shh. We know you’d never do that,” Vic soothed her.
“And I didn’t really sneak out. I left a message for you with Tink, and I was going to message you again when I got to my office.” All this talking was making her tired again, but she wanted to tell them what had happened.
Ward spoke, his voice tight. “You left us to go back to work?”
She closed her eyes, as if shutting down one sense might give her more energy to keep speaking. “Not to work, not exactly. I wanted to let the IAF leadership know about us, so they could decide if they wanted to continue using my services or not.”
“You were going to tell them you were dating us?” one of them asked.
“Well, yeah. I mean, humans have rules about therapists falling for their patients. I thought I better tell them before they figured it out on their own.”
She didn’t need to see their faces to know what they were feeling. Twin surges of affection, joy, and something far more powerful flowed into her and she let it carry her back into the comforting quiet of unconsciousness. She was safe now. She could rest.
He’d been a soldier the first half of his life and an assassin most of the other half, but Vic had never been in a fight like this. The stakes were higher than ever because they had Xori to protect. He glanced down at the sleeping female curled in his arms, her blue coloring so washed out her cheeks and lips were gray.
They’d brought a basic battlefield med-kit with them. It had a few pain-blockers and a selection of wound sealants made to stop someone from bleeding out before they could get to a med-bay. Or, if you were a cyborg, to hold you over until your medi-bots could repair the damage. The problem was, Xori didn’t have medi-bots yet. He wouldn’t dose her with them unless it was a matter of life and death. She should make that decision for herself, for one thing. But almost as important was the need to keep the military clueless about what Denz was up to. If they found out someone outside their control was producing the nanotech again, it could cause problems for not just Denz, but the whole Haven colony.
They had to keep her safe and get her into the Malora’s med-bay for treatment. The team’s medic was already prepped and waiting to perform the chip extraction and fix her injuries. They just needed to get her there.
“Commander Rossi, we’re only a few minutes out. Sit-rep from your end, please,” Ward asked.
“Blink and Sabre are in position. Magi was working to take down the ship’s systems, but we hit a snag. He swears he got all the auto-defenses, but we can’t be sure. Seems like