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He pulled her over onto her back and brushed the hair back from her face, studied her a long moment and leaned down to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I love you, Victoria. Remember that,” he murmured, then nuzzled her neck.

Victoria stiffened at his words, but before she could think of anything to say, his lips closed over one nipple and she descended once more into the ecstasy only he had ever given her.

* * * *

Raphael was on his feet the moment the catch was released on the door and striding toward it. He was within three feet of the door when it was snatched open and Roach stepped into the portal. His first instinct was to plant his fist in the man’s face. He quelled it, instead placing a palm on Roach’s chest and propelling him backwards out the door. “You have a reason for being here?” he asked grimly.

Roach gaped at him, so surprised it took him several moments to think up a response. “Tory hadn’t shown today. Just checking to make sure she was all right.”

“She is,” Raphael responded and shut the door in Roach’s face.

Victoria had been swimming upward toward consciousness in a lazy, unhurried manner until the abrupt movement beside her brought her fully awake. She sat up with a jerk as Raphael leapt from the bed, certain there was some threat.

Anger surged through her when she caught a glimpse of Roach trying to crane a look at the bed around Raphael’s broad form, but it vanished at his words.

“Shit! I overslept!” she exclaimed, leaping from the bed as Raphael closed the door and turned to look at her.

A wave of dizziness assailed her at her abrupt movement, and she sat back, dropping her face into her hands. She’d only managed to catch a few hours of sleep in between bouts of the best sex she’d ever experienced in her life. At the time, it had seemed well worth the loss of sleep. In retrospect, it seemed criminally negligent and she wondered how she could have been tempted so far off the track of sane, logical, dependability as to have romped half the night when she should have been resting to face the challenges she knew she must face come morning.

“You should try to sleep a few more hours.”

Victoria shook her head. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had a shower and gotten a gallon or so of caffeine into my system.”

Rising more slowly, she staggered toward the bathroom and indulged herself in a long, hot shower, more than half expecting Raphael to join her. To her relief, he didn’t.

Despite her optimism, she felt very little better after the shower and had to fight the urge to dry off and climb back into bed. Instead, she resolutely left the bathroom with the determination to dress and study the reports she’d put off the night before. Raphael was no where to be seen when she left the bathroom. She wondered at it, briefly, but shrugged it off and looked around the room, wondering where her clothes had been stowed.

Groggy as she was, she found them after only a half a dozen tries and had just finished dressing when the door opened and Raphael entered carrying two cups of coffee. He set both on the desk and went into the bathroom to shower without a word.

Victoria was almost as grateful for his silence as she was for the coffee. Years of getting up before first light had not done anything to adjust her natural sleep patterns. She had always had the inclination to stay awake long into the night, and sleep well into the morning and she was definitely not a ‘morning’ person. She was never more than partially functional until she’d been up at least two or three hours and drank several cups of coffee. It was for that reason that she’d made it a habit to do her paperwork in the morning.

True, it was enough, in general, to put her right back to sleep, but by doing it first she had an excuse not to face the crew until she had her wits about her.

Which was one of the things that pissed her off about Roach’s intrusion. Not for one moment did she believe it had been concern for her safety that had brought him up to check on her. It had been pure, unadulterated, nosiness and nothing else. They had never worked together, but he most certainly knew it wasn’t his place to check on the boss to see if she was up yet.

She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she was going to have to come up with some way to avoid partnering with Roach when her two weeks with Raphael were up.

She would have preferred to stay with Raphael as long as he wanted to room with her, but that wasn’t an option. It would be blatant favoritism. Roach was certain to file a grievance when they got back even if no one else did and her whole career could go down the tubes. If it had only been a fine she would be facing, she would have been willing to pay it. She wasn’t ready to whistle her career away. She needed to hang on to it at least another year, two at the most, and then she could tell them all to go to hell. No matter what happened here on Kay—assuming she survived—she’d have enough to buy a homestead somewhere and a nice little nest egg besides.

Fortunately, her career choice hadn’t led her to accustom herself to more than the basics, because luxury wasn’t in the picture for her, whether she stayed with the company or not.

She supposed, after a little thought, that she might be able to bribe a bi-sexual or a lesbian to pretend to be her lover for a couple of weeks. She’d have to do a little investigating and see if any of the women on the mission fell into one or the other categories and seemed open to the possibility of earning a little money on the side.

She dismissed the thoughts as Raphael came out of the bathroom. His expression, she noticed when she glanced at him, was grim and she supposed he was feeling the aftereffects of little sleep as she was.

“I’m going below to check the progress of the crew in clearing the mine shaft. Would you like me to check on the situation with the communications tower and report back?”

Victoria shook her head. “They probably haven’t really had time to assess the situation fully yet. I’ll check with them later.”

He nodded and left and Victoria turned her attention to the files at long last. She looked at the latest date first and her heart seemed to stop dead in her chest.

The security crew is searching for the five men who disappeared yesterday and to try to ascertain what happened to the others. All mining suspended until further notice.

Chapter Eight

It was late in the evening the third day after their arrival when Victoria went to check on the crew’s progress on the communications tower. The crew members assigned to the task had planned a replacement tower around the scrap metal that had been gathered and Quinton and Albert had begun manufacturing parts. Caroline and Barbara had managed to scavenge what they needed in the way of electronics from operations, but they were weeks away from even reaching a point where they could begin testing the possible range of the makeshift tower.

Caroline placed their chances of being able to reach the closest outpost at practically nil. Unless she had miscalculated, their only hope even once the tower was operational was the possibility of reaching a ship cruising the outer rim.

The lift was still out and Victoria paused at the rail to catch her breath as she left the habitat, looking out over the churning waters of Kay’s red ocean at the ball of fire settling into the sea. The fiery disk that was Kay’s sun had already begun to dip below the horizon. It would be dark soon.

Dragging in a gulp of Kay’s thick air with an effort, Victoria moved to the stairs. She was little more than half way between the upper and lower decks when, faintly, she heard a cry from above, almost like the cry of a seagull except that Kay had no birds of any description that she’d seen. It was cut off abruptly.

Adrenaline charged through her and Victoria raced up the remaining steps. When she reached the flight deck and looked around, Quinton and Albert were peering down over the side.

Kichens was no where in sight.

“What happened?” she shouted, dread filling her even as she ran toward the two crew members.

They turned, their faces pasty.

“Kichens went over the side.”

Whirling, Victoria raced to the alarm and slammed her hand down on the button. Nothing happened. She hit it frantically several more times before realization coalesced in her panicked brain. It wasn’t working. “God Damn it to hell!” she cursed furiously. “Does nothing on this piece of shit rig work?”

Racing toward the stairs once more, she charged down them as fast as she could, nearly falling twice before she reached the lower deck, snatched the door open and raced down to operations. Punching into main communications, she prayed the repairs had been made in the mining area. “Attention! Man down! Man down! Raphael—Anybody in the immediate area of the habitat. We have a man overboard. We need rescuers in the water STAT!”

Raphael responded almost instantly. “Most of the crew’s in the mine shaft. I’ll go myself.”

“It’s Kichens. She might have five minutes, tops.”

He rang off without another word and Victoria leaned against the console weakly, wondering if there was any chance Kichens had even survived the fall. When she turned at last, she found that Quinton and Albert had followed her down.

“What happened?”

The two men exchanged a look. “I didn’t see. I was bolting a couple of beams together. When I heard her cry out, I glanced in her direction, but she was already gone.”

“What about you, Albert? Did you see anything?”

Albert frowned. “Not much more than Quinton. I was holding the beams steady. The last I saw, she’d gone over to grab up another short beam. Then, when I heard her, I looked up just as she went over the side, but I couldn’t get to her in time to help.”

“Did she surface, at all, after she hit the water?”

Quinton shook his head.

“Not that I saw,” Albert said.

Victoria ran a shaky hand over her face. “Get back to work. There’s nothing you can do.”

Quinton turned immediately on his heel and departed. Albert frowned, looked as if he might say something and finally turned as well.

Victoria stopped him. “You saw something, didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “Just what I told you. I just don’t understand how she could have fallen. The railing’s solid there and she wasn’t that close to it anyway. She would almost ... well I can’t see how she could have fallen at all. She would have had to be standing on the top rail, or climbing on it. I don’t see how she could have fallen between the rails, even if she’d tripped.”

Victoria nodded and dismissed him. The temptation was strong to try to contact Raphael, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to. In any case, he would call when he had something to report. The wait was nerve wracking, however. She glanced at her watch, saw that five minutes had passed and began to pace.

Kichens had not been equipped with the prosthesis that would allow her to breathe underwater. If the fall had knocked her unconscious, her chances were slim to none that she’d survive until Raphael found her. She hadn’t been in the water yet herself, but from what the crew members said who had, visibility was limited to within a few yards at most.

Her heart jerked painfully when the speaker came to life.

“Victoria?”

“Here. Did you get her?”

“No sign of her. I’ve pulled the crew from the mines. We’re going back to search for her again.”

Victoria didn’t know whether she felt more like throwing up or crying.

“You there?”

“Yes. Do what you can to locate her.” She left off ‘body’, unwilling and unable to think of the twenty two year old woman in terms of a corpse. She hadn’t even been with the company five years.

Pushing the thought aside, Victoria made her way from the operations deck to her living quarters. She was still staring at the blank fatality report when Raphael returned several hours later.

She looked up at him questioningly when he closed the door behind him. He shook his head. “The currents are pretty strong here. They must have carried her ... off.

We brought out the lights, but it’s just too dark to keep looking tonight.”

Victoria nodded and dropped her head in her hands. “I’ve never lost a crew member before. I know I’m supposed to file a report, but I can’t think of anything to put on it.”

She didn’t hear Raphael’s approach, didn’t realize he’d crossed the room until she felt his hands settle on her shoulders, kneading them. “It’s not your fault.”

“The safety of every crew member on this job is my responsibility,” Victoria responded angrily, but she felt too drained for the tender to catch fire. Almost the minute the words had left her her anger died.

“We did everything we could. You did what you could.”

“Which was nothing.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do. I’m sorry I failed you.”

Victoria glanced at him in surprise. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for! You responded as quickly as possible!”

“As you did.”

Victoria looked away. Raphael squatted beside her. “Come. You need to eat.”

“I don’t think I could choke anything down to save my life.”

“Try.”

Thankfully, most of the crew members had already eaten and departed. A few had lingered in the rec room, although no one seemed inclined to seek entertainment. Conversations broke off as she and Raphael left her quarters.

“Any word about Kichens?”

Victoria turned toward the speaker. It was one of the miners, but she couldn’t seem to think of the woman’s name.

“Sylvia.”

Victoria nodded. “Missing. Presumed dead. I’ll need volunteers to go out tomorrow as soon as it’s light enough and look for her. Just sign up on the schedule for volunteer search duty.”

She managed to eat enough to pacify Raphael and finally pushed her plate away.

Raphael, she saw, had eaten little himself.

“Do you think it’s related to the ‘incident’?”

Victoria shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Neither of the men with her actually saw anything, but Albert said he didn’t see how she could have fallen. She wasn’t even near the railing and he vouched for the integrity of the railing at that point.”