Bianca D'Arc (5 page)

“You don’t have to come with me,” Lila
protested softly as they began to walk toward the pod station.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I
didn’t see you home safely, Lila.” He was only half joking. Her
safety had come to mean a great deal to him over the past few days.
He’d taken to her more quickly than any person he’d ever met. And
it wasn’t just because he was so acutely attracted to her.

He’d wanted women before that he didn’t
really care about after getting into their panties. With Lila,
everything was different. He wanted to fuck her upside down and
inside out, no doubt about that, but he also wanted to take care of
her, even though he realized she was fully capable of caring for
herself in most situations. Something about her brought out his
protective instincts to a major degree. He wanted to put himself in
the way of any danger that might befall her.

In fact, he’d been on the verge of telling
her to leave
Madhatter Station
a time or two as he’d gone
over the conversations of the plotters in his bar. When they hinted
at something catastrophic happening here, his first instinct was to
get Lila clear of the danger.

But he knew her well enough by now to know
she wouldn’t go. Lila wasn’t one to run from danger or quake in
fear. No, she’d been minding her own business in the bar before
he’d gotten there, and when she’d heard something that alerted her
to possible danger, she’d waded in to learn more instead of running
away or passing the buck to someone else. Even now, while she’d
turned over control of the bar to him, she was still actively
investigating, even though he’d told her to lay low.

He didn’t have to like her sticking her
lovely neck out, but damn, he admired it. She had heart. And nerves
of steel.

Only yesterday, one of the plotters had been
looking at her with suspicion when she got a little too close to
their table. Chip hadn’t liked that at all, but so far nothing
seemed to have come of it. Although…

Maybe the securecart’s failure to show up was
more than a fluke? Chip gritted his teeth and nearly growled. If
anyone tried anything, he’d be there to kill them.

No pussyfooting around. They’d be dead.
Anyone who dared target Lila was already dead and didn’t know
it.

“Looks like we’re in luck.” Lila’s gentle
voice drew him from his grim thoughts. “There’s a pod in the
station.”

Of course there was. But Chip wasn’t saying a
word. He merely popped the hatch of the two-person pod using his
credit chip and checked the pod before he let her step in. He
wasn’t taking any chances with Lila. The small vehicle looked sound
and his cybernetic implant confirmed it was clean of listening
devices or explosives. They were safe enough once they were inside
and had coasted out into the stream of traffic in the station’s
zero G transport system.

Lila slid into the cramped pod and Chip took
his place beside her, crowding her. The pods were sufficient for
two civilian sized people to fit comfortably, but this civ station
didn’t take soldier size into account. Only the biggest and baddest
from each human planet, colony, or station went into the military.
Soldiers were head and shoulders above most of civ men and military
stations and ships took that into account. Not so, the civ
stations.

Which suited Chip just fine in this
situation. He most definitely didn’t mind getting close to Lila,
even if it was just for a short hop from ring to ring ensconced in
a private pod.

Chip input her destination into the onboard
computer manually.

“You know where I live?” Lila raised one
eyebrow in question when he turned to look at her. There wasn’t a
lot of room in the pod for his shoulders, so he lifted one arm over
her to settle along the back of the seats.

“I know all sorts of things.” It was one of
his typical noncommittal answers, but he softened it with a grin
that she seemed to respond to. The charm offensive was still in
full force and she’d softened toward him over the past few
days.

He told himself it was for the good of his
mission, but really, he just wanted her to think well of him. Chip
didn’t examine his reasons too closely.

“I’ll bet you do,” she responded in the same
teasing spirit as she sat back, appearing more than comfortable
with his arm nearly around her.

She surprised him by taking a small device
out of her pocket and switching it on. It was a scrambler that
would shield their conversation from any eavesdropping device,
should there be one in the pod. Chip knew there wasn’t, but he
couldn’t tell her how he knew, so he let her continue as she
was.

“Bjornson and Beezus met briefly tonight,
just outside the entrance. I saw them through the panel in the
door, but it was too fast for me to run in and focus the outside
pickups on them,” she said quietly.

The mood turned serious in a heartbeat. He
didn’t bother asking her why she hadn’t alerted him. There’d been a
lot of people in the bar tonight, including almost the entire group
they’d identified as being involved with the conspiracy. They’d
been watching him—and every patron of the bar—as hard as he’d been
watching them. The conspirators were getting more edgy. That wasn’t
a good sign.

“What did you see?”

“Bjornson passed something to Beezus when
they shook hands. It couldn’t be seen from the hall, but through
the door panel, I could see a slip of bright yellow between their
palms. It seemed like luck that I would see it, but I’m not sure…”
she trailed off.

“You think it was a set up? Maybe they want
to try to trick you into revealing yourself?”

“It’s possible, but my other senses tell me
no.” She bit one corner of her lip, looking absolutely adorable,
even though her gaze was clouded with concern.

He’d read her file—the parts that weren’t
heavily redacted—and he knew enough by now to listen when she had
one of her feelings.

“Clairvoyance?” He still wasn’t sure he
believed in such things, though Lila’s sister had given him
information years ago that had saved his life.

“Not exactly. No. I get feelings about truth
or falsehood. I can usually tell when someone is lying or using
subterfuge and whether it’s benign or malevolent. In your case, I
sense whatever you’re hiding, it’s mostly benign, so I don’t make
anything of it.” Her gaze challenged him but he did his best not to
react. “When I first saw Bjornson, my senses screamed at me that
something was very wrong about him and his motives. He was lying to
everyone he talked to that first time in the bar, when I was still
waiting tables close enough to hear some of their conversation with
my own ears. I stumbled a few times. Dropped things. That’s another
part of the reason I stopped waiting tables and set the bots to do
it. I was drawing too much attention to myself.”

Chip recalled one or two early recordings
where there was a lot of crashing and cursing in the background at
particular points that suddenly made sense. Could Lila’s so-called
gift
actually be real? And accurate to that degree?

Chip set his implant on the problem, using a
fraction of its large computational power to correlate the
incidents in that recording with the words being spoken by
Bjornson. It took only a split second to come back with a very high
probability that Lila was reading Bjornson correctly, based on
Chip’s years of experience dealing with liars, cheats, villains and
saboteurs.

Their pod had pulled out into the main ring’s
transport tube and was on its way across rings to jump to the level
where Lila’s rooms were. The pod swayed gently as it coasted along
in zero G and all indicators were green.

Then suddenly, they weren’t.

“Damn.” Chip used his implant to check the
traffic in the cross tube they were in. Nobody else was nearby, so
he used the emergency brake to stop the pod in a highly illegal
maneuver that would get him in serious trouble with station
authorities if they ever discovered it. As it was, his implant
would cover his tracks in the station computers while he reversed
their direction and got them out of harm’s way.

“What is it?” Lila seemed to know enough not
to interfere with him while he tinkered under the panel that
threatened immediate incarceration for tampering with the pod’s
mechanism.

“Problem up ahead. See the red indicator in
the tube?” He didn’t bother pointing. Once her gaze was set in the
right direction, he knew she’d see it.

“Wouldn’t a red signal just stop our pod? It
might not be anything bad.”

“If your senses are as good as you claim,
tell me what you feel when you think about what’s waiting for us at
that station.” He challenged her, all the while pretending to
manually override the pod’s direction. In reality, all he had to do
was flick a thought from his implant to the receiver in the pod’s
computer to get it moving backward at a fast pace. He’d already
done so, in fact, and they were heading back out into the main
stream. No longer cornered.

She shuddered. He could feel it, as close as
they were sitting.

“Nothing good,” she whispered. “Nothing good
is waiting for us beyond the red signal.”

Chip breathed a sigh of relief the moment
they were out of that cross tube. Nobody would mess with them in
the main flow of traffic. Not without drawing way too much
attention.

He turned to Lila, only to find her white as
a ghost and trembling. Chip didn’t think twice. He put his arms
around her and tucked her head under his chin in a protective pose.
He stroked her hair, hoping to convey safety.

“You’re okay, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe.
Don’t worry. Now tell me…” He put a little room between them so he
could see her face. “What did you sense?”

“Beezus. He was waiting there for me.
Thinking very dark thoughts. Very dark. And very strong.”

Damn.

“He planned to attack me, and when he got me
alone.” She shuddered in his arms and Chip bit back a curse. “And
with the red signal on the tube, I’d have no way out.” She bit back
a sob.

“Ssh. Don’t think about it.” Chip stroked her
hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Lila. Believe me when I
say that.”

To her credit, her shaking reaction didn’t
last long. Straightening in his arms, she met his gaze with a
surprisingly steady core of steel visible in her expression. She
was tough and resilient. A woman after his own heart.

“I believe you, Charlemagne.”

She’d called him that once before—when she’d
told him about the king on the deck of cards that had supposedly
foretold his coming.

“I’m not some ancient king. I’m just plain
old Chip.” Somehow, he got the unnerving feeling that she saw
behind his easy mask of simple barkeeper. Nobody had challenged his
identity like this in a very long time. Not since he’d perfected
his covert skills. Still, there was something about Lila that saw
too much.

She blinked, smiling slightly and seemed to
let it go. “There’s nothing plain about you, Charles Quartain.”

She sat back and he let her go. His
cybernetic implant had kept track of where they were while he’d
taken care of her momentary distress. They were getting close to
their destination.

“We’re almost there. Are you okay to make a
dash for it, just in case? I won’t be happy until you’re safely
inside, under cover.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the bar. Only we’re taking an
alternate route.”

“There’s a back door? I looked when I first
got there, but I didn’t find anything other than the service
entrance used by the bots. Doesn’t seem big enough for people. At
least not you.” She smiled and tapped his arm with her little fist,
emphasizing the difference in their sizes and her awareness of it.
Good. He liked it when she looked at him like that. Like he was a
man, not merely a co-worker or an ex-soldier she was trying to
figure out.

“There are several back doors.”

“Really?” She seemed surprised.

The pod pulled out of the main traffic flow
and coasted to a stop in a station in the location he’d specified.
It was not the same station they’d departed from. Not even
close.

“Watch and learn.” He checked with both his
eyes and his cybernetic sensors before popping the hatch on the pod
and stepping out. He held out one hand to her, assisting her out of
the pod.

They walked rapidly, but not fast enough to
be noticed by passersby. This particular corridor had a little more
traffic this time of the station night than the area near the bar.
It was good cover for them, strolling together through the late
night crowd. When Chip turned into a small shop run by an
ex-soldier Alex had put in place, a simple and discrete hand signal
was all it took to alert the man that Chip needed him to watch his
back while he used the secret passage into the station’s service
corridor located in the back of the establishment.

Lila didn’t say a thing as they made their
way through the store and into the back. She impressed Chip with
the way she handled the change in plans and unfamiliar route back
to the bar. Chip began to think she might have once been an
operative herself. It made sense, given her file and the personal
recommendation in it from General Winters.

She walked with surprising stealth and kept
her eyes open, he was glad to note as they made their way through
the cramped service tunnels. Though when Chip stopped, Lila bumped
into him. She recovered quickly when he put his arm out to steady
her and he spent a split second enjoying the way she fit in his
arms before he turned back to the matter at hand. She wasn’t safe
until he had her inside.

Not willing to let her go, he turned, drawing
her closer while with one hand, he pressed the right pressure
points to pop the hidden hatch. Whisking her inside, he made
certain the hatch closed securely behind them. Seeking ahead with
his internal electronics, he was relieved to find all as it should
be in the secret passageway that would lead ultimately to one of
the backdoors into the bar. They were nearly home free now. Just a
little farther to go.