In the Devil's Nebula (Phoenix Adventures #2) (3 page)

“So, Darwood, you got us here. What have you
got for us?” Dathan asked.

Darwood leaned forward and set his elbows on
the table. “You wanted information on this new player. Likes to
leave a little metal bird behind.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I have info.”

“Then spit it out.”

The low, dangerous tone sent a shiver
through Ria. She knew that voice, deep in her soul. Zayn.

“He’s very mysterious. Doesn’t use a name
and he isn’t selling his goods.”

A mumble. From Niklas.

“What else?” Zayn asked.

“Ah, well…”

Darwood stumbled on his words and even from
her table, Ria saw the beads of sweat glistening on his brow.

Zayn leaned forward. “You didn’t get us all
the way out here to waste our time, did you?”

“No. No.” Darwood wiped a shaky hand across
his mouth. “The thief likes jewelry. Expensive stuff.”

Zayn tossed a hand in the hair. “Info we
already know. Give us something good. Why’s he after our hunts?
Where’s he from?”

Ria chewed on her bottom lip. If she didn’t
give them something, they’d walk. She wasn’t ready to reveal
herself yet. Not yet. But she needed them wanting what she had to
offer. “The Devil’s Nebula. Tell him that’s where I’m from.”

Darwood’s gaze swung across the bar to her,
his eyes wide.

“No,” she whispered frantically. “Don’t look
this way! Just tell them.”
Idiot.

“Ah, the Devil’s Nebula. She is…I mean he is
from there.”

Zayn stiffened and Dathan Phoenix swore,
uttering some pretty creative curses Ria had never heard
before.

“Devil’s fucking Nebula.” Dathan’s hand
pressed over the top of Eos’ on the table. “That place just keeps
coming back to haunt us.”

Zayn was staring at the scarred surface of
the table, his face hard as stone. “So, the thief is from one of
the guilds.” He looked up. “Which one?”

“Ah, well.” Again Darwood looked her
way.

“Tell them you don’t know and quit looking
at me,” she growled.

But Zayn’s head snapped up, like a predator
scenting prey and he followed Darwood’s gaze, scanning the bar. Ria
sank back into the shadows, her heart thumping. She ran her fingers
down the side of her face, along the tiny, parallel ridges that her
species were known for. The ridges were nestled against her
hairline and dotted there in a darker brown than her skin,
continuing down the side of her neck. They itched like crazy
whenever she was nervous.

Like now.

“I don’t know which guild,” Darwood replied,
tugging at his ear.

Suddenly Zayn leaped up, knocking the small
table over and sending drinks crashing to the floor. Darwood
jumped, his face blanching white. Zayn gripped his shirt and lifted
the smaller man a few inches off the sofa.

“Who the hell is feeding you info?” Zayn
dropped Darwood and plucked at the man’s ear.

Ria watched in horror as Zayn picked up the
small comm device and held it to his lips. “Where the hell are you?
Talk to us and quit being a coward.”

Ria dragged in rapid breaths. He didn’t know
where she was. She was safe.

“What the hell do you want?” he
demanded.

“I can’t answer that. Not yet.” The words
were out before she could stop them. She knew she wanted the Guild
off her back. But this man was a stranger despite the fact she felt
a powerful pull toward him. She wasn’t sure what to do about those
feelings yet.

Zayn stilled, his gaze probing the crowd.
“You’re a woman.”

“Problem with that?”

“Show yourself.”

Ria stood, turning her back on him and
heading for the door. “Not yet. What I want you to know is that I
need your help. Yours and your brothers’.”

“Funny way to get our attention.”

“I got it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah. You need us to hunt something for
you.”

“Yes. Something big.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Old Earth treasure. Ever heard of the
Lincoln Derringer?”

“Hang on.” She heard Zayn talking to the
others. Heard Dathan’s excited exclamations and Eos’ indrawn
breath. “Apparently we’ve heard of it. It was a small handgun used
to assassinate the famous Terran president.”

“Yes. Abraham Lincoln. A president of the
United States of America.”

“Okay, we’ll talk,” Zayn said. “Come
out.”

She paused at the exit of the bar, resisting
the urge to turn and go to him. But she wasn’t ready yet, the
swirling emotions in her conflicted for so many reasons. “No. I’ll
contact you.” She couldn’t resist a glance over her shoulder.

He was still looking around the bar, turning
in a slow circle. Then suddenly, his head turned her way and his
gaze collided with hers for the briefest second.

Her pulse spiked. She turned and left the
building.

***

“Flame-burned piece of crap.” Zayn yanked his
bleeding hand back and swiped at the cut. He kicked the piece of
the ship engine he was working on. Stupid part was stuck.

“Here.” His cousin, Malin, leaned over and
handed him a rag.

He eyed the dirty thing, covered in black
smudges of engine oil. At least he thought it was engine oil. “I’ll
probably get an infection from that.”

“Big baby.” She pressed the rag to his hand.
Then she passed him a small, slim tool. “Laser cutter will help get
that off before you lose a body part.”

“Thanks.” He fired up the cutter and sliced
into the metal.

“No, thank you for helping me pull scrap off
these junkers.” She adjusted the cap pulled low over her choppily
cut dark hair. She was dressed in baggy coveralls that swamped her
tiny frame.

Zayn knew that just like he lived to go fast
at the controls of a ship, Mal lived to tinker around with engines
and pull scrap parts off broken-down ships. He glanced across the
hangar. Their moon, actually a captured asteroid, was covered in
the ruins of ships, like some sort of spaceship graveyard. Mal ran
the scrap business while he and his brothers ran the treasure
hunting. But Zayn knew more about ships than the others and often
helped her out.

“I’ve got another shipment coming in soon.
Actually, from our cousins,” Mal said.

“Cousins? Not those deep-space reprobates?”
Zayn had only met his other cousins two or three times. After his
father was estranged from his brother, the cousins had drifted
apart. The other three Phoenixes were deep-space explorers running
convoys beyond chartered space. Crazy, in Zayn’s opinion.

“Yep, the ‘other’ Phoenix brothers. They’re
running a convoy out of the Sahara Quadrant.”

Zayn grunted and as he tried to focus on the
job,
she
popped into his head. He promptly scraped his hand
against a ragged piece of metal. “Flaming son of a bitch!”

“You want to talk about what’s bothering
you?” Mal swung a hammer at a large exhaust pipe. The clang of
metal-on-metal rang out.

Zayn hunched his shoulders and rubbed the
last of the blood off his finger. “No.” He kept thinking of the
woman. The Mystery Woman.

“Sometimes it helps to clear the air.”

He cast a sideways glance at Mal. “How would
you know? You are the most cheerful person I know. Do you even have
problems?”

Amethyst eyes stared up at him. “We all have
problems, Zayn. Challenges, things that get in the way of what we
want.” Something flashed in her eyes before she turned back to her
beloved scrap metal. “Or who we want. Just remember I’m here if you
ever want to talk.”

He knew better than most that some obstacles
surrounding who you wanted could never be resolved. He stared at
his cousin’s bent head. “Same goes, Mal.”

She glanced up and smiled at him.
“Thanks.”

“Zayn?” Eos’ shout echoed though the
hangar.

“Yeah,” he called back.

“Meeting in Mission Control. I have more
information on the derringer.”

“Be right there. Catch you later, Mal.”

“Later.”

He headed toward the stairs that would lead
him up to Mission Control, dodging the piles of junk. Some it was
Mal’s spare parts and some were bits and pieces pilfered from
hunts. He passed the rusted chassis of a genuine Earth automobile.
He ran a hand over the metal symbol on the front of it, a circle
with three spokes. It almost looked like a wheel. Even damaged, he
could tell from the sleek lines that she’d been built for
speed.

Eos kept threatening to start The Phoenix
Museum. Dathan protested about it every chance he got. Vocally.
Loudly. Said it’d ruin his reputation and he didn’t want people
traipsing all over their moon.

Zayn had money on Eos talking him around
eventually. The woman was mad for sharing artifacts with everyone
in the galaxy.

He ran up the steps, hoping to burn off some
of the edgy energy winging through him. Once again he thought of
her
and that tantalizing hint of her across the bar. That
glimpse of creamy skin and blonde hair. He shook his head. It was
driving him mad and dredging up things best left unremembered.

Zayn shoved his hands in his pockets and his
fingertips touched metal. He pulled out the silver bird and turned
it over in his hand. “I’m going to find you.” He slipped the bird
back into his pocket and entered the large room where they planned
all their treasure hunts. Eos and his brothers stood crowded around
the holo-table. Images were displayed on its flat screen surface.
In Mission Control there was no disorder, no junk. Artifacts were
lined up on the shelves on the wall, all neatly tagged and bagged.
Treasure hunting was about adventure but it was also their
business.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Okay, I found an image of the Lincoln
Derringer.” Nik tapped the screen. “It’s grainy because the file
was damaged, but I recovered what I could.”

The image appeared and Dathan whistled. “Now
that is a tiny little beauty of a gun.”

The derringer was a gentle curve of wood
inlaid with metal. It was small, Zayn mused, maybe fifteen
centimeters. But size didn’t really matter. It was still dangerous
and had taken a life. “Is that silver?”

Eos shook her head. “We aren’t sure what it
is, but I think silver would have been too expensive at that time
except for the wealthiest clients. My guess is some sort of metal
alloy.”

“Now, look at that,” a feminine voice
drawled. “That is one very old and very cute looking weapon. I’d
carry something like that over a boring old laser pistol any
day.”

Zayn shook his head and saw Dathan roll his
eyes. Zayn cleared his throat. “BEll, you’re a computer. You can’t
carry anything, let alone a gun.”

“A girl can still dream.”

Dathan mumbled under his breath. “Sometimes
I regret stealing her. A bio-sentient computer is a pain in the
butt.”

“You didn’t steal me, you won me in a card
game.”

“I cheated. So you’re stolen.”

“And you love me.” A sniff. “Besides,
without me, you’d be lost…or dead.”

Eos raised a brow. “She has a point.”

“Don’t agree with her, Eos,” Dathan pleaded.
“She’s not really a girl, you don’t have to stick together.”

Eos turned away from him. “BEll, can you
display a map of Old Earth, please?”

“Someone with some manners. So refreshing.”
A map appeared on the screen.

Eos pointed. “From what Nik and I have
pieced together, the derringer has a fascinating history. It was
utilized by an assassin who used it to kill Abraham Lincoln. From
what we know about Lincoln, he was a great man and a great leader.
The assassin…I think his name was Booth, but I can’t corroborate
yet, shot Lincoln while he was out at the theatre.” Eos’ face came
alive, as it always did when talking about Terran history. “The
assassination took place here.” She stabbed a finger at the
map.

Zayn leaned forward. “Washington D.C. That
was the capital of the United States before it became the United
Countries of America.”

Nik stepped in. “Correct. The theatre later
became a museum and the derringer was housed there. It was feared
destroyed during the nuclear devastation of the Terran War. But
while the world was fighting over everything, even over whether
they should call the planet Earth or Terra, rumors have always
persisted that the derringer and other presidential treasures were
smuggled out of Washington D.C. by loyalists. That they possibly
made it to the Pacific Federation capital in Sydney, Australia—” he
touched a spot on the map, then another “—or maybe were stolen by
the Northern Federation. But after that…nothing.”

Zayn frowned. “Until our mystery female
treasure hunter appears saying it’s in the Devil’s Nebula.”

“We have to find it.” Eos’ voice was
firm.

“And it’d be worth a huge fortune,” Dathan
said.

She shot her husband a sharp look. “This is
an important piece of history. I can’t bear the thought that one of
the guilds has it. Wasting it. Wrecking it.”

Dathan smoothed a hand over her shoulder.
“Okay, okay. Then we’ll get it back.”

Zayn resisted the urge to kick the
holo-table. “So we just wait around for mystery woman to make
contact?”

“I’m running some searches for blonde
females from the Devil’s Nebula, seeing if I can identify her.” Nik
shrugged. “But it isn’t much to go on.”

“For now, we stock up on supplies.” Dathan
looked at Zayn. “Have the
Infinitas
ready to fly at short
notice. If the woman makes a move, we’ll be ready.”

Zayn nodded. “Mal and I did some maintenance
on the engines. And I’m just finishing upgrading the gravity
plating. She’ll be ready.”

“So we wait,” Dathan said.

Not something Zayn was good at. Twenty
minutes later, he headed to his quarters. He wasn’t good company
and the edginess inside him was driving him crazy. He felt like a
million Argent fire ants were crawling all over him.

He considered taking the
Infinitas
for a run, but it would just be a waste of fuel. Maybe he’d take
out the smaller space runner he’d been rebuilding in his spare
time.