Page 11

Sherrod

T he dot on my screen was moving fast and I set a course to follow.

I wasn’t stupid enough to think that a woman raised and trained by Commander Randall Livingston would have given me the drive without either making a copy, sabotaging it, or both.

Turns out Zephyr was thorough. Just like her uncle.

The virus she’d put on the drive was hard to strip from the device before looking at the data, which turned out to be nonexistent.

Brains, beauty and guts…I always knew she’d…

I shook the thought free and tried to figure out where she was headed.

The ‘poison’ was just a delivery method for one half of the bug I needed to place in her optic nerve.

Then the ‘antidote’ delivered the final piece.

I knew enough about her internal systems to realize that I needed to ease in the optic transmitter so her diagnostics didn’t know it was there.

It was too great a risk to plant one in her ear implant as well so I settled for seeing what she saw.

I could only guess as to what she’d found since she’d been puking her guts out after discovering what was hidden in that list. Her internal diagnostics had to be very sophisticated to discover and expel the bug that fast. Again, I’d expected nothing less from her.

What I hadn’t expected, or planned for, was the way my body would react to seeing her after all this time. I had truly believed that I’d become too cold, too dark for those childish feelings to have survived. Oh, how wrong I’d been.

Not only had those desires survived, they’d evolved into something persistent and painful in the years I’d kept them hidden.

Seeing her in that damn dress had me half hard in seconds.

But seeing her flirt with that piece of shit Valtoshan?

Having to watch his hands on her when there was no way I could tell her who I really was, much less touch her?

I had nearly blown the whole thing by killing that piece of shit. But I was a professional, and the mission always came first. So I’d stuck to the plan, even though I was a team of one and no one would’ve known if I hadn’t. I supposed me knowing was enough.

Not to mention I suspect that old bastard of haunting me.

I laughed to myself at the thought of the Commander, Randall ‘rat bastard’ Livingston, sticking around to haunt me just to make sure I didn’t cross any of those lines he’d drawn between me and his niece.

“Yeah, well, if you’re here, you son of a bitch, hear this: If you didn’t want me touching her you shouldn’t have asked me to keep an eye on her.”

I shook my head. I was getting crazy in my ripe old age of thirty-seven.

It really hit me then just how long it had been since I’d last laid eyes on Zephyr, or Daisy as I’d called her then. So many years since the last and first time I’d touched her, kissed her.

“Stop it,” I muttered to myself. “She’s not that girl any more than you’re that boy. This is a mission, one last favor to the old man. There’s no way she’d recognize me anyway.”

I rubbed my jaw, the stubble itchy and wondered if she could recognize my eyes though. They were just about the only thing I’d kept after the good doctor had been done with me.

Truth be told, seeing her at that bar had been far more jarring than I’d anticipated. Memories were tricky, unreliable things and so I had expected that the one time we’d ever met before now had been corrupted by time and rose colored glasses.

Turned out that it had been an unreliable memory but only because the woman Daisy had grown into was more incredible than I could’ve ever anticipated. I’d panicked, when she’d cozied up to the bar and looked straight into my eyes. Did she know it was me, even though I looked completely different?

And then she’d dismissed me, just like she was supposed to dismiss a bartender and went for her mark.

My chest had caved in for a moment and I had to breathe through the pain, which transformed into self-loathing.

What the fuck was my problem? Attachments got you killed, they were foolish for people like me.

I’d learned that lesson the hard way, and the small scar on Zephyr’s chest was a reminder of that.

I was a more of an asshole now than when I’d ‘died’.

If she hadn’t needed me in her life then, she certainly didn’t now.

And besides, I’d promised the commander I wouldn’t put myself in her life ever again and I owed him everything.

Which was why I was putting my own shit on hold to do one last favor for the old man.

I wasn’t going to lie, it had shocked the hell out of me that he’d asked me to look after her, to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid.

Like try and take out Cypher of all people.

I had steered well clear of all things that even gave the whiff of that psychopath. I may have been a selfish jerk that valued credits and power over friends, but I didn’t have a death wish.

Unlike Zephyr apparently.

I’d parted ways with the commander many years ago and hadn’t heard a thing from him until his death a few months back.

His droid found me and gave me the last message he’d recorded for me.

I’d watched it through a tear and alcohol filled binge that I didn’t come out of for a week.

By then, I’d memorized the stupid thing, complete with inflections and coughs.

“I trained you both to be resilient and independent, and I should’ve trained you to know when to ask for help. So I’m asking you, look out for her, save her from herself and do what you have to. Just don’t get killed.”

“Resilient and independent…is that what we’re calling it?” I whispered to myself. “Not socially stunted and incapable of trusting others?”

I directed my ship’s AI to bring up a list of possible destinations at the end of the trajectory Zephyr’s ship was flying and about half a dozen came up.

All of them were space stations that had either been built and abandoned by the GUP or had been constructed by whatever federation or syndicate had controlled that area at the time.

Now, those stations were hubs for smugglers, flesh peddlers, fight clubs and every other kind of illegal business.

From the information I’d seen on the drive, I thought I could eliminate four out of the six. That left Olympus and Stygian.

They had the most diverse kinds of underground businesses mixed with legitimate ones that operated mostly as fronts and money laundering.

I had owned one of the fight clubs on Olympus at one time.

Good money, but not something I actually loved.

After a while, you’ve seen one cage match, you’ve seen them all.

But Olympus had one thing none of the others could boast: access to a warp gate.

It was older, and had needed constant repair when I’d been there ten years ago, but it was enough for those desperate to escape who didn’t have legal papers or travel permits. All anyone on Olympus really cared about, was credits. If you had those, you could go anywhere from that gate.

I knew from tracking her GIB resources that the ship she was currently traveling in was scrubbed clean of any ID.

It technically didn’t exist, neither with the Gex-Corps or the GIB.

She had about a dozen dummy transponder and ID codes that were one and done, and so she could disappear in that thing with no one the wiser.

It was obvious that Zephyr was keeping herself off both the GIB and Gex-Corps radars by not using any of those resources. And that’s where I could come in.

I could offer my services to help her. An extra pair of hands, blasters, whatever. In so doing, I could stay close. Once she was off Cypher’s trail I could consider my promise to keep Zephyr safe from the legendary criminal fulfilled and get back to…

What? Stealing from idiots at casinos? Robbing banks?

Breaking into that vault a few months back had been exhilarating, but the rush was short lived. I hated to admit it, but I was bored out of my mind.

I’d been at this for twenty years, I’d seen most of the galaxy, done every kind of job out there.

And I’d burned just about every single bridge in the process because relationships were a sucker’s game.

The closest I’d ever come, since I was seventeen, was with Jax Vabaris.

I’d meant what I said to him in that bank; if I could’ve loved anyone after Daisy, it would’ve been him.

But I was broken beyond repair, had been since I almost got Daisy killed.

I’d wanted to be better for her, and without her I really didn’t see the point.

I took every risk I could, the more dangerous the mission the better.

Because if I just died, I wouldn’t have to live with the constant ache in my chest.

If not for a dear friend of mine, the only one I still had, I would’ve drank and smoked my way into the grave long ago. Still, what had survived wasn’t entirely whole, and would never be. Daisy had my heart since day one, I just hadn’t realized how much until she was out of my life forever.

“Good god, I sound like some angsty fucking teen. This is pathetic.”

It was, no denying it.

It was also true and that made it all the worse.

I was surrounded by luxury, even here on my private shuttle. For a solid decade I’d had more money that I could’ve dreamed of as a gutter snipe. There was no pleasure I couldn’t afford, no extravagance I couldn’t have. Yet, it was hollow.

I wasn’t sure when the delight of all I had became ash, just that it had. Nothing tasted good anymore, nothing thrilled me.

Until tonight, when I’d been trying to get the drive from Zephyr and ended up rolling around on the floor with her.