Quantum (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

Tocarra

He’d woken to the steady drumming of rain and the body-warming sensation of a woman naked in his arms.

Zander stared across the cave to the opening that showed a curtain of gray blurring the green of the forest beyond. Mae had woken a while ago but hadn’t moved or spoken. It seemed neither of them was willing to break the last moment of that surreal time after the intimacies they’d shared.

But if he was going to be totally mercenary, hadn’t his reasoning for letting this happen been so she’d let her guard down and open up to him? Yeah, that plan was working out real well, considering he was the one who’d opened himself up to becoming moronically susceptible to her charms.

“I was thinking,” he said before he could stop himself, “I’m willing to believe you. That your secrets don’t interfere with us escaping this wilderness alive.”

She pulled out of his arms, tugging the thermal blanket across her chest and propping herself on an elbow to look down on him. Her gaze was nothing short of assessing as she studied him.

“So, it’s that easy? We sleep together and suddenly you believe me?” An amused gleam kindled in her eyes. “Well, if I had known that was all it’d take, I would have jumped you the first second I realized you didn’t trust me.”

He frowned at her, though the conflicting urge to laugh tightened his chest. When she put it like that, it made him sound kind of ridiculous.

“Seriously, though,” she continued, “if this is your apology, I accept. I can’t blame you for your reaction, considering you’d lost three people and nearly died several times over. You don’t know me, and I can see it was a bad coincidence that everything started going wrong the minute I turned up. I’m glad we can get on and not have that distrustful tension between us anymore.”

Apologizing wasn’t what he’d had in mind. To survive, sometimes a person had to become the worst version of himself. Sure, he’d done things over the years that might have kept him awake at night if he dwelt on them. But those choices had kept him alive. Since he still didn’t trust her, he wasn’t sorry for the accusations he’d tossed her way. But if she thought he’d apologized, maybe it would work in his favor.

He cupped her face. “Whatever is going on, whatever you feel like you can’t tell me, I want you to know you can count on me to have your back. I might hold the office of captain admiral, but I’m still just a soldier. I put people before protocol, and I might be able to help you.”

Her gaze sliced away, but he could see her mind turning over, and a flash of hope flared within his chest. But then she shook her head, and when she looked back at him, the decision had been made, the window of opportunity closed, curtains drawn. The momentary hope went up in flames and crumbled to disappointing ashes.

“Part of me wants to tell you everything. Maybe we’d be better off if I did. But if I told you, I’d betray someone else’s secrets. I promise, once we get out of this wilderness, I’m pretty sure everything will be much clearer.”

A hot surge of frustration rolled through him. Apparently, Mae Petros could play politics with the best of them. Maybe she should have been the one with the captain admiral standard on her uniform.

Instead of letting the aggravation at her fancy verbal footwork get the better of him, he pulled her down, catching her surprised gasp as he took her mouth with his. Straightaway, she all but melted into his arms, a quiet moan of approval escaping her as he pushed the thermal blanket aside to cup her breast. When they talked, things got chaotic and complicated. But
this
. This was simple. In this, they could find common ground, could agree. And maybe if they spent this rainy morning satisfying each other in the most basic way, he’d forget to be annoyed about her evasiveness when they finished hiking out of the woods later today.

…

Civilization.
Mae let out a long breath of relief as she broke through the last of the thick brush, putting them a mere hundred or so meters away from an actual building.

It was late afternoon, and they’d come out of the forest in a residential and touristy-type area, where signs boasted the best hiking and most spectacular scenery in the galaxy. There was even a complex that announced the presence of hot springs in the area. Obviously, the remote one they’d stumbled across wasn’t the only place the heated subterranean water came to the surface.

“What’s the plan now?” Zander asked as he stopped beside her.

Zander.
After what had passed between them, her mind had fallen into the intimate habit of thinking of him by his first name, but they were about to return to reality, and it was time to nix the inclination.

She swallowed over the abrupt tightening in her throat. This moment had been hurtling toward her like an asteroid. Now that it had arrived, there was no use being upset or wishing things could be different.

After last night, and the surprising repeat performance this morning while they’d waited for the rain to clear, she’d almost been able to forget that Zander and she had enough secrets and mistrust between them to fill the cargo hold of a Commodious class hauler. Almost forgotten that her life had totally gone off the rails and she had no plan for the future beyond this little off-the-books assignment she’d taken on for Rian. When the truth came out, Zander was going to hate her for tricking him. And that was assuming he wasn’t a Reidar after all. Because if he was—

She forced a smile to cover the sudden churning in her stomach. “Before or after we toss all the leftover MREs into the nearest waste chute?”

He sent her a half grin and navigated the last rough patch of forest, heading for an honest-to-god footpath. “I think we need to toss everything we’ve got in the nearest waste chute, including our clothes. I’m sick of seeing them.”

She glanced down at his coat that she’d put on this morning, because the sky had stayed overcast and chilly in the seven hours since they’d left the cave. Yeah, the garment looked a bit on the dirty side, but this was his dress uniform. These things didn’t come cheap. Surely he could just wash it?

Putting the mundane thought out of her mind, she hurried to catch up with him, where he’d stopped on the deserted sidewalk to wait for her.

“I’m thinking we should get a transport back into the main city, check into an IPC-approved hotel near the spaceport, and get ourselves cleaned up before we hail the
Swift Brion
for a rendezvous,” he said.

She nodded as they started walking along the block. “I’ll see if I can find the nearest public transport location.”

Reaching into the side of her pack, she pulled out the shuttle display. The screen took a long while to power up and came on dull.

“This thing is running out of juice. I guess we’re lucky it lasted this long.”

Zander grunted a response as she called up nav data and maps of the immediate area.

The last of their hike went by in silence, and with each step she took, an impenetrable wall of energy built between Zander and her. The knife of treachery she held was poised, ready to stab him when he least expected it.

There had to be some way to explain everything so he’d understand. But if it was her and she found out that he was doing the same things to her, then yeah, she’d be pretty frecking pissed off.

She swallowed a sigh as they found the transport hub. There weren’t many people about, the cool, gray weather likely keeping tourists inside.

Mae stopped in front of the screen displaying the shuttle timetable.

“Looks like we just missed a transfer into the city.” She glanced over her shoulder and found Zander dropping his packs into a nearby waste-disposal unit. “Really? I thought you were joking about tossing everything. Some of that stuff was still useful. It could have been repacked—”

He shot her an exasperated frown. “There’s plenty more where that came from. The IPC has endless resources. Besides, I don’t trust that stuff not to be bugged by whoever the hell has been after us the past couple of days. I only kept it this long in case we needed it.”

Oh.
Hell, she hadn’t considered that. Surely if the Reidar did have it bugged, there would have been another attempt on them last night or at some point today? But it was better to be safe than sorry. She shrugged out of the three packs she’d lugged the last few days and hurried to drop them into the waste unit, including the display screen from the shuttle.

“I don’t want to wait around here any longer than necessary. Let’s hire one of those autocars and get back into the city.” He scanned the area. Abruptly, he was less the Zander she’d spent the morning naked with and more the unyielding captain admiral who commanded an IPC flagship.

She followed him to the line of public autocars, where he pulled out his wallet and used currency to pay for one of the aerosphere vehicles, as opposed to the slower wheeled automated cars, which stayed on the ground and were better for shorter trips.

Inside the vehicle, Zander input their destination as the Tocarra Intergalactic Hotel directly across from the spaceport.

As the aerosphere car took off, Mae sat back and focused on the scenery whizzing by. If she looked at Zander right now, the words crowding her throat would come bursting out, and that wouldn’t do either of them any good…probably just make things more awkward than they already were. Worse, the need to tell him the truth about Rian and the Reidar was like a weight sitting on her chest. But she’d made a promise she couldn’t betray for anything, no matter that her heart thumped hard enough to ache at how angry Zander would be when the truth finally came out.

Time.
Time would help. The hours and days would go by, and what she’d had with Zander would become a fond memory. The best thing she could do was put it firmly behind herself. They’d been thrown together by the shuttle crash, forced to rely on one another, and faced the constant threat of death for the past days. Now that they were returning to reality, things would change. They would change, and whatever this anomaly had been between them would end up firmly in her past.

Zander’s hand touched hers, and she jolted, thinking it an accident. But when she turned to look at him, she found him staring at her, his eyes melting with intensity. “We should probably have a conversation about things.”

Her heart skipped wildly and she swallowed, trying to put a lid on the untamed sensation.

For some stupid reason, her imagination went spinning off, a fantasy springing to life of him telling her he didn’t care what she was hiding, that he wanted to get to know her outside this crazy situation where they’d been running for their lives.

Hell.
Where had that come from? There was no feasible way they could ever be anything to each other. They existed in two entirely different worlds. He was a career officer, and she— Well, she’d been a UAFA agent…now she had no idea what to do with herself.

Joining Rian’s crew seemed like her only option, unless she wanted to take her life savings and go lie on a beach somewhere. But that just wasn’t her play—she couldn’t skulk off to the far reaches of the galaxy with knowledge of the things going on in the shadows. And if she joined Rian’s crew, there was a good chance she’d end up on the opposite side of the law to Zander. They were mismatched in every sense of the word. So why did being with him feel so right?

She forced herself to nod, striving to keep her expression neutral.

“But not now.” He withdrew his touch, and it was like a new wall came up between them. “Once we’ve gotten to the hotel, cleaned up, and had a decent meal.”

Another nod.
Idiot, I probably look totally brainless.
But her voice had deserted her. Her mind had gone blank, all except for the single desperate need to remind herself they’d be parting ways sooner rather than later. And the parting would be something akin to an asteroid impact—messy and destructive.

Her heavy thoughts had distracted her, and surprise threaded through her when the aerocar lowered and slowed as it pulled into the Tocarra International Hotel.

A uniformed employee stepped forward and held the door for them, his gaze sweeping over them both and then focusing off into nowhere.

For the first time, the thought of what a mess they both looked registered. And her self-consciousness only increased when they stepped into the plush foyer and received reproachful looks from other guests.

The staff behind the desk regarded them with carefully bland expressions, and Mae crossed her arms in growing annoyance. They’d nearly been killed. Several times. She shouldn’t care if she looked like she’d just walked off a battlefield. Nonetheless, the sooner she could get a room and clean herself up, the better.

Zander stood in front of the desk, shoulders back and expression professionally implacable, as though he hadn’t been wearing a torn, bloody dress uniform for the better part of three days. “Captain Admiral Zander Graydon. I’ll take an executive suite. Put it on my IPC account.”

“Yes, sir.” The man behind the desk started tapping at his display screen but managed to shoot her a curious glance before dropping his gaze. “Just one room, sir?”

“That’s what I asked for.” Zander’s voice lowered, she guessed with impatience. The hotel employee wasn’t an IPC officer, so he obviously didn’t realize questioning a captain admiral was
never
a good idea.

“If you’ll provide a handprint scan here and then type in your security code?” The man held out a palm-size pad, where Zander laid his hand. A blue light flashed, and the unit beeped. Zander lifted his hand and typed a series of letters and numbers into the keyboard that appeared onscreen.

He glanced back at her, his expression stern, but his lips quirked up for a second, his gaze becoming lighter.

“I’m sorry, sir, but those codes are incorrect. Can you try again?”

Zander turned his attention back to the hotel employee, who was holding out the pad again.

A weird sense of
something
she couldn’t explain rose within her when the codes were denied a second time.

“I’m sorry, Captain Admiral. I can’t let you have the room if your security codes aren’t working.”