Rebels and Lovers (10 page)

She’d hoped Pops might be at his usual table, sucking down an ale. Hell, she’d have settled for Ilsa. Aries would have been a boon—Trip would have deemed her “apex”—but none was here. Still, she’d make do. There were other faces and ships’ patches Kaidee recognized, and she felt more than fairly sure that in a standoff with Fuzz-face, she’d find most of Trouble’s Brewing on her side.

She hoped.

Trip emerged, face damp and somewhat ruddy from scrubbing, jacket sleeves pushed haphazardly up—though not enough to hide the water stains trailing to his elbow. She stepped toward him and stopped abruptly, as if hitting an invisible wall.

She sniffed. “What in hell?”

He ducked his head slightly and loped two long steps over to her, smelling like a twenty-credit prosti.

“Antiseptic dispenser was empty,” he said, with a shrug that sent another wave of noxious fumes wafting under her nose. “But aftershave contains alcohol, and it didn’t cost much more. I figured it was—”

She sneezed. “I get it. I get it.” Maybe it would wear off. Or maybe if Fuzz-face grabbed Trip, it would knock the bastard unconscious.

It certainly made a few patrons back away, eyes slitted in defense, as they returned to the main area of the bar.

“Sit,” she told Trip when, by some miracle of the bar-and-space gods, three patrons suddenly vacated a nearby table that bordered the bulkhead.

Maybe not a miracle. The Takan one was sneezing.

“Put your back to the wall,” she ordered him, then dropped into the seat on his left, where she had a clear view of the bar’s front entrance and a decent one of the two exits behind the bar. Either the bar’s air recycs were sending Trip’s noxious scent away from her or whatever he’d liberally applied to his skin was fading. She palmed her L7 and then noted, with a small start of surprise, that her charge was also taking stock of his surroundings. Actually, his mostly calm demeanor through this whole ordeal surprised her.

Then again, he was a Guthrie.

“So tell me in detail this time,” she said, her gaze drifting over the bar’s inhabitants, her voice low but audible. “You didn’t see Fuzz-face until after you hit Dock Five. And you’ve never seen him before.”

Trip had already said as much, in his brief recounting in the lift and then in spurts and gulps as they ran up and down stairwells. But she needed the whole story. Kaidee also desperately needed to believe that Jonathan Macy Guthrie III’s appearance on Dock Five had nothing to do with the Imperial warships out there, or with Frinks and company in here.

Or her delightfully dead ex-husband.

And there were other questions she wanted answers to, like why Trip was on Dock Five in the first place. Was there a problem at home or at school? They hadn’t delved into that, because her immediate concerns were the people who’d almost succeeded in grabbing him. No matter how bad a problem was at home, his parents wouldn’t send someone to harm him—and they wouldn’t send strangers. That meant Fuzz-face worked at someone else’s commands.

“Didn’t see the bearded guy on my flight, no. But like I said, I slept. Or was reading.” He patted the
leather backpack hanging off one shoulder. “I didn’t think to be looking around. Stupid, I know.” He glanced at her, then back at the throngs of people standing around the bar—gray shipsuits, green shipsuits, humans, and Takas. Two dark-haired women were laughing loudly, one wiping tears from her eyes. A group of five dockworkers—three human and two Takas—seated at a nearby table had their heads together, intent on something a thin-faced young human male had on the datapad in his hand. No one seemed to be looking at her and Trip. Yet.

“Uncle Philip would hand me my head for not keeping track of my surroundings,” Trip continued. “’Specially because I ditched Halsey. None of us is supposed to be out without security, you know?”

“When did you first notice the guy?”

“Not long after I got off the shuttle. I was hungry. The snack stall has this polished metal wall, almost like a mirror. I saw this guy … behind me, sort of. Then I remembered he was the same one who’d bumped into me a few minutes before. Something just wasn’t right, so I pulled my pack around, like I was looking for credit chips. But I was really checking it because that’s where he bumped me. And I found a tagger. A Lockpoint, I think.”

A Lockpoint tagger. A tiny tracking device that easily latched on to fabric or, in Trip’s case, expensive leather. Not much more than a small metal bump, which could feel to inexperienced fingers like a slub in the material. But Trip had known what it was.

She wondered if Kiler had shown him. She couldn’t see Trip’s father being aware of those kinds of things, but Ben Halsey would have known and quite possibly educated Master Trip. Halsey would know a Lockpoint from an Alphoid RLM.

“Where’d you leave it?” If he knew what it was, then he knew it was important to ditch it.

He shot her a quick grin as if he heard her confidence in him, then let his gaze sweep the crowd again.
Definitely Halsey’s training
, she thought. “I put enough space between him and me, and then I latched it on to a cleaning servo’s towel rack. I figured that was the end of it. The guy—well, this is Dock Five, and I know what my pack costs. I thought he was going to wait until I hit an empty corridor, then rob me.”

She studied him as he spoke. Smart enough to know what a tagger was and that it was a Lockpoint but naive enough to believe the whole thing was over his two-hundred-fifty-credit leather backpack. Not experienced enough to recognize that a goon like Fuzz-face was far beyond petty thievery. And spoiled enough
not
to know no one was going to waste a high-tech piece of equipment like a Lockpoint tagger for a two-hundred-fifty-credit leather pack.

At least not until Fuzz-face showed up with reinforcements.

“Yeah, I kind of figured at that point it was more than just my pack,” Trip admitted with a grimace. “Plus, the bearded guy knew my name. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“He called me Jonathan. No one calls me that. Well, sometimes Grandpa J.M. does.” He shrugged. “Some of my professors do. And Uncle Ethan when he wants to annoy me.”

Ethan, Kaidee remembered clearly, excelled at annoying people. But Ethan wasn’t the problem here.

“What else did you hear the bearded guy say?” She watched a server ’droid roll its way toward them. They’d have to order something to eat or drink, or the
’droid would issue the ubiquitous warning that this was a pub, not a hotel. “Not just what he said to you. Anything that might indicate what he wants.”

Trip was shaking his head as the ’droid arrived. Kaidee ordered two coffees and let the ’droid swipe her credit chip. Ale was for relaxing, and this wasn’t time to relax.

“I remember hearing some guy say, ‘Get Jonathan,’” Trip said, as the ’droid pivoted on its base. “Paid it no attention ’cause I don’t think of myself that way. Only when he grabbed me and said, ‘Jonathan, you’re coming with us,’ did I put it together. Well, that and the fact that he had a gun. An old Carver-Eight. He was going for it when I hit him.”

“And you don’t know why he grabbed you?”

“Honest, Captain Griggs, I don’t.”

“He didn’t mention your parents or your grandfather? Ransom? GGS?”

“Not that I heard.”

She fingered the small L7 and scanned the crowd again. The laughing women had quieted, but the group of dockworkers was still focused on the young man’s datapad. She saw them without seeing them, her mind going in worried circles.

Damn it, there were too many variables, from a disgruntled ex-GGS employee to something personal with Trip’s parents. Or grandparents. The Guthries had money, they had economic power, they had social standing, they had political power. It could be anything or any combination.

The only thing she knew for sure was that it was trouble.

“And you left the university why? Were you meeting someone here on Dock Five?” It wasn’t like Dock
Five was the usual party locale for wealthy college students.

Trip glanced at her, lips parted, then clamped them shut. He glanced away. He shrugged.

She felt her own jaw tighten and had to remind herself he was not only male, he was nineteen: a young man with a large dose of child inside. But a young man …

“Is this over a girl?”

That got him to look at her but didn’t gain her an answer.

“Trip, I’m not judging you. Damn it, I’m trying to keep you alive. Someone’s pissed off—either at you or your family or your family’s business or all of the above. I can’t solve this if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“It can’t have anything to do with—Nobody knows I’m here.”

“Someone
does.” She pinned him with a hard stare. But not for too long, because Trouble’s Brewing was packed with people coming and going. And any one of those coming in could be looking for Trip Guthrie.

Or Makaiden Griggs. She’d forgotten that for the past hour, as involved in Trip’s situation as she was. But Frinks was out there, and someone had ordered Gudrin Vere’s death.

Which made her realize she hadn’t seen her Takan shadow in a while. Slag it. She hadn’t exactly been looking for him either, but that didn’t negate the fact that he was out there. Or, worse, that Frinks had put someone else on her tail.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with someone named Orvis? Or Horatio Frinks?” she asked him.

The confusion on his face looked genuine. “Who?”

She waved the question away. “People who belong
here. You don’t. But you didn’t end up here by accident. Neither did those guys who jumped you.”

His expression darkened, his brows coming down in thought. “But I purposely didn’t tell anyone where I was going—and why—for that very reason. I didn’t want to put Uncle Philip at risk.”

“Uncle Philip?” That was not remotely the answer Kaidee expected. Philip Guthrie?
Admiral
Philip Guthrie?

“Even he didn’t know I was coming here,” Trip continued, as images of Imperial warships stationed off Dock Five blossomed in Kaidee’s mind. Was this whole thing some kind of trap? Any citizen of the Empire knew that Tage wouldn’t mind at all if Philip Guthrie was captured. Or killed. But she couldn’t believe Trip would be party to that.

He’s just a kid. A big nineteen-year-old one, but a kid. And not beyond being manipulated by a professional. Tage has offices full of those
. “Who told you to meet your uncle here?”

“I’m not meeting him here.”

Kaidee fought the urge to pound her head on the bulkhead behind her. The kid should be a politician, for the way he used evasive answers. “Trip.” She paused, knowing that would make him look at her. It did. “What in hell are you doing on Dock Five?”

“I think it’s important that …” His voice trailed off again. Then he huffed out a hard sigh. “You know Uncle Philip was reported killed, right? But he really wasn’t?”

When she nodded, he continued: “That’s when I knew I had to join up. With him. With the Alliance.” Passion crept into his last few words, and his shoulders straightened.

God and stars. Kaidee went from wanting to pound
her head to wanting to smack Trip’s. The damned kid had
hero in training
written all over him—from the tilt of his chin to the stiffness of his spine. “What does Dock Five have to do with—”

“Everyone knows you can get anywhere from Dock Five. Or buy the documents to get you there.” He shot her a glance that had clear echoes of his father, Jonathan Guthrie II, in the way the dark brows dipped and eyes shifted slightly downward. As in:
You left your brains on the floor
.

She bit back her initial retort that
everyone
is usually an ass.
He’s a kid. He’s a kid
. “As in illegal transport into Alliance territory? And you know, of course, how much that would cost? And you know how to bargain for that without getting caught by stripers or, worse, ImpSec?”

He shrugged, but some of the bravado that had kept his shoulders straight dissolved. He leaned back in his chair, slumping slightly.

“Throwing a lot of money around on a place like Dock Five,” she said softly, “can get you killed.”

“I thought—”

“Be straight with me, Trip. Were you telling me the absolute truth about how you had this run-in with Fuzz-face? Or were you dealing with him to try to go out-system?”
That
would change everything. Fuzz-face could well be an undercover ImpSec agent. Or worse.

“No. I swear—”

She suddenly sat up straight, seeing movement by the side door that set her internal alarms pinging. Two large human males. Not Fuzz-face but the balding one she was sure had been with Trip’s attacker earlier. Dark jackets were too large, and hands were snaking
underneath or being tucked behind at the waist. Armed, definitely. Clutching weapons, definitely.

Looking for Trip Guthrie? Too damned likely.

They sure as hell didn’t look like they were looking for an ale.

Her pulse spiked. She nudged Trip’s boot with her own. “Side door,” she said quickly, quietly. “Guy on the left?”

Both men—Baldy and Curly, she dubbed them—were scanning the busy movement in the bar but hadn’t fixed on the spot where Kaidee and Trip were seated. Or else they had, she realized with a sinking feeling, and were too well trained to reveal that fact.

But not well trained enough to hide their imposing predatory appearance. She crossed ImpSec off the list. ImpSec was cagier than that.

“You shot that one earlier,” Trip said, confirming her recognition of the balding man.

“Stunned him,” she corrected him. Station rules. She tried to abide by them. Not everyone did, as Gudrin Vere had found out when Nula caught up with her. “You see Fuzz-face anywhere?”

Trip slouched down in his seat and raked the bar with just a glance and only the slightest movement of his head. She wondered again how much Halsey had taught him.

“Nope. You?”

“Nope.” She’d used the same method. Movement drew attention. They didn’t need that right now. “We need to get out of here. Front door’s closest, but it’s also the most obvious.” Just to the side of the front door, though, was a little-known maintenance access to what was now the CFTC shuttle bay. Scenarios and options ran through her mind. So did a penchant for safety. There were far too many innocent patrons
between here and that access way. “There’s a back exit to your right, behind the bar. Provides more cover.” And fewer innocents in the line of fire, should stupidity make an appearance. Bar ’droids were replaceable.