Stark Surrender (12 page)

She hung onto him, her hands clawing in his jacket. “No!” she cried. “No, Lode. Come with me. You’re gonna get hurt—or dead. Then what’ll happen to me?”

“You’ll have my credit, so be quiet.” He grasped her wrists and shoved her away. “Go home.”

And then he strode on, fury burning in his chest. He’d recognized that hoarse, cracked voice—it was one of the old soldiers who frequented the church portico.

By the time he hit the steps, he was running. The scene was as bad as he’d feared. One of the old soldiers supported himself on a stone column, trying to remain upright on one good leg while whacking ineffectually at the two toughs who stood over his comrade. They were laughing as they kicked at her prone body. Their heavy boots made a wet smacking sound.

“You should have listened to him,” Lode snarled.

The two turned on him, one a stocky breed with purplish skin and a vacant smile of sharp yellow teeth, the other a gaunt human hopped up on some drug, eyes rezzed, and improbably red hair clinging to his face with sweat.

Lode shot the breed in the chest with his laser and took the human down with one kick.

He planted his foot in the ganger’s heaving chest and leaned his full weight on it, hearing bone crack. “Tell your boss he won’t get away with this anymore. Because I won’t stop until his nasty little minions—like you—are all gone or scared off.”

The human, who was just a youth under the dirt and drugs, bared his teeth at Lode in the travesty of a defiant snarl. “You just—told ‘im—yourself … fool.”

Lode froze. The gang leader was surveilling through their coms, then.

“Well, in that case,” he said coldly, “no one needs you anymore, do they?”

He lasered the murderous ganger in the chest. The youth jerked under his boot, and then went still, eyes going blank, blood staining his brilliant jacket.

Lode shoved the bodies down the steps and turned back to the old soldiers. The uninjured one crouched over his friend’s body, tears runneling through facial grime. “They just appeared and started in. Never even looked at me, just dragged Dee out and started in beating and kicking. On the steps of a church, for God’s sake.”

Lode stared down at the battered, bleeding bundle that had been a woman, a soldier. “Hells, I’m sorry.”

The old man snorted. “Reckon you should be, seein’s how they gimme a message. Said to tell you no one who knows you is safe.”

Lode’s head began to pound again. Shit, he’d never meant for these two to get caught in his dirty cruiser wash. “Do you have any of the credit I gave you? Use it to get off the street, somewhere they can’t find you.”

“Don’t care much,” the soldier muttered. “My only friend is gone.”

“I’m sorry.” Lode repeated. “But take care of yourself. She would’ve wanted that.”

He started back down the steps, toward the street where passersby had paused to watch. He flipped his hood up against curious eyes, and the rain that had begun to fall.

“Wait,” the old man called. “Where are you goin’, loner?”

Lode paused on the pavement. “Back to what I’ve been doing.”

“Oughta gather some reinforcements. Ain’t no good bein’ alone ...” the cracked voice followed him out into the street, echoing through the pain in his skull.

Alone might not be any good, but what else was there? He had Liss, but she wasn’t a fighter.

And he wasn’t finished with the GloJacs. They could crawl out from their gutter drains, but he’d keep smashing them under his boots. From the whispers he’d heard, the more vicious their crimes, the better their leader liked it. They would only continue to escalate, unless someone stopped them.

Someone like him, who had nothing to lose. If they didn’t kill him, the pain in his skull would. It might be a mercy to go by laser.

Chapter Thirteen

Kiri and Kai had been in New Seattle for two long weeks, fraught with moments of breathless excitement when someone in the network of LodeStar contacts reported a sighting of Logan. But the excitement was invariably followed by disappointment when the man merely resembled Logan superficially, or he’d disappeared by the time one of Bronc’s people arrived.

To keep from going rezzed with worry, Kiri kept as busy as she could. She spent time with Taara and Zaë, who she was coming to like and respect more all the time. She and Kai worked out in Logan’s fitness center.

They cruised the city with Rak, helping in the search. From the safety of the cruiser, Kiri also showed Kai the Astra Quadrant, where she’d been living when she met Logan, which unfortunately looked the worse for the continued conflict on the docks.

Kai looked angry when he saw her gutted building. “I can’t believe you had to live here,” he said. “In the middle of a war zone.”

“It wasn’t so bad then,” she said, flushing as Rak raised a grizzled brow at her. “Well, I was hardly ever there, anyway. I pretty much lived at my shop in the space port.”

“I always pictured you in a nice apartment somewhere,” Kai said quietly. “With our parents. I knew they were dead, but ... it helped me to pretend they were still there with you.”

Kiri nodded, the old grief rising. She’d comforted herself with such fantasies more than one lonely night in the dormitory at the trade school where she’d been sent. She’d huddled in her hard, narrow bed, pretending that she was only there until her parents were miraculously found and came to rescue her. Then they all set off to find Kai, for a joyous reunion.

“Our old apartment building is gone,” she told him. “There’s a factory there now. A LodeStar factory, actually, so it’s a good place to work. Logan takes care of his people.”

Or he had. The words hung unspoken in the cruiser between the three of them. Was he down there below them right now? And if he was ... why? Was he safe or hurt, ill?

Kai looked out at the foggy cityscape as they flew, at the scrapers towering up out of the clouds, the air traffic zipping past. “Wonder if there really is a safe place in this city,” he muttered, eerily echoing her thoughts.

“I know,” she agreed. “We—I may have grown up here, but I surely don’t miss it.”

She smiled at him, hoping it didn’t look as fake as it felt. “So, we’ll just see some family history while we’re here. Then we’ll head home, and never come back.”

She and Kai visited Maury, Kiri’s friend who had taken over running Kiri’s Kaffé at the space port until Kiri decided to stay on Frontiera, and sold the shop. The new owner, a widowed Pangaean, had promptly fallen for Kiri’s silver-haired friend, and they were now partners in life as well as the coffee shop, which had been renamed Lii Lattes, for the plant from which Pangaean silkworms spun the famed lii silk.

Maury enveloped Kiri in a hug perfumed with coffee and spices. She wept with joy at meeting Kai and exclaimed at his likeness to Kiri.

“Your sister never stopped looking for you,” she told him. “I’m so happy for both of you.”

Kai bowed politely, and even allowed her to hold his hand for a moment.

“And how is Mr. Stark?” Maury asked, with a roguish smile at Kiri. “Surely you’ve reconciled by now.”

Kiri froze, her tongue tied.

“He’s on a business trip,” Kai said. “We’re hoping to meet him here next week.”

Maury nodded wisely, and Kiri thanked her brother with a speaking glance.

Kiri had hoped to see Illyria Bean, but when she linked the vivacious heiress to a coffee import business, she learned that her friend was on a buying trip to Pangaea—with Marc Moon, the owner of MoonPenny Coffee.

“Didn’t see that one coming,” Kiri told Taara that evening, when they had all gathered at the penthouse sitting room after dinner. “Moon is an arrogant ass.”

“But hot, right?” Taara asked, looking wise. “Even if he was your biggest competitor.”

Kiri wrinkled her nose. “I suppose.”

“Too bad you missed seeing your friend, though,” Zaë sympathized.

“Probably just as well,” Kiri sighed. “I don’t like lying to my friends, saying Logan is on a business trip and should be back soon.”

“I know,” Taara groaned. “I had to do that when I visited Maitresse. Creed didn’t even want me to tell Daanel, but I can’t lie to my cousin. Although, he’s more like a brother. But I warned him if he breathed a word even to his partner Tony that I’d let Creed use him for a sparring dummy.”

Zaë’s eyes widened, and Taara smiled wryly. “Daanel is impulsive. I had to make the consequence a little scary.”

“He’s a drama bot,” Kiri agreed. “Never a dull week, having him as a neighbor in the F City shopping center.”

Taara leaned forward. “Once, he actually said to a customer—”

“Everyone, we have news!” Bronc’s deep voice interrupted.

Pulse pounding, Kiri turned with the others as the big man strode into the penthouse. His broad, tough face was creased in a smile.

“You found Logan?”

“We’ve sighted him,” Bronc agreed.

“Are you sure it’s him this time?” Creed asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Joran put in, following Bronc into the room. “Watch, and you’ll see.”

Taara grabbed Kiri’s hand, and they clung to each other as Bronc manipulated his com to bring up a holovid of a wet, dusky street, lights flashing on and off from holosigns and billboards.

“There,” Joran said, pointing.

A tall, lean man in dark leathers emerged from a doorway, scanning the street before stepping out onto the pavement. The holocam zoomed in, and Kiri gasped with shock and joy. It was Logan—leaner, his hair longer than she’d ever seen it, hanging over his brow and covering his ears, and a scruff of beard shadowing his jaw, but it was Logan.

She gave a sob of joy, pressing her fingers to her trembling lips as she drank him in with her gaze. He looked wonderful—like a swaggering, street version of himself, the way he moved and held himself, but he was alive.

Then he turned and reached back into the doorway, and Kiri froze as a flashy blonde in scarlet leathers which fit her like a second skin stepped from the doorway. She moved close to his side, his arm slid around her, and they walked on, plastered against each other ... like lovers. Which Kiri could readily believe, because the woman was beautiful—in a tough, streetwise fashion, with large breasts under her low-cut jacket.

“It’s really him,” Creed said. “We found him.”

“Yeah,” Joran agreed. “And we know where he is, so all we have to do is move in.”

“We’ll surround the area, first thing in the morning,” Bronc added. “Get surveillance and a perimeter in place, so if he moves, we follow.”

Their jubilant voices thundered in Kiri’s ears as she stood, staring at the holovid, which Bronc was replaying, pointing out buildings and landmarks.

Taara pressed close to Kiri, tipping her head to look into her face. “Honey, we found him. Don’t worry, I’m sure ... well, there must be—”

“A reason why he’s with another woman?” Kiri managed, her voice gruff. “She’s attractive, and he’s ... Logan. That’s all the explanation anyone needs.”

Someone else stepped in on her other side. Kai, his arm around her, his eyes stormy.

Kiri leaned her head on his shoulder, her strength deserting her. Her brother moved, bearing her with him, across the sitting room, along the passageway and into her bedroom. He shut the door behind them, and Kiri slumped onto the edge of her bed. Something huge and terrible began to penetrate the numbness of shock.

“I let him in,” she said, her voice cracking. “I worried about him until I barely slept. I let his brother convince me that Logan needed me so much I came back to the last place I want to be ... and dragged you with me. And now ... surprise, he has another woman.”

Kai was frowning. “But Kiri, what is he doing on the streets like that, and why here? Isn’t this totally unlike Logan Stark? I mean, he owns entire buildings here, right? I would think down in the streets is the last place he’d want to be.”

“He owns entire city blocks.” Kiri shook her head, holding back her tears only with sheer force of will. “He—I don’t know what he’s doing down in those streets, and—and I don’t care.”

This was a lie, as she’d give nearly anything to know why he was here, and what he’d been doing while he was missing ... but maybe if she kept telling herself she no longer cared, she’d be able to believe it. “He’s with that woman, and when I say ‘with’, I think everyone could see what that means.”

He eyed her with angry sympathy.

“His brothers convinced me to fly half way across the damn galaxy to ‘save’ him,” she went on. “Looks like he’s already found someone to do that.”

She looked up at her own brother. “I want to go home.” She was done, with Logan and with this city.

“When do you want to leave?”

“Now,” she said. “Except, I don’t want to have to face everyone. Let’s go later, when they’re in bed.”

Kai’s eyes gleaming with mischief. “We can go now. I found a back way out of here. Natan takes galley deliveries there.”

She huffed a laugh, and they both ignored the fact that it sounded more like a sob. “You’re sneaky. I like that in a brother.”

* * *

Within half an hour, Kiri had her new things packed, and she and Kai were heading out a narrow back passageway that led to a small docking bay. If the Occulan air taxi pilot was surprised to be picking them up there instead of the front of the building, she didn’t show it, merely flicking a few eyestalks their way atop her freckled brownish head while the other monitored her controls and the traffic zipping past.

“Where to?”

“The space port,” Kai said, while Kiri sat back in her corner and tried to ignore the knot of shame in her gut that she hadn’t said goodbye. But Taara would’ve tried to talk her out of it, and Zaë would’ve looked at her with sympathy in those sweet blue eyes. Kiri couldn’t bear either. She felt raw, as if her skin was on inside out.

She’d link them from the space port.

The air taxi revved up, and zipped through the heavy fog, only the pilot’s flashing instruments to guide them. After a huge airbus loomed out of the mist right in front of them, Kiri closed her eyes, and huddled in her seat, sunk in misery.

But damn it, this was wrong—the coward’s way out. She was running away instead of facing her troubles. She couldn’t treat her friends or her brother or, maybe most importantly, herself this way. Okay, so Logan had once again proven that he would never be the man she longed for him to be. That didn’t mean she didn’t need to finish what she’d come here to do—help find him. Then she’d walk away—or fly away.

“Turn around,” she told the taxi pilot. “We’re going back.”

She turned to Kai with an abject apology on her lips, but to her shock, a smile lurked on his face. “Been waiting for you to say that.”

“You’re not angry at me for dragging you across the city and back?”

He shook his head. “Worth it to watch you fight whatever had you on the run, and win. You’re strong, Kiri. You don’t need him, but you don’t need to hide from his shit, either.”

“If I won, why do I feel like such an idiot?”

“Hey,” he said. “This is our secret. As far as anyone else knows, we went out for a drink.”

She nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“With all our luggage.”

Kiri elbowed him. “You may be grown up, but you’re still a bratty little brother.”

He grinned. But by the time they flew back over Astra Quadrant, Kai was scowling out the porthole of the air taxi.

“Y’know, I’d really just like a chance at Logan Stark myself,” he said. “Arrogant bastard.”

“You and me both,” she muttered. “Hey, Joran, Creed and Bronc are down there right now searching for him, and they have his coordinates from earlier. What if—we could meet up with them, and when they find him—”

“We could both have a word,” Kai finished.

They shared a look. “Let’s do it,” they agreed.

Kai linked Bronc, Kiri linked Joran. Within a moment, they had coordinates for both men.

“Hey, Bronc’s right near our old apartment,” Kiri said. She leaned forward to speak to the air taxi pilot. “One more change. Astra Quadrant, Landing Ten.”

“You’re okay going down there?” Kai asked. “Bad section of the city.”

“I’m armed, as you are,” she told him.

Bronc had insisted they all carry small laser weapons, and blades for those who were comfortable with them. Kiri had a laser, Kai had both. They would have had to surrender them to the hold on the passenger ship to Frontiera, but since they hadn’t gotten that far, Kiri’s laser was still in her pocket.

“And we’ll be with Bronc and his men. We’ll be fine.”