Thief (17 page)

“Could be.” Kraft darted a quick glance to Jace at the other end of the table. He kept his gaze riveted to his cup of swassing. He’d been avoiding her all day. This was the first time they’d faced each other since last night. Jace refused to meet her gaze, but he listened to her plan.

Unlike Garrett, Jace hadn’t spent his script on new clothes. Jace wore a decimated homespun shirt and faded dungarees. He hadn’t even bothered to shave. He looked scruffy and harsh. She stopped looking at him when she found herself wondering what his beard-shadow would feel like against her skin, especially the exquisitely sensitive skin along her inner thighs.

“Those fetches play rough, darling, and there’s got to be at least a hundred of them on that station.” Garrett looked around. “We got you, me, Jace and Heller. Four fighters against a hundred?” He looked down at her new boots. “Are your toes starting to stress that leather?”

It took her a moment to grasp what he meant. “You think I’m getting too big for my boots?” She laughed. “Maybe I am, because if you think four fighters against a hundred is crazy, how does one grab you?”

“One? You mean one person?” Garrett leaned back in his chair and tilted his hat further back. “Let me guess, you?”

“Just little old me.” Kraft smiled, leaned forward and gripped the table. “Why send an army, or even four, when you’ve got me?”

Garrett whistled. “Jace had it right, lady, you’ve got bigger balls than any man I ever met. Hell, you got more in your sack than the three of us combined.”

“Garrett!” Bailey, sitting to the left, slapped his arm, clearly horrified he would say such a thing about the all consuming object of his puppy-love. “And there’s four men here, not three.” Bailey sat a bit straighter and tried to broaden his chest by extending his slender arms.

“We already know her balls are bigger than yours.” Heller slapped Bailey on the back so hard the poor boy struggled to keep his seat.

“It’s not that, Bailey.” Garrett glared at Heller. “You’d be flying, not fighting. We got four fighters, one pilot, and two docs.” Garrett considered. “No, wait.” He lifted a gnarled finger. “What we
really
got is one bonafide crazy lady, three fighters, one pilot and two docs.” He winked at Kraft. “You crazy, girl, but you got a mind for mischief on you, and I’m willing to listen.”

Kraft followed Garrett’s gaze down the table to Jace. Captain Lawless sat at the other end with his attention on his cup of swassing. He just listened while his crew discussed the possibilities of the job.

“It’s impossible,” Heller said. “We can’t even get close to the damn thing without them seeing us coming.”

Bailey looked up at her. “It’s true,” he said apologetically. “
Mutiny
doesn’t have any way to jam their sensors. They’ll see us coming from at least ten minutes off.”

“Ye of little faith.” Kraft sighed. “They won’t see us at all. And there won’t be any record of our visit. What we need is exactly what we got.”

“A crazy lady?” Garrett looked at her black boots again.

“A shadow,” she said. A quick glance to Jace revealed he still paid full attention to his cup.

“A what?” Heller asked.

“Someone quiet, invisible. That’d be me.”

“I ain’t letting my hide hinge on you, freak-show.” Heller shoved his chair back from the table and crossed his bulky arms over his chest.

Kraft rolled her eyes. “Could we lay off the nasty names for awhile? And how about, just for fun, I present the whole plan before you rip it apart?” She laid out a detailed schematic of an IWOG transport station. “Before anyone asks, I acquired these blueprints on Dahank.”

“Finagling black market goods. Another interesting skill you have.” Garrett grinned. “I’m starting to think you got full right to some mighty big boots.”

“Thanks for the lone vote of confidence,” she said, hoping Jace would finally look at her, but he continued to stare into his cup. Disappointed but not surprised, she turned her attention to the blueprints. “Now, let’s go over the plan.”

Chapter Sixteen

Relieved that he had something to focus on besides his now empty cup, Jace studied the diagram Kraft laid out on the kitchen table. IWOG transport stations were 10xBasic. The zeppelin shape became a cigar with a bite off the front end. The bite opened into a huge cargo bay with the bridge riding up and behind the mouth, like a leviathan from the bottom of the Void. The hatch of the transport cargo bay would fit to the docking bay of
Mutiny
perfectly, like a lip-locked, T-shaped kiss.

Before his weary mind could start wandering down the trail of kissing, Jace asked, “Could you get in?”

So far, he’d just sat back and listened. Right from the start, he didn’t like the job, but Kraft’s voice compelled him to consider the particulars. And it gave him an opportunity to face her and hopefully put behind them what happened last night. But he still couldn’t bring himself to look directly into her eyes. He couldn’t even face himself in the mirror long enough to shave.

He was ashamed for losing control and hurting Kraft by grasping the raw wound on her arm. A wound caused by his own bumbling. Her blood on his hands was a reminder of all he feared. Claiming her as his own, possessing her, trying to protect her, then failing her so miserably. Just as he’d failed Senna.

When Kraft paused in answering, he finally looked up and caught her gaze. He felt the space between them compress. His heartbeat shot up to a painful twirling-dervish pace, but he didn’t see what he expected in her fathomless eyes. Rather than fear or regret, he found that smirky flirtatious arrogance.

Kraft cocked her hip, lowered her eyelids and her voice, and said, “With the right gear, I could get in, lock it down, and we could grab whatever we take a fancy to.” She arched one brow and gave him a saucy wink.

Confused by her casual attitude, and the potential double entendre of her statement, he dropped his gaze from her face and noticed she wore a new black dextex shirt, dangerously unbuttoned and tucked into tight black dextex pants.

The fabric clung to every curve she possessed and caused interesting things to happen in his own clothing. When she leaned forward over the blueprints, she gave him an enticing hint of a lacy black bra. He wanted to rocket to his feet and yank the rest of the buttons apart, but then he noticed a bite mark on her neck, and he dropped his guilty gaze back to his empty cup.

“How?” As soon as he asked, he knew he’d just swallowed her lure like a greedy fish. Garrett may think her crazy, Heller might hate her guts, Bailey might lust her every step, but Jace seemed to believe her every word. As much as she tried to act flippant about last night, she seemed to be doing so for his benefit. As if she were saying their encounter didn’t mean anything to her so why should it mean anything to him?

“Okay, what we got is a supply station with a skeleton crew. We hit them at the right moment and half the crew will be on down time. I enter here.” Kraft pointed to the diagram.

Jace forced himself to keep his gaze on her finger and not look at her cleavage.

“That’s the sewage line.” Bailey’s whole face pinched up in squeamish distaste.

“That’s where they’re weak,” Kraft said. “And don’t worry, I’ll be in a suit. Since the IWOG runs everything like clockwork, they’re gonna clean the line in two days.”

“Don’t they have recyc?” Heller asked.

“They do, they do. Lucky for us it’s old and inefficient. Couple of times a year they clean it out. It’s cheaper for the IWOG to pump and dump than to upgrade the technology. You know how they are about the bottom line.” She looked right at him and Jace saw a curious sad hunger in her eyes, something almost like an apology.

More than anyone at the table, Jace knew too much about IWOG greed. When the vast agricultural WAG world of Tyaa had become profitable, the IWOG unleashed a virus that killed almost everyone on the planet while leaving the plants and animals intact. Jace survived and he’d been almost mad with grief when the IWOG showed up in biosuits and mobile body disposal units to clean up the dead. As they dug up the four bodies he’d carefully buried, Jace snuck aboard the IWOG scout and eventually ended up on planet Byzantine.

“How do you know they’re gonna clean it out in two days?” Garrett asked, pulling Jace from the past to the present.

“I bought the information with the blueprints.” Kraft shrugged and Jace noticed she winced slightly as her shirt pulled on her upper left arm. “Anyway, the Dungslurper—”

“The what?” Heller asked.

“The pump and dump ship. Let’s just call it the IWOG Dungslurper.” Kraft smiled brightly. “Now, the Dungslurper has limited instruments and no sensors aft.”

“Right! Who’d want to rob a ship full of shit?” Heller was clearly delighted he’d figured something out on his own for a change.

“Exactly.” Kraft nodded. “Anyway, using a shuttle, approaching the Dungslurper aft, where it has no sensors, you drop me on it.”

“I’m all for that,” Heller said. “But only if you ain’t wearing a suit.”

Kraft straightened and put one hand on her hip. “When this job is over and you’ve got 100K script in your pocket, I’ll let you decide whether or not you want to toss me to the Void without a suit.”

There was a long run of hushed silence. Jace let the number roll over his brain as his gaze traveled the enticing thrust of her hip.

“No way can
you
run a job that will bring that kind of script,” Heller said.

Despite his biting comment, Jace saw respect in Heller’s eyes. Since they’d met Kraft, their score on jobs had climbed exponentially.

“Finish running it, Kraft.” Jace met her gaze and held it only by the sheer force of his will.

She stepped forward and pointed to the diagram. “The Dungslurper will dock here, to the sewage hatch. Once it starts to pump and dump, nobody is going to notice me getting onto the transport station. I wait until they’re done then use a flashpop to open the airlock, but I probably won’t need it.”

“Yeah, why lock a door that holds back megatons of shit?” Heller laughed and, for the first time since Kraft had come aboard, Heller seemed to be enjoying himself in her company. And Jace let the swearing slide since now wasn’t the time.

“Absolutely.” Kraft nodded. “I get in through the recently cleaned lines. Then, look.” Using her index finger, she traced her way through the schematic. Jace noticed her nails were short and buffed, newly manicured and feminine despite the strength evident by the rough calluses that no amount of moisturizer would ever soften. “From the sewer to the hall to another and—”

Dropping his feet to the floor with a solid
thwump
, Garrett whistled out a long sharp tone. “Well, glory be, girl. You went from shit to shinola!”

Jace retraced her path. “You’re in the control room.” He triple checked the schematic. No way could it be that easy.

“Yep. And all it’s gonna cost is one suit. After trudging through there, I don’t think you’d want it back.”

“No.” Jace shook his head, still considering the schematic with a worried frown. “I think we can spare a suit.”

“Anyway, I leave the suit in the line and make my way down this hall. At best, two men will be on duty in the main control room. Most like, one of them will be sleeping while the other ponders IWOG sanctioned porn on the Tasher.”

“Cameras.” Garrett pointed. “Trained on the hall.”

“The IWOG guards won’t be looking at them,” she said. “Even if one of them is, he won’t see anything.”

“So you’ll just sneak up and kill ’em?” Heller was enthused about the idea of killing as many IWOG officers as they could during this job.

“No, I’ll sneak up and make sure both of them sleep.”

“How?” Jace asked.

“Want me to demonstrate on Heller?” When she moved behind him, Heller shot to his feet so fast he knocked his chair clean across the room.

Jace knew Heller had a healthy respect for Kraft’s physical prowess. Once again, he wondered why she hadn’t fought him last night. With two fingers, she could have dropped him to his knees in begging agony. Instead, she’d allowed him to grasp and fondle her body like a greedy kid in a candy store. Was it because of their contract or did she actually welcome his embrace? In a million years, he felt he’d never understand her.

“I won’t hurt you.” Kraft smiled at Heller as she rapidly touched her forefinger to her thumb. “Much.”

Heller pulled his hand to his chest. “Stay away from me, freak-show.”

“Why don’t you demonstrate on me.” Jace challenged her with his gaze. She seemed so casual, cocky even, like last night hadn’t even happened. He wanted to find out just how disinterested she was.

“Ain’t the best idea you’ve ever had,” Heller said. “She-bitch could kill you.”

“Hell, lovely lady has already saved him twice, why would she kill him now?” Garrett dropped his hat to the table and primped his freshly cut hair.

Jace thought Garrett looked like a proud peacock with his new duds. It worried Jace at first that Garrett had turned an eye to Kraft, but over dinner it was clear Garrett still wore his heart on his sleeve for Payton. And he’d seemed a mite more than pleased when Payton had taken pleasurable note of all his efforts. Compared to Garrett, Jace looked like a market street bum. With his scruffy face and slept-in clothing, all he needed was a paper-wrapped bottle to complete his dreadful appearance.

Kraft obviously spent a large portion of her share of the job on clothing. He’d seen her enter the cargo bay wearing a new belt with blades and guns. She’d strode in like she owned the place and never looked up at him. But he’d had a feeling she knew he was there and watching her.

“Go ahead, Kraft,” Jace said. He felt a perverse thrill in ordering her to embrace him while his crew looked on.

“Oh, goody goody fun fun. I always did wanna hold you in my arms.” Kraft smiled, slow and lazy and sexy. She got behind him. “Now, just relax.” She cupped his face with her left hand and pressed her body to his back as she slid her hand to cup his neck. He caught a whiff of her perfume and his whole body felt electrified.

In a flash, she lowered her right arm and crooked her elbow against her hand. She squeezed.