But that didn’t mean we had to make things easy for those bounty hunters—or for Bridgebane, if he was behind all this. First, I had to get rid of any tracking devices before that pair of hunters found us again and shot to kill. Then, we’d head straight to Starway 8.
As for Shade, I’d worry about him when he showed up, set on a live capture and looking to get the most out of hisprize.
I growled so loudly it hurt my throat. He’d already gotten more than enough from me, parts of myself I should never have given up.
I threw open the door with every bit of the violence I wanted to unleash and stalked toward the spacewalk gear.
I had no doubt that Shade would come. He didn’t strike me as the type of man who gave up, and I was worth a lot. Sooner or later, he’d find me—along with a swift kick in the balls.
Chapter 22
Zero G didn’t bother me, but I hated the space suit. It was hot and heavy and confining, a mass of bulk around me, some of it hard, some of it flexible, but all of it necessary, right down to the thick, movement-impairing gloves and the titanium-soled, integrated boots. It felt like a coffin to me every time I put it on, only it was encasing me alive instead of dead. The damn thing was my nemesis—or one of them.
My own breathing echoed back to me, loud in the confines of my helmet, a constant reminder that I had limited air and time and that even with a forty-five-pound suit on me, I was about to be weightless, and that one cut through the tether could leave me floating off into the Dark. The suit didn’t have any integrated propulsion, no handy button to set off mini thrusters or little joystick to steer me around. We didn’t have the money for that, only for the basic, standard suit. I would have to crawl all over my ship with a rope clipped to my waist. If I drifted away, I’d have to reel myself in from the void of space.
Fun times. The last twenty-four hours had been great.
My heart clenched, and heat blasted through me, followed by a quick shot of cold. I’d actually thought the last day had been pretty freaking fantastic—before.
“Fuck you, Shade Ganavan,” I muttered as I pressed my gloved index finger down on the seven-digit code to the air lock control. A palm swipe would have been easier, but that would have required undressing, so…no.
“What’s that?” Jax asked.
“Nothing, partner,” I answered into the com.
The inner safety entrance to theEndeavorwas already sealed up behind me, and I kept my arm firmly hooked around the handle next to the new starboard door. The moment it opened, space claimed the air between the two doors. The powerful pull sucked at me, and I held on, waiting for equilibrium to settle over the entrance once more.
Calm came quickly, along with silence. The slight magnetism in the soles of my boots kept me anchored. It wasn’t enough to make it hard to pick up my feet or move around. It just kept me close to the ship and allowed me to do what I needed to do without having to constantly worry about floating off.
Looking out the wide-open door, the same combination of sensations as usual shivered through me: a chill, a thrill. Spacewalking was cool. It was also terrifying.
I’d already checked twice, and so had Jaxon before he’d sealed me out of the main part of the ship, but I gave the tether another hearty tug before I let myself drift out, keeping a hand on the hull to guide me.
Carefully, I started combing theEndeavorfor bugs. We didn’t have the tech for anything other than a manual sweep with the electronic wand in my hand, and it didn’t immediately pick up anything of note. The device had a fifteen-foot radius, so I didn’t have to touch every single part of the ship, but it was slow going to be methodical and thorough.
“Jax, when are you going to squeeze us into that supply line?” I asked. I wanted us to get lost in the other ships around Flyhole as fast as possible.
“Don’t like moving when you’re out there,” he grumbled.
“I’m holding on tight,” I assured him.
Jax bullied his way into a line of ships waiting for water renewal, but instead of just cursing us and then shrugging and going with it like ninety-nine percent of people would have, the captain behind us started flashing what-the-fuck? lights from the midsize cruiser’s bridge.
Great—that would really help us blend in.
I turned and glared, wishing the asshole would knock it off. The point of cutting into a line had been to make it look like we’d been here for a while, instead of like we’d just arrived in a panic to sweep for bugs.
The other ship kept going berserk on theEndeavor’s rear end, so I told Jax about the flasher and asked him to try to communicate enough with the cruiser to make the aggravated captain shut the hell up.
We were in breach of unwritten rules, but as soon as I finished, they’d get their spot in line back, and all would be right in the world of Flyhole extortion.
Who in their right mind would buy water at Flyhole when Albion 5 was just a hop away? There were at least thirty ships in this line, and they’d all pay twice as much here as they would on any inhabited rock.
Whatever. Money wasn’t an issue for everyone, and their loss was our gain. If those hunters got here before I was done, at least we wouldn’t be sticking out like criminals on the run. We looked a lot like everyone else here. Out in deep space, with nothing else around, a tracked ship was impossible not to spot in an instant. Here at Flyhole, you had to weed through the crowd to be sure you had the right one.
My skin buzzed with nervous energy as I crawled along the hull, meticulously moving the wand back and forth. I reached the stickers on the starboard side without getting a single hit for bugs. Since eliminating possible trackers was the priority, I left the numbers up for now and moved to portside. Two minutes later, my wand beeped through the earpiece I had in my helmet, its little flashes and alarms getting more frantic and insistent as I moved left and down.
“There you are,” I murmured, finally spotting the tracking bug. It was the exact same dark gray as theEndeavorand blended in almost perfectly.
