Before I knew it, a yell ripped from my mouth. “Tess!”
“Get ready to take a bullet out of my ass, cupcake.”
“I—” Darkness folded in on me. Hyperspace wrapped her arms around us, and everything went weightless, quiet, and blank. I cradled the baby as my stomach started to writhe and tumble, words I didn’t get to utter lodged tightly behind clenched teeth.
—love you.
Once again, I was too late. The words burned in my throat, and Tess and I were light-years apart already.
Chapter 17
TESS
It was so freaking quiet all of a sudden. TheUnholy Stenchwas gone, taking Shade, Jax, its crew, and that whole cargo hold away with it. They’d detached first from the DWALSH and had taken the brunt of the chase. I would be the focus now. And theEndeavor. We weren’t lined up yet. We still had to make the attachment, and I’d never felt so alone in my life. If it weren’t for the two big blobs near me on the radar, I’d have panicked.
TheEndeavorandDark Watch 12.
Who’d ever have thought I’d findDW 12looming over me reassuring?
I swallowed, and it tasted like fear in my mouth. “Merrick?”
“Reverse thrusters,” he ordered.
“Brace yourselves!” I shouted. I couldn’t turn to see if anyone listened. If the yells and flops of people on metal were any indication, I didn’t give them enough warning.
My hips rammed into the edge of the console. I gasped, the jolt echoing in my injury.Who the hell gets shot in the ass?
Me, apparently.
Just before we started moving backward, I killed the power to the thrusters and waited for Merrick’s instructions.
“Stay there, Tess,” he said. “I’ll do the maneuvering.”
I lifted my hands from the console. “What’s Bridgebane doing?”
“Sending a lot of threats and warnings.”
“And?” That couldn’t be all.
“He shot theStenchat least twice. They’re limping through their jump right now.”
“I heard the explosions.” I sure hoped the damage wasn’t bad enough to ground them on the near-deserted Nickleback. Shade could repair a lot of things, but not without materials.
I rubbed my forehead. “Bridgebane won’t do nothing for long. He can’t risk it.” Even with Sanaa and me in the line of fire, he’d shoot. I knew that.
A jolt went through the cargo unit, throwing me away from the console so hard I fell over. We tilted, and I slid toward the mass of human passengers, slamming into someone sitting on the floor. Two knees hit the back of my rib cage like fists with iron knuckles and drove the air from my lungs. I wheezed in a breath, rolled over, and stared at the woman above me. For a second, she looked just like my mother.
I blinked. A stranger looked back at me.
Lank dark hair curtained forward as she leaned down to help me sit up. Her helpful grip turned into painful clinging when the lights went out in the cargo hold. The darkness was as dense as the Black Widow. Not a single pinpoint of brightness, not a glowing button, not a flashing control panel broke the intense blackness around us.
The woman’s nails dug into my shoulders. Her breath came in scared little shudders. People murmured in fear. The whirring of the air filters stopped abruptly. The gravity shut off, eliminating the universal standard. Up I went, my heart in my throat. Pandemonium erupted in the cargo hold.
“Merrick? Can you hear me?” The coms were independent, right? They’d still function.
“I hear you.DW 12shot your box with some kind of electrical charge.”
“All the systems are off. No new oxygen. No gravity. Can’t see!” I tried to keep my voice down, but stress made it rise beyond the whisper I’d started with.
