Given that, he’d picked one hell of a time to initiate this discussion. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“Well, you did.” She pushed ahead of him.
He kept to the right side of the heavily trafficked passageway, tucking them as much as possible between larger groups as they headed for the bank’s main entrance off Corridor Supreme. If Filar had his Bruisers following them, Nic didn’t see any.
That Filar could be following them on security vidcams was a definite possibility. It was the reason Nic chose Sector United. The vidcams in Corridor Supreme were the least effective and not just because of the crowds, but because two popular pleasure houses there paid good money not to be recorded.
Sector United was crowded—it was the only bank on-station that was multi-species-friendly, including a private office for methane breathers and decking-level teller terminals for four-legged patrons like Skoggi. He guided Serri past the currency-exchange kiosk, then spotted a vacant space along a side wall. He nudged her quickly in that direction. They needed to look as if they waited for a loan officer.
“Serri, I’m sorry,” he said as she wedged herself between a fake redsprout tree on her right and a tall blinking advert pillar on her left.
She brushed a synth-frond off her head. “I’m okay.”
“No. About Rez and his affair with Janna. It was Rez I wanted to hurt. Not you. Never you.” He didn’t know why it was so important to tell her that now, but it was. He suddenly had a bad feeling about this mission, and about what exactly he’d have to do to make sure Serri and Quin got off station alive and in possession of their ship.
Emotions played over her face, her eyes darkening, her mouth parting slightly. He had to force himself to look away from all that, from what it made him want to do, because they now had forty-three minutes to get up four more levels, pull the plug on station defenses, and get back down to the
Suddenly, she grasped his forearms, pulling him closer. Nic was very aware that he had three minutes to spare, and that three minutes wasn’t nearly time enough to kiss Serri like he wanted to. People in hell want ice water, his grandfather always used to say. He’d take what he could get.
But her face didn’t hold a look of passion but concern. “A pair of Bruisers just came in.”
Nic shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Time to disappear. “Side exit. Go.”
She threaded her way through the crowd of bank patrons. He took one last look at guards—the Breffans hadn’t seen them, he was sure—and then followed on her heels, cursing silently. He should have demanded more time.
There was a maintenance storage room about fifty feet to the left of the bank. At least, there had been two years ago, which was the last time Nic was on Jabo Station. But when they came around the curve in the corridor, something else had been added: two more red-uniformed Bruisers. One leaned against the bulkhead, checking something on a transcomm in his upper left hand; the other watched the crowd through narrowed eyes.
He pulled Serri behind a pylon.
“They’re looking for us,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“They’re also blocking access to the maintenance core.” Where they would have been able to continue with much less chance of being seen.
“There must be others.”
“That’s the closest workable one on this level that I have the code for.”
“Since when do you need a code for a lock?”
“Since we only have forty minutes to do what we have to and get back.”
One of the Breffan guards raised his face, peering over the crowd of stationers. Spotting them? Nic couldn’t take the chance. The guard was already heading toward them. Nic put his arm around her shoulders, aware now of movement to their left. A deep voice, shouting. Then a sharp trill of high laughter.
“Looks like someone’s on his way to a party,” he told her, turning her quickly toward the group of drunken revelers. “Let’s go crash it.”
....
THEY STANK. SOMEONE—more than one someone, Serri guessed with fair accuracy, wrinkling her nose—had spilled sour ale on his clothes, and another someone standing far too close to her and Nic had pissed on himself. Or herself. Crammed into the small lift as they were—a nonstop to Level Ten—there was nowhere to get away from the stench and the harsh laughter and—
Vakare-be-damned, if that bastard behind her patted her ass one more time she was going to ignore Nic’s admonition to “blend in,” and clock the drunk right across his drooling face.
She inched closer to Nic, regretting that too because he smelled clean like soap and leather and, well, like the Nic Talligar she remembered.
She played his words over in her mind as she listened to Nic ramble on in an unintelligible conversation with several of the drunks, his newfound friends. There was no escape, not from the drunken dockworkers headed for the Crimson Flask on Level Ten, and not from Nic Talligar who never wanted to hurt her.
But how in hell was helping Rez cover his affair with Janna hurting
Though she might suffocate from the noxious fumes before that happened. She gave up and leaned her face against Nic’s jacket. And was surprised when his arms came tightly around her. And even more surprised to feel his mouth brush the side of her forehead.
But being held by Nic felt good. And it wasn’t just because he smelled good. It was because… he was Nic. Her onetime closest friend she never wanted to see again. Ever.
This was definitely not good.
The lift shimmied to a stop, doors opening. The whooping and laughing increased, along with general mayhem as the partygoers stumbled toward the bar’s entrance.
She and Nic stumbled along with them. Suddenly he yanked her sideways.
“Hey, party’s this way!” someone called out.
“Be righ’ there,” Nic called back, words slurred as he swayed against her. “Gotta puke.”
That elicited a chorus of groans and epithets as Nic bent over, one hand braced against the wall.
“Arm around my shoulder. Block their view.” His voice was low, urgent.
She steadied him and realized he didn’t want his new friends to see the tiny decoder in his hand. He was picking the lock on a door clearly marked “No Admittance.”
“I really don’t think they care,” she said quietly, meaning that he was accessing the door, not that he was pretending to be sick.
“Anyone watching?”
She turned slightly. The line of dockworkers in the corridor had dwindled. “Nope.”
He shoved the door open and pulled her inside. “They care,” he said, closing the door, extinguishing all light. Then light flared. Nic, with a small handbeam. They were in a storage closet.
“They care,” he repeated. “You ever know a Jabo dockworker who could afford drinks on the house for fifty people at the first bar, and now a second party here?”
“Someone’s rich relative died?”
He shook his head and played the beam around the room. “The woman with the long white braids on the lift with us is our hostess. Got paid good money for doing something interestingly illegal. And it involves filched cargo and bogus tariffs.”
“She works for Filar.”
“No. Rez Jonas.” He focused the beam on another door on the left wall. “This way.”
Her mind frantically processed the information and refused to let her feet move. “But why would he risk his
