“I’ve researched this place and them to death,” she said. “I could stay here for a year and not figure out what happened.”
“That’s still not a reason for you to leave,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I just… they left me, you know? And as a kid, I’d track them down and join up with them again, only to have them leave again. I started researching them, just like I had as a kid, and then I talked us into coming here, and I thought… I’m doing it again. I’m chasing them, and they don’t want me.”
Her voice didn’t break when she said that last bit, but it sounded odd, strangled, as if she had trouble getting the words out.
“And that’s if they’re alive,” she said. “If they’re dead, then what have I gained?”
He wanted to get up and hold her. But she had placed that chair—and the table itself—as a barrier between them.
“Knowledge,” he said. “You would know what happened to them.”
“Knowledge is overrated,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ve researched my history for more than twenty years and found nothing. I would love to have a name, an idea, a place to start with.”
She stared at him. Then she said, her expression bleak, “I have knowledge. I know they had a pattern. They had no idea how hard it was to raise a child. They had no one to help them and no money. So they’d drop me with so-called friends. Over and over and over again. They were going to send me to the Guild anyway. Their last friend did. They never came for me, they never paid my fees at the Guild, they never even acknowledged me.”
Her hands continued to run across the back of that chair. He understood the fidgeting. He had just done it as well. He wanted to take her hands and pull her toward him, but he couldn’t move in this tiny room.
“They’re the reason I’m trapped by the damn Guild,” she said. “I could have gone to school there, and if they had just paid the stupid fees, I’d be free. But I’m still associated in ways I don’t want to be because they abandoned me. So why am I chasing them?”
This time her voice did break. And this time, he couldn’t stand it. He stood, hit his thighs on the table, and winced as pain threaded through him. He managed to get around it, and he shoved her chair aside. He pulled her in his arms.
He had expected a fight, but she didn’t give him one. She buried her head in his shirt.
But she didn’t cry. Her breathing didn’t even change. He rubbed her back and after a few minutes, she relaxed against him.
How long had she carried that abandonment all by herself? When he talked with her about the Guild, she mentioned that she knew people, but she never mentioned friends.
He didn’t have a lot of friends, but the ones he had he valued above all else.
Skye was being his friend. He needed to value that as well.
“Maybe you just want answers,” he said. “Maybe you want to stop guessing about why they kept leaving you behind.”
Her breath hitched. Then she stiffened, and stood, tilting her head upward so that she could look directly at him.
“Those answers can wait,” she said. “They’ve already waited for most of my life. What’s another year or two? Besides, if I help you and we solve whatever is going on with the Guild and Heller, then maybe I can get out of the last of my contract. I’ll be free to pursue the investigations I want to pursue.”
He smiled at her. “And I can help you.”
He was about to add,
She moved away from him. “One thing at a time, Jack. One thing at a time.”
Chapter 36
She didn’t want to think about the future. She certainly didn’t want to think about the future with Jack.
If he had asked her what was wrong, she would have answered him in less blunt terms. She would have said,
But he didn’t ask, and she had the sneaky feeling that he knew what she was thinking. She didn’t like that.
She didn’t like it at all.
She had been alone her entire life. She wasn’t about to change it.
That didn’t stop her from wanting to help Jack. She would have done it even if it hadn’t benefitted her, although she didn’t tell him that. Let him think she was doing this out of self-interest. Both of their worlds were filled with self-interest, and he understood it.
Hell, she did too. It was, she once said to Guild Director Ammons, what made the universe tick.
The best way she could help Jack was to get them out of Zaeen safely. They needed to go to a system or an area where they could research everything without worries of getting caught.
They also needed a place that would allow them to talk freely about the Rovers and the Guild.
They needed to be alone.
It was impossible to be alone on Zaeen.
They left the restaurant and picked up supplies, including clothing. Over Jack’s protest, she bought a laser pistol as well. She had been trained to use one; it was time to have one with her.
They sped through the shopping, and didn’t worry about prices. Or at least, she didn’t. Jack occasionally made a few faces. He also complained about the fact that she hadn’t negotiated the ship.
But she hadn’t wanted to negotiate. She was pleased with the ship, which according to the registration was
The ship was huge, just like everything else on Zaeen. She wouldn’t have thought it built for speed except that she saw the additions to the engines as she walked around the ship.
Jack walked with her, looking up as she looked down. She would have thought that he would like Zaeen, since it seemed to be the only space station in the universe that could accommodate a man as tall as he was. But he had hurried them through the stores, and then he had taken one store’s offer of transport to the port without a second thought.
He wanted to leave immediately, but she wasn’t going to let that happen without all of the safety checks she could think of. Since Jack didn’t have any real piloting skills, she handled the actual examination of the practical things like engineering and the navigational systems.
She gave him the task of examining the communications systems, the nonship-related computer systems, and she also asked him to make sure that no one had placed tracking devices on the ship.
He had gladly taken that job. Although as she walked around the engineering area and looked at the cargo space, she also looked for tracking devices.
In one of her bolt holes, she had left a device that located tracking devices. She hadn’t ever used it on a job, so she had decided it was too much baggage.
She wished she had it now.
It took three hours to examine the ship. When she returned to the cockpit, Jack was there, folded underneath one of the navigational desks, his body tilted so that he could reach upwards.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
Instead of sliding out, he extended his left hand. He turned it upward, and then opened his fingers. On his palm, she saw dozens of tiny chips.
“Trackers?” she asked.
“The obvious ones,” he said, and slid out.
“You mean there were some that weren’t obvious?” she asked.
“Most of them,” he said. “I neutralized them. I don’t suppose you found any.”
