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DEEDECK DESIGN
Chapter 14
Jax found them in an interior sleeping chamber, Moira straight-backed and alert as she leaned over a display, and Connie slumped against a wall with the glazed eyes of intense boredom. He would have found this scenario amusing if it wasn’t for the acid bite of lingering jealousy. She’d been so much more comfortable and easy with Connie than with him. And here they were, ensconced in an intimate sleeping unit together.
Logic told him nothing was going on. Connie was still calling her ma’am. Moira hadn’t lost the wariness in her eyes when she looked at Connie until after the airlock incident. But Jax also hadn’t missed Connie’s softening towards her, something he rarely did with clients. And Moira had touched him with a spontaneous ease that made Jax want to snarl.
Jackass. The insult did little to ease the twist of jealousy in his gut, but he managed to hide it behind a commanding calm as he caught Connie’s eye and jerked his head. The glaze disappeared from Connie’s eyes as he snapped straight and stepped out of the chamber. Moira didn’t even twitch.
Jax led him partway down the corridor. “How’s the doc?”
“Seems okay.” Connie was watching him with more care than usual.
Jax put his hands in his pockets with an inner grimace. Maybe he hadn’t hid his aggression as well as he’d thought. Leaning against the wall, he asked mildly, “Something on your mind?”
“More worried about what’s on yours, Colt.”
Jax lifted his eyebrows, surprised by his old Patrol nickname. Connie must be more worried than he looked, if he was waving their long-standing friendship like a white flag. “I’ve got lots on my mind, Con. Wanna narrow the subject?”
“The doc.”
“What about her?” Jax deliberately forced his muscles to relax and kept his expression pleasant with an effort.
“Plain to see you got a thing for her.”
“Plain to see you do, too,” Jax said with quiet menace.
Connie shifted his head back and forth in a slow shake, his eyes never leaving Jax. “Won’t deny she’s a pretty lady and she’s got a yard of guts, but she ain’t my thing. Too brainy and snappy. So how ‘bout you step off and stop makin’ alpha-dog faces at me?”
With a wry grin, Jax shifted against the wall. “That bad, huh?”
“Bad as I’ve seen. You never used to get so worked if somebody had the same eye on a bird.”
“Too many feathers on the fly,” Jax murmured the oft-repeated woman wrangling phrase from their younger years, studying his one-time partner in all things nefarious. Connie didn’t look much more relaxed than he had at the beginning of this conversation. “This one’s…different.”
“I see that,” Connie responded, but he didn’t look any happier. Less, actually.
“Hack up what’s choking you, Con.”
The big man rumbled like a bear with indigestion before he let out a deep sigh and said flatly, “She’s a client, Colt.”
“You worried about the payday or me keeping my head straight in the game?”
“Neither. Just think the lady’s going through enough.”
Jax tipped his head to one side, taking in the tightness around his friend’s eyes. “You think I’ll hurt her.”
Connie folded his arms across his chest and looked down at the floor. “Crossed my mind,” he muttered.
Jax said nothing, letting the silence grow as he studied his friend and employee with varying degrees of annoyance and amusement.
After a couple of minutes, Connie grimaced without looking up and said, “Yeah, okay. Ain’t my business.”
“Why do you care, Con? You usually keep a distance with clients. You sure she ain’t your thing?”
“Naw, I just like how she busts your balls,” Connie drawled, a lazy grin breaking across his face.
Jax chuckled, straightening away from the wall and moving back down the corridor. “Sick part is I like it, too. Heard from Besh or Kreel?”
“No, sir. What’s the word on the crew?”
“I grilled ‘em hard, but they didn’t have much for me. My gut says they didn’t have anything to do with the airlock. They’re fingering a station tech they remember hanging around, but no ID.”
“Than how do they know it was a tech?”
“Just the outfit and kit full of the right toys. Could’ve been an outsider for all they know. Couldn’t even say the sex for sure.”
Connie made a sound of deep disgust, and Jax grunted agreement as they entered Moira’s chamber. The place smelled like cinnamon and sugar. Jax felt his body tighten in response and ground his teeth, irritated by the uncontrolled reaction.
“Doc, you still with us?” he asked while thinking cold thoughts and doing his best to ignore her scent.
She looked over her shoulder at them with a faint smile, the inviting softness of her eyes reheating his thoughts in a hurry. The memory of her in his arms snuck up on him, the silky feel of her hair against his jaw, the sleek line of her back under his hands, the delicate, vibrant form pressed against him. Clenching his fists and inhaling slowly and deeply, he shoved the memory into a back corner of his mind with ruthless determination.
While he was trying not to think of touching her, Moira was saying, “Sorry, I get focused. Did you need me for something?”
Ignoring his body’s obvious answer, he said in an even tone, “I need you to catch me up on the job.”
Her smile faded as a crease formed between her brows. “I can give you access to—”
“Which I won’t understand without a translator. That’s you.”
She sighed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she glanced at her display.
“I can’t do my job if I don’t know what’s going on, Moira.”
When he said her name, she flashed him a look that was too fast to interpret before she turned back to the display with another sigh. “All right, pull up a chair.”
There was no other seat in the narrow confines of the chamber. The sleeping unit wasn’t made for parties. Instead of retrieving one from another chamber, Jax activated the bed with a faint smile of anticipation. He wasn’t disappointed.
Moira squeaked when the thing slid open next to her, and then turned narrowed eyes up to him. “That’s my bed.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said with as much provocation as he could, setting the pillow against the wall as a backrest and making himself comfortable. The bed was so close to her that if he shifted his knee a bit, he’d be pressing it against her side. “You don’t want to make Connie stand all this time, do you?”
She curled her upper lip and pointed a finger at him. “Blatant manipulation, Coltier. And cowardly, to use Connie as an excuse for your rude invasion of my personal space.”
He leaned forward abruptly until his face was a finger’s length away from hers. “I don’t need excuses,” he purred with a slow, predatory smile.
Her eyes widened and she eased away from him, lips thinning. “Terrific. Unapologetic rudeness. How did I get so lucky?” When he chuckled, she rolled her eyes and glanced over at Connie. “You may as well sit down, too. Let’s get this over with.”
“That’s the spirit, Doc,” Jax responded, sitting back with a grin.
She muttered something under her breath and pressed fingertips into her temples, closing her eyes for a moment. “To summarize,” she said stiffly. Opening her eyes, she touched the display and turned it so he could see the star system she’d called up. “Fourth planet of the Richter’s system, locally called Bante, had an outbreak of an unknown pathogen several weeks ago. General malaise followed by severe abdominal cramping and hemorrhagic diarrhea. Once the patients start to vomit blood, they have only hours before they bleed out and die. This thing has an eighty-five percent kill rate so far.”
Connie swore softly, and Jax felt a chill run down his spine, a sense of foreboding that made him want to take over the ship and get her as far away from the zone as he could.
Moira glanced between them with a grim twist of her mouth. “Do you see now why the DDEC needs to keep quiet about outbreaks like this? Panic is a mild word for what would happen if people heard of it.”
“You’ve seen this before,” Jax said in a low voice, studying the somber lines of her face.
“Not this exact disease and few this virulent,” she said in a tight voice as she turned to the display. “But yes, I’ve seen it. That’s my job, and the universe is a dangerous place, even on the microscopic level. At first Bante thought it was a protozoan, though such a dramatic death rate is unusual for protozoal microorganisms. Now they believe it’s a virus, but they’re having trouble pinning it down. It seems to have an incredible rate of mutation, and traditional antivirals are having no effect.”
“Which is where you come in.”
“Yes, but I need to see it, to watch it in action, and for some reason no one has been able to get me a visual.”
“Why not?” Jax asked with a twinge of suspicion.
She shrugged. “I don’t know for certain, but the disease is moving so fast and overtaking their quarantine measures. All their medical facilities and staff are overrun and overworked. It doesn’t matter—I’ll be there soon to see for myself.”
“Moving fast?”
She nodded, brow creasing as she touched the display. A series of stills appeared, showing patients in various stages of illness and treatment. “The malaise is the longest portion of the disease, fatigue, intermittent fever, and body aches lasting an average of three days. Once the abdominal cramping begins, without severe intervention the patient has about two days before the disease reaches end stage. The symptomatic patient can die in less than a week.”
Moira bent her head and rubbed the fingertips of one hand over her forehead, as if to wipe away the worried frown between her brows. “Complete resection and regrowth of the GI tract only slows the progression, because they can’t get rid of the virus. The disease just begins all over again with a host weakened by illness and surgery, so the progression is much faster.”
She lifted her head, misty eyes dark with heavy knowledge and a form of grief as she met Jax’s gaze. “Their quarantine procedures were too flimsy. They didn’t know how it was being passed, and with the swiftness of onset, they were overwhelmed. This thing has spread way beyond the original planet. Currently, there are only a handful of moons and a small outer planet still unaffected. I’ve been working with them on quarantine procedures, but it’s a wildfire out of control.” She paused, pressing her lips together and glancing at the graphic visuals still marching across her display. “With how bad this has gotten, the DDEC should have sent a whole team.”
He leaned forward, ignoring the dying patients in favor of her grim features. “Why didn’t they?”
“When we were first informed, it wasn’t this bad,” she answered, waving a slim hand at the display. “And I suppose the issue with the transfer system slowed everything down. They should be sending a team to back me up now.”
“Are they?”
She gave him wry look. “I don’t know. They’re avoiding my calls. Might have something to do with your ham-fisted handling of my superiors.”
“I detect a note of criticism,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“And here I thought I was being so subtle. No wonder you’re such a highly respected investigator.” She blinked wide-eyed at him while Connie choked on a laugh.
Jax gave her a slow, hungry smile.
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