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DEEDECK DESIGN
Chapter 8
Jax watched his own face turn pale and gaunt with fear, and snarled at his helplessness. He wanted to dive through the com, drag her to safety, and keep her there until hell froze over. It gutted him to know he couldn’t, but he hadn’t lost a client yet and he wasn’t going to start now.
“Besh, report! Now!” he snarled into a different com unit, a less secure, but more direct, expedient connection.
“S’okay, boss,” Besh answered hurriedly, his voice sounding a bit sheepish. “Just a juiced up nutter crashin’ into airlock. Damn near blew his ass to spacedust. Won’t be partying for a while, but only damaged that lock and his ship. Structure’s good, she’s still secure.”
“Get your ass back to her,” Jax commanded, severing the connection before Besh could answer. An unusually strong wave of relief made him want to sit down. Instead he turned to Moira’s unit and had another bad moment. She was gone from the screen, only the dim background of the little motel room visible.
“Moira!”
He heard his clone’s muffled voice say something that he couldn’t quite make out, though it sounded a little like a crude comment on his ancestry. A second wave of relief was liberally mixed with irritation.
“There’s no breach. A partier just crashed his rig into docking. Motel’s fine. You’re not suffocating.”
She raised his clone’s head back into view, and he winced to see his normally golden complexion so greenish white. “I don’t like tight little spaces with no air, Coltier,” she wheezed, glaring at him with terror lingering in those familiar eyes. “I’m leaving this death trap with or without the escort.” She put a hand to cheek in a very feminine gesture of distress, then seemed startled at the sensations she encountered in his flesh. Jerking the hand away with a quick, wary look as if the thing had grown new fingers, she resumed glowering at him.
Her feisty attitude—her fire as Nat described it—made him smother a grin and restored more of his equilibrium. She couldn’t be in real trouble if she was still ready to take a chunk out of his hide. “Calm down, Doc. We’ll have you out of there as soon as we can. Kreel will straighten the transfer out, and you’ll be back in your body before you know it.”
“I’m serious. I can’t take this place—”
“Take a deep breath, Moira. I’ve never had an anxiety attack and I don’t want to watch myself do it now. You’re safe there, I promise. Haven’t you been in worse places? Didn’t you intern at Kribok Alpha?”
She grimaced at him, but he saw that she’d followed his order to take a deep breath. “Kribok may have had minuscule living spaces, but the structure was sound. And I’m not having an anxiety attack.”
He settled a hip on his desk and smirked at her. “Could’a fooled me.”
“That’s because you’re an ass,” she snapped, then jumped and glanced over her shoulder with an almost guilty look. “Your men are back.”
“Good,” he responded, just as Nat swept regally through his door. Straightening, he gave Nat the wait signal. “Keep breathing and stay put. I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.” He terminated the connection to her with a disconcerting pang of reluctance.
Nat approached with eyebrows raised. “Keep breathing? Did she do something to your clone after all?”
“She had a scare,” Jax replied, realizing with an inner grimace that he’d had a scare, too. The idea of her in danger should not be freaking him out this badly. He was a professional, for the Void’s sake, and she was just a client. It hadn’t even been real danger, just a false damned alarm. Get a grip, Coltier.
He quickly outlined what had happened for her and then asked, “What’d you get from DeeDeck?”
She stared at him for a moment with a direct look that put his guard up, but she didn’t comment on the speculation he could see in her eyes. “The guy I wheedled says the good doctor was on her way to a system called Boreline, two habitable planets, six hostile planets, ten occupied moons, and a half dozen stations. They don’t have much on the disease itself. They’re waiting for Dr. Bannen to hit the hot zone and get them more info.”
“Why the secrecy?”
She shrugged. “He says it’s standard procedure. Keeping a low profile makes clean up easier.”
“Clean up?” Jax repeated sharply.
“His word for disease control and eradication. As far as he knew, it was just another routine scrub, nothing unusual about the locale or job. He didn’t act suspicious, just a little nervous and excited about spilling the goods.” She gave him a cynical smirk, folding her arms across her spectacular chest. “Quite the rule-breaking rebel.”
“I’m damn sure the excitement was all about you, Nattie,” he responded with a waggle of his eyebrows and a pointed glance at her cleavage.
She snorted. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Jackson. Where are we with the doctor?”
“She’s clean. We need more on the job and DeeDeck. Wanna try your guy again?” He sent her a lazy grin as he settled into his seat.
Nat gave him a narrow look. “I believe I’ll try official channels first. I’m sure it would amaze you how much you can get done that way.”
“And how much time you can waste doing it. Just start on that angle. I’ll work the transfer station.” Leaning forward, he activated the connections necessary to contact Kreel, the transfer consultant. Nat faded away like a shadow, silent and efficient. After a few moments, Kreel’s long face appeared on the com screen.
“Mr. Coltier, I’ve arrived at Beta 1. They say they’ll cooperate and will allow me access to Dr. Bannen’s TSU.” He paused, his expression carefully blank. “They required a bit of handling.”
Since he’d worked with the man before, Jax was able to translate—coercion and threat of pubic exposure had been necessary to gain the station’s cooperation. He gave Kreel a grim smile of approval. “Good. Work fast. I want to be there yesterday.”
Kreel gave a dignified nod of his dark blond head. “You’ll have my initial report in an hour.”
“Watch your back,” Jax concluded, ending the connection with an abrupt flick of his finger. He knew the man would work better without him breathing down his neck, but it was still unbelievably hard to just let him get on with his business.
Surging to his feet, he began pacing his office, maneuvering with the ease of long familiarity around the stark efficiency of his workspace and the contradictory lounging area with its slovenly comfort. He lived more in this office than he did in his home, a cloud-ensconced retreat that saw him only when business was slow—hardly ever these days.
Residual adrenaline still thrummed in his muscles, and he needed the movement to work it off. He’d thought that the killer had discovered her location against all odds and had made another ambitious play for her life. Causing catastrophic structural failure of a space borne edifice would have been a change in the killer’s M.O. More violent and less specific, but it could have been a desperation move after the failed first try.
What had Jax pacing the length of his split-personality office was his absolute inability to have stopped it. To do anything about it. He was not used to inactivity, to sitting back and dictating courses of action to his people. And worse—to watch terror come over Moira and be completely unable to help her. That had done something horrible to his insides, and he was still trying to recover from the ugly sensation. His reaction suggested a level of investment in the case and in his client that was causing him considerable alarm.
With this in mind, he concluded that it would be a huge mistake to transfer to Bode. Getting too personal about a case or client was a recipe for trouble, causing all kinds of problems and clouding his judgment. He needed to stay objective, to stay clear-headed and unbiased about the information he obtained and about the steps necessary to conclude the case. Getting too involved could get him dead, or worse, could get his client killed. Not to mention, getting involved with a woman like Moira was bound to be trouble—she was not a casual relationship kind of woman and he was not a commitment kind of guy. He needed to stay the hell away from her.
Unfortunately, he knew he’d be going to Bode anyway. He had to be there, not only to personally handle the unexpected turns in the case, but also to make sure that Moira was really safe. That was becoming more scarily important to him by the minute. He trusted Besh and Connie, but shit happened, and mistakes could be made by even the best people. Speaking of which…
Jax strode back to his desk and made a swift connection. Then he left Besh a message in a very clear, diamond hard voice. “Don’t leave her again.”
Then he sat in his chair and allowed himself a moment to brood over the way she’d looked after touching his clone’s face. Was he really so repulsive to her?
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