Chapter 14
Raaze was pacing. Again.
Cait sat in the cockpit, reading through the security schematics for the stadium.
The plan was solid. Raaze would take the field as a wildcard, drawing attention with his undeniable skill.
Meanwhile, she’d slip into the box, present the evidence, and force a confession from these crooked assholes.
It was clean, efficient, and minimal risk…
At least on paper. But she knew every plan had the potential to fuc-fudge… fuck up.
Behind her, Raaze paced the small room like a caged predator.
“You should rest,” she said without looking up. “Big day tomorrow, remember?”
He didn’t reply, just kept up his pacing. Perhaps he was trying to wear himself out before sleep. She could think of far more pleasurable ways to do that.
His heart rate is elevated, Fred murmured to her.
She glanced up. She’d expected pre-match jitters, but Raaze’s expression was too tight for it just to be nerves. His jaw worked as if he were grinding his teeth.
She set down her data-slate. “Okay, what’s up with you?”
“I can’t let you walk into that box.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Tomorrow.” He stepped closer, and the cockpit felt smaller than it actually was. “The R’Tev box. I can’t let you go in there.”
“Can’t let me?”
“It’s too dangerous.” His voice was rough and urgent. “You’re human, and you’ll be surrounded by Latharians with absolutely no reason to let you walk out alive. You will get hurt, Cait. I can’t—” he stopped. Swallowed. “I can’t allow you to put yourself at risk like that.”
The anger started in her chest. A slow burn that expanded with every breath.
“You can’t allow me?”
“That’s not—” He stepped closer, towering over her. “I know these people. I know what they’re capable of.”
“So do I. I read the same files you did.” Heat rose in her cheeks. “Did you think I missed the part where they murdered people?”
“This isn’t a game, Cait.”
“No shit.” She surged to her feet, refusing to be intimidated by his size. “But it’s my choice.”
“Not anymore. You will not do this. I forbid it.”
“Forbid it? Excuse me? Does having sex with you come with a permission slip I didn’t see?” Her voice was sharp, but she didn’t care. “Do you think you magically get a say in what I can and cannot do now?”
“Yes.” Anger flashed in his eyes. “Yes, I draanthing well do.”
The words hit her like a slap.
“We’ve been intimate,” he said, his voice steady. Too steady. “Even though I didn’t expect to be. Even though I shouldn’t have. I picked you back on Parac’Norr because you were the easy target. The easy female to manipulate.”
The floor dropped out from under her.
She’d known. Of course she’d known. She’d assumed it because men who looked like him did not come onto women who looked like her. She’d told herself that from the beginning. Reminded herself every time he smiled at her, every time his hand lingered on her waist.
But knowing and hearing it were two different things.
She stood frozen in place.
Cait. Fred’s voice was distant in her ears. Tinny. Cait, your heart rate—
She’d told herself she was too smart to fall for it… that she saw right through him. She’d told herself the attraction was physical, convenient, controllable.
For fuck’s sake, she’d been so fucking stupid.
Raaze was still talking. Something about how things had changed, how he hadn’t expected to care, how she wasn’t just a means to an end anymore. She watched his mouth move and heard none of it.
Then she walked past him.
He reached for her arm. She stepped out of range without looking at him.
Her quarters were three steps down the corridor, and he followed her every one of them.
The data chip was in the pocket of her jacket, where she’d kept it since Ithaan’Dor.
She pulled it out and set it on the desk with a small click.
“Be off my ship in ten minutes.”
“Cait—”
“Ten. Minutes.” She turned and walked back to the cockpit, sat in her chair, and began the launch sequence.
Her hands were steady. They should have been shaking, because everything else inside her was shaking… a fine tremor that started in her chest and radiated outward until her whole body felt like it might fly apart. But not her hands. They were rock-solid.
Cait. Fred said, sharper now. Talk to me.
She couldn’t. Not yet. If she opened her mouth, she didn’t know what would come out.
The pre-flight checklist scrolled across her display. She worked through it methodically. Fuel pressure… Navigation systems… Life support. All the same steps she’d done a thousand times.
Raaze appeared in the cockpit doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.” She didn’t look at him. Her voice came out flat, emotionless, like someone else was speaking through her mouth. “I’m taking my ship and going home.”
“Cait, you can’t—”
“You have the data chip. Do what you like with it.” She pulled up the departure request and submitted it to station traffic control. “I’m done.”
She could feel him standing there… could feel his stare on the back of her head.
“The match is tomorrow.” His voice was strained. “I’m registered—”
Traffic control has approved our departure, Fred said. We are cleared for launch.
She turned back to the controls.
“Cait. Please.”
She didn’t answer, letting the silence stretch out.
He sighed and turned to go. She listened to the sound of his footsteps through the ship toward the airlock.
She didn’t watch him go, not even through the port-side cameras. Instead, she kept her eyes on the viewscreen as the airlock sealed shut, and then retracted the landing struts, dropping the H4-RPY out of the docking cradle and turning her onto their departure vector.
Course plotted for Rhenn Logistics home base, Fred said. ETA fourteen hours.
She nodded. The stadium’s orbital ring shrank in the rear display until it was just another point of brightness among the stars.
Then she put her head in her hands and absolutely didn’t cry.
The cockpit was quiet. Too quiet.
Cait slumped in the pilot’s seat, legs tucked under her. The H4-RPY hummed around her, engines steady, systems running normally. No red lights flashed on the overhead panel to demand her attention. There was nothing to patch with duct tape and swearing.
For the first time since she’d breached Parac’Norr’s atmosphere, the ship was peaceful.
She stared at the readouts. Her chest felt like a scooped-out hole. The air recycler hissed, pushing stale, cycled air over her face, and she blinked against the sudden dry sting in her eyes.
The crisis was over. She’d gotten off that hellhole prison planet and made her cargo runs, more or less on time. And she’d dumped the lying asshole alien who’d played her for a fool.
All in all, a job well done.
Even Kian’s downfall had already been handled. The heavily encrypted files detailing her brother’s sabotage were currently sitting in her solicitor’s inbox. A loaded gun waiting to be fired.
And absolutely none of it mattered.
God, what she’d give for a hydraulic failure right about now.
The stars outside the viewport were the same stars they’d been flying through for days, but they looked different now.
Flatter. Like someone had painted them on the glass instead of scattering them across the blackness of space.
Her hands rested on the armrests where they’d been resting since she’d finished the pre-flight checks, and she hadn’t moved them because there was nothing to move them for.
“Fuel margins holding at twelve percent,” Fred said, his voice gruff. The same tone he’d used since she was fourteen and sneaking him illegal processor upgrades. “Projected arrival at oh-nine-hundred station time.”
“Good.”
“Traffic density in Sector 41 is minimal. We will bypass the outer asteroid belts entirely and should have clear lanes all the way through.”
“Fine.”
“The hydraulic cylinder is holding pressure at ninety-nine point eight percent efficiency. The port-side strut is miraculously stable given the nature of the field repair.”
“Okay.”
She stared out the main viewport. The star streaks blurring past the reinforced glass looked wrong. Distant. Like she was watching the universe through two feet of dirty aquarium water.
Her reflection was a ghost in the viewport glass… hair pulled back, face pale, eyes that looked like someone else’s eyes looking back at her.
Insufficient.
Her father’s voice surfaced from the dark corners of her mind.
It was what he always said. No matter what she did, it was somehow never enough.
She’d once dragged a barely functional freighter across three hostile systems on nothing more than vapor and a prayer, dumped the manifest on his polished desk, and waited for a nod.
A sliver of respect that she was a Rhenn in more than just name.
Insufficient, Caitlyn. The margins are too thin. The risk was unnecessary.
She waited for the spike, the hot rush of anger that welded her jaw shut because she couldn’t trust her voice. The heat made her curl her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms. The one that caused the urge to yell, scream, and try harder to prove the old bastard wrong.
But there was nothing. No anger, no embarrassment, no drive to try harder. Just… nothing.
“Cait?”
“What?”
“Your solicitor has acknowledged receipt of the evidence packet. She’s requested a preliminary consultation upon your return.”
“Fine.”
“She also noted that the documentation is, and I quote, ‘the most thorough sabotage case file she’s seen in fifteen years of practice.’ Her words, not mine.”
“Good.”
“That was a compliment. Most people respond to compliments with something other than monosyllables.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re doing that thing where you pretend you’re fine because admitting you’re not fine would require acknowledging that something affected you, and acknowledging that something affected you would require dealing with it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”