Bianca D'Arc (2 page)

“That tells me about the civs. What about
them?” He jerked his chin toward the other vets farther down the
bar.

She looked at the small group of big men and
smiled back at him. “I would think you could tell me more about
them than I could tell you.”

He liked the teasing challenge in her voice
and expression. He was being cautious until he had a chance to
check her story out through back channels, but if she was legit—and
he was leaning toward believing she probably was—then these next
few weeks filling in for Alex might be a lot more interesting than
even he had expected.

He decided to play her game, looking more
closely at the group of men holding up the bar a few yards away. He
could tell just by looking that more than a few of them were
operatives he’d been sent here to handle in Alex’s absence. And
there was one guy, a pilot named Julian, that he’d been asked to
keep a special eye on. They’d worked together before but Chip
wouldn’t reveal that little fact to anyone. He decided to stick
with non-operatives for this game of hers, and only note the more
obvious things.

“The guy in blue is a new retiree. Probably
just got out of the service in the last week or so. Am I right?” He
was almost sure she’d have some knowledge of her clientele,
especially since she seemed to like to work the bar herself. He
already knew she was the talkative type.

“Gary? Yeah, he got out last week and decided
to take a little tour around the Rim. This is his first stop. How
did you know?” She seemed both impressed and intrigued.

“The cut, quality and condition of his
clothes. Plus the length of his hair. It hasn’t had time to grow
out yet.”

“Maybe he just likes to keep it military
short after so many years in service,” she challenged.

“Nah. The gold earring marks him as someone
who’d have longer hair if he could. Looks like he’s trying to fit
in with civs, though his size alone will make that impossible. No
doubt the earring is new, just like his clothes. They don’t usually
allow us to decorate our bodies with precious metals while in
service.”

“I didn’t know that.” She looked him over,
noting the length of his hair, longer than military regs, but still
neat, and his clothes, which were well worn and comfortable, though
still cut in a quasi-military style. He liked the way she looked at
him, as if she liked what she was seeing.

“I bet there’s a lot you don’t know about the
warrior class. Your husband was a civ, wasn’t he?”

She gasped and her eyes widened the tiniest
bit. He’d managed to surprise her and that made him smile with
satisfaction. He didn’t think this woman was often surprised.

“How did you know I was married?” She asked
the obvious question, but then glanced down at her left hand where
she still wore her marriage band. She blushed. “Okay, I’ll give you
that one. But how did you know he was civilian and why did you use
the past tense? For all you know, he could be in the back
room.”

“Oh, honey, you made this way too easy.
First, you don’t know much about soldiers. You’re not afraid of us,
which counts against my guess, but you don’t seem to have an easy
familiarity with our kind either, so I’m going to have to stick
with the idea that you never really interacted with any of us
before two weeks ago when you took over the bar. In that case, your
husband couldn’t have been a soldier. And if he was still around,
he wouldn’t let you out here by yourself to be ogled by all these
men. Not if he had half a brain in his head. You still wear his
ring, so my guess is, he died. Probably a long time ago because
your smile comes easily and your eyes get just the tiniest bit
wistful when you gaze at that ring. You loved him and he died. Not
recently enough for you to still be in deep mourning, but not long
enough ago for you to have forgotten him. Possibly you never will
forget him.” Chip’s voice softened as he spoke. “He was a lucky man
to have a woman as loyal to his memory as you have been.”

She gaped at him. “How could you know…?” Her
voice trailed off as her eyes grew misty with emotion. She
swallowed a few times and smiled a little to try to hide her deep,
emotional reaction. “And I’m supposed to be the fortune
teller.”

“Don’t sweat it, Miss Lila. I’m a trained
observer of human nature.”

“What did you do in the service?” she asked,
suspicion in her tone, her smile friendly and curious.

“Oh, I didn’t learn this in the military,” he
lied with a straight face. “I’ve been managing clubs all over the
galaxy since I got out. You run a bar long enough, you get to know
people’s stories. You can tell who’s going to cause trouble and
who’s there to drown their sorrows. Who’s dangerous and who is just
out for a good time. If you don’t learn how to read people, you
don’t last long in this business.”

“So that’s why Alex asked you to fill in for
him? You’re a professional tavern manager?”

“Something like that,” he agreed easily. He
wasn’t about to say he’d been assigned here by their superiors in
the intelligence service.

He and Alex might be retired on paper, but
they were still both very much in the game. They just weren’t
active participants on ops anymore. Now, as older men who’d
survived active duty in the most secret game of all, they were
running the younger operatives. They lived relatively normal lives
but when the active duty guys needed to pass on information or get
instruction or materials, they were the go-betweens that got the
data where it needed to go.

“I hate to ask you at this late date, but
before I turn over the bar to you, I think it’s only right that I
get the proper unlock codes from you. My predecessor was all too
willing to give them to anyone who showed an interest, but it
wouldn’t be right for me to be as cavalier as he was.”

“Quite right,” Chip lifted to remove a data
wand from one of his pants pockets. He handed it over with a
flourish. “The unlock codes for the bar and attached private
residence are on there. Where have you been living, if I might ask?
I wouldn’t want to kick you out. I can always find accommodation on
the station if you’re in Alex’s place behind the bar.”

“Oh, no,” she was quick to answer even as she
scanned the data wand through the reader behind the counter. “I’m
bunking down in Della’s quarters. I had her codes, and she has
mine. We’ve always made sure we could access each others’ places.
It’s good to have one person you trust that can help you out in a
pinch.”

“Good policy,” Chip replied noncommittally.
In his business, there were damn few people he could trust with
that kind of information.

She handed the data wand back to him. “Your
codes check out. I’m happy to turn over
The Rabbit Hole
to
your care.” She smiled at him and he felt like he’d won a treasured
prize. He liked her smile and the way it reached all the way into
her eyes. It was a genuine look that spoke of happiness and shared
pleasure.

And wouldn’t he like to share pleasure with
this soft piece of feminine fluff? Whoo boy, he could live on
dreams of making love to her. But she was still attached to the
memory of her dead, civilian husband. She was too fragile for the
likes of Chip Quartain. He’d have to throttle it back. They could
work together – if she wanted to stay on now that he had arrived to
take possession of the club—but he wouldn’t let his marked interest
go any farther. His conscience wouldn’t let him. She was too good
for him, or any other soldier for that matter.

No, she needed a softer, gentler man. Another
civilian. That was if—and it was a big if—she would let another man
into her heart, or her bed. For all he knew, she was still hung up
on her dead husband. He wouldn’t be surprised. A woman like her
loved with her whole heart and when she gave it, she gave it for
keeps.

“You have any plans for the next few weeks?”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to say it. After he’d just gotten through
telling himself she wasn’t for him, here he was inviting her to
stay.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” she replied with a
cautious smile. “Why?”

“I could use some help with the bar. I could
pay you. It wouldn’t be much, but it’d be a fair wage. As a matter
of fact, I hope you’ve been taking a wage the past two weeks.”

“Free food,” she shrugged. “Non-alcoholic
drinks.”

“You don’t drink alcohol?”

“Occasionally. But it’s no fun to drink
alone,” she said with surprising candor. Lila looked away as if
embarrassed by what she’d divulged.

Chip wanted to say he’d be her drinking
partner. Hell, he’d be her partner in anything she had in mind.
He’d show her what it meant to have fun.

But he couldn’t.

“I’d like to stay on,” she went on when he
didn’t speak right away. “For a couple of weeks. The place has sort
of grown on me.” She wiped down the counter unnecessarily. “It’s
fun.”

“Good.” Chip finished his ale and stood.
“Then why don’t we start with a tour. Can you show me around the
place?”

They spent the next half hour going over the
obvious parts of the bar and the behind the scenes stuff as well.
Chip was impressed by the way she kept the books. It was clear Lila
had a head for figures and wasn’t afraid of a little hard
work—whether it was the physical work of tending bar or the mental
work required behind the scenes.

Chip noted the way the veterans at the bar
treated her. They showed her respect, but also a sort of friendship
he hadn’t expected. For some reason, they’d accepted her as one of
their own. A member of a loose brotherhood formed by those who had
seen the harsher side of life. That didn’t happen easily or often
with civilians. Somehow, she’d earned their regard in the short
time she’d been in charge of the bar.

They were in the small office adjacent to the
bar area when Lila surprised him by closing the door, sealing the
two of them inside the windowless space, all alone. She held one
finger to her lips in the universal sign to keep quiet. Chip
waited, one eyebrow raised at her actions.

She walked around the desk and touched a
pressure plate she should not have known was there. Chip knew about
it, but that was only because he’d been briefed on the design of
the bar and the secret hidey-holes positioned all around the
station for his use, now that he was the temporary manager of
Alex’s network of spies.

He watched her fingers fly over the small
datapad that slid out of hiding when she’d touched the pressure
plate in just the right way. His internal electronics—well hidden
and top secret—noted when she switched on the privacy shield. She
entered a few other commands and the wall that adjoined the club
came to life.

“They can’t see us,” she explained
unnecessarily. He was very familiar with surveillance tech of all
kinds. “This is a projected image, not a true window. There are a
bunch of little audio and video pickups all over this place for
some reason.” One of her eyebrows rose in challenge when she looked
up at him, her hands stilling on the datapad.

He didn’t comment, merely waited, wondering
why she’d just revealed her knowledge of something she probably
shouldn’t have noticed in only two weeks running the bar. Most
civilians wouldn’t know how to operate such devices. Even most vets
wouldn’t have noticed the hidden cameras. They were designed not to
be seen, even by experts.

“Della left me instructions. In code. In her
quarters. Don’t worry. I didn’t figure all this out on my own.”

“Why are you betraying your knowledge to
me?”

She paused, meeting his gaze for a moment
that stretched. “You’re Charlemagne. King of Clubs. I saw your
arrival in the cards and in here.” She touched her forehead in the
third eye position he’d read about but wasn’t quite sure really
existed.

“I know you don’t believe me yet. But you
will.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “The reason I showed
you in here is because in the two weeks I’ve been tending bar, I’ve
noticed something very disturbing. My gift tells me you’re the one
to deal with the danger.”

“Danger? To whom? Or what?” His interest
piqued and he was suddenly all business. He didn’t understand the
esoteric stuff, but give him a military problem—any military
problem—and he was in his element.

“Danger to all of us. The whole station.” She
moved out from behind the desk toward the image of the bar’s
interior being displayed on the wall. “I’ve heard things over the
past two weeks. See this table here?” She pointed to a group of
mech workers who were sitting quietly, talking.

Chip stood and touched a control on the
datapad, zooming in on the table. He made a note of the four men
sitting at the table, committing their faces and name tags to his
Enhanced memory.

“What bothers you about these four?”

“The things they say. The things they think,”
she admitted softly.

“Think?” That set him back. It was one thing
for her to claim to be clairvoyant. It was quite another to imply
she could read minds.

“It’s a rare thing and it doesn’t happen
often, but those men…” Her gaze drifted to the display and the men
clearly seen by the bar’s hidden cameras. “That one in particular.
Beezus is his name.” She shivered. “He broadcasts so loud at times.
I can’t help but pick up a flavor of what he’s thinking.”

“You’re saying you can read minds.” Chip knew
skepticism was clear in his tone, but he couldn’t help himself.

“No. I’m not saying that. Normally I can’t
pick up anything from anyone. Only my close family. People I’ve
known for a long time. I suppose it’s a combination of reading
their expressions and body language, but every once in a while,
I’ll get words and images too. It’s a side effect of my primary
talent, or so my mother told me when this ability first
manifested.”