Runner: The Fringe, Book 3 (23 page)

“What?”

“You’re slipping. You didn’t say pardon.” He grinned. “I wanna get back to the source. You know, that part of you that made your panties smell so fucking good.”

Simultaneously, her jaw dropped and her eyes went round, not only at what he said but how her body reacted. He was trying to humiliate her, or frighten her, yet instead his rumbling voice, penetrating gaze and pointed words excited her.

“You’re insane if you think I want anything to do with you now.” Trembling hands tightened the belt around her waist. Underneath the flannel, she wore only a battered T-shirt.

“What’s a matter? Wasn’t it fun before? I didn’t hurt you then, and I wouldn’t hurt you now. I’m a fairly benevolent master, right, my lovely servant? In fact, if I were a betting man, and I am, I’ll bet you’re wet.”

Heaven help her, she was. Very. For all the wrong reasons. Fear and shock, but still, below it all, she flat-out wanted him. And he knew it. Desperately seeking a clever and distancing rejoinder, she found herself rendered speechless.

“Maybe I should come in and see for myself.”

She shook her head and backed farther away.

“How about a deal. You let me check and see, or rather feel,” he said with a wink, “and I let you have your bra. Sound like a fair trade?”

In a rush, she understood. He knew she wanted her bra. That meant he had already removed what she wanted from it. He was only playing the sex game with her to torment her and extract information.

“Keep it with my compliments.”

“Yeah. Kinda figured you’d say that. ’Cause you don’t want this.” He tossed the bra to her feet then plucked two small metal cylinders from his back pocket and held them up. “You want these.”

Chapter Twenty-One

After making a few other hasty arrangements, Foster had been working off his nervous energy by cleaning up the bridge. He found his jeans, his silk boxers, his blue T-shirt, Jynx’s bra and panties. They’d been abandoned for four days. When he bent over to retrieve them, her scent enveloped him, making him remember the feeling of her in the dark as music rolled around them. The alluring scent made him so instantly hard, he had to stand or injure himself.

From where he stood, he smelled the worn leather of his chair and felt the hide molded to his body. That chair was as familiar as his own hand. To, for only once, ever, in his whole life, take a woman from that seat of power filled him with a masterful rush.

“Ride me.”

His eyes rolled back as he thought about that moment. How many times had he sat in that chair, on his bridge, and pleasured himself, thinking of what it would be like to have a woman on his lap?

“Lovely IWOG lady.”

To have it be Jynx, to have her be so excited and eager, was just icing on the cake. “Jynx Brennan.” He’d hated that name, then loved it; now it swung to a painful regret. He could have refused the contract, but greed made him ignore that little voice in his heart. Longing and lust further blunted the niggling doubt that said something was wrong. Jynx Brennan was not what Roberts said, wasn’t what anyone said. Jynx was herself. Not perfect, not good or bad, but honest and direct, passionate and proud. If Foster took nothing else away from her, he would always remember her pride. She acknowledged her foibles and mistakes but still kept her dignity.

He looked down at the scrap of lace and tossed the panties in with the rest of the laundry. Her bra looked a bit torn on the cups where he’d forced the edge low with his teeth and chin.

“Crap.” He dumped himself in his chair. “Aw, Jynx, I’m going to hurt you so badly and I don’t want to but you just don’t know how to lie. If I can see right through you, so can Roberts.”

Foster had enough to worry about trying to keep his true intentions from Roberts. No way could Jynx. Foster was a master at putting on a nasty face and spewing cutting words that denigrated his target. He didn’t get his reputation by accident.

“Gonna have to pull off the biggest act ever to win this.”

Clenching his fist, he stopped when he felt something stab at his hand. He examined Jynx’s bra. The sides seemed too thick and rigid. Shit. He’d cut out the underwires but hadn’t even bothered to check the sides.

“Hell, doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t know what to do with them if she had them.”

Scooting forward, he plucked his knife from his belt and cut a nick into the side of the bra. He extracted a slim, flattened, finely fashioned metal cylinder.

“What the hell?” He checked the other side and found another one. They didn’t look like any underwire he’d ever seen.

Ordering the bridge to full light, he held one of the small metal tubes up and discovered a tiny latch at the top. “With what inside?”

He set both items on the main console, then linked to the Tasher and channeled until he found out they were expensive and rare containers that wouldn’t set off most scanners. They would have set off his if he’d bothered to scan her body with more than his hands or his gaze.

Carefully, he held them up to his ear and rattled them. One of them sounded like it had liquid in it and the other had two or three loose items within. Looking at the channel info, he found out how to open them and almost did until he remembered that Jynx had worked on the Tyaa plague.

“Shit.” He set the little metal cylinders on the main console and backed away. Composing himself, he realized even if she carried something deadly, it wouldn’t open by accident. “Not if she wore them around in her bra.” Sudden or even violent movement wouldn’t open them. They had to be deliberately opened.

“But what the hell is in there?” He shook his head. “Has she really been playing me? Getting cozy so I keep her alive long enough for her to get me and Roberts in the same room and then she lets us both have it? A big old dose of the plague? I deliver her to Roberts, who kills her, but ha ha ha, we’re gonna die too?”

Shaking his head, Foster couldn’t even imagine Jynx doing that. Not in a million years. She’d been horrified she’d hurt him while trying to read his mind, and clearly ashamed that her anger got the better of her. He couldn’t blame her for trying. He’d been a right bastard, egging her on and practically daring her to. In an effort to protect herself and her child, she fought back with the last power she had. What she’d done scared the crap out of him
and
her.

He had to find out what was in those things. Putting them in his back pocket, he left the bridge, carrying her underclothes.

“Gonna get the truth from you one way or another. Know just how to do it, too.”

Jynx reached for the cylinders, and he grabbed her wrist. He tugged her to the bars with a slow, persistent strength.

“Let go.” She tried to free herself, but his fist wrapped around her wrist like iron.

Shoving the cylinders into his pocket, he lifted his hand to capture her face. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes.” Her answer came automatic and honest.

“Smart. You should be.” Cupping her chin, he lowered his hand until it rested against her throat.

He had to feel the pounding of her pulse in his palm as it pressed right against her jugular vein.

“Fear excites you, doesn’t it?” he asked.

Beads of sweat popped up on her upper lip, and she wanted to lift her hand to wipe them away. But if she moved…

Foster lowered his face and brushed his mouth to her lips, licking away her sweat. Lifting his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “I can taste your fear, Sweets, along with your need.”

Frozen, she didn’t know what to say or do as her mind and body warred between lust and loathing.

“Tell me what’s in those two containers, or I’m gonna fill you so full of fear, you’ll pass out. Got it?”

Realizing they had bars between them, she tried to pull free, but his hand on her wrist tightened along with his hand on her throat. Just a bit. Just enough to remind her the pressure could get much worse.

“Foster, please, stop. I’ll tell you the truth, just don’t hurt me.”

“Maybe I should hurt you. Make sure you tell me the truth.”

“I’ve never lied to you, and I’m not going to start now.”

“Yeah?” Rubbing his lips to hers, he licked her mouth and asked, “Are you wet?”

“Yes.” Shocked by her honest admission, she hung her face and looked away.

“Don’t play with me, ’cause you’re gonna lose. I’ll come in there and see for myself.”

“What do you expect me to say, no? And then you come in here find out I am and feel vindicated? What is it you want, Mr. Nash? Just tell me and be done with it.”

He let her go suddenly, and she stumbled back.

“What’s in these things?” He held up the two slim metal cylinders well out of her reach.

“Inoculate. The other has two micros, the directions for how to make the inoculate and how to deliver it. There’s also a pill.”

“What’s the pill?”

“A suicide pill. I had planned to use it on myself, but obviously I won’t do that now.” She touched her belly, then looked away, ashamed she’d actually considered using it to thwart Roberts. Now that she had a child, an innocent, Jynx couldn’t even contemplate such an act.

“How did you know you were gonna need this?”

“Something just never felt quite right to me. The closer we came to the answer, the more that feeling gnawed at me. I wanted insurance, a backup, something.” The twin tubes seemed terribly small in Foster’s hand. “I need to get the rest to someone who will fight off what Roberts is planning. I think I’m wasting my time asking you, but grant me a dying wish and take that to possibly the only person who could launch a successful campaign against the IWOG military.”

“Who?”

“Michael ‘Overlord’ Parker.”

“What makes you think he gives a shit about the whole of humanity?”

“I don’t. But I’ll bet he cares a great deal about himself and keeping his empire intact. If nothing else, he’ll save his planet.” Grimly, she admitted, “I can’t save everybody, but at least I can save some.” Jynx looked up and caught his gaze. “Somehow, saving the man the IWOG despises almost as much as me seems entirely apropos.”

Determined to keep his focus, Foster struggled to comprehend why Jynx had told him the truth. Hell, she told him why. Since she couldn’t save everybody, she tried to save as many people as she could.

“What a martyr you are.” Even knowing she was for real, he still pushed just a bit more.

“Why? Because I don’t want everybody to die?” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Trust is for suckers, right? Why should you trust me? Why should Michael? For all you know, I could be handing you purified virus, not inoculate. Maybe I am what Roberts has said all along. A sick, destructive mental defective who wants to kill everyone because…oops. See. There’s the problem.
Why
, Mr. Nash? Roberts hasn’t actually come up with a plausible reason for my insanity, right? Why do I want to kill everyone, including myself? Oh, wait, I don’t need a reason. I’m insane. Pretending for sixteen years to care about people so I can actually kill them all. After healing their cuts and broken bones, their battered bodies, bringing their children into the world. I did all of that only so I could obliterate them later.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had this?”

“Are you playing the part of the hurt lover now?” Jynx threw her hands in the air and laughed. “Honestly, Mr. Nash, I didn’t tell you right away because I was a bit intimidated to tell you about my plan to save the universe when you were convinced I wanted to do the opposite and destroy it. Admit it. When you first took me prisoner, you believed Roberts, that I created the Tyaa plague. I can’t even imagine what your face would have looked liked if I told you the truth that my goal, my
raison d’etre
, was to save trillions upon trillions of sentient beings
from
it. I didn’t want you to think I was suffering from delusions of grandeur. Frankly, I know for a fact I am. I’m fooling myself. I’ll be lucky if I can help you walk away from this, let alone anyone else.”

He couldn’t believe she still wanted to help him even after all the hateful things he’d said.

“If you wanted to save everyone, why the suicide pill? Too afraid to save yourself?” Foster probed a tender spot because he wanted to know why she would kill herself. What did she think her death would accomplish?

“I didn’t want to suffer at Roberts’s hands.” Her voice grew cold and cutting. “Once delivered, my work safely in someone’s hands, I would have killed myself rather than let Roberts have one sick taste of pleasure from killing me as a public spectacle.”

All along she could have killed herself or slipped the pill to him. It scared the crap out of him that she’d had a deadly weapon tucked into her bra the entire time.

“I’m going to die in a very nasty, bloody and public way. Roberts is going to execute me with the media watching. I was hoping to avoid that.”

“You would kill yourself to avoid the indignity of a public execution?” His survival instinct would force him to fight to the bitter end.

“Not much, I know. But something. Denying Roberts that sick pleasure. Only thing I could think of, since I’d never live to see whether I succeeded in saving anyone. But now…” Jynx didn’t touch her belly. She didn’t have to. Foster knew she thought of the child waiting there. Growing there. Trusting her to protect it. And she would. Or die trying. Jynx wouldn’t kill herself now.

Foster actually lifted his hand to his key ring, plucked out the key to her cell with a knowing finger. Darkness fell around him like a black blanket tossed over his head. Startling back, he yanked his gun from his hip, flicked off the safety and kept it pointed to the floor as he waited, breathing deep in the dark.

From the right, he heard Jynx say, “It’s just the ship giving me nighttime, remember? Sixteen/eight split. Annoying, isn’t it? Good luck finding your way to the door. It’s by the red light over there. Try not to shoot yourself in the foot on your way out.” Her voice held no malice, only a weary resignation and a bit of mocking that he’d forgotten the rhythm of his own ship.

He heard her moving in the dark off to his right.

After she brushed her teeth, covers ruffled as she climbed into bed. “Are you going to stand there all night?”