Thief (28 page)

Payton found herself alone with Kraft. “This would work better without the cuffs…”

“I have a feeling they’re not ever coming off.”

Payton examined her wrists. They were badly scraped from three days and nights in the cuffs. Payton’s questioning gaze kept darting to her face. “There’s not much I can do. I can wrap them in gauze. That should help.”

“I’d be grateful.”

“Just doing my job.” Her tone was colder than the Void.

“One you’d rather not.”

“The IWOG has never granted me any favors.” Payton worked meticulously.

“I’m not IWOG, Payton.”

“Jace said you were. I saw the warrant.” Payton wrapped her battered wrists and left.

Kraft sank to the bed. Jace, the man she loved, hated her. His crew, those she had grown to care for, hated her. Her own parents would gleefully turn her into the IWOG regardless of the bounty. Fairing was long in his grave. So too were the seven women of her crew. There wasn’t a soul in the Void who could or would help her. Not even Michael would if he knew.

She covered her face with her hands.

“Aw, is the big tough lady gonna cry?” Heller leaned against her doorway jeering at her.

“I will if I have to eat any more of the slop coming out of the kitchen. Did you make that abomination?” She nodded toward the strange, gaily colored mixture on the table.

Obviously disappointed when she didn’t burst into tears, Heller snarled, “You’re lucky we’re feeding you at all.”

“Well, lucky’s not what I’d call it. Torture’s what I’d call it.”

“There’s an idea.” Heller pulled a wicked dagger out of his hip holster, but he frowned when she laughed.

“Could you be any more pathetic? I’ll bet you’d take real pleasure in slapping babies and kicking puppies.”

“Nothing’s more pathetic than an IWOG fetch.”

“That’s true enough.” She sighed. “Are we done yet?”

“Done what?”

“Dancing.”

“You know,” Heller said, looking up and down the hallway. “Jace isn’t around.”

“Let me point out the obvious to you, Heller. Even if Captain Lawless was around? I don’t think he’d stop you.”

Heller took a step toward her and she stood, her body poised for defense. “Of course, I don’t need him to, chained up or not. If you’d pull your head out of your butt for half a second you’d remember a little interlude involving me, your hand and a lot of tears. Notably
not
mine.”

Heller yanked his hand to his chest as if to protect it. She could practically hear the rusty wheels grinding in his head. In the end, Heller decided to play it safe.

“I don’t know why, but Jace wants you alive.”

“I imagine cashing me in for 15Mil gives him quite an incentive.”

“Maybe he won’t sell you. As soon as he gives the word—
eerk
!” Heller swiped his blade in pantomime across his neck.

“Then I guess we’re all waiting on Captain Lawless to set the tune.”

Heller didn’t understand what she meant. He shook his head. “Maybe he’ll want to kill you himself.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t seem to care.”

“About dancing with you? You’re right, I don’t. You’re an annoyance, Heller. Captain Jace Lawless is the man I have to worry about dancing with.”

Kraft sat on her bed in the dark, repeating every recipe her grandfather and Parkhill taught her. As she thought of the recipes, she went through the motions in her mind, visualized herself preparing each dish just so. She became so focused she could almost smell the creations.

An impossibly sweet chord filled her room.

A green light glowed steady on the com next to the door—the only thing she couldn’t reach in the room.

From the tinny com speaker came a melancholy tune. Slow and sad, filled with a curious longing.

Bailey. Sitting watch on the bridge. He’d tapped her com so he could play for her. Bailey played stories without words long into the night. She didn’t know if he could hear her or not but she finally curled for sleep on the bare mattress and whispered, “Thank you.”

The whole crew, minus Jace, sat around the kitchen table, picking and poking at the oddly festive glop on their plates.

Whatever Charissa made for dinner terrified everyone. Not just for its garish color, but its lively stench.

Everyone took a bite, to be kind, then pushed the food around their plates.

“Remember that Rinderbraten Kraft made?” Bailey asked. “You could cut it with a breath it was so tender and juicy.”

“Kung Pao chicken.” Charissa nodded. She too pushed around the gaily colored goo. “I’ve never had anything so—”

“Sublime,” Payton said. She caught herself and nodded to Charissa. “But this is, well—” Payton looked down at her plate. “This is—”

“Horrible,” Garrett said. “I’m sorry, Charissa. I appreciate your effort and all, but I’m tired of beating around the bush. Three days of nothing to eat has made me more than a mite crotchety.”

Jace rolled his eyes. “This can’t be that bad.” He sat down, ate one bite, gagged it down and then shoved his plate away.

“Look everyone, I know it’s terrible,” Charissa said, “but you guys don’t know how to cook with Kraft’s stuff either.”

“And since we have Kraft on board, it seems logical to ask her to cook,” Garrett said.

“That whore is chained to a bed—just where she belongs,” Heller said.

“Kraft is a prisoner,” Jace said. “And she stays right where she is.”

“Indefinitely?” Bailey asked.

“That’s up to me.” Jace stood.

“Eventually we’re gonna have to do something,” Garrett said. “Rather, you have to do something, Jace. You gotta decide. Push comes to shove. You can’t leave everybody hanging by a thread. It’s cruel to leave Kraft twisting in the wind.”

“Julie, not Kraft,” Jace corrected. “You still have a notion she needs your protection?”

Garrett stood. “I saw the warrant, Jace. Clear as day her pretty face, but that was eight years ago. Kraft’s not once given us a wrong turn. That lady could have killed us all from the moment we stepped into that derelict Basic. Whatever Julie was, Kraft became. Despite her past, or maybe because of it, Kraft wouldn’t hurt a one of us.”

“Unless we hurt her first,” Bailey said.

Charissa and Payton nodded.

“Are you?” Bailey asked.

“What?” Jace asked, glaring down at his dinner.

“Going to hurt Kraft?”

“It’s on a need-to-know basis.” Jace picked up his fork and toyed with the glop on his plate.

“Let me guess, I don’t need to know?” Bailey asked.

Jace refused to answer and kept his attention on his plate.

“Hate to say it, Jace, but I’m getting the feeling even you don’t know what’s really going on,” Garrett said.

“I know enough.”

“Maybe we should interrogate her,” Heller said with obvious relish. “We could get all kinds of information with the right tools.”

Jace looked at Heller for a long time then marched away. Heller tried to follow him. “You stay here.”

Grumbling with disappointment, Heller threw himself back into his kitchen chair.

Chapter Twenty-four

As Jace approached her door, he could hear the chains rattling. He slapped the com and the door jerked open.

Kraft had slung the chain over her shoulder and was practicing some kind of martial art.

“Did you think I was trying to escape?” She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

He closed the door behind him.

The look on his face made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and goose flesh break out over her body. In the whole of her life, she had never been so afraid. She could take him by physical force, but her honor and love held her back. Hurting Jace would be worse than hurting herself.

“We need to chat. Sit down.”

She sat gingerly on the bare mattress.

Jace stood right in front of her, forcing her to crane her neck to look into his eyes.

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“I never lied—”

“We’ve had that conversation. Why did you join the IWOG?” He leaned over and practically screamed in her face. “You explain to me how someone like you could align herself with butchers.”

When she flinched back, Jace grabbed her shirt collar.

“Tell me how you could condone killing innocent people.”

“I didn’t—”

His fists tightened. “You were an IWOG assassin!” He realized she made no effort to fight back and let go.

“I didn’t know any better,” she offered softly.

“You didn’t know it was wrong to kill innocent people?”

“They recruited me when I was barely sixteen.” She drew a deep breath. “All I’d ever known was life on IWOG planet Banna. To me, it was normal to live in a rigidly controlled society where everyone spent at least four years in the military.” After a very long pause, she said, “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Jace snorted with derision. “You helped them bring fear and chaos.”

“I know that now. I didn’t know it then. Has no one ever tricked you? Taken advantage of your naiveté?”

“Besides you?”

She winced.

“Why? How? Tell me your life story, Julie, and don’t lie to me or I swear, I’ll kill you.”

“I’ll tell you. And you can kill me if you want, but when you do, I’d appreciate it if you called me Kraft.”

Jace refused to look at her.

“I grew up on Banna. My parents were high-ranking officers, so it seemed natural that I would follow in their footsteps. I thought our way was the only way. And I trained so well. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t learn. Flying, computers, martial arts. In five years they crafted me into an incredible weapon. Contrary to your opinion, I never went after an OuterWorlder.”

“Then who did you go after?” His face was drawn and haggard.

“My targets were high-ranking officers from the very organization that created me. I was a tool they used to keep their own people in line.”

“Assassins go after OuterWorld targets.”

“Some do. I didn’t. There’s a lot about the inner workings of the IWOG that even most IWOG officers don’t know.”

“Why would they kill their own people?”

“As Garrett would say, some of them just stressed their toe leather too much. They didn’t follow the code. That’s a very big no-no to the IWOG. The code is almost as sacred as the bottom line.”

“They would tell you who to kill and you would just go do it?” Jace asked.

Kraft nodded. “They’d brief me on the target and I’d shadow them until I found the perfect opportunity. My superiors liked that I could make it look like an accident or natural causes. I hate to say it, but I was very, very good at what I did.”

“Why did you run?” Some of his fury had lessened but he still couldn’t seem to look her in the face.

“Parkhill.”

“Is that a person or a place?”

“A person. A retired officer. When they briefed me, they said that Parkhill had outlived his usefulness, that he practiced a way of life that ran counter to the ideology of the IWOG. They didn’t give me specifics. I shadowed the man for three days. And what I saw…I couldn’t kill him.”

“Why?”

“Parkhill reminded me of my grandfather. He eschewed the Tasher and all forms of media, preferring instead to read banned books. But most of all, he cooked. My grandfather taught me how to cook. It was a dangerous game we played because my parents would have turned him in for teaching me.”

“You mean he cooked with raw ingredients, not the IWOG packaged food.”

Kraft nodded. “I was shadowed in Parkhill’s kitchen, watching him. When he finished making dinner, he set two plates at the table and asked me to join him. I don’t know how he knew I was there, but he didn’t seem concerned. It’s funny, in a way, but it’s a lot harder to kill someone after you’ve supped with them.”

She gave Jace a meaningful look. “Well, perhaps that only applies to cooks. Anyway, Parkhill was a wonderful cook. Far better than me or my grandfather. And while we ate he taught me his recipes and I taught him mine. When dinner was over, he wiped his hands, stood and said he was ready.”

“For what?”

“For me to kill him.” She paused, remembering exactly how small and harmless Parkhill had looked. “I couldn’t do it. It would have been like killing my grandfather. Killing myself.” She took a deep breath. “You see, I never got so close to a target before. I watched where they went and at what time. I didn’t really think about who they were or why the IWOG wanted them dead. Believe me, Captain Lawless, with most of them it wouldn’t have mattered. They were terrible people doing horrible things. But when I think back, I think in my zeal, my misguided youth, I may have killed men like Parkhill without even knowing it.”

“What did you do?”

“Put Parkhill in my IWOG fighter ship and flew him to Kali. There I sold the ship and went to the Den of Ishtar and wagered up the script. I gave most of it to Parkhill so he could live a good life while in hiding. While I was in the Den of Ishtar, I heard of Fairing, that the man was always looking for a good cook.” Kraft sighed. “You know the rest of the tale from there.”

Jace sat down heavily on the bed. He rubbed a hand against his exhausted face. “What happened to Parkhill?”

“I don’t know. When I gave him the money I told him to go into hiding. If the IWOG caught me, I didn’t want them to be able to extract the information, so it was best I didn’t know. Sometimes I think of him, hope he’s still alive, but I honestly don’t know.”

“And your parents?”

“Again I don’t know. I could find out, but honestly, I don’t really care. I know that sounds horrible, but you have to understand how they are. They’d turn me in without a second thought.”

“Your own parents?” His eyes went wide.

“They’d turn on me in a flash. Not for the money, but for the glory of doing the right thing. Turning in your own flesh and blood is considered one of the highest marks of honor to the IWOG. There’s even a medal for it.”

“So you went at life utterly alone.”

“For the last eight years I’ve lived by my own code. I’ve tried so hard to atone for what I did. Because if you think you hate me for it, you ought to try it from my shoes. Repeatedly, I put myself in danger hoping to die. I hated myself that much. But death would have been easy, a blessing, so I just wouldn’t die. It was more of a punishment to live. If there’s anything I could do to make up for what the IWOG did to you, I swear, I’d do it.”