Warrior (26 page)

What's wrong?
she commed to him, alarmed.
Have you picked up something?

What?
He shot her a look.
No, nothing like that. Just making sure I'm ready if a threat does materialize.

Dona heaved a sigh of relief.
Good.
She turned to scan the approaching corridor junction.

Ivar struck in a merciless blur. One huge fist slammed into the side of her head, detonating an explosion of light and pain. Dona went flying, slamming headfirst into the wall in another burst of agonized stars. She hit the floor with a thud she barely felt.

His armored boots rang on the deck as he walked toward her.
Get up get up get up!
Tears of shock and pain stinging her eyes, Dona fought desperately to scramble away.

Ivar fisted one hand in her collar, grabbed her weapons belt with the other, picked her up, spun around, and rammed her headfirst into the opposite wall.

Everything went black.

Jess stood frozen
in shock as Ivar dumped the body of his lover on the floor. Suddenly all too much was all too horribly clear. “It was you,” she blurted. “You're the spy!
You
hacked the Outpost and the combot.”

He bared his teeth at her in a wild, chilling grin and flexed his massive hands. “Oh, yeah. I've been working for the Xerans for years.”

“You
bastard
, you got those Enforcers killed!” Her lips peeled back from her teeth as pure and bracing rage punctured her paralysis. Her hands curled into fists.
“You sold out Galar!”

“And I'm going to kill
you
.” He lunged for her.

Jess tried to duck away, but he was just too damned fast for her. He swatted her like a mosquito, sending her spinning to the floor, stunned. Blood rolled hot from her nose, her mouth. Her jaw went numb.

“Galar!” She screamed it, roared the name in her mind, a desperate, terrified howl.

“Sorry, sweetheart, he can't save you.” Ivar drew back a huge booted foot. “You're dead.”

14

Jess watched that enormous boot swinging at her
head, and knew it would shatter her skull. She threw herself into a roll and flung up her hand, focusing her fury, her desperation.

The blast knocked Ivar stumbling backward to fall flat on his back.

She rolled to her feet and scrambled away. Her head swam.

“Bitch!” He reeled upright, blood covering his handsome face.
Good.
“You're going to pay for that!”

He took a menacing step toward her. . . .

Dona grabbed his legs, wrapping herself desperately around his ankles. He went down again with a howl of fury. “Run!” the woman yelled, scrambling astride him to aim a furious punch at his face. “Get to safety!”

Safety. Was
anywhere
on the Outpost safe? What she needed was that damned painting. . . .

The flare of hot white light filled her eyes with a thunderous crack.
Oh, shit,
Jessica thought, realization dawning.
What did I just . . .

Galar!
The raw
terror in the mental scream froze Galar in his tracks.

Then he whirled and started to run, racing down the corridor back toward the brig.

It had been Jessica's voice in his mind. Jessica, who didn't have a com implant, yet had just touched his thoughts with that mental howl.

Galar didn't even bother thinking that telepathy just wasn't possible. He'd already realized that terms like “impossible” did not apply to Jessica Kelly. Assuming she was still alive, since it sounded like somebody was trying to kill her. Again.

He rounded a corner to find two uniformed figures writhing on the floor, fists and feet swinging as they fought in the middle of the corridor.

Ivar and Dona? What the hell—? And where was Jess?

“Galar!” Dona yelled, her voice choked. “Ivar's the spy!”

“No, it's Dona!” Ivar's fist cracked into her face with such violence, her head banged against the floor with a thud that echoed down the hall. The female Enforcer went limp under her partner's big body. “She just tried to kill the primitive!”

Ivar rolled off her, panting. Galar's sensors told him she'd been knocked cold by that last double impact of fist and floor.

“Where's Jess?” he snapped.

Ivar shrugged his massive shoulders. “Ran off, I guess.”

Galar threw himself into a vicious spinning kick that slammed into Ivar's jaw. The redhead went down like a felled ox. Before he could recover, Galar dragged him off the floor by his collar, drawing back a fist.

“Fuck.” The big man spat blood, staring at him, dazed. “How'd you know it was me?”

“I didn't.” Galar slammed his fist into his face again. “But I do now.”

“How
did
you
know?” Dona asked as they waited for the medtechs.

Galar shrugged, shaking his stinging hands as he sat astride the big man's unconscious body. He'd just worked out quite a bit of frustration on Ivar's rock-hard head. “I figured one or the other of you was the spy. Since you were already unconscious, I decided to knock Ivar out and sort out who was what later.”

“Ruthless of you,” she grunted, probing her swollen face delicately. “But effective.”

He pulled a set of force cables from his belt and started tying Ivar's thick wrists together. “Did you see where Jess went?”

“I think—maybe she Jumped.” The female Enforcer frowned, looking uneasy.

“What?” Galar stared at her. “Where'd she get the T-suit?”

“She didn't have one.” Dona shrugged. “Last I remember, Ivar was about to hit her. I tripped him and screamed at her to run. There was a flash and a sonic boom, and she was gone.”

“That's . . .” He closed his teeth over the word “impossible. ” “Never mind, we're talking about Jess. Apparently anything's possible where she's concerned.”

The question was, where the hell had she gone?

Jess's legs buckled
as she materialized, and she collapsed, knees hitting the thinly carpeted floor with a tear-inducing crack.

“Jesus H. Christ!” a female voice yelped, but Jess was otherwise occupied with the violent nausea and thundering headache that were currently vying for domination. Squeezing her eyes shut, she concentrated on breathing.

“Jess?” Ruby's voice quavered with both stark terror and dawning hope.

Swallowing hard to contain her rebelling stomach, Jess opened her eyes.

Her sister was staring at her across the width of the single-wide trailer, half-cowering against the scarred, woodpaneled wall. Ruby was pale as skim milk, her red-rimmed eyes wide, her bloodless mouth pulled into an O of shock. Her painfully thin body trembled. For once, Jess didn't think it was withdrawal.

“I'm not a ghost,” Jess rasped. “If that's what you're worrying about.”

“Where . . . ?” Ruby stuttered. “How . . . ? There was lightning. In my house!”

Oh, yeah. It wasn't just the ghost thing. Ruby had just gotten her first up-close-and-personal taste of a temporal Jump. Between the sonic boom and the light show, it was a wonder she hadn't run screaming from the trailer.

This was going to be a bitch to explain.

Jess cleared her throat. “Sorry about that.”

Ruby took a cautious step closer, her muscles coiled, as if ready to bolt. “Jess, the cops said . . . they said you were dead.”

“They were wrong.” Deciding her stomach was going to stay put after all, Jess rose wearily to her feet.

Her sister reached out a cautious hand and brushed her arm with shaking fingers. “You
are
real!”

“Well, yeah. I . . .”

To Jess's astonishment, her sister jerked her into a hard, fierce hug. “I never thought I'd see you again! I thought that bastard Billy Dean'd had you killed!”

Surprised, touched, Jess patted her sister's thin back. “Billy Dean didn't have anything to do with it. It was . . . somebody else.”

Ruby pulled away, her gaze narrow and fierce. “Who? Who did this to you? We need to get the bastard locked up! You gotta talk to the cops.”

“Uh, the cops can't do anything about this guy. Besides, he's dead.”

Ruby's brows flew up and she blinked in astonishment. “
You
killed him?”

“No, my . . . uh . . . lover did.”

“You've got a lover? Get out! Since when?” Blue eyes narrowed. “Is that what you've been doing while I was locked up? They thought I killed you, by the way.”

“Yeah, I heard. I'm sorry. I would have come sooner, but I . . . couldn't get away.”

“Couldn't get away? I thought you were dead, Jess! How could you . . . ?”

“They wouldn't let me go.” Spotting the stained velour armchair printed with birdhouses standing in the corner, Jess staggered to it and collapsed with a weary groan.

“
Who
wouldn't let you go? I don't understand any of this.” Ruby wandered to the matching couch and fell onto it. Hands shaking, she searched through the litter of beer cans and wadded Kleenex on the scarred coffee table. Finally she found a packet of Virginia Slims and a box of matches.

The familiar ritual of lighting the cigarette seemed to steady her. She took her first deep draw, eying Jess through the smoke. “Your blood was all over the apartment.” She sounded like she was beginning to think again. Which, knowing Ruby, might not necessarily be a good thing.

“Yeah, I got stabbed. But then I got better.” Jess rubbed her aching forehead. Her EDI had warned that Jumping without a T-suit was unpleasant in the extreme. It wasn't kidding.

“Where the hell have you been?” Ruby's eyes flicked over Jess's clothing, taking in the emerald-green fabric that draped softly over her body. It sure wasn't polyester. “And where did you come from?”

Jess winced, anticipating her sister's reaction. Unfortunately, she didn't think she could get around telling her the truth. “The future.”

“Yeah. Right.” She snorted a plume of smoke. “Seriously, where have you been?”

“Hello? Remember Mr. Lightning Bolt?” Jess demanded tartly. “How do
you
think I beamed in like Captain Kirk? I'm not exactly hiding David Copperfield up my sleeve.”

Ruby stared at her for a long beat. Slowly, her jaw dropped, and she started going pale again. “You're serious. ”

“As a heart attack.” Jess sighed. “Look, this is going to be hard for you to believe, but give me the benefit of the doubt.” Maybe she should take a look at the painting first, though, just in case Ruby decided to get difficult. “Where did you put my paintings?”

“Your paintings?” Tweezed brows drew together. “I don't have your paintings. The cops took everything.”

“Damn.” Her heart sank. How was she going to get a look at that piece if it was in police custody?

“Look, what's all this shit about you being in the future? Could you
please
tell me what's going on?”

“You're going to think I'm nuts.”

Ruby's lips twitched. “I've
always
thought you're nuts.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jess said drily.

Her sister sighed and took another long pull on her cigarette, eyeing her through the smoke. “Let's drop the sibling rivalry for a minute, okay? Just tell me who tried to kill you and where you've been.
And what's with the lightning bolt?
”

So Jess took a deep breath and told her the whole thing. It took more than an hour. An hour of looking into her sister's eyes and watching disbelief and wonder go to war there.

Wonder finally won. “Holy shit,” Ruby breathed when she finished.

“That's putting it mildly.” Jess leaned forward and braced her elbows on her knees, staring into Ruby's stunned face. “Listen, you can't tell anybody you saw me. Including the police. They have to go on believing I'm dead.”

Ruby frowned. “Why?”

“Because . . .”
Oh, hell, this is way too complicated to explain.
Ruby hadn't even passed her high school biology class. She sure as hell wasn't up to a lesson in twenty-third-century temporal physics. “Because if they find out I'm still alive, the future will be changed.” Never mind that you couldn't really change history. Jess had learned years ago that if she wanted Ruby's cooperation in anything, she had to make it about Ruby. “
Your
future would be changed.”

“
My
future? What do I got to do with this?”

“Actually, it's about my paintings. You've got to get them back, Ruby. They're going to be worth a lot of money.”

"But ...”

“Yeah, I know nobody was interested in them before,” Jess interrupted, “but that was before I was murdered. Now they're collectors' items. Or they're going to be. In six months, you're going to sell one of them for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Ruby's jaw dropped. “Two hundred . . . thousand?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand. A quarter of a million dollars. And the price will go up from there. You'll be rich.”

“Me? But they're your paintings!”

Jess shook her head. “I told you, baby. As far as the world is concerned, I'm dead. The paintings are yours now, and so is the money.”

“Money.” Her expression dazed, Ruby stared around at the single-wide trailer with its shabby furniture, scarred 1970s-era wood paneling, and worn shag carpeting. “God knows I'd love to be rich. I'd love to move out of this rat hole. I'd love not to be . . .” She broke off, but Jess knew the rest anyway.
I'd love not to be a crack addict and a whore.
Her chapped lips compressed. “But it's not right. What are
you
going to do?”