Furious

19

It took all the willpower Kris could muster to stay at Penny’s side as she shuffled toward the back of the bar. But the slow pace didn’t mean she had to ignore Jack. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him. Since the other two men were watching them, Jack did, too.

At first, he seemed distracted, uninterested, maybe even depressed. But the more he watched her, the more intense his gaze grew. They were still five eternally long meters away when Jack’s eyes lit up, and he mouthed, “Kris!”

A moment later, he blew her a kiss.

From two meters out, Kris flew into his arms.

She couldn’t feel his cheeks on hers for all the junk she had on, but she could sure feel his lips. They were heavenly.

Then his arms were around her. Again, there were so many places she couldn’t feel him, but his hands danced on her back, and his arms enfolded her.

She was finally where she longed to be.

She hardly noted when Penny settled herself beside her, giving her some cover from any roving eyes. Kris didn’t care. Let them gawk. Still, as she hungrily devoured Jack’s lips, she couldn’t help but hear the table conversation.

“That Kris?” Colonel Hancock asked. “The years haven’t been kind to her.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure, either,” Grampa Trouble said. “But I think we can trust Jack on this.” That drew a chuckle from all three of them.

“And we worked so hard on our disguises,” Penny said with a sigh.

“You got this far,” Grampa Trouble said. “It must have fooled the security scans.”

“It fooled me,” the colonel admitted.

There was silence for a while, then the colonel began again. “Are they going for a record or something?”

“Nope, not even close,” Grampa Trouble said. “When Ruth and I got back together after the Iteeche dustup, we went a whole lot longer.” He paused before adding. “Of course, we were married by then, and there was a bed involved. Penny, has she already got a room?”

“We just got down the beanstalk. We came right here.”

“She got my message, then.”

“She got it, but she didn’t give me a hint where we were going until she told a cabby where to take us. Untrusting girl, if you ask me.”

“It’s kept her alive this long,” Trouble said.

Kris finally had to come up for air. One gulp and a whispered “Jack,” and she was ready to make up for more lost time.

“Can I have you two’s attention for a few seconds?” Grampa asked.

Kris nestled into Jack’s arms and turned front. Oh, if I could ditch all this junk I’m wearing. If I could feel Jack, she thought. Of course, that junk had got her through several security checkpoints without her being hauled off to jail.

Choices, choices. Someday, I’ll live with one choice and nothing else.

“Yes, Grampa,” Kris said, holding Jack’s hand tight.

“What’s your situation?” he asked softly.

With a sigh, Kris came back from the bliss of Jack’s arms. She didn’t move an inch away from him, still, that wonderful feeling of Jack’s being close and nothing else in the world mattering took quite a beating.

“We’re here,” Kris said the obvious. “We have no money. Nelly and her kids can’t access the Wardhaven net, and Grampa Al seems to have gone rogue. He’s definitely taking a back door into politics and maybe hatching some cockamamy plan to deal with the alien all on his own. We need to stop him, but I have no idea how.”

Kris glanced at Jack. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Other than that, everything is great.” She kissed him again.

Grampa Trouble let them go on for a brutally short time, probably no more than a minute, before calling her back to the matters at hand.

“Your Gramma Ruth told me about the political play he made on Eden. She didn’t say anything about the alien thing.”

Kris sighed. “The political play was poorly done and left enough threads leading back to him. Nothing strong enough to take to court. The alien thing was a vague reference that likely would have been ignored, except that the guy who made it woke up with his throat slit next morning. That kind of makes people talk.”

“Even ones who aren’t as paranoid as you Longknifes,” Colonel Hancock said. “But no idea what it is, huh?”

“No idea at all,” Kris replied.

“Your Gramma Ruth tells me that someone tried to kill you before you’d been on Eden an hour.”

“Yes,” Kris admitted. “The shooters were hired. Who paid them was still being examined when I left Eden. Have you heard anything?”

“Nothing. But Ruth heard it might be someone in your Grampa Al’s pay.”

“Yes, I head that rumor, too,” Kris admitted. “But the short fuse doesn’t leave enough time for someone to get Grampa Al’s approval for it. My guess is someone was trying to get back into Grampa Al’s good graces and pulled the pin on that operation without approval.”

“Someone would think that killing his granddaughter would make his employer happy?” Colonel Hancock said with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s a Longknife thing,” Penny said.

“Now I’m starting to understand why you were so hot to trot to get away from the Longknife shadow. How’s that working?” Colonel Hancock asked.

“Not so well,” Kris admitted. “Some days better than others.”

Kris chose to change the topic. “Grampa Trouble, do you think there’s any chance I can get in to talk to Grampa Al? And if I do, is there any chance I could dissuade him from whatever it is he wants to do?”

“I figured you’d want to get in his Fortress of Security, so I did a little discreet nosing around. As to talking him out of anything.” Grampa shook his head. “He’s a stubborn old cuss, much like his dad, Ray, and not known for walking away from a business deal once he’s set his hat for it.”

“Yeah,” Kris nodded. “That’s pretty much what I heard, too.” Kris turned to lose herself in Jack’s eyes for a moment. “Damn, all I want to do is find some sunny beach with a nice small cottage and curl up with you.”

“That’s been in my thoughts a time or twenty,” Jack said. The first words she’d heard from him sounded wonderful. Of course, he’d had a hard time getting a word in; she’d kept her mouth on his pretty much since she first caught sight of him.

Kris sighed. “I really don’t want to go charging off to save the world again.”

“Spoken by someone who sounds resigned to doing just that,” Jack said.

“You up for another charge into the breach?”

“I’d prefer a beach,” Jack said with one of his lopsided smiles. “Do you honestly think we can find a breach in Al Longknife’s security wall?”

“What chances do we have?” Nelly asked. “Considering that right now, I can’t even catch the nightly news feed.”

“Jack told me that he hadn’t risked getting his computer in the net, what with the invasive tests and background checks the new security system requires,” Trouble said. “I had a hard time believing it, considering what Abby’s reports said about what you and Nelly and her kids had been doing in Peterwald space. Still, you’ve got to take a man at his word. And if Jack was blocked, I figured you were, too.”

“What have you managed to come up with?” Kris said. Hating herself for what she did, still, she found herself leaning forward, away from Jack, to better hear what Grampa Trouble whispered.

“When your aunt Trudy went off after alien relics, she left me a note. If I needed info-warfare help in her absence, I could talk to her sidekick from the old days of the Iteeche war, Sara Powers. A freethinker in those days, she caused a lot of people a lot of trouble. Some of it actually helped the war effort.”

“You’re complaining about someone causing you trouble?” Penny slipped in.

“She didn’t pay her dues to my troublemaker’s union, the scab,” Grampa said with a scowl that curled up too much at the edge of his lips. “I told her what I wanted, and she asked me no questions, just three days later dropped this mass storage chip in my hand after we’d gotten together for lunch to talk about old times.”

Kris noticed a storage chip between Grampa’s fingers. She thought of reaching for it, but didn’t. He’d pass it to her when he wanted her to have it, at a time and place of his choosing. There might be no visible security cameras in there, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

Suddenly, Colonel Hancock sat up even straighter. “I’m getting activity on the police band. Much of it’s coded, but it’s all addressed to this sector of town.”

Grampa Trouble frowned. “Nelly, did you try to connect to the net?”

“Yes. On the station I used all my certificates, including the secret ones.”

Grampa was already starting to stand. “Kris, did you use your credit chit to get down the beanstalk?”

“No, Grampa. The skipper of the Yellow Comet gave me some gift chits.”

“Bought here or on Eden?”

“I’d guess Eden.”

“We need to be gone,” Grampa said, standing. The softness of his words were countered by the urgency of his movements. “The rear exit is out past the loos.”