Fugitive by Gilbert M. Stack

Author:Gilbert M. Stack [Stack, Gilbert M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Is There Any Truth in That Story?

Jewel sat at the small desk in her cabin, unlocked the bottom drawer and took out a small box that she had carried with her since she’d run away nine months ago. She opened the case, revealing an assortment of specialized tools that she used to quickly disassemble the desk lamp, rewiring the device so that anyone touching the base of the lamp would receive a long and sustained electrical charge. Then she reassembled the lamp and replaced the tools—all except a long, slender wand topped with a thin needle covering a wire thinner than a single strand of her hair.

The bell on the cabin door sounded, startling her. Moving quickly, Jewel replaced the wand in her tool case and stuck the container back in the drawer. She rose as the bell chimed again and hurried to answer it.

Erik stood in the doorway with all his weight uncharacteristically on one foot. “Do you have a minute?”

Jewel couldn’t fully suppress the urge to look back over her shoulder at her desk before she stepped back and let the exec into her room. She didn’t want him finding out what she was doing. Not only did she not want him to find out that her bioware chips were real. She especially didn’t want him to know that she planned to turn the software back on to help her deal with Brüning, and would have to risk killing herself to turn it back off again.

“Sure, come on in,” she told him. She didn’t like the fact that her voice sounded uncomfortable even to her own ears, so she added a little joke to warm the atmosphere. “I didn’t expect it to be you. I didn’t realize you knew how to use the doorbell.”

Erik smiled and for a moment looked like himself again—the man she’d first been attracted to. The officer she’d met before they’d discovered that some of his people had escaped the Armenite net, only to disappear again in this far off system. “I only use my master key when I’m coming to seduce you,” he teased.

Jewel shivered, wishing she understood precisely what her relationship was with Erik now that she’d forgiven him for humiliating her and they’d started discussing running away together. The idea that she wouldn’t have to be alone out here on the Fringe still appealed to her, but the entire situation had been further complicated by Brüning’s on target accusation of her status as a Cartelite and her need to do something drastic to protect herself from him before they reached a star system with a functioning sys-net.

“Do you want to sit down?” she asked Erik?

Erik looked around and seated himself on her mattress.

She shivered again, remembering their intimacy in the shower and how close she had felt to him on the Genesis before Kiara interrupted them and they discovered the armenium. If she went ahead with her plan to reactivate her bioware, they wouldn’t be able to have sex again until she got it shut down again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.