Spectre of Intention Read online

  “Finally! Now I can finally stop being everybody else’s grease monkey and start doing some real work.”

  Even without seeing his intention incarnate, J.C.’s desire to grab that stick back from Gerard’s apparently untrustworthy hands came through loud and clear. Kaitlin reminded me to keep my smile to myself.

  I held my hand out for the stick and with a roll of his eyes, Gerard turned it over.

  “Now you realize this is a your-eyes-only file. If you try to transmit it, it will erase. If you try to take it off the ship, it will erase. This file is worth millions on the black market. Only myself, Cam, the captain, and the chief engineer have access to it. Oh, and Will, of course.”

  The file went from feeling like a stick of cold plastic to feeling like a stick of hot dynamite in my palm. I raised my eyebrows.

  “But what about the rest of the security team: Davina and Arlen and those people? Don’t they need this information to do their jobs?”

  “They have their maps. You don’t need this level of information to schedule security patrols. Now, if anything should happen—if you even suspect you just misplaced it—contact me immediately, so I can remotely erase it. Understood?”

  “Understood, sir,” Jessie replied. “Do you have time to give us a quick walk through, so we can be prepared for the tour?”

  J.C. glanced at his mini, then slid it back in his pocket.

  “Yeah, I have a few seconds.”

  I got the impression he meant that literally. I got Paula up with a jerk of my head.

  “The projector is in Kaitlin, Box 1. You still have the box knife?”

  She pulled it out and came with me to help. Fortunately, the projector was in the upper layers of filler.

  We cleared a space on the unvandalized conference table. I plugged the stick into the small pad and turned it on. After a few bits of instruction, a transparent ship built of blue lines sprang to life above the table.

  J.C. stepped forward.

  “Alright. Operations starts about here,” he said, pointing just forward of mid-ship. He moved his finger backward from there. “The spare elevator is here. The elevator bay is here.”

  J.C. move himself out of the way and gestured to a large empty area near the end of the ship. “Canisters are assembled all the way back here toward rear of the ship. The first stop they make is here at the canister loading facility where all the non-human cargo is added—all the equipment the settlers will need, agricultural and otherwise, to get started. Then the canister rolls forward to the cryogenics lab where the settlers’ containers will be installed. After that the canisters slide forward and are fitted into the lower portion of the next available elevator. This area above is for the boarding of the elevator’s regular passengers and crew members, loading of space station supplies.

  “Other than that, there are security stations at both entrances to operations here and here.” He gestured vaguely to the fifth-floor check points we were all familiar with. “And this entire rear section of the ship is dedicated to engineering.”

  I stared through those blue lines. What in the hell were Stephan and Mak here to steal?

  “…to go. Kaitlin. Kaitlin?”

  “Kaitlin.”

  I jerked my head around at the touch of Jessie’s hand on my shoulder.

  “J.C. needs to leave.”

  “Oh, thanks for this, J.C. This’ll be great.”

  J.C. just gave me a distracted nod as he walked out the door, head already bent over his workpad.

  Neither Paula, nor Jessie, not even Gerard said a word as I pulled a chair over and started taking the schematics apart, level by level, room by room.

  What was here that I wasn’t seeing? What take was so incredible that it could unite two archenemies for a heist this delicate?

  Come on out, Ashley. Tell me what the hell it is that I’m not seeing.

  “Break time.”

  I jumped straight out of my chair, spun around, and caught Jessie’s hand where it had sat on my shoulder. A violent re-entry into reality.

  My brain was full of giant rails, canisters, plows, seeds, and chickens caught in suspended animation. And a serrated blade at the corner of my vision that never stopped moving.

  Jessie extricated his hand from my grip. He reached past me and powered down the projector.

  “Time to hit the gym.”

  “Oh, um, yeah.”

  He pulled the chair aside and I walked around it. Gerard and Paula were already waiting at the door. I grabbed my bag and hurried after them. We stood around and waited while Jessie used his ship ID to lock the door.

  Beside me, a softness drifted from Paula. Stealing a glance, I saw her watching Jessie’s hands with the sweetest look in her eyes. Before he could turn around, it was gone—as was that gentle pull.

  I averted my gaze in surprise. Was that new? How had I missed that? And then I thought of those countless hours I’d spent sitting across from her staring into those cameras.

  Oh, god. I hadn’t missed that. She was hiding it from me. She believed. She actually believed. Out of the three people around whom my world revolved, the one so carefully kept in the dark was the one who believed in my freakish little ability. My stomach gave a little lurch.

  Paula knew what I could do.

  Now veterans of the locker-less gym, we detoured first to the restrooms down the hall from our office. That flutter in my center followed me all the way inside. Dropping my bag, I leaned back against the door.

  “Paula.”

  She turned, looked back at me with her eyebrows wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “I…” I looked around the utilitarian white tiled room. How the hell did I broach this? I’d never done it before. “I felt you. You don’t have to hold back from Jessie like that. You’d be good for him. He’s lonely.”

  Paula’s intentions became a definite shove.

  “That was private, Kaitlin.”

  I blushed. “I know. I, um, I don’t usually, I mean I try not to, but I would feel so bad if…” I sighed. This was not going well.

  The shove slackened, and Paula just shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter, Kaitlin. He’s already built himself the perfect woman.” She gestured at me. “Perfect hair, perfect face, perfect body. Perfect social graces. Perfectly unattainable.” She sighed. “It really doesn’t matter.”

  I stared at her, a pained sort of laugh pushing out from between my lips.

  “Me? No, Jessie and me? That would be…that would just be wrong.”

  “Exactly and that’s exactly how he wants it. If you stay unattainable, then you stay perfect. And he has absolutely no need for someone like me.”

  “Paula.”

  Her smile was so sad I felt my heart breaking, even as I absorbed her pain.

  “I can’t do what you do, but I have my databases and I have my eyes.”

  “You wouldn’t even consider giving him a chance to change his mind? I don’t have your brain, but I know what I feel and ‘afar’ isn’t working for him.” I wasn’t sure I believed what she was saying, but her twisting, penetrating ache killed me.

  Paula pressed her lips together. She started to answer me, but then the tears started.

  “I…I think maybe I’d better go. You can tell them…tell them…”

  I pulled her in for a quick hug, felt those tiny, fragile bones in my arms.

  “Go, before they get out. I’ll just tell them you weren’t feeling well.”

  Her satin head nodded into my shoulder. Keeping her face down, she hurried from the restroom.

  Alone, I blinked back tears of my own. I felt disoriented, her pain lingering with me long after she was gone.

  Could she be right?

  Or was that just her fear talking?

  The thing with brilliant people was they could come up with equally brilliant reasoning for whatever path they chose to take—right or wrong.

  I remembered Jessie’s reaction when Cam came to take me to lunch. But shouldn’t he
feel something when someone showed up intending to usurp his role? Platonic or not, we’d had only each other for so long.

  Had I been oblivious? I shook out my head and reached for my gym clothes.

  Planting seeds could be so dangerous.

  But I knew one flaw in her theory upfront. Only to her could I possibly appear perfect. Jessie, and only Jessie, knew exactly how imperfect I really was.

  As I pulled on my workout gear, that already distracting question was joined by another:

  Just how long had she believed?

  When we returned from the workout, I shifted from the ship’s schematics to one of the workstations. Ashley had been no help at all with determining what Stephan and his people might plan to steal. Escape routes, hidey holes, sure, but nothing about what Pioneers’ Port’s crown jewels might be. To be fair, Ashley’s role in Stephan’s gang had primarily been lookout. When she—when I—willingly joined with Stephan not only did it gift intentions with their own incarnations, but it also massively expanded my range from a few feet to roughly a half-block radius. Overwhelming for me, but incredibly useful for a band of mid-list thieves.

  I began by pulling up all the news I could find about Pioneer’s Port itself. There was a lot. Too much. I sorted and categorized. Tried to look for reoccurring names. The most prominent topic was controversy over the program itself. The same things I’d wondered about—was it thinly veiled suicide being sold to the desperate and delusional?

  I tapped at the screen, staring at the article. Still nothing to steal. I kept flipping.

  “Hey, it’s getting late. Why don’t you walk back with us?”

  I waved Jessie off, not even looking over my shoulder.

  “I’ve got to figure this out. I know it’s obvious. I’ve got to be on the right track.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you walking back alone.”

  I kept flipping through the articles on the giant workpad. I forgot to answer him, never heard them leave.

  “No!”

  “Whoa, it’s just me.”

  I jerked upright, blinking to clear my eyes. Cam stood beside me, one hand on my shoulder, one hand carrying a white fast food bag. I shuddered, then slumped over, pressing my hands to my face. Cam’s humor and concern wrapped around me.

  He rubbed my back, chuckling.

  “Shooting Felons to the Stars: A Second Chance or Just the Latest Form of Guilt-Free Execution? Yeah, falling asleep reading that would give me nightmares, too.”

  Groaning, I raised my face from my hands. After a couple of tries, my mouth finally engaged.

  “Is this for real?”

  Cam laughed. “Oh, it’s real. Probably about fifty percent of our clientele are countries unburdening their penal systems.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s not exactly a new practice. Britain used to offload its convicts to colonies in the U.S., Australia, and India. Even parts of the Galapagos Islands you just came from used to be a penal colony.”

  I rubbed at the squished side of my face, then reached out and powered the monitoring station down.

  “And these guys, are they taking your leap of faith, too?”

  “Will won’t take them unless they’ve signed off that they are making the choice of their own free will. In some countries that still doesn’t mean much, but it’s the best we can do for now.”

  Cam raised the bag. “Jessie told me to drag you out of here and feed you. Come on. Let’s go trail shredded lettuce down the promenade. Really piss off Lou and Xiaomei.”

  Jessie told him? What on earth did that mean? Ashley sank her hooks right into that one. I shook her off. Didn’t matter. Right now, it really didn’t matter. With a smile, I hopped down from the stool. Now that the spare table was gone, we could actually walk side by side out of the room. I snagged my bag on the way out.

  “Do you really know the name of everyone who works here?”

  “I try. Best way to keep the peace.”

  We waved goodnight to Dmitri at the security check point. Ashley always got so agitated every time we passed through the simple metal detector. Kaitlin just smiled at the well-rounded officer. He smoothed the sides of his mustache sternly.

  “You two should be outside watching that sunset. You spend too much time inside. It is not good for your health. Out, out with you.”

  People, Kaitlin reminded Ashley. Just people.

  Ashley shook her head. Fake. Trying to trick you into trusting them. Stay away.

  This time, I was the one to slide Ashley back into her closet. I didn’t like her talking about Dmitri that way, not when I could feel his conflicting desires for company and for our happiness playing tenderly back and forth. I gave his arm a squeeze as I passed by.

  Cam called over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, we all know who really runs this place!”

  “Fresh air, director. She should not be so pale in your care.”

  I blinked. In your care?

  Cam caught my look of surprise.

  “Village gossip is the primary form of entertainment around here.”

  Ashley made a desperate play to lock my legs. I breathed through her anxiety. If Dmitri has heard, then Stephan will hear.

  Breathe.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, just forgot we had an audience, I guess.”

  “It’s mostly harmless.” Cam dropped back and settled his arm across my back, his hand on my shoulder. His intention pulled me in before his body did. All that heat spreading through me, from his body, from his mind, melted away the last of Ashley’s hold. I raised my arm to his waist and pressed my head to his shoulder.

  In that moment I didn’t even care if we’d just given Dmitri a little something to take back to the gossip mill.

  In that moment my world was perfect.

  “Dmitri wasn’t kidding about the sunset.”

  The half-sun that remained painted the sky in golds, blues, and blacks. Cam relaxed against the railing beside me, one hand kneading the muscles in my neck until I wanted to purr.

  “I actually can’t remember the last time I stood and watched the sun go down,” I agreed.

  I leaned out over the railing. The breeze blew my hair back as I looked down at the white water shoved aside by the immensity of this floating city. The captain and his team were maneuvering the ship in a precise pattern that would relocate the space station out of the flight path of a satellite without causing excessive whiplash for the occupants of the station or for the crew of the elevator.

  I straightened and turned my face upward, trying to picture the movement of the ribbon, the elevator, the space station. I shook my head.

  “Amazing.”

  The warmth of Cam’s palm closed over the side of my neck, his cool fingertips pressed into the divot of my spine. He gave a little tug and I turned to face him, my heart in my throat. I looked up into those eyes, more electric than the painting of the sun; those soft lashes promising gentle, sweet sensations I didn’t have names for. My chest grew tight and I shivered.

  “Come with me.”

  His hand lowered down my arm to my hand. His other hand relieved me of my bag.

  “This way.”

  The wooden deck rang loud with each step we took in our tidy business shoes. I wanted to kick them off and float like I was supposed to, along with the breeze. I followed him up a flight of metal stairs, across a second deck. He held the door open for me as we re-entered the ship. As the door closed behind us the air in the hallway grew distressingly still. I wanted to float.

  Instead, I stroked his hand with my thumb as he pulled me forward, his intention stuttering between the ghostly hands that roamed over my body and his hesitation, dark and confused. I tried to keep my reactions from my face as I struggled to breathe.

  We reached his door and he unlocked and opened it one-handed, as if he was afraid to release me. He dropped my bag beside the door, drew me inside. The door closed behind us both with an unsettling click.

  His a
partment.

  In the half-light from the balcony window across the living room, Cam studied my face. He was so painfully torn. Secrets. My secrets.

  His hands ran up my arms, buried themselves in my hair.

  “Tell me, Kaitlin. Please just tell me.”

  So hard to breathe. I strained forward against his grip, tilting my face up toward his, my breasts so achingly heavy.

  “Davina hates you and Will. Will is alarmingly genuine. Arlen wants to fuck me.”

  Cam gave my head a shake.

  “Kaitlin!”

  “You…you don’t want to want me, but…” I sank my teeth into my lip, trying to bite back a groan. “…but you already have my breasts in your hands.”

  “Kaitlin.” This time it was a hoarse whisper. He laid his temple against mine. My breath hitched in his ear and he trembled. “Can’t you just trust me?”

  “Can’t you trust me?” I begged. I felt the barest touch of the corner of his lips against mine. I lunged.

  Our teeth tapped our mouths came together so hard. His tongue thrust between my lips and he drilled down so far into me I felt my center tighten convulsively. I cried out, my shaking hands clawing at his arms. He raked his hands down my hair, found the shoulders of my wide-neck silken T-shirt and yanked. I heard seams pop, fabric tear. My breasts sprang free, but the neckline bound my elbows to my sides with a cutting tension.

  “You said I’ve got your breasts in my hands.”

  “Oh, god. Cam!”

  He wrapped a hand around the base of each breast and shook them until the heat was unbearable. I begged wordlessly, but he merely backed me into the living room. I hit the back of the couch and he leaned me back over it until everything I was became that unrelieved ache, throbbing into the points of my nipples.

  Abruptly, he slowed. He tugged the shirt and bra lower until I was pinned at the wrists, but he had full access to my torso. As I writhed, he stroked his palms over my skin, dipping in for a teasing lick at first one, then the other nipple. Then his hands moved lower, closed over the belt to my slacks. I bucked. He clamped his mouth over my left breast and sucked, hard. I screamed.

  The pants, the panties scraped down my hips, down my legs. Even from this awkward position my hips thrust and my head thrashed wildly. We pulled my feet free from the shoes and I kicked the rest away.