Stark Surrender (19 page)

‘You want him to stay like this for the rest of his life, knowing that will likely be short? Because at the first chance, he’ll escape from us, and go back out there on the streets. Where he won’t last a night, because he’s got the most evil slimer in this city’s history looking for him.”

He stabbed a finger at Logan’s bandaged head. “Those gangers did this, and they won’t fail a second time. You want that on your conscience, fine. Turn and walk out. Let him lie here for weeks on end while we wait for a cure that might happen.’

‘Oh, and by the way, the economy of western Frontiera and a piece of the galaxy may fall apart along with him, but don’t worry about that either.”

Creed put a calming hand on Joran’s shoulder, but Creed was also looking to Navos, the set of his jaw letting the Indigon know he supported Joran all the way.

Navos stared down at their brother for a long, suffocating moment, his long face impassive as always. Then he nodded once.

“Although highly emotional, your words have logic, and thus merit. And you are right—I could not live knowing I sent Logan Stark into further harm’s way. He is not just my employer, he is my friend.”

He turned his dark blue gaze on Joran and Creed. “If you wish to act as Logan’s conservators, so be it. I will do what I can.”

“Everything you can,” Joran insisted. “No limits. He’s got nothing to lose.”

Navos ignored this as unworthy of him. “You must remember, I don’t know what I’m facing here, since we don’t understand what sort of compound this is. Hope for the best if you will, but be prepared for the worst.”

Joran nodded, although fear clawed at his gut at this reminder, and Creed’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“I will need you to vacate the room,” Navos said, “and keep all other personnel and family out. Holovid monitoring by the medical team is acceptable, but without the audio link. I can’t work with others’ emotions impinging on my consciousness.”

“We humans are messy that way,” Creed agreed, his tone wry, but he gave Navos a small smile. “Thank you, Commander. Anything else you need?”

“No. I will link you when I have information, not before.” He turned back to Logan, dismissing them.

“We’ll get out of your way.” Joran moved toward the door, Creed behind him.

Outside, Joran slumped against the wall. “He went for it.”

“You think he can save him?” Creed asked. “The way they saved Zaë?”

Joran rolled his head toward him. “I don’t know. Time to say a prayer that he can.”

“You’ve got that right.” Creed indicated the divans in the waiting area. “I’ll stay here and keep vigil, if you want to get some rest. You look like hell.”

“So do you, but I’m not leaving either.”

With unspoken accord, they each moved to a divan. Joran flopped down on his back, and Creed leaned back, long legs crossed, his head on the back of the divan, fingers laced over his flat belly. “I’ll take first watch.”

“Nah, I won’t sleep anyway. I’ll order some coffee, and something to eat.”

They both settled in to keep vigil, knowing Logan would do the same for them.

Chapter Twenty-One

Logan Stark opened his eye—the one that was able—and looked into a familiar face. Angular, even severe in repose.

The man arched one black brow and allowed himself a small smile. “Welcome back, Logan.”

Logan moistened his dry lips. “Thank you, Daron.” His voice sounded strange in his ears, low and rough.

“How do you feel?” Daron Navos asked.

“As if … I’ve been to hell and back.” He was exhausted, and his head ached fiercely—an all too familiar state.

He looked around the small but immaculate room. A medical room, with familiar colors of gray and blue and cream. “We’re at … HQ?”

“We are.” Navos voice held a wealth of satisfaction. “You remember it. This is good. Very, very good.”

“Yes. I remember …” Logan flinched as an image flashed into his mind and out again with the suddenness of a holovid gone into hyperdrive, then another and another.

Moving through the cabin of a shabby but swift cruiser, keeping the questionable crew at bay with a show of his weapons and his willingness to use them.

Walking down one of the mean streets in New Seattle, a flashy blonde at his side as he scanned the shadows for threats.

In a bed, moving over Kiri, their bodies locked together as they strove for sexual completion, her lovely face taut with desire, triumph roaring through him as she took him in and gave him herself.

Confronting gangers in fluorescent acid green jackets, watching them fall as his laser flashed. Standing over their bodies with savage satisfaction.

Kiri, gazing up at him with horror and betrayal in her golden-brown eyes, asking him if he was rezzed to think he could force her to stay with him.

The attack in the alley, huge boots battering his wounded body … then nothing.

No—Kiri, her face congested with blood, eyes wild with distress, her hands tugging ineffectually at his wrists as he tried to strangle her.

“No!” He pressed a hand to his head, staring at Navos with his good eye. “I—I can’t—no more!” And too painful. God, had he really done all that? Undergone that ordeal? And worst of all, had he really attacked his beautiful little wildcat?

Navos leaned close to lay his long hand on Logan’s unbandaged temple. “Unfortunately, this distress seems to be standard for recovery other forms of this drug—at least the ones we’ve encountered. And you were given the most toxic form I’ve encountered.”

Logan stared at him, rage firing in his chest. “Wait, what? I was drugged? By whom? How? I’ll destroy them.” He’d been right, all along. That was why he’d come here to New Seattle, for answers. “Who did this to me?”

“I will let your brothers explain how it happened. For now, Logan, I’m afraid we’re not done yet.” Navos pressed his hand lightly to Stark’s temple.

Logan gritted his teeth, then regretted it when his healing jaw protested with a shaft of pain that nearly sent him flying from the bed. He groaned.

Let Navos in? It was one thing to know the Indigon had probed the depths of his mind when he was unconscious, but while he was awake? Everything in him rebelled. He wanted to let out a roar of denial, knock Navos away with a sweep of his arm, and demand to be treated another way. As the man who owned all of this and ruled it and the beings who worked here.

“Be strong,” his friend urged. “Strong enough to let me in one more time. This is just between us, Logan. You know I would never reveal any of your private thoughts to anyone.”

“You must wish that you could turn your back on me and walk away,” Logan choked out, his good hand clenched in a fist. Because among the memories flooding back were those of the last month, and the man he’d become—the beast he’d sunk to being.

The knowledge made him yearn for the peace of unconsciousness once again.

Navos brows rose, and he considered Logan for a long, suffocating moment. Then he shook his head. “I am not your judge or jury, Logan. I am also a man, one who is fortunate enough to have been endowed with powers that can heal. But don’t forget—I have also used them to do harm. And I did so while possessed of my full faculties and memories. You were in a fugue state, except that because of my work, you will retain memory of your activities in that state.”

“But you acted to save your wife—and many others. You were fighting a killer.”

Navos shrugged. “Yes. But even if his only target had been Nela, I would have done the same. I made a reasoned choice, and now I must live with it.”

“But you … only killed one man.” Navos hadn’t prowled the streets, stalking gangers like prey and leaving them dying in their own blood.

“And were each and every one of the beings you killed or harmed on these streets not killers as well? Logan, you will have to deal with your feelings about your actions. That is the cost of vigilantism. But never forget that you acted while the governors of conscience and habit were not in place. You are a good man. When you reflect on your deeds, remember all the thousands you employ, and their families that you support with good wages, programs and more.”

“But have I done so for good reasons,” Logan said bitterly, “or for more power?”

Navos eyes glinted with wry humor. “Find me any being as successful as you who does not enjoy power. I enjoy wielding mine, and don’t intend to give them up.”

“I hope to hells you don’t. At least while my family is around. We seem to need you on a regular basis.”

“Unfortunately true. Now,” Navos went on brusquely, “let me finish here. Trust me, Logan. Open your mind.”

Logan took a breath and let it out, then closed his eye and forced himself to let Navos work.

Power prodded into his mind. At first, he instinctively pushed against it. Silently, Navos laid his cool fingers on Logan’s temple, and Logan slowly relaxed, feeling calm flow into his mind. But after several moments, it faltered He opened his eye, reaching up to pull Navos’ hand from his brow. He frowned as he noted for the first time the lines of exhaustion in the other man’s pale face

“No more—for your sake. You’ve done too much for me. You’re exhausted. How long—?”

Navos shrugged slightly. “How long have I been working with you? Off and on for hours.”

“Hours?” Guilt speared through Stark again. He knew something of Indigon psychic powers, and that was an incredibly long time for such utter concentration. “Daron, you need rest as much as I do. More, probably.”

“No, not more. You must keep quiet and calm, Logan. Do not become agitated. It may undo some of my work.”

“I can get the doctors to prescribe a mild tranq if I need one,” Logan insisted. “You are finished with me and my problems.”

Navos raised his brow again. “Back in charge, I see, Mr. Stark.”

If he’d felt better, Logan would’ve laughed. As if was, he smiled—or tried to. “I can never thank you enough, Daron.”

“No need.” His friend took the hand Logan offered and gripped it for a long moment. Then he rose. “I trust the next time I see you, you will be back in good health, and at the helm of LodeStar once again.”

Logan sighed, exhaustion pulling at him. “Yes.”

“I will inform your brothers that you are recovering,” Navos said quietly, and left the room.

Logan’s last thought before he let himself sleep was that he wanted his woman by his side. Needed her … but would he ever find a way to deserve her again?

* * *

Kiri wanted to kill Logan Stark—slowly. She wanted to laser him, she wanted to listen to him scream, she wanted to … okay, nothing that extreme. A woman could fantasize when driven to it, but she really didn’t want to end her days on Deep Six, the prison planet.

Maybe she just wanted to smack him upside the head—in front of the galactic news cameras. And tell the galaxy exactly what kind of utter bastard he was.

But then she’d also be telling them what an utter fool she was.

She sat on the divan in her new bedroom at LodeStar HQ. Weirdly, this apartment was nearly identical to Logan’s scraper top penthouse in which they’d been staying. Some of the paint hues were different, including the room Kiri was given. That was fine with her, as she hadn’t really liked inhabiting what she would always think of as ‘the mistress room’ in the scraper penthouse.

Although it seemed Logan didn’t bring women here, as the room had the smell of newness, as if no one had lived in it, imprinted their favorite scents on the air system.

These thoughts flitted through her mind, but then she circled back to the enormous, life-changing, planet-shifting news she’d just been given by the kind, efficient, and discreet female LodeStar doctor who had examined her.

She was pregnant.

And since the tech available to obstetricians now allowed for timing down to the day of conception, this baby had been planted the night Logan had come to her on Frontiera. Sure enough, she’d been overdue for her yearly vaccinations.

Thank God, she had contracted no STIs, a distinct possibility since she’d had sex with him again just two days ago, after he’d been with the loathsome Liss and God knew how many other females here.

With a moan of misery and humiliation, Kiri fell to her side in the soft cushions mounded on the divan, and let the hot tears fall. No wonder she was so tired and weepy lately. And no wonder she’d responded helplessly to Logan even after he’d treated her like a—a slut. She had been under incredible stress, but she also had hormones working against her. It wasn’t because of her feelings for him—those were gone … except for blistering anger.

A baby. What on planet was she going to do now? A baby girl, the doctor had told her. Great, they’d be two females together, adrift in the universe. And yeah, she knew she was being melodramatic, but damnit, she deserved a little time to wallow in her misery. She sniffled, and blinked fresh tears away to stare sightlessly at the pretty room.

She’d have to tell Kai soon, because he was her family. She wondered how he’d feel about being an uncle … probably as terrified as she was about being a mother. What if something went wrong? She’d upload all the pregnancy holovids she could find and watch them all. She needed an obstetrician on Frontiera, she needed vitamins, she needed …

She needed Logan. The bastard.

Just when he’d finally done something so terrible she’d been ready to sweep him from her life for good, he’d gotten her pregnant. And yeah, she also knew it was her responsibility because she’d missed her scheduled vaccination, but she needed an outlet for her fury, and there he was in her mind’s eye with a great big target on his genitals. He’d fired in her, now she wanted to fire at him.

A baby. She spread her palm over her belly, still flat and firm. She had a daughter in there, still curled in a tiny knot the size of a—a peabean, floating safe in her mother’s womb. Unaware of the cataclysm she’d set off outside.

She’d have to tell Taara, because she was Kiri’s best friend, and she was going to be an aunt, by marriage anyway. And Zaë, because she’d be an auntie too. But not yet, because they’d tell their husbands, who would tell Logan … when he was in his right mind, that is.

She sat up, knotting her hands in her lap. Logan. She needed to know if he was all right. Just because he was her baby’s father, that was the only reason.

But first she had to have a showerdry and get dressed, and force down some breakfast. Little Peabean had to have her nourishment. And her mother needed to try to maintain at least a façade of normality.

Whatever normal was … she wasn’t sure she knew anymore.

She’d spent a sleepless night, half of it gazing at an old news holovid of Logan, smiling triumphantly from the steps of one of his new space cruise ships, surrounded by the uniformed crew commanders. She’d gazed at his handsome, vital face, trying to wipe out the memory of the gaunt, rezzed stranger who’d attacked her.

But every time she’d closed her eyes she’d relived again her capture, her strange time with him, and then his attack. She huddled under the covers, praying desperately, wordlessly that he would somehow recover not only from his physical injuries but from whatever evil had seized his mind.

And that she’d never have to be around him again. Except that now, that possibility was gone.

Showerdried and dressed in one of her new ensembles, a yellow wool sweater set with a weave as fine as silk, cocoa leggings and soft boots, Kiri ate breakfast in Natan’s galley, glad to have his company as a distraction from her troubles.

Kai was somewhere in the building, probably with Bronc, Taara was in a conference with Daanel about her new fashion line, and Zaë was doing something in her room.

Natan didn’t blink when Kiri asked for decaffeinated coffee. He did, however, present her with a tall, slender glass of pale green to begin her breakfast. “Full of nutrients, Ms. Kiri.”

Kiri shot him a wary look, wondering if he could possibly know she was pregnant, but he stirred eggs serenely, and besides, the doctor had promised complete confidentiality, so how could he know?

The smoothie was delicious. She also ate the eggs, a warm moonberry muffin and drank a cup of delicious coffee with cream. Yum, she could just keep eating and eating. No, bad idea. She didn’t want to be waddling in eight months. She was going to have to buy new clothing as it was. She glanced down at herself in consternation. Her belly was going to stick out as if she’d swallowed a huge pala melon.