Mindee Arnett - Proxy

“We’ll be right behind you, Boss.”

Jeth took Celeste by the hand, and together they stepped out from the cover of the trees. They continued on from their original path, taking a shortcut down another narrow walkway that dumped them out on the far side of the loading docks. The Wellforth truck was parked in the same place. Not letting his relief get the best of him, Jeth swept his gaze over the scene, checking for onlookers.

Once he had determined the place was empty, he hurried forward, yanked the truck door open, and climbed inside, with Celeste right behind him. The cab was empty too, the only sign of Danforth his discarded Wellforth uniform lying strewn across the passenger’s seat. Jeth raced into the cargo hold, and together he and Celeste began yanking the lids off the decoy barrels. The first one Jeth opened was empty, but not the second. Lizzie peered up at him, her eyes wide and wet with tears and her face swollen with a splotchy bruise.

“Lizzie!” Jeth reached for her, hauling her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Her voice shook as she spoke, and she began to babble. “I’m so sorry, Jeth. I blew it. I tried to stop him. I sent a message to Hammer, but then Danforth figured out what I was doing and hit me. I tried to fight him off, but he shoved me in here.”

She sobbed as she threw her arms around him. Jeth reeled from the onslaught of emotion—sympathy, disbelief, and most of all rage. Danforth had hit her. Touched her with his slimy, dirty hands. Jeth would cut them off. He squeezed Lizzie in his arms. “Shhhh. It’s all right.”

Jeth let his emotions rule him for only a moment, and then he locked them away in a deep place inside him.

He helped her out of the barrel. “Do you have any idea where Danforth went or where he was heading?”

Lizzie blinked the bleariness from her gaze. “No, but I might be able to find him.”

“How?” Jeth took a step back as Lizzie pushed past him. She headed for the corner, where he spotted the master control computer lying on top of one of the barrels.

“I detected their comm signal,” Lizzie said, her fingers already flying across the touchscreen. Her distress from a moment before was draining away as she fell into the job.

Jeth stepped up behind her, watching. “What are you doing, Liz?”

She chewed on her lower lip as she worked. “Danforth had two comm units running the whole time we’ve been here. He thought he could hide it, but when the relay went down and I had to fix it, I discovered the other signal. I figured he was communicating with someone else on-site, someone we didn’t know about. So I sent a message to Mark Hilty back on the Debonair , telling him to let Hammer know that Danforth was up to something.”

That’s how the emperor’s mistress knew to come find us , Jeth realized. A tremor of fear went through him at the risk Lizzie had taken. Hilty might not have been trustworthy. And alerting Hammer about a job going wrong wasn’t something he would’ve done. In Jeth’s experience, the less Hammer knew, the better. Still, her actions had saved them. He resisted the urge to hug her again.

“If Danforth’s still in close enough proximity,” Lizzie went on, “and if he hasn’t turned off his comm, I should be able to figure out his location.”

Jeth squeezed her shoulders, which was all the encouragement he could manage. They just might be able to salvage this job.

“Shady and Flynn are coming,” Celeste announced a few minutes later from the cab, where she’d been keeping a lookout.

Jeth left Lizzie where she was, still doing her techie thing. She hadn’t picked up a clear signal yet, and he feared it was because Danforth was long gone.

“They’re over there.” Celeste pointed out the side window. Jeth looked and saw Shady and Flynn standing by a hedgerow, the latter visibly swaying on his feet.

A moment later they were climbing inside the truck. Jeth felt something click into place inside him, a rightness like a homecoming after a long absence. His crew was together again. Safe. And that was all that really mattered. Losing the ruby hurt, but he would get over it. As long as Hammer wasn’t too upset, Jeth had time to make up the lost profit. Avalon would be his again someday.

But as Jeth walked back to Lizzie, she pumped her fist in the air. “Found him! He’s just outside the palace grounds, but on the move.”

Unable to resist the prompting of his relief, Jeth bent forward and planted a loud kiss on the top of her head. She giggled and shook him off.

“Right,” he said, marching to the cab. “Let’s go run down that lying son of a bitch.”

MINUTES LATER JETH WAS PILOTING THE TRUCK OVER THE palace grounds to the entrance. He’d put on Danforth’s discarded uniform, swearing to himself that he would bathe in turpentine the first chance he got. Shady sat beside him in the passenger’s seat, while Lizzie, Celeste, and Flynn were in the cargo hold, standing out of sight of the door. They didn’t bother getting back into the barrels. The security measures were focused on incoming vehicles, not outgoing.

Jeth sat up straighter in his seat as he approached the gate. Half a dozen sentries lined each side. He slowed the truck, waiting to be waved through. He was, and as Jeth accelerated, he called for Lizzie.

“Make a left at that next street,” she said, sitting in the passenger’s seat after Shady vacated it.

Jeth took the turn easy, not yet adjusted to the truck’s controls. But the moment he was straight again, he pushed it hard, ignoring the posted speed limits. Lizzie sent him down several other streets, a winding path that didn’t make any sense to Jeth. He figured Danforth and his crew would be heading out of the city as soon as possible. But then again, they probably didn’t have a spaceship with a functioning stealth drive waiting. They would have to charter a flight off planet through one of only a handful of ports, hoping they could smuggle the ruby out successfully.

“Oh my,” Lizzie said.

Jeth glanced at her. “What?”

“The signal separated.”

“What does that mean?”

“That someone using that comm split off from the main group. Looks like the person is heading down an alley.”

“An alley?” Jeth frowned, trying to make sense of it.

“The first signal stopped just around the corner,” said Lizzie.

Jeth pulled back on the controls, slowing the truck. Fortunately, the street they were on was empty of other vehicles. “Let me see it.”

Lizzie held up the screen, and Jeth examined the map that showed the two red dots of the comm system they were tracking as well as the outline of the buildings and streets around them. Sure enough, one of the dots was moving down an alley, the progress too slow to be a vehicle, Jeth guessed. The other dot had come to a stop completely a short distance beyond the alley.

A hunch came to Jeth as he remembered Danforth’s silence after his taunt about Soleil handing him over to Hammer. It hadn’t been an unfounded taunt at all, and Danforth might have realized it. Or maybe Aileen and her giant of a partner had decided to eliminate him now that they had what they wanted. That was the trouble with criminals—one could always trust them to be untrustworthy.

Returning his focus to the front, Jeth piloted the truck forward, accelerating hard.

“What are you doing?” Lizzie said as they passed the street where their quarry had turned. “They’re back there.”

“I have an idea.” He made a left on the next street. “Let me know when we’ve reached the alley the second signal is heading down.” He leaned forward and switched off the truck’s autopilot override, a feature designed to take over control of the truck if it ventured too near any objects.