Everyone stared in shock, even Jax, who already knew who I was.
“Soooo… No one’s leaving?” I eventually asked, not surprised, but not happy, either.
No one spoke. The Endeavor rattled like a sick metallic animal and then groaned again—hard.
“We’re as dead out there as we are in here,” Miko finally answered. No one contradicted her, so I figured she spoke for them all.
I nodded. “Big Guy?” I asked, turning to the bearded man.
He just shook his head.
Fine. His choice, although I had no idea why.
“Power up, Jax, and get ready to punch it. Miko—set us thirty degrees to the left.” Portside was nothing but the Black Widow. The huge, lightless area gave new meaning to the oft-used expression “endless Dark.”
I turned away, my stomach knotting. I feared the unknown as much as anyone else.
Focusing once again on my crew, I announced, “Strap in. Don’t strap in. It doesn’t really matter at this point.”
We’d never been much for emotional speeches, so I didn’t give one. Shiori got out of the captain’s chair and felt her way to Miko. The two women stood side by side by the navigation controls, holding hands. Fiona and Jax stayed close together. I was alone. Except for Big Guy. He stayed pretty close.
My gaze returned to the Widow, as if drawn by its massive gravitational force. Twenty-six years, and it hadn’t been a bad life, even if a lot of it hadn’t been fun. I’d wreaked more havoc on the galactic government than most rebels could manage in five lifetimes. With the help of my crew, I’d kept the Outer Zone colonies from true starvation for years. And everything else I ever had, I gave to the kids in Starway 8. I didn’t regret a thing.
And I was a Novalight. I wouldn’t go out like a sigh in the Dark. I’d go out like a fucking bomb.
I reached for the external com and opened the line to Bridgebane. “Your boarding crew has thirty seconds to detach. After that, I’m taking the Endeavor and your vaccines into the Black Widow. Everyone on this ship would rather die than see that serum back in the hands of the Galactic Overseer.” I lifted my finger but then pressed it firmly back down on the button again. “By the way, this is Quintessa, and you can tell my tyrant father that I hate his fucking guts.”
I pulled my hand off the com. The line went dead, then blinked red again.
“Quin?” Bridgebane said.
I counted down in my head. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
“Let’s talk, Quin,” my uncle said. “Give me the lab, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…
“I saved you, Quin. You owe me.”
Five, four, three, two…
I turned to Jax, seeing the Black Widow looming through the wall of windows behind him. I felt a lurch and hoped it was the boarding cruiser beating a retreat.
“Quin!” Bridgebane yelled over the com.
A second later, the Dark Watch frigate fired on us. The resulting jolt nearly knocked me off my feet. Alarms flared all over my controls—pressurization compromised in three zones. Another blast like that, and they might disable us enough to hold us in place.
I gripped my console. The Endeavor was a good ship. It was too bad I had to take her out.
My heart pounded so violently that each beat felt like an explosion inside my chest.
Some ends are just a new beginning…
My mother’s words to me, when she’d gotten so sick. Too sick for anyone to save her.
The Black Widow stretched before us, ready to snare us in her web. Nothing escaped a black hole. Not light. Not matter. Maybe not even a soul.
I swallowed. Some ends are just the end.
“Hit it, Jaxon.” I nodded to my first mate.
Jax looked at me one last time. Our eyes met, and seven years of shared history struck me in a bittersweet rush. Then he grabbed Fiona around the waist and threw the hyperdrive switch with a cosmic roar.
I inhaled sharply. Everything blurred. My bones crunched, and my chest folded in on the thousands of things I’d still wanted to do as the Endeavor shot toward the event horizon—and the end of us all.
CHAPTER 2
Shade Ganavan flipped the sign on the door of Ganavan’s Products and Parts to closed and locked it. He didn’t care who might need a spare part today, tomorrow, or any fucking day. He cared about Tess Bailey and her little stream of lies.
Under her pale skin, her fireworks of a blush, and her rabbiting pulse, there was a woman running scared. She looked like she’d been that way for a while, like she never stopped. Never came down. No one got that white unless they spent all their time in the Dark.
Shade strode into his office, tension like he hadn’t felt in a while whipping through his body.
Sitting at his desk, he powered up the tablet that might give him some answers. He typed in the passcode to the secure database only he and about a hundred other people in the galaxy had access to. This was where shit went down. This was where he made his money.
He scrolled through the latest entries first. Rebel. Rebel. Rebel. Escaped convict. Kidnapped scientist. Rebel. Priest.
Priest? His eyes stopped for a moment. That was unusual. Not many people fucked with the Powers, just in case they were real.
“Not interested,” Shade muttered.
Going to the search bar, he typed in Tess Bailey.
No matches came up for a current job. No bounty. No info.
Pursing his lips, he typed in just Bailey.
Again, nothing.
He tried Baylee, Bayleigh, Bailee, and Baileigh, all without a hit.
Good. She wasn’t anywhere on the up-to-date Wanted or Retrieve lists. That brought a little relief to the tension in his gut.
Shade switched databases to hunt for birth records, looking for women under thirty.
After a long wait, about two kabillion Baileys popped up.
He groaned. It’d take forever to sort through all that. She’d probably given him a false name anyway. This was a wild goose chase.
Shade ran a hand through his short hair, still not used to feeling it so close to his scalp. The movement wasn’t very satisfying with nothing to shove back.
“Well, shit. Who the hell are you, starshine?”
He hadn’t expected his tablet to answer, but all of a sudden, there she was, filling his screen as a new message came through from the first window he’d opened to the private database. His eyes widened, and adrenaline ripped through his body.
He stared at the enormous WANTED above her head.
The sum below it of two hundred million in universal currency made his jaw drop.
Shade stood up, thunking both hands down on his desk and glaring at the tablet. He leaned over for a better look—and to make sure he was reading this right.