Free The Bounty Hunter: Reckoning by Joseph Anderson Page A

recognized the name from all the deliveries he had received.
She didn’t follow him in and stood outside instead, glancing casually back
inside every few minutes. He was standing at the bar at first, then was sat
alone at a booth, and was then joined by another man. They began to talk and
Jess started to move.
    She went back to her room, marched
toward her bag and heaved it up over her shoulder. She walked back around the
station, passing the same bar on her way to the hangar and turning her head,
only for a brief moment, to confirm that Burke was still at the table. She
marched onward, faster when she was passed the windows to the bar, until she
arrived at the hangar. The terminal was easy to bypass. The ship’s alarms were
meant to serve as the real deterrent to thieves, and its locks and pass codes
as the barrier to unauthorized access.
    She walked quickly into the hangar
and passed the ship’s main doors. She longed to look over the ship’s hull and
check for changes or new damages, but she had no idea how long Burke would be
gone. If he left the bar shortly after she passed it, he would be only a few
minutes behind her. She found the opening on the ship’s side and saw that the
grating had never been replaced. She slipped easily inside of it and then
pulled her bag in behind her. The compartment was as filthy and greasy as ever
but the smell of it was oddly welcoming to her.
    At the end of the compartment, she
put her hands on the hidden door and took a breath. The next part was the only
section of her plan that relied on luck. She was leaving it to chance that
there was no longer anything blocking the door on the other side. If there was
anyone else inside the ship, or if Burke’s AI was monitoring the interior, then
she was ready to deal with that. If the door didn’t budge, however, then she
needed to leave and formulate an entirely new plan.
    She exhaled and pressed against the
door and felt it give to her strength. She pushed herself up with her arms,
sticking her head up into the ship as the doorway parted and pulling herself up.
The bag came next and then she stayed crouched, hands on the floor, and peering
around in the dim light of the ship. She could hear the faint hum of the engine
and the air rushing through the ship’s ventilation. Immediately she could tell
that alterations had been made and old rattling, damaged parts had been
replaced for the ship’s innards to sound so smooth. She pushed the thought
aside and strained her ears for any other sounds: footsteps, voices, breathing.
She heard nothing and slowly stood upright.
    The ship was vacant. Everywhere she
looked she saw evidence of change. The walls were clean. The floors were swept.
The cargo hold had been halved and another room was between it and the engine.
The battle aegis and an extensive collection of firearms were inside but she
moved past them and into the engine room. Surprisingly, she felt cheated when
she looked over the repairs that had been denied to her so many times. Still,
there were at least three that she saw had been missed and were still in the
rigged state she had put them in. She hunkered down next to the engine and
assembled the rifle. When it was locked and loaded she made a final check over
the engine and then lay flat on her stomach. She waited.
    When the ship’s doors lowered,
there was the sound of one person’s footsteps but two voices. Their words were
muffled through the ships walls and their words were difficult to make out. One
man’s voice and a woman’s. Jess strained her ears and could still only hear one
person moving around the ship. The doors closed. She heard the voices in the
control room above her.
    “How long,” Jess heard Burke begin
to say, and then the rest was muffled.
    “Three days,” the woman replied,
louder and clearer than him. “That’s one less day than when you asked me
yesterday.”
    He responded. Jess couldn’t make it
out.
    “Only a little.”
    She stood slowly, carefully.