Captivate (Manipulate, Book 2)

Chapter 7

They were picked up less than two hours later by a rescue ship, just as Nat had assured the senator would happen. They were treated for smoke inhalation and minor burns, questioned exhaustively, and eventually Nat was allowed to shower and change out of her uniform that still reeked with smoke.

When she was clean, Nat put on an ill-fitting uniform, moving slowly and deliberately as she adjusted each button. This was the time when shock might set in, and she needed to stay alert and sharp. Her chest ached with every breath and occasionally an explosive cough ripped its way out. That was a small price to pay for surviving the explosion, though. When she’d first felt the shock of the explosions tearing through the space station, she’d been jolted out of a deep sleep. It had only taken moments for her to process what might have happened, and by then Akemi was commanding an evacuation.

Nat shivered at the memory, and used one of the rough Spo towels to dry her dripping hair before it drenched the back of her uniform. When she’d realized the space station was going, Nat’s first thought had been to get to Akemi.

She’d stumbled into the loud, smoky hall and only made it a few feet before Sam flew around the corner. His black eyes looked wild until he saw her.

“I was afraid you were caught in the first explosion,” he yelled over the blaring alarm. “Let’s go.”

“Akemi! We have to get her!”

He hadn’t argued with her. He probably realized at once that there was no way she would leave without her sister. That frantic scramble to the engine room and then to the escape pod had been one of the most awful twenty minutes of her life. The station had burned with a ferocity that amazed her.

Someone knocked at the door and Nat jumped out of her painful reverie. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Sam said. He opened the door, and slipped inside, letting the door slide shut behind him.

He also wore a badly fitted uniform. It stopped several inches short of his ankles and wrists, and he’d left it unbuttoned around his neck. Sam’s hair was growing back from when it had been shaved several months before, and it was finally starting to lay down on his head instead of standing straight up.

She and Sam had been working closely together since the trial, but they’d had very few private conversations. They talked constantly about humanity’s future, the Rik’s future, and the cadets’ future in countless meetings and press conferences and negotiations. But they hadn’t had a real conversation about themselves.

That first day she’d been so relieved the trial was successfully over, she didn’t even mind that she had no time to talk to Sam. Then she’d been whisked to the Spo medical quarters. A failed Rik procedure, a desperate fight, and oxygen deprivation had not left her in good shape. Plus, the Spo had wanted to do quite a few diagnostics, to make sure the Rik hadn’t irrevocably screwed up her brain when they tried to take her body. Her time in the infirmary stretched out and then Sam had had to go back to Earth to calm the situation, and she’d needed to stay with Akemi in the space station...

What with one thing and another, it had been two weeks before they really got to see each other, and when they did meet again, there were twelve Spo, three Rik, and thirty members of the press there as well. Not exactly a private reunion.

She had been alone with him since then, but there’d been a restraint between them. He’d been friendly, and he’d been available, but he hadn’t really tried to be more. Nat had wondered if he was waiting for her, or if he wasn’t sure of his feelings anymore.

When she’d seen him fly around the corner of the burning space station, panic on his face.... But that brought her mind back to the explosion and the fire, and Nat tensed up again.