Chapter 4

Chapter Four

“ Y ou’re saying that all of the wire is missing?” Molly couldn’t believe it. No, she could believe it but she really didn’t want to. One of her displays lay in a collapsed heap in the far corner of the room. Her only consolation was that this time it wasn’t the tree.

“I’m sorry,” Qavis, one of her best workers, a Jaaxian, replied. “It looks like most of it was removed sometime last night.”

Removed. Stolen. And this time there was no way it was a misunderstanding. A large amount of metal wiring had been removed from an already constructed decoration, something Molly was certain had been in one piece the day before. “We have a thief,” she muttered, bristling with anger that was barely caged by the time Tav joined her and Qavis.

“A thief?” he asked, looking from her to Qavis.

For a moment Molly wondered if she should drag Tav into this. He wasn’t a part of her problems, he’d just been willing to go along when she conscripted him, and his kisses gave her the promise of something more. But the concerned look on his face went a long way to alleviating her worries. This might have been her problem, but he was willing to step in and help her deal with it.

“A thief,” she confirmed. “It started with small things, but it’s escalated since then.”

“Have you reported it to the security team?” he asked.

She let out a huff of breath and curled her fingers into fists. “Yes, for all the good that’s done me. Apparently it wasn’t worth investigating when it was just small time shit. I can’t say that they instilled a great deal of confidence in me.” What was she supposed to do? Molly had the horrible image of arriving for the party in less than a week and finding everything gone, stolen away by some kind of space Grinch who was unwilling to learn about the magic of Christmas—winter, whatever. “We have more chance of finding this thief ourselves than trusting station security to do it.”

“Okay, how do we do that?” Tav surprised her with his readiness to dive in. Who was this guy? He showed up on one day and became her perfect helper, and then the next kissed her breathless, and now he was ready to take the space station apart to find the thief on her word alone. He was almost too good to be true, and she might’ve been suspicious that he was the culprit trying to cover for himself if she hadn’t known that he had only just arrived on the station. Even thinking that felt wrong and Molly was glad to dismiss the tiny inkling of doubt.

“You’re not going to tell me to mind my own business? To let the people whose job it is to find bad guys do it?” Molly hadn’t had many boyfriends—not that Tav was her boyfriend or anything. But any of her relationships that were more than just casual flings tended to self-destruct when the people she was with didn’t like her tendency to try and handle her problems by herself. And yeah, she had gotten into trouble before by not being as cautious as she should have, but life was short and she wasn’t going to waste it waiting for other people to catch up to her. Knowing that Tav was already going her speed made her smile on the inside, even as she was utterly pissed by what was going on around her.

Tav studied her for several seconds, his dark eyes narrowed. She could feel his gaze like a caress and wanted to lean into him, wanted to feel his hands running against her naked skin. But that was for later, if they could find the time. Not while a thief was on the loose, and her party had to be planned. “Those people aren’t doing their jobs, you just said. I am here to help you in any way you need.”

“Who are you?” He seemed like some sort of gift handed down from a benevolent being, maybe even Santa Claus. Was it Christmas Day on Earth? It was hard to keep track of her home calendar when she was not on the planet. “I think you’re too good to be true.”

Tav grinned at her, a wicked smirk that tied her insides up in knots and made her want to forget about the trouble at hand. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready,” he said cryptically.

“Am I not ready now?” She couldn’t help but grin back, her suddenly soured mood improved by his teasing.

“Not quite.”

They could stand there all day bantering back and forth about what ever idea Tav had in mind, but there was a party to plan and a thief to catch and Molly couldn’t let her responsibilities fall by the wayside just because a cute boy was flirting with her. “Go put those muscles to work over in the other room and meet me back here in an hour. I need to give the troops their marching orders and then we can go see what the hell is going on with my supplies. How does that sound?”

Tav nodded and leaned forward as if he were going to give her a kiss before leaving her to her duties, but he pulled back before he reached her, as if remembering that they were in public.

To hell with that. Molly curled her fingers in the collar of Tav’s shirt and pulled him forward, sealing her mouth over his for a quick and hard kiss that spoke of the promises that they made with every look and every touch, even if no whisper of the words had made it past their lips. When she let go, Tav’s eyes flashed red for a moment before settling back to black and he rubbed his thumb over his thick bottom lip as if he were imprinting the taste of her on his body.

“One hour, denya, and then you are mine.”

Molly shivered as she watched him go and wondered just how much of her heart and her body she was going to give up to that man before they were separated forever, making their own journeys through the vast reaches of space.

Molly quickly realized that she and Tav weren’t going to get any investigation done during the day. She didn’t have any clues to follow, other than the fact that things kept disappearing, and there were no leads. The fact that all of her sleuthing techniques came from the mystery novels she’d read on her long interstellar flights and not through any actual investigative work was irrelevant. She and Tav were going to find who did this and save the winter party.

Not that it was in any danger, not yet. Everything that had been taken so far was a nuisance. But she planned to have a gift giveaway for the kids who came to the party and there would be food for everyone. If the presents and the meals went missing, her name would be mud on Honora Station and she couldn’t imagine how far that news could travel.

So she had to find out what was going on and put a stop to it before things got worse. Once they found out who was responsible, they could go to station security with their evidence and maybe this time something would actually come of it.

But even worse than not having a trail to follow was that when the hour was up and Tav came to find her, Molly was buried in work. Half of her workers seemed to be missing, many of them having departed the ship on various shuttles. Work was moving at a glacial pace and she feared that if she took off, everything would grind to a complete halt. So she told Tav to give her another hour and to keep his eyes open for anything suspicious.

And when that second hour went by and he came back, it felt like only a few minutes had passed. Molly slumped against a pallet stacked high with supplies and gave Tav a beseeching look. “I might have been a bit overconfident this morning.”

He stepped close and cupped her cheek, his look both tender and mixed with the promise of heat. “Tell me what you need, denya, and I’ll see to it.”

Denya. He’d said that word before, and it wrapped around Molly’s heart and squeezed tight as if it meant something important. She’d never heard it before, and usually her translator was good at picking up alien words. “What does that mean?” she asked, giving herself this one moment to ignore the pile of responsibilities waiting for her.

Tav took a deep breath as if he was ready to dive off a high board, but then he let it out and offered a small smile. “It means that you’re special. So let me help. What do you need?”

“Minions.” The word slipped out and Molly felt her cheeks heat. She’d jokingly thought of her workers like that before, but it seemed insulting to call them that out loud. She cleared her throat. “Helpers,” she corrected. “I need more people to get the finishing touches set up. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to hire a guard to stay here all night and make sure nothing else goes missing.”

Tav nodded and brushed his lips against her forehead before backing up. “Minions I can give you. I have a ship full of them.”

She wanted to hug him and cry for joy, but even as she was happy with the reprieve, a cloud hung over her head. “I barely know you, and already I’m not sure how I’m going to manage when you’re gone.”

Tav studied her for several moments as if he were frozen in place. “Let’s not deal with our tomorrows yet,” he finally said. “I will return shortly.”

And he did. It was like a miracle. Tav came back with more than twenty people, some of whom were part of his crew and others his passengers. They got to work immediately and the twenty ton weight on her shoulders was lifted like it had never been there, leaving Molly time to look at her stores and pinpoint when exactly the thefts had started so she could get an idea of how to stop them. Tav was beside her the entire time.

Several hours of looking at inventories later, Tav spoke as if the time hadn’t passed. “You said you should hire a guard. What if you didn’t?”

Molly stretched, her back popping, protesting the way she’d been hunching over. “To see if anyone tries anything tonight?”

He nodded. “Whoever it is, they’ve escalated from some easy to move items to bulkier things that may be harder to purloin from better guarded areas of the station. So what if we leave some more piping out and see who comes by?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny disk that sat like a dot in the palm of his hand. “This little tracker might even be able to tell us where they’re taking things.”

“How did you get that? Isn’t that like spy stuff?” Was Tav a secret agent for some empire out there? Was she seriously crushing on some dangerous player who could get her mixed up in interstellar intrigue? How cool!

“No,” Tav replied, immediately dashing her hopes. “We tag some of our more crucial, movable items on the ship in case they go missing. I can monitor where this thing goes from my tablet.”

Maybe it wasn’t interstellar intrigue, but Molly decided not to hold that against him. “You’re a genius.”

But though they had a plan, they couldn’t put it in place until most of the workers were gone. Molly knew that none of the people from Tav’s ship were her thief, but she couldn’t say the same for anyone else working for her. She wanted to trust her people, but the fact was, she didn’t actually know them. They’d agreed to work for her for the meager wages she could offer, and some just for the break in the monotony of life in the station. It didn’t mean that any of them would pass up the opportunity to make off with unguarded loot.

Tav had only brought the one tracker, so when the room was clear he and Molly did their best to make one pile of piping look the easiest to rob. It was similar to what made up the Christmas tree, and for added incentive she placed a roll of wiring similar to what had been taken from the wall display earlier that day. She was tempted to put a bow on top and a sign that said FREE TO A GOOD HOME, but figured that might be a little obvious.

And then it was time to wait. Whether items were walking away at dinner time or only slightly before breakfast, Molly didn’t know, but she and Tav weren’t about to retreat and wait to see what happened in the morning. They found an abandoned room, little more than a closet, and sat there, cuddled up close and hovering over a tablet running a surveillance program. Excitement hummed in her veins. They were so close she could reach out and grab it, and Molly was sure that by the end of the night, her theft problems would be solved.