Page 56 of Skinwalker's Bane
* * * * *
There was only one day left in their night shift rotation, then Adam’s crew would be off for their five days. The Institute had pushed the rotations ahead a whole twenty-four hours to allow for the soiree, so what would have been their last night shift had moved to the night after the soiree.
That gave Adam the day to sleep and prepare. By rights, he should have gone back to the Beehive after the soiree, yet something had prodded him into taking the extra forty minutes to go out to the Table.
Who was he fooling? He’d wanted to sleep with Devin next to him. The warmth and softness of her body made his bed in the apartment feel cold and uncomfortable in comparison.
And like a fool, he’d stayed in her bed. Her scent had lingered long after she had slid out from under his arm and gone about her day. She had fallen in with the night rotation shift with barely a hiccup and seemed to be able to move about the house without making a sound.
Because the Palatine ran on a different day/night schedule from the main body of the ship, her house—just like the other houses in the Palatine—had plenty of light blocking measures to allow sleep when the daylights were overhead. Devin had programmed the AI to put the light blockers in place whenever Adam was in the house and on night rotation, which allowed him to sleep better in the dark and the silence than he ever achieved in the Beehive, when the sounds of commerce and people going about their day, and the trains rattling to a stop at the platform, kept him constantly hovering between sleep and wakefulness.
So it was very easy to linger where she had been lying.
Devin still wasn’t home when he forced himself to get ready for work and hail a taxiboat. He stood outside, watching the dayline draw nearer and the speck of a boat move away from the engine room dock and float down to where he was.
There were two other taxiboats floating along the invisible spine line of the rotunda, moving toward the engine room docks, too. Crew members, he suspected. Everyone else on the ship was heading for home.
Because he was already three-quarters of the way toward the back of the Palatine, Adam’s boat was the first to reach the engine room dock. He paid and went into the engine room section, where he could smell grease and hear the throb of the big engines through the walls themselves.
The locker room was empty when he stepped inside. He liked to arrive early. He moved around the bank of lockers in the middle of the room, heading for his, then halted.
The door of his locker stood open.
Coldness spilled into his belly. Moving slowly, he approached the locker, scanning the contents without moving anything. His suit, helmet, gloves and boots were there. His tool belt, too. On the shelf next to his helmet, above the suit, he could see the few personal items he kept in the locker were still there. They looked to be where he had left them the last time he had touched them, only he couldn’t really remember how he had left them. Itlookedright. He hadn’t deliberately memorized how he’d placed them, though.
He examined the palm lock on the door. It wasn’t broken and hadn’t been jimmied out, which was the quickest and easiest way to bust into a locker. Only, everyone who had access to the locker room was a mechanical engineer and a smart one, at that. They all had the capability to break into a locker and not leave a sign of the break in.
Except someone had very clearly left a message by leaving the locker door hanging wide open.
Protocols, rules and safety regulations flittered through Adam’s mind. His gut tightened even more. He left the locker room and locked it, then put a seal on it, so none of the crew could get in until he returned.
Then he went to the nearest public terminal and reached out to Haydn live.
Haydn was at home—he could see Noa putting together a meal in their little kitchenette, over Haydn’s shoulder.
After a quick greeting, Adam dropped the bad news on him. “Someone broke into my locker.”
Haydn swore. “Anything missing?”
“Not that I can see. I haven’t touched anything. Peter and his team will have to come and check the suit, though.”
Haydn nodded. “I’ll talk to Corin.” Corin and his crew had been on day shift and would have been the last ones to use the locker room. “You get Peter out there. Maybe the shift can be salvaged—at least part of it, anyway.”
Adam’s chest constricted. Nearly a whole shift would be lost because of this, including bonuses. “This is not good,” he murmured.
“Is Perez ready to lead a shift by herself?”
It was tempting to say yes, even without thinking about it. If the rest of the crew couldn’t get out onto the skin, with or without him, then they would lose their shift and their shift bonuses, too.
Regretfully, he shook his head. “She’s been sub-boss for less than a month. I haven’t even put her through leading while I’m there. Sorry, Haydn.”
Haydn shrugged. “I’d rather everyone go short a bit than risk putting you out there in a suit that might have been compromised. Talk to Peter, tell him I said drop everything.”
They disconnected and Adam punched in the Beehive’s code. Corin answered.
“I need Peter. It’s a work emergency,” Adam told him. Then a thought struck him. “Corin, was anything said about me during your shift today?”
Corin looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Funny you should ask. Yeah, they were laughing about you and the woman. The gorgeous one.”
