“That wasn't me,” Leo said. “It was Sofie.” He paused. “I'm going to try and get hold of Ruanne. Get her to help you. She can put you on the next freighter back to Garmen.”
“Ruanne Lex?” Sebastian bent closer to the screen.
Leo gave a short nod.
“Far as I know, Ruanne Lex was murdered by the Cores six months ago, because she refused to hand over her assets to them.”
Dee drew in a sharp breath. She should have thought of that. If all the businesses had been taken back by the Cores, why would Ruanne's be any different?
The woman was the largest independent on Lassa, and she and Leo had had a longstanding cooperative relationship.
Both cheated the Cores' system as much as possible, and helped each other where they could.
“Did you speak to Ruanne's captain on the Deck before the Caruso attacked?” Leo asked her.
She shook her head. She'd been looking for Vur when the shooting started. “But we've been in touch with some of Ruanne's people in the last six months.” She'd spoken to one of them herself.
“I've gotten written messages from Ruanne.” Leo leaned back in his seat. “They didn't mention any of this, which seems unlikely. And one of the messages has been within the last two months.”
“So that begs the question.” Dee glanced over at Sebastian. “Who have we been talking to?”
Chapter 11
He was behaving like an asshole, but Sebastian looked at Leo Gaudier's slick, handsome appearance, and wanted to punch the bastard.
He didn't like the proprietary way he addressed Dee, and he didn't like the way the man looked at him with deep suspicion.
“Did they take over Ruanne's business, or close it down?” Dee asked him, and he forced himself to put his animus aside.
“They took it over. They kept everything that was making money running.”
“So you were talking to the Lassian Cores, then. We all were.” Dee's face was grim as she spoke to Leo.
Leo sucked in a breath and scowled, his eyes cold and angry. “Dee, I want you out of there.”
“Send the VSC, Leo. There's a population in crisis here. Even more than on Garmen. People are literally starving to death. And I'm an eye witness to the fact the Caruso are on-planet.”
“I'll tell the Arkhorans, but they're not the the Verdant String planet with jurisdiction over Lassa. That's Bodivas.” Leo leaned forward on his elbows, his face taking up the whole screen. “According to my connection in the Arkhoran Special Forces, Bodivas is sending a warship to Lassa right now. Is there a way I can get in touch with you later, so I can give them your coordinates?”
“I don't think so.” Dee glanced at him for confirmation. “When we get to the forest, we'll be safe, but we'll be out of the loop.”
“I'll make a plan to get you to a comm unit.” This wasn't Dee's fight, and if there was a chance he could get her out of here, he'd take it. “I'll try to make contact in a couple of days, when the Bodivas warship has had a chance to get here.”
Dee shook her head. “That would put us both in serious danger. Where would you even find a comm station in the forest?”
Sebastian met her gaze. “There’re a few Cores security facilities scattered along the pipelines.” He knew--once upon a time he'd worked in them.
Dee narrowed her eyes. “And I bet they're guarded to the hilt. Give Leo a place where it will be safe for a ship to land, and I can make my way there. Say in three days.”
“The closest place is more than three days away. You're looking at at least a week until you reach open ground. The forest is too dense.” Sebastian rubbed a frustrated hand over his short hair. “I don't think you'd make it on your own, and I don't have the time to go with you, or the people to spare to send someone in my place. Either the Bodivas land at the Cores hover base, or you take a smaller hover up to meet them. And right now, that's impossible. I don't have access to a hover anymore. The one I had is floating off the Felicitos Deck.” He hadn't even thought about how he was going to explain to Seres that the small freighter he had borrowed to chase Rina Fattal was floating around Garmen's nearspace after the Caruso attack.
“Then bribe someone,” Leo said.
“I can't.” He looked over at Dee, held her gaze as he tried to push away the sick, hopeless feeling that would paralyze him if he let it. “We don't have money left to feed ourselves now, let alone pay a big bribe. We gambled everything on getting to Rina Fattal, and we lost.”
“Then you find a way to contact me in three days.” Leo had gone back to cold and hard.
Dee opened her mouth to say something, but Sebastian heard a voice just outside the door.
He reached over, switched off the screen, and grabbed her forearm, pulling her with him so they ended up flush against the wall beside the door.
It opened, and the office worker walked in, still talking on his comm set; unaware and blind to the world around him.
Sebastian slid his hand down Dee's arm, closed his fingers around hers, and then when the man had almost reached his desk he tugged her out into the passage.
Sebastian sensed movement as the man turned, but they were already a few steps away from his door, headed for the lifts.
“Good ears,” Dee murmured. “Fast moves.” There was approval in her voice. She threaded her fingers through his more fully, and squeezed.
He hadn't been happy in a long time, but, he realized with a ripple of shock, he felt close to it right now.
It was ridiculous. They were playing a game here, and none of this was real. And yet, because he'd had so little joy recently, he found he held on to it anyway.
Sebastian led them through the darkening streets of Dar Raca, keeping to the back ways.
Below the canopy of trees were lower, single and double story buildings that ran in a long, meandering line from west to east and Sebastian was leading them west, where the last, dark orange light of the day lit the sky.
Fluffy had fallen asleep in the bag when they'd left the apartment, but Dee felt her stir and then pop her head out the top as strange birds began calling from the trees as the darkness settled in, and insects started up a whirring sound that seemed to come from all around them.
“Did you see those guards?” she asked him. “Down the passageway?”
He nodded. “They've got someone or something down there. No question.”
“I wonder--”
“Trouble.” Sebastian's words were low and clipped, and as he said it, she saw for herself Cores guards turning the corner up ahead, coming their way.
“Won't they pass us by?” They weren't doing anything suspicious, after all.
He gave a tiny shake of his head. “I wouldn't count on it.”
He was right that the two men heading toward them seemed to be focused on them, and then Dee saw one look down at a screen and then back up at them.
They weren't just doing rounds. They were hunting.
She looked for a way out, saw the narrow gap between two low slung buildings made of the crisp white material everything here seemed to be constructed with.
She took a shallow, quick breath, and then gave a low, husky laugh. “Oh, all right then,” she said, tugging Sebastian between the buildings. As soon as they were out of sight, she gave a loud giggle. “Run,” she hissed, and took off, ducking around the back of one of the buildings. From inside the bag, she thought she heard Fluffy give a strange chortle of delight.
Sebastian overtook her, turned the next corner, and she almost ran into him as she found him stopped and facing a dead end.
A white wall blocked their way, a blue glow emanating from the top of it, and beyond it, away to the left, she noticed what looked like a massive screen which faced into the forest.
“What's the glow on top?” She measured the height, looked for hand and footholds.
They could maybe get over it with a little luck.
“You don't want to touch it. Chemical compound that burns through skin and bone.”
Right. They weren't going over the wall. And she could hear the pounding of boots headed their way.
She set her pack down at her feet.
“Well then, big boy.” She crooked her finger. Leaned back against the building behind her. “Let's make it real.”
Chapter 12
Dee watched him with eyes that dared him, that asked him what they had to lose.
And even though his training, and every sensible, logical part of him, screamed to stand ready for the guards who he could hear running in their direction, he stepped up to her.
She lifted her face to his, slid her arms around him as he backed her flush against the cool, smooth finish of the wall behind her.
He bent his head, his mouth almost brushing hers.
“Real, remember?” She whispered the words, then rose a little, nibbled on his lips.
The sensation slammed through him, almost blanking his brain as he pulled her hard against him, slid his tongue between her lips as her mouth opened beneath his.
She arched against him as he vaguely noted the guards racing around the corner, gasping for breath.
“Told you,” one of the guards huffed to the other.
Dee tilted her head back, to break the kiss, and he couldn't help himself, he bent with her, keeping their lips fused, unwilling to break their connection.
She raised her hands, cupped his face, and smiled against his mouth.
Then she turned her head to the guards, so his lips were on the soft skin of her cheek. “Sorry, boys, this is a private party.”
She extended an arm in their direction, made a shooing motion with her fingers.
Then she turned back to Sebastian, anchoring those fingers in his short hair as she got impossibly closer.
One of the guards cleared his throat. “I'm afraid your father--”
She made a sound of frustration, turned to them again, while Sebastian got himself back under control.
“We were just out to get something to eat. It's at least two hours until I've got to be at the function my father has ordered me to attend, and I haven't eaten in nearly a full day. This,” she twirled her hand between herself and Sebastian, “was just a delicious little side trip before we found a place we liked.”
She straightened back from the wall, hooked an arm around Sebastian's waist, and picked up her pack.
Sebastian saw it move a little, but in the gloom of the alleyway, he couldn't see Fluffy poking out the top.
“You said you knew a good place.” She was looking up at him. “Somewhere real and gritty.”
She was setting it up so he could take her somewhere the gen-pop would go, not the Cores. It would help keep her under the radar a bit longer while they worked a new way out of this, because these guards were not going to leave them now.
He said nothing, just gave a curt nod, and walked straight for the guards.
They eyed him with dislike and what he guessed was disdain, but then, he felt the same about them. He just hid it better.
He'd been taking them toward the gen-pop end of Dar Raca when they'd run, and he did know a restaurant nearby that served food that was traditionally from Bodivas, the closest Verdant String planet to Lassa. Even though it wasn't particularly expensive, it was out of the reach of most gen-pop now, though, so the gritty and real descriptors most likely no longer applied.
Still, that made it more likely to be a place Rina Fattal would frequent, not less.
He stepped a little away from Dee, grabbed her hand rather than be constrained by her arm around his waist if he needed to defend them.
She laced her fingers through his, and while he knew it was for show, he let himself enjoy the feeling.
When you lived as close to the edge as he did these days, you took what you could and held onto it with both hands.
Up ahead, the little place he was taking them to was lit up, but quiet still, because the sun had only just gone down.
He bent his head, put his lips near her ear. “We might have a problem paying for the meal. I spent my last ports buying supplies for the freighter we took to Garmen.”
“As it happens, I found some ports in Rina Fattal's bedroom suite on the cruiser.” She turned to whisper her answer in his ear, and her lips brushed his skin.
He had to fight the shiver that wanted to run through him.
“Well, then.” He held the door to the restaurant open for her, let it swing shut in the guards' faces as he followed her in. “Let's eat.”
Sebastian ate with the single-minded focus of someone who hadn't had a decent meal in far too long.
She enjoyed watching him as she sampled the aromatic traditional dishes of Bodivas, like nothing she'd ever tasted before.
The bowls of colorful food suited the warm, tropical air of Dar Raca and the calls of the birds coming from the trees.
The guards who'd tracked them down and followed them inside the restaurant sat at a nearby table and looked far more relaxed than they had before as they ate a meal as well. She guessed their good mood was because they could charge the meal to Hanran Fattal.
“What was that screen I saw when we were in the alley?” She kept her voice low, because Rina Fattal would sure know what it was.
“When the Cores took control of all the independent businesses six months ago, they fired everyone, and each day, whoever wants work has to go stand in front of the screen and see what jobs are available that day.”
“They turned everyone in gen-pop into a casual worker?”
“And they offer a rate of pay that's just short of nothing.”
She could see even talking about it was making him angry.
“Even the little they offer is enough to cause near riots as people vie for the jobs, and sometimes it ends with the guards firing their weapons into the crowd.” His jaw clenched, and then he leaned back in his chair and scooped up more food.
“What about the Cores businesses? Are the workers there still full-time employees.”
He gave a nod. “Wouldn't do to have strangers come in every day. They vet their workers and they pay them more than they're giving the others. Most of the permanent workers can afford to live in Dar Raca itself. Everyone else has been forced into the forests.”
He hesitated, as if to say something else, and she waited him out.
“The thing is, one of the resistance members worked for the independent contractor that was paid to get the screen up and running. She's set things up so that every day, she adds some extra workers to the schedule. Not enough to make them suspicious, but more than they actually asked for.”
She grinned. “Now that sounds similar to something we were doing on Garmen. Tipping the scales in our favor.”
He mirrored her smile and when she bit into a tiny pastry, his gaze moved to her mouth before lifting up to meet hers again.
It felt as if the air between them was full of static, and it was only when someone left the restaurant, banging the door behind them, that he looked away and went back to scooping up tender strips of meat with thin, aromatic bread.
“You're a good kisser,” she said.
He choked, and then flashed another look at her, and she guessed he was wondering how much of it had been real, how much of it was for show.
Theoretically it was all for show, because they wouldn't have been locked together, tasting each other, if they hadn't needed to look like lovers. But that wasn't to say she hadn't enjoyed the hell out of it.
“I'd do it again, given the chance. Without an audience.”
He paused, a sliver of meat pinched between bread just short of his lips. “Is that so?” His face was completely serious.
Little crackles of desire ran up her arms, and her blood seemed to slow, running thick and heavy in her veins.
He frowned at her and she sucked in a breath.
Since she'd met him, that face had made her want to do the verbal equivalent of mussing his hair, and she gave in to temptation again.
“Oh, yes.” She dre
w the words out.
He had difficulty swallowing his mouthful, his gaze lifting to meet hers.
“I got the sense you wouldn't say no, either.” She grinned at him.
He shook his head, put both hands on the table beside his empty plate, and leaned back.
“Full?”
“Yes.” He looked over at her plate. “You haven't finished.”
“I can put away a lot, but not this much. Even Fluffy's defeated.” She'd been secretly passing Fluffy tidbits throughout the meal, and the talu was now curled up, asleep, in the bag.
Dee tilted the plate to him in an unspoken offer, but he shook his head with regret.
“Can't.” He eyed the food, though. “Feels wrong to leave it, but I just can't.”
“The staff won't let it go to waste.” Of that, she was sure. When they'd first sat down, she saw their server's surprise at the sight of Sebastian.
He'd recognized him.
If he was part of the resistance, she bet the leftover food would find its way to the mouths of those who needed it.
Sebastian had said nothing about the server, although Dee was sure the recognition was mutual.
He leaned across the table, took her hands in his own, and she leant forward, so their faces were so close together, she could see the warm gold flecked through his dark brown eyes.
They were focused and all business now.
“Time to pay and run,” he murmured. “Give me some ports and while I settle the bill, you get out the door and get out of here. I'll block them, give you some time. They're only interested in you. Hide, and then come back here in an hour. I'll be waiting.”
She nodded, reached into the bag's side pocket and pulled out a heap of ports, dropped them into his hand.
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