“Not exactly, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Well, this will surprise you,” she said, staring at the door and seeing the hard planes of Doran’s abs instead. “I checked the outgoing transmissions, and there’s nothing there. I even rebooted the system. Nobody’s made a call since last week.”
“Huh. Maybe we were wrong about Kane.”
“I was thinking,” she said. “There’s one possibility we overlooked. The Enforcers might’ve found your ship through the tracking system. That would explain why they showed up right after you powered on the navigator.”
“But to do that, they had to know exactly which ship they were looking for. My dad didn’t even tell me that information.”
“They probably seized his records during the investigation.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Doran said, and then sheets rustled in the background, along with the creaking of mattress springs. “It’s safe to turn around now, by the way.”
“Face the wall,” she told him.
“Why?”
“So I can admire the back of your head,” she said sarcastically. “Why do you think?”
“Oh, come on. I’ve seen you undressed.”
“That was when you were sleeping on the floor. Want to revisit that arrangement?”
He grumbled a few colorful words and flopped onto his side.
As soon as his back was turned, Solara wiped her clammy palms on the blanket and released a shaky breath. She’d dreaded this moment ever since they left the cave, where she’d awoken so wrapped up in Doran that she was literally on top of him.
He’d gloated about that, too.
She double-checked the bolt before turning off the light and shedding her pants. The sheets were warmer than usual when she slid between them, already gathering heat from the human “furnace” lying inches away from her. She felt his body radiating energy, not near enough to touch but too close for comfort.
“Scoot over,” she whispered.
The mattress shook with his movement.
“A little more,” she said.
“If I get any closer to the wall,” he hissed, “I’ll have to buy it dinner.”
She grabbed her pillow and wedged it between them. “There, that’s better.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“All right, then,” he whispered, and she could sense him smiling. “This time, try not to mount me in my sleep.”
She kicked him in the shin while her face went hot. “Keep joking, and I’ll make sure you don’t wake up in the morning.”
“Good night, Solara,” he crooned.
“Sleep tight,” she told him. “Way over there.”
Doran didn’t sleep with girls, not if he could help it.
Years of trial and error had taught him that dating was like chemistry: Some elements weren’t safe to mix—overnighters and fooling around, for example. Put those two together and expect “fun” to turn into “feelings,” right before it all blew up in your face.
But even he could get used to this.
Every morning for the past two weeks, he’d awoken to Solara’s bare arm draped over his chest and her breath caressing his skin. It didn’t matter how far he backed toward the wall. She would inevitably kick off the covers and gravitate toward him in nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of white cotton panties that looked surprisingly hot on her. When morning came, she’d blink awake and scowl at him, as if he’d chased her into a cuddle instead of the other way around. Then he’d smile and point at the vacant stretch of mattress behind her and tease, What’s wrong? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed again? Which never failed to make her whole face turn red.
All in all, it was an excellent way to start the day.
He particularly enjoyed using the end of her braid to tickle her awake. This always earned him a smack on the chest, but it was worth it. And because today was a special occasion, she might not punish him.
Moving as little as possible, he reached behind the pillow to retrieve the end of her braid, then swept it down the middle of her face, holding in his laughter when her nose twitched like a rabbit’s. She groaned and scrubbed a fist over the spot before snapping awake and moving to strike.
He caught her hand in midair and said, “Remember what today is?”
She gasped, teeth flashing in an instant smile. “Shore leave!”
“That’s right,” he said, figuring it was safe to release her. “Not even you can be mad.”
Firing her usual glare, she scooted back to her own side of the bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Unless we have to leave early, like on Pesirus. Then the whole crew is dead to me.”
“Hey, I did my part. Nobody’s looking for me here.”
Last week, Doran had placed a few strategic transmissions to his friends back home, telling them—after they’d sworn to secrecy, of course—that he was on his way back to Earth to hide out in his father’s lake house. He’d figured at least one of them would blow the whistle, and they had come through like champs. Now the Enforcers were scouring the wrong end of the galaxy for him, and hopefully Demarkus was, too. Captain Rossi had pulled a clever bait and switch of his own, using a fake ship name to schedule a cargo pickup at a planet called Cargill. And because the Daeva had no way of tracking them to the settlement, he’d awarded the crew a day of freedom. More than anything, Doran needed a temporary distraction from his worries. He’d been looking forward to this.
“So why are we still in bed?” Solara asked.
“Speak for yourself.”
Doran playfully shoved her face in the pillow while leaping off the mattress. A race ensued, in which he beat her to the washroom and back to their quarters to dress. It was neck and neck for a moment, but he pulled into the lead and reached the galley just ahead of her.
The clomp of their footsteps drew Kane’s attention. He turned from the steaming vat of porridge on the stove and grinned at them. “That excited for my breakfast, huh? I knew I had skills.”
Doran returned the smile without having to fake it. He hadn’t uncovered any information to implicate Kane, so it looked like the Enforcers really had used the tracking system to find him. It felt good to let go of all that resentment, or at least shift it to the right people.
Cassia shared a knowing look with Renny, who sat beside her, nursing a cup of coffee and feeding Acorn a bean. “You’ve got skills, all right,” she quipped. “Mostly for being an—” She cut off when the captain hobbled into the room, then finished with a stiff smile. “Amazing cook. How do you make the porridge taste so sweet?”
“With an extra scoop of love, of course,” Kane forced through his teeth.
Captain Rossi barked a laugh and lowered onto the opposite bench. He eyed the ship hands while massaging his bad knee. “You can cut the act. I won’t revoke your leave privileges for fighting.”
Both blonds sighed with relief, apparently exhausted from ten seconds of being nice to each other. But their smiles turned genuine when they shared a glance. The promise of fresh air and wide-open spaces seemed to hang in the air like a second sun, lifting everyone’s mood. Even the captain had an extra pep in his step this morning…or rather in his limp.
“We’ve been in a pressure cooker lately,” he continued. “So I want you to blow off some steam.” Lifting a knobby hand, he clarified, “Quiet steam—the kind that floats up from a boiling pot, not the kind that comes screeching out of a teakettle. Keep your heads covered, and don’t draw too much attention. That means no getting locked up, and no passing out naked in the middle of the town churchyard. Understood?”
Renny chuckled behind his coffee cup while both ship hands turned the color of ripe raspberries. They nodded, gazing into their laps.
“It’s none of my business how you spend your wages,” Rossi continued, “but remember that we’re lying low, and that means fewer jobs.”
“No worries, Cap,” Kane said. “I’m only taking two chips with me
.”
“Smart move,” the captain told him. “We’re not in the tourist ring anymore, so watch your coin purse, and don’t bring anything with you that you don’t want stolen. We’ll meet back here at sunrise.”
Cassia gasped with excitement. “We get all night?”
“You’ve earned it.” He pointed his crutch at the stove. “Now, finish your breakfast and go have fun. I hear there’s a harvest festival in town. Might be a good place to start.”
After that, bowls and spoons went flying in a blur of activity, and in less than ten minutes, Doran and Solara led the way toward town with Cassia and Kane walking closely behind, bickering about whose turn it was to do laundry in the morning.
The crunch of dried grass created a lively percussion as Doran lifted his hands and face in worship to the sun’s rays. It was fall here, and the crisp breeze carried hints of wood smoke and kettle corn—autumn’s signature scent no matter what planet he visited. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was home, tailgating at a college football game with his friends. But those memories made him ache with longing and stirred up fears that he might never return to that life. So he zipped his borrowed jacket tightly over his chest, tugged down his knitted cap, and gazed toward the festival in the town square.
Right away, he noticed the no-frills architecture and the absence of flashing billboards that set this place apart from the planets within the tourist ring. Most technology was manufactured on Earth, so by default, the farther removed the settlement, the more primitive it became. Cargill was located in the third ring, mostly producing grain. Next would come the ore mines, then the prison settlements, and finally his father’s coordinates in the outer realm.
Doran had never been to the fringe, but he’d heard the settlers there farmed crops by hand. He couldn’t fathom living that way. Then again, he’d never experienced the overcrowded slums of Houston, so he really had no right to judge. These people hadn’t done anything to deserve their fate. They worked as hard as he did, probably harder, because they had to scrape for the basic things he took for granted. He glanced at Solara and wondered if she would be happy on Vega.
The townspeople here seemed content with their simple lives, chatting animatedly as they browsed the vendor tables lining their crudely paved streets. A group of children chased one another in a clumsy game of tag, tripping over their own feet in overly large shoes probably handed down from older siblings. It reminded Doran that he needed to buy clothes to replace the coveralls he’d lost in the fire.
“I’ll meet up with you,” he told the group, and then strode toward a table piled high with secondhand garments.
Just half a fuel chip bought him three pairs of pants, several pullover shirts, a parcel of socks and shorts, and a knapsack to carry it all in. A bargain, he learned, because Spaulding Fuel cost twice as much on this planet than on Obsidian. Despite the sudden increase in his currency’s value, Doran frowned as he walked away. He couldn’t see any reason for the steep markup. Fuel cost more to transport to remote planets, but not that much more.
He found his friends playing carnival games in a field behind the town hall. Kane held a rifle stock in the bend of his shoulder and fired lasers at moving holographic targets in the air. Judging by Cassia’s laughter, he hadn’t landed a shot yet.
“It’s busted or something,” Kane muttered, scrutinizing the rifle’s eyepiece.
“If by ‘it,’ you mean your head,” Cassia said, “then I agree.”
The carny running the booth, a stout man with a barbell piercing in his lower lip and the words BORN TO KILL tattooed across his neck, slapped a palm on the counter and growled, “Ain’t nothing wrong with my equipment. Let the lady try.”
Kane made a show of glancing around the field. “Lady? I don’t see a lady here.”
“You scatweed,” Cassia said, snatching the rifle. She jabbed him in the belly with it, then raised the weapon smoothly toward the targets and fired. In response, a bubble exploded into a twinkling shower of fireworks. “See?” she announced, and shoved the gun back at him. “The only thing that’s busted is your aim.”
“You two are such easy marks,” Solara said, burying her hand in a bag of roasted nuts. “The rifle’s laser isn’t calibrated to match the targets.” She pointed a nut at the carny before tossing it into her mouth. “He’s triggering the hits with a foot pedal. It’s the oldest trick in the book.”
The carny gave her a glare that would melt steel. “Are you accusing me of thievery?”
Solara shrugged. “Everyone knows these games are rigged.”
“Rigged?” asked a new voice from behind.
When Doran spun around, his gaze landed on the hardest-looking woman he’d ever seen—not so much unattractive as lethal. He caught himself drawing back. At six feet tall and about thirty years old, she had a striking face with regal cheekbones and an ice-cold smile that would send any lucid man running for his life in the opposite direction.
“I provide the finest traveling amusements in this system,” the woman said. “Anyone who says otherwise is attacking my livelihood, and that of my employees.” Her upper lip curled, revealing an incisor so sharp that she must have filed it. “Do you know what the punishment is for slander, little girl? I could have your tongue slit for this.”
Solara stepped forward with fire in her gaze, but Doran put her behind him and said, “She didn’t mean anything by it.”
The woman’s frigid blue eyes narrowed to slits. “That girl accused my worker of tampering with the game. Now you’re saying she didn’t mean it?”
“No, she didn’t,” Doran told her.
“Then she disparages reputations for fun? I don’t see how that’s any better.”
“We don’t want any trouble. Let’s just—”
“What you want,” she interrupted, “is irrelevant. You’ve got trouble. All that remains to be seen is how you’ll pay for it.”
Doran was considering whether he should grab Solara’s hand and run when Kane slung the laser rifle casually over one shoulder and sauntered up to the woman.
“You’ll have to forgive my cousin,” he said in a voice that dripped honey. He tapped his forehead and let loose that punch-worthy crooked grin of his. “She’s a bit touched by God, as my mum used to say. Never been the same since the black fever of…” He paused, tipping his head in wonder at the woman.
“What are you staring at?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” Kane said. “It’s just…there’s a place on Louron, my home world, where the river meets the sea in a shallow bank of pristine white sand. When the sun hits it just right, the water turns the most incredible shade of blue. It’s almost too beautiful to bear.” He reached toward her face, then pulled back. “I never thought I’d see that color again, until a moment ago, when I looked into your eyes.”
While Doran suppressed the urge to vomit, the woman lifted a hand to her heart and blushed—actually blushed—as a soft gasp parted her lips.
She was really falling for this tripe?
“You’re breathtaking,” Kane whispered. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so.”
The woman flapped a dismissive hand.
“You might slap me for this,” Kane murmured, “but I have to tell you…” Then he pressed his mouth to her ear and said something that made her giggle harder than a freshman at a slumber party.
Doran took that as his cue to make an exit.
He retreated a pace, and then another, while towing Solara along with him. Once they reached a safe distance, he flagged Cassia over, and the three of them made their way quickly to the other end of the festival grounds.
“So much for lying low,” Solara said into her bag of nuts.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cassia told her. “Kane could seduce the wings off a bird. It’s his one useful talent.”
“Does he do that often?” Solara asked.
Cassia laughed while helping herself to a handful of nuts. “He’s been charming his way out of trouble sin
ce we were kids.”
That caught Doran’s attention. “You grew up together?”
“Yes, but not on Louron. He was lying about that.”
“Where, then?”
The shift in her expression warned that she would dodge the question, which she did with a flick of her wrist. “Just a small colony in another sector. You’ve probably never heard of it.”
Worried she might shut down completely, Doran decided not to press for the planet’s name. Instead, he asked, “How’d you end up on the Banshee?”
He noticed that Cassia started rubbing her throat, but she dropped her hand when she saw him watching. Then she fixed her gaze on the ground. “Things are complicated at home. We’ll go back someday, when it all dies down.”
Her typically sharp tone was full of so much sadness that Doran couldn’t bring himself to ask any more questions. Something terrible had obviously prompted her to leave home, and prying information out of her felt like kicking a puppy.
They wandered in silence back to the town square to browse the vendor tables. Cassia’s mood brightened when Kane caught up with them.
“So, did you make a new friend?” she asked with a teasing grin.
Kane wrinkled his nose and stopped to spit on the street. “Yeah. A friend who chews hash leaves. She kissed me, and now I’ll never get the taste out of my mouth.”
“Here,” Solara said, holding out the bag of nuts. “Maybe this will help.”
Cassia intercepted the bag and arched a haughty brow at Kane. “Considering the kind of girls you date, this should be an improvement.”
“You seem to care an awful lot about my love life,” Kane told her, snatching the nuts. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
Cassia drew a breath loud enough to tell anyone within listening distance that Kane had plucked a nerve. “Not in your most twisted fantasies!”
Kane leaned down until their eyes met. “My fantasies aren’t all twisted. I’ll tell you about them if you ask nicely.”
The girl’s lips parted, and then Kane smiled—not the oily grin he used like a weapon, but a barely noticeable curve of his mouth with warmth dancing behind his eyes. Doran had never seen that smile before, so he presumed it was the real thing.
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