“That’s from a supply drop?” she asks as I shake out the sheet, which raises a small cloud of dust from the floor.
“I’m sure it is, originally, but I traded for it with the women in Settlement B. There are fewer people in their settlement, so the supplies dropped in their half of the zone go a lot farther.” The women probably wouldn’t let me near the drop itself, but since I left Settlement A, they’ve been happy to do business with me. When I have something to trade.
“I don’t suppose there’s another mattress in one of those other rooms, is there?” She takes the other end of the sheet and helps me spread it across the four-inch thick mattress.
“Not unless one has appeared in the past two days, since I was out this way digging that ditch trap we just checked. We’re going to have to share.” I grab my pack, then sink onto the edge of the mattress and pull my boots off, to keep dirt off the sheet. “Let’s eat something.”
“I’m sorry about your turkey,” Rayla says as she sinks onto the other end of the mattress, facing me. “I’m sure that would have tasted better than…” She frowns at a brown food packet as she pulls it from her bag. “Chili and Macaroni.” She makes a face.
“You got ChiliMac? Would you be willing to trade for Mexican Style Chicken Stew?”
“In a heartbeat.” Rayla tosses me her envelope and holds out her hand for mine. “You actually like that crap?” She gives my dinner another disgusted look.
“‘Like’ is a strong word. But ChiliMac has corn in it, which I can pick out and dry as bait for my turkey trap.” I pull a crumpled plastic pouch from my pocket and unroll it, then prop it upright against my foot. The packet used to say “cocoa powder,” but I’ve folded and unfolded it so often that the words are hardly legible now.
“Ah. A man who plans ahead.” She actually sounds impressed, and I’m not sure whether or not to be insulted by that. “I’m a planner too.”
“Yeah, I guess you’d have to be, to get yourself sent here on purpose.” I begin picking kernels of corn from my food and dropping them into the pouch, to be rinsed and dried later. “But Rayla, the best laid plans in the galaxy won’t get you off this rock, now that you’re here.”
She stares across the mattress at me, her short-handled spork hovering near her mouth, piled high with room-temperature stew. “Jai, I’m not going to try to convince you that I’m leaving. The fewer people who believe that, the better.” She shrugs. But she looks disappointed by my skepticism.
“Look. Maybe your plans will work out perfectly, and whatever backup guard you have on the hook will come pick you up right on time, and you can put this whole prison experience behind you like a…a bad date. But it’s entirely possible that something will go wrong. Something else,” I add, and her jaw clenches with my reference to the dead pilot. “You might be stuck here a lot longer than you think you will. You might be stuck here for the rest of your life, because regardless of why you stole whatever you stole, you’re a convict now, just like the rest of us, and the chances of a guard risking his own freedom to help you escape are slim to none.”
Her forehead furrows. “No offense, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I scrape another sauce-coated kernel into the packet, then I capture her gaze with mine. “I know that you’re a convicted criminal on a prison planet. Until and unless that changes, you’re just like the rest of us, Rayla. You need food and shelter. Which means you’re either going to have to hunt, fight, or sell yourself. Maybe all three. That’s how it works here.”
Her hand clenches around her spork. She looks shocked by the sudden brutal clarity of what I’ve been trying to explain to her all afternoon, as if it’s just now sinking in.
“How do you not already know this?” I ask. “Did you not talk to anyone in jail, before your trial? Or on the prison transport? Did the guards on Station Alpha not give you a heads-up?” Or did she just block out everything she didn’t want to hear?
“They’ve always told me that the prisoners have everything they need down here.”
They’ve always told her?
“Food. Clothing. Antibiotics,” she continues. “There are supposed to be buildings here, and beds. Universal Authority is required through their contract with the government to provide prisoners with the necessities.”
I study her, trying to understand the look of betrayal haunting her unfocused gaze. “You really did your homework, didn’t you?” But whatever Rhodon looked like on paper, when she was planning an insane mission to sneak onto a prison planet, clearly the reality is something entirely different.
“Not well enough, obviously. I mean, it makes sense that the strong would hoard food and supplies—these are all criminals, after all—but I didn’t think that’d be quite so…systemic. Or that there’d be bed shortages and buildings with no running water. The facilities are supposed to be livable.” She swallows thickly, clearly trying to get hold of herself. “It’s better in the women’s settlement, though, right? You said the supplies go further there?”
I shrug. “Yeah. They’re not over there braiding each other’s hair and having pillow fights, but it’s much easier for the women who get to stay in Settlement B than for the ones who get shipped off to Settlement A.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to my mother? Do you think that’s how she got pregnant here? Some asshole made her pay for food with sex? Or just…took it? Do you think my father is some kind of violent rapist?” Her hand begins to tremble, and stew sloshes over the side to drip on her pants. “What if that kind of psychosis is…genetic?”
Good god. She’s not upset about what she might have to do to survive here. She’s worried about what happened to her mother, and about what her mysterious parentage might say about her. At least I can set her mind at ease about that.
“Rayla, if your mother’s really a prisoner here, she must have had you before she got to Rhodon. She couldn’t have gotten pregnant here. The women are all sterilized before they arrive. Surely you remember that part.”
Alarm on her behalf washes over me with a sudden realization. She got herself arrested—and sterilized—just for the chance to meet her mother. Even if she gets off this planet, she’ll never have children of her own.
I can’t imagine making that kind of sacrifice to meet someone who gave me away.
“Something went wrong with my mom’s sterilization.” She sets her spork in her pouch of stew, with the short handle sticking up. “She either got pregnant here, or she was pregnant before she got here. Jai, I was born on this fucking rock.”
Born on a prison planet. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I have to know how that happened. I need to know the truth.”
The truth. “Was there a lie?”
She nods slowly, clearly thinking. Trying to decide how much to tell me. “I only found out I was adopted a couple of months ago. There were extenuating circumstances, but I never really thought about how weird it was to grow up the way I did, because that was my normal.”
“Raised on a freighter. Or a space yacht.” I lift one brow at her as I take a bite of my ChiliMac.
She actually laughs, but the sound is half-sob. “Something like that. Anyway, I went digging for answers, and all I could find was my mother’s prisoner number and her zone assignment. She’s here somewhere.”
“Or she used to be, anyway.”
“What?” Her face pales, except for that flush in the center of her cheeks.
Shit. There was probably a better way for me to say that.
“Rayla, there aren’t many elderly people here. It’s a hard life, and there’s no medical care to speak of. And the older you get, the more difficult it is to defend yourself. Especially for a woman.”
“Okay, but I don’t think my mother’s really elderly. I mean, I’m only twenty. Unless she had me when she was forty, I don’t think we’re looking for white hair and a cane.”
“Well then, that’s in h
er favor. But keep in mind that several of the women from Settlement B died a couple of months ago, in that raid I told you about.”
She looks horrified, and I wish I could take it back and tell her that everything will be okay. That we’ll find her mother, alive and well, and whatever guard she’s paid off will show up at just the right time to rescue them both, in a shuttle stocked with sparkling water and caviar, or whatever privileged princesses eat and drink while they’re thwarting justice. But I couldn’t say a bit of that with a straight face.
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“Got it.” Rayla nods and scoops up another bite of Mexican chicken stew. “My hopes are firmly in the mud. As are my toes.” She wiggles them at me from the floor, careful to keep dried dirt from flaking off on my semi-clean sheet. “I really miss my shower.”
5
RAYLA
After my first dinner on Rhodon—I’ve decided to think of the horrible food as part of the adventure—I head outside with my flashlight to relieve myself, because there’s no running water. Jai wasn’t kidding when he said it gets cold here at night. It’s fucking freezing, and I’m squatting in the brush with my bare ass exposed to the elements—definitely one of my less dignified moments.
Did I say I missed my shower? What I really miss is my toilet.
In addition to having no water, the abandoned office building we’re staying in has no power. So when I get back from my bathroom trip, I sit on a chunk of concrete and Jai holds my flashlight for me while I pour some of my precious, sterilized water over my bare feet and scrub the mud off with my hands. I’m determined not to get his sheet dirty.
Clean things are in very short supply on this planet.
Fortunately, I have several new, dry washcloths in the bottom of my bag, with which to pat my feet dry.
Twelve hours ago, my hair was freshly shampooed and straightened, my nails were clean and neatly polished with a clear coat, and my UA uniform was pristine, even after an eight-hour shift in the supply warehouse. But after just a few hours of walking on Rhodon, I am a sweaty, disgusting mess. It’s a miracle Jai hasn’t kicked me to the curb for stinking the place up.
“I don’t suppose there was a blanket, wherever that sheet came from?” It takes effort for me to keep my teeth from chattering. Air here in the building is warmer than outside, but not by much.
“No. Sorry. All I have to offer is body heat.” Jai gives me a suggestive grin and pulls his shirt off over his head to reveal a chest sculpted not by gym muscles, like the guards on Station Alpha, but by survival. By fighting for supplies, building what he needs from the scraps of material available, and digging turkey traps with nothing but a broken metal panel to use as a shovel.
He’s… He’s…beautiful.
I want to touch him. My hand reaches out, and I shove it into my hair, pretending my intent all along was to work out the knots blown into it during our trek across zone four.
Jai’s grin swells. He’s not fooled.
“What are you doing?” I glance pointedly at his bare—gorgeous—chest while I pull my fingers through my hair. “Won’t you be cold?”
“I run hot.”
Oh. Damn.
I turn around to stop myself from ogling the beautiful man waiting to climb into bed with me. I have no intention of…touching him. But I also had no intention of crash landing, or hiking across zone four with a dangerous stranger, or peeing outside in the dark and the cold. Shit happens, it seems, on Devil’s Eye. And I’m only human.
Jai, however, seems to be a god, fallen from the stars to tempt me. As if he were part of this adventure.
No. Rayla, this is not an adventure. This is a mission. A suicide mission, if I’m not careful.
“You coming to bed?” Jai asks, and I jump when I hear the rustle of material as he sinks onto the mattress.
“No!” My face flames, and I take several deep breaths, trying to cool down before I turn around. Then I remember that he can’t see well enough in the dark to know I’m blushing. “I mean yes, but not like that.”
I turn, and he shines his flashlight right in my face, blinding me. And exposing the flush I can’t seem to conquer. I throw my hands up to block the glare, and he finally lowers the beam.
“Not like what? It was a simple question. We only have about six hours of dark left, so…are you coming to bed?”
Is it just me, or did he stress a couple of those words intentionally, to deepen my blush?
“Yes, I’m coming— I’m going to sleep with— No. I’m going to go to sleep. Not with you. I mean, there’s only one bed, so of course I’ll be with you, but in the proximity sense. Not the…conjugal sense.”
“Duly noted.” He’s not laughing, but there’s amusement in his voice, bubbling through every word. Taunting me. Like his hard, bare chest. Jai stretches out on the mattress, folding his hands beneath his head, and every muscle in his torso ripples with the motion.
“Okay, it seems obvious now that I’m going to freeze to death if we follow my ‘no touching’ rule to the letter, so I’m going to suggest an amendment.”
“An amendment. How very official. What is this amendment?”
“Touching is allowed, but only for the purpose of sharing warmth. That way, we’re still abiding by the spirit of the rule.”
“You like rules, don’t you?”
“Actually, I hate rules.” There are so many rules on Station Alpha. And I don’t mean the ones everyone has to follow. My whole life, there have been rules just for me.
Don’t fraternize with the guards.
Don’t leave the crew quarters.
Never, ever leave the station.
Now that I’m of age and I have a job, I’m allowed to leave crew quarters, but I’m pretty sure my father only relaxed on that one regulation because by the time I turned eighteen, I was ready to stomp all over his rules and flee Station Alpha, never to return.
Before that, there were days when I actually thought about hurting myself, because a trip to the infirmary would have, at the very least, given me new walls to stare at.
“If you hate rules, why do you have them?” Jai asks as I sink onto the mattress, as far from him as I can get.
“Because rules are necessary. They maintain order. I don’t like broccoli either, but it’s healthy, so I eat it.”
He frowns at me as if I’ve suddenly stopped making sense. “I hate broccoli, so I don’t eat it. Because I’m a fucking adult, and I can do whatever I want.”
“Well, I think we may have uncovered the mystery of how you wound up on a prison planet.”
Jai laughs. “I’d like to argue, but that’s a pretty solid observation. However, the irony is that even though I’m technically locked up, in a way, this shithole planet is the ultimate freedom.”
I fold my legs in front of me and turn to face him from my end of the mattress. “How is that?”
“Here, there are no rules. Without rules to break, there can be no crimes. Thus, no criminals.”
“You’re all criminals!”
“No, we were all criminals. Out there.” Jai waves one hand toward the sky, as if he can see the expanse of space through the second floor above us. “Here, we’re just…colonists. Citizens.”
“Living in filth, with no rules. Sounds like chaos.”
“Oh, it is. I’d give up this ‘freedom’ in a heartbeat if I could get off this rock. Even if that meant living my life according to someone else’s rules again. But while I’m here—while we’re here—we may as well enjoy what freedom we do have. Right?”
“Well, I guess that makes a certain crazy sense.” And the thought of having no rules for the first time in my life does hold a certain reckless appeal. But I’m no idiot. “You’re hitting on me. You’re trying to talk me out of my rules.”
“Oh, no, princess. I’m trying to talk you out of your clothes.” Jai’s grin smolders, and I suck in a breath. Then he grabs my ankles and I squeal and fall onto my back as he hauls me
toward him across the mattress.
A heartbeat later, his face appears over me in the dark, one side lit by moonlight shining through the window. His hands land on either side of my head and his knee slides between my legs, drawing another gasp from me.
I should protest. I know I should just shove him off, then go to sleep curled up with my gun. But there’s something about this position. About the intimacy of his knee between my thighs, pressed against my most sensitive place, through several layers of material. There’s something about this blistering eye contact, from just inches away. Something about the sight of his bulging arms on the periphery of my vision, like the bars of a human jail cell locking me in.
I don’t want to escape.
I should be terrified, but I feel…safe. Probably because despite his hints and teases, and the apparent aggression of this position—of him pulling me beneath him and supporting his beautiful bulk over me—he’s not groping me or crushing me with his weight. He’s just…there. Drawing out this moment, as if he wants me to get used to having him there.
“You’re stomping all over my rule,” I whisper, trying to control the rush of my pulse. The tremble in my voice.
“Actually, I’m not. I’m allowed to touch you as long as I’m sharing my warmth.” His gaze blazes into me. “Don’t you feel warm?”
“Not really,” I breathe.
Jai lowers himself onto his elbows so that his chest brushes mine, giving me just a hint at what his weight would feel like, pressed into me. “What about now?” he whispers, and I catch my breath when I realize I can feel his erection against my lower stomach. He’s not grinding it on me. But he’s not hiding it, either.
It takes me a second to catch my breath. He feels so…hard. And not just that part of him. The rest of him is firm and so warm, even through my clothes. “That’s…better,” I finally manage.
Dirty Lies Page 6