He smiled faintly, his gaze dipping to the floor.
‘Tommy.’
He looked up.
‘You seemed…distracted– on the ride back, I mean. And now, come to think of it.’
‘Just a lot on my mind. Loose ends to tie up.’
‘Does that include me?’ I asked, my voice tight. Because if he saidyesthen that was that – we’d go back to how things were before Aetheria, before I was introduced to a skipper called Tom.
‘You’re not a loose end, Ally,’ he said, his voice low.
‘Well, I am until I sign that NDA,’ I quipped. Only it wasn’t funny, and we both knew it – Tommy’s thin-lipped smile disappearing almost as soon as it appeared.
He held my gaze for a long moment. ‘You’re a good person, Ally.’
‘Well, we always said we’d try and save the world, right?’ I retorted, half-joking.
‘I mean it.’
‘Oh…’ He’d caught me completely off-guard, and my pulse quickened.
He sat forward, his eyes boring into mine. ‘You had no idea what you were walking into tonight, but you forged ahead anyway – all to help Julian.’
‘I… Thank you.’
‘Of course, you’re also as stubborn as hell…’
‘Hey!’ I chided, breaking into laughter.
‘Am I wrong?’
‘No, but?—’
‘Maybe I should have saidtenacious,’ he teased.
‘Better.’
‘Like a dog with a bone.’
‘Can we go back to the part where you were being nice to me?’
He didn’t answer right away, and the air crackled with anticipation. Were we finally going to talk aboutus?
‘So,’ he said, breaking eye contact a little too abruptly, ‘you and Julian – all good there?’
‘Ah, yes,’ I replied, grabbing the change of topic like a lifeline. Despite what I’d been telling myself, I wasn’t ready to dive into the depths of the Ally-and-Tommy mess. ‘You know, he wasn’t going to sell the real code to Kovalec – he wrote dummy code.’
Tommy’s eyes flashed with surprise but only for a moment, then a wry smile tugged at his mouth. ‘I did wonder if he’d do something like that.’
‘Then why were you about to arrest him for espionage?’
‘I wasn’t—’ He huffed. ‘First off, that wouldn’t have been the charge. Second,’ he said, pinning me with a piercing look, ‘I took it to Trudy a couple of weeks ago – the notion that Julian might find a way to disengage without selling out.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes, but she was sceptical, and I was told not to pursue that line of investigation.’
