Kaz made a sucking sound with his tongue and teeth. He looked away from the table. “Yeah, well, you were busy.”
A callused, kohl-dark hand reached across the table to clasp Kaz’s forearm. In a soft voice, Tosun asked, “Do you want us to take you?”
For a moment, he looked lost. It was as if he never expected the offer, like not knowing the location of his mother’s grave was something he deserved. He probablydidthink that.
Now that the offer hung between them, he didn’t know what to do with it.
Atria’s heart ached for her poor half-orc.It’s okay,she thought, running her psychic fingers through all that churning emotion in a soothing caress.I’m here. You’re not lost when we’re together.
His gaze flicked her way, searching for something in her expression. The tension around his hard mouth eased. Kaz’s voice was rough when he answered, “I’d like that.”
“Might as well bring your priestess, too,” Frances grunted. “Seems she’s a good influence on you.”
The right corner of Kaz’s mouth twitched. “She is.”
“How’d you meet a priestess, anyway?” Suhana’s diversion wasn’t the cleanest, particularly when she swerved into it at lightning speed, but it felt like the atmosphere of the room lightened by ten shades anyway.
Happy to give her mate a break, Atria stepped in to tell a sanitized version of how they met: the plane, how she thought he was trying to kidnap her, the way she thought she wasn’t his mate, and how they’d ended up at the homestead. Of course she left out large chunks — most of the murder, exactly how outrageous the bounty on her head was, the sex, and everything about Norman — but it was mostly accurate to how it happened.
“Bounties are a menace,” Frances noted, her lip lifted in a small snarl. “I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve had to throw into the county jail for bounty-hunting in this area. It’s illegal in our territory, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it — or using our land as a refuge when they’re being hunted. Don’t have such a problem with that, except it brings trouble to the rest of us.”
“Well, that’s pretty much what we’re doing,” Atria admitted. “Right now we’re stuck. We did all of this so I could still present our work at the conference, but we’re no closer to figuring out who set the bounty. Either we go to the conference and risk more violence, or we turn back to the EVP.”
It was the subject they had avoided talking about all week. That was no longer an option. Their time had run out, and Kaz’s plan to find out who was behind the bounty had ended with Norman’s blood on the gritty floor of the lab. In her heart, Atria knew that they couldn’t continue forward. She’d known it since they sat in front of the fire after their first frantic night and day in the nest.
Presenting her research was simply not worth the risk to either of their lives, and even if it was, she couldn’t imagine doing it without Ruby, knowing that she was out there somewhere.
Kaz wouldn’t like it. He would hate the idea of her giving up something that mattered so much to her, and she knew he had his concerns about her safety even in the EVP. But there really wasn’t anything for it.
Tosun made a thoughtful sound, effectively breaking Atria out of her bleak reverie. “So this… think tank thing— they’re convinced you can make a weapon out of your generators?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“What if you told them you couldn’t?”
“They’d have no reason to listen,” Kaz explained, “and if we were close enough to be able to do that, the more effective solution to this problem would be to end them rather than give them a lesson in m-theory.”
“No, what I meant was what if you explained toeveryone?”Tosun waved his big hand over the table. “You have this big conference thing, right? Why not use it to tell the world the idea is bunk? And to sweeten it, an announcement like that would make Atria famous overnight. They’d be stupid to keep a bounty out for a woman everyone knows.”
“But wouldn’t that send them underground?” Atria turned a worried look on her mate. “If they withdraw the bounty and disappear, we may never know—”
Kaz shook his head. “We aren’t any closer to figuring out who they are now, though.”
“We don’t know that for sure. You haven’t spoken to your brother. He may know something.”
But even as she said it, Atria doubted they had found anything of use. No organization that went to the lengths they had, with the resources they obviously did, would allow themselves to be caught so easily.
Ruby had vanished into thin air. Norman was executed for even opening his mouth. Whoever they were, they were clearly concerned with exposure and had the ruthlessness to make sure it wasn’t an issue.
That gave Tosun’s idea more weight. What would happen if she made herself too big to be kidnapped? If she made herself a target so visible no one could miss it, would they dare step into the spotlight with her?
Kaz’s brow furrowed. “You’re right, but opening up a two-way conversation will mean he’ll be able to track us down, no matter how well I hide our location. And let’s say this plan is a good idea, Tosun. It still requires we cross Alliance territory and then over into United Washington. I can’t think of a way to get Atria safely across the continent by myself. I don’t trust any of my contacts to help and I can’t call in a Patrol team without asking them to defy their sovereign.”
Frances and Tosun exchanged a long look. At length, Frances said, “Well… I can’t promise it’d get you there safely, but did you ever consider an orcish caravan?”
Kaz raised his eyebrows. “A caravan?”
“No one would look twice at one on the road,” she replied, expression stiff. “We’ve got an old van we never use. You could take it. If you wanted it.”
