Kilo looks at me with both brow ridges raised.Touch-y!
“The Agency has sent twenty… six women to Calisan since the program started,” Riann says, his focus painfully forced on the numbers. “They’ve reported twenty-nine children so far. No crimes worth logging regionally, nothing to make anyone look their way.”
Kilo hums suspiciously. “Sounds fisty.”
“Fishy,” I correct him.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Riann glances at me and shakes his head.I wonder how hard it would be to hide his body if I killed him?
There has to be more to the irritation than Kilo’s blithe comments here and now. I’d ask what else he’s done, but honestly… I don’t want to know.
But silence means Kilo starts singingout loud, and neither Riann nor I deserve that.
We stop on the outskirts of the Ataron marshland and I let Kilo drive.
“Seriously?” he asks, as if I haven’t given him the neural link already.
“Yeah, anything to stop you from singing.”
“You underestimate my ability to multitask!”
But he doesn’t start singing again, so I lie down in the back, hoping I might actually be able to sleep.
And then Kilo’s thoughts turn to Riann.
My eyes snap wide.Oh.
Oh fuck no.
I straighten in my seat. “Fuck. I didn’t know how much this back row sucks.”
That makes Kilo laugh and stops him thinking about secrets I do not need to know.
“How much firepower did you bring?” Kilo asks when I have Riann bring up the satellite imagery.
“What do you think we’re going to find when we get there?” Riann asks, still reading the data.
“Nothing good.” Kilo looks at me in the rearview display, for backup, not because he thinks I need to know. “If it has something to do with the Company I don’t like those twenty-six women’s odds. Or their bondmates, for that matter.”
The car falls silent again and I am once again left hearing thoughts I don’t like… but these ones simply mirror my own.
When Kilo starts singing along with the next song that filters through the speakers, neither Riann or I complain.
We both let it go on for the next three hours, until we turn onto the smaller road that leads into the community.
There’s something cold and unsettling about the ravine walls rising up on either side of us.
“It feels like a trap.”
“Yeah, but a trap for who?” Kilo eases us back to an even slower crawl.
I take the tablet from Riann’s hand and flip back to the map, checking the route and surrounding geography. “I don’t like that it’s the only way in or out. This canyon could easily turn into a kill box.”
“It’s just a town,” Riann tries to remind us, “not a military camp. They’re not going to attack us.”
And when the walls recede and we get our first real glimpse of the town… he’s right.
