“There is no secret.” She stood so stiffly one might think she was a statue.
“Suspicious. Let me see what you were reading.”
“No.” She flinched. Her fingers twitched. My scanner showed nothing on our visor. Nothing around us proved a threat, nor was she injured anywhere that I knew of, so I could only conjure one reason she would flinch like that.
“Did you get a new message?” I asked.
“No.”
“Go on. Read it.”
She hummed. I hummed. She didn’t move. I didn’t move. The survey team would be here for a few more hours. Arana knew I could be stubborn. She saw further proof of that last night. And she had proven to keep those secrets, that she’d help me, if she could. When I told her she shouldn’t, that we should look out for ourselves…
“I missed my payments,” she spat out.
“As in the payments to the deadly mob boss that threatened to put your head on a pike outside his casino? His payments?”
Groaning, her head dropped into her hands.
My tracker didn’t show any threats, but I surveyed the area, anyway. The paranoia gnawing at me amplified tenfold because any noise could be a whole new kind of threat. “How many payments have you missed?”
“Three… in a row.”
“For fuck’s sake. Why?”
“I have bills to pay!” She threw her hands over her visor where her mouth would be as if that would quiet her. No one looked our way, and that would change if I raised my voice like I wantedto.
Jabbing her in the chest with the butt of my weapon, I hissed, “Bullshit. You were gambling online again. Fuck, A, I thought we blocked that.”
She didn’t deny the accusation because she knew she was in hot shit. Nowweknew she was in hot shit. I saw what Benno did at the Colony to those who pissed him off. If the shitbag after her was similar, beheading her would be a relief.
“It’s fine. He, I mean, we’re light years away.” She gripped her weapon as if she thought someone might attack.
“He has plenty of ships that could get here in a week, tops.”
“He does not know where we are. Even if he did, he wouldn’t attack us while we’re on a mission.”
“The mob boss with connections across the galaxy doesn’t know where we are? Don’t be ridiculous. If he doesn’t know, he will find out soon enough, and he’ll have one of his goons feed you to the plants on this deadly mission where no one will be the wiser.”
If I could see Arana through her visor, I bet she would be pale as death. The Planet would make for a perfect attack. We were the only ones here. They could sneak into the habitat and use our incinerator to be rid of her remains, if they wanted. Easier for them to drag her out into the jungle and leave her for The Planet to feast on. Even if anyone were suspicious, the militia wouldn’t look into her death. She’d be another pair of boots to fill and they could fill them easily enough.
“You have a point,” she said in a weak breath.
“Damn it all, what did the message say?”
Arana held up her commlink. There were dozens of messages, the first of which came last night. “I woke up to my commlink buzzing like crazy. That’s when I saw you weren’t in the room. I was looking for you when you returned.”
That made sense. Arana was a hard sleeper. She had her commlink set to remind her about her payments, and apparently any messages from him because of shit like this. I should have suspected more last night, but at least I knew now.
He was incredibly detailed in describing the many ways she could die. People like that didn’t make threats. They offered a promise that took time to reach fruition. If he wanted Arana dead, then she would be. She was a walking corpse unless we did something… like tell Roys, who could keep us on high alert under any excuse he wanted. But I wasn’t sure he was in the right headspace for that shit.
I wasn’t either.
“It was stupid. I know it was stupid. I took a couple of chances that fell through,” she said around a nervous laugh. “But we get paid this week. He’ll get a payment and back off.”
A fool’s hope. People like that didn’t run crime syndicates that spanned galaxies because they were understanding.
“We need to tell the others,” I said.
