Shade’s eyes flicked over my shoulder. He gave a slight shrug, speaking so quietly I essentially had to read his lips as well. “I don’t know every goon they’ve got.”
“Uniform?” I breathed.
“Black,” he mouthed back.
I exhaled. A trooper, then. If it had been my uncle coming for me, he would have been wearing red.
I lifted the shiny metallic cartridge box I still had in my hand. “You’re sure all forty rounds are in here?” I asked in a normal voice again, angling the box to reflect what was behind me. I saw a soldier I didn’t recognize. Probably just some Sector 2 guy in here looking for a knickknack or spare part.
I tried to act casual, even though adrenaline was making me jittery underneath. My relief was cerebral. My body hadn’t caught up yet.
“How much for this?” I asked.
“Fifteen,” Shade said, taking the box of bullets from me. “I’ll ring it up.”
I followed him to the register and then paid, only once darting a glance at the soldier who was perusing the shelves a good twenty feet from me. When Shade handed me back the cartridge box and my change, our fingers brushed, but I was too nervous to appreciate the brief contact.
Chuckling, he said, “I thought you were going to walk off without paying for that.”
What in the galaxy made him think that?
“I’m not a petty thief,” I said, coolness creeping into my voice. When I stole something, it wasn’t measly cartridges for guns we hardly used. It was cure-all vaccines and food for the starving and prisoners of war.
“I was teasing.” Shade cocked his head to one side, looking almost sorry.
I blinked.Oh.All right, then. Clearly, I needed a manual on flirting. I felt myself turn crimson again.
“You remember where to find me when you have those parts?” I asked.
He nodded. “See you soon…”
His sentence seemed unfinished. He might have been about to addTessor another antagonizingsugar, but he chose not to say anything else when the soldier came up beside me and plunked a shaving kit down on the counter.
Ducking my head, I turned and left Ganavan’s Products and Parts, not looking up or slowing down again until I’d reached the base of the Squirrel Tree.
The Dark Watch was on Albion 5, just like they were everywhere. And where there was one, there were many.
Chapter 7
Shade flipped the sign toClosed and locked the door. He didn’t care who might need a spare part today, tomorrow, or any fucking day. He cared about Tess Bailey and her little stream of lies.
Unexpected asteroid belt.He shook his head.
Under her pale skin, her firework of a blush, and her rabbiting pulse, there was a woman running scared. She looked like she’d been that way for a while, like she never stopped. Never came down. No one got that white unless they spent all their time in the Dark.
Shade’s blood still pumped harder than usual from certain parts of their exchange, and something a little crazy had happened in his chest when she’d looked so terrified of the Dark Watch. Her poker face had sucked, but then she’d managed to pull it together and be as cool as a cloud after the initial shock and assessment had passed.
He’d seen that there had been just one soldier, a man like any other poking around the shelves. A lot of the men and women who joined the galactic military wore their uniforms all the time because it gave them a power trip—always knowing people would get out of their way, say they were right, and look at them like they were a sight. The guy probably hadn’t even been on duty, not if he was shopping for razors in the seedy district around the docks.
Shade had been testing her when he’d said the Dark Watch had followed her into his shop. And her reaction had told him exactly what he’d wanted to know—she was definitely in the hot seat right now.
But he’d gotten more than he bargained for. Her chest had stopped—no breath—and her blue eyes had gone so wide they’d practically swallowed him whole. And then she’d asked the same question he would have.Uniform?Not how many, but what echelon. She’d wanted to know if there was someone important at her back.
Some of the blood had come back into her face when he’d said the uniform was black, which meant that whoever was looking for Tess Bailey wasn’t just some grunt soldier; he or she was a higher-up.
But the savvy space rat hadn’t taken his word for it, had she? She’d held up that cartridge box to use as a mirror and checked for herself. She’d made sure it wasn’t someone who knew her, and then she’d paid for her bullets like nothing had happened, even getting all high and mighty again when he’d teased her about walking off with the ammo.
He had no idea why he’d done that.
