Shade huffed, evidently unconvinced.
I forced down another mouthful, chewing and swallowing carefully. At least my battle with the soup got my mind off Ahern. And the food would do me good. The six bags of blood I’d taken from my own veins in as many days hadn’t totally wiped me out, but I hadn’t been able to completely shake it off yet, either. Beef—or whatever this was—would help.
The two women occupying the table next to Shade’s threw him flirty glances and leaned over to ask him a question about desserts. The waitress immediately joined in, having already attempted to draw Shade into conversation twice. I got it. It wasn’t often that tall, dark, and smoldering sat alone in a restaurant.
They finally left him alone after deciding on a choco seed dessert loaf to share. The waitress went to get it.
“Wow, you really are a wanted man,” I grumbled, a hint of tartness in my voice.
Shade’s small snort vibrated over the com, tickling my eardrum. “I want their dessert.”
“Youaretheir dessert.” He was six foot two of solid yumminess with a healthy appetite, broad shoulders, a square jaw, and scarred knuckles that saidI can protect you with my bare hands. I’d even bitten him and knew for a fact he tasted good. “But trust me, neither wants to share.”
Humor sparked in his eyes, and for the first time in an hour, I forgot why we were here.
The happy lapse didn’t last. My heart kicked when the door opened again. An older couple walked in, and the waitress for my corner threw me a dirty look, clearly wanting me to get lost so she could give my table to someone who might actually eat something.
I’d love to, I growled inside my head.If Daniel Ahern would just show up.
If Ahern wanted us to rescue his scientist wife from her extended stay in the imperial prison system, he needed to get his rebel butt in here and give me his new intel before a Dark Watch patrol spotted two of the galaxy’s Most Wanted through the floor-to-ceiling windows, stormed in, and Shade and I were toast.
I chewed my lower lip, wondering what was really going on. “Why the short notice? Why us?” I murmured. We only just found out about this mission, giving us barely enough time to wrap up the ship improvements Shade had been working on in the Fold, make the jump to Korabon, dig out the old coms I kept aboard theEndeavor, and get a few hours of sleep. We’d arrived in the dead of night here and couldn’t do much else.
“Been asking myself the same questions, starshine.” Shade’s low curse told me he was still livid about not having more time to prepare. “Giving us this little to work with feels like we’re being set up to fail.”
“I don’t believe that.” Icouldn’t.
The sudden attention from Loralie Harris and her rebel council didn’t surprise me, even if the last-minute nature of this odd assignment did. We’d just managed the coup of the century, stealing Overseer Novalight’s entire supply of super-soldier serum and bringing it to the rebel leaders in the Fold. We’d dealt the biggest blow in living memory to the tyrant I used to call Dad, and now we were apparently special enough to get “the good missions”—just when I needed to be left alone.
Still, that didn’t explain the lack of information or support tech. All we got from the rebel council was a picture of Ahern and a meeting place. No handy gadgets. Nothing about Korabon or the Dark Watch here. Maybe it didn’t matter. We weren’t tourists, and the military on Korabon would be like anywhere else: all over the place.
Right now, I was more worried about bounty hunters coming after my boyfriend. I probably wasn’t all that recognizable outside of Shade’s ex-circle of elite hunters. Images of the Overseer’s supposedly long-dead daughter popping up on screens across the galaxy would raise questions that even ashut up or blow updictator might have trouble answering. But Nathaniel Bridgebane, top Dark Watch general and the Overseer’s right-hand man, had threatened to go after Shade with a vengeance—and my uncle always did what he said.
I stole a look through the windows but didn’t see Jaxon or Fiona. They’d hunkered down somewhere discreet and weren’t muddying up the coms with unnecessary chatter like we were.
My mouth puckered. I was more than ready for all of us to get back to theEndeavor.
To hell with it.There had to be a time limit on waiting for informants. I couldn’t sit here anymore, stewing in my own fear about getting where I needed to go with those six bags of blood by tomorrow, universal time, or I’d lose one of the most important people in my life. I was done here.
I wiggled a hand into my back pocket and grabbed some of the currency units Shade had handed me earlier to cover the restaurant charges. I was broke after paying for repairs on theEndeavor. Paying Shade, actually. But he was finding ways to give the money back, such as buying and installing top-notch hot-water tanks for theEndeavor’s kitchen and bathrooms and getting my room a bigger bed.
Four nights together—that was all we’d had since I decided to give Shade a second chance.
Bringing cat toys to Bonk had helped melt some of my lingering reservations after Shade nearly cashed me in to the Dark Watch. On our first day in the Fold, he’d come back from hardware shopping with a pair of rodent-shaped mechanical playthings that did tight little flips. Bonk kept presenting the now half-mangled fuzzy gray robots to me like gifts.
I caught Shade’s eye again, murmuring, “Five more minutes and I’m done.” The coins I’d counted out hit the table with a clink. I put what was left back in my pocket.
Merrick’s voice came through for the first time along with a faint crackle of static. My coms were shit—a hodgepodge of old pieces we’d connected to the same signal. “Something must’ve held Ahern up. You can’t leave until he shows.”
I shook my head in silent rejection. I could, and I would. Either Mareeka’s or Surral’s life hung in the balance while I sat in a restaurant in Koralight Crown, one of the ten most disliked cities in the galaxy—or so I’d read during my negative two seconds of prep for this.
“Easy, partner. You’ve got this.” Crazy as it seemed, Jaxon’s voice helped. I still couldn’t see him—he might be a block away or five—but I could feel him inside me, reassuring me and untangling some of the knots in my stomach. We’d been partners in prison. We were partners on theEndeavor. There was no one I trusted more than Jax.
“Just sit tight, Tess. A little longer, that’s all.” His voice lowered to the soothing tones I remembered from when I was nineteen, terrified for my life, and tossed down a mine shaft on top of him. Keeping me safe on Hourglass Mile, both above and below ground, had been the only thing that stopped Jax from totally disintegrating in the face of his grief after just having lost his wife and children. “Fi and I can see you through the windows now. We’ve got your back.”
After a slight hesitation, I gave a quick nod. It mirrored the one Shade gave me from across the restaurant, reinforcing what Jax said.
As much as I wanted to give up on Ahern, they were right. I couldn’t bail on the first job the rebel leaders had specifically assigned to my crew, even if interrupting a prison transfer was an odd choice of tasks for us. Nightchasers weren’t part of the rebel forces. More like the rebel periphery. We pursued our own missions, mostly scouring the galaxy for food and medicine. We believed in a more equitable distribution of both, even if that meant theft. We also believed in training and prep work, so being slapped with our first spy mission only hours ago and just when I needed to be somewhere else really sucked.
