Shade wasn’t impressed. I’d heard him mutter earlier that poor planning and shitty gear were how alive people turned up dead.
I wiped my clammy palms on my lap. The need to move spidered down my spine and into my legs. The thought of missing my clandestine—and frankly treasonous—blood exchange with my asshole uncle was eating a hole in my hide.
How much longer do I have to wait?I didn’t want to ask. Everyone would just tell me to stay put.
Merrick would be so much better at this. He’d done some spy work for the rebellion, but then he got caught, shot up against his will with the Overseer’s experimental enhancer, and turned into a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall, faster-than-the-eye-can-blink, barrel-chested, muscle-banded super soldier who’d escaped the Dark Watch. The big black man didn’t exactly blend in.
Soft and low, Shade’s voice whispered over the com again. “You’re on, starshine.”
My head whipped up—the exact opposite of playing it cool. Daniel Ahern walked in, or a man I was ninety-nine percent sure was him. Adrenaline ripped through me. I’d been waiting for this, just wanting it to be over, but now, I didn’t feel ready in the least.
This guy fit the picture Loralie Harris had shown us in the Fold. Tall and slim, with a head of thick silver hair, a long face, and green eyes. Eyes the color of grass, according to the rebel leader. Grass colors varied from planet to planet, and a lot of places didn’t have a single blade, but when people said something like that, they meant green. Generalizations always went back to Earth. It was our one common denominator after generations of expansion across the stars.
Ahern swept a casual glance around the restaurant. Only two people dined alone. His eyes lighted on Shade first but didn’t stop. They got to me and locked on. Someone must have told him to look for a woman.
What else does he know?More than we did wouldn’t be a stretch.
He headed straight toward me, and I took him in as he walked. He was about sixty years old, distinguished-looking, and sharply but conventionally dressed. His brown suit and stiff white shirt matched the plain colors the Overseer favored, but he’d folded a rebellious red handkerchief into his breast pocket. It just peeked out and looked like a bloodstain on his chest.
I swallowed. Logically, there was no reason to fear this meeting—this wasn’t the hard part—but nerves still gripped my throat in a stranglehold.
Had someone followed him here? Could he have made a dirty deal to exchangemefor his wife? What if he wasn’t who I thought, or who he said, or a friend at all? Could it all be lies? It wasn’t as thoughthathadn’t happened before.
I glanced at Shade, a sharp jerk yanking at my heart. I trusted only a handful of people or let them anywhere near my personal space, and Shade—the man I fell for with the speed and recklessness of a meteor on a collision course—had messed with that. In the end, he’d saved my life and was trying to make up for his deception, but sometimes, the hurt and betrayal came roaring back and knocked the air from my lungs.
The silver-haired man stopped beside my table and peered down at me with a pointed look. “It should be a fine night for stargazing.”
Considering I could barely breathe, the required response slid surprisingly easily from my tongue. “The city lights are too bright. You’d have better luck at the Mercury Tides Planetarium. I hear they have a great show.”
He nodded and pulled out a chair. “I’ll try that,” he said, sitting down across from me. “Thanks.”
I exhaled slowly and unclenched my fists, flexing my fingers under the table.I can do this.
The waitress appeared, flashing a welcoming smile at Ahern as she brought up the menu on a lightweight portable screen. He ordered a coffee, and she left with a frown. The corner table in the back wouldn’t be a profitable one for her this afternoon.
“Are you who I think you are?” Ahern asked.
That depended. Who did he think I was? “Tess Bailey,” I answered. I’d been using the name for eighteen years. I certainly wasn’t going to say Quintessa Novalight and open that whole can of worms.
Sitting back, Ahern folded his arms across his chest. “Captain of theEndeavor, right?”
He’d heard of me? And my ship? I might have blushed.
“She’s old and beat up but gets us where we need to go,” I confirmed with a nod.
The corners of his mouth lifted, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I understand the Demeter Terre refugees can thank you for feeding them.”
In our four-and-a-half-minute briefing with the rebel leaders, we’d learned that Daniel Ahern and his wife, Reena, were DT natives. There weren’t that many left. Ahern and his wife had gone farther afield and risen in the rebel ranks, but most survivors of the Demeter Terre massacre had stuck close to their ruined home and colonized its nearby moons.
“We’re not the only ones,” I said. Plenty of Nightchasers brought food and supplies to the barely inhabitable rocks orbiting the ex-agricultural giant of Sector 18. From what I understood, Reena Ahern was the only scientist in the galaxy who’d come anywhere close to figuring out how to decontaminate Demeter Terre after the Overseer poisoned the atmosphere.
“Did you know that Sector 18 lost ninety percent of its population?” Ahern asked.
I nodded. I was too young to have lived through the final Sambian War, but I knew my history. When the imperial hammer pounded down with extreme violence and a total disregard for human life, it obliterated the strongest resistance to military rule. Sectors 17 and 18 finally fell, and the Overseer—a.k.a. thank-the-Powers-that-man-wasn’t-my-father-after-all—only stopped when my mother bargained her future and her body away for the safety of what was left of the Outer Zones.
Ahern wasn’t the only one who wanted his wife back. If Demeter Terre could produce again, Sector 18 could repopulate.
The waitress arrived with Ahern’s coffee, and we kept silent while she set it in front of him with a couple of compacted sugar disks and a self-heating tube of milk—luxuries we couldn’t afford aboard theEndeavor.
