Coming at them from an angle gave me a chance to study my uncle in a way I hadn’t gotten to during our previous encounter. Towering, strong, fit, and handsome, he looked a decade or more younger than his actual age of sixty. The silver strands glinting in his short dark hair were his only outward sign of aging. Piercing blue eyes, a long, straight nose, and a firm jawline made him striking in a severe fashion. He didn’t look like he smiled much—if ever. Life as the Overseer’s right-hand man was clearly a barrel of laughs. All that fun hunting down and enforcing.
All in all, I couldn’t find the entertaining, generous, smiling man I remembered from my childhood anywhere in the person we were approaching. Nathaniel Bridgebane had obviously buried whatever humor and integrity he had left in him deep in my mother’s grave on Alpha Sambian eighteen years ago, right alongside her.
Bridgebane’s restless, scowling face blanked the moment he saw me. While he appeared to experience an emotional shutdown, an explosion of feelings detonated in me. Heat. Fury. Incomprehension. His eyes narrowed to blue slits when he saw Shade—the one man the Dark Watch general had called for backup when he cornered me on Starway 8. That hadn’t worked out as expected.
So here we were, all of us betraying the people and ideals we fought for.
I took in my uncle’s companion as we came to a standstill—althoughstandoffmight have been the better word for it. I couldn’t tell if she was curious or suspicious. I only knew that her intense stare seemed to penetrate straight through to my internal organs, which wasn’t a sensation I cared for.
Bridgebane looked Shade up and down as if he were a piece of space garbage. Shade wasn’t his favorite flunky anymore. My uncle liked skilled, intelligent people—unless they turned on him.
“He’sstill alive?” Impressive. Bridgebane could say something so tightly his mouth barely moved.
“No, he’s the Ghost of Bounty Hunters Past,” I shot back, certain Uncle Nate would remember the crumbling book we’d read together. Only now,hewas the coldhearted bastard who needed to wake up and see the error of his ways.
That scraped the contempt off his face. He definitely remembered those parchment-like pages with illustrations that made little sense to us and references to things we could only guess at. We’d had fun trying to figure them out. The rest was easy. It was a story about people and how they could change.
Too bad my uncle hadn’t changed for the better.
Bridgebane rallied, forcing out a clipped “Maybe I should double his bounty.”
“Or maybe you should cancel it. We’re late because we had to avoid complications—complications that almost gotmecaptured.” That wasn’t a lie exactly. Raquelhadcaptured me. And if my uncle understood that he was hurting me by trying to hurt Shade, it might solve one of our major problems.
Bridgebane ran a critical eye over Shade’s scratched jaw and swollen cheekbone. A bruise blossomed like a purple and blue flower around his left eye, which no longer fully opened. Shade was a mess, and I was still slightly nauseated from the tranquilizer and its antidote in quick succession. I’d had to sit in the cruiser and fight the urge to vomit before I could even think about preparing those “cure-alls” for the bounty hunters. I’d been stupid to lower my weapon. Raquel had put hers down, too. I just didn’t know she had another.
Crossing my arms, I stared at my uncle. “Well? Are you going to call off the bounty, or are you going to continue putting me in danger?”
Bridgebane had one hell of a poker face. He looked like a wax statue, stiff and emotionless. Something in his eyes still gave him away this time, at least to me. In them, I saw the man who’d tried to keep me out of a black hole, who’d shot at Shade but not once at me, who’d pointed a gun at his own head—because he wanted my forgiveness.
I knew I’d won before my uncle realized it. The unclenching in my stomach told me so.
Scowling, Bridgebane turned to his companion. “Lieutenant Mwende. My tablet, please.”
My mouth puckered. “I thought we agreed: no goons.”
His eyes cut back to me. “She’s my personal bodyguard. There’s no one else with me.” He swept a dismissive glance over Shade. “You obviously brought your guard also, although he doesn’t look very effective.”
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Shade sounded prickly. Did my uncle’s opinion matter to him?
“My niece doesn’t have a scratch on her, so I’m assuming she came to your rescue.”
“She did.” Shade’s flat answer seemed to startle Bridgebane. “But she wouldn’t have needed to if you weren’t pissed off that we’re together.”
“It was a mutual rescuing,” I corrected. “And you should behappyI have Shade looking out for me. Wasn’t he your favorite? The best of the best? The guy you called when you wanted something accomplished?”
“That’s the problem, Quin,” Bridgebane ground out. “He has no conscience. He turned on me; he’ll turn on you. He’s bagged people without asking a single question.”
“Onyourorders,” I flung back. “Any dirt on Shade is shit-layered mud on you,General Bridgebane.”
I was expecting my uncle’s expression to deaden again, to shut like a door in my face. Instead, his color rose.
“I would die before I turned on Tess.” Shade glanced at a passing couple and lowered his voice. “I had no idea you were related. Or protecting her—in your way, at least. I betrayed youforher. Don’t you get that?”
Bridgebane was listening, but he was hard to read. So was Lieutenant Mwende, who stood beside him holding a small tablet. She didn’t take her midnight stare off us. An angular chin, high forehead, and wide, prominent cheekbones gave her an elegant, almost diamond-shaped face. She’d slicked her black hair into a tight bun. If charisma and deadliness were to be mixed into one person, I had a feeling she was it. I wanted to look at her almost as much as I wanted to study my uncle. No part of her was soft or gave the impression she could be molded by anyone’s design but her own. Tall and poised, she exuded command. She also looked like a sleek, gleaming bullet marked for a precise target. You wouldn’t see her coming until you were already bleeding out and done.
My uncle finally took the tablet. “Thank you, Sanaa.” His politeness with her made me wonder how he could be so awful to everyone else.
A moment later, Bridgebane flashed the tablet at us, showing us some kind of database with listings on it. He tapped a line, calling up Shade’s description, picture, and astronomical bounty. A header reading DEAD OR ALIVE prefaced the whole thing in big block letters and scared the crap out of me. My uncle scrolled to the button that said Cancel and pressed it.
