“Copy that, control. Sealing all external access now.” She killed the comm, and her fingers were already dancing across the console, bringing systems online. “Fred, get us out of here.”
“With pleasure. Engaging departure sequence.”
The ship shuddered as the docking clamps released. Through the viewport, Raaze watched the station begin to slide away.
He dropped into the co-pilot’s seat. “Yellow spotted rhino-hedgehogitis?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Is that… a real thing we have on board?”
Her lips quirked at the corners. “No.”
“So you just?—”
“Made it up.” She didn’t look at him, too busy monitoring their departure trajectory, but the grin spread wider. “Latharians have no idea what dangerous diseases humans carry, do they? For all they know, we’re walking biological weapons. One sneeze and their whole station could be compromised.”
He stared at her profile. Her red hair was coming loose from its tie. The grease smudge on her jaw she hadn’t noticed yet, and nowhere on her face was there a flicker of guilt about any of it.
“That’s…” Holy trall. She was devious, brilliant, and terrifying. “Not what I expected from you.”
“What did you expect?”
Back on Parac’Norr, he’d clocked her as the easy mark. Nervous and isolated. The kind of soft target who’d fold under pressure because she didn’t know how to push back. He’d watched her struggle with equipment, seen the way she’d flinched at the other pilots’ dismissal, and filed her away as manageable.
Draanth, he was an idiot.
The woman who’d just lied her way past station control without breaking a sweat wasn’t soft. She wasn’t manageable. She was something else entirely… something he hadn’t expected or accounted for.
“So.” She swiveled her chair to face him, and the grin was gone. Back to business. “The healer’s dead. His room’s been ransacked, and it seems that someone wanted whatever records he had badly enough to kill him for it.”
“That’s about the shape of it.” He nodded, lounging in his chair and watching her.
You’ve spent your whole career reading people in under three seconds. Took one look at her on the tarmac and filed her under easy. Your instincts have apparently retired without telling you.
“Which means the records aren’t in that room anymore. Either whoever killed him took them, or he hid them somewhere else before they got to him.” She leaned her elbows on the armrests, hands folded over her stomach. “Where would a healer hide sensitive medical files? Failing that, do Latharian healers have some kind of universal records system? Somewhere records get sent automatically as a backup?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“I’m a warball player,” he shrugged, the words dragged out of him. “I can read a defensive line. I can put a ball through a gap smaller than my fist at forty meters, and I know which reporters can be bought and which ones can’t. Ask me about locker room politics, and I can talk for a week.”
He spread his hands. “Ask me where a dead healer might have stashed evidence of medical fraud, and you’re talking to the wrong male.”
“I had one lead,” he said finally, the words bitter on his tongue. “V’Teth diagnosed me, and he could have testified that the results were faked. That was my whole plan. Find him, get him to recant, clear the warrant.”
“And now he’s dead.”
He sighed, running his hands through his hair. “Yeah, now he’s dead. Sucks to be me, huh?”
She watched him for a long moment. Her expression was unreadable—not hostile, but not sympathetic either. Calculating.
She’s deciding if you’re still worth the trouble.
The thought shouldn’t have stung. This was a business arrangement. She’d agreed to help him because clearing his name was the only way to clear hers. If that path was closed…
Cait swiveled back to her console. Her fingers moved across the interface, pulling up screens he didn’t recognize.
“What are you doing?”
