“I don’t like it,” he said finally.
“I know.”
“If anything happens to you?—”
“It won’t.”
But even as she said it, her mind kept circling back to that moment when Fred had announced the security inquiry. The look on Raaze’s face. He’d known they were coming, and he hadn’t told her.
She set it aside again. They’d deal with that later, when this was over.
When there was time.
If there was time.
The station smelled like recycled air, rust, and… Cait frowned as she took a tentative sniff… Yeah, the lingering odor of wet socks.
She followed Raaze through the cramped corridors of KT-Seventeen, a frontier trading post that clung to the edge of legitimate space like a barnacle with commitment issues. The lighting flickered in patterns that suggested either faulty wiring or a deliberate aesthetic choice, and she wasn’t sure which option was worse.
The station concourse opened up like a wound in the station’s belly, stalls jammed together under jury-rigged awnings that dripped condensation from the ceiling pipes. Voices bounced off metal walls in a dozen languages, not one of them bothering to lower the volume. An argument erupted near a parts stall, something about a cracked fuel coil, but nobody turned their heads. She didn’t expect them to, deliberately keeping her gaze locked ahead. Eye contact here meant you cared, and caring got you marked.
Raaze moved past her, his shoulder brushing her arm. She bit her lip as the contact sent a spark up her nerves that had nothing to do with the static charge in the air.
Heart rate elevated, Fred noted. Cortisol levels suggest you have slept four hours in the last cycle. Recommend immediate rest.
She sidestepped a Bretvikian merchant hauling a crate of something that clicked. I’m fine.
Logging that under Optimistic Inaccuracies. Also, the male two stalls back has been tracking you for the past seventy seconds. Probability of pickpocket: sixty-three percent. Probability of something worse: twelve percent.
And the other twenty-five?
He might just like redheads.
She snorted, drawing a glance from Raaze. He’d stopped at a stall selling secondhand clothing, the kind of place where everything came pre-stained, and nobody asked where it had been before. Casting an eye over the offerings, she decided that was probably for the best.
“Problem?” he asked.
“Nope,” she shook her head, but turned to glare at the potential pickpocket. He suddenly decided that there were other places far more interesting to be. “Just Fred being Fred.”
“Ah.”
He reached for the first jacket that didn’t look like it had been owned by a corpse. Testing the seams with thick fingers, he tugged at a reinforced shoulder.
She eyed the price tag. “You have a budget, remember?”
“I have taste,” he shot back, lips quirking. He flicked the tag and picked up a different jacket. It was more flamboyant, but the leather was cheaper and stiffer. Turning it inside out, he checked the lining. “This’ll do.”
He found some dark pants and held them up to his waist.
“Those will fall apart in a week,” she said.
“They’ll last three days. I only need two.” He didn’t glance at her. “We’re not moving in.”
He picked up a pair of boots, frowning as he turned them over and ran his thumb along the seam.
She’d expected… something else. Celebrity helplessness, maybe. The kind of performative indifference that said I’m too important to care about prices, and I want everyone to know it.
Rich people did that. Her father did that. Kian definitely did that.
