[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
You want to turn yourself into a lab rat, you go right ahead. Tal gestured towards the comm.
The smile slipped a little. Not particularly. But I also figured you d want to avoid recognition for a
while. You re not going to be much help if you re arrested as soon as we dock.
Well, we are trying to stay out of prison for your sake. Vanya leaned over, elbows on the console.
I ll take care of the message. I think I can mask us enough to keep them in the dark at least until we dock.
Maybe we should wait until we re planetside, Frey suggested. Less chance of anyone intercepting
the message through a relay, and less time for them to prepare if they do.
Makes sense, as long as you assume that Cassie hasn t run right to Vradoz and told him we re on the
way.
Jealousy is so unbecoming, Vanya. Frey s normally cheerful look had been replaced by something
like a sneer, his tone icy, and Tal winced. Whether it was true or not, even accusing Vanya of it was enough
to start a fight he didn t want to clean up after.
Deceptively gracious, she leaned in and patted Frey s knee, her smile serene and her eyes holding all
the warmth of a winter sea. You re so right. I wish I had the power to make you throw yourself into
something that could get you killed, again and again, until you finally prove yourself by dying in a hail of
gunfire. I hope that one day you love me enough to disregard everything you know about pulling a job, so I
can try to sabotage you at every turn and have you laugh it off like it s all part of the show. You re like a
fucking marionette, Frey, and you re too stupid to notice you ve got strings. Squeezing his leg, hard if Tal
was any judge of the way her fingers dug into him, she stood up abruptly. I don t know why you want to
spend the rest of your life proving yourself to someone who doesn t even She bit the words off,
clenching her jaw as she pressed her teeth over her lower lip. Never mind. I m sure it s all part of some
game I m just too naive to understand.
Tal let her go, unwilling to leave Frey unsupervised on the bridge, but for all the sound he heard out
of him for the next few hours, he might as well have been alone.
www.samhainpublishing.com 107
Chapter Eleven
It was a good thing that she could program the nav console remotely in a pinch, because if she had to
spend three more seconds in Kellen s company, she was going to do something she regretted. Vanya wasn t
used to having to censor her words. Lying never really worked out in her favor, but slapping Kellen in the
face with his unrequited love, however true the fact, seemed coldhearted. Now just slapping him period?
That thought was gaining more favor than it should.
The workroom was in its normal state of chaos, something she found soothing. Which was probably
why Heston s meticulously ordered workroom made her want to sweep everything off the shelves and onto
the floor. She settled for grabbing her notebook and shoving a pile of discarded parkas and mitts to the side
before dropping to sit cross-legged in her comfortable mess.
It was short work to program in the coordinates for Lassiter. She d worry about fine-tuning their
arrival when they were closer. There wasn t much information on Prita, and it wasn t even the capitol city.
Apparently Slipstream Labs didn t believe in a central location. Either that, or it was just more beneficial to
them to stay out of direct public view. Instead, Prita looked to be a small port city with nothing of note to
recommend it. Even the lab seemed to be advertising itself as merely a mid-grade power-cell manufacturer.
It was probably safe to assume that their security would be a bit greater than that of a run-of-the-mill
petrochem lab though.
Setting the notebook aside, Vanya let herself slump against the wall with a sigh. She was willing to
bet the ship that there had been more to Kellen s message to Cassie than what she and Tal were privy to.
Normally she d just dig around a little and be able to recover it, but with his newfound skills, it was going
to be buried deeper than she could get to. On her own ship, with the security codes she designed& it stung.
A flashing message on her notebook caught her eye, and she brought it up, surprised to find that the
trackers had come back online shortly after they d rescued Kellen. She hadn t thought they would recover
from the disruption, but they were definitely working. One less thing to worry about. One more thing to
yank Heston s chain about the next time they talked.
It looked like they were in for about ten hours of travel time if there were no hidden surprises. Too
long to hide out in the workroom, however much she might want to, but after that uncomfortable
confrontation, she wasn t anxious to see Kellen again any time soon. She wasn t used to questioning her
motives or decisions, preferring to think things through carefully enough that she never had to. Then along
came Kellen Frey, and everything was suddenly shot to shit.
The Slipstream Con
Everything about this felt off to her, from the stilted interactions between Cassie and Kellen, to the
ease with which Tal had agreed to it. She didn t think her husband was suddenly in league with Kellen, and
she knew that two criminals not talking about their worries and feelings in front of people who could use
any dropped bit of information against them wasn t going to make for the most comfortable conversation.
The common denominator in all of it seemed to be her unease, but she couldn t shake it, and she knew
enough about trusting her own instincts not to pretend that everything was just fine. There was something
going on, and she didn t know what part of any of it she could safely trust.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]