“No. Instead you’d turn your back on me.” The heat built behind her eyes, and she could feel the hot, wet tears on her cheeks. Selling Collins had already been difficult, and now this. “On us.”
“You’re the one who said you were done living by other people’s orders, who wanted to do for yourself. That’s not the chance you’d get on the Sentinel. The captain wants obedience. Every person to their task.”
“I don’t have a job there,” she said softly. She realized it was right as the words left her mouth. She had no skill or talent to contribute. They needed a geneticist and cat-handler like they needed a set of wire-mesh airlocks. “I can’t contribute.”
“You do contribute. You make me happy. But you have your own dreams. I won’t ask you to give those up. But I’d like it if you did. Stay aboard that is.”
It was what she’d hoped for, what she’d wanted. Or at least what she thought she’d wanted. Now she wasn’t so sure. Even with Barnes’s fee she’d managed to make herself a tidy sum. More then enough to get started on a whole new path. “I…need to think about it. Can I give you my answer when Zion’s back?”
He nodded. “Take your time. I’ll go back to the spaceport and wait.”
16
He’d asked her to come with him. Finally. Meja’s heartbeat gave an unexpected hitch. Okay, it hadn’t been an enthusiastic invitation, but it had been one all the same. As prickly and standoffish as her doctor himself.
Hers.
The thought made pride burn fierce in her chest. Her fingers drifted to her lips, remembering his kiss, and she wondered if he was thinking of her at the moment too. She’d far from tamed him, but he had carved out a space in her heart. And if he could grow to feel the same… Best not to get ahead of herself.
She’d asked him for time to consider. She owed both of them that time. Once the sale had completed, she’d have enough money to do whatever she wanted with her life. Something more fulfilling than creating custom animals for people who were too rich to appreciate them as more than a status symbol. Except…she wasn’t entirely certain what that might be.
When she’d been at GRCA, her work had been her whole life. A constant state of waiting to exhale and start doing the things she wanted. Now she had no more excuses, and outside of Layth, she couldn’t come up with anything.
She refused to define her life only in terms of Layth. It was unhealthy, and they both deserved to be a whole person on their own merits. Plus, she’d only known him a few weeks, marvelous though they might have been. With the money she had, her possibilities were—if not limitless, at least more open than they’d been. Now she could travel around and see what her options really were.
And what better way to travel than with a team of independent long-haul operators. The phrase made her think of Layth again, and the warmth blooming through her blood had nothing to do with lust.
Someone cleared their throat, breaking her reverie. She looked around, remembering now that she’d stepped through the gates and away from the race area. Two people in dark clothes leaned against a parked hovercar, watching her.
Panic punched an icy fist into her stomach. This was bad. She glanced over her shoulder but of course Layth was nowhere to be seen. Another hovercar eeled over the ground toward her. Meja turned ninety-degrees to them both and started to walk away at a brisk trot. The first two people climb back into their vehicle.
The second hovercar changed direction to pull up alongside her, the only sound the whirr of the window rolling down.
“One might almost suspect you were thinking of going somewhere, Ms. Aquarone.” The voice was silky smooth, tinted with laughter at the owner’s own cleverness.
She turned, fully aware who it belonged to. “Hello, Gideon. Sorry, but I was on my way to meet someone.”
Gideon Voss, one of the senior VPs at Golden Ratio Companion Animals, smiled from the open car window as if he’d been patiently waiting for this exact moment. Actually, from what she knew of him, he probably had. At least since she’d been spotted yesterday.
“People at the company are very worried. You’ve been missing for a month, almost. I had to put a trace on your omni, to make sure you were safe. Imagine my surprise when you were back on Burbidge.”
“Did you also put the bounty on my head?” God, she hated the way he liked to talk around things instead of saying them outright.
He held a thin-fingered hand to his chest. “That may have been overzealous. I just wanted to make certain you were safe, that if someone saw you, they could tell us.”
She glanced around, but unfortunately, the other team had moved to cut off her avenues of escape. Plus he’d be able to catch her regardless, unless she learned to fly. Somehow, she doubted wings were in her future. “I’m sure you must have been devastated to hear I’d been shot.”
“As I said, overzealous.” He opened the door and stepped out of the car. Across the vehicle, another bruiser in GRCA livery got out. “But let’s be honest, you’re far less important than those assets you took. We both understand that.”
“They weren’t assets. They were living creatures that you wanted me to kill because they were the wrong color.”
“They were a special order for a customer, and when they failed to meet the expectation, we cancelled the order and we back to manufacturing.” He shook his head. “You used to agree with me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She stepped backward. There may not be a way out behind her, but she didn’t like being within arm’s reach. “It took me a long time to grow a spine, but I was never okay with it.”
“Where are they?” The two guards from the other vehicle walked closer, while Bruiser came around the back of the car, cutting her off. Voss sighed in quiet frustration. “If you hand them over right now, things will go easier for you.”
“I sold them on Heph Prime. Sorry. You’re out of luck.” Part of her hoped, maybe even expected, Layth to charge down the street and whisk her to safety. It was a vain idea, she knew, but her heart still stuttered at the thought.
“I make my own luck, as you well know. We’ll just have to ask less nicely back at headquarters.” He stepped away from her, returning to his vehicle, and snapped at the guards with a casual flick of his wrist. “Bring her.”
Like dogs unleashed, the security guards barreled toward her, unlimbering stunsticks and spreading out as much as they could on the narrow walk. She swung at the first guard to come close, and his partner drilled her in the back with his stunner. Meja cursed as her knees buckled under the sudden disruption to her nervous system. She hit the floor hard, still trying to struggle, until another stunner hit her, and everything went black.
Layth paced across the tarmac, tugging out his omni to check the time again. She still wasn’t here. Fear, and some other emotion he couldn’t quite name, tangled in his chest, the pain leaving him blinking against tears. Not that he’d shed them in front of Zion. The idea of giving the man that kind of leverage over him was all but unthinkable.
“Still no word?” Say the devil’s name and he appears. Tiredness hung around Zion’s shoulders after his flight, but he’d completed the job in record time. And he’d brought Barr back with him, just in case they needed backup.