Torran said nothing. His team’s subtle movements highlighted his incredible stillness. He could’ve been carved from stone. And, indeed, I’d met rocks that were more forthcoming.
I tried again. “How long ago was your mystery item stolen?”
“Approximately eight standard days.” The tiniest curl of his lip told me exactly what he thought of referring to human time units as the standard.
I wrinkled my nose, both at him and at eight days. More than a week was a long time for a trail to go cold. We’d gotten lucky picking up older bounties in the past because of Kee’s ability to find information, but that might not help us on Valovia. “Kee, you finding anything?” I asked under my breath.
“I’m looking, but I’m not seeing anything. Either they haven’t reported it, or the Valovian police force is better at keeping secrets than the FHP. And based on what I’ve seen before, they’re not.”
“Did you get the authorities involved?” I asked Torran.
There was the tiniest crack in his calm facade, and his glare became even fiercer. “No. This is a family matter.”
“Who assessed the crime scene?” I asked, my limited patience running dangerously thin.
“I did,” he replied.
“And? Did you find any leads?”
“Yes.”
When he didn’t say anything else, my patience snapped. “So you expect me to agree to help you find an unknown item stolen by an unknown thief over a week ago with nothing more than your word that this isn’t just an elaborate plot to lure me and my crew to our deaths in Valovian space?”
He stiffened and his glare turned icy. “I already offered you safe passage and agreed to explain after the contract is signed.”
“So you said.” I blew out a frustrated breath. I didn’t like going into a contract blind, but with half of the money up front, I would make a tidy profit even if the task was as impossible as I feared.
I knew what I had to do, but I still didn’t like it. Working with the enemy felt like betrayal, and bitterness filled me. I tried to think of it as relieving a Valovian general of as much of his money as possible.
It didn’t help.
Before I could change my mind, I spoke. “Double the price and deliver a signed guarantee of safe passage, and I’ll give you four standard weeks of my crew’s best effort. If we haven’t recovered the item or the thief by then, I keep the first half of the payment and we go our separate ways—after you’ve escorted us to safe territory. You and your team will be allowed on my ship, but you must respect my crew and follow my orders. Rifle through anyone’s head without permission and I’ll dump you into space. Do we have a deal?”
Torran’s expression remained frustratingly blank. I would have better luck reading a painting. My patience was shot, but I had stubbornness in spades. I stared him down.
Finally, after an age, he said, “Give me twelve weeks and I’ll give you two-fifty.”
I laughed in his face. A Valovian squad on my ship for three months? No thanks. “Eight weeks, three hundred thousand credits. That’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”
When he didn’t respond, relief chased disappointment. Kee still wouldn’t be getting her upgrades, but at least I wouldn’t have to deal with Torran and his squad for two months. I tossed him a mocking farewell salute and turned to my ship. I’d been waiting for Eli, my first officer, to return from a supply run, but I could just as easily wait inside.
I was halfway up the ramp when Torran stirred. “Wait.”
The extra height from the ramp meant he had to look up at me. It was petty, but I enjoyed it anyway. “Yes?”
Torran raised his chin. “I accept.”
Fucking hell.
Chapter Two
Eli showed up while Torran and I were in the middle of heated contract negotiations. Torran had refused my standard bounty hunting boilerplate and now he was trying to give me an aneurysm from sheer rage and frustration.
My first officer parked his levcart at the bottom of Starlight’s ramp and circled around toward me, his face set in granite lines. He was tall and heavily muscled, with deep brown skin and warm brown eyes. He wore the dark pants and black shirt that had become his working uniform. When he wasn’t scowling, Eli was incredibly handsome, so much so that Kee and I gave him shit for it. People took one look at his face and underestimated him, even with his build.
“Problem?” he asked quietly.
Eli, Kee, and I had served together during the war, and while I didn’t need the support, having him at my side loosened some of the tension I’d been carrying. Eli and Kee were the siblings I’d never had, and the bonds we’d forged in blood and death were diamond hard.
If I needed help burying a body, Eli would silently grab a shovel and start digging while Kee erased all evidence of the crime.
I would do the same for them.
“This is General Torran Fletcher,” I said with a wave at the Valoff in question. “He’s trying to hire us, but my standard contract isn’t good enough for him, so we’re negotiating. Rather, he’s dictating, and I’m ignoring him.”
At the name, Eli’s eyes darted to Torran. I knew that look, so I tensed to intercept an attack, but Eli merely growled something nasty under his breath. He looked at me, and his voice came through my comm, picked up by his subvocal mike. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Blame Kee.”
Eli shot me an exasperated look and heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“Yes, blame me for forcing Tavi to accept more money for eight weeks of work than we’d normally make in two years,” Kee said over the comm, her voice tart. “Woe is us.”
I covered my laugh with a cough. Torran had to know we were communicating with each other, even if he couldn’t hear us, but his expression remained unreadable. “General Fletcher, meet my first officer, Elias Bruck. When I’m not around, you’ll follow his commands while aboard Starlight’s Shadow.”
A curt nod was Torran’s only response.
“You may want to move this somewhere more private,” Eli said. “You’re starting to draw interest.”
I’d noticed the increasing frequency of people walking by, but for all of our furious disagreement, Torran and I had kept our voices down.
“They’re not setting a single foot on my ship without an ironclad contract,” I growled with an impatient wave toward the Valoffs. “It’s not my fault the general refused a perfectly good one.”
“My ship is—” Torran started, only to stop when I made a disbelieving noise. I certainly wasn’t setting foot on a Valovian ship, contract or no.
For the first time, frustration showed in Torran’s expression. Welcome to the party.
Without warning, one of the Valovian soldiers broke from the group and headed toward the landing bay’s exit into the station. Eli stepped protectively closer to me. We were both a little jumpy with so many enemies nearby.
“Chira is going to secure us a neutral location,” Torran explained.
This was a Fed station, so as long as we remained in the station itself, it was unlikely to be a trap. And if it was a trap, well, then more fun for me.