Polaris Rising (Consortium Rebellion, #1)(28)

I would have to risk the central district to try to lose the tail in the meager crowd. I angled back toward the spaceport. Hopefully I could catch a glimpse of the Rockhurst ship while I was out.

As the number of people in the streets picked up, I dropped into my invisible persona, subtly altering my gait and posture. I also picked up the pace until I was just another harassed underling off to do an urgent task for a demanding boss.

I slipped down alleys and through a busy trading street. I looped back and changed course at random, until the watched feeling faded away. I kept at it for another twenty minutes, even pausing to stop in a tea shop and then exiting out the back.

When I was completely sure that I’d lost any tail, I started working my way back toward our original house. I was on the edge of the central district when Richard Rockhurst stepped out of a restaurant with a com to his ear.

Richard wore a traditional mercenary outfit, complete with cloak, but the hood was thrown back. He was tall and fit, with the blond hair and blue eyes I’d so envied as a young girl. I’d recognize him anywhere.

He was in the middle of the block I’d just entered. There was nowhere to go without drawing attention to myself and it took everything I had not to freeze and give myself away.

“And the man with Loch?” Richard asked with deceptive calm.

Someone on the other end must have responded, but I wasn’t close enough to catch it.

“So you’re telling me that you have neither Loch nor his contact on this godforsaken planet. You had one job and you failed.”

Another pause as the person on the other end tried to save their life. Now I was within a meter of Richard. I ducked my head, dropped my eyes, and thought invisible thoughts. I passed him close enough that our cloaks brushed.

“Find Ada,” he said. “That is priority one. Loch is our only lead right now, so that makes him priority two. We know he’s here in the city. Now it’s just a matter of finding where he’s stashed her.”

I didn’t breathe until I turned the next corner. I kept my pace even and continued on my way. Whoever had been following me thought I was Loch’s contact, unless Loch had another contact somewhere else. Either way, Loch had also avoided capture.

Ten minutes later I stopped in the darkness between two buildings and scanned myself for trackers. I came up clean. My tail had been following me the old-fashioned way, which begged the question: Why?

It was clear they’d arrived after us, but not by too much if Loch left the house while I was scanning for bugs. Maybe Loch had drawn off the main set of men, leaving behind a skeleton crew to watch what they thought was Loch’s contact’s house. If so, we’d gotten extremely lucky.

Luck was a fickle bitch, though, and I’d used up my monthly allotment in the last two days. I needed to be more careful.





Chapter 8




It took me over an hour to return to the house. I could’ve covered the distance in ten minutes if I took a direct path, but after the scare with Richard I wanted to be absolutely sure I didn’t have a tagalong.

Entering a potentially compromised building with only a knife was stupid. But I’d checked the perimeter twice and no one else lurked in the shadows. Stationing your entire team in the compromised house was equally stupid. We’d see whose stupid won.

The back door was unlocked. I slipped inside. “Loch?” I called. It gave me away, but it also meant I wasn’t sneaking up on the Devil of Fornax Zero in the dark. And if it wasn’t Loch waiting for me, I’d rather know that while I still had an easy exit at my back.

“In here.”

“We really should’ve had a secret ‘I promise there isn’t a roomful of mercs in here’ keyword,” I muttered to myself.

“I promise there isn’t a roomful of mercs in here,” Loch called back. I could hear the grin in his voice.

I locked the back door and approached the room we’d used before. The door was open and the light was on. Loch sat on a barstool that hadn’t been in the room before. He clutched a bloody rag to his upper left arm.

“Holy hell, are you okay?”

“Energy bolt grazed me,” he said. “Just deep enough that it didn’t cauterize. It looks worse than it is.”

“That’s good because it looks terrible,” I said. “Why didn’t you get the first aid kit?”

“Didn’t know we had one,” Loch said. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow. Can’t say the same for the bastard who shot me.”

“What happened?” I asked. I pulled out my com and checked him for trackers and bugs. He was clean, as was the room, and our packs from the ship. The two trackers I’d attached to his cloak didn’t set off the alarm since they were mine now. Assuming neither of us had been tracked the old-fashioned way, we wouldn’t have to leave tonight.

I rummaged around in my pack from the ship until I dug out the first aid kit. Loch grimaced but didn’t object. He was right, the wound looked worse than it was. It was shallow, but as wide and long as my finger. I bet it stung like nobody’s business. I cleaned the wound and put a healing bandage on it.

“I went to look for heat only to realize the heater was missing. I’d been feeling twitchy, so I went outside to check the perimeter. Rockhurst’s men are sneaky fuckers, I’ll give them that. They moved in before I could warn you, so I did what I could to draw them away.” He shrugged his bad shoulder. “It worked a little too well.”