Starfall (Starflight #2)(71)
“Batavion. They mine fuel ore here.” He cut the engine and pulled a tarp from behind his seat. “And if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”
There was no plan B, and they both knew it. Batavion was the site of the only active outbreak they could find, which meant infiltrating the settlement was the most likely way to secure an inhaler. So while she helped Kane cover the shuttle, she mentally reviewed the details of his idiot scheme, making sure they hadn’t overlooked any snags beyond the obvious.
The Batavion mine workers had recently begun to show symptoms. According to the pattern, that meant they would grow worse and disappear in about a week—plenty of time for Kane to join them and catch a potentially deadly lab-engineered disease that might or might not have a permanent cure. Meanwhile she would lie low in a town full of outcasts and convicts who’d probably never seen a lady outside of a brothel. Then, assuming Necktie Fleece actually showed up with the cure, Kane would pocket an inhaler, and in his weakened state, escape on foot from the galaxy’s most infamous assassin. At which point Cassia would pick him up in the shuttle, and they’d evade a heavily armed ship and reunite with Renny somewhere in the void of space.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Did you bring the tracker?” Kane asked. “And the glue?”
She pulled them from her pocket and scanned his body for the right place to stick the pea-size beacon so it would stay put. Belly button, she decided. “Lift your shirt.”
He chuckled, but for the first time since they’d left the ship, he seemed to lose some of his confidence. It showed in the wall that went up in his gaze. “While you feast your eyes, are we going to talk about our fight? Or are we still avoiding the subject?”
She hadn’t expected him to bring that up. Glancing at his boots, she rolled the tracker between her fingers. “I think your navel’s the best place for this. If anyone sees it, they’ll assume it’s a piercing.”
“Still avoiding,” he muttered under his breath.
He lifted his shirt to midchest and forced her to do a double take. The once-golden curls that encircled his navel were now a thick, inky black, making him seem older somehow. She hadn’t realized he’d dyed his body hair, too, and she couldn’t decide if she liked it. Her pulse seemed to, because it ticked to a new rhythm as she knelt in front of him and squeezed a bead of adhesive in his belly button.
When she inserted the tracker and held it in place, the hard press of dirt beneath her knees reminded her that she was kneeling, something she’d vowed never to do before any man. She started to shift to her feet but then relaxed into her original position. Kane didn’t count. He would never try to make her feel small or degraded.
In that moment she knew the answer to the question that’d plagued her since the night of the rebel raid. No matter which direction the evidence pointed, Kane hadn’t betrayed her in any way that mattered. He wouldn’t do that to her. So she stayed on her knees until the glue dried, then tapped the device a few times to test it before standing up.
“Where’s your com-link?” she asked.
He patted his pocket. “But it’s muted, so you won’t—”
“Be able to call,” she finished. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”
“Do your best to—”
“Stay out of sight. I will.”
“And stay close to—”
“The shuttle. I know.”
He gripped both hips and stared her down. His brows were lowered and his mouth curved up, as if he was torn between irritation and amusement. “Since you can read my mind, go ahead and tell me what I’m about to say.”
“Let’s see,” she said, and began ticking items on her fingers. “You want me to be careful, wear my pistol at all times, not talk to strangers, eat my vegetables, and say my prayers at night.” She mirrored his pose. “Does that about cover it?”
“And don’t tell Renny—”
“What we’re really doing here. Or he’ll jerk a knot in both our tails.”
He nodded with exaggerated slowness, watching her for a few silent beats. Then the barrier in his gaze went up again. “I also want you to know—”
“That you didn’t spy on me.” She dipped her chin. “I know you were only protecting your mother. I wish you had told me instead of going behind my back, but now’s not the time for that discussion, so let’s keep avoiding it.”
“So we’re okay?”
“Until Fleece kills us, I guess.”
“Well, be safe,” he said.
“You too.”
And then she watched him walk away, reminding herself as her feet twitched to run after him that there was no plan B.
To his surprise, it took less than a day for Kane (or Jude, as he was known) to settle in among the miners in their camp outside the ore caves. No one questioned his story when he walked into the dorm and announced that his cousin’s wife’s best friend’s brother—intentionally confusing so he wouldn’t have to remember any names—had secured him a job. The miners didn’t say a word, not even the foreman. They simply pointed their sooty fingers toward the empty bunks in the middle of the room and returned to their conversations and dice games.
While Kane rested in his upper bunk with one arm folded behind his head, he casually peered around the room to gauge the miners’ health. Most of them seemed tired, but so would anyone after a ten-hour shift. The real clue was in the trembling of their hands and the sweat glistening on their foreheads. By his estimate, the temperature inside the dorm was a perfect seventy degrees. Knowing the disease was airborne, he inhaled through his nose to check for unusual scents. All he smelled was a crew in need of a shower.