Ar'Tok - Alana Khan Page 0,17
out this whole time?” Crap. His body is like an eye magnet. I try to focus on the ceiling, but I can’t control my urge to steal peeks at all those muscles.
“Yeah. Is something wrong?”
Why would he think that? Maybe because I knocked like my hair was on fire or because my cheeks are flaming in embarrassment.
“Exciting news. I want to run it by you. Could you, uh, put on some clothes?”
“Sure. I forgot. They warned me that Earth women are offended by nudity. Let me take a shower first.”
Luckily, he’s quick in the shower. Ten minutes later, we’re sitting across from each other on his bed, and I’m telling him my exciting news.
“So, how much do you think I can wangle out of him?” I ask.
“I have no idea, but whatever you can do, Aerie can get you more. I watched her in action a while back. She’s an amazing negotiator.”
“I guess we also need to see if Captain Zar will agree to the plan. It would mean going to Paragon, and I’d probably need an armed guard.”
“Let’s go ask.”
As we stand to leave and I’m inches away from Ar’Tok, I can’t keep the image of his naked body out of my thoughts. I’m going to finagle a way to sleep with him again tonight. Maybe we can try some of the things we were talking about right before my oxygen ran out.
When we get to the bridge, I tell the captain about Ergonn’s offer. Zar’s an amazing male. When he looks at me, I can tell he’s thinking of nothing other than what I’m saying. He’s thoughtful and respectful as he weighs my words.
“So you want to do this?” he asks.
I nod.
“You have no doubt you can produce what this male is asking of you?”
“None.”
“Did Dr. Drayke relay my offer to you? That you can stay with us? Fly the galaxy with us if you’d like?”
“Yes.”
“Have you made that decision yet?”
“No. It’s only been two days.” I’m surprised he would imagine I could make that big of a decision in such a short amount of time.
“I only ask because I’m concerned for your safety. Once Ergonn knows you’re a female, your identity will not remain a secret in the underworld. As a single female, alone on a satellite, you might be a target for evildoers. I believe this job will put you at risk.”
I hadn’t thought of that. He’s right. But all that money could buy me an in-house team of bodyguards for a decade.
“I’ll take that chance,” I tell him.
He nods for a while, still thinking. “You’re sure? I don’t want you to make this decision lightly.”
“I’m sure.”
“Then let’s negotiate this dracking job to the highest amount we can squeeze out of him,” Zar says with a piratical smile.
I’m told he was born a slave. Somehow in the months since he fought for his freedom, he left that persona in the dust. He’s a born leader.
“You’re doing all the negotiation by comms?” he asks. “Mind if we invite Aerie to help? She has the skills to get us the highest amount possible.”
“If she can get us more money, I’m all for it.”
Aerie and her male, Beast, live on the Devil’s Playground, which has followed us to these coordinates. She joins us, dressed for battle in a gray pinstripe suit that she must have been abducted in. She looks like she’d be more at home in a Wall Street boardroom than an alien spaceship—except for her flip-flops. They’re an awful eggplant color with chartreuse alien eyes all over them. They look like thrift store rejects.
“You’re eyeing my shoes?” she asks, a smile slashed across her pretty face. “I’m sure you covet them. Who wouldn’t? But don’t even think about it. These are my lucky shoes. When I wear them, I can get your price doubled.”
She asks me lots of questions so she understands what the job might entail. I throw some jargon at her so she can throw it at Ergonn.
“Tell him this is a hundred times more complicated than the firewall he requested. What he needs is a virus, a virus that replicates itself and morphs to avoid detection. It involves polymorphic malware. This is high-level stuff. When I’m done with his system, it will evade the most sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms.”
She gives me an open-eyed look and a shake of her head. “I have to write this down, it’s above my paygrade.” She begins comm’ing back and forth with E, her keystrokes getting faster the longer the