he was a loner. Plus, he’d promised himself he would never risk caring for anyone again.
That last image of Maria flashed in front of his mind. Her blackened and still smoking body dead on the altar, with the church burning around her. She’d wanted to save his soul. Hell, he was pretty sure he didn’t have a soul to save. Her betrayal had broken him, and it had taken years to put himself back together. To come to terms with what he was. Now the memory brought no pain. Maria had been a product of her times and beliefs.
If Destiny didn’t go with them, then what would happen to her? He was still no closer to understanding who and what she was. Would she be safe here? She was clearly important to Kinross, so likely she would be looked after. Safe. But he couldn’t dispel the niggle of worry.
Maybe if he could prove to himself conclusively that she would be safe on Trakis Four, then leaving her would be easier.
There was also the fact that she didn’t know their true nature, and he wasn’t about to tell her. Rico had a strict policy about what happened to outsiders who discovered what they were, and it usually involved death.
“I could keep watch when you go in,” she said, dragging him from his thoughts. “I want to be useful.” Her chin took on a stubborn tilt.
He thought about his answer carefully. “It will be more dangerous with you along,” he said. “I’ll worry about you and that will make me careless. Likely I could get killed.”
Dylan smirked and raised the bottle of whiskey in his direction.
Milo cast him a dirty look that said keep out of this conversation.
Her eyes narrowed and he braced himself for an argument. But in the end, she smiled sweetly and nodded. “Okay. I’ll stay here.”
A feeling of unease ran through him, not helped by the fact that Dylan snorted another laugh.
How had his life gotten so complicated?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.”
—Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
They left in the late afternoon.
Milo was already distancing himself, though Destiny was aware that he still wanted her. Occasionally, she would glance up and find his gaze on her, his eyes heavy with desire. But he didn’t touch her. And when they left, he didn’t kiss her goodbye or anything.
She held herself firmly in place, clutching the arms of her seat while every atom of her body screamed to go to him. Cling to him. Men hated clingy women, and she suspected Milo more than most.
Besides, she knew what they were doing was dangerous, and she wouldn’t beg to be allowed to go along. She didn’t want to be a distraction. They were only leaving her for her own protection.
She huffed. Why did that sound familiar?
Deep inside her, the old familiar anger stirred. She waited for it to sink back down as she had taught herself. Anger had never gotten her anywhere. Instead it grew, swelling and rising to the surface. She gritted her teeth. The truth was she didn’t want to be fucking protected. She didn’t need protecting. She was strong and she was fast, and she could shoot a gun…probably.
As the door slid closed behind them, she hurled her ereader across the room.
Then jumped to her feet and picked it up and heaved a sigh of relief that it wasn’t damaged. She loved her ereader. Plus, she needed the information on there. It occurred to her that in some ways Dr. Yang was right; anger didn’t solve anything and could make you act stupidly. Like throwing your ereader across the room.
She was still going through the engineering books. It had occurred to her that what they needed most from their shuttle was the communication system so they could contact their captain, Rico. Maybe if she got the comms system working on this ship, she could somehow rework it so they could use it to contact the Trakis Two. She couldn’t see why not. In principle. She hadn’t mentioned what she was doing to Milo or Dylan. She hadn’t wanted them to tell her not to press buttons.
She’d read through the part of the books that covered the comm system on the Trakis ships, but so far, she hadn’t found anything that looked the same or even similar. Now she was going through the various consoles on the