High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,10
had a disconcerting tendency to act more like lightning than anything else on Faldine, vacillating wildly.
Shooting a laz, as the first Verdant String settlers had discovered, could be just as deadly for the shooter or the friends beside them as for whoever they were shooting at.
Hana handed the SAL back to him and then went still, a look on her face telling him she was concentrating hard, and he guessed she was listening for the runner.
“They're close.” She glanced at him. “Too close.”
“As in 'how did they know which direction to choose' close?” There was really only one logical explanation for that.
“Electronic tag,” Hana said. “The magfield will be interfering, so they'll have to get closer to get a signal.”
He gave a nod of agreement. “If there's one on either one of us, they'd have managed to get a general direction when they were coming in. Now they'll be hunting to refine it.”
The aurora had finished hours before, but the lack of it meant the moonlight was useful again, and Iver caught a glimpse of Hana's face. She was worrying her lower lip with her teeth.
“I should have thought of a tag earlier.”
“Why?” He hadn't either. “The first team didn't behave as if they had a tag to follow.”
“Probably Lancaster didn't think we'd get away. Now he's not sure if we did or not, he's come to check.”
The logic of it was undeniable. “And because they're heading right for us, they've been getting an intermittent signal, at the very least. So Lancaster knows we made it. And generally where we are.”
“The good news keeps coming.” Her voice held a hint of humor, and sudden, unexpected desire flashed through him.
He was plastered up against her, so it was no trouble at all to bend his head and give her a quick, hard kiss.
She went still under him, and then, to his surprise and delight, kissed him back, her lips firm against his.
She cleared her throat delicately, and he thought he saw a flush of color on her cheeks.
Before he could tease her, the sound of a big runner coming closer had him focusing again.
Hana drew in a deep breath. “We need to find that tag.”
“I know.” It was most likely in his clothing, but unlike Hana, he had nothing spare. His luggage had gone up with the Sig.
Still, if it kept them alive . . . “I'll strip off everything.”
She was looking in the direction of the runner, tension in every line of her. “I'm going to trust you with something.”
He waited, saying nothing.
She drew in a deep breath. “The magfield is weak enough here that I can find the tag on you, if there is one.”
“All right.” Of everything he thought she'd say, this was the last thing he'd expected.
She turned to him, reaching out her hands.
He didn't know what he expected. Given her nervousness, he assumed she was about to bring out a banned or modified scanner of some kind. Some illegal equipment he, as the head of planet, would be obliged to report her over. What he didn't expect was for her to run her fingers over him, starting at the top of his head.
“What if the tag is on you?”
“It isn't. I've checked.”
He wondered when she'd done that, but said nothing as her fingers ran down his neck, over his shoulders and then down the front of his chest.
She hesitated when she got to his crotch, and he couldn't help leaning in. “It's nothing you haven't felt before.” His voice was a husky whisper.
She lifted her gaze to his, and despite the situation, the rising noise of the runner coming their way, he could see the gleam of humor in her gold-brown eyes as she inclined her head. “It's poked me in the back a time or two.”
Her lips quirked, but she didn't touch him intimately.
“However good he is, I don't think Lancaster would be able to put a tag on you there.”
Her arms came around him, and her hands rose up his back, and then came to a stop on his spine, just between his shoulder blades.
“There.” She pressed the spot, and he felt a sudden sharp pain.
“That's quite a gift you have.” He said it only to distract himself from the memory of him and Lancaster waking from a night out in the bush. They'd both been stiff and sore after spending a day whitewater rafting in the river near his home, and then drinking too much xitin around the campfire.
He remembered how his back