High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,59

nose and mouth. She took a few breaths, looking around. “We need to find a good place to hide before the camp guards get here.”

“We're only to attack if there's one of them, Craven said. We stay put if there are more.” Her companion coughed again.

“Sure.” There was a slightly derisive laugh in the woman's voice. “We play it safe, got it.”

The man sighed, then the fumes must have got to him again, because he coughed for a minute. “There aren't enough of us to risk being hurt or captured, Lia.” There was a more aggressive edge to his voice now.

Iver recognized the name. He hadn't gotten a good look at the woman who'd been part of the group that had chased Hana into the steel trap, but he'd heard her name mentioned. There couldn't be two women with the same name in the area.

So these two were part of the smugglers' group.

Iver had gotten a good look at all three men who'd been part of the ambush team back in the valley, and the man with Lia now wasn't one of them.

So there were others in the group. How many would be interesting to find out.

“I said sure.” Lia snapped out the response.

“You say a lot of things, and then just go your own way.”

“I found the camp, didn't I?” Lia's tone was sharp.

“You did. But you also let them see you. So now we have to bring the plans forward.” There was a nastiness in his voice.

“You ever get tired of being Craven's little sycophant, Roj? Because that's all you do. You toe the line.”

Roj turned to her, aggression in his stance. “Why did you join up if you don't want to toe the line? No one forced you to come out here.”

“Fuck you.” Lia sneered, hands on hips. “I fought in the war as soon as I was old enough to join, and I lost big. I'm not losing out again because someone's scared of acting.”

“It's called being strategic.” Roj's hands were fisted at his sides, then he went still, his gaze snapping to the path.

He signaled to Lia, pointing back the way they'd entered the clearing and then ran silently to the bushes opposite to where Iver was hiding.

Lia hesitated, then followed Roj's directions, slipping back the way they'd come.

Iver hadn't heard whatever had alerted Roj, and the silence dragged out. The camp guards had either smelled the burn of the TellTale, or they'd heard Roj and Lia talking. Either way, they'd gone silent.

As time stretched out, with nothing happening, Iver decided the other option was that Roj had been overcautious, that there hadn't been anyone there in the first place.

He heard the rustle of foliage to his left, where he knew Lia had gone to ground.

She was getting twitchy. Or tired of waiting.

There was a sudden shout, coming from Roj's hiding place, and two men burst out into the clearing, fighting.

It was ugly.

There were vicious blows and hard knocks, the men grunting and grappling as they rolled around on the blackened ground.

Iver recalled Roj had had a SAL earlier, when he'd shot Grimms and her fellow guard, but there was no sign of it now.

Both men started coughing as they picked up the grit and residue of the TellTale, so their labored breath became part of the ugliness of the fight.

Iver recognized the man from the night before. He'd accompanied the medic to check on Hana in the medbay--Luki.

His face was smudged with black residue, which made the pale blue of his eyes even more intense in his face.

He looked lost in the violence of the fight. There was no strategy, it had devolved to a desperate struggle for survival, and Roj was outclassed, not because he didn't have the skills, but because he wasn't trying to kill his opponent.

And Luki looked like he was prepared to do murder.

Iver couldn't just sit in his tree and watch. He looped his pack over his shoulders, moved close to the edge of the branch, and looked below to check the ground where he would land.

As he committed to the leap, two more people burst into the clearing, coming around the trees from the direction of the river.

It distracted Iver and he landed hard, falling to his knees on the twisted, uneven roots.

One of the newcomers was the woman who'd been with Grimms earlier, searching the river for Hana, the other was a man Iver didn't recognize.

The man must have seen him jump, because his attention was fixed