and I finally realized what bothered me about this planet—there were no animals. No birds singing or dogs barking. It was eerily still except for the sound of the wind.
I turned left, back toward the main part of town. No one tried to stop me, but I had an itch between my shoulder blades like someone watched my progress. I took a meandering path but I couldn’t shake the tail. Whoever tracked me was good, because I couldn’t catch a hint of them, even when I doubled back on my path.
I would have to risk the central district to try to lose the tail in the meager crowd. I angled back toward the spaceport. Hopefully I could catch a glimpse of the Rockhurst ship while I was out.
As the number of people in the streets picked up, I dropped into my invisible persona, subtly altering my gait and posture. I also picked up the pace until I was just another harassed underling off to do an urgent task for a demanding boss.
I slipped down alleys and through a busy trading street. I looped back and changed course at random, until the watched feeling faded away. I kept at it for another twenty minutes, even pausing to stop in a tea shop and then exiting out the back.
When I was completely sure that I’d lost any tail, I started working my way back toward our original house. I was on the edge of the central district when Richard Rockhurst stepped out of a restaurant with a com to his ear.
Richard wore a traditional mercenary outfit, complete with cloak, but the hood was thrown back. He was tall and fit, with the blond hair and blue eyes I’d so envied as a young girl. I’d recognize him anywhere.
He was in the middle of the block I’d just entered. There was nowhere to go without drawing attention to myself and it took everything I had not to freeze and give myself away.
“And the man with Loch?” Richard asked with deceptive calm.
Someone on the other end must have responded, but I wasn’t close enough to catch it.
“So you’re telling me that you have neither Loch nor his contact on this godforsaken planet. You had one job and you failed.”
Another pause as the person on the other end tried to save their life. Now I was within a meter of Richard. I ducked my head, dropped my eyes, and thought invisible thoughts. I passed him close enough that our cloaks brushed.
“Find Ada,” he said. “That is priority one. Loch is our only lead right now, so that makes him priority two. We know he’s here in the city. Now it’s just a matter of finding where he’s stashed her.”
I didn’t breathe until I turned the next corner. I kept my pace even and continued on my way. Whoever had been following me thought I was Loch’s contact, unless Loch had another contact somewhere else. Either way, Loch had also avoided capture.
Ten minutes later I stopped in the darkness between two buildings and scanned myself for trackers. I came up clean. My tail had been following me the old-fashioned way, which begged the question: Why?
It was clear they’d arrived after us, but not by too much if Loch left the house while I was scanning for bugs. Maybe Loch had drawn off the main set of men, leaving behind a skeleton crew to watch what they thought was Loch’s contact’s house. If so, we’d gotten extremely lucky.
Luck was a fickle bitch, though, and I’d used up my monthly allotment in the last two days. I needed to be more careful.
Chapter 8
It took me over an hour to return to the house. I could’ve covered the distance in ten minutes if I took a direct path, but after the scare with Richard I wanted to be absolutely sure I didn’t have a tagalong.
Entering a potentially compromised building with only a knife was stupid. But I’d checked the perimeter twice and no one else lurked in the shadows. Stationing your entire team in the compromised house was equally stupid. We’d see whose stupid won.
The back door was unlocked. I slipped inside. “Loch?” I called. It gave me away, but it also meant I wasn’t sneaking up on the Devil of Fornax Zero in the dark. And if it wasn’t Loch waiting for me, I’d rather know that while I still had an easy exit at my back.
“In here.”
“We really should’ve had a secret ‘I promise there isn’t a