the second man could hit me with a stun pulse. I had to put distance between us then go to ground. I didn’t know how many men Richard had on-planet, but it couldn’t be enough to sweep an entire section of city or even the oblivious mercs living here would know something was up.
I kept my turns erratic so they couldn’t radio ahead for men to intercept me. These soldiers weren’t encumbered with heavy armor and they were in excellent physical shape. Outrunning them proved difficult.
Picking them off one at a time worked, but every time I stopped to aim at one, the others surged closer and I risked getting stunned. Since I’d surprised the first, I’d had a much more difficult time with the other three. I wounded one enough that he dropped back, but the final two were persistent as hell.
I hoped Loch was having better results.
It took nearly an hour of hard running before I lost them. I ran flat-out for another thirty minutes then stopped to check myself for trackers. I didn’t find any. The cuff’s repulsive field had done its job.
I pushed my exhausted body into a jog and looked for a place to hunker down for the night. I was at least an hour away from the house, even at a jog. And after that run, I needed rest more than I needed to return to base.
The next block revealed more cookie-cutter houses. I randomly chose the third one down as my palace for the night. I made sure I hadn’t left any tracks, then picked the lock and eased inside, gun first. The house was cold, dark, and empty. None of the rooms had any furniture, so I selected a bedroom and stationed myself inside against the door.
The constant wind whistled eerily around the abandoned buildings. I was alone in a vast, abandoned city. I pulled out my com and checked on Loch’s location.
His trackers were offline, but the last known location was near the edge of the central commercial district. The log showed they’d stayed in that same location for fifteen minutes before being disabled.
Dread twisted my gut. I went further back in the log. His path out of the house had started erratic, dodging around corners at random, but then he stopped entirely for five minutes before making a straight line to downtown. He stopped smack in the middle of the central district for ten minutes, then continued to his final location.
Several possibilities arose, none of them great. Most likely, Loch had been captured by Richard’s team. And damn if I didn’t feel responsible. I should’ve been more adamant about leaving when I’d felt something was off to begin with.
I had to be careful, though, because it was also possible that Loch was working with Richard to double-cross me. It absolutely fit his personality, but it just didn’t ring true. However, that could have been my own selfish desire for him to be honorable clouding my judgment.
There was nothing I could do about it tonight. Tomorrow I’d go back to our house and pray Loch showed up. After all, a double-cross was much easier to deal with than a rescue mission.
Chapter 10
The perpetual gloom had one upside: it made sneaking around in the afternoon infinitely easier. I’d returned to the house to find it exactly as we’d left it—and with no signs of Loch. So now I was positioned on a rooftop three blocks down from the building where Loch’s tracker had first stopped, playing a game of Spot the Spotter.
The building had probably once been the home of the Yamado diplomat in charge of the planet. It was made from real wood with delicate sliding doors and a beautifully curved tile roof. The fact that it was still in pristine condition was not terribly surprising—you crossed a High House at your own peril. Even when you thought they were gone, they weren’t really gone.
If Richard had taken up residence, he either had permission or enormous balls. If he had permission, then this whole situation was far worse than I realized. One House potentially planning a war with us was bad, but if two Houses were colluding . . . I would have to set aside my personal desires and contact Father immediately—the warning I’d given Bianca would no longer be sufficient.
It took three hours, but eventually my patience was rewarded. Richard Rockhurst emerged from the house flanked by two men. They turned left—toward the spaceport and Loch’s final location—and walked