Jaxon agreed, and he knew metal and labor costs even better than I did.
“Besides,” I added. “Shade offered to find us a new armored door for half price.”
They all stopped eating again. Jax looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
I frowned. “What?”
“A guy doesn’t just give you an armored door,” he said.
“I didn’t say he was giving it to me. I said it would be half price.”
“It’s practically the same thing,” he muttered, setting his coffee mug down a little too forcefully. “There must be something wrong with him. Or…” Jax’s eyes narrowed on me.
“What?” I asked again.
“We’re leaving this place, Tess. Don’t get attached.”
I did that turtle thing again. Turtles were on to something with their retractable heads. “You’re crazy, Jax. I don’t even know the guy.”
“If he’s giving you a deal like that on a reinforced door, he wants to know you.”
Low down, my belly clenched. Is that true?
“And what’s the harm in that?” Fiona asked. She pushed her untouched mug toward me. “Why don’t you take him a cup of coffee and see what you think of him.”
Jaxon swung an incredulous look on Fiona. “Don’t encourage her, Fi!”
Fiona rolled her eyes, somehow managing to make her ponytail swing without even moving her head. “Just because you never want to see anyone again in your whole life apart from the four of us doesn’t mean that Tess has to stay shut up in this metal box.”
True. Although I liked my metal box.
Jax waved a hand through the air, whispering, “Everyone out there is looking for us.”
“Not everyone, Jaxon.” Fiona met his dark eyes with some pretty fierce eyes of her own. They were green, like her plants. “And not everyone is looking to take her from you. From us.”
He quietly set down his fork and sat back in his chair when I thought what he really wanted to do was throw the utensil across the kitchen and break his plate. “You never know when they’ll strike,” Jax said so flatly it hurt my heart.
“You’re right. They could strike anytime,” Fiona agreed quickly. “That’s all the more reason to live!”
Jax flinched, and Fiona looked momentarily horrified, as though she feared she’d gone too far.
“We’re careful, Jax. We’re all careful,” I said, although I didn’t know if I should have been soothing him or helping Fiona to rile him up. I was pretty sure some smashed dishes and an explosive bellow would have done him a galaxy of good. Sometimes, I wished he would fill his lungs with his pain and fury and shake the ship with them.
“Good,” he finally answered, his face turning into a wall—flat and blank.
Fiona’s expression went in the opposite direction, bursting with emotion, and they stared at each other for a moment before Jax disconnected, shifting his gaze to the side.
Sadness crept through me, and irrepressible Fiona suddenly drooped, although she probably thought she was hiding it. Some things were only secrets here because nobody talked about them, and I wanted to scream at Jax to look right in front of him, instead of behind.
“You know who Tess is now.” Jax picked up the conversation again in a monotone that reminded me of the grieving man on the Mile, the one who might never let himself get over his dead wife. “There isn’t a single person alive who doesn’t know who she is.”
“Yeah. And they all think she’s been dead for the last eighteen years,” Fiona shot back.
“That’s a good point,” I said. Everyone in the galaxy thought I’d died from the same mysterious fever that had taken my mother, when in fact, I’d never been sick a day in my life. Not even when the other children in the orphanage had been dropping all around me, killed off by infections and diseases with cures.
“There are more people searching for our Tess than for a ghost,” Shiori said, looking across the table at Fiona but not quite hitting her mark. Her milky eyes landed somewhere between Fiona and me.
“Exactly,” Jaxon agreed, turning a pointed look my way. His expression regained only enough life to look satisfied that Shiori had helped prove his point. “People everywhere—looking for Tess.”
Well, I doubted that Shade Ganavan, Space Rogue, was one of them. And I hardly thought Tess was that important. The great rebel wheel was full of cogs, and I hardly signified. At most, I was worth a lethal injection, and the Overseer had plenty of those.
That said, I didn’t want to get caught. But I also wouldn’t stop doing what I needed to do just because I feared the possible consequences. Fear was something I could accept. Abandoning the galaxy to a group of despots was not.
“I have a plan for how to pay for the repairs.” I stood up, finishing my portion of the orange and then grabbing Fiona’s and my mugs. “Thanks, Fi.”
She nodded since she was chewing her food.
“Tess…”
I turned back to Jax from the doorway, the two mugs in my hands, and gave him my most reassuring smile. He’d lost his sister to the heat and murderous roar of the galactic military’s flamethrowers that day, too. She’d been visiting, helping out with the newborn.
Some days, I thought he forgot I wasn’t her. Most days, I was glad he thought I was.
“Don’t worry, partner. I’ll be careful. He knows this place, and I have to pick his brain about where to sell some rare books.”
Jax pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything else. It was Miko who surprised me, because I knew she’d dropped out of the conversation and crawled into herself the moment Fiona and Jax had hinted at Shade wanting anything more from me than universal currency. Miko liked to pretend that no one ever had urges, because they scared her half to death. If I were ever to take up praying again, I’d pray that someone, someday, could show Miko that intimacy could involve tenderness instead of violence.
“He used to kick his dogs.” She looked my way, but I didn’t think she was seeing me, or any of us. “Why would anyone kick a dog, Tess?”
My chest tightened as I shook my head. He’d kicked Miko, too, I’d have bet. I was glad the bastard was dead. “I don’t know. There’s no reason for that.”
“Don’t trust anyone you think would kick a dog,” Miko said.
She still looked as though her thoughts were focused far away, but she knew what she was saying, and it was solid advice.
Chapter 9
I handed Shade the mug, hoping the dark liquid inside was still hot enough—and that he didn’t prefer it with sugar. We didn’t have any, although we did still have a little of Mareeka’s valuable honey.
“Coffee,” I said. “Good stuff. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
His lips curved up in amusement. The surprised smile faded quickly. “You think I don’t know what coffee is?”
“I think you’ve never tasted this coffee. It’s the best in the galaxy.”
He took a sip. “Yeah, it’s good. Thanks.” He drank again.
I smiled. This already seemed easier than earlier. Maybe he’d just needed coffee to brighten him up.
“So, what about the damage?” I asked. “Still thinking the same as before?”
His gaze roamed over the Endeavor, over the holes the Dark Watch had blown in her hull. Shade Ganavan sure did like to stare. At me. At my ship. Maybe it was a Sector 2 thing.
Had his eyes just snagged on the fresh-looking stickers?
He obviously didn’t miss a thing, and they did seem a little too new, with none of the slightly raised numbers battered yet by space travel. I’d meant to beat on them with a chain this morning, but then Shade had shown up too soon.
“I can patch her up for you,” was all he said.
“Still thinking a week?” I asked.
He nodded. “Unless you mind seeing a whole lot of me.”
Actually, I was pretty sure I didn’t.
The heat of a blush spread across my chest and neck. I willed it not to hit my face. “I probably won’t be around much anyway,” I said.