I found him at a corner table, his face barely visible under the deep shadow of his hood. Despite my nerves, I strode over confidently. "Ahro?"

He looked up.

It was him.

Ahro's eyes flashed with recognition at the sight of me. He lowered the hood. "Well, I'll be . . . the girl who ran out on me."

I straightened slightly. "I wouldn't say ran out," I countered.

"How would you put it, then?"

"I left. I had places to be."

"I see."

"Look, let's not get stuck on trivial matters. I've got a proposition for you." I leaned in closer, my gaze as hard as my tone. "A job. Interested?"

Surprise briefly registered on Ahro's rugged features before smugness overtook his expression. He leaned back in his chair, regarding me from beneath his heavy brows. He took a long drink from his glass, letting the suspense build before he finally responded.

"Hit me with it."

I pulled up a chair and sat. I told him about the town of L'fal. About Kaju, and how he and his crew of pirates had kidnapped all of their children and was holding them hostage for the time being.

Ahro shook his head. "Barbarians."

"I know."

"L'fal . . . now, that's a place I've been meaning to visit," Ahro said, his voice filled with inscrutable intent. "Count me in."

I studied his features closely. "Donnel said you're one of the best."

"Donnel knows of what he speaks."

"Not very modest, though," I said. "I can't speak for pay. You'll have to negotiate that with the leader of the town, a man called Gascu. But I'm running this. I can't have anyone undermining me."

"Understood. You prefer to be dominant," Ahro said, smirking. "I know that first-hand."

It should have irritated me, but it didn't.

"Do we have a deal?" I asked, extending my hand to him.

Ahro shook mine. "We have a deal. You're the boss. Whatever you say, goes."

"Oh, one more thing. Let's keep last night between us, please. I don't need everyone knowing about it."

Ahro's smirk faltered. "Don't get all romantic, will you? I don't think I could take the strain . . ."

"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. It's just . . . I try to keep certain things private. One-night stands being one of them."

"Understood. So when do we leave for L'fal?"

"Tonight. Does that work for you?"

"It does."

"Good," I said, getting up. I paused to ask him one more question. "By the way, you said you wanted to visit L'fal. Like there's something there worth seeing."

"Well, yeah. Of course. You know it's an oasis, right?"

"No."

Ahro looked taken aback. "You know it's, like, a farming community."

"Of course."

"Did you stop to think about how they'd grow crops out in the desert?"

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. "I guess I didn't give it much thought."

"It's a literal oasis in the middle of the desert. Well, near the base of a mountain, but you know what I mean. It's not like there's anything else around there. This whole planet is endless desert in every direction, all the way to the horizon."

"It makes sense, I guess. I just never questioned it. I think I was too caught up in other stuff."

"The one thing about Drift World is, you start missing the color green. I was going to find my way to L'fal and lay on the grass, like I used to on my home planet when I was a kid."

I thought back to Cestus VI. The crashing waves. The rock pools. The fantastical light show of the meteor shower. My brother walking away, never to be seen again. And I recalled looking out the viewport of the starship that took me from Cestus VI. Lifted me out of the planet's atmosphere and ferried me through space. How small Cestus VI had seemed, a fragile blue marble in a sea of infinite black. How tiny it was—how tiny everything was—compared with space. Everything so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it was almost heartbreaking to perceive.

"I'm sure there's crops you can grow in the desert," I noted.

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"True. But I doubt it'd be to the scale Gascu is talking about," Ahro said. "They trade here in the Space Port."

"That's right, they do."

Ahro got up. "I'll leave with you. I want to head back to my hotel, get my things. Are you anticipating a lot of heat with this?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll bring everything I've got with me."

We walked outside.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Cort Valez stood out in the street, flanked on either side by a muscle-bound heavy, both men dressed in the same bland uniform that I had seen on the other operatives I'd tackled the day before.

The man on the left was tattooed all over. His entire body seemed to carry some kind of illustration or inscription in ink. He held one blaster in his right hand, and another identical blaster still sat in a holster on his left hip. The man on the right had long dark brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail and carried a cumbersome sonic shotgun in his hands. Cort Valez had her own blaster pistol drawn and aimed directly at me.

"I knew I'd catch up with you again eventually," she said.

"You know these people?" Ahro asked.

"Let's just say it ain't our first dance," I said.

Valez's mouth tightened, visibly rankled by my blasé attitude to the ambush she had sprung. "You won't walk away this time, bounty hunter."

"Won't I?"

"No."

"We'll see about that," I said.

Ahro held a hand up. "Come on, guys, let's not let this get messy."

"This isn't your fight," Valez told him. "Go back inside and let us deal with her."

"You got a problem with Aurora March, you got a problem with me."

I half-turned to him. "She's right. You don't need to do this."

"Yes I do," Ahro said, and I recognized something in his eyes—something I should have identified the night we met. The night we slept together. It was the same thing I'd seen in myself whenever I looked in the mirror. A willingness to do what it takes. An eagerness to action that is missing from most people. Perhaps that was why we'd connected in the first place. Both cut from the same cloth.

Valez thrust her pistol forward. "Put your hands on your heads!" she snarled.

Ahro reached for his weapon. I closed the distance between me and Valez, taking hold of her gun hand and aiming it up into the sky. Valez's finger pulled on the trigger, hard, and the pistol fired several times.

The man with the ponytail stepped out of the way, brought the sonic shotgun up.

Ahro shot the bald, tattooed man in the shoulder. He flipped about, grimacing, winged from the hit. The bald man got off a shot, but it went wide. Ahro lunged at him, knocking him to the ground.

I headbutted Valez in the face. I felt something go crunch and, at first, couldn't be sure if I'd broken Valez's nose, or my own. But as Valez stumbled back, her hand to her face and blood pouring out from under it, I knew it was her nose that had been broken.

I turned to face the man to Valez's side.

A second later, Ponytail fired the sonic shotgun. The blast smacked me in the solar plexus, punched me up into the air. I rolled over in midair and crashed back down on my side with a grunt. I pushed myself back up in time to see Ahro gain the advantage of the tattooed man and struck him hard around the side of the head with the butt of his blaster.

Ponytail took aim again with the sonic shotgun.

Ahro didn't have time to react. He was caught out in the open without cover.

Smarting from the force of the sonic shotgun blast I'd suffered myself, I took aim, fired. My blaster fire blew a smoking hole through the center of the man's forehead.

Ahro spun about, looked back at me in disbelief as the body of the man with the ponytail collapsed, lifeless, to the ground. He clambered up then offered me a helping hand.

"You really had my back there."

"I generally do," I said. "Unless you have a price on your head."

"Nice," Ahro said.

We both turned to look at Cort Valez. She scurried back across the street on her rear end in a desperate attempt to get away from us. "No! No, it wasn't my idea! Please . . ." she cried, her voice muffled by the trauma to her nose.

I grabbed her up, shook her until she quieted. "Quiet! Listen to me!"

Valez trembled with fear.

I continued: "Zel Nekra ordered this?"

Valez nodded quickly. "Yes. He wants you back."

I glanced at Ahro, then turned my attention back to Valez. "You're to report back to him. Tell him it was a success."

"It was?" Valez asked, unsure.

"Yes it was. But I want you to admit to him that you went too far. You shot me with a high-energy weapon and I was vaporized. Do you understand?"

"What if he learns that I've lied to him?"

I shrugged. "It's either you do as I say, or I kill you now. It's your choice. I don't usually offer my enemies options."

Valez gulped. "I'll do it. I swear."

"I have your word?"

"You have my word."

I let her go and she thudded down to the ground.

Ahro shook his head. "You should just kill her."

"If she deceives me, I'll hunt her down and blow her head off her shoulders," I said, loud enough that Valez could hear me as she got up and ran away. "She's too intelligent to allow that to happen."

Ahro placed a hand on my back. "Come on, let's get out of here," he said.

As we passed the tattooed bald man, he was just stirring. He tried to sit up. Ahro kicked him hard, knocking him back out. Meanwhile I collected the dead man's sonic shotgun.

"What's that for?"

"I don't know," I said, regarding the weapon as we walked away. "It might come in handy."

"Fair enough," Ahro said. He thumbed back at the mess we'd left behind us. "Does this kind of thing happen regularly to you?"

I looked back. "Lately it does."

"Well, I guess if she reports back to her boss that you've been killed, it should cool things off."

"Did I mention I have a price on my head?"

Ahro didn't respond straight away.

It clicked.

I stopped walking. Ahro turned to face me.

"The night we met . . . you were following me, weren't you?" I asked.

"Yes."

I shook my head. "I knew it."

"It started out as just another job to me."

"Yeah? And then what?" I asked, my anger rising. "You sleep with every mark, is that it? That part of your thing?"

"No, no. Never. I just . . ."

"Just what?"

"I was watching you. You know, tracking your movements and everything from afar. Trying to decide how I was gonna take you in. I felt this need to go talk to you. I didn't expect it to go anywhere. But you were drinking alone at that bar and I thought, why not, you know?"

I didn't like it, but I couldn't detect that he was lying to me. His story sounded genuine, and I already knew that I could trust him when it came to a fight—he'd proven that just now in the street.

And I figured that if he really wanted to take me in for the bounty on my head, he'd have done it by now. Hell, if that was his motive, wouldn't he have taken advantage when I'd been passed out in the bed next to him?

Realizing this dispelled my anger somewhat—though I remained annoyed by the fact I'd allowed a bounty hunter on my trail to get so close to me. I'd not been on my game and it bugged me. In fact, it left me feeling embarrassed.

"You're pissed at me, aren't you?" Ahro asked.

"I'm more angry with myself."

"We all let our guard down from time to time," he told me. "I've been caught unawares before. It happens. We're only human, after all."

I couldn't argue with him, but his words grated on me anyway, though I recognized it was probably more my problem than anything to do with him.

"Is this going to affect us working together?"

I shook my head. "Don't worry, I'll get over it."

"If it counts for everything, I've got your back," Ahro said. "You know that, right?"

"I don't do romantic entanglements," I said sharply. "So if you're thinking that's what this is, you're wrong."

Ahro's face tightened. "Of course not."

"Good."