Page 7

Stevie waved the comment away. “But if I can’t get a new pilot,” she warned, “then we’re going to have to go with him.”

“I can pilot. You know I can.”

For a second, Stevie just looked at her. Then she sighed, the sound low and tired. “We’ve been through this, Blythe. I know you can fly, but you know what the insurance said.”

Blythe shut her eyes.

Yeah. She knew all about bloody insurance companies.

They’d spent three weeks after James crashed their ship asking whether she’d approved the route changes. Whether the maintenance log had been current. Whether there had been any prior indication he might be unstable, criminally inclined, or simply prone to vanishing with every credit they owned.

Yeah, right... Because, of course, she’d kept a checklist.

Does fiancé have pretty eyes? Check. Nice hands? Check. Secretly planning to fuck me over and leave me with debt until I die? Better ask him over dinner.

They’d wrung every last thing they could out of the wreck, then told her the policy didn’t cover deliberate acts by an insured party.

She’d lost the ship. The contracts. Her entire future.

And now she had a restricted pilot endorsement because apparently being in the copilot’s chair when somebody else ruined your life made you an unacceptable risk.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

Stevie’s blue eyes softened, which Blythe hated nearly as much as pity. “So if I can’t find a new pilot, we’re going to have to go with him. We’re already pushing it with a departure for tomorrow. You know as well as I do, we need to be gone before⁠—“

Blythe pushed off the wall and headed for the door. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just keep trying, please, for me.”

Layla paused in front of an open door, then turned back toward him with a smile.

“So... these are your quarters. Home sweet home, eh?”

Rann looked past her into the room. Then he looked again.

He’d assumed the little doors lining the corridor led to storage lockers. The ship had a lot of them, and humans apparently needed an alarming quantity of possessions even when heading out to establish a colony in the middle of nowhere.

But no.

This was his room.

His entire room.

He blinked. The walls were close enough that he could spread his arms and touch both sides at once. There was a narrow locker, a tiny hygiene facility unit shoved into one corner behind a sliding privacy screen, and not much else.

O... kay.

“Errr... It’s compact,” he attempted a smile.

Layla chuckled. “That’s for sure. Better get used to it, honey bun.”

Stepping inside, she tapped one wall with her knuckles. “The bunk folds down from there. Standard-issue bedding’s in the locker, but I guess you got your own like the rest of us.”

“I do,” he said, although his bedding was currently sitting in a locker aboard the Lady’s Dream. Along with everything else he owned that wasn’t hidden beneath these too-small coveralls. Draanth. Yeah, he was going to have to find a solution for that. He smiled again. “My trunk should be here shortly.”

“Good.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You’ll want something softer than the stuff Stevie bought. It feels like somebody stuffed a sack with old packing foam and called it a mattress.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She nodded, then looked up at him. “I’m just around the hall if you need anything.”