Page 33 of Claimed by the Ghost Warrior

“He did.”

He pressed his lips tightly together. “And now you will…contact him.”

“Yes.” One word, and somehow I made it sound like agreement instead of disaster.

His stare sharpened.

I was doing terribly. I smiled anyway. “Thank you.”

I turned before he could ask another question and kept walking, one foot in front of the other, steady, do not run. Around the corner I ran anyway. Not far, just far enough to put a row of stacked cargo containers between myself and anyone who might decide my story deserved investigation. I crouched beside one of them and listened to my own breathing.

“This is going well,” I said. No one answered. Progress.

Then my wrist unit vibrated, and I froze. Another official notification. I didn’t open it. The screen lit anyway.

REPORTING STATUS OVERDUE.

There it was.

My ten minutes were gone.

A second message appeared.

REMAIN AT CURRENT LOCATION.

I stared at the command on the screen, my throat tightening. “Oh, absolutely not.”

My fingers worked at the clasp of the wrist unit, fumbling in their haste until it came free. For one reckless moment, I considered hurling it into the nearest disposal chute—watch it vanish into the grinding machinery below. But I stopped myself. Too obvious. And stupid besides. If they were tracking its signal, discarding it would be as good as sending up a flare that I knew I was being hunted. Better to let them think it was still on me, moving through the station as intended.

My eyes scanned the busy platform to an unattended freight cart twenty feet away, and then a stack of shipment crates marked for agricultural transfer. The crates. Definitely better.

I waited until two workers turned away, then slipped toward a stack marked for agricultural transfer.

My hands shook as I wedged the wrist unit behind the outer securing band of one container.

The display disappeared between the crate and its binding.

Good luck finding me in whatever field that ended up in.