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small apartment. She was restless and full of resentment and other, less easily identifiable emotions. She regretted that she didn’t need as much sleep as other people, because it gave her time to brood.
    She hoped Malamig got what he wanted. He was a hidebound jerk, but he managed the Security Division schedule and assignments well, and he usually ignored her. Besides, if he got the director’s position that he’d reportedly been bragging that he was toplisted for, he’d no longer be her problem.
    Foxe was another matter. To quote a saying she’d once heard, he was nine yards of trouble.
    Eleven hours from now, she was to check out a company vehicle and meet Foxe at the office, then accompany him wherever he wanted to go. She didn’t want to be his company. She didn’t even want to be in enclosed spaces with him, where the sounds and scents of him were too intense. He was dangerously smart and dangerously… tempting. She’d caught herself entertaining idle thoughts of how it would feel to touch his skin, or what his mouth would taste like. It was an involuntary and inconvenient hormonal response to his presence. She’d seen it in others, and read about it, but it was the first time she’d experienced anything like it herself.
    She supposed she should be grateful to regain that small bit of normality. It had been four years since she escaped from the Citizen Protection Service, but they’d had nineteen years to burn out most of her humanity. They’d given her the ability and knowledge to survive and succeed in the harshest of conditions, but no useful skills to do ordinary, civilized things, such as have a friendly conversation. Much less how to navigate attraction.
    Exasperation coursed through her. She’d only spent a combined total of about three hours with Luka Foxe, but thanks to her suddenly runaway senses, she already knew the cadence of his walk, the timbre of his voice, the smell of his soap. She liked that he had a brain and knew how to use it, but it made her vulnerable to his powerful intuition. If anyone could uncover her secrets, he could, and it would likely get her killed.
    Since her sex drive was going to wake from the dead whether she wanted it to or not, why couldn’t it have picked a nice, stupid person?
    The only safe course, she finally decided, was to do the job asked of her but nothing more. Foxe would conclude she was useless to him and send her back to the Security Division. Malamig would be happy to get his way, and Mairwen could go back to the safe, quiet anonymity of the night shift, and forget how proximity to Foxe made her feel.

    CHAPTER 3
    * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.028 *
    L uka hadn’t expected to be back at the planetary spaceport quite so soon, and not in the middle of a workday. The huge port was teeming with crowds of people, some in a hurry to get somewhere, some doing their jobs, some waiting. He’d never cared for crowds, and especially not since his talent had flared. More than half the people were carrying one or more weapons in holsters, rigs, sheaths, and pockets, which he still wasn’t used to even after a year of living in Etonver. The city didn’t even require biometric safeties on any of them.
    His eventual destination was the food court commons, the public place where the informant wanted to meet. The unlooked-for informant that Zheer had sent him to meet, in Leo Bankovsky’s place.
    For now, he stood on the pedestrian bridge above to get the lay of the land. Morganthur stood quietly to the side and a couple of paces behind him, as had been her habit so far. Her dark green civilian suit, a long jacket over a buttoned shirt and pants, didn’t fit perfectly, so she probably bought it set-sized instead of from an autotailor. He wondered if she didn’t have the money or didn’t care. At least it and her light overcoat concealed any weapons she might be carrying besides the wrist knife he’d seen at the warehouse. Her expression and body stance were