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something stupid.”
    “Maybe, maybe not.” Kim scanned the street, alert to the slightest movement. All she saw was a yellow tabby slinking off between the two houses across the road. “Jatki and I have been together for a very long time. She’d better have a damn good reason for disappearing on me now.”
    “Perhaps she didn’t see where you and Onca went,” Roncas suggested. “Did you arrange a place to meet if you got separated?”
    “Yeah. I’d better head over there. She’ll be worried sick.”
    If she isn’t dead.
    “I’ll come with you,” Roncas volunteered. “We can take my speeder. If I let anything happen to you, Onca and Jack will both kill me.”
    “Something tells me this ‘Jack’ and I would get along pretty well.”
    “She’s definitely a survivor,” Roncas said. “Probably the toughest female I’ve ever met.”
    Kim smiled. “You’re pretty tough yourself.”
    “True, but Jack is a lot taller.” She pulled a tiny pulse pistol out of her pocket and checked the stun setting. “And she carries a bigger gun.”
    “Yeah, well, hopefully we won’t need it.” Patting her own pocket to reassure herself that her knife was secure, Kim nodded toward the speeder. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 4
    What a way to start a vacation.
    Or his retirement. Onca still wasn’t sure which it would turn out to be, but if this first day was any indication of what was to come, he probably ought to go back to the Palace and stand out on the street and solicit like all the other guys in the district.
    Onca had never needed to do that before since he was only “seen” by appointment. Simply by soliciting, he could easily make five thousand credits a day. If he was diligent, he could probably do eight, even without Roncas. Too bad he didn’t need the money.
    Roncas had always handled the business end of things—booking appointments, scanning the clients, taking their money. Onca wasn’t stupid. He could do all that shit. He didn’t need her. Especially after she’d turned on him like that. Kim probably thought he was a complete asshole.
    Not that it mattered what she thought of him, but he did want to make sure she got her fair share of the trust fund. He didn’t fully understand why she wasn’t jumping at the chance to become rich overnight. Being concerned about her friends was admirable. Surely she could understand that a rich woman had a better chance of finding them than a homeless waif.
    Waif. She was a perfect example of that. Small, starved, no home, no family, and fewer friends now than she’d ever had before. Onca would be her friend if she would let him. But no, she had to go on being noble, dedicated, and trustworthy.
    Yeah. All the things he wasn’t—at least, according to Roncas. He’d never realized Roncas had such a low opinion of him. Paying someone a salary apparently made them blind—or at least mute—to your faults.
    Stripping off his clothing, he stepped under the waterfall, letting the soap and warm water work their magic on him. He washed away the scent of his last client, trying to remember her name or her face.
    He couldn’t recall either of those things. She was simply the last in a long line of women he had slid his cock into and given joy. Would he miss the attention? The way women craved him, the way they gazed at him with adulation while in the throes of the orgasms triggered by his snard or later, when filled with laetralant delight?
    Probably. Then again, if he missed all that, he only had to stand out on the street naked and say, Come, mate with me, lovely lady, and I will give you joy unlike any you have ever known.
    Would that standard pickup line actually work with a real Zetithian girl? It hadn’t worked very well on the refugee ship—not that those times counted for anything now. Outnumbered four to one, the girls on the ship could afford to be choosy. Back when he and his partners were working the brothel, many women had chosen Tarq or Jerden over him. The