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  Apparently the appointment the Viking was trying to make when he was arrested was with Rahal Mizyar.

  Two things about Karn the Viking: One, he was, in his own way, not a bad guy. He was well educated, charming, honorable within the limitations of a profession that necessitated breaking some laws, and despite the violence he facilitated, he eschewed it himself whenever possible. He had a reputation as a playboy and a pervert, but only with consenting adults. The people who kissed and told had nothing but tales of good times with someone who didn’t pretend it was more than a bit of fun.

  And, two, he bore a striking resemblance to Cal.

  Oh, if you saw them side by side, you could tell them apart, but if all you had was an ID holo of Karn the Viking, Cal Janssen looked close enough to pass, considering Karn often traveled in disguise and his ID was probably doctored anyway.

  The resemblance wasn’t close enough to fool facial recognition software, though, so Cal expected the Delebrian to realize his mistake any second. Cal had a laugh ready, an uneasy one, which would be appropriate under the circumstances. Wish I were the kind of guy who had an appointment with the warlord, and can you point me toward a cheap restaurant because I’m sick of vacpac synthmeals—something like that.

  But the Delebrian didn’t say anything. And he certainly had a neurorelay, so he should have been able to access the galactic law enforcement database.

  Except Cibari wasn’t part of the galactic law enforcement consortium. It was still considered a frontier planet. With no law enforcement to speak of—and a lot of residents who had something to hide—they weren’t likely to be hooked up with the database.

  When the universe hands you a gift, say thank you.

  “Last minute change of plans,” Cal lied calmly. “Sometimes my line of work involves the lap of luxury. Others, it involves a secondhand shuttle and a boring cover story that makes people overlook me. Unfortunately, my last deal required the latter.”

  The Delebrian nodded. He probably heard similar stories all the time, Cibari being what it was.

  Cal thought fast and ventured a wild guess. “Where’s the… I know it wasn’t a Ritz-Xenaci but the same situation that led me to arriving here in that seedy ship led me to losing a few days’ worth of data transmissions. Neurorelays don’t work well in that kind of magnetic field.”

  One thing about his actual line of work: Since private law enforcement, especially its investigative side, thrived on telling people what they wanted to hear until they told you what you needed to know, Cal could deliver glaspoid poop in buckets and people would think it smelled like Vicarian lilies.

  “If you’re staying at a hotel, it must be the Orion.” The Delebrian sniffed. At least Cal thought he did. It was hard to tell with Delebrian nostril slits. “It’s no Ritz-Xenaci, but it’s where the warlord puts up his business associates, and since he’s footing the bill, it’s better than a Ritz-Xenaci. You can’t miss it. It’s the biggest building in the city’s center, other than the palace, and one of the few that’s unbombed.”

  Well, wasn’t that interesting? At least he’d have the best accommodations the city had to offer, on someone else’s credit chit, as opposed to sleeping on his sorry-ass shuttle.

  Now, all he had to do was avoid actually encountering the warlord while finding Xia, and not scare her off with his newly minted cover.

  One advantage to his cover, though: He could poke around the spaceport now. The Delebrian might get thugs to stop a random curious immigrant, but he’d leave Karn Anders alone.

  And within moments, his snooping paid off.

  That slightly battered but well-maintained older freighter was the Malcolm, the ship his quarry worked on.

  And the ship’s crew was being welcomed by someone in a very expensive flyer, with very expensive bodyguards.

  Thanking imaginary deities and real medicos for implanted enhancement technology, Cal focused in on the distant group.

  Yes! That felinoid must be Xia Suarez, who might or might not be Xia Merrin. She definitely had the coloring to be the lost girl, and seemed to be in the right age range. And, marling stars, now that she wasn’t semiconscious and bleeding, as she had been on the news holos from San’bal, she was adorable. Tiny and wide-eyed, with long hair a few shades darker than her tawny ears (one white-tipped) and tail; a pert, little triangular face; a petite, shapely body; and a wicked smile that practically lit up the smoke-smudged air. His groin offered the opinion that it didn’t matter whose daughter she was or what her real name might be. Cal should get to know her just because she would be dangerously fun in bed.

  Unfortunately for Cal’s groin’s opinion, she was deep in conversation with a male felinoid who swam in the lethally handsome end of an attractive gene pool. Cal figured he could compete with most guys on a good-looks level, but this black-furred felinoid was gorgeous enough to make Cal consider making one of his rare bends queerward just to get a taste of him. How was Cal supposed to get close to the woman when she was already being hit on by someone who not only looked like that, but was her species to boot?

  Then someone who looked to be a bodyguard or thug for hire spotted him and seemed to point him out to Mr. Way Too Hot.

  Suddenly everyone was staring at Cal. Everything grew still, the kind of stillness that happens before things go supernova. No one was reaching for weapons yet, but both the felinoids were flexing their claws and one of the humans with the Malcolm, a beat-up, fair-skinned guy, looked ready to explode.

  Then the cat-man laughed, loudly enough that Cal’s aural enhancer buzzed. Through the buzzing, Cal heard him say, “He’s not armed. I can tell from here. He’s just staring at the lovely ladies like at least two of you three would be if I didn’t pay you to be paranoid. Still, we’re exposed here. Time to head out.” The cat-man’s voice was infectiously cheerful, but with an underlying authority to it.

  Cal listened, hoping Xia would say something. He wanted to hear her voice.

  Instead, he got to watch as she and the rest of the crew filed into the expensive flyer.

  As it took off, he noticed some kind of seal blinged up its red-and-black surface, a seal that matched the gaudy piratical pendant the male felinoid had worn on his bare chest.

  An official-looking seal, or the kind of seal that might be considered official if the “government” was a jumped-up criminal and his buddies.

  Cal had gotten his wish. He’d just seen the warlord.

  And the warlord had slipped away with the woman Cal needed to fulfill his contract—and wanted to act out a few dozen brand-new fantasies.

  Some of which also featured the warlord in a cameo role.

  At least Cal didn’t need to figure out a way to stake out the warlord’s palace without looking like he was doing so, in hopes that Xia’s curiosity would eventually overcome what passed for common sense in a felinoid and lure her outside.

  He had an appointment. And he’d brought a few illegal arms traders to justice in the past. With all the research he’d done, he should be able to pull off the scam long enough to make contact with the girl. Not that he had anything to sell, but he could come up with a story to cover that.

  Sure, he’d have to confirm the appointment to figure out when it was, but even a totally legit businessperson could have a malfunctioning neurorelay. The more irregular your life was, the more ways you could get your relay scrambled. Cal had experienced most of them at one time or another. Just had to pick the one that seemed most plausible.

  No. Most dramatic. From what he knew of Karn the Viking, even if the malfunction was because of something that could happen to anyone, it would turn into an adventure in the retelling.

  He shook his head, mocking himself for the surge of excitement at the idea. Apparently all you had to do was get hot and bothered over a felinoid…okay, two felinoids…and you started getting excited about scams and cons and disguises. He just hoped
he was good enough to pull off this particular cover, because on Cibari, getting made when you were undercover would likely get you killed.

  But if he was stuck here, some usually quiet part of his brain pointed out, he might as well have fun with it.

  Chapter Six

  Xia had been waiting for hours in the guest suite of Rahal’s palace. The place was huge, this suite alone larger than any building she’d ever spent time in, other than a major spaceport. It was gorgeous, if gaudy, with high ceilings and murals that she suspected weren’t all that great as art—Drax’s expression confirmed her instinct, and she knew Drax knew art, given his former career as an art thief—but were colorful and gilded and extremely cheerful. Extremely explicit in some places too, but with a kind of cartoonish gee-whiz naïveté about kinky sex that she found endearing.

  She didn’t think Rahal had ordered them, and not just because none of the figures was felinoid. He’d have certainly noticed some of the explicit bits weren’t physically possible. Not even for Betans, who were awfully bendy, as she’d learned on one memorable rainy afternoon. Couldn’t remember the Betan’s name, but she’d never forget some of the positions they’d ended up in.

  She spent the hour or so of waiting for her fathers to return from their meeting with Rahal, studying the silly/sexy murals, exploring the quarters and looking without success for someone to play with. Buck was napping. Rita and Drax were holed up in their bedroom, and judging from the noises she was hearing, they weren’t napping—lucky them. The guards in the hallway, while they would have been happy to direct her to a gym, a swimming pool, a sauna or any number of other potentially enjoyable places, wouldn’t go with her to those fun places, except for one to stand watch outside the door while she did her thing, which sounded almost as boring as being here alone. She’d tried flirting and wheedling, and that almost always worked on male beings, but not on these guys.

  Apparently, they were taking the assassin threat seriously. Since Drax was the guy with someone gunning for him in particular—the rest were incidental targets—and was also their warlord’s buddy, they weren’t taking any chances on leaving the door to their area unguarded. Made sense, and she was glad they were looking out for Drax, but it wasn’t too entertaining for her.

  She spent the next hour napping on the most luxurious bed she’d ever experienced and wondering why peace, quiet and luxury got boring so fast.

  She’d just about made up her mind to go bother Buck when Mik and Gan returned. Mik was grinning, a grin she recognized as the dangerous-crazy-fun-idea grin, the one that she usually enjoyed, but made Buck duck and run for cover. Gan looked, for want of a better word, coiled. She’d seen him like this before when things were about to go supernova. He wasn’t going to lose his temper because he’d wrapped all the energy tight up within himself to deal with the problem at hand.

  Intriguing. This hadn’t been a courtesy meeting, like they’d all thought.

  “Sooo,” she asked with deliberate casualness, “how went the male bonding? Or is that male bondage? I always forget. If it was male bondage, did you get holos of Rahal? Don’t want to see you guys—that would be too weird, even for me—but Rahal’s yummy.”

  Gan didn’t react at all, not even to twitch. That was odd. He was always torn between trying to be what he thought was fatherly and saying something even ruder back; the result was usually a few seconds of him looking stern and then cracking up. Mik’s grin grew, but it was definitely his dangerous grin, not his good-humored one.

  Something was afoot all right.

  “I guess it wasn’t just having a few drinks and telling exaggerated tales of your exploits? What’s going on, Dads?” She realized she was working her claws in and out. She thought about making herself stop, then decided against it. She wanted to let them see she was concerned.

  She didn’t know what she expected them to say. Rahal was a mystery to her. A gorgeous, sexy mystery who smelled more delicious than anyone she’d ever met before, but still a mystery. Anything could have happened, from attempted extortion (which would have meant Rahal hadn’t done his homework—they had nothing someone who basically owned a continent of a gem-rich planet would find worth extorting) to attempted seduction. Hell, maybe successful seduction. She thought her fathers were monogamous, despite Mik’s frequent flirting, but she’d never asked.

  What they said was nothing she could have predicted.

  “Turns out Rahal invited us here to get our help, Gan’s and mine,” Mik said.

  His posture was so proud right now, Xia thought, he needed a tail to cock at a jaunty angle.

  “He wants us to take down slavers and child exploiters, rescue some people in trouble.”

  “You do that anyway.”

  “He wants us to do it very publicly. Dramatically. Bloodily, even.” Gan’s voice was tense, and she realized why he’d looked so tightly wound. He was all for heroics, and even the occasional violence. Publicity, not so much.

  “You said yes, of course, but not to the public part. That would make it hard to do rescues on any other planet.”

  “He didn’t offer us a lot of choice. Said to think of it as rent for this literally palatial living space, not to mention guards with guns and such that should keep our assassin friends away.” Mik shrugged. “It does seem fair we do something in exchange for his help with the assassins, even if he was more forceful than he needed to be. Not like we wouldn’t do it anyway.”

  Xia literally saw red, like a wash of blood behind her eyes.

  She imagined tearing out Rahal’s throat. It would be a shame to kill someone that sexy, and she wasn’t sure she could manage it. On top of being a certified badass, Rahal was stronger than she was, and probably just as fast.

  But she had to do something. This wasn’t right. Not at all. Her fathers’ mission was bigger than all of them. “He did what? Who the marling stars does he think he is? Just because he’s scrambled to the top of this shithole planet doesn’t give him any right to suck you into his schemes…” Xia’s voice raised to a caterwaul. She thought briefly about trying to keep it down, then changed her mind. Credits to corn chips, the room was bugged anyway. It seemed like something a sensibly paranoid warlord would do to his guest quarters.

  No, Drax had checked for bugs, because it was the kind of thing sensibly paranoid ex-spies did, even in a friend’s home. Kind of a shame. She’d love to give Rahal an uncensored earful.

  “It’s a good scheme, though, Xia.” Mik’s voice was a verbal pat on the head. Part of Xia thought it was condescending, and if he’d been anyone but her dad she would have lashed out at him, verbally if not with her claws. But since it was her dad, the little part that harked back to the frightened kitten Mik and Gan had found blood-drenched and violated in an alley in Lysander wanted to be soothed by the calm voice.

  “It’s all super well-intentioned and shit, so, yeah, I guess you could call it good,” she conceded, “which makes me distrust it. Way more noble than anything I’d have expected from Rahal Mizyar.”

  “I thought you liked him, kitten.”

  Damn her father for being perceptive. Mik could pick up on the slightest hint of attraction, and she bet she’d been showing more than a hint. “He’s pretty-pretty and charming and makes me think about things I really don’t want to talk about with my dads. But that doesn’t mean I trust him. He’s started this antislavery campaign for his own reasons, not from the goodness of his heart. And he has no right to coerce you guys into anything.”

  Then again, he was Drax’s sworn brother, and Drax, for all he’d gone from being a high-level thief and grifter to putting his sneaking and conning skills to work as a spy, was a straight-up guy when it came to the important things. So, she grudgingly admitted to herself, maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that Rahal, for all he was a warlord—and you got to be warlord on a planet like this one by being a bigger, better thug than everyone else—had a hard-o
n of hate for slavers and people who exploited children.

  Logical enough if Rahal figured, since Mik and Gan did the hero thing anyway, and he was helping them, fair was fair. Could have communicated it better, though.

  Gan laid one big, tattooed hand on her shoulder. “Does it matter what his motives are? He’s doing the right thing, and he wants us to help.”

  Xia shook off Gan’s hand, sprang to her feet. “He wants to use you. I haven’t figured out why yet.”

  “Because we’re that good.” Mik smiled sweetly, only it wasn’t sweet at all. She may have picked up a lot of human mannerisms from him, but he’d picked up a few felinoid ones from her. Or maybe he’d always had that smile.

  “As it happens,” Gan said, “he made it clear that part of his motive is that Cibari’s terrible reputation is bad for business, and it’s earned every bit of that reputation. He figures that if he can clean the place up a little, keep it freewheeling and what he calls fun, but not the cesspit it is—that’s his word, by the way—it’ll be good for business. Even with all their gemstone and mineral wealth, they’re cash-poor because no one even halfway legit wants to do business here, and if people take jewels off-planet to sell, they tend not to come back.”

  Xia chose a particularly plush, expensive-looking cushion and shredded it with gusto. “That’s what I think of his business concerns! We’re talking about lives here, yours and the children you save.” Children like me. They’d never have been able to rescue her, let alone all the others they’d helped since, if their faces and exploits had been plastered all over the Galaxinet.