Scarlet (3 page)

Scarlet’s gut tightened. “He didn’t do any—”

“Don’t you start, Scarlet. How much destruction were you planning on causing today? Are you
trying
to get me to close my account?”

She bristled, her face still burning. “Maybe I’ll just take back the delivery and we’ll see how your customers like eating spoiled vegetables from now on.”

Rounding the bar, Gilles snatched the cable out of Scarlet’s hand. “Do you really think you’re the only working farm in France? Honestly, Scar, I only order from you because your grandmother would give me hell if I didn’t!”

Scarlet pursed her lips, holding back the frustrated reminder that her grandmother wasn’t here anymore so maybe he
should
just order from someone else if that’s what he wanted.

Gilles turned his attention back to the fighter. “I said get out!”

Ignoring him, the fighter held his hand out to Émilie, who was still half curled against a table. Her face was flushed and her skirt was soaked through with beer, but her gaze glowed with infatuation as she let herself be pulled to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said, her whisper carrying in the uncanny silence.

Finally, the fighter met Gilles’s scowl. “I will go, but I haven’t paid for my meal.” He hesitated. “I can pay for the broken glasses as well.”

Scarlet blinked. “What?”

“I don’t want your money!” Gilles screamed, sounding insulted, which came as an even further shock to Scarlet, who had only ever heard Gilles complain about money and how his vendors were bleeding him dry. “I want you out of my tavern.”

The fighter’s pale eyes darted to Scarlet, and for a moment she sensed a connection between them.

Here they were, both outcasts. Unwanted.
Crazy.

Pulse thrumming, she buried the thought. This man was trouble. He
fought
people for a living—or perhaps even for fun. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

Turning away, the fighter dipped his head in what almost looked like an apology and shuffled toward the exit. Scarlet couldn’t help thinking as he passed that despite all signs of brutality, he looked no more menacing now than a scolded dog.

Three

Scarlet pulled the bin of potatoes out from the lowest shelf, dropping it with a thud on the floor before lugging the crate of tomatoes on top. The onions and turnips went beside it. She’d have to make two trips out to the ship again and that made her angrier than anything. So much for a dignified exit.

She grabbed the handles of the lower bin and hoisted them up.

“
Now
what are you doing?” Gilles said from the doorway, a towel draped over one shoulder.

“Taking these back.”

Heaving a sigh, Gilles braced himself against the wall. “Scar—I didn’t mean all that out there.”

“I find that unlikely.”

“Look, I like your grandmother, and I like you. Yes, she overcharges and you can be a huge sting in my side and you’re both a little crazy sometimes—” He held up both hands defensively when he saw Scarlet’s hackles rising. “Hey,
you’re
the one who climbed up on the bar and started making speeches, so don’t try to say it’s not true.”

She wrinkled her nose at him.

“But when it comes right down to it, your grand-mère runs a good farm, and you still grow the best tomatoes in France year after year. I don’t want to cancel my account.”

Scarlet tilted the bin so that the shiny red globes rolled and thumped against one another.

“Put them back, Scar. I’ve already signed off on the delivery payment.”

He walked away before Scarlet could lose her temper again.

Blowing a red curl out of her face, Scarlet set the crates down and kicked the potatoes back to their spot beneath the shelves. She could hear the cooks chortling over the dining room drama. The story had already taken on a legendary air from the waitstaff’s telling of it. According to the cooks, the street fighter had broken a bottle over Roland’s head, knocking him unconscious and crushing a chair in the process. He would have taken out Gilles too, if Émilie hadn’t calmed him down with one of her pretty smiles.

With no interest in correcting the story, Scarlet dusted her hands on her jeans and paced back into the kitchen. A coldness hung in the air between her and the tavern staff as she made her way to the scanner beside the back door—Gilles was nowhere to be seen and Émilie’s giggles could be heard out in the dining room. Scarlet hoped she was only imagining the dropped glances. She wondered how fast the rumors would spread through town.
Scarlet Benoit was defending the cyborg! The Lunar! She’s clearly split her rocket, just like her … just like …

She swiped her wrist beneath the ancient scanner. Out of habit, she inspected the delivery order that appeared on the screen, making sure Gilles hadn’t shorted her like he often tried and noting that he had, in fact, deducted three univs for the smashed tomatoes.
687
U D
EPOSITED TO
V
ENDOR
A
CCOUNT:
B
ENOIT
F
ARMS AND
G
ARDENS.

She left through the back door without saying good-bye to anyone.

Though still warm from the sunny afternoon, the shadows of the alley were refreshing compared with the sweltering kitchen and Scarlet let it cool her down while she reorganized the crates in the back of the ship. She was behind schedule. It would be late evening before she got home. She would have to get up extra early to go to the Toulouse police station, otherwise she would lose a whole day in which no one was doing anything to recover her grandmother.

Two weeks.
Two whole weeks
of her grandmother being out there, alone. Helpless. Forgotten. Maybe … maybe even dead. Maybe kidnapped and killed and left in a dark, wet ditch somewhere and why?
Whywhywhy?

Frustrated tears steamed her eyes, but she blinked them back. Slamming the hatch, she rounded to the front of the ship, and froze.

The fighter was there, his back against the stone building. Watching her.

In her surprise, a hot tear leaked out. She swiped at it before it could crawl halfway down her cheek. She returned his stare, calculating if his stance was threatening or not. He stood a dozen steps from the nose of her ship and his expression seemed more hesitant than dangerous, but then, it hadn’t seemed dangerous when he’d nearly strangled Roland either.

“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said, his voice almost lost in the jumbled noise from the tavern.

She splayed her fingers on the back of the ship, annoyed at how her nerves were humming, like they couldn’t decide if she should be afraid of him or flattered.

“I’m better off than Roland,” she said. “His neck was already starting to bruise when I left.”

His eyes flashed toward the kitchen door. “He deserved worse.”

She would have smiled, but she didn’t have the energy after biting back all the anger and frustration of the afternoon. “I wish you hadn’t gotten involved at all. I had the situation under control.”

“Clearly.” He squinted at her like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “But I was worried you might draw that gun on him, and such a scene may not have helped your case. As far as not being crazy, that is.”

Hair prickled behind her neck. Scarlet’s hand instinctively went to her lower back, where a small pistol was warm against her skin. Her grandma had given it to her on her eleventh birthday with the paranoid warning:
You just never know when a stranger will want to take you somewhere you don’t mean to go.
She’d taught Scarlet to use it and Scarlet hadn’t left home without it since, no matter how ridiculous and unnecessary it seemed.

Seven years later and she was quite sure not a single person had ever noticed the gun concealed under her usual red hoodie. Until now.

“How did you know?”

He shrugged, or what would have been a shrug if the movement hadn’t been so tense and jerky. “I saw the handle when you climbed up on the counter.”

Scarlet lifted the back of her sweatshirt just enough to loosen the pistol from her waistband. She tried to take in a calming breath, but the air was filled with the onion and garbage stink of the alley.

“Thanks for your concern, but I’m just fine. I have to go—behind on the deliveries … behind on
everything.
” She stepped toward the pilot’s door.

“Do you have any more tomatoes?”

She paused.

The fighter shrank back further into the shadows, looking sheepish. “I’m still a little hungry,” he muttered.

Scarlet imagined she could smell the tomato flesh on the wall behind her.

“I can pay,” he quickly added.

She shook her head. “No, that’s all right. We have plenty.” She shuffled backward, keeping her eyes on him, and reopened the hatch. She grabbed a tomato and a bundle of crooked carrots. “Here, these are good raw too,” she said, tossing them to him.

He caught them with ease, the tomato disappearing in his large fist and his other hand gripping the carrots by their lacy, leafy stems. He surveyed them from every angle. “What are they?”

A surprised laugh tumbled out of her. “They’re carrots. Are you serious?”

Again, he seemed embarrassingly aware of having said something unusual. His shoulders hunched in a vain attempt to make himself seem smaller. “Thank you.”

“Your mom never made you eat your vegetables, did she?”

Their gazes clashed and the awkwardness was immediate. Something shattered inside the tavern, making Scarlet jump. It was followed by the roar of laughter.

“Never mind. They’re good, you’ll like them.” She shut the hatch and rounded to the door again, whisking her ID across the ship’s scanner. The door opened, forming a wall between them, and the floodlights blinked on. They accentuated the bruise around the fighter’s eye, making it seem darker than before. He flinched back like a criminal in a spotlight.

“I was wondering if you could use a farmhand?” he said, the words slurred in his rush to get them out.

Scarlet paused, suddenly understanding why he’d waited for her, why he’d stalled so long. She scanned his broad shoulders, bulky arms. He was built for manual labor. “You’re looking for work?”

He started to smile, a look that was dangerously mischievous. “The money’s good at the fights, but it doesn’t make for much of a career. I thought maybe you could pay me in food.”

She laughed. “After seeing the evidence of your appetite in there, I think I’d lose my shirt with a deal like that.” She flushed the second she’d said it—no doubt he was now imagining her with her shirt off. Yet, to her shock, his face remained serenely neutral, and she hurried to fill the space before his reactions caught up. “What’s your name, anyway?”

That awkward shrug again. “They call me Wolf at the fights.”

“
Wolf?
” How … predatory.”

He nodded, entirely serious.

Scarlet swallowed a grin. “You might want to leave the street fighter bit off your resume.”

He scratched at his elbow, where the strange tattoo could barely be seen in the dark, and she thought maybe she’d embarrassed him. Perhaps Wolf was a beloved nickname.

“Well, they call me Scarlet. Yes, like the hair, what a clever observation.”

His expression softened. “What hair?”

Scarlet settled her arm on top of the door, resting her chin. “Good one.”

For a moment he seemed almost pleased with himself and Scarlet found herself warming to this stranger, this anomaly. This soft-spoken street fighter.

A warning tingled in the back of her head—she was wasting time. Her grandmother was out there. Alone. Frightened. Dead in a ditch.

Scarlet tightened her grip on the door frame. “I’m really sorry, but we have a full staff already. I don’t need any more farmhands.”

The glint faded from his eyes and in an instant he was looking uncomfortable again. Flustered. “I understand. Thank you for the food.” He kicked at the stem of a dead firework on the pavement—a remnant from last night’s peace celebrations.

“You should head to Toulouse, or even Paris. There are more jobs in the cities, and people around here don’t take too kindly to strangers, as you may have noticed.”

He tilted his head so that his emerald eyes glowed even brighter in the wash of the ship’s floodlights, looking almost amused. “Thanks for the tip.”

Turning, Scarlet sank into the pilot’s seat.

Wolf shifted toward the wall as she started the engine. “If you change your mind about needing a hand, I can be found at the abandoned Morel house most nights. I may not be great with people, but I think I’d do well on a farm.” Amusement touched the corners of his lips. “Animals love me.”

“Oh, I’m sure they do,” Scarlet said, beaming with fake encouragement. She shut the door before muttering, “What farm animals don’t love a wolf?”

Four

The captivity of Carswell Thorne had gotten off to a rocky start, what with the catastrophic soap rebellion and all. But since being transferred to solitary, he’d become the personification of a well-mannered gentleman, and after six months of such commendable behavior, he’d persuaded the only female guard on rotation to lend him a portscreen.

He was quite sure this would not have succeeded if the guard wasn’t convinced he was an idiot, incapable of doing anything other than counting the days and searching for naughty pictures of ladies he’d known and imagined.

And she was right, of course. Thorne was mystified by technology and couldn’t have done anything useful with the tablet even if he had had a step-by-step instruction manual on “How to Escape from Jail Using a Portscreen.” He’d been unsuccessful in accessing his comms, connecting to newsfeeds, or scouting out any information on New Beijing Prison and the surrounding city.

But he sure did appreciate the suggestively naughty, if heavily filtered, pictures.

He was scrolling through his portfolio on the 228th day of his captivity, wondering if Señora Santiago was still married to that onion-smelling man, when an awful screeching disrupted the cell’s peacefulness.

He peered upward, squinting at the smooth, glossy white ceiling.