The Color of Rain (20 page)

“So this really is your ship,” I say, sitting on the bunk where the Touched man recuperated the last time I was here. “Where is that guy?”

“I put him with the others, but Johnny shouldn't remember him, so he's relatively safe.”

“Relatively.”

“Yeah.” He sits in the captain's chair, leaning his head back. “This ship is . . . I don't even know.”

“From everything I hear about the Edge, it doesn't sound like a place you should leave. How'd you get here?”

“I ask myself that question all the time.” The steel behind his eyes is more silvery than usual, highlighting the blue. “I wanted to be a doctor, to help people, but somehow I got on the military path. It was probably because of my dad. He was K-Force. A slaver ship like this one rammed his into the Static Pass, and without thrusters or a way to call for help, they spun off course,” he says. “They drifted for months until they all died of starvation.”

“Was it this ship, Ben?”

“It was too many years ago to be
Imreas
. It was whoever Johnny works for . . . the head of the slave trade.” His hands tuck into tight fists.

“So if you disable the trade—”

“I punish my dad's murderer. But that's only why I volunteered. I stay in it now because someone has got to help those people.” His fingers uncurl, and he grips his knees. “My uncle Keven is a high-ranking official in the K-Force, and he was the one who okayed me to take this mission with Bron even though we were so
young. Bet he's sorry he did it now.” He takes a deep breath. “Bet my mother's all but killed him for letting me go.”

“You had a mother?” The thought is weird for some reason.

“Of course, I have a mother. Just like you.”

“But I don't.” I run my hands over the bunk until I find the metal edge. “She went Touched when I was seven.” I remember her smooth face and emerald eyes for the first time in years. “She was a real beauty. The kind of redhead that Johnny would have gone nuts for.”

“Like you.”

I flinch. “Yeah, well, the cops took her, and my dad had his hands full with my brothers and me, I guess. He didn't try to stop them. He didn't even fight back.”

“He was taking care of your family. Don't doubt him.”

I cover my face, but my memories come with anger instead of the usual drowning pain. “When they came again, he did fight. Jeremy was helping our neighbor hide from the cops. Someone told on him, and they came for both of them. My dad went nuts. He tried but . . . they beat his skull inside out on the stairwell and dragged him into the street.”

Ben moves beside me. “He did what he thought he had to. Just like you do for Walker.”

“What
I thought
I had to . . .” I pull at my shirt, feeling ghostly fingers. How many men have I given myself to? I've given up counting.

The smell of the Touched cargo hold refills my senses until I have to cover my mouth. Of course Johnny should be stopped, but if I help Ben, I'm gambling with not only my life but also my
brother's. And Walker needs me now more than ever. But Lo needed me, too.

Our people
.

I clench my knees. “What is it that you need me to do?”

J
ohnny is the lord of the common room. He sits on a navy couch amid blue-tagged girls, taking questions from a line of passengers about our upcoming arrival at Entra.

I swallow my excitement for seeing a whole new world and sidestep the crowd, waiting for the moment when he sees me. Waiting to see if there's a speck of humanity within him.

Maybe just a glimmer of his regret at having killed my best friend.

My coin hoard is now hidden beneath the dustiest can in Lionel's storage room, and my feet feel loose in my shoes. What I'm about to do may drastically upgrade my position on this ship, but I'm not foolish enough to cut off other avenues. I may still need to pay someone to help Walker. Maybe Samson would do it. . . .

Ben's so-called “solid plan” has more holes than the worn-through sleeves of my shirt, but what he needs me to do is simple: distract Johnny. And that means giving him what he wants: the proof that killing Lo made me more independent—just like his father's order of banishment “freed” him.

I have to admit that more than a little piece of me revels in the
idea of taking on Johnny again. Making him pay.

Johnny's black clothes stain the navy couch like the harshest center of a bruise. “No, I won't be joining you on the gaming floor,” he says to the first passenger in line, a chubby middle-aged man. “You'll have to repay what you owe in credits instead of slippery offers.” He looks up from his tablet, wearing a thin smile. “Hello, Rain. I was wondering when you were going to grace me with your unique coloring.”

“Am I still just a color to you?”

He turns to his screen. I forgot how tall he is. Even sitting down, he's just a head below eye level, and his thighs splay out like a dare. “Do you have something
more
for me?”

I push past the chubby man and stand between Johnny's legs. A blue girl reclines across the couch with her hand resting on his knee, and I knock it away. I lean over the tablet in his hands, making him look into my face.

He still steals my breath.

Beyond the sex, the slaves in his cargo, and the darkness in his too-deeply brown eyes, he has the allure of something unknowable. Unfathomable. And with a start, I realize what he's always reminded me of.

The stretching black behind the stars.

I lower my mouth to his lips. His initial response is lax, so I take his collar in both hands and bring him against me. I am the hungry one now. My tongue finds the edge of his, and my hatred twists my attraction until I could almost suffocate him with this kiss.

When his hands mount my hips, I push him back against the
cushions. “I'm done with this level. Give me a new challenge.”

Johnny's neck is tinted with a rare blush. “Such revamped interest.” His tongue flicks across his lips, and I can tell that he's pleased. “Does this mean you've forgiven me?”

I hold back the urge to kick him in the balls, and then maybe kiss him again until he turns as blue as my bracelet. “I've”—my voice threatens to break as I remember Lo's horror-stricken face—“adjusted.”

“Let's test that resolve.” Johnny's fingers tap his tablet, and my wrist switches from sapphire to scarlet. “But clean yourself up first. You're a little disgusting at the moment.”

Johnny motions for the chubby passenger, and I take a few steps back. “I've changed my mind. Maybe I will join you at the casino. What passes for high roller tokens these days?”

I take this as dismissal but don't move fast enough to miss the man's response. “Girls, credits, or stones,” he supplies. “But girls take the cake.”

With each step, my bracelet seems to grow heavier and heavier until I have to hold it up with my other hand. This is what had to happen, right? Johnny is distracted, and we'll arrive at Entra soon. Now I just have to pray that he doesn't lose me in a card game.

I take the elevator to the Family Room and walk past the ugly stares of the green girls and into the shower area. It's mercifully deserted, and I strip, looking over the deep tub where I bathed with Lo—where Kaya tortured us with the mysterious burning powder.

Frightened and unaware but together—I wish I knew then that
that moment in the water with Lo was going to be one of our last. I should have tried to calm her. She was already scared for her life.

And poor Kaya . . .

I blink some raw wetness from my eyes and get into one of the wide, tiled showers. I turn the water on as hot as it runs and step into the scalding stream. I wash my hair dozens of times, letting the water melt my muscles and sore hips into a less horrible form. The rush and flow steals the lingering filth from all the other men, and I bask in a rare carefree feeling.

“Rain!”

I poke my head around the curtain and find Ben frowning. “Hey, I'm showering here.”

“You're red-tagged again! First off, how the hell did you manage it? And secondly,
why
?”

“You wanted me to help.”

He waves his hand to shut me up and leans against the divider between my shower and the next. “I didn't mean for you to throw yourself back under him,” he whispers, something like jealousy darting between his words. I find that I like it on an entirely unhealthy level and let the curtain close in his face.

“I don't do anything half-assed. Besides, I can't just wink at him and make him do what I want, you know.”

“I realize that,” he says. “This just complicates things. He's going to keep you near him now, especially when we land on Entra. That means you're going to be in the danger zone when I . . .” His words stop at the sound of someone entering the shower room. “Someone's coming!”

“Didn't you lock the door?”

“I forgot.”

I reach through the curtain and grab him by the front of his shirt, pulling him into the shower with me. He spins so that he isn't facing my nakedness, which means he's staring down the stream of the water.

I do a poor job of trying to cover myself even though he isn't looking, and then, while girls' voices resonate in the shower room, I begin to enjoy the fact that he's getting soaked, fully dressed. And the thrill that I'm
embarrassed
, my nakedness seeming like a crazy powerful thing.

Which is something I haven't felt in far too long.

In a few minutes, the girls leave, and the door wallops closed behind them. Ben steps out of the shower without turning back to look at me. “That was close,” I say. “What's the point in keeping a stern eye on the security feed if you forget to lock the door?”

“Even geniuses can be forgetful,” he says, and I think I hear a smile. “Especially geniuses. But a locked door might have been
more
suspicious, so maybe I was just being inadvertently smart.”

I stick my face around the curtain. He's leaning so close that I bump foreheads with him. “You wanted my help, so I'm actually going to help. And your plan, by the way, completely sucks. I have a better one, but you have to do something for me first.”

Ben's face is an inch from mine, his gaze so keen that it'd make me feel naked even if I wasn't already. He looks as though he's about to complain, but his rather full lips—which I can't believe I haven't noticed before—curl into that boyish smile instead. “I'll hear you out, but not here where the other girls might catch us.” He pauses. “It's going to be hard to get you away from him.”

“Give me one of your gadgets. Let me dope him.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “So much for playing it safe.” He fishes into one of his pockets and hands me a small tin. “Drop one of these in his drink. It'll knock him out and cloud his memory of the whole evening. Then I'll come get you, and we'll talk.”

“This is a gamble.”

“Yeah, well, we're both in deep now.” His smile is uneven, smirky, and I have the craziest urge to kiss it.

So I do.

I peck his lips so fast that he stumbles back and falls straight into the deep tub with a wild splash. I laugh, ducking back into the shower as two green girls enter. Over the rush and flow of the stream, I hear Ben's sloppy, boot-stomping exit from the tub.

“You should take your clothes off first, Mec,” one of them dares to say.

“Very funny,” he says. The girls' feet patter on the tile as they hustle by my shower, and I peek out to watch Ben struggle out of his wet shirt. He shakes the water from his dripping hair and glances back at me.

I drop the curtain. This is nuts. I'm giddy and running warm inside like the insanity of our plan has given me new life. It's probably just the promise of being proactive, but it feels like I'm really running the Void for once.

I turn the tin of drug strips over and over in my pocket. Johnny's room is just as I remembered it—satiny sheets and the daring window that he first took me against. Not to mention the dim lighting
that draws shadows down the walls like reaching hands.