Chapter 4

The forward cabin still stank of impact foam, burned wiring and fire, but Sophia felt safer taking the linens from her designated room on the upper deck and bedding down in the Warlock instead.

The encounter with John Bren had rattled her. She hadn't been prepared to see him yet, and had certainly not been prepared to have him suddenly appear outside the Warlock like a hallucination brought on after too many hours flying.

She was still feeling nervy, too. Her fingers fumbled at the wrappings on the blankets, and she'd dropped her tools several times after John Bren had faded back into the shadows. Every few minutes — or less — she stopped to peer over the side of the Warlock's canopy to make sure he wasn't standing there again.

Eventually Sophia abandoned the idea of getting the cabin fully clean and just satisfied herself with vacuuming the foam off the floor and laying out some blankets. The Warlock's own bedding was still locked down in the interior compartments, and she hadn't gotten that far in her work.

Had he recognized her? She could have sworn he hadn't.

As for her, she'd reacted to the sound of his voice before she even saw him. The passage of years hadn't changed the peculiar sound of his voice, the words blurred by the way he spoke them. When she'd met him before, it had made him sound uncertain. Now it made him sound dangerous.

He looked dangerous, too. He'd grown older, and more powerful. She hadn't realized how young he was, the last time she saw him. He'd been a man, yes, but not fully grown. She'd been even younger, and hadn't been paying attention, never thinking that he was anything but one of Carolina's friends, a halfway decent navi, and possibly her lover.

His features were still the same, but age had put an edge on them, broadened his shoulders, added heft to a frame that hadn't been small to begin with. His green eyes were no longer candid, now they were watchful, veiled.

That was the dangerous part, to Sophia's mind. She'd been hoping to play off his shock at seeing her, for her plan to work. But there'd been no recognition there at all.

With arms that ached both from injury and from the strenuous work of the morning, she slowly levered the canopy back into place over the cabin. The flight deck's blinding white lights refracted through the gunk that was still smeared all over the transparent panels.

Sophia tapped on one of the Warlock's comms in a vain attempt to get the panels to darken. They remained transparent, which she had expected. She sighed and knelt down to push the blankets further past the navi's chair and into the back of the cabin.

Had he not really recognized her?

She didn't look a lot like Carolina, but there was some resemblance. Brown hair, brown eyes, round face, lithe body made tough by the Warlock's demands. Not that he could see her body in the sexless jumpsuit. But surely he'd seen something of Carolina in her face. That was what she'd been hoping for. Just not so soon, before she was prepared!

Sophia looked around the little cabin and sighed again. She wasn't used to sleeping under floodlights yet. Nor was she used to this prickly feeling of dread that kept her jumping at every sound she heard outside the Warlock. Even when she'd left home, there had been no dread, only determination.

Damn John Bren. He'd caught her unawares and spiked her determination. She looked around at the foam-encrusted consoles of the Warlock and firmed her resolve once more. She'd faced down more dangerous men over the breakfast table. John Bren would be no problem at all.

Bren organized the night's reports so that all the ones regarding Sophia Delgrada were on top. The several reports he expected turned out to be only two. One minor note from security listing two short stays in her designated cabin. The second report wasn't much longer; Banks stated that she'd worked on the Warlock, hauled some bedding into the ship's cabin and hadn't been heard from since early morning, when she'd headed for the lifts.

Bren glanced up at the viewscreen over the table in his quarters. It was about an hour after the report said she left. He shrugged and began to read through the rest of the reports with his usual deep concentration.