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disinterest lost entirely as her shirt bloomed with a dark stain. She went down on one knee, and he lunged
towards her, stopped by Cassie s hands as they fisted in his shirt and pulled him back. She was surprisingly
strong, and the urgent hum of her voice was lost on him, crushed under the roaring in his ears.
Even half-down, Vanya wasn t out. She fired three times, a tight cluster of shots that took Matriska in
the chest and dropped her flat on her back. Her gun slid across the gritty floor, into the no-man s land
between Vanya and him and Cassie.
I asked you nicely. Vanya ground the words out as she pressed her free hand to the wound near her
collarbone. Frey comes with me, and you walk away from this one. You don t want Imperial attention,
Vradoz. Not the kind I can bring.
I can double the bounty you ll make if you leave him to me. The warm smile he gave her was tight
around the edges. You re not an officer, and in fact, I believe that right now you re as wanted as Mr. Frey
here, aren t you?
I won t deal with you, Vradoz. I m leaving with Frey, and you can be alive when it happens, or not.
That s your only choice in the matter.
Or he could come with me, Cassie said from behind Kellen, her hand gripping his arm tightly as she
yanked him closer. He started to jerk away until the barrel of her gun dug into his side, and then he stilled.
He hadn t even known she was armed, but she d always had the damnedest fondness for vintage weapons.
The gun she d pulled on him was definitely the old-school, massive-tissue-damage variety, and the sound
of the hammer being cocked was a distinct form of punctuation to her otherwise quiet statement.
The betrayal hurt, a heavy gut-wrenching pain all the worse because he d known it was coming, even
if he hadn t admitted that knowledge to himself. She hadn t actually shot him yet, but for the first time,
Kellen accepted that it was just as likely that she would as not. Her casual bait and switch wasn t a game
this time, not a joking test of his skills, and they weren t only playing against each other as they had for so
long. They weren t walking away from this one together, and Kellen couldn t fix that. He should have been
able to salvage something from it, pull all the pieces back into some semblance of a whole, but the dying
breath of their relationship was skirting across the back of his neck, and he felt frozen by it.
Shoot my rundown, and I ll take you in his place, Elisha Saporta. The bounty isn t quite as good, but
there s a tidy sum attached to that alias. Vanya s look was cold, for all that she spared barely an instant of
attention from her vigilant watch. My offer expires in about ten seconds, Vradoz. What s your choice?
Kellen was almost expecting something. A man s name didn t take on near-mythic expectations for
cruelty and violence unless he had something up his sleeve all the time, and in this case, apparently the
sleeve was literal and the something was a flash bomb. A twist of Vradoz s fingers sent it spinning out into
the space between them, and Kellen s instincts reacted before he had the chance to second-guess them.
The shock wave knocked him off his feet just as he threw himself to the side, tackling Cassie and
taking her down with him. He turned his head, trying to see what had happened to Vanya, but he could
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The Slipstream Con
barely make out anything past the brilliant glare that left him almost blind, trying to blink away the after
burn of the flash. Eyes streaming, he eventually spotted Vanya, down on her back a few feet away from
him and Cassie. Beyond her, the bulk of another body could only be Vradoz, but unlike Vanya, he wasn t
moving at all.
The steps pounding across the catwalk were fast and far from stealthy, and the note of fear in Tal s
voice as he called Vanya s name was unmistakable. Kellen pushed himself up, and his awkward scuttle on
hands and knees brought him to Cassie, who was just starting to sit up and shake her head.
Cass He cut himself off, trying to find the right words, even though he had precious few seconds
to make it all work. He grabbed her hand and left their fingers tangled together for longer than he should
have. Go for the side door. Run, now.
Letting her go, he was surprised when she leaned in to kiss him, her warm lips pressed against his
temple for the beat between one of Tal s feet hitting the stairs and the next. It was just the game, Kel. She
whispered it against his forehead, and he didn t know if she meant all of the current disaster, or the gun
she d held against him, or their entire life together. He didn t have the time left to figure it out.
There s a vault on Warrenth, Kellen told her as she scrambled to her feet, and the words tasted of
goodbye in his mouth. He didn t watch her leave.
The catwalk stairs swayed under his feet, the grinding scrape of screws pulling loose from the wall
almost drowned out under the slamming sound of his own footsteps. It had only been seconds since Vanya
had gone down, but it was already the longest stretch of time he d ever experienced, terror pounding in his
throat like a physical thing. Every step slapped his rifle across his shoulders, and he d already pulled his
handgun from its holster before he hit the fifth rung.
Hand on the railing, Tal vaulted the last ten or so steps to the warehouse floor, landing half-crouched.
There was no movement from Vradoz s sprawled body, but a flash of golden hair sent him spinning, aim
transferring to Cassie s retreating figure. It was stupid and weak and potentially deadly, but the quick
glance at Frey s anguished face stilled his hand before he squeezed the trigger, and he grunted in frustration
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