Excerpt

"You should start a restaurant, Las," says the voice in her ear. "Cazinho's: Service with a Snarl."

Lasadi Cazinho hurries through the pompous tech giant's posh hallway to the kitchen, her tray of empties getting heavier by the step.

"Not now, Jay."

But Jay Kamiya is on a roll, and after working together for so many years, Lasadi has learned to simply let him talk, the comfortable cadence of his voice in the background a soothing presence and constant companion.

Jay's got a touch more Coruscan lilt than she does, one of the indications of the class differences in their upbringing, where his family was solidly blue collar and hers played government roles. The lilt's cheerful, a little cocky, always joking until the real danger hits. Whether in dogfights together as pilot and mechanic during the Coruscan war for independence from Arquelle, or these last three years doing odd jobs for Nico Garnet since they washed up in the Pearls, Jay's voice has been her lifeline.

"I can see it already," he continues. "You'll have one of those port diners, where everyone's too disoriented and jetlagged to care what they're ordering, while you're at the register yelling at them to hurry the hell up if they don't know what they want the minute they walk in. I bet you take people's plate before they've had the last bite, too."

"Mmm-hmm."

Lasadi is only half listening; her attention is split, caught partly by the job at hand and partly by the Arquellian talking with Sumilang in the museum hall.

Something about him sticks like a barb in her mind.

He's eye-catching, and holds himself like he knows it. Wears that suit like he was born to it, his thick black hair curling loose around his ears to brush his shoulders. The casual way he'd run slender, tawny fingers through it, the way the flecks of gold embedded in his deep brown eyes caught the light. And, of course, the easy Arquellian grin that says he owns the world and has never had to worry about whether he's got enough food, water, air to survive until tomorrow.

Lasadi can appreciate a piece of candy without letting him go to her head — no matter how long it's been — but something happened when he caught her watching him. She can't say whether it was a flicker of an eyelash, a curve of his lips, a lift of his chin. But for a split second he'd dropped his mask, and there wasn't simply a live wire beneath the surface — a whole damned wild current of electricity had surged through her.

A fire like that could light you up like a torch. Or burn you to ash.

Danger. The man is pure danger. Maybe he really is an investor with ulterior motives he's keeping Sumilang in the dark about. Or maybe he's a grifter trying to get his hands in Sumilang's pockets. Lasadi doesn't care what game he's playing so long as he keeps Sumilang out of her hair long enough for her to finish this job.

And so long as she doesn't have to ever see him again.

Because he definitely saw straight through her, all the way to the core, and she can't afford to have that happen on such a critical job.

She rounds the hall to the kitchen, where the catering staff have set up for the evening. A kid in a busser's outfit is lounging outside the door, probably trying to avoid the explosive volcano in an apron who calls himself the head chef. Too bad.

"Here, I have to get back out there." She thrusts the tray of empties at the kid, who shoves his comm back in his pocket barely in time to catch it. She snatches Sumilang's glass back off the tray before the kid slinks away in resignation. "It's chipped," she says in explanation. "Go."

The busser — like all the catering staff — is wearing a pair of silver antimicrobial gloves. Lasadi is, too, but hers have been given an upgrade: a special coating Jay managed to procure from a friend, which he's reassured her will definitely, definitely work.

Here goes nothing.

Lasadi cups her right hand around Sumilang's martini glass, trying to mimic his grip and careful not to smudge the existing fingerprints. The faint flicker of a status bar pops up on her lens to tell her it's working, but she's not getting the full array of data Jay is back on the Nanshe.

"What do you see?" she asks Jay.

"I'd run Kamiya's Kitchen."

Voices from down the hall — a bartender and a cocktailer, bitching about some aristocrat in a blue jacket. Lasadi melts into a supply closet as they round the corner. She's got a cover story for if she gets caught lingering out here, of course, but she's not getting caught.

Not now, not ever.

"Jay?" she whispers.

"I'd run Kamiya's Kitchen," Jay says again. "Open up right next door, give you a run for your money."

"The glove, Jay."

"Throttle down, it's loading." He makes that clicking sound he always does with his tongue when he's thinking. "I'd serve barbecue like my grandma used to make."

"You've never made me barbecue," Lasadi says.

"I've made it for Chiara," Jay points out. "You never come over when I invite you. And the Nanshe doesn't have a proper kitchen."

Neither did the barracks of the Coruscan Liberation Army where they met, Lasadi supposes. Whether in the CLA or in their time on the run since the independence effort went up in flames, what she's known of Jay's cooking has been fast and utilitarian. Calories in to support calories out. Lasadi'd assumed that meant Jay was as uninterested as she is when it comes to domestic matters, but apparently he cooks for his girlfriend.

"I won't believe it until I taste it," Lasadi says. The voices have faded; the hallway's empty once more.

"Shift your grip," Jay orders. "Okay. Again."

"Is it loading?"

"What you should do is, you should talk Nico into some better kitchen gear on the Nanshe," Jay says. "After this job — "

"Jay."

"Sorry."

He clicks his tongue again in the silence, and Lasadi scans the hall. She doesn't own the Nanshe, Nico Garnet does. And "after this job" is not something she wants to think about, not if Jay's decided he no longer wants to work for Nico. This is Jay's last job, he's told her. He's got a girl, he wants to settle down. Hell, even in his job-banter fantasies he's talking about opening side-by-side restaurants.

And Lasadi?

Has no fucking clue what's next.

She shoves away the thought. Just enjoy working this last job with Jay, figure out what comes next after.

"Glove's ready," Jay says.

Lasadi takes a sharp breath of relief and glances at the silver glove, but she doesn't see any difference. "How do I know it's working?"

"You'll know when lasers don't shoot out of the base of the plinth and kneecap you."

"Very reassuring."

"Trust me, Las," Jay says. She can hear him typing. "This is good tech. I mean, I'm not — "

"You're not a hacker, I know." They've had this conversation a dozen times, about bringing in new blood. They'll need a few more people to complete the rest of this job, but Lasadi has put off looking. Maybe she can find someone decent once they get back to Ironfall, someone she won't hate working with — someone not like the stony mercenaries Nico Garnet normally assigns to jobs that require a few more bodies. Garnet's mercs are always competent, but soulless. And having them around always ends up reminding her of how good it used to be, back in the CLA, working with a group of people who believed in the same cause you did, and had your back no matter what.

Now Jay's the one person in this entire universe she trusts. He's had her back through the worst days of her life and beyond — and everyone else she used to trust is either dead or out of her reach.

"Plus," Jay continues. "I doubt you'll get kneecapped. Your reflexes are too good."

"Thank you."

"Not good enough to run the gauntlet you'll need to if you trip the security, though," he says, cheerful. "Sumilang hired almost every private security guard in Artemis and Dima for this event. So get moving, and — DON'T!"

Lasadi freezes with her right fingertips millimeters from the handle of the supply closet door. "What is it?" she hisses.

"Don't touch anything else with that hand."

Lasadi snatches her hand back. "I thought the prints were set after the program ran."

"Nanites are shifty bastards and I don't want to take any chances. So don't mox them up by touching anything until you get back to the museum hall. Go, gogo."

"Sumilang?" she asks Jay.

"At the bar."

Which means the Arquellian asshole investor is probably there with him. Good. Las opens the supply closet with her left hand, then drops the martini glass in a nearby recycler chute, shoulders loosening and heart rate picking up in delicious anticipation. After the last few hours playing the role of catering staff, she's finally getting to the good part.

"Heya. Sweetheart."

Lasadi stiffens at the sound of the head chef's voice behind her.

"Deep breaths, Las," Jay murmurs in her ear. "Deep breaths."

Lasadi has never been one for keeping her feelings off her face, but she's practicing the finer art of acting lately, since more of these jobs seem to require it. She musters a patient smile as she turns to find the head chef looming in the doorway to the kitchen. The table beside the door is laden with food that needs to be run out to the party.

"Yeah?" She's trying for cheerful.

"I don't know where you servers all hide when I need you," the chef grumbles, jabbing a silver-gloved finger at a tray of puff pastry tartlets. "Take that out to the terrace, then."

"Knee-capping lasers," Jay hisses in her ear.

"I'm going on break," Lasadi tries. She curls her right hand protectively into a loose fist, harboring nightmares of smudging the shifty bastard nanites out of their new Parr Sumilang's fingerprint configuration. "But I can send someone back."

The head chef's cheeks flare even redder. "The nerve on you — there's no such thing as break," he scoffs. "Take the tray or I'll have security dump you out and you can forget about pay, can't you. The help you get these days." He's working himself into a roar; it's echoing down the hall. "People used to work, and now they expect handouts, to be paid for standing around smoking goddamned moss instead of doing the fucking jobs I hired them for."

He curls a lip at Lasadi. "Get on now, would you."

"Okay, okay." Lasadi reaches for the tray. "I got it."

"What you need to get is a work ethic," the chef growls. He starts to stalk back into the kitchen, then stops in the doorway as though thinking better of it and glares at her until she actually moves towards the tray.

"Lasers," Jay says.

"I know," she mutters. She manages to cradle the tray, awkward, using the side of her right hand to scoot the tray onto her left. The head chef shoots her one last disgusted look before finally turning his wrath back on the kitchen staff; still, Lasadi waits until she's turned the corner into the museum hall before ditching the tray. A long table has been set up on one side of the hall — maybe Sumilang thought they'd bring the party in here among his weird obsessive collection at some point and would need refreshments. If anyone asks, Las can claim that's what she's doing here with the tray of puff pastries.

For now, though, the coast is clear.

Finally.

Las cuts through the faux-marble plinths, attention on her objective — and feet slowing of their own accord as she passes the mixla Sumilang and that Arquellian bastard were making fun of. She frowns at it, annoyed at herself for pausing but curious nonetheless.

It's much smaller than the one her grandmother has set up in her kitchen, and a completely different stone and carving style, but the sight of it unseals a store of memories from home. The scent of lavender tea in the morning; Grandma sharing her cup with the mixla, pouring the hot liquid into a thimble-sized bowl with a prayer. The perfume of roses at new year; the shrine covered in petals and Lasadi's hands bleach-rough from scrubbing the house clean. Crumbs of cake and precious coffee beans set out on ancestors' birthdays. A smear of blood from her little brother's first lost tooth — Lasadi had yelled at him to wash it off first but Grandma had said the mixla wouldn't mind.

And, of course, the silver necklace she'd left on the altar when she left home against her grandmother's wishes to join the liberation movement.

Sumilang had called the mixla superstition, but it's more than that. Her grandmother was a Coruscan senator, and the most rational person Las knew.

Knows.

Her grandmother's still alive, of course. It's Lasadi who's technically dead — or worse. Her family had held banishing on hearing of her death; Anton told her. Her grandmother, her sister, her brother, her cousins — they'd ensured her name will go unspoken and her memory unshared because of the things she was responsible for in the war. No one is leaving offerings at Grandma's shrine for Lasadi's memory. She might as well have never existed.

"Las."

She blinks the memories aside, clears her head with a sharp shake. "I'm on it."

She scans the room once more to make sure she's still alone, then stops in front of the plinth that holds the obsidian totem. She tries not to think of kneecapping lasers, a hand's span away from her shins, as she slowly settles her hand on the bioscanner.

"This better work," she mutters.

"Trust me."

"You know I do."

Yet when the bioscanner pulses red three times under her silver-gloved fingertips, each pulse spikes Lasadi's adrenaline through the roof.

She smudged the fingerprints, she thinks.

She didn't get a good enough grip on the martini glass.

Jay's hacker set them up to fail.

Nico set them up to fail.

"Is that normal?" she hisses; Jay clicks his tongue. That's an I don't know.

Her muscles tense, ready to leap back from the plinth — and she freezes.

Behind her, someone clears their throat.

"So." The elongated vowel holds an unmistakable Arquellian drawl; Lasadi spins to meet those familiar dark eyes, light catching in the gold flecks of his irises like a warning. The mask the Arquellian asshole wore for Sumilang is gone entirely, and the way his gaze bores through her sets every fiber of her being on fire.

Danger.