Mrs. Phan’s has the sector’s best Pan-Asian grub, light-years ahead of the pretentious crap they serve in the four-star, hundred-galactics-a-sitting places in the upper city. Sofia deserves a break from my protein bars and gel packs. What are you trying to do, man? Bring her a courting gift?
I shove the voice in my head aside and nod to Mrs. Phan, who’s manning the counter herself. They have a menu here, but the locals just ask for whatever’s cooking; it’s always good. I hold up two fingers to indicate my order, and she bustles away to call unintelligible instructions to the kitchen staff. There are a couple of guys sitting together in a corner, gazing deep into each other’s eyes, and a woman by the other wall working a logic puzzle on her palm pad, and none of them casts a second glance at me.
Mrs. Phan dumps two containers of steaming noodles on the counter, along with two bottles of her husband’s home brew and two pairs of disposable chopsticks. She takes my money and I’m out in under two minutes. Success.
Sofia’s eyes light up when I let myself back in, and she practically tosses her palm pad aside, hands extended for the noodles. “That smells incredible,” she whispers, almost reverent, but she’s smiling, and I’m smiling right back. We’re both silent as we pull the lids off our containers and the caps off our beers, sending up clouds of steam as we dig into the noodles with our chopsticks. I shovel up my first mouthful, the spicy sauce burning my tongue. It’s perfect. Beside me Sofia tries her own mouthful, eyes widening, those perfect manners vaporizing as she speaks with her mouth full. “Oh my God.”
“I know, right?” We’re on safer ground with the food, and for a couple of minutes we’re both quiet—no calculation, no consideration, just enjoying the meal. Still riding out the ripples from that kiss. Me trying not to watch, sidelong, as she licks the sauce off the ends of her chopsticks.
“Nobody saw you?” she asks eventually.
“I’m sure,” I reply around a mouthful. “This place is secure. Nobody’s getting in without an invitation.”
“My place was secure too,” Sofia points out drily. “So was yours.”
So was Mae’s.
I’ve had days now to think on what she did. I haven’t dared make contact—if she did what I told her and sold out the Knave to get her kids back, then they’ll have a watch program on everything she touches, and they won’t be letting her out of their sight. There’s no safe way to reach out to her—not for either of us. She knows it too—that’s why she posted the picture of her, Liv, and Mattie on her public profile, I’m sure of it. What I wasn’t expecting was that I really miss talking to Mae. It’s been years since I went even a day without checking in, and there’s an ache that’s part loneliness, part pain that she’d give me up. But really, I can’t blame her. I don’t.
I blame the ones who used her kids to threaten her.
This is my vindication, though I don’t know who it is I’m making my case to, when I lie awake at night, debating some imaginary opponent. Silently pointing out that this—the threat to innocent kids—is just the latest in a long line of reasons that my cause is just, and I’m only doing what’s required to take LaRoux Industries down. I’ve reached inside myself more than once, searching for any sympathy for the woman I’m sending running all over the galaxy, or even just trying to dampen my satisfaction when she’s forced to ditch another disguise and go scrambling all over again. But the truth is, her fear feeds me. I can imagine, just a little, that it’s LaRoux’s fear. That it’s him I’m hounding. And after all, the great Commander Towers opened herself to this when she chose to look the other way for him.
“I guess I hope this place is safer than either of our homes were,” I say eventually, recalling myself to the conversation at hand. “And I’ve got your back, Sofia, I promise.”
“I know,” she says softly. Almost wistfully. “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since somebody said that and I believed them. I haven’t had anyone I could trust.”
I want to dump my food and turn to her again. But I make myself speak instead. “You have me now,” I murmur.
She’s found the little card for the restaurant I got the noodles from, pulling it free from the side of the container. Absently she weaves it through her fingers, moving it back and forth almost too quickly to follow, passing it from hand to hand. Then she lifts one hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, and the card simply vanishes from her palm. She laughs at my expression.
“Remind me not to gamble with you,” I say, tilting my head to try and work out if she tucked it in her hair. “I’d lose my shirt.”
“The drawback being?” She flashes a grin at me.
“I’d rather you lost yours.”