Arabelle tucked a scarlet curl behind one ear and opened the cooler to retrieve the iced tea she’d left to steep overnight. “Want some?”
“Sure.” Cassia strode to the cabinet and stood on tiptoe to reach the cups. She wished Kane wouldn’t put them up so high. When she noticed Arabelle watching, she laughed. “Short-people problems.”
“Tell me about it.” Arabelle flourished a hand at her own petite body.
“Do you ever feel like people don’t notice you?” Cassia asked. “Whenever I make deliveries with the crew, the warehouse workers barely look at me. They glance at whoever’s tallest, and then they start talking like I’m not even in the room.”
“Yep.” Arabelle nodded. “But that can actually be a good thing.”
“How so?”
“You can learn a lot if you blend in and listen.”
Intrigued, Cassia slid onto the bench.
“Fleece had a lot of shady people working for him,” Arabelle said, pushing a cup of iced tea across the table as she took the opposite bench. “Shady but smart. A while ago, two of his tech guys were talking about how to hack transmissions—and how to keep from being hacked. They said all it took was tweaking the advanced system controls.” She took a long pull of tea and smiled. “So I restored Fleece’s transmitter to factory settings.”
Cassia gasped. “That’s how my team is hacking him.”
Arabelle lifted a shoulder. “It felt good to get back at him in some small way.”
“What about the Banshee’s settings?”
“Renny already asked me to check. They’re secure. I don’t know how Fleece was trailing us yesterday, but I don’t think it had anything to do with our transmitter.”
“Did Fleece ever say why he was in the fringe to begin with?” Cassia asked. “I mean, I assume the mafia’s making a power grab outside their territory, but what’s his role?”
Arabelle frowned as she nursed her tea. “I’ve been thinking about that ever since you said he was killing pirate lords. Fleece was always tight-lipped, but I heard him mention Daro the Red once or twice. He’d been planning the hits for months. I think that’s why Ari Zhang sent him out here, to clear the way for some kind of expansion.”
“But what can the mob do in the fringe that they can’t do on Earth?” Cassia wondered aloud. It was true the outer realm had no laws, but Ari Zhang had successfully operated outside the law for decades, mostly because he had half the Solar League in his pocket. Expanding into the fringe didn’t make sense from a business standpoint, either. Most of the galaxy’s wealth was concentrated on Earth, so Zhang should fight to stay there, not leave. “Even if the mafia wins a foothold in pirate territory, they’ll have to spend a fortune on security to keep it. What’s the point when most of the fringe settlers are too poor to gamble or hire a hit man?”
“Desperate people can always find the money.”
“But there has to be more to it than that. Maybe he’s tired of paying off politicians and wants to move his business where there aren’t any rules.”
“Politicians…” Arabelle repeated. “I just remembered something. It happened so long ago that I almost forgot. The night Zhang sold me to Fleece, I heard him mention a bill that had failed. I guess he wanted a law passed, but he couldn’t buy off enough politicians to do it. About a month later, Fleece and I were in the fringe.”
Cassia wondered if the bill was a matter of public record. She doubted it.
“I didn’t think much about it at the time,” Arabelle continued, and gave a sad smile. “I had other things on my mind.”
Cassia reached out and covered Arabelle’s hand. “Of course you did. Living with Fleece must have been awful.”
Arabelle stared into her tea, paling a shade. “It was.”
“I can relate, at least a little bit,” Cassia shared. “Renny probably told you about the bounty hunters who took me. It happened right here in this town, about half a mile away. That was the worst experience of my life, and it only lasted a few weeks. I can’t imagine how you stayed sane.” She squeezed Arabelle’s hand. “How long were you with him?”
“I don’t know. About a year, I guess.”
“Who did you work for before then?”
“Before when? I’ve always belonged to Fleece.”
Cassia wrinkled her forehead. Maybe she’d misunderstood. She thought Ari Zhang had taken Arabelle immediately after Renny had picked his pocket and left Earth. “You said Zhang came for you because he couldn’t find Renny. He wanted revenge, and he knew that Renny loved you, so hurting you was the next best thing.”
“Right.”
“How long did he look for Renny?”
“A day or two. At first he wanted me to lure Renny out of hiding. Once he heard Renny was long gone, he sold me to Fleece.”
“But that was more than two years ago.”
“No, it’s only been a year.”
“Belle…” Cassia tentatively tried out the nickname and was rewarded by a soft smile from her bunkmate. “I’ve lived on this ship ever since I ran away from home. That was more than two years ago, and Renny was already here as the first mate.”