“Who?” Solara asked, but then the answer came. “Oh. Pink hair, black soul.”
Doran glared at her and tapped the new contact information. The second transmission connected almost instantly, followed by a breathy “Hello?” Solara craned her neck to glimpse the screen just in time to see Miss DePaul’s eyes fly wide.
“Dory!” the girl cried, then lowered her voice to a hiss. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
That wasn’t the reaction Solara had expected, and judging by Doran’s parted lips, he hadn’t seen it coming, either. His girlfriend didn’t seem worried about his disappearance, or particularly happy to hear from him.
“I, uh,” he stammered. “I need you to send a message to my father.”
“Where are you?” she asked, instead of Are you okay?
“On Pesirus, but I’m going to Obsidian.” He leaned forward and stressed, “I’ll be at the next outpost in three days. Tell my father to have a ship waiting so I can do my job. He’ll know what that means.”
Miss DePaul acted like she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. “What happened to the girl you hired?” she asked. “The homely little indenture with the dirty clothes. You didn’t”—she gulped—“kill her, did you?”
“What?” Doran jerked back. “Of course not!”
Solara clamped her lips together, trying not to laugh at the idea of Doran using his perfectly manicured hands to kill her. He’d never do it. He might break a nail.
Miss DePaul didn’t look convinced. “Then where is she?”
“Right here with me, very much alive.”
“She came with you? Of her own free will?”
Doran cast a cutting glance at Solara, and she brought a finger to her lips as a reminder to keep their arrangement a secret. “I didn’t kidnap her,” he muttered darkly, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Then she’s more stupid than I thought,” Miss DePaul said. “To aid a fugitive when she’s already got a record.”
Solara’s eyebrows jumped in perfect synch with Doran’s.
“To aid a what?” he asked.
“Dory, you know I love you, but I can’t get involved.” His girlfriend twisted a pink lock around her finger. “You understand, right?”
Doran nodded absently while his cheeks turned waxy. Solara waved to get his attention and mouthed Fugitive? at him, but he stared right through her.
“Is this a secure line?” he asked.
“Totally,” Miss DePaul promised. “And I won’t tell anyone you called.”
“Yes, please don’t. What happened after I left?”
“They’re still trying to extradite you for all those indictments on Earth,” Ava whispered. “When you took off, they started tracking all the ships that—”
The transmission ended with their prepaid minute.
While Doran groaned and cradled his head between both hands, Solara processed what her ears were trying to tell her…which she still couldn’t believe. Doran was a fugitive from justice? Doran Spaulding—Mister unlike you, I’m not a lowly convict—had broken the law?
“What did you do?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he whispered. “I swear.”
“Sure. That’s what they all say.”
She remembered how the outpost intercom had repeated, Passenger Spaulding, return to your ship. The Enforcers weren’t worried about the heir to the Spaulding throne. They were trying to extradite him. And she’d helped him escape.
“The ship that chased us last night,” Solara realized, her stomach sinking. “They were after you, not me.” Which didn’t really matter. Because if the law caught up with them, everyone on board the Banshee would rot in a lifer colony. “And you just told your girlfriend where we are.”
The booth seemed to shrink around her, and for once she understood how Doran felt about closets. She jerked open the door and stumbled outside, blinking against the sunshine while she turned in a clumsy circle. “We have to go,” she said. She didn’t know where the nearest Enforcer patrol was stationed, or how long it would take it to reach Pesirus, but the clock was already ticking. “What do we tell the crew?”
“Nothing,” Doran replied from behind. He stepped out of the booth, looking calmer than any fugitive had a right to be. “They can’t find out who I am.”
“We’re supposed to spend the whole day here,” she reminded him. “How do we convince them to leave?”
“Easy. I’ll lie.” He nodded at the booth. “I just got word that my grandmother’s dying, and I have to rush to the nearest outpost for an Earthbound ship. We’re paid passengers. You heard the captain; business comes first.”
“But you can’t go to that outpost anymore,” she said. “Your girlfriend knows—”