Page 22 of How to Steal a Galaxy

“No,” Rian says forcefully. He grabs Fetor’s arm, pulling him toward the door.

“Wait, no, let me hear him out. Good money?” I ask.

“Very good.” Fetor’s lecherous grin may be the only real emotion I’ve ever seen his plastic face wear, and it promises a price tag with a lot of zeroes, my favorite kind of number.

“No,” Rian says again, already in the corridor.

“Maybe later,” I call to Fetor as Rian drags him away.

9

The woman in red watches Rian and Fetor go as she stands in the doorway. After enough time has passed that they’re definitely down the stairs, she turns to me. Gone are the timidness and polite veneer. “The fuck are you doing?” she asks, stepping farther into the room.

“You’re supposed to ask me the codeword,” I point out.

Phoebe rolls her eyes. Technically, I am the only one who needed the “Eva Charming” link as a codeword so I could identify the contact on the inside if I needed to—apparently, the contact already knew who I was. Which makes sense now that I see my contact worksforRian. Bit unexpected, but I can roll with it.

There’s an irony, too, in the fact that my contact on the inside was also assigned to Strom Fetor—although perhaps Fetor doesn’t have a dedicated security team like I thought, and she was only fetching him for the tech trial. The pieces start organizing themselves into a pattern in my head: Rian was tailing me, Phoebe was watching us both, and she put herself in a position to get to me alone.

“If you’re already in UG security, why does the client need me?” I ask.

“I don’t have high-enough clearance to get in. Rian’s the only one in our department with full access.” Phoebe strolls languidly around the room, eyes tracing the enormous portal built inside.

I feel a little sorry for the portal. This thing is made with minerals mined on multiple worlds and had been filled with fuel generated from the captured sunlight of stars so distant that humans once only theorized they were there. It hung in space, defying the void, allowing intergalactic travel for nearly a century before it was replaced.

And now it’s caged in a windowless room.

I give it a little pat, like it’s a puppy. It deserves better.

I can feel her watching me. Phoebe. She’s not telling me the whole story; that’s for sure. Not that I blame her. I’ve got secrets of my own. But it’s not just about clearance.

I’m betting she tried to be honest first. The good sort usually do, and she seems like Rian, all noble and sincere and hoping to do the right thing. So, I’d wager, when she first realized just how colossally Strom Fetor’s company was going to fuck Earth over, she tried to raise the alarm internally. I’m betting she even approached Rian. But she didn’t have the evidence, I suppose, to make him see how bad this deal was going to go.

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s not like me; she wouldn’t have tried to turn her knowledge into profit. And I was wrong, I think; she didn’t go to Rian. Because Rian would have listened to her. She went to someone else. Someone who doesn’t care the way he does. Maybe someone higher up the chain? Yes, that’ll be it. She tried to tell someone, and they didn’t believe her.

So, she’s done with words. Actions only. Except now she’s burned some bridges that would have helped her do more from the inside. Lost a promotion, maybe, or an ear. Now she’s stuck as a junior member of security, fetching assholes to do tech checks. She sacrificed something in an attempt to do the right thing, and it didn’t pay off.

It usually doesn’t.

I wonder how different things would have been if she’d been trusted when she spoke up.

But that’s an old story, often repeated throughout history. It’s rare that anyone listens to words they don’t want to hear, rarer still when the speaker’s not the one in power.

“Have you even started on the mission?” Phoebe asks, pulling my attention back to her.

See, well, that’s an interesting question. The mission the client hired me to do? I mean, technically. But I’ll confess, I did sort of get distracted by my secondary goal, knocking over dominoes just to see them fall.

That’s what my contact gets for not paying for the repairs onGlory.

Still, I do have a real job to do. And I’ve done...some. I’ve laid some groundwork. That sounds good. “I’ve laid the groundwork,” I tell Phoebe confidently.

She raises her eyebrow, all doubt. Obviously, she’s been working with Rian for too long.

“What’s your connection with Fetor?” she asks.

“None. Why do I have to keep reminding everyone how much I hate him?”

Phoebe frowns at me. “You’re supposed to be here for—”

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