Page 10 of Spark Transform

Now he saw where this was going. He crossed his arms. “I’m retired from security work.” He snorted. “Besides, I can’t pass a corporate background check.”

She gave him a sardonic look. “Janitorial work that fulfilling, is it?”

“Keeping a tracer on me?” He should have known she would.

She twitched one shoulder. “I owe you.” She unlocked the flitter and opened the center sliding door, then tilted her head toward it. “Want to hear the offer?”

Despite his determination not to be the universe’s pawn again, one of his weaknesses was curiosity. He’d managed to hide it from Davidro for nineteen years, but wily Neirra had noticed it, and clever Charrascos had discovered it almost immediately.

He blew out a noisy breath, then stepped into the flitter. He could listen.

She followed, sealing the door behind her. She sat in the pilot seat as he sat in the passenger seat.

Instead of powering the flitter, she turned her seat to face him. “I want to hire you as my personal security. You’ll have to stay in my new rental townhouse and go everywhere with me for the first few days until Novo Granica can help me put together another team. I’d be hiring you myself via private contract. I’ll pay the customary rate and meals.” Her irrepressible smile quirked a corner of her mouth. “You already passed my security check. I probably know Faraday Brenner’s background better than you do.”

She ought to. She’d invented it. She’d even called in a favor to arrange new official records based on Brenner’s fictional life.

“What do you owe me for?”

Her head tilted slightly. “No more recovered memories?”

Right after the first two weeks of reconstruction surgeries, tissue printing, and vat-grown organ replacements, the medics had temporarily awakened him to check his cognitive functions. He’d barely remembered coming to the planet with the rest of Davidro’s independent contractors to chase people whose continued existence threatened Davidro’s latest special project. Hell, he’d barely remembered his name.

After the major surgeries and cloned body-part integrations were over, more memories of what he’d done in Ridderth had returned, except the last stubborn few. The medics said it might take years, if they came back at all. The therapy telepaths couldn’t treat him because of his immunity to telepathy. The talk therapists tried to help, but he couldn’t trust them, either. Faraday Brenner didn’t exist, and Renner’s experiences were nobody’s business but his own.

“No more memories.” He didn’t count the dreams.

She took a deep breath. “I owe you because when I found you in the townhouse, you asked me to kill you. I refused.”

That was it? “And?”

She frowned. “The medics assumed you wanted to live. I didn’t tell them you wanted to self-term.”

He felt his eyes widen in surprise. She’d been resolutely silent about the other lost days, but he thought she’d told him everything about the day she’d found him mostly dead.

“Was this before or after your fixer got Davidro’s collar off me?” The fixer had to have been nova-class, or the collar’s multiple failsafes would have killed everyone in a five-meter radius.

“Before. I rehydrated your mouth. You said ‘kill me.’” Her thin tone sounded tense. “I owe you for taking that choice away from you.”

He shook his head. “Davidro took the choice from me.” He clenched his fist to keep himself from touching the now-flawless skin of his neck. “I didn’t want to die from the motherfucking collar. You freed me.”

The slight shake of her head said she didn’t consider herself absolved.

Rehab had given him plenty of spare time to read and watch a lot of her work, but he didn’t know shit about the woman herself or her personal life, other than she’d traveled a lot, and justice was important to her. He did know she was stubborn. He wouldn’t win that battle for now. “How did your team die?”

“Assassination attempt in a public transport station. A high-level supposedly ex-CPS telekinetic impersonated a new hire. He’s dead. Only Marcan survived. She’s the one whose beamers you kept draining the last few times I visited you in the rehab center. She went to her family home to recuperate after a spinal column rebuild.” Her recitation was objective and professional, as if she were narrating a news holo, but her too-still body language belied it. He’d seen her tease and laugh with all her team, and she’d obviously respected them.

He eyed her skeptically. “You’re a star with a fame quotient. Hire a private squad of ex-Jumpers.”

“I’m not a star, I’m a journalist.” She smiled in momentary amusement. “I’m too short to work with Jumpers.”

“Why me?” He quelled the impulse to ask if she was calling in his massive debt to her. Not everyone, it seemed, kept score.

Her expression became determined. “Because the CPS doesn’t know Faraday Brenner from an Andromeda alien spy, and you hate them. Because you have an ace up your sleeve that no one expects.” She splayed and pulsed her fingers, her sign language for his minder talent. “Because you know how this city works. Because in rehab, you could have set me up for a target, or fried me and everyone else, but you didn’t.” She looked him straight in the eye, but her expression hardened. “Because you don’t like me well enough to die for me.”

The corollary was that she didn’t like him well enough to care if he got killed, either. He didn’t know if he was relieved or irritated, but it was good to know where he stood.

The edges of his talent alerted him. “Three people coming up the lift.”