The quiet denial shot around the flank of his defenses. He turned his head,
pressed the button.
The siren went. The door shot open. He was facing Curran and Neill. He was
somehow not surprised.
“He’s coming back,” Allison said. She closed the door again. The siren stopped.
“We’ve got it settled.”
The faces in front of him did not believe it. He reacquired his own doubts,
nerved himself with the insolence of a thousand encounters with docksiders.
Offered his hand.
Curran took it, a small shudder of hesitation in the move, a grip that spared
bruised knuckles—but Curran’s hand was in no better condition; Neill’s
next—Neill’s earnest expression had a peculiar distress.
“Sorry,” Neill said.
He meant it, Sandor reckoned. One of them meant it And knew it was all a sham.
He felt a pang of sympathy for Neill, which was insane: Neill would be with the
rest of them, and he never doubted it.
“Deirdre’s on watch, is she?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to have my breakfast and wash up. And I’ll rest after that… find
myself a cabin and rest a few hours. You’ll wake me if something comes up.”
He walked on—away from them. Stopped in the galley and opened the freezer,
pulled out a decent breakfast, pointedly keeping his back to the rest of them as
they passed.
It was a quiet supper, hers with Curran. Curran was eating carefully, around a
sore mouth, and not in a mood for idle conversation. Neither was she. “You think
he’ll go along with it all the way to Venture?” Curran asked once. “Maybe,” she
said. “I think he’s had the angles figured for years. We just walked into it.”
And a time later: “You know,” Curran said, “the whole agreement’s a lie. Look at
me, Allie. Don’t take on a face like that He’s a liar, an actor—he knows right
where to take hold and twist I knew that from the start If you hadn’t stepped in
when you did—”
“What would you have done? I’d like to have known what you would have done.”
“I’d have beaten a straight answer out of him. He says not But that’s part of
the act. He’s harder than I thought, but I’d have peeled the nonsense away and
gotten right where he lives, Allie, don’t think not Wouldn’t have killed him;
not near. And it might have settled this. You had to come out the door—”
“It didn’t go your way the first time. How much would it take? How many hours?”
Her stomach turned. She pushed the food around on her plate, made herself spear
a bite and swallow. “You heard what he said. We’ve got him working now. Another
set-to—”
“You go on believing what he says—”
“What if it is the truth? What if it’s the truth all along?”
“And what if it’s not? What then, Allie?”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”
“Don’t redirect You know what the stakes are. We’re talking about trouble here.
You sit the number one; you’ve got to have the say in it But you’re thinking
below the belt.”
That’s your assumption.”
“Don’t tell me a male number one wouldn’t have gotten us in this tangle.”
“Ah. There we are. What if it were a woman and it were you calling the shots?
Dare I guess? You’d take it all, wouldn’t you? You think you would. But would
you sleep sound in that company? No. You think it through. I’m not sleeping with
him. And he even asked.”
“Maybe you should have.”
She was reaching for the cup. She slammed it down, spilling it. “You need your
attitudes reworked, Mr. Reilly. You really do. Maybe we really need to figure
the logic that carries all that. Let’s discuss your sleepovers, Mr. Reilly—or
don’t they have any bearing on your fitness to command?”
His face went red. For a moment he said nothing at all. Then his eyes hooded and
he leaned back. “Hoosh, what a tongue on ye, Allie. Do you really want the
details? I’ll give you all you like.”
She smiled, a move of the lips, not the rest of her face. “Doubtless you would.
No doubt at all. You had your try; and he knocked you flat, didn’t he? So while