“He wasn’t really a friend of mine,” Idnew put in a small voice. “Just a friend of a friend, really. Weird artist types tend to stick together and pass around the locations of crash spaces. He was just another charity case down on his luck who . . .”
“. . . who is currently winging his way back to his accomplice with the news that we’re on their trail,” I finished with a grimace.
“Isn’t that ‘accomplices’ as in plural?” Massha asked softly.
I ignored her.
“Oh, Drahcir,” Idnew said, “now we have to help them. It’s the only way we can make up for having provided a hideout for the very person they were trying to find.”
“If I might point out,” her husband replied, “we’ve barely met these people. We don’t really owe them an explanation, much less any help. Besides, you still have a deadline to meet and . . .”
“Drahcir!” Idnew interrupted. “It could get real lonely sleeping in the old kennel while I work day and night on a deadline, if you catch my meaning.”
“Now, dear,” Drahcir said, sidling up to his wife, “before you go getting into a snit, hear me out. I’ve been thinking it over and I think there’s a way we can provide assistance without biting into our own schedules. I mean, we do have a friend . . . one who lives a little north of here . . . who’s temporarily between assignments and could use the work. I’m sure he’d be willing to do a little tracking for them at a fraction of the fee that we’d charge for the same service.”
He was obviously talking in the veiled references partners use to communicate or check ideas in front of strangers, as his words went completely over my head, but drew an immediate reaction from Idnew.