She should be more afraid of him. He was an alien, a smuggler by his own admission, and she had no reason to trust his motives. But fear seemed like a luxury she couldn’t afford right now, and something in her gut told her that whatever else Doren va Karr might be, he wasn’t a threat to her.
Not directly, anyway.
“What happens when we drop out of hyperspace?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
“A station called Bragar’s Rest. It’s not exactly... reputable, but I have contacts there. And resources that will make traveling with an infant somewhat less improvised.”
“You have a plan.”
“I have the beginning of a plan.” His tail flicked. “Plans have a tendency to fall apart when the universe gets involved. I prefer to stay flexible.”
“That sounds like a fancy way of saying you’re making it up as you go.”
“Aren’t we all?”
She couldn’t argue with that. Twenty-four hours ago, her biggest concern had been whether she’d ordered enough construction paper for the post-holiday art projects. Now she was hurtling through space with an alien treasure hunter and a baby who might be the key to... what? Weapons? Power? The fate of civilizations?
It was too much. It was all too much, and if she thought about it too hard, she was going to shatter into a million pieces.
So she didn’t think about it. She did what she always did and focused on the practical, on the things she could control.
“I need to see if I can rig up some kind of bottle for the baby,” she said. “She’ll need diapers, or whatever the equivalent is. And clothes. Maybe a doctor, since we don’t what she needs to stay healthy.”
His expression shifted, something like approval flickering in his eyes. “There should be a medical scanner in the emergency kit. It won’t tell us everything, but it might give us a baseline for her biology.”
“And we can find proper supplies at Bragar’s Rest?”
“We can find anything at Bragar’s Rest. For a price.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“No.” His smile returned, sharper this time. “But I do. And I have a vested interest in keeping that child alive and healthy.”
She studied him, trying to read beneath the surface charm. “Because she’s valuable.”
“Because she’s a Key.” He rose from the pilot’s chair, moving past her into the main cabin. “And because, whatever else I might be, I’m not in the habit of letting infants die for want of resources.”
She wanted to believe him. Against all logic and self-preservation, she wanted to believe that this golden-furred alien with his sharp teeth and sharper wit had some genuine decency buried beneath the smuggler’s exterior. But she had learned the hard way that charming men often had the least trustworthy hearts. Her father had taught her that lesson, over and over again, with every broken promise and abandoned dream.
“Why were you on that ship?” she asked.
He paused, his back to her. “I told you. I was looking for something.”
“But you found her instead.” She took a step closer. “Were you going to steal her and sell her to the highest bidder?”
He turned, and what looked like hurt flickered across his features, but it vanished so quickly she might have imagined it.
“I didn’t know she was there,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know what the Grorn were really hunting. I thought it was a relic, apiece of technology. Perhaps something I could sell, but more importantly, something that would lead me closer to my own goal.”
“Which is?”
“Opening the Vault.” He said it simply, without apology. “I’ve spent most of my life searching for it. The technology inside... the knowledge...” His voice softened. “Do you know what it’s like to want something so badly it becomes the center of your existence? To build your entire life around a goal that everyone else thinks is impossible?”
She thought of her father and his schemes, his endless pursuit of something better that was always just out of reach. And she thought of herself, working double shifts and tutoring on weekends to pay off the debts he’d left behind.
“Yes,” she said. “I know exactly what that’s like.”
Something shifted between them, recognition, perhaps. A shared understanding of obsession and its costs.
