Will I find a human bride someday too? Or, will I be the only brother to either never find a bride, or, find a Xylan bride? I have no idea.
“She just needs her diaper changed too, she’s wet. And then she needs lots of snuggles from her daddy.” Ines comes out of the bathroom, drying her hands on a cloth. She is exactly as sharp as she was the day she talked her way onto this planet with a fake assignment and a real agenda. “Scar.” She smiles at me. “Good to see you. Do you have news?”
“Yes, I have a new lead.”
“Mm-hm.” She hands Trunk the diaper bag. “We’ll get to the lead. First, I want to know more about the new Engineer you had dinner with last night.”
Trunk chuckles. “I wasn’t me,” he explains. “I didn’t say anything. They’re all talking about it amongst each other.”
I should have known. Hook told the crew, and the crew told their brides, and the brides tell each other everything.
Trunk changes his daughter’s diaper.
Ines places her hands on her hips. “You had dinner with Mara Wilson, alone, in her quarters last night?”
“It’s the investigation. She’s working the grid. The grid is the case.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s useful.”
“Useful.” Ines says the word the way she’d hold up a piece of evidence that doesn’t fit the story she’s being told. “Right. And you stayed until twenty-two hundred, being useful. And you had lasagna.”
“…Who told you it was luh-zaun-yuh?”
She waves a hand. “Did you tell her everything we know about the case last night?”
“Noteverything,” I grumble.
“Scar.” Her voice gentles, but only a little. “You didn’t tellmethe whole thing for three moon cycles. You made me sign a list of rules before you’d let me interview anyone. You recorded nothing, I recorded nothing, I couldn’t so much as take a note in a room without your permission.” She tilts her head. “And you barely know this woman and you’ve told her everything? Trunk, are you hearing this?”
Trunk is finishing up the diaper. “I’m hearing and I’m just as stunned as you are.”
“Scar, why would you do something so irresponsible, when normally you’re the most secretive amongst us?”
“We all thought it was because she was his future bride,” Trunk offers.
Ines nods. “That has to be the reason.”
“No,” I shake my head. “I scented her last night and it came back negative.”
Surprise flashes across her features. “Huh.”
A growl rumbles in my chest. “Trunk already gave me the speech about the two of you and what happened at the med lab.How he originally scented you and it came back negative too, until after the med lab it wasn’t negative anymore. I don’t think it’s the same. She’s just simply not my bride and instead a good friend.”
“Hey, I’m not giving you a speech.”
“We’re just friends,” I repeat. “Coworkers.”
“Okay.” She grins. “If you say so.”
Trunk takesthe baby out to the front room after that and gives us time to work alone.
The reporter and the watchman.
“Okay,” Ines says, settling in, all business now. “Bring me up to speed. All of it.”
So I tell her everything, except the fact that Mara is pregnant, but I give her everything else, down to the last detail.
