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“Raffa?” DJ answers. “What did I miss? You called me?”
“Were you out a minute ago?” I ask.
“Kaye, that you? There was someone in here. What’s up?”
“Raffa and I are leaving town. There’s a bounty hunter here at Raina’s property, so if you could deal with his body… um…?”
“You’re gonna have to run that one by me again.”
“I don’t have time to explain much, and this is bigger than you realize. So I need you to trust me. A bounty hunter came to Raina’s house looking for her and ran into me instead. So I handled him, and now Raffa and I need to leave immediately.”
“Slow down. Why are you leaving? Lock yourself in the house, and I’ll be there in a minute.” I hear the sounds of him grabbing things from his desk and rushing for the door.
“I can’t afford to risk Raffa’s life by waiting around here when there could be more coming to check on this guy! So please, just deal with this for me. I don’t care what you do about it, if you record that I killed him in self-defense—”
“Kaye, you’re telling me youkilleda bounty hunter? What part of this story aren’t you telling me?”
“Lots,” I say. “Things that you shouldn’t ask about, okay?”
“Lemme guess, it has something to do with Raina’s new husband and Raffa’s so-called uncle,” he snorts out. “I’m starting to get really tired of being left in the dark.”
“DJ, it’s better that you don’t know anything. Goodbye.”
“Kaye, what the fuck—”
Raffa’s pulling up outside the shed while I watch the quick puff of flame inside the incinerator turn the tech to nothing. The generator happily beeps that the items have fully charged it. I hang up the line and meet Raffa outside.
“Let’s go straight to the station.”
“Really? What about our stuff and the body? What are you—”
“The sheriff is going to handle it, but we need to leave as soon as possible.”
I start guiding the airbike toward the hitch on the back of the skimmer, and Raffa jumps out to take over for me.He’s turning into a young man, I think to myself, as he waves me off to handle hitching the bike on his own. I knew it. I knew it was happening all this time, but I just watched him fight a grown bounty hunter. Fight and kill him… My heart patters away. How must he feel right now? His adrenaline is probably keeping him going, like my own is keeping me from bursting into tears. And thank God for that.
Silently, I get in the pilot seat and Raffa climbs on from the back once he’s done.
“Oh, no,” he groans. “We could become wanted criminals at this rate.”
“DJ isn’t going to make us wanted criminals,” I assure him. “He’s going to handle it, like I said.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m a good judge of character,” I tell him. “You know the sheriff.”
“B-but it’s a big mess to leave on his hands. He might be angry at us.”
“Sure,” I agree. “We’ll just send him a fruit basket, mm-kay?”
“A fruit basket?” he cries. “What do you mean?”
“On Earth, there’s a tradition of sending baskets of fruit to someone you owe an apology to, or to someone that you’re really grateful to.”
“That’s pretty lame. If I was pissed off at someone and they brought me a basket of fruits, it really wouldn’t change a thing,” he tells me.
“I’ll remember that next time I piss you off,” I say.
Usually he would laugh, but he only blows out a shaky breath of amusement before wrapping his arms around himself.
