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She beams up at me. “So you’re not mad that I imprisoned her?”
I laugh. “I’m just trying to figure out how you managed it. Did you hold a blaster to her head?”
Her look becomes mischievous. “Nope. I told her I’d finished cleaning out the best guest quarters on the ship and did she want to check them out to see if she wanted them for herself. She walked herself right into the cell and I locked the door behind her.” Dora gives her yellow hair a confident toss. “She’s probably spitting mad right about now.”
“Rhonda never spits,” I tease.
“Ew.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.” I eye the tiny component once more, the back of it sticking to my fingertip. “I wonder if this has something to do with why we’re getting such mixed signals on Lord Nerit. His trail is obvious, but he’s also hiding his records and he abandoned his ship at the resort. And he’s working with someone else.”
“Someone else?” Dora asks. “So do you think Rhonda is in on this plan?”
“Don’t know, and Rhonda won’t tell us the truth even if we ask.”
Dora grabs my arm and then points at my boots. Right. We need to check if we’re being spied on even now. She could have planted more listening devices all over the ship, I’m realizing, and we’ll have to go through the security footage and pay attention to her actions over the last few days.
I groan at the thought, because Jamef is going to think I’m an idiot for not being more suspicious of her. “That woman is more trouble than she’s worth.”
“Maybe she means well,” Dora says, and then rolls her eyes while making a gagging motion with a finger to contradict her words. “Maybe she is what she says, a human just trying to get by in this end of the galaxy.”
“Maybe…” I pull one of my boots off and hold it out to Dora while I remove the other. “She’s really let herself go, though.”
Dora’s eyes widen, and then she presses her hand to her mouth in silent laughter. If Rhonda’s spying on us, I’m going to give her something to keffing listen to.
“Did you see how wrinkled she is?” I tease Dora as I run my hand over the outside of my boot. “I’ve seen nutsacks that have better skin.”
“Be nice,” Dora says, her eyes dancing with amusement. “She can’t help that she has jowls.” Her hand runs along the inside of my boot, and a moment later, she pulls out another plas-film thin disk that was stuck to the inside, holding it up to me.
A split-second later, I find one in my other boot. It’s nothing more than the tiniest ripple on my boot, the skin on my fingertip barely catching over it.
That little shit has been spying on us. She’s been playing innocent this whole time while she’s had an ulterior motive.
I should have spaced her when I had the chance.
One Hundred
DORA
My relief that both Jamef and Bethiah are back and whole is almost as great as my relief that they’re not mad that I locked Rhonda up. I worried I was being overdramatic. That there was a nice, simple explanation for this and I’m reading the situation all wrong.
But now, looking at Bethiah’s face, I know I’m right. Rhonda is absolutely up to something.
“Such jowls,” Bethiah says into one of the listening devices, before snapping it between her nails like the tiny blasting caps we used to play with as children. The memory drifts through my head, unbidden. Maybe that’s why I was terrified this was an explosive of some kind.
I’m just relieved more than anything. I feel responsible for watching over the ship while they’re gone, and I didn’t want it to blow up under my watch. Bad enough that Rhonda’s been placing listening devices all over the place.
“Come on,” Bethiah says, tossing her boot aside. “I think I want to go talk to our friend.”
I pause, set her boot down to grab her blaster, and then follow after.
Bethiah is right about one thing—Rhonda is very much not pleased to be locked up in the holding cell. The door is shut as tightly as I’d left it, but I also set the walls to one-way display. On Rhonda’s side, it’s dark, but on ours, we can see everything she does.
And she’s sitting on the bed in the cell and pouting, her arms crossed under her breasts and a miserable look on her beautiful face.
Bethiah walks up to the door and slides open a compartment just large enough to slide a food tray through. “Well, well, how’d you get yourself into this mess, Rhonda?”
Rhonda gasps and jumps to her feet, putting her hands on the door and peering through the food slot to Bethiah. “Bethy! You have to help me! Your human has gone mad.”
