Dragonfly by Erica Hayes Read Free Book Online

for precision. I’d seen him cut an enemy’s throat with that same easy gesture.
    “Thought you might be hungry,” he said.
    Like he actually cared. All he knew was that I used to like it when he cooked for me.
    He wore dark pants and a pale blue shirt that set off his eyes. He was fresh and gorgeous, effortlessly elegant, one of those rare men who looked equally as good in clothes as out of them. I felt doubly glad I’d gotten rid of him last night before anything humiliating happened.
    I suddenly wondered why he’d want me back, after the way we broke up. Apart from the fact that he wanted everything. I shivered, on my guard. Maybe something more sinister was going on here. Did he know about my conversation with Surov the cat-man? Was he bribing me to stay on Renko’s team?
    With the quilt still tucked around me, I climbed out of bed and thumbed the door closed. I pulled on my black flight suit and boots, tugged my hair into a black velvet shrinkband. When I emerged, he’d set the little table with my breakfast: two golden-fried eggs on cheese toast with tomatoes, topped with pepper, and a glass of fruit juice. I sidled into the metal chair opposite him, uneasy. I was ravenous but didn’t want to show him appreciation he didn’t deserve.
    “Thanks,” I muttered, and started to eat.
    He put on a wounded look, his big blue eyes wide. “Why scowl at me? I didn’t do anything. Nothing you didn’t want, anyway.”
    I stabbed at the toast with my fork. “This isn’t about what I want. It’s about you.”
    “So I wanted it too. I missed you, Carrie.”
    “Give up, okay? Stop calling me that.”
    “It’s true. I’ve never forgotten you.”
    My fingers itched to claw that earnest expression from his face. But I knew he didn’t understand the problem. He thought this was how real people acted.
    I didn’t want to have this conversation. Didn’t want to drag up past stupidity. But it was too hard not to argue, with all those years I’d hated him washing back over me like a cold ocean. My fingers tightened around my knife. “Really? How about on Volkus Sept? That prison hulk? You sure as hell forgot about me then. You were my backup and you deserted me.”
    “You know how that happened. It was an operational imperative.”
    His soothing tone raised my hackles, and I forgot I was supposed to be keeping cool.
    “You were screwing one of your operatives, Nikita. Doesn’t sound very fucking imperative to me.”
    I hacked into my eggs, spilling yolk on the white plastic table, and shoved a forkful into my mouth before I could say anything else. The fact that he’d cheated wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t even that he’d abandoned me on a shattered station with two hundred misogynistic Empire-hating mutants and no weapons because he simply couldn’t be bothered.
    It was that I’d believed him when he said he loved me.
    The eggs tasted fantastic, which only made me angrier. I glared holes in the table and ate until the plate lay empty.
    When I looked up, he was sitting at my console, flicking through a data chip, the display flashing colored diagrams in three dimensions.
    “Vault specs,” he said, like we’d been chatting about the weather. “Take a look.”
    Curious despite myself, I slouched over and peered at the display. Esperanza aren’t coy about their security. It’s one of their biggest selling points, and they want every petty criminal and slime-dwelling terrorist in the sector to know exactly how hard it would be to pull any stunts there.
    For starters, the physical security is imposing. The vault itself is built from fusion-grade septurium, which means you can’t blow it apart without taking the entire station and the loot with it. Guards patrol seamlessly around the clock, and state-of-the-art visual, audio, infra-red and chemical surveillance systems pick up anything they miss. And quantum anti-jamming systems—ice—blanket the entire station except for the spaceport. They stop dead not