Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two by Loren Rhoads Read Free Book Online Page A

Kavanaugh. She was sorry he was dead. She turned toward Sloane and shot him with the gun she’d taken from the fallen archaeologists. If Thallian could connect her to Sloane, she needed to get away from him as quickly as possible. She unhooked the crash restraints and dragged Sloane’s body back to the airlock.
    She’d always been happier running alone anyway.
    Coni was taking a shift in the cockpit while the others slept. The puzzle of piecing together a new identity for Raena was more entertaining than she expected. For once, during her shift, she wasn’t the least bit sleepy.
    After they’d hijacked the Veracity from the Thallians, Coni had seen Raena’s Imperial wanted poster and the recording of her trial in its log. It surprised Coni how much more information she could find about the little assassin in the Imperial archives. Following up on the crimes Raena had been accused of opened up all sorts of records. Fascinating reading, if one had the patience to wade through the human-centric propaganda.
    The old files inspired the new biography Coni was writing for Raena. She wanted to tie in planets that Raena had actually visited, skills she honestly possessed.
    The work felt like compiling an ironclad telenovel. Coni found wry amusement in using the search capabilities of the Veracity’ s computers to craft this elegant fiction.
    Then again, Mykah had been the one who changed the ship’s name from the Raptor to the Veracity —and he’d encouraged Coni to add another false record of sale atop the Raptor ’s already complicated series of falsified registrations. After the Thallians had illegally prevented the Raptor from being melted down as war surplus, they obscured their ownership for fifteen years. The ship’s current crew was only continuing that tradition. Coni loved Mykah enough to make sure the final transaction moving the ship into his possession looked very, very legal. She’d even refinanced a fake loan on the ship, then paid it off in reality with part of the bounty they’d claimed on the Thallians.
    All the same, Coni was aware of the difference between the literal truth and the apparent truth. She had never had any aspirations to becoming a journalist, as Mykah had. She hadn’t even really planned to become a hacker. She had only wanted to protect the ship and its crew to the best of her abilities.
    Some strange noise raised Coni’s hackles. She reached out one finger to mute the Haru singer she had been listening to.
    There it was again: a quiet voice, a note of protest, raised in the sleep of one of her crewmates.
    Coni had forgotten she’d turned on the speaker for the monitor in Raena’s cabin. Thank the stars one of her crewmates hadn’t caught her spying. She reached over now and turned on the picture.
    Raena was alone in her cabin, of course. Coni couldn’t imagine anyone keeping her company, although she supposed Mykah might have, if asked. No, Raena lay in her bunk, sleeping face down, arms wrapped around her pillow.
    The quiescent monitor screen in Raena’s cabin cast bloody red light across her skin. She was bare from nape of neck to the ribs, but weird shadows striped her skin. Was it a tattoo? Coni tried to make out the image, but the video resolution was too grainy for clarification.
    Raena whispered again. She stiffened, straightened her legs, and the shift of her body propelled her from the nightmare.
    Coni toggled the monitors off. Her surveillance felt intrusive now, too intimate. It was one thing to watch Raena awake and moving about in her gym—and another entirely to spy on her as she awoke from a nightmare.
    Why was she doing this, Coni asked herself. Of all the illegal things she did for her shipmates, spying on Raena was by far the one that felt the worst.
    Raena opened her eyes on her darkened cabin. Only the power light of her screen glowed, a cheery red light in the shadows. She rolled over, chasing sleep. Of course, it wouldn’t come back.
    That wasn’t how it