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

went , she thought. Gavin hadn’t come down to the tombworld to get her. He’d been waiting in his base on one of the planet’s moons. When she’d shown up there with Kavanaugh and a couple of Gavin’s bodyguards as an escort, Gavin hadn’t recognized her. He accused her of working for Ariel.
    With eyes closed, Raena could picture it all again: the ludicrous white fur carpet, the crystal glass from which she’d drunk her first sip of water in twenty years, the pretty girl with the big gun who stood guard for her boss. Gavin had a beard then, like he did in her dream, but he seemed younger in her true memory than he had in the dream just now, even though the drug he’d been addicted to at the time had whittled him down to little more than a skeleton.
    Weird. Now that she pondered it, the man she’d identified as Gavin in her dream didn’t really look much like him at all.
    Anyway, why was Kavanaugh getting dragged into her dreams? She wondered if he understood how much danger Sloane had put him in. When Kavanaugh opened her tomb, Raena had been just as disoriented as she had been in the dream. She marveled now that she hadn’t simply killed Kavanaugh and his men just for startling her. At the time, it hadn’t seemed necessary.
    Thinking about it now, Raena finally appreciated how much she had changed during her imprisonment.
    Poor Kavanaugh , she thought. She’d always liked him. He seemed like an honestly good-hearted person, fair and reliable, maybe too kind to survive in the galaxy. At least she’d avenged his death in her dream.
    Raena got out of bed to splash some water on her face.
    Why was her subconscious bringing up Kavanaugh and her escape from the tomb now?
    Yeah, she was sorry that she’d ended things with Kavanaugh with her fist to his head. Tarik didn’t deserve to be left unconscious on the floor of Ariel’s ship. When she was leaving them behind on Kai, Raena had been angry at being spied upon by her supposed friends. She’d been in a hurry to steal the Raptor and get off Kai before Planetary Security caught up to her. She was supposed to meet Mykah and the crew. The clock was ticking.
    She ought to apologize to Kavanaugh, but she wasn’t sure how to look him up. What would she say, anyway? Sorry you were in my way?
    Poor Kavanaugh. He deserved better friends.
    The dream circled around and around in her thoughts. Raena shook her head, trying to shake the dream images away. Her mind just wouldn’t clear.
    Disgusted with herself, she went to dress. She might as well get some use out of the day. Maybe she could get Vezali’s help making some modifications to her gym to make working out more of a challenge.
    The lights flickered on in welcome as Raena stepped into her gym. She stood in the doorway, wondering whether she knew the room well enough that she could work out in the dark.
    She stepped back into the passageway and opened the panel by the door, hitting the switch to kill the lights.
    That didn’t make the room completely dark, she realized. Light still filtered through the windowpane on the door. She caught herself wondering how to turn out the passage lights. Right. She could blackout the whole ship and creep around in the dark. Her crewmates would be sure to understand that.
    Were the disruptions to her sleep making her irrational? Not, she supposed, as long as she recognized the craziness before she acted on it.
    What was she trying to do, anyway? Hurt herself? What did she have to prove? She was never, ever going to be anywhere that was completely dark again, if she could help it.
    She flipped the gym’s lights back on. Maybe she could heat the room up, find a way to make it humid. She wanted to exhaust her muscles with running and vaults. Movement. The illusion of flight. She wanted to tire herself out to the point of sleeping without dreams.
    Coni waited until she was sure Raena was occupied before she switched off all her monitors and pinged Haoun to wake up for his shift. Then