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

candidate, except that I don’t want to be linked to him. If I claimed Gavin Sloane—another reasonable possibility—maybe I could get a court to award me some support.” She grinned as if the idea amused her, but then shook her head. “I don’t really want or need Gavin’s help, though. I guess it’s better if I’m just orphaned.”
    Then she grinned again. “How about this? What if the old Raena—the Raena of the Imperial era, the one on the run from Thallian—had a child while she tried to hide from the Empire? Maybe she got pregnant on the Arbiter , some torrid affair with one of her shipmates under Thallian’s nose, and ran away in order to protect her unborn child?”
    “All right,” Coni agreed. Clearly, Raena enjoyed the idea of the fictional romance. “If that was the case, where could you have been left behind on your mother’s flight?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not sure I even remember all the places I ran through. I really only remember the places I was captured—and I don’t see how that can help us now.”
    Coni slipped the handheld from her jacket pocket and made some notes.
    “Whatever else we do,” Raena said thoughtfully, “I hate to think that this imaginary self grew up a slave, so let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to her. I spent three years legally enslaved myself. They were probably the safest, most secure years of my childhood, but I always understood that my purpose was to do whatever was necessary, even die if I had to, in order to allow Ariel time to escape. I wouldn’t wish that pressure on even a made-up person.”
    “I understand.” Coni’s attention was already absorbed with the problem. The trick was to fill in the intervening years—the years when Raena had been imprisoned—with plausible occurrences.
    She turned the question of Raena’s past around a different way. Where could she have been educated? It had to have been somewhere that would explain why no one had ever heard of her, why no schoolmates would argue with her schooling: some dumping ground for human orphans that the Empire would have ignored in its death throes and no do-gooders like the Human Safety Commission would have disrupted.
    Really, though, since Raena wasn’t likely to ever apply for any sort of legitimate work, Coni didn’t feel the need to force any accreditation. She just didn’t want it to look like the woman had sprung, fully formed, from a hole in the ground—even if that was exactly what had happened.
    “Thanks, Coni,” Raena said softly.
    Coni glanced up, saw that Raena was already withdrawing. “My pleasure,” she said, using one of Mykah’s favorite phrases, but her attention didn’t stray far from the puzzle at hand.
    Kavanaugh wove through the docking area on Tacauqe, which was mostly deserted at this hour of night. Everyone must either be off in town, enjoying being on the ground, or locked in their ships already, headed for bed. He checked the time. In another hour or so, the commonways would be hopping as everyone stumbled home from the bars.
    He checked over his shoulder one last time. No one trailed him as he ducked into his own docking slip.
    The Sundog was a little human-made hauler, perfect for a man alone to handle. He’d fallen in love with her retro-futurist style as a young man, purchased her with a loan from Doc when he was ready to start out on his own. The hold was a nice size, easy enough to fill without big equipment to shift things and simple to reconfigure for passengers if he decided to take them on. Generally Kavanaugh preferred to haul freight and to travel alone. Fewer complications that way.
    He stepped inside and turned by reflex to lock the door. Then he didn’t bother to turn on the lights as he moved through the little ship. The running lights were enough to guide him, although really he could have moved through the familiar ship in complete darkness. The Sundog was the only home he had known in his adult life.
    Kavanaugh entered his