Exi Exinta shifted-nervously in his seat; after another stretch of silence, he got up and went back to where he’d been sitting before. Lylunda kept the apathetic look, but she wondered about him. His had been a very nice performance, but alarms were going off inside her. It wasn’t the first time she’d trotted out this persona, and she knew well enough what reactions it got. Moving in on her showed a kind of blindness on his part, as if he thought that she’d be so flattered by the attention she wouldn’t question the reasons behind it.

She was annoyed because it meant she had to drop deep into the role she was playing; if you were supposed to be dull and self-absorbed, you couldn’t let an experienced op catch you peeking. There was something else to worry about. This could be a double up. Mr. Ex-the gall of the man, playing that kind of names game-Mr. Exi Exinta might be the throwaway, the one she was supposed to watch while his partner got inside her boundaries and dropped the sack over her head.

Which brought up another problem. She must have tripped an alarm that her ship’s sensors missed because the Kliu tagged Dragoi just before she ’splitted with Prangarris and his catch. Probably got enough for an ID. Were these two or maybe three working a standard scam, or were they setting her up for a snatch? Marrat’s OverSec ran a tight Pit, stomping hard on industrial spying and any physical violence beyond the drunk fight and the one-on-one duel, but they weren’t set up to guard against the one-off, the quick snatch and scamper.

When the shuttle sighed to a stop and the exit slid open, she walked out, moving with a heavy stolidity meant to underline her lack of curiosity about the world around her. She climbed aboard a chainchair, tapped in her destination, and went clanking off, tensely aware that Exinta was behind her and that she still hadn’t identified his partner. If he had a partner.