Page 17 of Synnr's Ride

He would never take things that far.

So he suffered alone.

"Did you ride today?" The ground floor of their house contained the kitchen, where Hanna stood, with a small alcove big enough for their table, and a living area. The second floor had the bedrooms and bathroom. They even had a flat roof that could be converted into some kind of outdoor living space, but neither of them had spent much time up there.

"I did a tour of the neighborhood. A few of the tougher men saw me." This part of the job was teeth-grindingly tedious. They had to establish themselves in the neighborhood. If they showed up at Kark's place when no one had ever heard of them, they might as well announce their true plans.

"What's the design flaw of the SynStar Class 2.7?" She came out of the kitchen and sat at the table with a steaming bowl of soup.

"I don't really think I'll blow my cover by not knowing esoteric fusion bike details." He could ride adequately. He knew the ins and outs of his own bike. "This is a gang of saboteurs, not gearheads. They'll be more impressed if I tell them where to get bomb materials."

Her spoon clattered to the table and she glared at him. "The 2.7 flaw isn't esoteric. A short in the onboard battery led to catastrophic system failure, and if it happened while the bike was operational, that meant explosions. One took out an entire bridge in Vanen thirty years ago. The accident nearly killed my dad, but luckily it wasn't his bike. I'm not asking you to know all the little idiosyncrasies of these beasts."

Jori didn't respond. He could imagine the reaming Major Ozar would give him for treating Hanna's portion of this job like it was unimportant. "If they try to trip me up, I'll tell them you got me into bikes."

She gave him a skeptical look. "A guy like Kark won't take kindly to a man admitting ignorance, especially in deference to a woman." But she picked her spoon back up and ate her soup. "I passed by the bar last night."

"What?" It was vehement, and the jolt of adrenaline had Jori aching for a fight.

But Hanna ignored that. "There's a market on the same street. It's where I got the soup. I didn't go inside, I'm not an idiot. But a girl was posting a help wanted flyer on the window as I passed."

"Ozar said she'd have the police detain their bartender. Did you talk to the girl?"

"I bumped into her and introduced myself. You're right. It's a bartender position. I told her I was up from Kilrym and stranded. She got called inside before I could say much more. Her name was Zilly."

Jori mentally reviewed his files on the bar. "I think that's Kark's girl. All we know is she's been around the bar for a year or so. No criminal record. Paper thin background."

Hanna raised her eyebrows. "You think it's fake?"

He shrugged. "Could be. Or she could be an innocent girl caught up in something far bigger than herself."

"She's cute." There was something in her tone that Jori couldn't decipher.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked cautiously.

"It means she's cute. Why does it have to mean anything else?" She placed her spoon in her empty soup bowl and pushed it towards the center of the table. "We should go for a ride."

"What?" If he could barely keep up with a simple conversation, he had no idea how he and Hanna would pull this job off.

"You say you're good, I believe you. But I want to see it. Once I make initial contact, it's game on. And I can't see you ride for the first time when we're already in it. Besides, I've got a few showy tricks I can teach you. They're nothing to do, once you know them. But they might come in handy."

His sense of self-preservation was screaming at him to say no. But that sense had nothing to do with the job. This was exactly why Hanna was here. She could help him sell his role.

"Give me a few minutes and I'll meet you outside," he said. "I know a good place."

Hanna nodded. "I can't wait to see what you've got."

* * *

"Aren't you getting your bike out?" Jori asked after he locked up the back door.

Hanna ran her hand over his bike and patted the passenger seat. "If a man wants to show off for his girl, he doesn't let her ride her own bike." It was true, and also a complete lie. Hanna could follow Jori on her own bike and easily assess how he was doing.

But she didn't want to do that.

She'd been living in the same house with him for a week and it was driving her crazy. He had this way of looking at her that made her want to climb him like a mountain. She'd been in a constant state of arousal and anxiety since she walked through the door that first day, and if something didn't break one way or another, she would...

Well. She wasn't sure what she'd do. Whatever it was, she couldn't put the job at risk. That meant finding someone else was off the table for now. And climbing Jori?

---