“If Atticus kills your pa, then that land is yours. Maybe you should kill him and take it for your own. Make a life for yourself.”
“So? What am I going to do with dirt and rock? Farm slugs? Naw. I never wanted to be a farmer. I’m leaving Patch. Heading somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. I don’t care.”
“This sector doesn’t have many decent places for a girl to go,” I say. I have no intention of letting her go now. She might not want North Valley, but I do. That kind of land, legally owned, could be used as a base for all sorts of activities. And the Imperium respects land ownership more than it respects anything else, so I’d have a fast track to…
“You’re thinking about the ranch, aren’t you,” she says shrewdly.
“What makes you say that?”
“That expression you just got. I saw it on Atticus’ face when he found out who I was.”
“That land’s worth money. Even if you don’t want it, the sale value would be…”
“Nothing, because Atticus is going to get it one way or another. Mister, I’ve been surviving my whole life. I’m tired of Patch. I’m tired of trying to get by out here. I’m leaving. I’m going to make my way to the freight depot at Rotdead, and I’m going to leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere near Rotdead, not until you get revenge on Atticus.”
“But I don’t want revenge.”
“Well sure you do,” I say. “Revenge is the only thing any of us are likely to get on Patch. You just said you were going to find the man and kill him.”
“Changed my mind already then,” she says. “I want off this rock. I want to go somewhere they have actual technology. I want to find out what things that aren’t slugs and cabbage taste like.”
“I assume you don’t have any travel documents. As soon as you get to the next colony, you’ll be caught. As an undocumented woman, you’ll be property of the Imperium, and they have uses for young women that you won’t enjoy.”
She narrows her eyes at me, turns, grabs the lamp on the bedside table and hurls it across the room, where it predictably smashes. That’s her move, apparently. Throwing, smashing, and I can’t forget that she shot a man in the face today. That usually blows off steam for a while for most people, but I guess she’s got more anger than I figured bottled up in that cute little body of hers.
“So there’s nothing for me out here, huh? I get disowned, I try to make a life for myself, events happen, I almost get hanged…”
“Events happen?” I quirk a brow at her.
“You’ve beaten enough out of me for one day.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I growl. “And you can quit breaking things. Some unfortunate soul is going to come up here and cut themselves on that broken glass. I’m calling for a broom and you’re going to clean that up.”
Josie
My ass is aching. My pride is stinging, and Orion is making me clean up every last sliver of the smashed lamp. This does give me time to think though. He’s right about running. It won’t work. Every time I’ve run in life, things have gotten worse.
I don’t want the ranch. I don’t want the hassle which comes from trying to make legitimate money on Patch. First you get raided by bandits, robbed by criminals, and then the law comes along and screws you out of it. There’s no point in working hard on your land, trying to build something, only to have it all taken away whenever the rest of the world says so.
“There’s more over there. Under the bed,” Orion points.
“What person is going to end up under the bed?”
“More than you think,” he says. “Clean it all up.”
“I shouldn’t be cleaning this up. You should be.”
“How you figure that?” Orion is leaning up against the window, his elbow resting on the window sill, his face cast in half-shadow. He’s the kind of handsome women die for, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to myself that I feel more than a little attraction to him. I’d still be terrified if he took me to bed, but at a safe distance I can let myself feel those tingles that always lead to tragedy.
“Because it’s your fault.”
“It is, huh?”
He’s not really listening to me. He’s thinking about the ranch, I bet. Everything my father and his father worked for. Everything that would have been mine without question if I hadn’t turned out to be a wretched girl.
Women get a raw deal. Men lust for us, but they rarely want the babes that result. My father didn’t want me. My mother lied and told him that I was a boy for the first fourteen years of my life. He never noticed the difference until one day someone pointed out that his son had a nice set of tits.