Scarlet shoved Roland hard with both hands. He stumbled back into Émilie, who’d been trying to get in between them. Émilie screamed and fell back onto a table in her effort to keep Roland from crushing her.
Roland regained his balance, looking like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to smirk or snarl. “Better be careful, Scar, or you’re going to end up just like the old—”
Table legs screeched against tile and then the fighter had one hand wrapped around Roland’s neck, lifting him clear off the floor.
The tavern fell silent. The fighter, unconcerned, held Roland aloft like he was nothing more than a doll, ignoring Roland’s gagging.
Scarlet gaped, the edge of the bar digging into her stomach.
“I believe you owe her an apology,” the fighter said in his quiet, even tone.
A gurgle slipped out of Roland’s mouth. His feet flailed in search of the ground.
“Hey, let him go!” a man yelled, leaping off his stool. “You’re going to kill him!” He grasped the fighter’s wrist, but he might have grabbed an iron bar for as much as the limb budged. Flushing, the man let go and pulled back for a punch, but as soon as he swung, the fighter’s free hand came up and blocked it.
Scarlet staggered back from the bar, dully noting a tattoo of nonsensical letters and numbers stamped across the fighter’s forearm. LSOP962.
The fighter still seemed angry, but now there was also the tiniest bit of amusement in his expression, like he’d just remembered the rules to a game. He eased Roland’s feet back to the ground, simultaneously releasing him and the other man’s fist.
Roland caught his balance on a stool. “What’s wrong with you?” he choked out, rubbing his neck. “Are you some lunatic city transplant or something?”
“You were being disrespectful.”
“Disrespectful?” barked Roland. “You just tried to kill me!”
Gilles erupted from the kitchen, shoving through the swinging doors. “What’s going on out here?”
“This guy’s trying to start a fight,” someone said from the crowd.
“And Scarlet broke the screens!”
“I didn’t break them, you idiot!” Scarlet yelled, though she wasn’t sure who had said it.
Gilles surveyed the dead screens, Roland still rubbing his neck, the broken bottles and glasses littering the wet floor. He glowered at the street fighter. “You,” he said, pointing. “Get out of my tavern.”
Scarlet’s gut tightened. “He didn’t do any—”
“Don’t you start, Scarlet. How much destruction were you planning on causing today? Are you trying to get me to close my account?”
She bristled, her face still burning. “Maybe I’ll just take back the delivery and we’ll see how your customers like eating spoiled vegetables from now on.”
Rounding the bar, Gilles snatched the cable out of Scarlet’s hand. “Do you really think you’re the only working farm in France? Honestly, Scar, I only order from you because your grandmother would give me hell if I didn’t!”
Scarlet pursed her lips, holding back the frustrated reminder that her grandmother wasn’t here anymore so maybe he should just order from someone else if that’s what he wanted.
Gilles turned his attention back to the fighter. “I said get out!”
Ignoring him, the fighter held his hand out to Émilie, who was still half curled against a table. Her face was flushed and her skirt was soaked through with beer, but her gaze glowed with infatuation as she let herself be pulled to her feet.
“Thank you,” she said, her whisper carrying in the uncanny silence.
Finally, the fighter met Gilles’s scowl. “I will go, but I haven’t paid for my meal.” He hesitated. “I can pay for the broken glasses as well.”
Scarlet blinked. “What?”
“I don’t want your money!” Gilles screamed, sounding insulted, which came as an even further shock to Scarlet, who had only ever heard Gilles complain about money and how his vendors were bleeding him dry. “I want you out of my tavern.”
The fighter’s pale eyes darted to Scarlet, and for a moment she sensed a connection between them.
Here they were, both outcasts. Unwanted. Crazy.
Pulse thrumming, she buried the thought. This man was trouble. He fought people for a living—or perhaps even for fun. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
Turning away, the fighter dipped his head in what almost looked like an apology and shuffled toward the exit. Scarlet couldn’t help thinking as he passed that despite all signs of brutality, he looked no more menacing now than a scolded dog.
Three
Scarlet pulled the bin of potatoes out from the lowest shelf, dropping it with a thud on the floor before lugging the crate of tomatoes on top. The onions and turnips went beside it. She’d have to make two trips out to the ship again and that made her angrier than anything. So much for a dignified exit.
She grabbed the handles of the lower bin and hoisted them up.
“Now what are you doing?” Gilles said from the doorway, a towel draped over one shoulder.
“Taking these back.”
Heaving a sigh, Gilles braced himself against the wall. “Scar—I didn’t mean all that out there.”
“I find that unlikely.”
“Look, I like your grandmother, and I like you. Yes, she overcharges and you can be a huge sting in my side and you’re both a little crazy sometimes—” He held up both hands defensively when he saw Scarlet’s hackles rising. “Hey, you’re the one who climbed up on the bar and started making speeches, so don’t try to say it’s not true.”
She wrinkled her nose at him.
“But when it comes right down to it, your grand-mère runs a good farm, and you still grow the best tomatoes in France year after year. I don’t want to cancel my account.”
Scarlet tilted the bin so that the shiny red globes rolled and thumped against one another.
“Put them back, Scar. I’ve already signed off on the delivery payment.”
He walked away before Scarlet could lose her temper again.
Blowing a red curl out of her face, Scarlet set the crates down and kicked the potatoes back to their spot beneath the shelves. She could hear the cooks chortling over the dining room drama. The story had already taken on a legendary air from the waitstaff’s telling of it. According to the cooks, the street fighter had broken a bottle over Roland’s head, knocking him unconscious and crushing a chair in the process. He would have taken out Gilles too, if Émilie hadn’t calmed him down with one of her pretty smiles.
With no interest in correcting the story, Scarlet dusted her hands on her jeans and paced back into the kitchen. A coldness hung in the air between her and the tavern staff as she made her way to the scanner beside the back door—Gilles was nowhere to be seen and Émilie’s giggles could be heard out in the dining room. Scarlet hoped she was only imagining the dropped glances. She wondered how fast the rumors would spread through town. Scarlet Benoit was defending the cyborg! The Lunar! She’s clearly split her rocket, just like her … just like …
She swiped her wrist beneath the ancient scanner. Out of habit, she inspected the delivery order that appeared on the screen, making sure Gilles hadn’t shorted her like he often tried and noting that he had, in fact, deducted three univs for the smashed tomatoes. 687U DEPOSITED TO VENDOR ACCOUNT: BENOIT FARMS AND GARDENS.
She left through the back door without saying good-bye to anyone.
Though still warm from the sunny afternoon, the shadows of the alley were refreshing compared with the sweltering kitchen and Scarlet let it cool her down while she reorganized the crates in the back of the ship. She was behind schedule. It would be late evening before she got home. She would have to get up extra early to go to the Toulouse police station, otherwise she would lose a whole day in which no one was doing anything to recover her grandmother.
Two weeks. Two whole weeks of her grandmother being out there, alone. Helpless. Forgotten. Maybe … maybe even dead. Maybe kidnapped and killed and left in a dark, wet ditch somewhere and why? Whywhywhy?
Frustrated tears steamed her eyes, but she blinked them back. Slamming the hatch, she rounded to the front of the ship, and froze.
The fighter was there, his back against the stone building. Watching her.
In her surprise, a hot tear leaked out. She swiped at it before it could crawl halfway down her cheek. She returned his stare, calculating if his stance was threatening or not. He stood a dozen steps from the nose of her ship and his expression seemed more hesitant than dangerous, but then, it hadn’t seemed dangerous when he’d nearly strangled Roland either.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said, his voice almost lost in the jumbled noise from the tavern.
She splayed her fingers on the back of the ship, annoyed at how her nerves were humming, like they couldn’t decide if she should be afraid of him or flattered.
“I’m better off than Roland,” she said. “His neck was already starting to bruise when I left.”
His eyes flashed toward the kitchen door. “He deserved worse.”
She would have smiled, but she didn’t have the energy after biting back all the anger and frustration of the afternoon. “I wish you hadn’t gotten involved at all. I had the situation under control.”
“Clearly.” He squinted at her like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “But I was worried you might draw that gun on him, and such a scene may not have helped your case. As far as not being crazy, that is.”
Hair prickled behind her neck. Scarlet’s hand instinctively went to her lower back, where a small pistol was warm against her skin. Her grandma had given it to her on her eleventh birthday with the paranoid warning: You just never know when a stranger will want to take you somewhere you don’t mean to go. She’d taught Scarlet to use it and Scarlet hadn’t left home without it since, no matter how ridiculous and unnecessary it seemed.
Seven years later and she was quite sure not a single person had ever noticed the gun concealed under her usual red hoodie. Until now.
“How did you know?”
He shrugged, or what would have been a shrug if the movement hadn’t been so tense and jerky. “I saw the handle when you climbed up on the counter.”
Scarlet lifted the back of her sweatshirt just enough to loosen the pistol from her waistband. She tried to take in a calming breath, but the air was filled with the onion and garbage stink of the alley.
“Thanks for your concern, but I’m just fine. I have to go—behind on the deliveries … behind on everything.” She stepped toward the pilot’s door.