Dirty Lies Read online

  With my life savings, half of which I’ve already deposited into his account.

  “Good for you.” I guess neither of us will be the same after this week.

  “Okay, right over there.” Kenny points through the windshield. “That’s where I’m going to put us down.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly. No prisoners. No buildings. I’m going to park this thing as close to that patch of woods as I can get, then we’ll cover it with—”

  An alarm screeches through the shuttle, reverberating in my head. I slap my hands over my ears, glancing around with wide eyes at all the blinking displays. “What’s wrong?” I shout, but Kenny can’t hear me. Or he’s too busy trying to figure out the problem to answer me.

  “We’ve lost the engine. Fuck!”

  For a second, I can’t process what he’s saying. How could we lose the engine?

  “Did you take the wrong shuttle? Was this one not fixed?”

  “It has nothing to do with the repair. The shuttle was in to have its circulation and climate control fixed. This is a whole new disaster.” He grabs the joystick and braces his feet against the floor. “Hold on. It’s going to be a rough landing.”

  “Shit! How can I help?”

  “You can’t. Get in the back. Behind your chair. Use it like a shield.”

  I climb between the seats into the cargo space, and I’m already ducking behind my chair by the time it occurs to me to ask what it’s shielding me from. But when I peek out to ask, the sight through the windshield steals the breath from my lungs and the words from my tongue.

  Trees. Racing toward us.

  We’re not going to make it past that patch of forest.

  “Rayla, duck!” Kenny shouts.

  I cower behind the chair just as something smacks the underside of the shuttle, throwing it into the air again. I cling to the back of the seat in front of me as I’m lifted from the floor, then slammed back down.

  The shuttle falls again, still barreling forward, and something scrapes against the floor with the screech of tearing metal. Daylight appears through a hole in the floor, inches from my left knee.

  I scream as we hurtle toward the ground, shearing the tops off trees as we fall. Then the nose of the shuttle slams into the ground, and I fly forward, plastered against the back of my seat as glass shatters and something races past my head.

  A tree branch slaps my face. A broken limb pokes my side. And suddenly the shuttle goes still.

  For several seconds, I remain frozen, huddled on the floor behind my chair. Beneath a tree limb that was mostly stripped of bright red leaves when it speared the windshield, then pierced the headrest where my head would have been, if Kenny hadn’t told me to get in the back.

  “Kenny!” I crawl out from under the limb and peer around it to see that we’re on the ground, the nose of the shuttle crumpled and half-buried in rust-colored dirt. Against the base of a huge tree. “Kenny?” I push aside a broken branch, and my hand comes away sticky with blood. “No…”

  Kenny’s slumped forward in his chair, his arms hanging limp against the panel. I pull him back by his shoulder, so that he’s sitting up in his seat again, but his eyes are open and staring at nothing. There’s a huge gash on his forehead, stretching back into his skull.

  I have no idea where his cap went.

  “No, no, no…” He was one week from getting out of this place. From leaving Rhodon and its violent criminals and corrupt corporate board behind. From going back to school and making something of himself.

  And I got him killed.

  Tears fill my eyes as I climb over the limb, squishing myself between it and the door on my side of the shuttle. Kenny was an actual nice guy. And he’s gone, while I have nothing more than a couple of scratches on my arm.

  I shove my door open and step out onto the ground, and that’s when the true depth of my predicament hits me.

  I’m alone. On a prison planet. And with the shuttle wrecked, I have no way to get off the surface of Devil’s Eye.

  2

  JAI

  I’ve been craving turkey for months. Crispy skin. Broth. Juicy meat. I blame Tyson Adler. Before the shit hit the fan in Settlement A, he once brought a wild turkey into the park and grilled it right in front of everyone.

  In a place where not much ever happens—not much good, anyway—that was a landmark day. Not that he offered me any.

  Since then, I’ve been obsessed with catching a damn turkey.

  I’ve spotted several in the woods near the settlement, but after Tyson killed Jaime and left with his women—somehow, that giant motherfucker had collected three of them by the time he left—Settlement A has been embroiled in a constant power struggle. It turns out that around here, if you cut the head off a snake, it’s not one head that grows back, but half a dozen heads. On Devil’s Eye, a dead power snake rises again as a fucking hydra, with each head trying to devour all the others.

  The third time the patrol came to drop that paralyzing “riot gas,” I decided to take my turkey-hunting ass deeper into zone four. Away from the crowd, and the riots, and the…beds.

  Yeah. The disadvantage of going it alone is that though there are a several isolated buildings scattered around zone four, I have yet to find one boasting anyplace comfortable to sleep. In fact, I count myself lucky when I find a functioning toilet.

  What I have found today is a stretch of forest teeming with turkeys. I haven’t actually seen one yet, but I’ve heard them, and twice I’ve found their distinctive three-toed footprints in patches of bare dirt.

  I hope to be sick to death of turkey by the end of the week. But first I have to catch one.

  The hard part is digging the ditch. I’ve tried several makeshift digging implements, but they were all more trouble than they were worth until I found a battered section of sheet metal lying on the ground yesterday, half buried by reddish soil. I’ve spent all morning in the softest patch of dirt I could find, scraping layer after layer from the ground, my hands wrapped in scraps of cloth to keep the metal from cutting into them.

  The shape of my ditch is just starting to become obvious when a shadow races over me, then disappears before I can get a good look at what cast it. It was too big for a bird, but too quiet for a shuttle. Yet there’s a line of smoke trailing directly overhead, visible through breaks in the red foliage. That’s engine failure, if I ever saw it.

  I stand, and an instant later, I hear the crash. To the north. Whatever it is, if it had hit the ground ten seconds earlier, it would have crushed me. I bend and pluck my sheet metal from the ground, then I take off toward the north, shoving my makeshift shovel into my bag as I go.

  A couple of minutes later, I see the first broken trees. Their tops are sheared off like a giant took a razor blade to his beard growth. I follow the trail of destruction to find that each subsequent tree has been broken off closer to the ground than the one behind it. Then, suddenly, there’s the wreckage.

  It’s a patrol shuttle, its front end crumpled like the nose of an ill-fated paper airplane. Smoke is still pouring from the engine. A large, severed tree limb has pierced the windshield and ripped through the top of the vehicle, peeling sections of the roof back like a metal flower in bloom.

  It’s one of the smaller, two-person crafts. If the guards survived the crash, they’ll have called for help, which means I might only have minutes to take what I can from the wreckage. But if they’re still conscious, they’ll probably be trigger-happy.

  Before I can decide how best to approach the front of the shuttle, the passenger door flies open. I dart behind a tree and crouch where I can watch, mostly hidden by a clump of brush. A fully conscious and mobile guard is less than ideal, but if he’s hit his head, I might be able to sneak up on him and disarm him before—

  But the person who climbs out of the shuttle is neither a man nor a guard. It’s a woman in a prison uniform.

  What the hell?

  Prisoners are normally dropped off in group
s of ten or more, by transport shuttles. Female prisoners are dropped off in Settlement B, which is nearly a days’ hike from here, to the southwest.

  The shuttle was headed north.

  I watch as the woman stands and shoves pale brown hair back from her tear-stained face. She glances around, pouty bottom lip trembling, and I duck lower in my hiding place. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since the day they dumped me on this piece of shit rock. And she looks terrified.

  Satisfied that she’s alone—that there’s no immediate threat—she leans back into the shuttle and seems to be reaching for something, and the way she’s bent at the waist pulls her baggy pants snug over her ass, and I swear to god, that’s the tightest, roundest ass I’ve ever seen. Whatever her crime, she must have committed it on a planet made of stair-climbing machines, because damn.

  Her right wrist and hand are wrapped, and the bandage is pristine. Her nails are neatly manicured with a clear polish and I can smell her shampoo from here. How the hell is that possible, after days, at least, spent on a prison transport? Did she get private transportation to Rhodon, just like she was clearly supposed to get a private drop-off?

  Is this a wealthy inmate? A rare privileged princess actually held accountable for whatever white-collar crime she committed? She’s too young to have earned any serious credits on her own, so it must have been Mommy and Daddy’s fortune that paid for the first-class prison transport and a private release, far from the thieving bitches that run Settlement B.

  The woman grunts softly, pulling at something evidently stuck in the shuttle, and that’s when I realize the other door hasn’t opened, and no one’s spoken from the pilot’s seat. The pilot is either dead or unconscious.

  Poor pretty princess, all alone and far from the safety of her kingdom.

  I stand just as she finally pulls a brand new supply pack from the shuttle, one of its straps dangling, torn and useless after being pulled free from whatever it was caught on. She slings the bag over her shoulder by the good strap, then her gaze finds me, and she goes completely still, as if she’s afraid moving will spook me. Or trigger my predatory instincts.

  And really, that’s a fair assessment.

  “Don’t come any closer.” Unshed tears stand in her eyes. Her small, clean hands are trembling.

  I step forward, out of the brush, because she’s fucking gorgeous, in a surreal, shiny kind of way that is totally at odds with the realities of life on a prison planet. And because I don’t take orders.

  “I’m serious.” Her voice shakes. “Stay back.” She tugs her bag forward with the strap still hooked over her shoulder and starts digging inside. I laugh, wondering what she’s planning to throw at me. Her newly issued scent-free deodorant or a bottle of vitamins? I’m not going to hurt her, but I am going to scavenge the shit out of that shuttle before someone comes looking for it, whether or not she sticks around to watch.

  I really hope she sticks around.

  Then she pulls her hand from the bag and—

  I freeze as she points the pistol at me. That’s an automatic reaction—habit spawned by a sense of self-preservation—and it takes me a few seconds to realize that the gun represents no real threat. I laugh again, crossing my arms over my chest, and she scowls.

  “What’s so funny? This thing is real.”

  “Oh, I know, princess.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me? I’m guessing the only fingerprints authorized to fire that thing belong to the pilot. Who, I assume, is either dead or unconscious.”

  She glances at the gun, and surprise flickers across her expression. Did she not know about the fingerprint restriction? “He’s dead,” she admits, and her eyes tear up again.

  “Oh, princess, you’re way too soft for this place. If you’re gonna cry for someone, cry for yourself. The guards don’t deserve your pity. Not even the dead ones.”

  Her brows dip, and for a second, she looks like she’ll start yelling at me. Then she aims at my feet and pulls the trigger.

  A bolt of red light flashes toward me, leaving its echo imprinted on my vision. Dirt sizzles between my feet, where the laser has evaporated every trace of moisture and singed the ground itself.

  Holy shit, the trigger isn’t restricted.

  There’s an unrestricted gun in zone four. Why the hell would a guard bring an unrestricted gun onto the surface of a prison planet?

  I hold my hands up, palms facing her. “Princess, why don’t you give me the gun?” I keep my voice low and steady, because now I’m afraid of spooking her.

  “Why don’t I shoot you with it?” she counters, raising her aim toward my chest.

  For a second, I’m certain I’m about to die. But she doesn’t fire.

  She’s scared of me. That much is obvious. So why hasn’t she killed me?

  “Princess—”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snaps, and her finger twitches on the trigger.

  I swallow, wondering exactly how closely I just came to dying with a smoking hole in my chest. “Okay. What’s your name?”

  “Rayla,” she says, and on the tail of the last syllable, she flinches. I recognize the regretful way she’s pressing those beautiful lips together. She wishes she’d lied about her name, and now it’s too late. Not that it matters. It’s not like I can look her up, with no com device.

  “Hi, Rayla. I’m Jai. I swear on my life I mean you no harm. But I think you should give me the pistol.”

  She huffs through her nose. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re holding the single most dangerous and valuable object on a planet full of very violent people.”

  “Including you.”

  “Well, yes. But I’m only violent when the occasion calls for it. Most men in my position would already have tried to take that thing, through any means necessary.”

  Her left brow rises. “Most men in your position would already be…perforated.”

  “So why haven’t you shot me?”

  “Should I shoot you?”

  “Yes.” She should shoot anyone who sees that gun, because anyone she doesn’t shoot will take it from her. I’m planning to take it, the first chance I get.

  Rayla seems to be considering. Yet she doesn’t fire.

  “Jai.” My name lingers on her tongue, and I’m transfixed by the shape of her mouth as she says it. But it’s not a question. She appears to be trying out my name. “I need help, and you want my gun. So, why don’t we make a deal?”

  “What kind of deal?” I want that gun. But suddenly I also really want to hear her say my name again. A little throatier. A little more…desperate.

  “I’m looking for someone. If you help me, once I’ve found the person I’m searching for, I’ll give you the gun.”

  I blink at her, waiting for the catch. Or the fucking punchline. But none comes. “I’m supposed to believe you’re just going to give me an unrestricted laser pistol? Why would you do that?” She’s probably used to people giving her whatever she wants, just because she’s pretty and she smells good. But citizens of the Red Rock don’t give. They take.

  “Because I won’t need it anymore.”

  Either she’s an expert liar or she’s fucking delusional. I’ve been reading expressions for most of my life—a necessary skill for a thief—and I can’t see any sign that she doesn’t mean every word she’s saying. There are no unusual pauses in her speech. She’s not avoiding my gaze, nor is she overcompensating for her lie with too much direct eye contact. She’s not fidgeting, sweating, flushing, or touching her face.

  “You’re not afraid I’ll shoot you once I have the gun? Or…use it against you?”

  She thinks about that for a second while she studies me, and I wonder what she sees. Rayla wears her pristine prison uniform as if it were a designer gown, head held high, spine straight. She doesn’t have on a bit of makeup, of course, but her complexion is clear and rosy. She’s an angel fallen into hell.


  I’m…a demon. A grimy, dangerous fiend ready to rob her the second she turns her back. She should be terrified of me.

  Yet Rayla shakes her head. She’s clearly afraid of me, but her fear evidently has nothing to do with the gun. If I hadn’t already seen her fire it, I’d assume that was because it couldn’t be fired. But I know the gun works, I know the trigger is unrestricted, and I know that laser pistols don’t require ammunition. The model she’s using just has to be charged through one of the small solar cells on either side of the grip.

  That gun is an unlimited source of power in zone four, for anyone strong enough to hold on to it.

  She must know that. She’s probably planning to shoot me once she’s gotten what she needs from me, but that seems fair, considering that I’m going to take the gun from her the first chance I get.

  She’s using me. And unless she’s stupid, she knows I’m using her. We’re standing face-to-face, outright lying to each other, and she seems to be just as okay with that as I am.

  “Deal,” I finally say. Though she’s been holding her gun on me for several minutes now, her aim hasn’t wavered. This is not her first rodeo.

  A few minutes ago, I would have sworn she was here because of some stupid, petty, rich girl rebellion. But her ease in handling the pistol makes me wonder…

  “Rayla, if we’re going to work together, you’re going to have to let me get a little closer.”

  “How close?”

  “At least close enough for me to see if there’s anything else we can use in there.” I nod at the shuttle.

  “There isn’t. And even if there were, you couldn’t get to it.” She gestures toward the wreck, and, assuming that’s an invitation, I step to the side to see that what I thought was a branch piercing the windshield is actually an entire tree impaling the patrol shuttle.

  “Holy shit. How did you survive that?” A branch three inches in diameter went right through the headrest of the empty seat on its way through the roof of the shuttle.

  “I was in the back.” Her wary gaze remains glued to me. As does her aim. “I broke my pack trying to pull it free. I don’t think we can get to anything else—”