Free Rebel by Cheryl Brooks Page A

“There’s an empty warehouse on the north end of the commerce district. It was supposed to be torn down, but the owners are in a dispute with the city over how much the land is worth. We have a place on the upper floor. It’s a long way up and there isn’t much of an escape route, but at least the street sweepers can’t see us.”
    “And neither can anyone else,” Onca concluded. He understood the need to avoid the sweepers. The flatbed droids roamed the city gathering up anyone they found sleeping in the street and carried them off to the city’s drunk tank. Onca had never been picked up, but he knew a few guys who had. Some of them had given up booze altogether as a result of the experience, and those who hadn’t made a point of staying off the street. Nobody wanted to get stuck spending the night with a bunch of drunken Drells. They were annoying enough when they were sober.
    “Yeah,” Jatki said. “Hardly anyone else ever goes up there.”
    “Maybe we should check it out,” Roncas suggested.
    Kim shook her head. “Wouldn’t be anyone up there during the day, and we do our best not to leave any evidence that we were ever there.”
    “So where did you leave your clothes?” Onca was fairly certain that Kim had never been one to wander the streets nearly naked—not that anyone would remark on it, but she didn’t strike him as the type.
    “I had them,” Jatki said. She glanced at Kim. “Lost them. Sorry.”
    “No worries,” Onca said. “Just a question.” Still, if anyone looking for Kim had found her clothing, there were plenty of species on Rhylos that could use them to follow her scent trail. “The bad guys didn’t get them, did they?”
    Jatki winced. “Maybe. I’m really not sure.”
    “Great,” Onca said with a roll of his eyes. If that was the case, the Racks could’ve already tracked Kim to his house—which meant he and the girls really had nothing to lose by going back there, whether they were followed or not. No matter what happened, he wasn’t about to let a bunch of fuckin’ Racks run him out of his house.
    Shemlak swaggered over to their table with Jatki’s veggies. He was moving as nonchalantly as possible for a Darconian, but Onca caught the high sign he was giving him—not to mention the fact that her lunch was in a box.
    “One of the guys spotted a bunch of Racks hanging out in the bar across the street. You might want to head out through the kitchen entrance,” Shemlak suggested. “We moved your speeders around back.” He glanced at the beacon lying on the table. “Leave that here. I’ll hang it on Draddut after a while. They’ll get a real surprise if they try to jump him .”
    Since Draddut was even bigger than Shemlak, this was an excellent plan. “Ask him to squeeze some information out of them while he’s at it, will you? I’d rather do that than pay them off. Goes against my principles to throw money away like that.”
    “Principles?” Roncas echoed. “Didn’t know you had any.”
    Onca slammed his palms on the table. “Roncas, if you dislike me so damn much, why the hell did you ever come to work at the Palace?”
    “Jerden hired me, remember? I hadn’t met you when I took the job.”
    “I tell you what ,” Onca grumbled. “You give your receptionist a big bonus and she turns on you.”
    Roncas patted his hand. “I’m not turning on you. I’m speaking my mind.”
    “Same difference,” Onca said, snarling. “Let us know what you find out, Shemlak, and tell Draddut not to lose that beacon. We may decide we want to use it to trap those punks ourselves at some point, but right now, we have another strategy in mind.” He got up from the table. “Kim, you’re riding with me—seeing as how Roncas can’t stand me and Jatki doesn’t trust me.”
    Shemlak chuckled. “Just take it slow and easy and maybe no one will notice you’re going out the wrong door.”
    Roncas led the way with Onca bringing up the rear. Their escape would’ve been