Free Salvaged Destiny by Lynn Rae

don’t want to attract his or her
attention.” Casta was still looking through his visions, speaking slowly and
appearing completely relaxed. “I’d say someone is probably on to us.”
    “Oh no,” she moaned. “How? I thought you said this was all
undercover.”
    “I did, but it’s not surprising that someone has figured
something out. People talk.” Lazlo sounded so calm about it but Del was
anxious. If someone else found the cache, she wouldn’t be paid and she was
counting on that money to pay for a class or two. Maybe even a trip to a
conference.
    And if it was Harata or one of his minions out there, she
and her family could be in real trouble. She remembered what had happened to
the woman who had run against him in the last election. A few weeks after
Harata had been sworn in again, her cart was stolen, her home burglarized and
someone had spiked her field’s irrigation system with coolant. She and her
family had lost everything.
    “Is that cart heading anywhere we’re going to go?” Lazlo
asked. He stopped looking at the distant cart and stared at her instead. The
idea that someone with nefarious intent was out there didn’t seem to bother him
in the least. But he had all sorts of skills and weapons to rely on. She was
alone and vulnerable to any sort of intimidation.
    Del thought rapidly. “Without looking at the maps, my guess
is no. That’s not really the direction we would be going for anything.” She
didn’t dare power up her datpad and check. The mystery cart was close enough to
them to pick up the signal if they were scanning frequencies.
    “So if we keep a low profile, no one should notice us?”
    “I guess. What if there are others out there?” Del pictured
swarms of searching carts, piloted with menacing figures in black, relentlessly
crisscrossing the blue-lichen fields.
    “We’ll just have to keep a really low profile.”
    “What, subterranean?”
    Then he laughed, big barks of laughter that made her grin in
response. He was a likable guy, this Lieutenant Casta. She wondered what sort
of family had produced him.
    “Are we satisfied with our search today?” Lazlo glanced back
at the cart speeding along the horizon and then rolled onto his back and
stretched his body with a sigh. Del wanted to stretch too and relax and bump
into his body a few more times. It had been so intriguingly solid.
    “Yes. I saw nothing that looked promising and the scanners
agreed with me.”
    “It’s always good when the machines back up our opinions,
isn’t it?” He rolled to a crouch on the rock, looked for the now out-of-sight
cart, then helped her to her feet, both of them making a slight effort to dust
themselves off. It mostly resulted in smearing the sticky mud over even bigger
swathes of fabric. “Where are we going for dinner?”
    “What are you talking about?” Del couldn’t quite understand
what he’d just said.
    “Dinner, tonight. I’m hungry.” Casta looked at her with an
inquiring quirk of his eyebrows and she felt as if she had lost some sort of
grip on reality.
    “You’re serious, aren’t you?” He wanted to eat a meal with
her? Why?
    “Absolutely. I think I can even claim it as a legitimate
expense, so we should go somewhere nice.”
    * * * * *
    Del had obstinately refused to let him pick her up,
insisting instead on meeting under a particular tree on the Lower Boulevard.
Lazlo accommodated her peculiarities. Considering how hard they’d already
worked that day, he wasn’t going to argue with her. Just thinking about how her
smudged face had filled with confusion when he’d invited her out earlier made
him smile. He needed her to be in a good mood because there were tougher
challenges ahead.
    So Lazlo waited, freshly showered and neatly dressed, under
the largest cashew tree and tried not look around for Del too obviously. He was
early and resolved to spend at least ten minutes alone before he started to
wonder if she was going to stand him up.
    To take his mind off