Renall stormed down the hall and into the large office whose wide windows looked down onto the floor of the hall. Instead of seeing a packed house and money, all he could see was Clara.

Kissing her had been foolish. He had just risked everything he had planned. Everything, and not just for himself, but also for his family. Talon, Marik, and Jeval would be furious if they found out.

Then again, they didn’t have the same restrictions upon them that he had on his shoulders. Their betrothals were of massive importance, of course, but their bride families were not of the same mind about purity that his bridal family was. They were free to do whatever they liked while he was bound by a restrictive and archaic belief system that often left his flesh aching.

But until that moment when Clara had stepped into his line of vision, he had not had any true regret over that deal. Now he did, and plenty of it. He was also having trouble recalling exactly why that pact he had made was such a necessary thing. The longing to kiss her again, and far more, was so sharp-edged that he had nearly taken her into his arms there in her chamber.

The only reason he had not was because he was not sure how she had felt about his kissing her. Oh, true, she had responded, but humans could kiss and have sex as they liked, with little thought to lifetime mating. They lived too short of a life to care about those things. They were hasty and rash and driven by impulse.

Much as he was just then.

That he could be so lacking in control of his body irritated him. The erection straining the front of his suit made it very clear that he was, indeed, losing his grip on his emotions and body.

He tensed as an interface call came on. He hit the toggle and barked out a harsh greeting. Talon appeared on the screen. “Renall, bad news.”

Just what he needed. “What is it?”

Talon said, “We’re on the way back. We came too close to getting stripped and then we somehow had to outrun the Gorlites.”

The Gorlites? Renall’s teeth clenched. The Gorlites were without a homeland; their planet had been imploded centuries before. They wandered; taking over whatever ships they could when the one they were on was failing. That they’d tried to take Talon’s had likely been a fatal mistake on their part, but it was a safe bet that now Talon would have to fly stealth all the way back or risk running afoul of any of the Gorlites who were aware he had taken out one of their pilfered ships. They were a vicious race, forever parasitic and outlawed, and they fiercely protected what they thought of as theirs, and they sought revenge like some sought oxygen. “Be safe.”

Talon said, “I will.” He paused, “Renall we may have a larger problem too.”

“Oh?” How could they have a problem larger than the Gorlites?

Talon said, “I found something on the ship. A crypto file.”

“So?” Renall frowned.

Talon’s face took on a look even grimmer than the one it had worn a second ago. “Renall, it was a file that got caught in one of our sweeps. We were sorting, on the day before the Borgites showed up. This file, it doesn’t match any of the women we found or rescued. In fact, according to the women on this ship, there were only twelve women aboard.’

Uneasiness filtered through him. “Maybe the crew hustled one aboard in secret.”

Talon’s face darkened. “It’s worse than that.”

“How so?”

Confused and on edge, Renall stared at the interface while Talon chewed at his lips. Finally, Talon spoke. “The crypto file is for a high-ranking government official’s daughter. One who had not just a mind wipe, but a complete remake of her memories.”

Renall said, “So where is she?”

Talon said, “I don’t know. She could be any of the women we have or the ones who died. We have to do a spinal match, take fluid. There’s only one way to do that.”

“Remove their chips and use the fluid. So do that.”

Talon hesitated. He glanced around the empty chamber in which he stood. His voice dropped even lower. “Aside from running the risk of having them run away, there’s a larger risk.”

Now he was far past uneasy. “Oh?”

Talon said, “Whoever she is, she was sent for a reason. There’s a circuit notation in the file.”

Renall recoiled. His antenna went up. “You’re saying she’s transmitting information back to whoever sent her.”

Talon said, “Yes, and it may be too late to halt it. Or whoever is pulling her strings.”

Talon signed off. Renall stood stock still, his feet rooted to the spot.

Twelve women. Five were dead. Some had died in the stripping. One had gone from the fast gas. That left them with seven women, any of which could be the cycle spy.

A cycle spy!

His stomach rolled.

It was forbidden.

The wiping of memory was one thing, but implanting fresh ones was tricky and dangerous. The circuits placed into a cycle spy’s brain were placed so that everything the cycle spy saw or heard went into storage that was then transmitted via the circuit to an interface. And those circuits could be very long range. Galaxy wide, in fact.

The part of him that recoiled the hardest was the one who knew that no brain could continue that sort of thing before breaking down. Eventually, usually in a matter of months, the cycle spy would simply wear out. The organic matter in their brain would collapse and liquefy. They’d die abruptly and without warning but all the while inflicting damage on whoever they had been sent to spy upon.

Who could it be?

Not Clara.

Her mother had been right where Clara had said she would be. Her father and brother too. She had skills no mind wipe or memory install could have given her. The muscle between her thumb and forefinger was spring tight, something that dealers only had happen after decades of play.

So not her. The others? He considered that. His heart dropped as he realized that everything could be compromised now. His legal activities notwithstanding, the woman who was a cycle spy would have seen his face, which meant whoever had sent her must have seen it too. And the faces of his brothers.

Now might be the best time to pull stakes and head out.

Not that he could, and staying where he was just then was not such a huge risk. It was possible that the cycle spy was dead. Perhaps she had even been the woman with low rot. He calmed himself by thinking through all the possibilities in as rational a way as possible.

But the only real thought that kept coming back was that he had to make sure that it was not Clara. But if he had her chip removed so soon, she would want to know why. Cycle spies had no idea what they were, but if she felt threatened, the person watching might execute a kill order into her brain.

But it was not Clara. Could not be.

Could it?