Enola didn’t seem to mind, though. If anything, she acted excited and nearly burst with enthusiasm whenever she talked about the new tech she’d begun incorporating into it. Her persistent optimism kept things light. Or at the very least, it pissed Phox off, which proved to be endlessly entertaining for me.
“Have you come up with a team name yet?” Rout asked as he stood, picking imaginary pieces of lint off his coat. “The press is still asking.”
Phox and I exchanged a look.
I grinned. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“It’s the Raiders,” I answered. “Routilondric’s Raiders. What do you think?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug, like he didn’t care one way or another, but as he sauntered past, I caught a hint of a smile right before he walked out the door. What a dork. I guess he did like it after all.
“I think it’s perfect,” Enola said, practically bouncing out of her seat to snatch up a thin, tablet-like device she used to keep in contact with the maintenance crew working on our ship. “Let’s get you both booked in for a simulation test-drive tomorrow, okay?”
I nodded.
Phox made another grumbling noise that passed for consent.
Once she’d gone, all but skipping out of the lounge and leaving us sitting there alone, he lifted his head to give me a puzzled look. “You actually think we can pull this off again? I mean, shit, we barely made it through the first one. And this time, you know Sienne will be coming for us right from the start, right?”
Oh. He had no freaking idea.
“Yeah, I know.”
“And? That doesn’t worry you?”
It did, of course. Sienne and Faulbender, whoever he really was, now had even more reason to want me dead. But that didn’t scare me nearly as much as the thought of giving up on the idea of finding a way back home. Maybe I couldn’t afford a code to get through one of those jump-gates yet—but if I won a few more races? It might become possible. I might be able to go home. Phox would be set for life doing whatever it was he wanted to do. And Enola would have a good job and full citizenship far away from those mines.
All we had to do was win.
A lot.
“With your mad flying skills paired with my incredibly awesome plans, we can’t possibly lose,” I replied, flapping a hand at him proudly.
He snorted. “Your awesome plans have a bad habit of blowing up in our faces—literally.”
“And you have a bad habit of crashing our ships.”
Phox must have been fresh out of good retorts for that because he muttered something under his breath I couldn’t make out and pushed himself up from the couch. He stretched his arms over his head and arched his back like a lion waking up from a nap. Even his yawn showed off those pointed incisors as he wandered past, scratching at his back on his way to the hall leading to our rooms.
“You better not be going in there to steal my phone again, you big alien nerd,” I called after him. “I know you’ve been playing Tap Tap Revenge and trying to beat my scores! Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
His footsteps grew faster. Dammit, was he seriously running?
“I mean it, Phox! Don’t you dare take it again!” I shouted, springing off the couch, and taking off after him. “If you break that phone, you’re getting me a new one! I don’t care if you have to fly all the way back to Earth to get it!”
I skidded into the hall just in time to see my bedroom door slide shut. His victorious laughter crowed from inside. Then it abruptly stopped.
Ha!
Phox appeared in the doorway, holding out the phone in his giant palm with a sulky frown. “You activated a security passcode.”
I snatched it back and smirked proudly. “Yes, I did. You wanna borrow my phone—which was supposed to be a gift from you, by the way—then you have to share.” Grabbing his big arm, I pulled him into the room and shut the door. “Two songs for you, then it’s my turn. Deal?”
“Fiiiine.”
“Why do you even care about this, anyway? This is pretty old tech even by human standards.”
He shrugged and dropped down into his usual spot on the floor by the bed, slipping the headphones over his pointed ears and settling in with his hand held out expectantly. “Less judging, more putting in the passcode.”
“Only if you say please,” I scolded.
“Please … brat,” he muttered, like he thought I might not hear that last part.
“No-nipples.”
“I still say having nipples is weirder.”
I giggled as I punched in the passcode and handed it over. “If you beat my score, I will never forgive you,” I warned, making sure he saw it when I wrinkled my nose at him.
Phox gave me his signature, one-eyebrow-arched look of disbelief as he swiped it from my hand. “And why is it my fault if I’m better than you?”
“Okay, you know what? We’re doing a two-player death match. Right now. Extreme tracks only.”
His mouth curled into a confident smirk. “Is that supposed to scare me, human?”
“It should,” I replied, grabbing one of his pointed ears and giving it a yank. “Better choose your first song wisely because you are going down, my friend.”
Ready For Race Two?
RENEGADE RUNNER: DEFECTOR
Available soon for preorder in ebook and paperback from Amazon.com
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to my beta readers and editors. You guys are my rock.
To my agent, Fran, thanks for not laughing and hanging up on me when I first pitched you this idea.
Thank you to my family, for all your love and support.
I promise not to kill all your favorite characters
