Daggertail by Kaitlin Maitland

knew.”
    “I'm just telling you that things aren't always what they seem.”
    She wondered in silence at his words. She didn't doubt that he knew more than he would say. But the unsaid fervency behind his words left her with a sense of foreboding about his own truths. What would she eventually discover about this man who had offered his protection and so much more?
    He waited several more minutes before standing and pulling her with him. She lingered against his warm, muscular body, thankful for the protection he'd been so willing to give and letting his closeness push the demons away.
    “I told you they're not taking you from me,” he rumbled into her ear.
    A shiver of delight chased up her spine. It seemed ridiculous to allow herself to be excited by his possessive nature. But she couldn't stop her mind and body from reacting.
    “We should hurry. They might come back this way for another sweep.”
    “Heidi's isn't much farther.” Gripping his hand, she started down the last alley toward Dame Heidi's shop at an energetic pace.
    When they reached the dark alcove protecting Heidi's rear door from prying eyes, Tavish lifted her hand to knock.
    “Wait,” Xave ordered. He stepped forward, standing straight and rigid, sniffing the air around them, and seeming for all the world as if he listened to things impossible to hear. “Okay, but do it quietly, Tav girl.”
    “You're going to rue the day you told me to be quiet, Xave.” She teased in low undertones as she rapped four times in quick succession on the heavy door.
    The door swung open with a creak. A short, round woman in a tentlike dress stood silhouetted in the doorway only seconds before she grabbed Tavish and yanked her into a huge hug.
    “Tavvy, darling! I was so worried !”
    “We shouldn't stand out here,” Xave growled, crowding against them.
    “Oh! Of course, of course. Come in!”
    Soft yellow lighting revealed Damn Heidi's living quarters at the rear of her shop. Tavish had grown up visiting these comfortable rooms every few months for the only mothering she could remember.
    Xave disappeared, no doubt to check the entire building for safety.
    Dame Heidi pulled her farther into the room and urged her onto the worn sofa. The cozy living room boasted a faux hearth flanked by two wingback chairs Heidi had inherited from an ancestor on Earth. The artwork hanging around the room showed the woman's love of twenty-second-century fashion, shoes in particular.
    A tiny kitchen unit took up one corner of the main room, its late-model food-processing unit a testament to Heidi's successful clothing shop. A common lavatory and one tiny bedroom opened to the left of the kitchen. The master suite with its own private powder room sat on the other side. Tavish had been inside once, but it warmed her that her old friend had splurged on niceties for her decadent boudoir. When she'd been a little girl, Tavish had often dreamed of running away to live with Heidi.
    Of course, if she had left Louie's, she wouldn't have met Xave. And even the few hours she'd had with him were enough to make up for the lifetime of hell at Louie's. That, if nothing else, made her a stupid, stupid woman.
    “I was so very worried, Tavish darling. Where have you been?”
    Tavish nibbled her lip in worry. “Did Louie give you trouble?”
    Heidi waved one chubby hand. “I do not much care what Louie thinks. He came to my shop an hour after you'd gone, demanding that I release his property. I would have had my security droids roll his fat bottom out the door had I not been numb with shock over the news of your disappearance.”
    “It all happened so fast.”
    “And now?”
    “And now Xave and I are back to find Vincent Mendez.”
    “That space trash?” Heidi scoffed. “What do you want with him?”
    She shrugged. “There's a price on his head. Xave is a bondsman, it's his job.”
    “And you? What happens when this bondsman's finished doing his job?”
    Tavish had nothing to say. She couldn't