Soldier of Fortune: A Gideon Quinn Adventure (Fortune Chronicles Book 1) by Kathleen McClure Page B

woman was, she was trouble.
    She was also still talking.
    “I have to say, I am surprised to see you standing upright. We were expecting you to be sound asleep in your room — Nahmin’s dosing isn’t usually so far off.”
    Nahmin , Mia thought, that must be the ponce .
    “Nahmin’s dosing wasn’t off,” Gideon said. “It knocked me pretty well out. Almost drowned me, in fact.”
    “That would have been a shame,” the woman said.
    Mia didn’t think she meant that.
    “I’m not sure you mean that.” Gideon seemed to agree.
    “But I do,” the woman insisted. “You and I, we have unfinished business.”
    “We do? Oh , you mean because of the thing, back at the airfield.”
    Mia almost snickered at Gideon’s exaggerated tone. Was he trying to make the woman mad?
    “Yes,” the woman replied, sounding pretty mad, “because of the — thing.”
    “How is your brother, anyway? He is your brother, right?”
    “My twin, Ronan,” she said. “And I am Rey.”
    “Gideon Quinn, but you knew that. Where is old Ronan, anyway,” he continued in a ‘we’re just mates, catching up on old times’ fashion.
    Mia wondered if it was a typically Teslan style of conversation, or unique to Gideon.
    “Recovered enough to seek you in your rooms.”
    “I’m glad to hear it,” Gideon said.
    “I’m not sure you mean that,” she echoed his earlier opinion.
    “Seems to be a lot of that going around.”
    Odd, Mia thought, how she could hear the man’s smile. He was a stranger, a mark, and yet in the roughly half an hour since she’d saved his life (well, she and Elvis had saved his life), she’d come to know his voice, his mannerisms, and his expressions as well as any of her mates — not that she had many mates. 
    “You know what else is going around?” the woman asked, and Mia now heard the distinctive hum of live crystal, which meant a gun.
    “An appalling lack of composting in the inner city?” Gideon asked.
    Mia rolled her eyes at the unseen soldier because, even if he weren’t facing an angry woman with a live weapon, it was a silly statement to make. Keeper waste bins were the crystal standard of composting, so why— 
    “No,” the woman was saying, apparently in response to Gideon’s suggestion. “What is going around lately, is pain. ”
    Which was when Mia, who understood Gideon even better than she herself knew, put her shoulder to the corner of the bin and her feet to the wall and pushed.
     
    * * *
     
    Gideon, standing with his hands out to his sides, Elvis tensed on his shoulder and facing an armed and angry woman, had no idea if the dodger had gotten his hint — until he heard the telltale groan of the compost bin’s wheels. 
    So, thankfully, did Rey, who instinctively turned her weapon towards the new threat.
    While Rey faced off with the composter, Gideon spun behind the rolling blockade barely in time to avoid being squashed between it and the neighboring building. As it was, the gouge the bin’s corner dug into the wall as it screeched to a halt between himself and Rey had him wincing in relief as he turned to the dodger. “You got the hint!” he grinned down at the girl.
    “Yeah, yeah, I got the hint. Now can we scarper?”
    “One second.” He put his own shoulder to the bin and gave it another granite-scraping shove, just to make sure the alley was well and truly blocked.
    From behind the wall of compost, he could hear Rey’s curses, interspersed with the occasional blast from her shooter. He shook his head at the waste of power.
    “Now we can scarper,” he said, making sure the dodger remained ahead of him as they made their escape.
    “How’d you know the bin was wide enough to block her off?” she asked as they turned onto Bard Street.
    “I didn’t.” He almost laughed at her expression of affront. “I figured it’d be enough to have a mastodon-sized composter bearing down on her. The blockade was just luck.”
    “You’re a right nutter, you are.”
    “So I’ve