Dragon and Herdsman

It was irritating, but he wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of letting her know that. He certainly wasn't going to ask what in blazes she was talking about.

"Good," she said. "Does that mean you're over your twitchies?"

"Being cautious in enemy territory is not being twitchy," Jack insisted stiffly. "And, no, I think we ought to stay here a little longer"

Alison peered up at the sky. "If we do, we may be here all night," she warned. "We don't have much daylight left."

"I think it's worth it," Jack said firmly. "I'm staying, anyway."

"Fine," Alison said, resettling herself against the tree. "You're in charge of this expedition. So how about telling me a story?"

Jack frowned. "What kind of story?"

"Colonel Frost called you Jack Morgan," she said. "Two months ago, when we were raw recruits sweating through basic in the Whinyard's Edge mercenaries, they all thought your name was Jack Montana. Was it you or them who got your name wrong?"

Jack hid a grimace. "Them," he said. "Probably a clerical error."

"Yeah, right," she said. "Come on, Jack. Like it or not, we're stuck here together. I need to know that I can trust you."

"Fine," Jack said. "In that case, you can go first."

Alison lifted her eyebrows. "Go first where?"

"You weren't any raw recruit," he reminded her, sitting down facing her with his back to another tree. "You could start by telling me what you were up to that made Sergeant Grisko ready to kill both of us."

She sighed, lowering her eyes. "It was all Dad's idea," she said reluctantly. "He had this crazy notion that merc groups who took teenagers probably didn't keep very good records on them. He figured he could keep indenturing me to one after another, collect the money and then help me get out, and they'd never catch on."

"Cute," Jack said. "More stupid than cute, actually. But no crazier than some of the scams my uncle and I pulled over the years."

"So you are a con artist?" she asked. "That's sort of what I figured."

"Reformed con artist," Jack corrected. "Trying to reform, anyway. So what were you doing in the Whinyard's Edge HQ that night?"

"I wanted to get a peek at their records on me," Alison said. "Just in case Dad's plan hadn't been as clever as he thought. I guess I should have waited until we were on Sunright."

"Or skipped it completely."

She made a face. "Dad wouldn't have liked that," she said. "He's—well, let's not go into that."

"Bad childhood?" Jack suggested.

Alison shrugged. "Mom and Dad and I never stayed in one place very long, if that's what you mean. Other than that . . . I don't know. I don't really have anything to compare it to."

"I know the feeling," Jack said ruefully, thinking back over his own life with Uncle Virge. "What kind of work do your parents do?"

"Whatever they can find," she said. "Dad's always chasing the Big One, as he calls it. The job that'll finally bring him fame and fortune and success."

"I gather he hasn't made it?"

She shrugged again. "There's been some success, I suppose. There hasn't been any fame. There certainly hasn't been any fortune."

Jack nodded. She was being evasive, but he could read between the lines as well as the next guy. Her father was a criminal like Uncle Virgil, though apparently not nearly as successful.

Which was ironic, considering that it was Uncle Virgil's spectacular career that had caught the attention of Arthur Neverlin in the first place, which was what had dragged Jack, and now Alison, into this mess. "Where are your parents now?" he asked. "Are they the ones you're expecting to pick you up?"

She shook her head. "These are some friends of theirs. Actually, I really don't know where Mom and Dad are. Like I say, they move around a lot. What's a K'da?"

With a supreme effort. Jack managed to keep his face expressionless. "A what?"

"A K'da," she repeated. "Frost said he didn't want you and your K'da to suffer the same fate as your uncle. Come on—I've told you about me. It's your turn."

"I have no idea what he meant by that," Jack said, feeling sweat break out on the back of his neck. He'd completely forgotten that last comment of Frost's just before he'd shut down his comm clip. This girl was way too observant for his taste. "Some slang term, I suppose."

She stared hard at him with those dark eyes. Jack held her gaze without flinching, and after a moment her lip twitched. "Fine," she said. "Don't tell me. Can I at least get your real name?"

"Jack Morgan," he said. "Raised by my uncle, Virgil Morgan."

"Virgil Morgan," Alison said thoughtfully. "I've heard that name. One of the great con men and safecrackers of our age, isn't he?"

"Certainly in his own mind," Jack said, feeling a ghostly echo of pain and loss. Even more than a year after Uncle Virgil's death, it still hurt sometimes. "No, that's not fair."

"Not if even half the stories are true," Alison agreed, an odd glint in her eye. "So you're Virgil Morgan's nephew."