Scarlet

instinctively went to her lower back, where a small pistol was warm against her skin. Her grandma had given it to her on her eleventh birthday with the paranoid warning: You just never know when a stranger will want to take you somewhere you don’t mean to go. She’d taught Scarlet to use it and Scarlet hadn’t left home without it since, no matter how ridiculous and unnecessary it seemed.
    Seven years later and she was quite sure not a single person had ever noticed the gun concealed under her usual red hoodie. Until now.
    “How did you know?”
    He shrugged, or what would have been a shrug if the movement hadn’t been so tense and jerky. “I saw the handle when you climbed up on the counter.”
    Scarlet lifted the back of her sweatshirt just enough to loosen the pistol from her waistband. She tried to take in a calming breath, but the air was filled with the onion and garbage stink of the alley.
    “Thanks for your concern, but I’m just fine. I have to go—behind on the deliveries … behind on everything. ” She stepped toward the pilot’s door.
    “Do you have any more tomatoes?”
    She paused.
    The fighter shrank back further into the shadows, looking sheepish. “I’m still a little hungry,” he muttered.
    Scarlet imagined she could smell the tomato flesh on the wall behind her.
    “I can pay,” he quickly added.
    She shook her head. “No, that’s all right. We have plenty.” She shuffled backward, keeping her eyes on him, and reopened the hatch. She grabbed a tomato and a bundle of crooked carrots. “Here, these are good raw too,” she said, tossing them to him.
    He caught them with ease, the tomato disappearing in his large fist and his other hand gripping the carrots by their lacy, leafy stems. He surveyed them from every angle. “What are they?”
    A surprised laugh tumbled out of her. “They’re carrots. Are you serious?”
    Again, he seemed embarrassingly aware of having said something unusual. His shoulders hunched in a vain attempt to make himself seem smaller. “Thank you.”
    “Your mom never made you eat your vegetables, did she?”
    Their gazes clashed and the awkwardness was immediate. Something shattered inside the tavern, making Scarlet jump. It was followed by the roar of laughter.
    “Never mind. They’re good, you’ll like them.” She shut the hatch and rounded to the door again, whisking her ID across the ship’s scanner. The door opened, forming a wall between them, and the floodlights blinked on. They accentuated the bruise around the fighter’s eye, making it seem darker than before. He flinched back like a criminal in a spotlight.
    “I was wondering if you could use a farmhand?” he said, the words slurred in his rush to get them out.
    Scarlet paused, suddenly understanding why he’d waited for her, why he’d stalled so long. She scanned his broad shoulders, bulky arms. He was built for manual labor. “You’re looking for work?”
    He started to smile, a look that was dangerously mischievous. “The money’s good at the fights, but it doesn’t make for much of a career. I thought maybe you could pay me in food.”
    She laughed. “After seeing the evidence of your appetite in there, I think I’d lose my shirt with a deal like that.” She flushed the second she’d said it—no doubt he was now imagining her with her shirt off. Yet, to her shock, his face remained serenely neutral, and she hurried to fill the space before his reactions caught up. “What’s your name, anyway?”
    That awkward shrug again. “They call me Wolf at the fights.”
    “ Wolf? ” How … predatory.”
    He nodded, entirely serious.
    Scarlet swallowed a grin. “You might want to leave the street fighter bit off your resume.”
    He scratched at his elbow, where the strange tattoo could barely be seen in the dark, and she thought maybe she’d embarrassed him. Perhaps Wolf was a beloved nickname.
    “Well, they call me Scarlet. Yes, like the hair, what a clever observation.”
    His expression softened. “What hair?”
    Scarlet settled her arm on top of the door, resting her chin. “Good one.”
    For a moment he seemed almost pleased with himself and Scarlet found herself warming to this stranger, this anomaly. This soft-spoken street fighter.
    A warning tingled in the back of her head—she was wasting time. Her grandmother was out there. Alone. Frightened. Dead in a ditch.
    Scarlet tightened her grip on the door frame. “I’m really sorry, but we have a full staff