Crossing the Line Read Online Free

sensations persisted into waking. She was in a room enveloped in a smell like a forest floor. She couldn’t see anyone, but she knew somebody was there. The sequence of events was jumbled: but however it manifested, the events were the same—searing loneliness, the wild panic of trying not to breathe and then inhaling a lungful of icy water, followed by agonizing pain between her shoulder blades.
    And she had thought she was coping pretty well, all things considered. The dream symbolism was unoriginal except for the smell. Maybe I’m not as tough as I think , she decided. An unbroken night’s sleep would have been welcome.
    And nobody needs a copper out here .
    The ground was almost too hard to dig, but she wanted to make an early start, a manual start, to prove that she had no intention of freeloading on the Constantine colony’s generosity.
    And they don’t need to learn how to control a riot or secure a crime scene or keep yourself from going barmy with boredom during a month-long surveillance. They don’t need me at all.
    It was just as well that the wess’har thought she might come in useful one day. Otherwise she was just a mouth that needed feeding, and there were no shops here. If she didn’t plant it and grow it, she didn’t eat it. Suddenly all those dreams she had once cherished—a patch of soil to cultivate when she turned in her warrant card, a little more time to herself—seemed painfully ironic. She’d got exactly, literally , all too bloody generously what she had wished for. She rammed the spade hard into the soil again.
    The sun—Cavanagh’s Star to humans, Ceret to wess’har—was making little impression on the frost at this time of the morning. Shan stopped and leaned on the shovel. Josh Garrod was making his way towards her, stumbling over the furrows that frozen water had burst and broken.
    He was in a hurry. That wasn’t encouraging; there was nothing to rush for here. She started towards him, sensing that there was some emergency and responding to ingrained police training, but he waved her back with both hands. He had her grip slung over his shoulder on a strap.
    Maybe it was good news that couldn’t wait. She doubted it.
    When he reached her he was puffing clouds of acrid anxiety. Her altered sense of smell, another little retro-fit provided by her c’naatat , confirmed her fears. She had never seen the stoic colony leader in a flat panic before.
    â€œYou’ve got to get out.” He pulled the bag off his back and held it out to her to take it. “I’ll show you where to go—”
    â€œWhoa, roll this back a bit,” she said, but she already knew what he was going to say. “Just tell me why.”
    â€œThey’re here,” he said. “They know. They’re searching Constantine for you.”
    â€œWess’har?”
    â€œI’m afraid so.”
    There was the merest kick of adrenaline and then a sudden, cold, alien focus. “Where’s Aras?” It had only been a matter of time. There was no monopoly of information. But she had expected a little more breathing space before the matriarchs discovered what Aras had done to her. Now she didn’t even have time to wonder how.
    â€œThey’ve taken him. He told me to hide you. I promised him, Shan. Don’t make me break that.”
    â€œWell, you’ve done your bit.” She took the grip from him and slung it across her shoulder, then started walking back towards Constantine, shovel in hand.
    Josh grabbed her shoulder. “You’re not going back.”
    Shan glared at his hand. He withdrew it. “I bloody well am.”
    â€œYou can hide out—”
    â€œYeah, ’course I can.” Aras didn’t deserve this. She owed him. She quickened her pace. “Good idea.”
    â€œShan, they’ll execute you. You know that.”
    â€œThey’ll have a job on their hands then,