Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two by Loren Rhoads

Raena said, impressed. Her expression warmed with the enthusiasm in her voice.
    Seeing the little woman’s happiness made the next part of the conversation even more difficult, Coni realized. For a moment, she wanted to leave things well enough alone, but she felt deeply that she needed to point the obvious out to Raena. “I started to do the same backgrounding for the scar on your face. I went back to your service records to see how you received it …”
    “It predates my Imperial service,” Raena said drily.
    “That’s the issue,” Coni agreed. “It’s very visible in your wanted poster. We can obfuscate everything else, but that scar is like a fingerprint. For you to have a scar that exactly matches a twenty-year-old wanted poster …”
    “I see.” Raena nodded. “Thank you. It’s going to have to come off.”
    Raena’s face had gone blank again. Coni wondered how deeply she was upset. If she were talking to Mykah, she would ask, but Coni was still hesitant to provoke Raena.
    “There are plenty of spas on Capital City. I can find you somewhere discreet that will resurface your skin without questions, as long as you pay up front.”
    Raena surprised her by asking, “Will you come with me? My last medical procedure was done by Thallian’s family robot. Before that, it was onboard the Arbiter . I … I would feel more comfortable if someone came with me to make sure the med techs don’t suddenly ID me in the middle of the procedure and arrest me for war crimes …”
    Her voice trailed off and she met Coni’s gaze again. “Please come along to watch my back.”
    Coni was touched. The request seemed to cross the line from being shipmates to something more intimate. It wasn’t a line that Coni had been aware that she wanted to cross, until now.
    “Of course,” she said. “I’d be glad to.”
    Later, thinking about that conversation, Coni wondered about Raena’s attachment to her own appearance. Coni lived closely with a human man who re-sculptured his facial hair every other day, who thought nothing of changing the color or loft of the hair atop his head. Mykah’s appearance was fluid and fun for him to play around with.
    Raena’s appearance remained consistent throughout her Imperial records. That might have been mostly to cater to Thallian’s preferences, but even after she gave up her Imperial uniform, she continued to dress in black. On the run, she often wore a cloak to cover her weaponry, but she’d worn a cape while working as a “diplomat” on the Arbiter . It wasn’t much of a change.
    Even while she was trying to hide from Thallian’s bounty hunters, Raena never altered her face or attempted to disguise her height or weight. She even kept her hair long, loose, and always black.
    Coni thought over the outlines of Raena’s life, as she knew it: a refugee traveling with her deranged mother, bought as a slave for an arms manufacturer’s daughter, enlisted by Thallian as his aide and trained to kill. Then she had the year or so on the run before she was captured, tried, and sentenced to the Templar tomb.
    In all that time, Raena had nothing to call her own. Nothing except the clothes she wore and whatever she could strap on her back. Nothing, really, except the body that served as the only possession she couldn’t mislay, the only commodity she could trade to keep herself alive.
    No wonder she didn’t want to change it. It was all she had ever had.
    Coni clenched her eyes shut and ordered herself not to weep. Raena had never asked for pity, only for help.
    Haoun stretched out on the heated platform that took up most of his cabin. Warmth crept into his limbs, making him sleepy, but he put the call through anyway.
    Jexx answered him immediately. “Daddy!”
    His daughter had gotten longer in the face and her scales were losing their rounded childish edges. Haoun ached that he couldn’t be home to watch her grow.
    “Hi, Baby,” he said with false cheer. “What are you still doing