“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Nailer startled. The girl’s eyes were open again, watching him across the fire, reflecting the blaze of shattered ship furniture and picture frames. “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” she whispered.

Her words were cultured, exquisite in her mouth, clipped and close and precise. As if she were one of the boss men who came down to watch the work and paid out cash bonus for good salvage. Perfectly formed words, with not a break in them, not a hard edge. She accepted the last of the orange slices from Pima and ate them, taking her time and seeming to savor them. Slowly, she pushed herself upright again.

Her eyes went from Nailer to Pima. “You could have just let me die.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with the palm of her hand, licking at the last of the orange’s juice. “I couldn’t get out. You could have been rich with my gold. Why?”

“Ask Lucky Boy,” Pima said, disgusted. “It wasn’t my idea.”

The girl looked at him. “You’re called Lucky Boy?”

Nailer couldn’t tell if it was an honest question or if she was making fun of him. He stifled his unease. “Found your wreck, didn’t I?”

Her lips quirked. “I guess that makes me a Lucky Girl then, doesn’t it?” Her eyes twinkled.

Pima laughed. She squatted beside her. “Yeah. Sure. Lucky Girl. Damn lucky.” For a moment her eyes lingered hungrily on Lucky Girl’s hands, on the gold glittering against her brown skin. “Damn lucky.”

“So why not take my gold and walk away?” She held up her hand where the thin slivers of their blades had cut. “You could have had my fingers for Fate amulets, right? Could have had my gold and my finger bones, too.”

Her smooth features had hardened. She was clever, Nailer realized. Soft, but not stupid. Nailer couldn’t help thinking that he’d made a mistake letting her live. It was hard to tell when you were being smart, and when you were being too smart for your own good. And this girl… she already seemed to be taking over the space around the fire. Owning it. Asking the questions instead of answering them.

Lucky Strike always said there was a fine line between clever and stupid and laughed his head off every time he said it. Watching this girl across the fire taunt and tease him, Nailer suddenly had the feeling that he understood.

“I think one of my fingers would have made a nice amulet for you,” she said to him. “Would have made you exquisitely lucky.”

Pima laughed again. Nailer scowled. Dozens of futures extended ahead of him, depending on his luck and the will of the Fates… and the variable that this girl presented. He could see those roads spinning away from him in different directions. He was standing at their hub, looking down each of them in turn, but he could see only so far, one or two steps ahead at best.

And now, as he stared at the sharp eyes of this perfectly unblemished swank, he realized that he had missed a factor. He didn’t know anything about the girl. He knew about gold, though. Gold bought security, salvation from the ships and the breaking and light crew. Lucky Strike had gone down that road. Nailer would have been smarter to simply let Pima pigstick the girl and be done with it.

But what if there were other roads? What if there was a reward for this rich girl? What if she could be useful in some other way?

“You got crew who’ll come looking for you?” he asked.

“Crew?”

“Someone want you to come home?”

Her eyes never left his. “Of course,” she said. “My father will be hunting for me.”

“He rich?” Pima asked. “Swank like you?”

Nailer shot her an annoyed glance. Amusement flickered across Lucky Girl’s face. “He’ll pay, if that’s what you’re asking.” She held up her fingers. “And he’ll pay you more than just my jewelry.” She pulled a ring off and tossed it to Pima. Pima caught it, surprised. “More than that. More than all the wealth I’ve got on my ship.” She looked at them seriously. “Alive, I’m more valuable than gold.”

Nailer exchanged glances with Pima. This girl knew what they wanted, knew them inside and out. It was as if she were a beach witch, and could throw bones and see right into his soul, to all his hunger and greed. It pissed him off that he and Pima were so obvious. Made him feel like a little kid, stupid and obvious, the way the urchins looked when they were hanging out behind Chen’s grub shack, hoping he’d toss out bones for them to pick over. She just knew.

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Pima asked. “Maybe you’ve got nothing else to give. Maybe you’re just talking.”

The girl shrugged, unconcerned. She touched her remaining rings. “I have houses where fifty servants wait for me to ring a bell and bring me whatever I want. I have two clippers and a dirigible. My servants wear uniforms of silver and jade and I gift them with gold and diamonds. And you can have it, too… if you help me reach my father.”

“Maybe,” Nailer said. “But maybe all you’ve got is some gold on your fingers and you’re better off dead.”

The girl leaned forward, her face lit by the fire, her features suddenly cold. “If you hurt me, my father will come here and wipe you and yours off the face of the earth and feed your guts to dogs.” She sat back. “It’s your choice: Get rich helping me, or die poor.”

“Screw it,” Pima said. “Let’s just drown her and be done.”

A flash of uncertainty crossed the girl’s face, so quick Nailer might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching closely, but he caught the slight widening of her eyes.

“You should watch yourself,” he said. “You’re alone. No one knows where you are or what happened to you. You could be drowned in the ocean for all anyone knows. Maybe you just disappear and the wind and waves don’t remember you even existed.” He grinned. “You’re a long way from your swank servants.”

“No.” The girl drew her blankets around her like a cloak and looked out at the moonlit ocean and the far waves. “The GPS and distress systems in the ship will tell them where to look. It’s only a matter of time now.” She smiled. “My ‘crew’ will be coming very soon.”

“But right now, you’ve only got me and Pima,” Nailer said. “And you definitely ain’t our crew.” He leaned forward. “Maybe your people really will hurt us bad-yank out our guts, cut off our fingers-but that doesn’t scare us, Lucky Girl.” He drew out the words of the nickname, mocking. He waved back toward the ship-breaking yards. “We die here every day. Die all the time. Maybe I’m dead tomorrow. Maybe I was dead two days ago.” He spat. “My life isn’t worth a copper yard.” He looked at her. “So the only way your life is worth more than that gold on your fingers is if it gets us out of this place. Otherwise, you’re just as good dead.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized it was true. He was in Hell. The ship-breaking yards were Hell. And wherever this girl came from, whatever she was, it had to be better than anything else he knew. Even Lucky Strike, who everyone thought lived like a king, was nothing in comparison to this spoiled sleek girl. Fifty people answering to her. Lucky Strike could muster Raymond and Blue Eyes and Sammy Hu, and that was enough for most of his leg-breaking jobs, but it was nothing outside. And even Lucky Strike smiled and scraped when the big bosses from Lawson & Carlson rolled in on their special train to inspect the breaking, before it rolled out again to wherever swanks lived. This girl was from a whole different planet.

And she was going back to it.

“If you want to stay alive,” he said, “you take us with you when you go.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”

“She’s lying,” Pima said. “Buying time, that’s all. She’s not our crew. As soon as her people show, she’s gone and we’re back in the yards.” She glanced back to where the invisible hulks of the wrecked ocean vessels lay along the beach. “If we’re lucky.”

“That true?” Nailer studied the swank carefully, trying to divine if she was a liar. “You going to ditch us? Dump us back with the rest of the ship breakers while you go back to being swank?”