There was one good reason to willingly come to the Dakota Reaches: looking for people like Niles. Talented, energetic individuals with nowhere to go and nothing to lose, who would accept an invitation to start over in a very different sort of place.

Una had been there for a month, watching people come and go, getting the latest gossip on who everyone was and what they were doing there. She'd been observing Niles since he'd arrived, having heard interesting whispers about his background and how he'd ended up here, and decided now was as good a time as any to make an approach.

She slipped onto the bar seat beside him. There was nothing about her that immediately marked her as anything but another no-hoper stuck out in the Reaches—perhaps an unusually good-looking one, but that was about it.

She didn't say anything right away; she always liked to let the potential recruit act first, the better to get the measure of them.