“Damn, Sare,” he gasped. Sweat was running down his face, his hair matted to his forehead. He grabbed my shoulder with one hand, steering me so I was parallel with the couch instead of across it. He clambered up behind me, still embedded down to the base inside me.
He drew me back up, using the handcuffs to pull my body up by the shoulders, then his other hand to grab the tie, pulling my head back. He slammed down into me, deep enough to make me scream. The pace resumed, a stronger, heavier pounding than I was expecting from him, every gasping moment of respite ended by him burying himself to the hilt in my pussy. I couldn’t pull away with the grip he had on the tie and handcuffed wrists, so that each backstroke ended slightly premature, his cock catching me off-guard every time it sank back into me. I came again, screaming, my body collapsing. He let me go, let me bury my face in the cushions of the couch, my orgasm ripping through me as I screamed it out into the seat in front of me. His hands wrapped around my waist, holding me tight to him.
“Oh, hell. Oh, God,” he moaned. He leaned over me, wrapping an arm around my chest, his hand gripping one heavy tit, squeezing hard. I felt him pulse inside me, then again, harder, and I moaned. Daav muttered profanities as he came, telling me how good I felt, telling me how hard he was coming, how much he wanted it.
For a moment after, even after he’d taken the handcuffs off and walked back to his chair, I just lay there, basking in the high of the moment. It’d been, cautiously, better than I expected. A lot better, actually. Enough to think that, had I been a different girl in a different world, ending up in a life where Daav King and I fucked hard and often enough to get hitched would not have been so bad. Still boring, but not as boring as I might have thought.
“Did I get off?” I asked him.
“A few times,” he said.
“Haha.”
Daav grinned, sweat dripping down his chest.
“Look, Sare, the truth is, I was only going to bring you in if it seemed like I was wrong, and you had killed Theed. Or Hary Xu. Well, maybe not even if you had killed Hary Xu. But Theed, at least, is a set-up. That’s a hit, and I know it’s a hit, and the only reason I’m not calling it a hit where the media can hear is because right now it behooves my superiors to look the other way to the Mars Provisional Authority’s blatant corruption. Someone, someone with strings, wanted Theed dead. They wanted you to go down for it. They got the first half, but the back half doesn’t matter as long as no one minds the first half. So I’m not minding.”
“The MPA’s involved in this?” I asked.
“That’s police business, M. Jeffries,” said Daav, his face going blank. Then it resolved into a grin and he laughed. “Seriously, though I can’t fucking tell you that. It’s what’s keeping you alive.”
“What about Hary Xu?” I asked.
“What about Hary Xu?” asked Daav. “I think you stumbled into that. Someone made it look like a classic neuro den robbery. Fry the guy, take his stuff, beat it. You stumbled into it, probably. Probably why they decided to put you up for Theed’s murder.
“Anyhow,” he continued. “You said yourself, the wife’s over him, at least enough to go exploring women the day after he died. That would be enough for me to look at her for his murder, but somehow I don’t think she’s that devious. Either way, she’s not going to shed a tear when I tell her that it’s the age old story of ‘man goes into New Canaveral neuro den, man dies in New Canaveral neuro den, bumbling police unable to catch anonymous scumbag what did it.’ Another disappointed taxpayer complaint to go in the recycle bin with the plethora they get about busted autocar relays in Argo.”
“So you’re just going to let me walk?” I asked.
“No, I’m going to let you off with a warning. Two warnings. One: don’t ever show up on my radar again as a suspect in a murder case. Two: don’t explore this any further. I don’t want you poking around in these murders, in GJS’ business, in Hary Xu’s life, in Landa Xu’s life, nothing. Because there are only two outcomes to sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong in this case. Either I pick you up for two murders, or the same person that killed Theed kills you. It doesn’t go any other way, Sare.”
He looked at me cockeyed as I undid his tie from around my neck and threw it at him, then collected my skirt and blouse.
“You understand me, Sare?”
“I understand you, CI King,” I said.
Chapter 10
“A nd there we go, all the CCTV video of Hary Xu that Chief Inspector Daav King has on his computer,” said Murado, showing me on the array of screens at his desk. “Which, given that he’s tapped into the entire New Angeles surveillance network on that thing, is pretty much all of Hary Xu’s life for the past three weeks. Why’s it only go back three weeks?”
“Too much information. You know how expensive it is to cool a server farm on Mars?” I asked. “The force has a pretty big budget, but we can’t keep everything. Anything related to an open case we keep, everything else gets tossed. And then it’s up to good ol’ fashioned police work.”
“How long does your eavesdropper live for?”
“Oh, a couple of days. Provided no one sweeps his office for bugs.”
“They’re supposed to sweep the whole Asshole every 16 hours,” I said. “But I never saw them do it faster than 72, and it usually took a week.”
“Well, then, we could very easily get lucky,” said Murado.
“Can I drive?” I asked. Murado shrugged and got out of his chair, so I could take a seat at the console.
The SPD maintained a pretty extensive CCTV network, plus any footage off private cameras that they could subpoena pretty much at will. That means I had practically all of Hary Xu’s life up to and including him using the bathroom, if that’s what you’re into.
It’d been awhile since I’d done a suspect search in the CCTV database, and a lot of the software was pretty crudely engineered, but eventually I figured out how to get it to just show me clips where Hary had interacted with people related to the case file. Then I went back and pulled Theed’s identity, and looked for clips of that. There were enough. Theed and Hary meeting in a booth at a bar. Theed and Hary meeting in a parking lot. Hary gesticulating wildly, trying to say something. Theed shaking his head.
Not much to go on.
I searched for Hary with women, then told it to exclude Landa Xu. A lot of coworkers. A lot of just random people. Finally, though, a clip of Hary in a nice restaurant, taken from the camera on the opposite side of the street through the big plate window. He showed up late, you could tell by her body language. He kept his coat on, wasn’t staying. He said something. She said something. He stroked her face.
I looked for a DNA match on her.
Isibel Martinque, 31. AI engineer. She worked for a contractor related to GJS, looked like they provided some software work for any GJS devices that needed a computer. Or, rather, used to work for. Looked like she’d been terminated for not showing up to work for a few days. Hadn’t called. Hadn’t signed for the notification she’d been fired.
So, dead or lying very low.
I pulled up the video of Juan’s Neuro Solutions, watching from when the camera picked him up to just after he entered the store. There was a blink of footage missing and then you could see me coming in. I groaned. What had Ivers said? He wasn’t on cameras for five blocks. I extended my search criteria, moving to cameras farther and farther away from the neuro den until I found it, a Jupiter with an ambiguous registration settling down five blocks away much earlier than even Hary Xu had arrived. A large man got out of it.
Ivers.
I ordered the computer to identify Ivers.
“No facial or DNA match found.”
“What the fuck,” said Murado over my shoulder. I’d completely forgotten he’d been watching. “Everyone has a DNA match.”
“Not this fucker, apparently,” I said. “I met him, actually. In Max Yallen’s apartment. Goes by the name ‘Ivers.’ That’s the fucker who killed Theed.”
“Who doesn’t have their record in the SPD’s database?” asked Murado. “That’s a government mandate. It’s ten years in prison if you do it on purpose. And eight for just on accident, like a space or Outback birth.”
I paused, rolling back from the desk, thinking about my options. GJS was employing a hitter who, on paper, didn’t exist. Who might as well be invisible to the CCTV cameras.
“I’ve got to find that guy,” I said.
“Good luck with that,” said Murado. “You can’t even tell the computer to reliably find him on the CCTV footage. If this Ivers guy wants to disappear, he’s gone.”
I paused. Daav King had told me not to poke around. I mean, I’d clearly already ignored that what with the seduction and bugging and all, but he’d made the point that if I got involved, GJS, or their allies in the Mars Provisional Authority, which was the only group I could think with the ability to wipe a man out of the Central Genetics Database, would kill me.
Ivers would kill me.
And then he’d disappear.
“Can you make me disappear on these things?” I asked. “I need to go somewhere, and I can’t be seen.”
“Disappear, no,” said Murado. “I can’t wipe out your DNA record.”
“Could you turn the cameras off as I go?” I asked.
“No, that would raise every red flag from here to the Asshole and back again,” said Murado. “I can make it a brief outage, though. It’d give you a short window.”
“How short?” I asked.
* * *
Which is how I found myself breaking into 420 Ulysses Boulevard again, only this time doing it in seven seconds.
“You know, that’s not much time,” I said. I’d had to sprint across the parking lot in the back of the building. Lucky for me, some idiot had left the back door propped and I got in without having to shoot my way in.
“Well, look, it’s an encrypted police computer and I’m trying to make it look like a camera on the fritz, not like it’s gone down and needs attention,” said Murado. “If they get out there for a busted camera and it’s not busted, they’re going to know it’s somebody on the network, and they follow that thread, whole sweater unravels.”
“Okay, okay, no need to get feisty,” I said. “Just saying, don’t see why it can’t be out for, like, eight seconds. Or ten.”
“Or how about an hour? Would that be enough?” said Murado, with more sarcasm than I liked coming from someone other than me.
“Can you unlock 3C for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” grunted Murado. “For seven seconds.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said, popping Peppy’s door open. There was a light on in the living room, and I could hear voices. I closed the door gently behind me and stalked down the hall, slipping my hand cannon onto my fist.
As I got closer, the voices became clearer, moans, repeated questions about whether someone liked something, and some directions about where to put things. Soft wet smacks echoed out.
I walked into the living room.
A younger girl, probably just past her last teenage birthday, was lying on her back on the floor. She was a real stunner, probably would be for quite a while, too. On top of her was Peppy Beaver, Six Shooter on, ramming it into the girl’s pussy, the two of them wrapped in a fairly tight missionary position.
And behind Peppy, shoving his cock into her pussy, was none other than the other man in Yallen’s apartment. Gannard. His nose was covered with a splint from where I’d broken it. He and Peppy both had receivers on, doing the same thing she’d done with me.
Their clothes were in a pile by where I was standing, and I bent down and went through Gannard’s pants, taking out his wallet. A business card dropped out. Tedore Gannard, Director of Research and Development for GJS.
“Now I know where you got your toy, Peppy,” I said, rising back to my feet.
All three of them froze, staring at me. Gannard went to move and I lifted the hand cannon, making him think again.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you again, Tedore,” I said.
“Jeffries,” he said. “How’d you survive?”
“Yeah, it was fun, actually. Some people are just built for fucking,” I said. “I’m built for fucking like what you’re doing now, and you’re built for just getting fucked, like what’s happening to you now.”
“What do you want, Sare?” asked Peppy.
“Not happy to see me, Peps?” I asked. “Thought your boss and your lover here might be able to kill me.”
“I’m sorry, Sare, they threatened me,” she said, suddenly weak and demure, on the verge of tears.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “And what’s this, they forced you to use that Six Shooter of yours on a...prostitute, I assume. Are you a prostitute?”
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Let her up, Peppy. And Gannard, back off her. As amusing as it is to watch you all go soft on each other, this doesn’t need to be a whole big thing. Come here, girl. What’s your name?”
“Elice,” she said.
“Beautiful name, Elice. Could you do me a favor—Peppy, where’s your duct tape?”
Peppy didn’t say anything, she just looked at me sullenly.
“Oh, c’mon, Peps. don’t be stupid. If you let her get the duct tape, there’s a pretty strong chance that everyone gets out of here unharmed. If you don’t, there’s a pretty strong chance I have to shoot one or the both of you.”
“In a drawer in the kitchen,” said Peppy.
“Great,” I said. I bent down and checked out Gannard’s pants again. The dampener was there too. I fobbed it on. “Go get me some duct tape.”
A few minutes, one roll, and a very apologetic prostitute later and I was sitting, relaxed, on Peppy’s couch, while she and Gannard were taped tightly into their chairs.
“This the dampener?” I asked Ganard, holding the device I recognized from my run-in with him earlier.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Ah, well, no,” I said. “Been fucked once already today, and, as you know, it was almost the death of me yesterday.”
I showed him the light indicating I’d already turned it on.
“You should really cooperate on the easy stuff,” I told him. “For instance, I know that’s the dampener. So a ‘yeah, that’s it,’ would cost you nothing, and maybe build a little trust. Maybe enough trust to fit a lie in. But instead, you come in all hot and heavy with the ‘fuck you,’ stuff, and now I have to play hardball too, just to get the stuff I already know.”
I turned to the girl they’d been fucking.
“You should probably get out of here. Did Peppy pay you?”
She nodded, mutely.
“Good, then ditch out of here, don’t ask questions, don’t tell anyone. Got it?”
She nodded again, gathering her clothes and hustling herself out the door.
“There, no more nosy witnesses,” I observed. Peppy and Gannard stared at me, their faces beginning to comprehend what I was saying. I let them think whatever they like. I wasn’t going to kill them, but I’d learned over the years that was a pretty good bluff to play. The threat of death is so flashy a card that you can’t really risk ignoring it, even if you don’t believe it.
Peppy was still wearing the Six Shooter, and both she and Gannard had their transmitters on.
I walked over to Gannard, then I looked at Peppy.
“Talk,” I said.
“Or what?” she asked.
I put my foot up on the edge of Gannard’s chair, pressing the toe of my shoe up against his balls. Lightly. Not enough to hurt, but enough to feel it. Both he and Peppy gasped simultaneously.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said. “Talk or there’s a two-for-one deal on crushed balls.”
“That won’t—” her defiance cut off as I trapped one testicle under my toe, pressing just hard enough to elicit a scream from both of them.
“Oh my fucking God!” she shouted. “Holy shit, that hurts!”
; Ganard was just swearing his heart out.
“You want to talk?” I said.
“Yes,” she gasped. “What do you want to know?”
“Why’d you set me up at Max Yallen’s?”
“You were a loose end. Yallen handles those things himself.”
“A loose end on what? On killing Hary Xu?”
“That, and Theed.”
“Theed hired me to tail Hary,” I said. “But he’d been meeting with Hary for weeks before.”
“He was feeding Hary information,” said Peppy.
“What information?”
“Don’t tell her anything more, Peppy,” said Gannard. “They’ll fucking kill both of us.”
I stepped on his balls again, causing him to yelp and Peppy to scream, thrashing about in her chair.
“Shut up,” I told him. “What information was Theed feeding Hary?”
“Theed was leaking trade secrets to ThorGen,” said Peppy. “He was using Hary as his cover.”
“You’re lying,” I said. I pressured the family jewels again.
“No, no, I’m not!” Peppy shouted. I let my foot off the gas. “GJS realized that Hary was the leak, but it was all information he’d never have. Half of it wasn’t even related to the Ganymede dig. So they hit Hary, then they hit Theed. Then the fucking cops let you go, even though you were right there. That’s where I came in.”
“We are so fucking dead,” said Gannard.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“No, that’s it,” said Peppy.
I considered my options. I considered how truthful Peppy had been in the past. I went back to the same well for water.
Gannard spoke up himself though, before I could visit him any more pain.
“She’s lying,” he said.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Shut the fuck up, Ted,” said Peppy.
“She’s lying. If you don’t believe me, put her Neuro Caster on and put mine on her,” he said.
“Shut up!” screamed Peppy, trying to kick Gannard, and failing miserably. I pointed the gun at her.
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