Red clicked back on the information from Carson and finished the last fifteen minutes of it. Basically, what Carson had discovered was that the plots against the Sector Force Three command and agents were staged by what seemed to be an organization bent on taking over entire systems of planets. Maybe even most of Sector Three. And it seemed this army of people had a fleet of ships as well.
For some reason, this organization felt as if the Sector Force organization and their scattered agents was one of their only major threats. They seemed to have no fear of any local or system-wide government. They had more than enough forces to take care of single systems.
But sector-wide organizations with the ability to control and send out highly trained agents scared them to death for some reason. Red had no idea why.
He had hated the Sector Force and had for a long time. It was Sector Force that had broken up the partnership he and Carson had had over a great five years.
He forced himself to contain that anger as well.
When Carson had walked out on their business, Red had turned over the day-to-day operations to someone they both had trusted and gotten drunk for six days. He and Carson had only talked rarely the year after that, but over the last year they were patching things up, getting their friendship back.
But in all the conversations, Carson had never mentioned he had gone to work for the Sector Force. Not once, not even a hint. More than likely he was afraid of what Red would say.
And he would have been right.
Red shut down the information coming over his data pad and tucked the data stick into his pocket. He had no doubt that Mattie would have already sent off the entire thing to Sector Force Three headquarters in the Webb System, but he doubted any Sector Force agents would be out this far on the edge of the sector, or could get here soon enough to help them.
At least not from the timeline that Carson had discovered.
He had already sent off the same information to his people, but it would take them a few hours to analyze everything.
Red had a couple of ideas to maybe buy them a little help, but he doubted Mattie would like the ideas in any fashion, if his sense of her was right.
He had already sent off instructions to his people back home to dig up as much information about Mattie Silks as they could and get it to him quickly. But even quickly was going to take hours at least on that as well.
And he had them searching in everything they could find, every detail about the organization Carson had talked about. He had never heard of anything like that before and that bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
He glanced at the time. He had thirty minutes before meeting Mattie in the restaurant. He needed to wash off some of the police grime and try to go into the evening with a fresh start and a halfway clear mind.
But he had a hunch that being around Mattie was going to do anything but keep his mind clear. There was just something about that fantastically beautiful, fantastically dangerous small woman that fogged his mind and made him want to just ignore everything else.
But for the moment he couldn’t do that. He had to stay focused.
He owed Carson, and he was going to make sure the people who killed his friend paid a very, very heavy price.
CHAPTER FIVE
MATTIE SAW the two station police who were assigned to follow Red sitting outside the restaurant pretending to not care. What a horrid assignment, to follow two people who could ditch them in a moment even on their own space station.
Her two keepers had actually come down the elevator with her. She hadn’t spoken with them, but she knew they were smart enough to know the score. More than likely they had seen the tapes of the firefight and knew just how deadly she and Red were.
She only had one gun hidden on her tonight, very well hidden, actually. She had no doubt Red had done the same.
The restaurant was sheltered in what seemed like a forest to one side of the vast lobby of the resort hotel. The trees looked to be oak and were as real as anything she had ever seen. There was even a faint forest smell that mixed with the fantastic smells coming from the hidden kitchen. Her stomach actually rumbled as she entered between two large trunks of trees.
Red sat alone at a table near a window that looked out into space and at the curtain nebula. One thing she had to admit, the views from this place would never get old.
Red turned and saw her as she wound her way through the tables and trees. He gave her that same half-smile he had given her the first time they met. And again it snapped up the heat around her and twisted her stomach. It was lucky that smile didn’t melt the leaves off the trees and start a forest fire.
“Down girl,” she whispered to herself as she moved toward his table.
He had on a casual dress shirt and slacks and had his long dark hair pulled back tight off his face. Without the hair and the stunningly perfect body, he could almost pass for a regular businessman.
She had picked tan dress pants, a white blouse, and a tan business jacket. She too could pass for a businessperson here for an important meeting.
Her heart fluttered as he actually stood when she approached, towering over her. No one did that, yet he had, as if she were royalty of some sort.
Thank heavens he didn’t reach for her hand, but instead indicated a chair facing him across the table. She wasn’t certain what kind of control she could maintain if he actually touched her.
Why did they keep the heat up so high in this place anyway? She knew her face must be flushed but she pretended nothing was wrong or different.
He really had an effect on her. Part of her liked the feeling, part of her was really annoyed at it. She had other things to focus on at the moment.
“Thanks for joining me,” he said, his deep voice actually letting her know that he was sincere.
“You saw Carson’s information?” she asked, deciding to jump right to the point.
“I did,” he said, staring at her with those fantastic green eyes.
“What do you think?” she asked, staring right back.
He just shook his head. “I think we have our jobs cut out for us. But first I think we need to eat. I’m starved.”
She nodded. “I agree,” she said.
“About which part?” he asked, smiling.
Damn that smile of his could kill a person without even trying. Did he even know what he was doing to her?
“About both parts,” she said, managing to smile back at him.
He motioned for a waiter who was standing off about ten paces to come over.
She watched the motion. Clearly this was a man who was used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it and controlling the people around him. More than likely there was money behind him, a lot of money.
She would know soon enough. The Sector Force research people were very, very good. They had to be.
It had been one of the things that Carson had done so well.
They spent the next ten minutes as they ordered and their drinks arrived making small talk about the hotel, the restaurant, and the views. Then, as the waiter left, he smiled at her again.
“I suppose you are having me investigated as we sit here,” he said, smiling.
“Of course,” she said, slightly surprised he had brought up the topic in that fashion. “And I suppose you are doing the same for me.”
He nodded. “So what would you like to know now, here at dinner, before you get the cold report from your people.”
She sat back, staring into his deep green eyes. He was serious.
“You’re going to be truthful?” she asked.
“Considering what we are facing, and that I just lost my best friend, I see no reason not to be.”
She nodded. She still didn’t trust him in any fashion at all, but this would be an interesting test.
“How rich are you?”
“Beyond stupidly rich,” he said, shaking his head as if he really was annoyed and almost embarrassed about how much money he had. “I earn more every day
, every minute, than I could ever spend.”
She nodded. She had figured as much.
“So you don’t belong to any organization?”
He shrugged. “Not in the strict sense of the word like Sector Force. But Carson and I started a business a number of years back, a protection business for those who think they needed protecting and could afford to pay for it.”
Suddenly his last name Simms came back to her. Oh, oh, she was having dinner with that Red Simms.
“Innocence Incorporated?” she asked, stunned.
He nodded.
“You and Carson started Innocence Inc.?”
She wanted to get up and leave the table now. She understood that when Red learned Carson was working for Sector Force Three, he had been stunned. Innocence Inc. and Sector Force Three seemed to have an uneasy truce of sorts, on two sides of the same job. They seldom tangled, but when they did, it had not been pretty.
“We started it after a friend of Carson’s was framed for a sector crime he had not committed,” Red said. “Carson did the research and discovered that the man was telling the truth, he had not committed the crime, had not been convicted of the crime on any planet or in any Sector Court, but a Hunter and the person who hired the Hunter didn’t seem to care.”
She nodded to that, doing her best to calm her anger and listen. The Hunters were a loosely-based organization that often killed their targets for any reason or price. Sector Force had often tried to take them down, but had always failed. They worked the fringes of law enforcement on the sector-wide level, always for hire.
Sector Force Three had strict standards for their agents. Their targets, as they called those they were trying to either capture or stop, were those who were convicted and clearly guilty of crimes against humanity in one star system or another, but had jumped to other systems or another sector to escape justice. Sector Force agents were the enforcers of justice, for lack of a better way of putting it, on a sector-wide scale.
Sector Force agents made sure the convicted killers and mass murderers did not get away with their crimes no matter how far they ran.
Red went on. “We started our business to defend those who were unjustly accused, who had not committed the crimes, but yet still had a sector-wide arrest warrant on their head. In the first five years of business, we never took a client targeted by Sector Force Three. The clients targeted by Sector Force Three were always guilty.”
“Then,” she said as he stopped and looked out the window into space.
“Then we took a job from a man named Beacher.”
“Beacher the Butcher?” she asked, shocked. She pushed her chair back to leave. She remembered the case and there was no way she could talk to or even have dinner with a man who defended such a killer. Beacher had murdered almost one thousand families, fathers, mothers, and children on his home planet in a botched experiment. He had been tried and convicted and sentenced to death before he escaped and fled. There was no doubt as to his guilt.
Red nodded and went on. “Beacher, when he hired us, sent us false data, false records, false everything. We took the defense, took his money. It was to be the first time we were to go up against the Sector Force Three. But then Carson discovered the truth, dug out what really happened and presented me with all the evidence.”
“What did you do then?” Mattie asked, keeping her voice low and controlled. His next answer would be the key to everything, of that she had no doubt.
“I attempted to give Beacher back his money, but he would have none of it. He was going to hold us to our contract with him to defend him.” Red shrugged. “So I killed the bastard myself. Dumped his body into deep space.”
Mattie stared at the handsome man across from her. That was the last thing she had expected him to say or admit to her, an agent of sector law.
Red went on with his clearly painful story. “Carson and his financial team raided all of Beacher’s assets, shut down his corporations, and gave all the money to charities on his home planet. When we were done, Carson decided we had come too close to being duped. He thought we should shut down Innocence Inc. I did not agree. It was the only real fight we ever had in all our years of friendship.”
Red looked off out the window, his eyes vacant. “Carson quit. I had no idea he had gone to work for Sector Force Three even though he had no need of the money, but in hindsight it makes sense. Justice was all Carson ever cared about. And Sector Force Three is all about true justice.”
Mattie just sat there, staring at the handsome man, shaking her head. The Sector Force Three had labeled Innocence Inc. a problem organization simply because of the Beacher case. No assassin had ever been able to track Beacher and everyone knew his companies had dissolved. Everyone thought Beacher had got away because of Innocence Inc.
Mattie chuckled to herself.
“What’s so funny?” Red asked, turning on her, clear anger in his green eyes.
“Someday you might want to set the record straight on all that,” she said, smiling at him. It might get your company some cases sent your way from Sector Force Three, the ones we know are false charges.”
He shrugged and went back to looking out the window. Clearly he was a man who didn’t much care what people thought of him. She liked that more than she wanted to admit. It made him even more handsome if that was possible.
But the loss of his friend was clearly hurting him.
“We’ll get the bastards,” she said.
“And how do you propose we do that?” he asked, looking back at her.
She smiled at him. “Somewhere in Carson’s data, the data your people are sending you, and the data Sector Force researchers are sending me, there will be a way. We just have to put our heads together and find it.”
He nodded and then with one more look out the window, he turned back to face her directly, his green eyes holding her gaze. “Deal,” he said, smiling.
Once again the temperature in the room went up a few degrees. She couldn’t pull away from looking into his eyes and he couldn’t seem to look away either.
They were saved a moment later by the arrival of the wine and some wonderful-smelling bread.
She hadn’t realized how hungry she was, in more ways than one.
CHAPTER SIX
MATTIE HADN’T ENJOYED A MEAL as much as the one with Red in a long, long time. At least it was great after she got over the shock of the fact that he was the Red Simms, the founder of Innocence Incorporated, which everyone at Sector Force disliked.
And after he had proven to her that he had actually killed the hated mass murder named Beacher.
He had simply handed her his tablet with a picture of Beacher’s body on it. One hole through the forehead, two in the chest. Classic. The man was clearly dead.
She had asked him if she had permission to send this and his other records on the death and destruction of Beacher and his organization to Sector Force Three and he only shrugged. She loved the fact that he didn’t care about what others thought of him, but if they were going to work together, better to have what tainted his name and organization with Sector Force Three out of the way.
She sent the picture and some other information he gave her off to Sector Force headquarters right from the table. She got that done between the bread arriving and their salads.
Her only note with the picture was “We were wrong about Innocence Inc. and their involvement with Beacher. They didn’t protect him, they killed him. It all should be in Carson’s records as well if you dig deep enough.”
Then she relaxed into the wonderful dinner and conversation with the swirling blues and reds and oranges of the nebula out the window on one side and the forest of deep green and browns over and around them. Just the setting alone made her relax some.
The main course was a white fish native to a local nearby system sautéed in a light butter sauce with a side of sweet-tasting green stalks she had never seen or tried before. Light and tasty and perfect. It melted in her mouth. During the meal they ta
lked about her being raised on Webber, the home planet for Sector Force Three. Then they talked about his parents and family.
She was surprised that for a rich family, they had seemed to be pretty normal. He had one younger sister who worked in the family business with his father.
She discovered, much to her relief, that he had no relationships at the moment, but had been close to marriage once. All he would say about it with a shrug of indifference was that it didn’t work out. And not working out had been a good thing for him.
To Mattie, he hadn’t seemed broken up about the memory of the relationship at all or maybe it was so far in the past he no longer cared.
That fact made her very happy. And when she caught herself thinking that, she shut the idea down. They were working together. They needed to keep it professional.
She had a hunch that wasn’t going to happen. Not the way she was feeling about him, and the way he clearly was feeling about her. As far as she was concerned, it was lucky they didn’t have wild sex right in the middle of the table in the restaurant.
That would have shocked the four security men trailing them.
She and Red talked about Carson after the main course while waiting for dessert. They both described how they had met Carson. Red seemed very interested about how she had met him and how she had admired and liked him a great deal. That made him smile fondly for some reason.
Finally, as they finished their dessert of a red berry cobbler covered in a white sweet sauce of some sort, Mattie got to the point about their coming mission. “From what you read of Carson’s research, how long do you think we have?”
Red ordered another bottle of wine, then turned his green eyes on her before answering. “A couple days at most. It depends on where these fleets of ships are located and what they are exactly.”
She nodded. “I’m hoping someone in Sector Force headquarters or DI has heard of them. Carson’s notes didn’t seem to shine any light on their possible location at all.”
“Only that they are a distance out of the sector, in the area called The Emptiness. But somehow Carson thinks they are headed inward, toward this sector and will be close enough to start attacks within two or three days.”
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