Kit was in no mood for politeness. She hooked her extended long right claws through the arch of the door pull, then using her strength, ripped the door open, and splintering the left door where the latch was inserted in a slot. The right side door came partly off its top hinge.
She rushed through the opening, and immediately saw the reception counter, with a terrified young woman seated at a computer terminal. The woman rose and was about to try to run when Kip leaped onto the counter and loomed over her.
“Stop moving. I don't intend to harm you if you tell me what I need to know.” Kit’s exposed fangs seemed to suggest otherwise, but the cowering young women quit moving, as she looked up at what she saw as certain and unavoidable death if she disobeyed.
“W…, what do you want?” She managed to ask, in a frightened little voice.
“My companion, Ethan Greeves came in here this morning. He isn’t responding to my calls now. I intend to find him. Where is he?”
“I don’t know where he is now.” She was trembling.
“Did you see him enter?”
There was a brief hesitation, so Kit leaped behind the counter with her, causing her to scream. “Shut up. I’m not going to kill you,” she paused briefly, “yet. Hold still, while I rub my neck against you to read your mind, and ask you questions.”
Pushing past the woman’s feeble efforts to ward off the big sweat covered predator, Kit actually achieved what she wanted as one hand contacted with her frill. “What did he do after entering here?”
“He went into the bar.” She pointed, but Kit already knew that it was a deceptive half answer. “You know that he left there with Madigan Brethard, Ellice. I see it in your mind, where I found your name when she said it to you, asking not to be disturbed. Where were they going?”
Before she even voiced the answer, Kit was looking towards the rear of the front atrium, at doors and hallways that led farther back into the building.
“Is there another way into her private quarters than by the hidden elevator?”
Ellice looked startled, since she had only looked at which corridor they walked through towards the rear, but she added, “Maddi also has a concealed door in the upstairs hall, next to the elevator shaft, which opens out from her apartment in case of fire or power loss. I don't know if it can be opened from the hallway.”
“Where are the stairs to that top level?”
Again, without waiting for directions, Kit looked towards both rear corners, where unseen stairs would be found when she went in those directions.
“Did he leave here, either alone, or with her?”
“Mister Greeves? I don't know. I didn’t see him again.”
“Could he have gone somewhere with her, without you seeing him if they left together, when she placed you in charge?” Ellice was less surprised this time, since the huge animal had said it would read her mind.
“That’s possible. She has a private exit to the back of our garage, and she said she would be gone several days. The man could have been with her and I’d not know.”
Kit suddenly snapped her head around and looked towards the bar entrance, where she’d heard a faint click. “That’s a small weapon for big game like me. I guarantee you it can’t stop me, or even seriously harm me before I tear you apart if I decide to do that. Aim it away, or I’ll rip off your arm for you. If you pull the trigger, I’ll tear off all of your limbs and watch you bleed to death as I enjoy your terror.”
The bartender lowered his pistol. Only his head and right arm and shoulder was protruding through the privacy noise barrier, because he’d just noticed that the front door was hanging askew. He’d not heard the noise. “What do you want?”
“My friend came in here this morning to meet Madigan Brethard, who said she was the owner of this place. I can’t contact him now, so I’m looking for him. Don’t interfere and I’ll leave you and this woman unharmed.”
“I think she left several hours ago. From the bar window I saw her armored truck pull out of our garage.”
“You saw her driving?”
“No, it has dark windows. But no one else ever uses that truck.”
Kit felt the anger from the woman he was frilling, caused by what the man just volunteered, but she also confirmed it with her unblocked thoughts.
“I’m going to search her living quarters. I don't want either of you to be here when I return. Leave now.”
Kit backed away from the woman, and stayed behind the cover of counter, to help dissuade the bartender from making a stupid mistake with his small caliber pistol, which truly would prove fatal for him.
“Go I said!” She ended that order with a loud nasty sounding snarl. The two scrambled to get through the broken front door, the still armed bartender ungallantly shouldering the woman aside to get out first.
Moving rapidly to the set of stairs close to the side where the attached garage was located, Kit caught a whiff of something that diverted her from going up the stairs. It came from under a door crack, which probably led to the garage. It smelled like blood. A faint trace of Ethan’s blood in fact. She smashed the door open with her shoulder, and her sudden appearance caught a teenaged boy by surprise as he tucked in his shirttail. He fell backwards with a scream, his pants unbuckled.
Kit noted that he was next to a sort of motorized dolly, and in addition to the stronger smell of blood and of Ethan out here, she could smell the stink of recent sex from the youngster. She strode swiftly over to the boy, who continued to scream and scuttle backwards, pulling at his pants. She paused at the wheeled device he’d been steering, and on one of two projecting flat metal prongs, he saw a large round drop of a red substance. Her nose confirmed her anxiety. It was blood, and it was definitely from Ethan.
With a short leap, she stood over the boy, one massive paw on his chest pinning him to the floor. “Where did you get that carrying machine? It has blood on it of my brother. And stop screaming.”
The surprise that the beast could speak did still his screaming, if not his fear. “It’s a pallet dolly from the store warehouse where I work. I loaned it to Ms. Brethard earlier today and I’m taking it back.”
“Why did she want it?”
“She didn’t say. She paid me by letting me be with one of her new girls. It was here when I came out that door a few minutes ago.” Kit realized that must have been just before she had broken open the front door.
“Explain how the blood got on this machine.”
“I don't know how it got there. I didn’t even see it until you told me.”
“What is the machine used for?”
“That’s a pallet hauler; we use it to lift and move stacks of heavy things in the store warehouse. It had a flat pallet on the forks when I brought it over, but it wasn’t here when I came back.”
Kit noticed the odd pattern of wheel tracks the device made in the dust on the garage floor. Keeping the boy pinned, she looked back through the garage, and saw another luxury model car parked near a rear wall, with “Private” marked on the wall and floor. There were more of the unique pallet mover tracks, which led back to another door into the building.
“Where does that rear door lead?”
“That’s Ms. Brethard’s private garage access. Her car is right over there.” He pointed at the only car.
“I smell that she was here a short time ago, in the last few hours, with my companion. Could she have left in another vehicle? Perhaps an armored truck?”
“I don’t know,” he whined. “I was with Gabby, the new girl from Cayuga.” He looked in another direction, over his shoulder. “I can see the old bank truck is gone from its place, and it was here when I arrived. She might have driven that today. Please don’t kill me.”
Kit grinned slightly, which was not a comfort to the boy. “I won’t hurt you, because you’ve been helpful, and by your body odor I think you were doing what you claimed. I’ll release you in a moment if you can tell me where she might have gone.”
“Damn, I don't have
a clue. This is where she lives in town. I see her car parked at restaurants, and bars sometimes. I always notice where she goes, because it isn’t a big town like Cayuga. If I find a way to do her a favor, like today, I might get some time with one of her girls. Today was the longest time ever.”
“It was big favor you did?”
“Not really. Just letting her use this hauler is all. I guess she had something heavy to move.”
“If she left town in that truck for several days, as her assistant said, where might she go, close by?”
“I’d suppose it could be her daddy’s ranch, about fifty miles from here. She takes the train if she goes to Cayuga, ‘cause I sometimes help her with luggage and her horse at the train station.”
“Do you know how to get to that ranch?”
“I ain’t never been invited there, but it’s easy to find. The northeast road out of town passes near it, and there’s a sign to tell you where to branch off.”
“Don’t be afraid, but I’m going to ask you to touch the ridge around my neck, and tell me again how to get to that ranch. Picture the road in your mind.”
It took only a moment, and Kit lifted her paw from his chest. “If your information helps me find my brother, I’ll reward you with Hub credits. Perhaps it can buy you another three hours with this Gabby person. Thank you, Will.”
The boy, about sixteen or seventeen, didn’t ask how the cat knew his name, but getting back to work without dying was reward enough for him right at this moment. He rose, belted his pants, and pressed the button and started steering the hauler away, at far too slow a pace for his liking. When he glanced back, the big cat was at that other entrance to the garage, sniffing, and looking at the floor intently.
He almost shit himself when the beast suddenly came running towards him at a breakneck pace, but it passed him as it turned up Main Street. He didn’t happen to think, in his moment of weak knees and relief, that the direction taken would carry the ripper towards the one road that led out of town to the northeast.
****
“Daddy, I told you. I angered that man from Koban, and his pet tiger, by telling him I was the daughter of one of the big ranchers in this area. I was trying to impress a handsome off worlder. He’s the first one I ever met.”
Cardwell Brethard raised a skeptical eyebrow at his only child. “Maddi, in your disgraceful business, I doubt he’s the first man from off Chisholm you’ve ever met. If he’s rich, I can certainly see you trying to impress him. But you’re pretty. Why would he and that alien tiger I saw on the Cayuga news be after you, or want to cause you harm?”
“Daddy, how was I to know he’d been hired by the SGA, to kill the thugs that attack the small ranchers and farmers. I know you pay your share of that blood money to the CCA, and the SGA knows it too. I think their man came to Trail’s End as his first stop, to help them to even the score. He was really after you I’ll bet, but he was also asking people about where I lived, and about where the ranch was located.”
“If that’s true, how would you know this?”
“You may criticize my business, but cowboys, shopkeepers, and bartenders talk to my girls about what they hear. He spoke critically of you, wanted to know where the Big-bar-B spread was located, and asked if you had other family in town or at the ranch. He claimed you paid killers to raid peaceful small operators that had land grants.”
“Nonsense. Nobody around here knows I support the Regulators. You know they’re paid from the contributions that me, and all the big outfits, make to our group defense fund. Hell, Egerton and Gregos are up to their eyeballs in giving the Regulators their assignments and paying them off, not me. This character came out of Cayuga. Why wouldn’t he start there, with the obvious first targets?”
“Daddy, you are the only person that I know that calls those hired killers Regulators. Does that make this Greeves person another Regulator, but working for your enemies? He’s simply their hired killer, and a supposed superman with a super tiger to help him, and he’s being paid to kill for the SGA. Not knowing that he worked for them, I told him all about the dad I was proud of, and the ranch you’d built up, it being the largest and best in the area. He listened closely to me. I was so gullible.” She shook her head, as if in disbelief she had been so naive.
“That was when his true purpose revealed itself. He got angry and loud on the train, talking about families killed by all the rich Cattle Barron’s hired killers. That he was here to see that they and their own families suffered the same fate. I shut up, and since we were already at Trail’s End by that time, I got off the train fast and got far away from him. Later this afternoon, I learned he was looking for me, and asking about the ranch. I promptly packed a few things and got out of town fast. Why else do you think I drove here in that ugly damned armored truck? I was afraid he might ambush me on the trail. You have no idea how frightening he and that giant tiger look and act. This is where I always felt safest, daddy. At home, with you and mom.”
For good measure, she teared up at the last reference, even though she hardly remembered her cold and distant mother, who her father told her had died in a riding accident when Maddi was five years old. Her dad claimed to have loved the woman, who only had his child because he wanted a son to be his heir. A daughter, who looked like her calculating mother, also won his heart.
Mentioning her mother was her ace-in-the-hole card, which Maddi played when she really needed to get her father’s sympathy and support. It always won the hand for her in the emotional poker games she played with him, as it did now.
“Baby girl, I’ll make sure this killer never hurts you. I’ll call in the men out on spring branding, recall the men I laid off after the roundup, alert the ten hands in the bunkhouse and barns now, and arm some of the household staff. When everyone comes in from the range, I’ll have at least twenty-five guns here by nightfall, and if most of the roundup crew is still out of work, they’ll add another fifteen guns by tomorrow. I can get the man’s picture off the TV coverage to share with everyone.”
“Daddy, it’s that blue tiger that scares me the most. It’s huge. Three times the size of the largest cougar you’ve ever seen. It’s intelligent, and can speak Standard. It’s supposed to be an excellent tracker, and an ambush predator. Show them that picture too.” She knew worrying about Greeves was pointless. Kit was the only threat she feared. Just before she reached the ranch road, Ellice had called her bud phone to say the tiger had broken through the front door and terrorized her and the bartender. It had forcibly read her mind about the private apartment, proving she’d been wise to flee town. When told the animal was last seen headed out of town to the northeast, that detail really did terrify her. It knew where the ranch was!
She considered bypassing the house, and leaving her dad a phone warning as she continued driving at a pace she believed the ripper couldn’t match. The vehicle had a small fusion bottle for power, so she had unlimited range, if not unlimited personal endurance. She decided her dad’s men should be able to kill the beast, and if its tracking skill was good, it might bypass the ranch to follow her anyway. She’d have to stop eventually.
The protection of the big house, with its well-stocked Safe Room and multiple guns around her, was the best protection she could find against an unarmed animal with only claws and teeth.
She considered again the words she needed to use with her father. “I’m telling you, it’s intelligent.”
After that, her father issue an order to his foreman, to open the ranch’s armory and break out the ten high-powered assault style weapons and ammunition, which were purchased on the black market. He went to his tall office safe in his study, and extracted another illegal weapon. It was a banned PU Army plasma rifle, with one spare power pack, and a portable charger.
Her father, in an unusual move for him, asked his daughter’s advice. “I don’t know crap about this ripper’s capability. I know high gravity made it strong, but how fast can it run, and for how long? We need figure out how quickly it
can cover fifty miles. It will need to rest, eat and drink. Do you have any information on its ability and needs?”
“Daddy, I think we should assume it can run thirty miles per hour, and do that for thirty minutes, then pace itself for a time, drink, and eat what it finds along the way, then sprint again for thirty minutes. It might be here in as little as three or four hours.”
Her dad nodded. “Good thinking baby and I agree. I’ll post some men farther out, in concealed positions with the assault rifles along the ranch road.”
“Dad, it might not follow our road, which winds around low hills. It could come along a more straight line from where the ranch road branches off of the main track.”
“You’re right again. I’ll send some men in an arc to the southwest of us too. Smart girl.” She briefly basked in the glow of rare praise from him, completely undeserved this time, as it happened.
Twenty minutes later, a fast moving shuttle landed close behind the house. Kit was intelligent. Far too smart to run fifty miles.
She instructed Wanderer’s AI, “Bandit, seal the shuttle behind me. Continue to run scans along the road from Trail’s End to here. I doubt she brought Ethan all the way here with her. I intend to make her tell me what happened to him, but if I don't survive to do that and you find him, fly the shuttle to him and guard him from anything that comes near him. I called Carson, and he and Kobalt will be here in another twenty one hours, after he obtains a ship.”
“Yes, Mam.”
“I told you, use Yes Kit, or OK Kit. I’m not a human Mam. I didn’t earn that designation as women did.”
“OK, Kit.”
She still couldn’t raise Ethan on Comtap, and after this length of time, doubted if she ever would again. Rippers usually left their dead where they fell, but that wasn’t the human custom if his body could be recovered. It made sense that this woman must have shot him in the back when he was distracted and unaware of a threat from her. Brethard hadn’t left his body where it fell, because she had borrowed lifting equipment to help her move him to that truck.
Koban Universe 2: Have Genes, Will Travel Page 20
