Hired Gun - A Bounty Hunter Space Opera Adventure (Aeon 14: Machete System Bounty Hunter)
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“As much as I want to snuggle with you two, I’m going to go get a drink and a bite to eat. Want me to bring anything back for you?” She was certain that Trey wasn’t going to leave Dex alone right after freeing him of the carrier.
“Sure. Whatever looks good.” He kicked his shoes off and sat on the narrow bed.
“Food, or drink?”
“Both. And don’t be cheap.” He pointed at her to underscore his warning.
“You’ll get what you get,” she told him before leaving the cramped space.
* * * * *
Ahhhh. The bar she’d found wasn’t half bad, and Reece felt herself relaxing as she sipped a whiskey and soaked up the dull roar of conversation going on around her.
This was her scene. Dim lights, interaction, and good drinks. The local brew wasn’t as good as Akon whiskey, but it was better than most.
Closing her eyes, she could almost imagine herself back home at the Ringtoad.
Almost.
Sighing, she opened her eyes.
“Rough day?” the good-looking bartender asked.
She didn’t know if he was interested in her, or just in selling more drinks. Either way, his pleasant looks and manner suited her well enough for the moment. “Not the smoothest, anyway,” she said with a smile.
“Here’s hoping tomorrow’s better.” He leaned in and topped off her whiskey. “On the house.”
“Don’t you mean on the station? Not a lot of houses up here.” It wasn’t her best line, but it would do. She wasn’t trying to impress him or anything, just to amuse herself for a short while.
He looked even better when he smiled. “Whatever works.”
She held her glass up in a silent toast, then tossed some of the whiskey back. As the bartender moved off to serve someone else, she enjoyed the feeling of letting the alcohol smooth out her rough edges.
In just a few more days, maybe, if she was lucky, she could be headed back home. Sleeping in her own bed, getting roasted by the perihelion heat, and most importantly, not traveling among the stars. A return to life the way it should be.
She just had to put this Fitzmiller case to bed.
Slowly sipping her remaining whiskey and refusing any further offers to get her another, she whiled away two hours. Surely Trey was glad for some respite from her company. The surest way to start hating someone was to remain unrelentingly in their presence.
When she settled her bill, the bartender grinned at her. “Leaving so early?”
She picked up on his interest, but in spite of his appeal, she had no desire for that sort of distraction. She had a job to finish.
In no hurry to return to the tight confines Trey’s nap room, she walked slowly through the terminal, examining the station’s interior details. It wasn’t the sort frequented by the well-to-do, and mostly serviced insystem traffic and workers headed out to mining jobs in the asteroids. She saw worn surfaces and door mechanisms, carefully maintained in spite of their age. Most importantly, everything was clean. She didn’t mind the lived-in, well-worn look, but she hated neglect and the grime that typically came with it.
Finally, she stopped at a small restaurant to pick up some takeaway for Trey, along with some snacks for Dex. With the warm bundle under her arm, she returned to the nap room.
Inside, she found the two of them sprawled across the bottom bed, snoring. She debated waking them up, then decided not to. They looked too peaceful. The food she’d brought would still be edible later, and Trey could always order something when they got down to the spaceport on Wadish.
* * * * *
Five hours later they were getting out of their rental car at the hotel, not far from the commercial district surrounding the spaceport. On the taxi ride over, Reece had double checked Fitzmiller’s tracker, satisfied to see that it had pinged a local network in the city just a few hours prior.
It looked like their plan to catch up had worked.
As they checked in, Trey informed her that he wanted to leave Dex with the hotel’s child minder service.
“It’s like a babysitter, but in a more official capacity. They have to be a registered agent in good standing, with a bodyguard classification,” Trey explained.
“And they won’t mind that the child in question is not a child, but a monkey?” Reece wasn’t so sure about Trey’s plan.
“As long as we’re paying the union rate, they’ll provide attentive care for a pet rock. It doesn’t matter.”
He seemed sure, so she agreed to put Dex in the care of a government-approved bodyguard. Before he and Reece left, though, Trey gave the woman explicit instructions as to Dex’s habits, dietary needs, and personal likes and dislikes.
Trey seemed so much like an anxious parent that Reece had to tamp down her amusement to avoid him seeing it.
When he was satisfied that Dex would be well cared for until their return, Trey scratched the monkey on the head. “We won’t be gone too long. I’ll see you soon.”
Dex didn’t seem to mind their departure. He was too busy inspecting the buttons on his temporary caregiver’s coat.
That left Reece and Trey free to kick ass, take names, and get the hell back to the Machete System.
She was ready to get this done.
“His tracker’s been in the same location since we came down on the shuttle,” she told Trey as he drove. Their rental car wasn’t much to look at, but Trey assured her it would be safe and reliable. Most importantly it allowed for manual operation, which was a must in their line of work.
“So we can assume he’s arrived as his destination,” Trey surmised.
“It would seem so.”
“Have you been able to determine what that location is?” he asked, his eyes on the road ahead.
“Not precisely. It belongs to a parent corporation that controls a lot of local real estate. No details on whether that particular building is currently under lease or occupied by the owner. And I’m not coming up with any clues about the purpose of the place. I’m trying to cross-reference business names with it, but not finding any matches.”
“Hm. I’m not sure what that means,” Trey admitted,
“Me either. It’s not uncommon on Akon for a bigger company to lease space to a smaller one, or for a particular location to route its official correspondence through a location at a different headquarters. It could be a similar thing here.” The lack of certainty annoyed her. She liked knowing exactly what she was headed into. Uncertainty meant risk.
She kept her tone upbeat, though. She didn’t want him to get psyched out before they even arrived. “We’ll just have to case the place, find out what we can, and adjust as we go. I’ll keep digging. It’s on the far side of Istanba, so we have an hour before we get there; maybe I’ll hit on something.”
“That’d be nice.” He didn’t give any hint of nervousness, but he was so good at being inscrutable when he wanted to be.
Reece had never attempted an infiltration job with a partner. She wished she could know for sure if he was ready for something like that.
She spent the rest of the ride trying to find anything out about Fitzmiller’s location, only to come up empty.
When they finally got their eyes on the place and drove around its perimeter, it looked like any other tall building in an industrial-commercial area. No identifying marks had been emblazoned on its outside, nor did any incriminating delivery trucks indicate what was going on within.
The parking lot had a few cars, which was reasonable given the proximity of the city’s transit maglev. Grass surrounded the building, with trees spaced evenly throughout.
“You sure this is the spot?” Trey asked.
She shot him a dirty look.
“Right.” He nodded as he parked the car in an adjacent lot. “So what now?”
“It’s about lunchtime, right?”
After a moment’s pause, while he was probably checking the time, he answered, “Yeah.”
“So we’ll order some food.”
He looked at her like she’d suggested he do naked backflips down the street. “You’re that hungry?”
“Not for us,” she said, her eyes on the building. “For them.”
* * * * *
Thirty minutes later, just as promised, a guy on a motorbike parked neatly in the delivery zone just outside the building’s front door. He stepped off, removed his helmet, and picked up a package that had been secured to the back end of the motorbike.
He wore a pair of plain blue pants and a white button-up shirt, and after a brief wait at the door, disappeared inside.
Reece stared hard at the door, watching time elapse to the left of her vision. Four minutes and twelve seconds after he’d entered, the delivery guy emerged empty-handed. A minute later he motored away on his bike.
Trey started the car and turned back the way they’d come. “I saw a place on the way in, just a few minutes down the road.”
She nodded, glad that he’d caught on, and was ready to play along.
She hoped he was ready for the next part.
* * * * *
Reece stepped out of the car, dressed neatly in blue slacks and a white button-down blouse. She felt naked without her weapons, but Trey had reminded her that a delivery person would not have any. This wouldn’t work if she seemed like anything but a delivery girl.
She walked around the car and removed a box with a large cake inside. Rather than go to the front door, she walked down the side of the building, noting the placement of the windows and doors, and trying the handle of a side door half way down.
Locked. It had been worth a try. This would have been a lot easier if she’d been able to sneak in.
Taking a deep breath and pasting on a bland, professional smile, she walked back to the front entrance and rang the buzzer.
“Yes?” a tinny voice asked.
“I have a cake delivery from Harrington’s,” Reece announced, keeping her voice even.
“That’s not on the delivery list.”
Damn. How had the guy before her gotten in? Taking a risk, Reece said, “It was supposed to be delivered with the food from Grimaldi’s, but it didn’t get picked up. They told me to deliver it separately.”
Reece held her breath, hoping the lure of cake would be her ticket in.
The door clicked. She reached out, pulled, and felt a rush of success when it opened.
First hurdle completed.
Beyond the door was a narrow hall, which she followed for a dozen meters to a double door. She pushed one side open and entered a small room where a woman sat at a receptionist’s desk, looking bored.
Bored was good. Reece could work with that.
As Reece moved, she kept an image of her position in relation to Fitzmiller’s tracker up in the right side of her vision. It appeared he was in the back of the building.
She made a show of gingerly putting the cake down on the desk and letting out a sigh of relief. “Whew. I was afraid I’d ruin it. Why they make them so fancy, I’ll never know. They all taste the same, right?”
She extended a small signatory device. “If I could get your signature to verify that it arrived intact?”
The woman looked from Reece to the large box, frowning. “I’m not supposed to leave my desk. Why don’t you take it to the break room? Third door on the right.”
She pressed a button, releasing the door to the hallway leading further into the building.
Reece put on a brave face. “Right. Third door. Could you, uh, hold the door for me?”
“Sure.”
Reece didn’t have to fake being worried as she carefully edged through the doorframe. She’d purchased the fanciest cake the store had on display, and it weighed a good fifteen pounds. If she lost her grip and dumped the whole thing in a heap on the floor, no doubt she’d find herself outside the building, pronto.
“Third door, you said?” she asked, careful to make herself sound slightly out of breath.
“Yep. Right down this hall.” The woman pointed, then turned away, returning to her post.
The door shut behind Reece and she did a mental victory dance. She’d gotten another step closer.
The third door revealed a nondescript break room, complete with a coffee kettle, a refrigerator, and several tables. It was a smallish room, not intended for a great many people.
It did, however, have an exterior emergency door. Thank goodness for these Eashirans and their paranoia of kidnappings, because it meant a whole lot of emergency exits.
She slid the cake box onto the counter near the kettle and turned to her next challenge.
The trick in opening the exterior door, of course, was in not triggering an alarm system, which might or might not be present. She hoped it wouldn’t be; that this room had the exterior door so that workers could enjoy a breath of fresh air and some sunshine while on break, even if they weren’t technically supposed to.
Fortunately, she had a secret weapon.
Thirty seconds later, he responded,
She did.
It was probably a fire sensor. Probably. Building codes could be different here, though. So she wasn’t completely certain. Without a way to tell, she had no choice but to risk it. She had maybe a minute or two before that receptionist came looking for her, and they wouldn’t get a second chance at this.
She pushed the door open.
Trey stood there, and no alarm started blaring at them.
She let out a breath. “Wait here!” she hissed at him.
She hurried back out the way she came, slowing her pace as she approached the door the woman had held for her.
“Thanks!” she called, not stopping on her way out of the building.
“Wait!” the woman called.
Well, shit.
Reece turned to meet the woman’s gaze. Should she run for it?
“I keep meaning to put in a standing order for a variety of muffins to be delivered every weekday morning. Could you do that for me, before I forget again?”
“Sure,” Reece agreed quickly. “Any preferences?”
“Just a variety of the sweet ones. Nothing savory.”
“Right. I’ll put that in for you. Anything else I can do for you?”
“No, that’s it. We love your cakes!”
Reece smiled brightly. “That’s what we like to hear! Have a great day.”
“You too.”
As the door closed behind her, Reece inhaled a long breath. She got into the rental car, drove it out of the parking lot and into a side street. She tucked her pulse pistol under her shirt, and then sprinted back to Trey’s location.
Trey didn’t respond, and the door didn’t open. Cautiously, she pulled on the handle, worried that it might have automatically re-engaged the locking mechanism.
It opened, and she stepped into the empty break room.
Sure enough, when she looked at the cake box, one corner of the lid was partway up and there were crumbs on the table.
Trey responded immediately.
That was interesting in and of itself, but at least he didn’t hear any voices. But then m
aybe he wouldn’t be able to anyway, from wherever he was.
She’d have to just go for it.
She emerged in the hallway, taking care to walk normally, in case the hall had security cameras, or if someone crossed her path. She might be able to claim to have gotten lost if she was just walking along.
One door…two…three. She opened it and ducked inside, closing the door behind her.
She found herself standing nose to nose with Trey. Well, actually more like nose to neck, since he a lot was taller. But they were staring at each other with no buffer space between, and an unpleasant aroma invading her nose. A dim light above gave her just enough to see by.
“Trey?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I think this is a supply closet.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too.”
She waited a beat. “Trey?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are we in here?”
“Like I said, some dude sounded really excited about cake, and was moving pretty fast. So I ducked in here. Then you were on your way and I thought it was better if I stayed still.”
She supposed that made sense. “Okay. Let’s leave now.”
“I’m right behind you.”
She was willing to bet that there were no cameras in this part of the facility, or someone probably would have arrived to see why the cake girl and some guy were shacking up in a supply closet.
She snorted at the thought as they hurried down the hall.
“What?” he asked as they found a stairwell.
“Nothing. What do you think, up or down?” She looked at the ascending and descending stairs, but neither gave her any clues.
As he looked at each one, she hoped they wouldn’t hear someone suddenly entering the stairwell, but it seemed unlikely someone would choose this route over the elevator.
“Since I have no logic at all to rely on, I’m going to say down, because in stories, whenever bad things happen, it’s in some dark, dank basement.”
“Fine. Down, then.” She started for the stairs, but Trey held out an arm.