by Cathy Pegau
Willem’s eyes held mine. “As far as necessary.”
Despite discomfort at the idea of selling myself, I could only nod. But that didn’t mean I’d take their shit without being sure of the job’s viability. Official involvement gave me the right to know more. “Where did you get the information about the filters?”
Willem and Chaz exchanged looks and shrugs I interpreted as “As much fun as it is to be the asses who keep to ourselves, we should share.”
“A friend did a little time at one of the Exeter managed correctional mines five years ago,” Chaz said.
A friend? Where was this “friend” now? Back inside? Dead? Sitting across from me with his hand on a blonde’s thigh?
“Rumors about a new filtering system sounded like more than inmate chatter,” he continued. “When he got out, I brought it up to Willem and we did a little recon.”
“One thing led to another,” Willem added, “and here we are.” He straightened his tie and stared at me. “Any other questions, Liv?”
This was my cue to shut up, so of course I had another question. I leaned toward Willem, holding his ice-blue gaze. “How reliable are your sources? Other than this friend, I mean.”
“Practically from Talbot herself. We’re not chasing our asses here. The intel is good, but we need the corroborating files to snag them by the short hairs.”
Nice visual, that.
“Is that satisfactory?” He smiled, but it wasn’t warm and reassuring.
“Sure,” I answered. “For now.”
He fished inside his jacket and withdrew a narrow, pinkie-long data stick. The hardware plugged into a standard jack on any computer or personal comm. “This has information on her, an overview of the data systems Exeter uses and the Exeter chain of command flow chart. We’ll get you into Talbot’s office after next week, so be ready.”
I took the stick from him. “Don’t I have to apply for a job or something?”
Willem’s grin was just this side of disturbing. “Already in the works. Part of what we obtained in the first stage was access to their Human Resources department. We’ll create your résumé and get it to the top of their list. I’ll send you a copy to study. It’s a temp job, so HR will handle it and a face-to-face interview isn’t required. Talbot will likely read your file, but unless there’s something glaring she probably won’t care who’s sent.”
He started toward the door with Chaz and Natalia, who followed like sulky shadows. Tonio and I trailed behind them.
“Doesn’t Talbot have an assistant now?” I asked.
Chaz glanced over his shoulder and winked at me. “That’s been taken care of.”
I managed not to visibly cringe, though my skin wanted to crawl away and hide. Thoughts of the guy who had ratted out the elder Grey came to mind, and I shuddered. Maybe this was going to be a bit rougher than I realized. “You didn’t—”
Willem, Chaz and Natalia all turned toward me, doubt blossoming in their eyes.
“Relax, Liv,” Tonio said. “It’ll be fine.”
In other words, Shut up, Liv, you’re already in too deep to balk now.
Willem and Tonio shook hands. “I’ll get in touch with you two next week.” He gave me a stern nod, and the three of them left.
Tonio closed the door. “No one will be intentionally hurt. I wouldn’t have signed on with them myself if that were the case.”
Suddenly chilled, I crossed my arms over my chest. “I know.”
Tonio had never been one for unnecessary violence. We’d always been grateful when a job came off without incident; most folks were smart enough to do what the people with the guns told them to do.
I hoped he hadn’t changed his M.O. for these guys.
He rested his hands on my shoulders, his fingers massaging my tense muscles. “There’s always a chance of someone getting hurt. You’ve known that from the beginning. Even one of us,” he said softly.
My chin rose with my defenses. “Is that concern or warning?”
Confusion filled his eyes. “Concern. I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
“No,” I said, stepping backward out from under his hands, “you save that little treat for yourself.”
The words came out before I had a chance to think them through. Another reason to follow Rule Number One; it kept me from making foolish and ill-timed remarks. Usually.
Maybe part of me wanted Tonio to finally understand what I’d felt three years ago. From the hurt and anger in his eyes, I’d made my point.
“That’s not fair, Liv. We both knew it was over long before I left. Punching a guy in the chest to keep his heart pumping doesn’t make him alive.”
Great. He was comparing our broken marriage to a near-corpse. And what happened to near-corpses who weren’t properly tended? Exactly.
The sting of tears caught me by surprise, and I dug my fingers into my upper arms to stop the flow. I thought I’d gotten over the death of our marriage a long time ago. I’d be damned, and damn stupid, to let him see me cry. Turning away, I went to the closet for my coat. “Let’s not make this any worse.” I kept my back to him as I shrugged into my jacket.
“Shit,” he muttered. “I did a piss-poor job as a husband. I know that, and I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. But it’s not like you were spouse-of-the-year either.”
He had a point.
When we faced each other again I could see his remorse. That was something, anyway.
“Is this going to be a problem?” he asked. “For the job, I mean.”
Ah, Tonio. I could always count on him to keep us from delving too deeply into our feelings. He was much better at obeying the Rules than I was.
“No,” I said as I headed to the door, “no problem at all. I told you I wouldn’t do anything to mess up the hit, and I meant it.” I opened the door and held up a hand to stop him as he started to follow me out. “I’ll find my own way. I’ve gotten quite good at it.”
I maintained a normal routine at Alpha-Omega the following week while getting to know Exeter, R. J. Talbot and my new background. Neither Tonio nor Willem contacted me. They were busy setting up living arrangements and jobs at Exeter headquarters in Pandalus, a city across the continent a few thousand kilometers.
The workings of the Exeter power structure weren’t terribly exciting. A corporation is a corporation is a corporation. It didn’t surprise me that Talbot was one of only a handful of women in any position of real power there. Despite the Equal Work Articles in the Nevarro Constitution, it wasn’t easy for a girl to get ahead in some of these old-boy networks, even in the twenty-second century.
However, R. J. Talbot wasn’t just any girl, according to her file. Not only as an exception to the gender rule, but as an exception to most rules.
Regina Jadzia Talbot had been born into a family of spacers who’d spent the last several generations hauling cargo between the Colonies. From what I’d heard it was barely-scrape-by kind of work. Young R.J. apparently decided the cramped, smelly quarters of a freighter weren’t for her. Couldn’t blame her there. She’d gotten a hands-on education in mechanics and engineering aboard ship then attended a private university on Hamlin with a full-ride scholarship.
R.J. came to Exeter fresh out of school and rose from assistant site engineer to Chief Engineer to VP of Research and Development in just under fifteen years. Though recent pics showed a stunning, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties, the spark in her green eyes told me she hadn’t slept her way to the top.
Sitting on my dingy couch in my dingy flat, I touched the icon for a vid file labeled “Talbot @ Mining Symposium.” The clip started as she stepped up to a podium before a room full of suited people, Exeter’s giant gold E emblem on the wall behind her.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said with a smile. Her husky alto floated from the speaker of my comm. She had a strong voice, but not loud or overbearing.
I ignored the presentation images behind her as she spoke to concentrate on the woman, to learn what I c
ould from her expressions and gestures. Focusing on R. J. Talbot was not a hardship. If it had been anyone else talking about breakthroughs in ore spectrum analysis, I would have shut off the comm before a minute passed. But her enthusiasm for the subject captivated me as much as her looks did. The way her eyes lit up when she discussed the research her labs had conducted and the strides they’d made in distinguishing ore quality. The cooler tone of her voice and the lines of strain around her mouth when she mentioned “readjustment of fiscal priority” had put the project on hold for several years. I wondered if that was corporate code for “The guys with the purse strings were damn stingy.”
Every so often, her steel-green gaze met the recorder and held there, as if she were speaking directly to me. My stomach fluttered. I’d have to keep a cool head when I finally met Talbot in person. She was a beautiful woman. A smart, beautiful woman. And my job was to outsmart her.
By the beginning of the next week I still hadn’t heard from Tonio or Willem, but I did get a visitor.
Sitting in my semi-partitioned cubicle, plugging in numbers that seemed to blur together more often of late, I heard a distinctive moist throat clear behind me. Even if the Exeter job fell through and I was arrested or forced to take work as a muck hauler, I was more than ready to ditch A-O just to get away from Rudy the Phlegm.
“What do you want?” I asked with my back to him. “I’m trying to work here.”
The position of floor supervisor afforded Rudy all the respect he deserved.
He rasped again. “Visitor, Olivia.”
I swung my chair around so fast I almost fell off. Was Rudy making an attempt at some kind of a joke? No one outside A-O, except Cal and Tonio, knew I worked here. I’d taken extra care in keeping my known whereabouts limited. But Rudy’s glittering dark eyes and razor-straight line of a mouth held more disapproval than hilarity. It seemed.
“Who?” I stood, my gut churning from the sudden movement.
He glanced around, making sure the rest of the peons weren’t listening. Which they were. I knew I’d be, were our positions reversed. His wide forehead wrinkled as he focused on me again. “Break room two. Make it quick.”
Someday I’d get him to speak in complete sentences.
He didn’t answer my question, but now I knew it wasn’t an upper level A-O exec. If it had been, Rudy would have been more smug than miffed about my unscheduled break. Visits from them meant you’d be looking elsewhere for gainful employment. Another example of the A-O “human touch” instead of some note in your comm Inbox telling you to clear out your cube.
I slipped past Rudy, feeling his disapproval burn into my back until I turned down an aisle between more drab cubicles. Curiosity about who could be asking for me made my palms sweat. Tonio? Possible, but not probable. He wouldn’t make the mistake of connecting us. Unless something had gone wrong.
Shit.
I realized I’d been standing at the door of Break Room Two with my hand on the latch for almost a minute. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t astrally project myself into the room or penetrate the metal door with my nonexistent microwave vision to see who it was. I opened the door.
And it took every gram of will power to look merely perplexed rather than slam the door shut and make for the nearest exit.
Wearing a tatty blue wool coat, Sheriff Nathan Sterling leaned against the stainless steel counter, sipping what the A-O commissary claimed was coffee. He set the chipped company mug down and stepped toward me. “Miss Braxton. Thanks for seeing me.”
I shook his hand, silently cursing Rudy. My supervisor—the bastard—was probably sitting in his own little cubicle laughing his weaselly ass off.
“Not a problem, Sheriff,” I lied. “Though I’m surprised to see you here.”
That certainly was true.
He released my hand and slid his palm over his short hair. “I tried to find your home address, but there must have been some glitch when we took your information.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I wasn’t. The bogus addy on my ID was just real enough to keep my flat off official screens. Unfortunately, my work location was legitimately in the system. While Alpha-Omega didn’t hand out employee directories, lawmen had access to tax files and such. One can’t have everything. “What can I do for you?”
He gestured for me to have a seat in one of the six chairs surrounding a dinged and scratched table. “I’ve got some pictures I’d like you to look at.”
Luckily I was lowering myself into a chair, because my knees wobbled like a drunk in low G. Pictures. He had images from the Milchner heist? I made sure my apprehension didn’t show on my face. He was trained to sniff out the likes of me, but I’d spent a few years playing it cool myself. “They were masked. How could I be of any help?”
Sterling reached into an inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a handheld. So they were modernized in Milchner. He powered up the unit and tapped screen icons. “If you could just give these a look. You never know what might trigger the mind.”
There was an odd glint in his blue eyes. I couldn’t read it, and I hoped he couldn’t read me either.
“I’ll do my best.”
The lawman turned the unit toward me. The black display screen began to brighten.
Okay, Liv, here it comes. You are a rock. You feel nothing.
A low-resolution washed-out color picture of a strange man popped up. He was balding, with dark hair and squinty eyes. I stared hard at him for a few moments then shook my head. Sterling tapped, and the screen changed to someone I did recognize. Willem. It was a candid shot of him looking toward something to the side. Another thoughtful perusal, another shake of my head. He changed the picture again. Chaz’s grimace filled the screen. It was an official picture of some kind. His CCM ID?
“No.”
A fourth picture.
Tonio. Another candid shot, but a head-on view of his handsome face and shoulders. The background was blurry, but was that the top of someone’s head just to his right? My head?
My toes clenched inside my boots, but otherwise I kept my outward reaction the same. I hoped.
The screen split into four miniatures of the men.
“I’m sorry. I don’t recognize any of them.”
Sterling’s eyes stayed on me. Maybe he’d gotten the drift adjusted. “You haven’t seen them in your neighborhood or anything, have you?”
I shook my head. “What’s this about? Why would these men come to my neighborhood?”
He rubbed the corner of his fake eye as his gaze skittered across the table before returning to me. “Miss Braxton. Olivia.” Uh-oh. He flicked a finger across the screen. Large, red words flashed beneath an official-looking seal. “I found Intercolonial Alerts on some of these men. They’re very dangerous.”
Willem and Chaz? Dangerous? I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
“It’s not like I could pick them out for the bank robbery,” I said. Let’s just ignore that I was an accessory after the fact, which was a lesser crime, but a crime nonetheless.
Had Sterling somehow linked me to the Greys and Tonio? A ball of ice coalesced in my gut. I had to throw him off; the best defense was a good panic.
I let my eyes widen and crossed my hands over my chest, like trying to hold my heart in. “But now I can ID them, thanks to you. Are you trying to get me killed?”
The lawman frowned as if I’d asked him what his illicit drug of choice might be. “Take it easy, Miss Braxton. I wanted to give you warning in case they decided to eliminate witnesses. One of them did such a thing, on Deemers, despite his never being identified.”
I swallowed back bile. Not Tonio. Chaz was my first choice for witness tampering in that manner, though Willem had a coldness in his eyes. And who knew about the strange man. Maybe he was some kind of silent partner. Other than Tonio, I wasn’t sure who the Milchner thieves had been.
“I’ve gone to see the Crosbys,” Sterling continued, “and was going to visit Mr. Trotter after I left here.”
Cal.
“Let me tell him, Sheriff.”
He fixed his lawman’s narrow-eyed gaze on me. “That’s not your job.”
“I know.” I had to come up with some reason to keep him away from Cal. Not only did I owe my former partner some peace and quiet, but the fewer people who could connect me with Tonio and the Greys, the better. “The thing is, Sheriff, Cal and I are more than friends, if you get my meaning.”
I gave him a sheepish smile then glanced away. Playing guilty was as easy for me as playing innocent.
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me for a full three seconds. “I’m guessing there’s a Mrs. Trotter.”
“I’m afraid so. Cal is nervous enough about our…liaisons…that if anyone were following him he’d know it. I doubt your thieves have been looking for him but just in case, I’d be happy to give him the head’s up.”
With the quirk of a blond eyebrow, his esteem for me dropped a few notches, but it was the price I’d have to pay. “And avoid my letting Mrs. Trotter in on your friendship with her husband,” he said with less warmth in his voice.
Goodness. Allude to a little adultery, and the world’s against you. Not that there was any such thing going on. Cal and I were friends. Period. I knew about Debra, and she knew about me, but we’d never met. Cal liked to keep his private life private.
Sterling pushed away from the table and stood. “Fine, Miss Braxton. Tell Mr. Trotter to call me if he sees anyone suspicious.”
I stood as well and offered my hand. He took it, but I could feel his new coolness toward me. “I’ll tell him. And thank you.”
He gave me the lawman nod of dismissal and left.
I sank back into my seat and rested my head in my hands as both relief and concern filled me. I’d tell Tonio and Willem about my visitor as soon as I could. Maybe they already knew something of the sheriff’s investigation. Hopefully he’d return to Milchner without further ado; Sterling was nosy for a local lawman.
By next week we’d be in Pandalus, and I’d be off his screen. This job would either be the pinnacle of my criminal career or see me swinging a pick along a vein of keracite.
