Detective Wilcox
Page 17
He finally found her on the top floor, near where her car was parked in the middle of debris from the wall.
She reached down to pick up something off the floor and shouted a couple of curse words. Nearby agents looked over at her to see what was wrong.
A uniformed officer said, “You alright, ma’am?”
“I’m fine. Glass cut me, that’s all.”
“The suspects were using a med kit before everybody showed up. It’s right over here.”
She turned holding a bloody finger and walked past Applegate. The officer gave her the med kit and she fished out a bandage.
Applegate opened his mouth to say something, then he closed it. He walked over and watched as she cleaned off her bloody finger and applied the patch.
He said, “How’s your shoulder doing, Wilcox? From the blaster hit.”
She grinned at him and said, “Nanobots take care of everything.”
“You didn’t bleed as much from that shot as you are from this cut.”
“That was just a flesh wound. This freaking hurts.”
Applegate gave up. He turned and headed for the stairs, starting to doubt all his prior certainties.
At the top of the steps he said, “Have a good night, Wilcox. The scene is yours.”
40
Montoya met Kruger at an apartment he rented near Octavia Park. It was an anonymous location. She had investigated who, in fact, paid for the rent and discovered the entire complex was owned by a shell company.
One evening each week she showed up here and waited patiently for him. Usually she would spend the time drinking a glass of wine while soaking in the tub.
He was late this evening, and found her sitting in her robe on her third glass while watching the holo.
A political satire show was on, with their own Severs impersonator dancing around and acting goofy. Every few seconds he’d stop and point at the camera.
“Gitcha some!”
The door swished shut behind Kruger and he said, “Turn that off.”
Montaya sat up and made a motion it the air, cutting the holo.
She stood, placing her glass down and reached out to hug him. Then they kissed.
She pulled back and looked at him while holding his shoulders.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?”
Kruger said, “That son of a bitch keeps climbing in the polls, no matter what. Nothing hurts him. Now even ‘Gitcha some’ is his unofficial slogan, even though he never says it. Everybody else says it for him, like those stupid comedy shows.”
He sat down in the chair and picked up the wine bottle. He looked at the label then tilted it back and drained what was left in a few gulps.
He wiped his mouth and said, “Nothing hurts him. No matter what happens.”
“Well . . . “
Montoya moved behind the chair and rubbed Kruger’s shoulders.
“Maybe he will just have to get hurt instead.”
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Much later that night, everybody cleared the crime scene except for one last uniformed officer. He stood in the open doorway as Gina went to the ground floor to check on him.
“We’re going to keep a car parked out here on the street, ma’am,” he said.
She nodded and said, “Good idea. The door in the basement is sealed, she can’t get back in that way. We have a camera nearby, and the reflection field has been disabled. So, hopefully if our fugitive tries to come back someone or something will see her.”
“Well, we’ll keep some human eyes on the door, too. Never hurts.”
Gina moved to head back upstairs when someone out past the police line called for her.
“Ms. Wilcox? Ms. Wilcox!”
She and the officer turned to look and they saw Del Rio waving at her.
She left the doorway and walked out to the perimeter line.
“Hey, you. Uh, Javon right? It’s like Jay Van instead of Have On.”
“That’s pretty good, Ms. Wilcox. Always impressive when someone can remember your name, as well as how to pronounce it.”
“That was a great story on the nightclub shooting. You did the Navy proud and made the petty officer look good.”
“Great. Maybe we can talk some more?”
“Sure. I don’t feel like talk about work tonight, though. It’s been a long day, you know?”
“No problem. Can I buy you a drink? We can talk about everything else besides work.”
“Will anything I say end up on the news in the morning?”
“No. Not unless you want it to.”
“Okay. My car is, uh . . . upstairs at the moment. I’ll have to go back up and get it. I think it still works. It took a couple shots. If it doesn’t work I’ll call an autocab.”
“Great! There’s this place I can meet you at. It’s called Skullduggeries . . .”
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The following morning, Gina woke up late.
For a moment she worried about work, then remembered it was the weekend.
She settled back and reflected on last night.
Skullduggeries happened to be a very nice place aimed at the older singles crowd. The evening turned into something of a group date, since Boggs and Collier were already there. The four of them shared a few drinks and everyone opened up about their personal lives.
Soon, Boggs and Collier were sharing war stories. Del Rio served as a war correspondent, but never got close to much of the action. If he felt like the odd man out, though, he never said anything. He seemed easy going and best of all not intimidated by the agents.
Most men that Wilcox found herself liking over the years were intimidated by her. But Del Rio seemed very relaxed. And, if she was reading his signals correctly, he was interested in her, too.
Her implant sent an incoming call signal. She turned on her personal holo and sat up in bed.
“Hi, Mama.”
Gertrude “Granny” Wilcox smiled at her from her house on Halcyon, a former League frontier planet. It was the scene of considerable fighting. The population decided to align with Lute after the war, rather than rejoining the League or linking up with the Republic.
Granny held two babies, one in each arm, rocking them gently. They were fraternal twins, a little boy in a cute blue outfit and a little girl in pink.
“Hey there,” Granny said. “Ain’t these the purtiest things? When are you gonna get hitched and deliver me some of these?”
“Don’t hold your breath, Mama.”
“You keep saying that. If you wait too long, the tides of youth are going to depart, girl. It’s easier to attract a man while before the petals fall off, you know what I mean?”
“I’m busy with work right now, Mama.”
Granny snorted.
“Look, forget work. Alls you have to do is advertise the fact you’re one of the wealthiest bachelorettes in the galaxy and you’ll be swarmed by men.”
“Yeah. I’m not going to do that, Mama.”
“At least go out and mingle with people your own age! You can’t tell me there’s no decent men on Diego. Heck when I was there in my prime I had gentlemen calling me every week. I had to beat them off with a stick. Literally. I beat some of them up for getting too fresh with me. Kicked one bastard right in the gonads.”
“Well there is a guy I kind of went out with last night . . .”
“Oh? Spill the beans, girl. What’s he like? What’s he do for a living?”
“He’s a reporter for the Zeitung.”
“A reporter? Now listen here, girl. Never trust anyone who writes for a living. Is he an English major? Because they’re the worst.”
“I don’t . . . no, he has a degree in journalism.”
“That’s almost as bad.”
The little boy woke up and started crying.
“Oh! Hush now, you. Look at that. Just talking about liberal arts makes him cry.”
The little girl woke up too and joined in the noise. Granny rocked them both.
“I . . . ew, you smell. I see
why you woke up. Misty! Get in here, the babies need you! Where is that stepdaughter of mine?”
Gina watched as Misty Kozlova came into the room. She said hi to Gina while scooping up the twins from Granny.
When they were gone, Granny turned back to the holo.
“There now. One of the benefits of being a step grandmother is I don’t have to deal with diapers or crybabies. It’s like having all the good parts of a baby and letting someone else handle the bad. Where were we?”
Gina smiled but avoided resuming the discussion about her love live, or lack of one.
She said, “Maybe you should come visit Diego. I bought a place. Or at least, I’m in the process of buying it.”
“Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, maybe I can talk Cason into going on a vacation. Stupid mayoral duties. I’ll be glad when he retires from politics. Hey, y’all got an election coming up. Who’s going to be the next Chancellor of the Republic?”
Gina said, “I hope it’s Admiral Severs. I’m voting for him, but they’re trying to make it hard on him. Have I got some stories to tell you . . .”
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Lead Tetrarch Julius Thrall jogged in from his morning run on the beach, guard bots following.
Here at his palatial Clarion home on the seashore, he had kilometers and kilometers of beachfront privacy.
It was not perfect. Assassins had tried taking him out here before. Pirates kidnapped his daughter once. But, it remained one of the most secure places in the galaxy.
Inside, he hit the shower then changed into his daily attire and walked into his office.
Now there were only two quadrants to govern instead of four. And Epsilon, the hub planet for all four quadrants, was gone as well.
But he and Tetrarch Chu still controlled eight major worlds and a host of minor ones.
He sat down and immediately received a call over the neural net. Few knew how to reach him directly. Fewer still were allowed through by StarCen, whose software engineers had been working valiantly to ensure her code remained free from the corruption that plagued her during the war.
But he trusted the AI enough to take the call. It was one he had been expecting, anyway.
“Talk to me, Finch.”
Finch was the de facto new head of SSI, since Edgar Munk had been taken out by RNI on Epsilon.
Everything in the entire League had been centralized on Epsilon. The Republicans yanked the lynchpin out for several governmental components of the League when they successfully attacked it, he thought.
Thrall managed to keep their fleet from taking Chu’s Euripides by suing for peace, once he escaped Epsilon and made it safely to Clarion.
Eshner Finch’s face appeared in Thrall’s personal holo.
“Triskelion Phase One is complete but we’ve taken heavy losses. Most of our first round of deep cover agents who were activated are down. Their law enforcement is surprisingly good, evidently.”
Thrall’s nostrils flared, a telltale sign he was irritated, but he showed no other outward signs of discontent.
Instead he said, “Begin Phase Two immdediately.”
Finch nodded and signed off, the holo winking out.
“What’s Phase Two?” Raquel Kirkland said, padding into the room barefoot.
She wore a silk robe over cotton pajamas. Raquel was not an early riser like him, and preferred to sleep in while he went on his long morning jogs.
She came around the desk and sat down in his lap, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Phase Two,” Thrall said, “involves the elimination of Chancellor Cole.”
“Oh, good. I love political assassinations.”
She kissed him, and he forgot all about governing the League for the rest of the morning.
The End
Other books by Jaxon Reed
The Redwood Trilogy
Redwood: Servant of the State
Redwood: Twelver
Redwood: Battle Cry
The Empathic Detective Trilogy
The Empathic Detective: A Mystery Thriller
Ghostsuit: An Empathic Detective Novel
Cybershot: An Empathic Detective Novel
The Forlorn Dagger Trilogy
Thieves and Wizards
Pirates and Wizards
Dwarves and Wizards
The Fae Killers Series
Tiff in Time
Ghost of a Chance
Rick or Treat
Booked for Death
The Dungeon Corps Series
Dungeon Corps: Crypts of Phanos
Dungeon Corps: Maze of Menos
Dungeon Corps: Depths of Dwarland
Pirates of the Milky Way
Digital Assassin
Clarion’s Call
Condor Rising
Halcyon’s Heirs
Solar Storm
Tetrarch’s Dilemma
Operation Starfold
Golden Alliance
Subversive Elements
Terminus Epsilon
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Visit Jaxon Reed’s Amazon Page:
https://www.amazon.com/Jaxon-Reed/e/B00Q9N5TQ2/
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For previews of upcoming books, please visit:
https://www.patreon.com/jaxonreed
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