Preying for keeps s-29

by Mel Odom

  The guy swallowed hard and closed his eyes, then reopened them. "All I know about Larisa Hartsinger is that she's dead and you were her boyfriend. The woman in there, she was supposed to be one of her friends. Maybe she'd know where you were."

  "See. Talking's not so hard. Who hired you?" Seeing the fear radiating out of the man, the liquid gleam in his eyes, and knowing he was putting it there, turned Skater's stomach. He was used to the heat of a run, danger nipping at his heels, giving him impetus to do whatever was necessary to survive. But then he thought of Larisa, the way she'd died, and he didn't let any of the weakness he felt show.

  "A guy named Tone," the yabo said.

  Skater nodded. "What for?"

  "Find you. Sit on you. Give him a call when it was done."

  "How were you supposed to get in touch with him?"

  "He gave us a number." The yabo recited it without being asked.

  Skater memorized it easily. He pulled the gun away from the man's head. "You did good. Now I'm going to give you a word of advice. Go catch the next suborbital and get as far away from Seattle as you can."

  Neither of the gunmen said anything.

  Brynna returned to the room, make-up intact again, a fresh layer of foundation partially covering the bruises.

  "You look good," Skater said, knowing it wouldn't take away the pain or the fear, but that it might make her feel a little better. He took her arm and led her out of the doss into the early evening heat, trying to act like he had it all together. Duran covered them all the way to the car.

  "Larisa didn't leave you, Jack," Brynna Rose said, lifting her brandy snifter and taking a healthy slug. "This guy made her do it."

  Skater sat in his seat and felt his breath grow tight inside him. He, Duran, and Brynna were seated at a round table in the back of Murphy's Law, a bar the ork had suggested. Skater had never been in a seedier one, but the dark interior and the accumulated grime assured them of anonymity from the players working the streets.

  "But she did leave me," Skater said. "Five months ago."

  Brynna reached out and patted his hand. "He made her leave you, but I think she hoped you'd come after her."

  "She said she didn't want me around," Skater said, listening to Larisa's words again in his mind.

  "Of course she did. She had to be convincing or he'd have turned you over to Lone Star." Brynna nodded, like it was perfectly understandable.

  Skater took a deep breath and let it out. It was frustrating being this close to some of the answers he needed and still not be able to make any sense of them. "Who is this 'he' you keep referring to?"

  "A street sleaze named Ridge Maddock. He's a fixer, definitely small-time, but he had this jones for Larisa like you wouldn't believe."

  "How was he able to force Larisa to leave me?"

  "First he found out you were a runner, then he found out you were involved in something that happened to someone named Scharnhorn."

  Skater flicked his eyes over to Duran's. The ork met his gaze but gave no outward sign that he recognized the name.

  The Scharnhorn deal had gone down almost two years ago, and the closest the team had ever come to a full-fledged disaster.

  "If she didn't do what Maddock wanted." Brynna said, "he threatened to squeal you to the people looking for you, and maybe Lone Star as well. If she told you, she'd save you, but she'd lose you that way, too. She didn't want that."

  "So she made the deal," Duran said.

  Brynna nodded. "And she got to keep you at least a little longer, at least until the pregnancy started to show. I guess she was hoping something would happen."

  Skater turned away and stared hard through the cigarette smoke at the elongating shadows starting to drape themselves across the front of Murphy's Law, Filling up the hollow spots in the sprawl. The low conversations at the other tables were punctuated by the click of balls coming from the pool table further in the back under long fluorescent lights. A half-dozen humans and metas were scattered down the length of the bar on his right.

  "What was the deal?" Duran prompted.

  "He wanted her to be a surrogate mother," Brynna said.

  "That's whacked," Skater growled angrily, facing the woman. "Larisa didn't even use skillsofts to enhance her dancing. She'd never have gone for something like that."

  "But she did. Jack. She did it for you."

  Skater's mind reeled. He fell back in his chair, feeling numb and disoriented.

  "She should be having the baby any time," Brynna said, laying her hand on Skater's. "Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if you see her-"

  "It is too late," Duran said in a gruff voice. "Larisa's dead."

  "She can't be," Brynna said in a small voice. "I just talked to her a couple days ago."

  "She was killed yesterday," the ork said.

  Brynna lifted her glass with a shaking hand and drained it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, biting her lip as she worked through Duran's words. Fresh tears glinted in her eyes. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. "Who killed her? Those guys back at my place?"

  "We don't know," Duran said with uncharacteristic soft¬ness, "Maybe." He signaled for a round of drinks and the waitress brought them.

  Skater watched the exchange, knowing the ork was taking his position as the soft-sell since he wasn't staying with the conversation. He seized on what Brynna had said. "You talked to Larisa a couple days ago?"

  The woman nodded.

  "She didn't mention the baby?"

  "No."

  "She had it three weeks ago," Skater said.

  Brynna shook her head. "She would have told me. Toward the end, she started talking about the baby all the time. She could hardly wait. She said she thought being a mother would be the first thing she'd ever had a chance to do right."

  Skater worked on keeping his distance from the subject matter. Images of Larisa lying asleep at his side, all baby-soft and cuddly in the early morning light, invaded his mind.

  "She was living in Bellevue when she died," Duran said.

  "I know. She wasn't as happy as I thought she would be. Drek, we used to talk about living in a place like that when we roomed together. Maddock paid for it."

  "Because she was having the baby?"

  "Right."

  "What was going to happen to the child?" Duran asked.

  "I didn't ask," Brynna replied. "See, Larisa got into this thing for all the wrong reasons, but she really got attached to the little guy. The way she could feel him inside her. She told me some days it was like he was turning somersaults and she didn't know how she was going to make it through."

  "The little guy?" Skater repeated.

  Brynna nodded. "Larisa didn't know for sure, but she hoped the baby was going to be a boy."

  Skater remembered the way the second bedroom had been set up, the little girl's bedclothes in the crib. He couldn't help wondering where the baby was. And how many babies there actually were.

  "Larisa was planning to keep it?" Duran asked.

  Mentally kicking himself for not paying better attention to all the angles being laid out on the table, Skater took a sip of his juice and listened more closely.

  "Yes. She had a piece of biz working." Brynna said. "If it came through, she figured she'd have enough to get away from Maddock and take the baby with her. I got the impression Jack was supposed to help her with it."

  Skater looked at Duran, and the ork returned his gaze letting him know they shared the same opinion. "Did she mention any names?"

  "No. Drek, Jack, she was going crazy there at the end. trying to figure out what she was going to do. Everything was mixed up for her. There's nothing else I can tell you, because I don't know any more." Tears ran down her face as she fought against it. She wiped a sleeve across her cheeks and sniffled.

  "Did Larisa ever mention a guy named Tone?"

  "I don't know… I don't think so, but I can't be sure. Why, is it important?"

  "Maybe," Skater said. "Maybe not." Reaching into his ja
cket. Skater took out a certified credstick with a few thou¬sand nuyen on it.

  "I can't take this," Brynna protested.

  Skater rolled it up in her fist. "Yes you can. You can't go back to your doss. And you can't access your own credstick for a few days. You're going to need something to live on. I wish I had more to give you, but I'm pretty tapped out myself at the moment,"

  Her eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. "I can't go off and leave everything I own."

  "You will," Duran said gruffly, "if you want to go on breathing."

  "Just give me a few days," Skater said. "Everything should be back to zero-sweat by then." He spoke with more confidence than he felt.

  "How will I know?"

  "Call this number and let me know where you're staying." Skater wrote the number of a message drop he used under another name on a cocktail napkin and gave it to her. The message drop, set up like the one he was using with Kestrel, went through an answering service. Once a call was made and another password entered, the message dropped through a trapdoor in the system, where it waited to be retrieved by another passcode. For all intents and purposes, he couldn't be made. Even the SIN he had on file with the answering service was false. Since he could call in and pick up whatever messages were recorded, it had a built-in layer of security. "If you don't hear from me, you might want to stay lost awhile longer."

  Brynna nodded, looking more scared than ever.

  "One other thing," Skater said. 'Tell me where I can find Ridge Maddock."

  17

  "It's me," Skater said when Archangel answered the telecom at the safe house. "I've got a name I want to run by you. Ridge Maddock. Small-time fixer. He was connected with Larisa, and maybe to the accounts at the Montgomery doss."

  "Maybe you should stop pushing for a little while," Archangel said. "Get some distance on things."

  The comment confused Skater. He figured she was concerned he'd blow their cover arid somehow lead the people who were hunting them back to the team. Bui for a moment, it sounded like she was concerned about him, too. "I'm okay. Duran's here to make sure I don't hose up too bad."

  She didn't say anything.

  "Have you found out anything about the diplomatic plates?" he asked. He didn't really expect anything, but asking was a way of ending the tense silence. Skater had noticed the official vehicles when viewing the newscast around the warehouse, and it seemed worth looking into.

  "No." Her voice was cool, distant, like all this had nothing to do with her. "There's a lot of IC around those Files, and cracking anything political runs the risk of getting my brain fried to a crisp."

  "Be careful in there."

  "Unlike you, I know when to stop, no matier how responsible I feel." The connection broke.

  Puzzled and more than a little irritated over the conversation even though he didn't know why. Skater broke the connection and walked back to the Eurowind. "She's running Maddock."

  Duran nodded, glanced quickly in the rearview mirrors, and screeched into traffic. "Something wrong?"

  "Nothing I know of," Skater replied as he watched the street around them. A Lone Star cruiser passed them, going the other way fast enough that he knew the blue crew had a definite destination in mind. "We're not any deeper in drek than we were before, but Archangel sounded bent about something."

  Duran handled the car easily, sweeping around the comer of Vine Street and heading north. "What'd she say?"

  Skater told him.

  "It's hard for her," Duran said when he finished.

  "What?"

  “Ties."

  "Between us?"

  "Between her and anybody," the ork answered. "I don't know much about Archangel, including her real name, even though I've known her longer than you. What I do know, though, is that I've never seen her with a friend, or ever mention having one."

  It had been Archangel who'd brought Duran in after working with Skater off and off for three or four months. Elvis was already working with Skater, and he'd brought in Wheeler. Skater had recruited Cullen Trey from a number of possibilities when it became obvious they needed a mage with combat skills. Duran had suggested Shiva to round out the team with chromed muscle.

  "Whatever happened to her along the way to getting here," Duran continued, "she doesn't let anyone next to her."

  "I've noticed," Skater said.

  "Right now," die ork said, "she's scared. She's let herself get closer to us than she planned." He paused. "I think maybe all of us have. Otherwise, we'd have split when we said we were going to. It was the best course of action at first glance."

  "Then why didn't you?"

  "I was checking you out," Duran said. "We discussed that. Elvis had already said he wasn't turning his back on you."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Wheeler stuck by you last night, too, when we were talking about divvying up the files. And Trey isn't the kind of guy to leave a chummer in the lurch if there's something he can do. And Archangel, well, she stuck for her own reasons."

  Skater let the ork's words spin in his head, trying to get used to them. He remembered how alone he'd felt the previous night when the team had left him in the back room of the Bloody Rosebud of Phelia.

  Duran stopped at a red light. "You put together a good team," he said, studying the rearview mirrors. "That's an achievement all by itself. If this had been some private action on your part and you'd gotten your hoop in the wringer all on your own, maybe none of us would have wanted to get mixed up in it. But it wasn't. You went into this thinking it was going to be a big score for all of us, and you got hosed for it."

  "We all did," Skater pointed out.

  "Yeah, but it's beginning to shape up like some of this was personal. Someone used you, and us along with you." The ork made a lane change, running a sedate ten kilometers over the posted speed limit. His fangs were edged ivory against his scarred cheeks. "A fragging lot of weight is hanging out there, waiting to come down on somebody. Even if we ran we'd probably get chased down and geeked one by one. Since we don't know, there's a safety in numbers. Could be whoever set this up figured the team would split up and be easier to get to. Most would have."

  "I know."

  "We run the shadows together," Duran said. "Doesn't make us bosom chummers, but we do have a responsibility to each other. A leader sets the standard on that, lack, and you've set a high one these past three years."

  Skater started to disagree, feeling uncomfortable, but Duran cut him off.

  "It's no bulldrek. When Archangel got me into that first piece of biz with you, I saw a punk kid standing where a man ought to have been. I'd worked with Archangel and couldn't believe she'd have the time of day for someone like you, much less consider following your lead on a run. I never intended to stay on, but in the end your smarts and your nerve sold me."

  "I was surprised you stayed," Skater said, remembering the tension that had existed then.

  "So was I. But the run came off just like you thought it would. And four runs later, it was still the same. Then, when Trey got zapped by that drone during the raid on the simporn blackmailing scam and you went back for him, I knew you were a guy who'd stick even when things got tough."

  "No way I could have left him there."

  "Sure you could have." Duran made the corner, beating out the yellow light at the intersection. "A lot of people would have. I've seen some do it. I respect how you handled it, and so do the others."

  "That hasn't been the only close call," Skater pointed out. "Everyone on this team has covered somebody else's hoop when the chips were down."

  Duran nodded. "Ain't none of us all good or all bad, but not everyone can do the biz together without rubbing each other raw. You kept some of us from each other's throats at different times and made the team work. Me and Shiva, we didn't exactly see eye to eye, but you kept us operational."

  That was putting it mildly, Skater knew, but he didn't offer a comment.

  "I couldn't ever see us getting social togethe
r," the ork said. "But the working relationship was good. Better than most I've been involved with. We live in the shadows, and life is just a run through the shadows, too. That's easy to forget sometimes. And when you're running through those shadows, it's good to know you've got someone you can trust watching your back door."

  "You didn't sound so trusting last night," Skater said, looking at Duran.

  The ork smiled, and the effect looked positively serrated. "You get pushy, kid."

  "Yeah."

  "That's what I meant about being a good leader. Why'd you say that?"

  "So I'd know," Skater answered.

  "And in order for you to know how I think?"

  "You're going to have to know how you think," Skater said.

  "Right. Squares me up with myself first. Takes the focus off whether I should trust you and puts it back where it belongs-on whether I should trust myself."

  "Something like that."

  "So where did you learn to think like that?"

  "Inside my own skin. Lot of drek I had to sort out for myself. Best way I figured to do that was know for sure what was on my mind, how I felt about a person or a situation."

  Duran shook his head. "You'd have made a hell of a first sergeant, kid. In answer to your questions, though, last night I was questioning your loyalty more than I was questioning whether I could trust you. Today, I decided."

  Skater nodded. It was fair.

  "Another thing"

  "What?"

  "That elf dancer you were involved with. How do you feel about her now?"

  Skater was silent for a moment, trying to skull it through but coming up cross-slotted every time. "I don't know. Too much I found out that I didn't know, and too many questions left about things I thought I did know."

  "How about I give you something to kick around in your head?"

  Skater was hesitant. He'd always liked to do his own thinking, then he realized that Duran had probably been leading up to this the whole time. The ork was no slouch, either. "Yeah."

  "You trusted this woman, maybe even loved her. On the surface, it looks like she fragged you over, looking for some kind of score to keep her own hoop from getting jammed."