“Look, ma’am, Reese just stepped out. Could I have her call you?”
“She’s supposed to be here already. I have dinner waiting.”
As if on cue, Jaxon’s stomach rumbled. “I’m sorry. We had a situation and she couldn’t call. We may be another hour. I mean, she may be another hour.”
“Is she okay?” Suspicion threaded through the words.
“Yes. Definitely. I’ll have her call you as soon as she gets back.”
“It’s not like Reese to leave her iTeev behind. What are you hiding?” Her tone became slightly threatening. “Did you steal the iTeev from her? It’s after hours, and she didn’t say anything about working late. Maybe I should call enforcers to track its location.”
“Look, ma’am, Reese is fine. And I went with her to see her new apartment because we knew each other from the Coop—I mean Colony 6.” It was unnerving to spill information this way, but he sensed the old woman wasn’t going to back down without something more, and he wasn’t about to tell her what had happened.
“Ah, I see. That’s quite a coincidence.” Her voice had warmed considerably. “May I ask your name?”
“Name was Jaxon Crawley, back then. I lived next door to Reese.”
Another brief pause. “I think I’ve heard your name before—a long time ago. You know what? I would like to meet you, if you want to come with Reese tonight.” She gave a stilted laugh. “That is, if you finish with whatever you’re doing in time.”
As he pondered her offer, Jaxon realized Reese hadn’t been very forthcoming about her childhood after leaving the Coop, and he wondered if this woman held any answers. He hoped Reese’s life had been better with her aunt than with her sauce-crazed father. Reese hadn’t mentioned him yet, but Jaxon bet she supported her father now—and his drinking habit. Had she gotten him out of Colony 6?
“Thank you. Maybe I will.” Jaxon definitely wanted to meet her too.
He disconnected with Reese’s aunt and looked up Gerry Parker on his own iTeev, linking once again to the enforcer database. He blinked when he saw the word: Deceased. The date was the day Jaxon had left the Coop.
“Oh, Reese,” he murmured.
Suddenly it was difficult to swallow. Memories of the day he’d learned about his mother crashed over him. He’d been stunned at her death, at the stark reality that he would never see or talk to her again. He wouldn’t be able to move her from the colony when he grew up. He’d never be able to question her about his father. Far worse, he felt responsible for her death because he’d witnessed her being strangled in terrifying visions for weeks before that fateful day. Then they had come true. Had his waking dreams somehow caused her murder?
Bobby—then known to him as Enforcer Tennant—had led him away from the house to his shuttle. Away from Reese. Away from everything Jaxon knew or cared about.
“It’ll be okay,” Bobby told him.
Jaxon turned his face from Bobby, but he clung to the words. Through the window of the shuttle, he could see Reese’s small face staring in their direction. She looked as if someone had punched her in the gut—exactly how he felt. Too stunned to cry out or protest or run away. He’d lost everything: his mother, his home, his best friend, his entire life.
When they arrived at the Coop’s enforcer division, Bobby’s hand touched his shoulder. “Come with me. I’ll stay with you until someone from child welfare arrives.”
The kindness in his voice was more than Jaxon could take, and the next thing he knew, he was sobbing and Bobby was comforting him. In that moment, a connection forged between them, and though Jaxon had no idea that his life was about to get a lot worse, that connection would eventually save him.
But he hadn’t been the only one who’d lost everything that terrible day. While Reese had feared her dad more than she loved him, she’d lost every bit as much as Jaxon. The pity he felt for her sat heavy in his chest.
Time passed as Jaxon waited at the hospital, and he found himself watching the Teev with the young couple, which was easier than thinking about the past or his cases. The holo had almost ended when Reese walked into the waiting room, moving slowly. More hair had escaped her braid and blood stained her tan pants, but someone had given her an ill-fitting scrub top that looked three sizes too big and was stained with what might be yellow gravy. “They told me you were here,” she said as he jumped up and went to her. “Thanks for waiting.”
“You thought I was just going to leave?”
“I didn’t know.” Her eyes went to her bag and back to his face, as if reassuring herself that it was intact. Not because she didn’t trust him, he knew, but because when you grew up wanting like they had, possessions had a way of grounding you. He understood that.
“Of course I waited. You’re my partner.” It stung a little that she thought otherwise, though really that reflected on the people she’d worked with at her last division more than her opinion of him. “And I already made an initial report. The captain sent someone out to your place to check for evidence.”
“Thanks.” She glanced over his shoulder at the couple sitting behind him before reaching into the bag to remove her iTeev and a gun, both disappearing under the voluminous folds of her shirt. “If you could carry the rest to a shuttle for me? I think I’ll risk the expense to go to my aunt’s. I’m not up to using the sky train.”
“The captain already ordered an enforcer shuttle, and you can use it to go wherever you want. But I’m surprised they’re releasing you so soon.”
“Just lucky, I guess. Where is this shuttle?”
“It’ll be waiting in the hospital shuttle bay.”
“Let’s go then.” She turned and headed for the door.
Jaxon shouldered her bag and hurried after her, noting her wince every time her right foot hit the ground. She paused in the doorway, peeking out into the hall, looking both ways.
Jaxon laughed. “They didn’t really release you, did they? And I bet you helped yourself to that shirt.”
Her face stiffened into a scowl. “Keep your voice down.”
“Well?” He folded his arms and leaned against the door jam. “What’s going on?”
Her voice lowered to a near whisper, “Okay. They want me to stay overnight, but I can’t. My aunt’s expecting me.”
“You mean, she’s expecting us.” He made the decision quickly. She was his partner and she wasn’t going anywhere alone, not looking like she was about to fall over.
She stared at him, her head tilted sideways. “Excuse me?”
She sounded just like her aunt. “Yeah, your aunt called while you were—”
“What did you tell her?”
“That there was a situation and you were working late.”
“Situation? Seriously?” She blew out a frustrated breath and started down the deserted corridor. “You might as well have told her I was dying. She’s an artist. She has a very active imagination.”
“I think she was too busy being surprised by the fact that we already knew each other to overly stress about your job.”
She stopped walking, blinking at him. “You told her that?”
“She dragged it out of me when she threatened to call enforcers to track your iTeev. But that’s when she invited me to dinner, and I’m starving so . . .” He shrugged. “Sorry. You know me and food.”
“Let’s go then.” She gave him a haunted look and clamped her mouth shut. Probably remembering how he’d been back in the Coop. About the many times they’d both gone without, though programs were in place to make sure kids had adequate, if unexciting, nutrition. They’d become rather creative at times, especially on the days they didn’t have school meals. He wished he hadn’t brought it up.
Now five of the kids they’d known there were dead, their struggle to survive meaningless. It was probably not a good time to ask if Reese had any more names for him to search.
They started down the hallway again in silence, Reese gritting her teeth with every step. He was tempted to offer help, but if she
was stubborn enough to sneak out of the hospital, she’d need to do it on her own two feet.
She gave a sharp nod to the security guard, who was lingering in the corridor, probably making sure Jaxon didn’t go crazy and shoot up the place. The man smiled at Reese and scowled at Jaxon as they passed, but at least he didn’t insist on searching them, and no alarms went off. Jaxon noticed Reese momentarily discarded her torturous gait under the man’s eye—as if she wanted to avoid suspicion—but when they reached the shuttle bay, she was moving slowly again and her breath was coming faster.
Their enforcer shuttle was waiting as promised, the black and red stripes down the silver sides standing out clearly in the nearly deserted space. Jaxon hurried ahead to open the doors with his handprint that would be encoded into the lock. The doors slid back, revealing a muscled, black-clad figure in the front seat, which was laid all the way back. Even then the man filled up the space to bursting. One solid hand clenched an oversized handgun that rested on his chest.
The figure started to move, and both Jaxon and Reese reached for their guns.
Chapter 6
“WHOA, THERE!” SAID the big man, sitting up and blinking at them in the sudden light. Reese expected him to raise the gun, but he let it slip to the side. “Clud, Jaxon,” he said with a groan. “Give a guy a warning when you’re going to wake him, would you? I might have shot you.”
Jaxon put away his gun and motioned for Reese to do the same. She opted for lowering it to her side because putting it away was too much effort. Now that her heartbeat was returning to normal, she remembered seeing this enforcer today when she was being introduced at division and later at the crime scene, but she didn’t know his name.
“You should know better than to crash inside someone else’s shuttle,” Jaxon said.
The man stood with a gracefulness that belied his size. “I’m the one who brought it. Or came with it. I got the guys started on your crime scene and then came here with the shuttle. I know it could get here without me, but the captain said you looked beat, and he wanted someone to make sure you got home okay.”
His eyes shifted to Reese and ran down the length of her body as if searching for wounds. “You’re Reese, right? I’m Hammer. Well, Evan Hammer, but everyone calls me Hammer.” He put out his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t have the opportunity to introduce myself to you today.”
She grinned despite the discomfort standing was causing her. Hammer was a good name for the man, whose fists were large enough to hammer anyone into place or out of the way. “Nice to meet you.” His grip was firm but not crushing; Hammer obviously knew his strength.
Hammer stepped back and indicated his vacated seat. “You look like you need to lie down.”
Reese was grateful for his perceptiveness. “Thank you.” She slipped into the seat and settled back awkwardly. She wished she’d thought to steal a pillow from the hospital room. When Jaxon leaned over to place her bag on the ground in front of the seat, she fished out her extra uniform, still sealed in its plastic covering, and balled it up under the small of her back, where it seemed to relieve the pressure in her side. They’d injected nanoparticles into her and used special laser techniques to stop the bleeding, but Reese wasn’t feeling all that much better. She hoped the painkiller the nurse had given her wasn’t wearing off already.
Outside the shuttle, the men were talking, their voices lowered. Reese focused on the words coming through the open door and caught Hammer saying, “. . . sure they were after her.”
“It seems so.”
Reese sat up, ignoring the spurts of pain that shot through her side. “Show me the evidence.”
“Clud, girl, you have good ears,” Hammer said, squatting down next to the door and handing her a plastic evidence bag holding a receptor screen the thickness of a paper.
Reese recognized her own image staring back at her from the screen. “This is the last official enforcer image I had taken for my file back in New York.”
“I was just telling Jaxon that I found this on the street where you were attacked,” Hammer explained. “You didn’t drop it, did you?”
“No.” Reese’s mouth felt dry and cottony.
Receptors were pre-Breakdown tech that was only available within the enforcer divisions. Enforcers used them when they wanted to show images to potential witnesses of a crime, or to post images in public places to warn locals about a criminal. They were handy, practically indestructible, and reusable.
A receptor with the image of an enforcer was doubly protected. That meant this image had come from someone with access—an enforcer or someone with authority in the CORE. A pus bag. The slur came directly from her memories of her father and what she’d thought of CORE leaders for the first ten years of her life, despite her loyalty and sworn allegiance to them now.
Jaxon’s eyes were like drills, and she finally gave in to the temptation to look at him. “Maybe it was stolen,” she suggested.
“Maybe.” He sounded as doubtful as she felt. He seemed to be waiting for more information, but she didn’t have any to give him.
Hammer shifted his squatted position to include Jaxon. “After you asked to look at the evidence this morning,” he said to Jaxon, “I got to wondering why you asked, and I can only think of one reason. Now that I found this”—he thumbed at the picture—“I think you might have more on your hands than you suspect.”
Reese knew this was connected to Jaxon’s request that she put off submitting her drawing of the enforcers dumping the body. What had she walked into? She’d expected Dallastar to be wilder than New York—or any place in Estlantic—but everything that had happened so far was beyond her expectations.
“This is the real reason you came tonight, isn’t it?” Jaxon said.
Hammer gave a few ambiguous shakes of his head that seemed to satisfy Jaxon but left Reese unsure.
“Anyone else know about this receptor?” Jaxon asked.
“Only the captain and the two enforcers with me tonight.” Hammer patted the side of the shuttle and came to his feet.
“Okay then,” Jaxon said. “Let’s tell Garrett as well and keep it at that. There has to be a way to track whoever loaded Reese’s image onto the receptor.”
“Not with anything I have at my disposal. There are no fingerprints and the number is wiped clean. There were millions of these created pre-Breakdown. More than we’ve needed in the past eighty years. It could have come from anywhere.”
Jaxon thought a moment. “We could track inventory and determine what receptors should be there but aren’t.”
“Maybe, but my guess is no. If this is what we think, there won’t be any trail.” Hammer’s massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. “But I do see that letting everyone know about this could undermine our efforts to find the culprit—not to mention damaging morale in our division.”
“What about that information you said you were tracking down earlier?” Jaxon asked. “Any word?”
Hammer’s glance slid down to Reese, as if he was reluctant to talk in front of her. “Still waiting on a guy. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
It was all too much. Biting back her discomfort, Reese leaned forward, punched the automatic controls on the shuttle, and rattled off her aunt’s address.
“Arrival in thirty-eight minutes at top speed,” the shuttle informed her. “Is that satisfactory? Or do you wish to engage the emergency siren? Arrival at maximum speed is twenty-eight point four minutes.”
Theena would love that. “Top speed is fine,” she said, settling back on the seat. “No sirens.”
“We can take it from here,” Jaxon told Hammer, hurrying around to the other front seat. “Thanks for coming.”
“Call me if you need anything.” Hammer lifted a hand in farewell as the shuttle, on automatic drive, pulled out of the parking space.
They’d been traveling what seemed like only minutes when the shuttle came to a stop. Reese opened her eyes with a groan. “Already?”
Jaxon turned
in the seat. “Sorry. I asked the shuttle to make a detour. I’m thinking maybe you don’t want to go to your aunt’s house covered in blood and wearing a nurse’s dirty scrubs.”
She bit back another groan. “I have some night clothes in my bag. The pants maybe could pass.”
“That’ll do. I’ll find you another shirt.” He opened the doors. “You coming up?”
She wanted to see his place and understand more about him, but the idea of moving was too daunting. “I can change here.”
“Keep the doors shut while I’m gone?”
She reached for her bag and took out her automatic rifle. “Sure.”
His lips twitched with a hint of a grin. “Okay then. Be right back.”
She’d barely managed to shuck off her black dress pants, pull on her pajama bottoms, and re-loop her belt and holster around her waist before Jaxon returned. Thank CORE she’d brought her more sensible night clothes. At age ten, she’d been in her underwear with him more times than she could count, but this was decidedly different.
Jaxon looked like a new person in the dark slacks and snug white shirt that was open far enough at the neck to expose some of his chest. The hair on the front of his scalp near his bandaged wound was wet and slightly messy, giving him that just-out-of-bed appearance. She looked away before her interest became a stare.
He tossed her a shirt as he slid into the shuttle, and then averted his gaze as she painstakingly pulled off the nurse’s top and buttoned his blue plaid shirt. “All finished,” she said as she began rolling up the sleeves. At least the plaid covered the bulge of her awkwardly hanging belt and holster—and hid the ridiculous fuchsia bow on the waistband of her pajamas.
He looked at her, and for a moment something crackled between them that was entirely new. And nice. But he destroyed the moment by shoving her a wet towel. “I think there’s blood in your hair.”
In all her dreams as a young girl, those were words she’d never imagined him saying to her. She laughed. “Thanks.”
WALKING UP TO Theena’s front door felt familiar, like sifting through sketches of people Reese had drawn over the years. The property had been in Theena’s family for over a hundred years, and was in one of the few untouched districts that had survived the looting and damage that rampaged for decades after Breakdown. The four-bedroom house had brown brick outer walls, a wide wooden porch, and steep, brown-trimmed gables that faced north, which protected it from the direct glare of the sun for much of the day. A huge weeping willow in the front right half of the yard obscured the gate to the back yard.
Sketches Page 9
