Stalker's Luck (Solitude Saga Book 1)

by Chris Strange

  “Mayweather,” Eddie said, rolling the name around on his tongue. He didn’t think it suited her. But then, nothing she’d been doing lately suited her.

  The barman pulled out a bottle of champagne. “Will this be suitable, sir?”

  “That’ll be great. You’re going to deliver it now?”

  “I’ll have one of our escorts take it to her.” He slid the bottle into an ice bucket and looked past Eddie. “Perhaps Brittany would oblige.” The escort was approaching from the table. “Brittany, would you mind delivering this champagne to Miss Mayweather’s dressing room on behalf of this gentleman?”

  She gave him a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Of course. Shall I give her your regards, Mr Black?”

  “Not necessary. Just tell her it’s from a fan.”

  She nodded and took the ice bucket. “I’m sure she’ll be delighted.” She turned and walked back across the restaurant, disappearing through a door to the left of the stage.

  Eddie thanked the barman and took his beer on a walk through the restaurant. The spices and smells of the meals being eaten around him turned his stomach. He sat down at an empty table near the stage and waved for a waiter.

  “I’m in the mood for a bit of chicken. What do you have on the menu?”

  “Tonight we’re serving a dish of pan-roasted chicken and squash served with a chard salad topped with bacon vinaigrette.”

  “Sounds delicious,” Eddie said, not caring. “Give me that.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The waiter disappeared. Eddie took a sip of his beer. He looked around the restaurant, making sure none of the staff were looking his way. Then he stood, straightened his jacket, and slipped through the door beside the stage.

  The quiet hubbub of the restaurant died away as he closed the door behind him. He was in a simple synth-wood-lined corridor that bent and continued on, probably behind the stage. Someone was talking somewhere out of sight. He shrugged, felt the weight of his pistol in the holster strapped to the small of his back. If he got to Cassandra, how would they get out? He’d have to move fast. Stay unnoticed as long as possible. Shoot his way out if he had to. He knew this was a stupid plan. But he might never get another chance.

  Dom was going to kill him for this. She wouldn’t understand.

  He moved quietly down to the corner and peered around. No one in sight. He kept moving. Every few metres there was a door. He passed one labelled Storage, another labelled Furniture, and another that said Security. Footsteps were coming from ahead of him, around another corner. High heels. Brittany coming back, perhaps. Too late to turn back. He straightened, preparing a lie that would keep her from calling security for at least a few seconds. Long enough for him to get to her and take her out.

  And then he saw it. His heart hammered. The door ahead of him, where the corridor turned. A name written across it. Lilian Mayweather.

  There was a light on inside, the glow leaking out under the door. Cassandra. Her name formed silently on his lips. He made for the door.

  Brittany emerged from around the corner and stood in his path. Between him and the door. Between him and Cassandra. There was no surprise on her face.

  He opened his mouth. But his prepared story died on his lips. She stared at him with dead eyes and raised her arm. She was holding a pistol.

  “That’s close enough, Mr Gould. Put your hands up.”

  Footsteps behind him. He glanced back, saw three more goons in red suits approaching along the corridor. Two were armed with handguns, one with a submachine gun. They pointed the muzzles at him and glared.

  He could feel the cold metal of his own pistol against his back. It might as well have been on the other side of the system. And the same for Cassandra.

  “Mr Gould,” Brittany said. “I will not ask you again. Raise your hands and get down on the ground.”

  The gun was steady in her hands. She knew how to use it. At least she’d become marginally less dull, he supposed.

  He smiled a mirthless smile and put his hands in the air.

  15

  Eddie stared through the wall-length windows that looked over the city. He could see the strip stretching away below him, all glimmering lights and excited movement. Eleda VI hung overhead, clouds still raging across the planet’s surface. It was quiet. Peaceful. He closed his eyes.

  The back of a hand crashed across his cheek. His eyes jerked open as his head snapped around. He spat blood onto the ground and grinned up at the goon standing over him. The man was round and heavy, eyes too close together.

  “I asked you a question, Eddie.” Another man’s smooth voice behind him. “You don’t mind if I call you Eddie, do you?”

  For the thousandth time, Eddie tested the bonds that held him to the pillar. They weren’t getting any looser.

  “Go right ahead, Jack,” he said. “I guess you’re calling the shots right now.”

  The man stepped into view, the soft leather of his loafers whispering on the bare concrete of the floor. This room appeared to be under renovation—the walls were stripped out, carpet removed, leaving only a bare skeleton littered with plastic sheets and rusted tools. Eddie guessed the renovation had stalled a few decades back. The concrete he sat on was stained, some of it his blood, some much older. He wasn’t the first person to be brought here and roughed up.

  As for the man with the loafers, he was a skeleton as well, but a better dressed one. He had a youthful face, but his long-fingered hands were wrinkled and veiny. Not that Eddie could see the man’s hands now, clasped behind his back as they were, but he could sense them there. He’d seen those hands as the man sipped a glass of red wine while his three goons softened up Eddie’s innards. The flesh hung loosely from his fingers, like they were rotting. Eddie could picture it even now. He decided that there was nothing worse than ugly hands. The man could dress himself in imported white dinner suits as much as he liked. He could oil up his hair and tighten his tie and slip on his fucking loafers. He’d still have those hands. He probably cried himself to sleep thinking about how ugly his hands were. The piteous life of Feleti Leone.

  Leone looked down at him, a faint smile playing at his lips. But there was a nervousness in his eyes that betrayed him. Eddie didn’t like nervous people. Not when they thought a gun or a few goons could keep them safe. Those people were dangerous.

  “So?” Leone said.

  “So what?”

  “What’s your answer?”

  Eddie licked his lips and tasted blood. “I’ve forgotten the question. Remind me.”

  Leone nodded and turned to the biggest of his boys, the one with the dimwit eyes.

  “You heard him, Mr Hume. Remind him.”

  The thug smiled around the gap in his teeth, gave it a good windup, and slugged Eddie across the face. Stars danced in Eddie’s eyes.

  “Oh yeah,” Eddie said, licking the blood from his teeth. “Thanks, pal. Now I remember. You wanted to know why I came to apprehend you. Is that about right?”

  “Exactly, Eddie,” Leone said. “That’s exactly right.”

  “Well, you’re gonna laugh when you hear this. You ready? Here’s the gag: I’m not here for you, Jack. Don’t give a damn what you’ve done and who you’ve done it to. Isn’t that a laugh?” He chuckled to prove it.

  Leone stared at him with his big eyes and his fake smile.

  “Come on, Eddie. We’re old friends now. You don’t expect me to just believe something like that, do you?”

  “I’m not jerking you off, Jack. You’d know if I was. I’m here for someone, but it ain’t you.”

  Leone signalled to one of his other boys, a plain-faced man who had decided to take care of Eddie’s pistol. He was practically fondling it.

  “Nick,” Leone said.

  The man came forward and slammed the tip of his shoe into Eddie’s solar plexus. The air rushed out of his lungs and he sat there for a moment, gasping into a vacuum. His eyes watered.

  Leone knelt down in front of him and slapped h
is face.

  “Eddie, Eddie. It’s not nice to lie like that. I got a call not two hours ago. This friendly chap with sources at the Fed outpost.” He pointed out the window, towards the sky. “Do you know what he said? He said he had some information for me. He said a couple of stalkers were coming to arrest me. I wasn’t sure whether to believe it at first. So I did a little digging into the stalker ship that docked earlier this afternoon. There were two names on record. One of them was Eddie Gould. And a few minutes later one of my staff spotted a new guest entering our Members’ Lounge. Sneaking around. And what do you know?” He held his hands out. “Eddie Gould. In the flesh.”

  “I hope you didn’t pay for that information yet, because whoever sold it to you was….” He trailed off, thinking. Then he smiled. “Ah, shit.”

  “What is it, Eddie?”

  “Just thinking. My quarry, the man I’m after. He made me. Let me guess. This source of yours, you’d never heard from him before, right? And he just offered you this information about me out of the kindness of his heart. How’s that?”

  Leone didn’t say anything.

  Eddie nodded to himself. “Thought so. Where’d we slip up? Something my partner did must’ve tipped him off.”

  The midget. It could be him. He’d set up this whole casino job. Eddie hadn’t seen him making any calls, but that didn’t mean anything. An ancient tech system that could track Roy Williams? What a joke.

  He’d told Dom. He told her not to trust a midget who sits in another man’s chair and drinks his beer. Ah well, live and learn. Or not, as the case may be.

  Leone stood and turned his back on Eddie, facing the window. “Tell me about this partner of yours.”

  “Didn’t you hear me, Jack? I’m not here for you. You might as well either let me go or kill me. I’d prefer the first one, honestly, but like you said, you’re calling the shots.”

  Leone flicked his fingers again. Old Gap-tooth approached Eddie, cracking his knuckles.

  “Say, pal,” Eddie said. “How about we settle this over a game of checkers? I’ll even let you go first.”

  Gap-tooth laid two punches into him, one after another. Like hitting a sack of meat. Eddie coughed and groaned.

  “Not so funny now, huh, funny guy?” Gap-tooth said.

  “Pretty funny. You fell right into my trap. I’m terrible at checkers. Reverse psychology, see?” He gave a hacking laugh.

  Leone turned back. “Your partner, Eddie. Souza, right? That’s her name. Tell me about her.”

  “Can’t do that, Jack.”

  “I don’t appreciate stalkers running around my station interfering in my business, Eddie. I mean that. But I would have let it slide if you’d kept to yourself. I sent a man to follow whoever left that ship of yours when you landed. But now I haven’t heard from him for several hours. Do you know what happened to him, Mr Gould?”

  Eddie said nothing. But in his mind’s eye, he saw the kid with the black hat and the hand cannon stuck in his pants.

  Leone stared into his eyes. “Temperance is my station. It doesn’t belong to the Feds or the stalkers or anyone else. It belongs to me.”

  “Well, I got to compliment you on the place,” Eddie said. “Real nice. Pity about how it’s going to be a dead husk in a couple of weeks, but until then it’s got a special charm. And I’m not just saying that because we’re friends.”

  Leone stroked his chin with his hideous hands for a few moments, studying Eddie.

  Gap-tooth spoke up. “Want me to hit him again, Boss?”

  Leone shook his head. “I think I’m beginning to understand our friend here. Really getting to know him.”

  “Soul mates, you might say,” Eddie suggested.

  “There, that’s what I’m talking about. These jokes. That smile. Even here, even with us…” He gestured to his three goons. “…he’s still got his confidence. He’s still got his dignity. He’s cocky. Don’t you think, Nick?”

  Nick stroked Eddie’s gun. “Yes, sir. Very cocky.”

  Leone strolled away a few steps and bent down. He took hold of a rusted sledgehammer and lifted it. “Strip his clothes.”

  The three goons stepped forward and ripped at Eddie’s clothes. Two buttons snapped off his shirt. Gap-tooth grinned as he unbuckled Eddie’s belt and started pulling his slacks down.

  “If I knew this was the way the night was going to end, I would’ve put on my good underwear,” Eddie said. But his heart rate kicked up a couple of notches as he watched Leone drag that sledgehammer along the ground.

  The way he was tied to the pillar, they couldn’t pull his shirt and jacket off completely. But his trousers and underwear were soon lying a few metres away. The cold of the concrete floor beneath him bit so hard it hurt.

  Leone nodded. “How’s that dignity, Eddie?”

  “Not bad. Okay, now you strip. We can compare.”

  “Still cocky.” Leone hefted the sledgehammer. “Let’s do something about that. Grab his legs.”

  Gap-tooth and Nick each took an ankle and dragged Eddie’s legs apart. The blood rushed in his ears. The muscles of his legs strained, but the thugs held tight.

  Leone gave a few practice swings of the hammer. “What do you reckon will happen to your balls when this hammer lands? I always wondered that. Will they pop like balloons? What do you think, Mr Rodriguez?”

  The third thug shrugged. His hands loosely gripped a submachine gun. “One way to find out.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Leone said. “Let’s try talking one last time, what do you think? Eddie, tell us about your partner. Tell us what she looks like and where we can find her. I can’t have a stalker running loose on my station. Not now. You know that. So tell me. Tell me and I’ll give you your pants back. What do you say?”

  Eddie stared at the hammer, then at Leone. His shoulders slumped.

  “All right. All right. Jesus.”

  “Tell me, Eddie.”

  “All right. Just, just don’t use the hammer, all right? I’ll tell you.” He licked his lips, stared at the concrete floor. “My partner….”

  “Yes?”

  “My partner.” Eddie swallowed. Met Leone’s eyes. And smiled. “My partner is your partner. My partner in all things is our Lord Jesus Christ the Luminary. Have you heard His gospel? He is come to save us from the endless night, from the threat of the void. He is come to reunite us with our brothers and sisters of the Solar Federation. Praise Him, for He is the light in the endless night who will show us the way back home!”

  Leone just smiled. “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. You’ve made a very poor choice.”

  He grinned back through bloodstained teeth.

  “It’s the only kind I know.”

  Leone raised the hammer. Eddie closed his eyes and braced for the pain.

  An intercom crackled overhead, static echoing off the concrete walls. Eddie opened his eyes to see Leone and his goons staring at the ceiling. They let go of his legs and stood. Rodriguez gripped his gun tight.

  “Attention,” a woman’s voice boomed over the intercom. “This message is addressed to Feleti Leone and the three gentlemen with him on the fourteenth floor of the Crimson Curtain. Nobody move.”

  “Who the fuck is that?” Leone hissed.

  Eddie grinned. “That? That would be my partner.”

  16

  The intercom spoke.

  “The first and most important thing I have to say is that if any one of you makes a move from this point on without my order, you will die. If you try to run, you will die. If you raise your weapons, you will die. If you try to harm the man tied to that pillar, you will die. You will die fast and without warning. I hope you gentlemen understand how serious I am about this point.”

  Leone bared his teeth at the ceiling. “She’s got access to the broadcast system. Where the hell is she?”

  “My name is Dominique Souza,” the intercom continued. “I am a stalker, charged with the apprehension of a fugitive from the Federation. Neither Mr Leone nor any of yo
u on the fourteenth floor is that fugitive. I repeat, I do not intend to apprehend any individual in that room. However, you have detained and assaulted a fellow stalker. My partner. And if he is not released, I will kill each and every one of you.”

  “Call security,” Leone said to the goon carrying Eddie’s gun. “Find that bitch and shut her up.”

  “I’m going to need each of you gentlemen to put your guns down and take three steps away from my partner,” Dom said. “You have two seconds to comply.”

  A second passed. Eddie grinned up at Leone. The syndicate leader glanced around, sneered, and took three steps away. Rodriguez dropped his submachine gun and backed up alongside Gap-tooth.

  But the third goon hesitated. His hand wrapped around the grip of Eddie’s gun.

  The left half of his head disappeared in a spray of blood and broken glass.

  A moment later, the boom of a gunshot rang out. Eddie spotted the neat hole in the window. He traced the bullet’s path to the roof of the adjacent casino.

  The bloodied goon took a step. Then he collapsed. Blood pooled rapidly around him.

  Leone and the goons ducked and made to scramble for cover. But Dom’s voice roared across the intercom.

  “Nobody move! The next person to move ends up like him.”

  Leone and the two thugs grew still. The syndicate leader bared his teeth at Eddie.

  “Let me be very clear,” Dom said. “I’m not fucking around, here, gentlemen. I’m in a very, very bad mood. I do not take kindly to people who harm my colleagues. Now, I have a few simple instructions for you to follow. If they are not followed, I’m sure you can guess what will happen.”

  Gap-tooth was staring ashen-faced at the dead thug. He didn’t look so pleased with himself anymore.

  “Mr Leone,” Dom said. “I want you to take out your tab and make a call. Another colleague of mine will be coming up to collect the man tied to that pillar. He will be allowed complete access to the necessary doors and elevators. Arrange it. You have twenty seconds to comply.”

  Leone’s eyes slid to the dead thug. He took his tab out of his pocket and touched the screen.