They knew he was looking for her. They’d heard him shouting. So she’d only just left. There was only one set of stairs, one set of elevators. He hadn’t heard anyone running down the stairs. The elevator hadn’t moved.
She could still be in the building.
He ran back to the stairs and took two steps back down. Then he stopped and turned back. Though the main stairs ended at the top floor, there was another door beside it. The sign on it read: Roof Access.
He tested the handle. Locked, but he could feel the flimsiness in the design. Once more he stepped back and aimed a kick at the lock. The door splintered and flew open, revealing another set of stairs. His heart pounded as he hurried up them.
He threw open the door at the top and looked out over the roof. The city spread out around him, all the way to the spaceport where he could watch the approach of tourist ships through the transparent panels that roofed the station.
But he didn’t pay attention to any of that. He only had eyes for one thing.
Lilian Mayweather. Her dark brown curls framed her face. A black stripe of makeup ran across her eyes and the bridge of her small, upturned nose. The black gown she wore caught the light reflected off Eleda VI overhead, giving it a hint of blue.
There was a hand across her mouth and a pistol barrel pressed against her temple. Behind her, a skinny grey-coated man stared at him with bared teeth and wild eyes.
A roar of applause echoed from somewhere a few blocks away. But there was only silence on the rooftop. Roy couldn’t take his eyes from Lilian’s. His heart ached.
“Get the fuck out of here,” the man in the coat said. “I’ve got backup coming. You better run, pal.”
Roy took slow, steady breaths. “Listen to me, boy. You let her go. You let her go and you get to live. That’s a promise. You don’t let her go, you die. That’s also a promise. And if you knew who I was, you would take that very seriously.”
“Fuck you!”
The man aimed his gun at Roy and fired. Roy ducked back inside the stairwell as two bullets pinged off the doorway.
“You come any closer I’ll fill her full of lead,” the man yelled. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it, goddamn it.”
Roy checked the machine pistol to make sure it was loaded and the safety was off.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. You win. Just let me talk to her, okay? I’ll stay right here.”
“Fuck off!”
“I just want to talk. I just want to make sure she’s okay. Are you okay, Lil?”
A muffled grunt in response.
“Shut up,” the man said.
“Listen,” Roy said. “You really don’t want to hurt her. And not just because I’m threatening you. Because your boss, Mr Leone, will be very, very upset if you harm her. Do you know who she is? Do you know why she’s so important to him?”
“Just…just shut up. I’m not moving until backup gets here.”
“She’s important because, well, it doesn’t matter why. You know she’s important because otherwise she wouldn’t be in this hotel. You know that, don’t you?”
He was silent. Roy peeked out.
“Stay back!” the man yelled, pressing the gun barrel against Lilian’s temple. “I told you to stay back.”
“Look, I’m putting down my gun.” Roy slid his machine pistol out and showed his hands. “See. I just want to talk to her. What’s your name?”
“Don’t you step out of there.”
“I’m coming out. I just want to tell Lilian I love her.”
“Don’t come out!”
“I’m coming out.”
He stepped out of the stairwell, empty hands out to his sides. He took two steps towards them.
“Stay back!” the man yelled. His eyes were wide.
Roy took another step.
“Fuck!”
The man brought the gun from Lilian’s temple and aimed it at Roy. He thought he could see the tendons in the man’s hand tightening as he began to squeeze the trigger.
Lilian bit down on the hand covering her mouth. The man screamed and fired. The shot went wide. Roy was already moving.
Before the man could squeeze off another shot, Lilian grabbed his left arm and pulled him down, teeth still sunk into the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. He cried out and raised the gun to bring it crashing down on the top of her head.
Roy drew the box cutter from his pocket as he ran and plunged the blade into the side of the man’s neck.
The thug stared up at Roy with round eyes. The pistol dropped from his grasp as he clutched at the knife embedded in his neck.
Finally releasing the man’s hand from her teeth, Lilian scurried out of the man’s grasp and kicked the pistol away. Roy snarled and grabbed the man’s head and pounded it against the ground. Over and over. Something cracked in the man’s skull. His screams became slurred.
Roy didn’t stop until the man’s eyes went glassy. There wasn’t much left of the back of the man’s head by then.
He sat back, panting. Lilian stood over him, her face hidden in shadow by the glow of the planet hanging above her.
“Honey,” he said, wiping the man’s blood from his hands. “I’m back.”
24
Leone’s thugs weren’t even trying to hide. Eddie watched from a doorway as a group of them swaggered past, coats swaying as they walked to reveal the guns holstered beneath. Tough looking guys and girls, but not very bright. Eddie traded jackets with a homeless man, hunched himself over, stole a shopping cart and filled it with trash off the street, and pretty soon not a single thug even glanced in his direction. Bunch of saps.
Most of the stores on Temperance were abandoned, but the one thing still in supply was booze. Eddie consulted a vid screen displaying a tourist map and followed its directions a few blocks towards the station’s bow.
Below a neon sign proclaiming Best Stims in Town, he abandoned his cart and went down a set of narrow stairs leading off the street. He passed through a heavy door into a grimy liquor and stim store packed with equally grimy locals. With his tattered jacket—unwashed smell included—he fitted right in.
The place was more a gathering place than a store. Friends laughed and kissed and told each other lies that sounded like the truth. For a few moments he was immersed in the local culture as he picked up what he wanted and waited for the man behind the counter to get his tongue out of a plump woman’s throat.
He returned to his cart a few minutes later with a case of imported beer—Carousel’s finest dog piss. He popped the top and drank one straight away, then started sipping a second as he headed back towards the hotel. The booze mingled nicely with the painkiller he’d injected. He felt like he could sleep for a week. If it wasn’t for the hunger battling it out with the nausea in the pit of his stomach, that was.
He went back and forth on the idea for a while, said, “To hell with it,” and bought a meal from a street vendor off the strip. The meal consisted off some unidentifiable dry meat drenched in a savoury sauce and wrapped in limp lettuce and flatbread that tasted like cardboard. He took a seat in the alley beside a brothel—ribs aching as he sat—and choked down the meal with the aid of another can of beer. His stomach didn’t thank him for it.
The details of the day swam in his head as he ate and drank. He knew he was missing something, but he didn’t let it worry him. It would come. He just had to wait.
An off-duty stripper in a heavy coat went past the alley, head down. He listened to the click-clack of her heels fading away as she walked. The grav train screamed past somewhere overhead, shaking dust loose from the wall he was leaning against. He took out his tab and scribbled down some notes for himself, snatches of dialogue and descriptions. He pictured Roy Williams in his mind’s eye. He would do as the villain of the story, although a few aspects would have to be exaggerated to make him more memorable. He decided to add a few inches to the man’s height. It was a start.
For a few minutes he considered what he’d title the story, t
ossing ideas back and forth, but it was pointless. He didn’t know how it ended yet.
That was another thought, one that made his heart tighten curiously. If he got Cassandra off the station, if he found a ship and they went off to live out the rest of their lives, then this might be his last book. There wouldn’t be much adventure to be had floating around the Reach. No contracts to hunt down.
What would he do? He could continue to write, he supposed, just making up tales. But somehow that didn’t feel right. He wouldn’t know the truth of the matter if he wasn’t there to see it. And if he didn’t know the truth, then what was the point in writing it?
It didn’t matter. They were just some scribbles. When the system was dying around you, what did his stupid stories matter?
He’d miss it, of course. As much as he and Dom fought, as much as they drove each other crazy on the lonely trips through space, he’d come to respect her. Once they left Temperance, he couldn’t risk contacting her again if he smuggled Cassandra off the station. The Solitude, the contracts, they were everything to Dom. He couldn’t risk that for her. So be it. She’d probably be glad to see the back of him.
He opened another beer, his thoughts turning back to Roy Williams. The fugitive had known he was looking for Cassandra. He’d recognised Eddie on sight. How had he found out so much about him in the short time they’d been on Temperance? Knox? But no, Knox didn’t know Eddie was looking for Cassandra. All the questions he’d been asking must’ve got back to Williams.
The woman he’d slept with, she knew his name. But she wasn’t a local. It didn’t ring true that she’d fall in with someone like Williams. And the only other person he’d given his name to was….
Victoria Palmer. The woman at Green Acres. The woman who’d worked with Cassandra at Lady Luck. She’d been so nervous, so eager to get rid of him. She’d told him Cassandra was dead.
He sat up straight. Williams was there. As soon as the thought came to him, he knew it was true. Roy Williams had been there, hiding somewhere. He could almost recall a hint of the man’s sweat lingering in the air as he’d stood in Victoria Palmer’s apartment, fingers running along the pages of his book. The book Victoria said wasn’t hers. The one she said came with the apartment.
What were the chances of finding his book—not even his best-selling book—in an apartment on Temperance owned by a woman who’d known Cassandra? Unless it wasn’t her copy. It was Cassandra’s. It had to be.
She’d known he was alive. She’d read his books. Why hadn’t she ever tried to contact him?
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. It’d all be explained when he found her, when he talked to her. And the key to that was Roy Williams.
The panel hidden behind the bookshelf in Palmer’s apartment. Had he been there? Had he been next door, listening in? Had he watched through the peephole as Eddie went past?
He put his back against the wall and pushed himself up, the booze tingling at the corners of his mind. Not drunk, just smoothed out. He’d walk it off on the way back to Green Acres.
He turned his back towards the street, took out his gun, checked the magazine. He was going to get an answer out of Roy Williams one way or another. No injury, no contract, and no partner was going to get in the way of that. He had a chance to make everything right, to erase the mistakes of his youth.
And he was going to take it.
He pulled his jacket around himself and took off down the street.
Leone’s people were at the train station. Not wearing red—they weren’t casino staff. But they were conspicuous enough in their grey coats and black hats. Four of them altogether. Dom watched them from an abandoned newsstand half a block away. They were grizzled, bulky. Not soft-faced security guards, but true syndicate thugs. Even the tourists went quiet as they moved past to board the train.
Dom chewed it over for a few seconds, but there was no way around it. She couldn’t sneak past them and she couldn’t take all of them out. Not without more ammo. And she didn’t like the idea of going toe-to-toe with men like that in a public area.
So there it was. She had to walk halfway across the city. She sighed, turned away from the station, and got going.
She’d spotted three more groups of syndicate thugs by the time she was halfway to St Reynold’s Church. They strolled down the street like they owned the place. Which they probably did. Each time, she ducked into an alley or an abandoned shop and waited until they’d passed. But sooner or later she was going to be spotted. She hoped Eddie was being careful. The bloody idiot was always reckless when his blood was up.
As she crept inside a ransacked market, hiding from yet another group of searching thugs, her gaze fell on a public off-station comm terminal near the checkout counter. Though the rest of the shop was torn to shreds, the standby lights were still on the unit. She slid onto the stool and touched the screen. The terminal came to life, flashing a welcome message at her from behind the smudged fingerprints on the old-tech screen.
She nearly stood up again and left, but she needed to make contact with the Feds at the outpost before they started getting antsy. Since she wasn’t going to be getting back to the Solitude anytime soon, now was as good a time as any to make the call.
She steeled herself and slid her cash card into the machine’s slot. It blinked her current balance at her—for the love of Man, how much had Eddie taken to gamble with? She could picture those chips now, sitting back in the Crimson Casino, pocketed by one of Leone’s staff. Hell. She wasn’t going to be seeing that money again.
Grumbling to herself, she accepted the charge and punched in the Fed outpost’s comm code. The machine deducted 450 vin for the off-station call and made the connection. She brought the handset to her ear as it picked up.
“Dominique Souza, stalker, for Lieutenant Pine,” she said.
The receiver’s voice came back distorted. “This call isn’t coming from your ship, Miss Souza.”
No shit. Who the hell did the Feds hire to take their calls?
“No, sir. This is a public terminal. Please connect me to Lieutenant Pine.”
A crackle. “Very well. Stand by.”
Dom drummed her fingers on the comm terminal’s casing and kept an eye on the window. Through the dirty and broken glass she watched a homeless woman in a heavy tattered cloak hurrying away. A moment later, three syndicate men strode past, talking to each other in low voices. Dom kept still and quiet until they’d passed.
“Miss Souza,” Pine’s whiny voice came down the line. “It’s a little late to be giving your report, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
She checked the time. Nearly four a.m. local time. And yet outside everyone was carrying on as they had since she’d arrived. A tiredness had settled into her bones, but not the kind of tiredness that brings sleep. The kind that only brings more tiredness.
“Sorry, sir,” she said. “Time is difficult to keep track of with the light discipline.”
“I’m disturbed by the reports I’ve been receiving from Temperance. I understand there have been firefights with local syndicate members.”
“Yes, sir.” She paused. “It was unavoidable.”
“I doubt that very much, Miss Souza. Temperance is in a delicate state. If I wanted chaos, I would take a company of marines down there myself.”
It was all bluster. Pine had no authority to initiate any sort of invasion or declare martial law over the station. But it made her uneasy to hear him make the threat. Men who wanted others to think they were powerful sometimes did stupid things to back up their boasts.
“That won’t be necessary, sir. The situation is under control.”
“You are close to apprehending Williams?”
“I believe we will be able to locate and isolate him in a matter of hours, sir.”
He made a noise like he didn’t quite believe her. “If you are unable to complete this contract, the Federation will have no choice but to revoke it and grant it to another stalker.”
“I will capture him, sir. I would advise other stalkers to stay out of the way, lest I mistake them for an enemy.”
She bit her tongue as soon as she said it, but it was too late. The words were already out. The pain in her jaw and the exhaustion in her bones and the fight with Eddie were bubbling away inside her, stirring up old angers.
Pine was quiet a long time. She scratched at the corner of an advertisement for a prostitute stuck to the comm unit as she waited for him to speak.
“One more thing, Miss Souza,” Pine said when he finally spoke. His voice was quiet now, serious. “I want no more altercations between you and Feleti Leone or his people.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“No, your best isn’t good enough. Mr Leone is a protected individual, do you understand?”
“Sir?”
“The Federation has placed significant value on Mr Leone’s life. He has been a valuable source of information. He is not to be harmed in any way. The same goes for his people.”
She wasn’t sure she was hearing him right. “Feleti Leone is a gangster and a racketeer and a murderer.”
“Feleti Leone is not your target, stalker. Penalties will be applied to your bounty if any more of his people are harmed. If Mr Leone is killed, your contract will be forfeit and further investigation will be undertaken to determine what other consequences will be handed down to you and Mr Gould. Do you understand?”
She ground her teeth. So now she had to tiptoe around a man who wanted nothing more than to see her dead. She couldn’t even defend herself without incurring this paper pusher’s wrath.
Pine cleared his throat. “Do you understand, Miss Souza?”
“Yes, sir. I understand. Feleti Leone will continue his fine service to this Federation for many years to come.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “Keep me informed. I await your call.”
She replaced the receiver and scowled at the terminal for a minute. Of all the men to leave alive on this station, Leone was the worst. But that didn’t matter. The Feds wanted him alive, and she was the Feds’ dog. They told her to bark, she barked. Woof woof.
Stalker's Luck (Solitude Saga Book 1) Page 16
