Expelled (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 1)

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Jayne felt like she could jump out of her skin when the man yelled. It took her a few seconds to register that he was not Burrett.

  For a second she was relieved.

  Then her stomach sank.

  He’s still out there.

  She sat back on her stool, feeling numb and embarrassed. Jayne wondered if she would ever stop thinking about Burrett and what he might do. She nursed her beer, wondering where she could even begin to look for someone as random and untethered as James Burrett.

  Vlad sidled up to the barstool beside Jayne. “Credit for your thoughts?”

  Jayne rubbed a bruised rib. “I’m good.” She looked down to the bottom of her drink, watching the bubbles in the frothy head shift and pop. “Just thinking about everything, you know?”

  He pensively drained a third of his drink in one gulp. “What part of everything, Ms. Austin? The good part or the bad part?”

  Jayne put her drink on the bar. “The bad part. The part of everything where I let a psycho like Burrett give us the slip. There’s a real dangerous nutcase on the loose and I’m responsible.”

  “But you completed your mission and preserved national security.”

  Jayne bobbed her head and took a sip of her beer. “I guess there’s that.”

  Vlad lightly rubbed her back. “Enjoy your victory.”

  Jayne hugged Vlad to the best of her ability. “You’re a good friend. Thank you.”

  Vlad hugged her back, mindful of her injuries. “And you’re greatly underselling your pain.”

  Jayne studied Vlad, searching for a sign he was reading her mind. She wanted to spill her guts, but everyone looked like they were having such a great time. Jayne pushed the corner of her mouth into a half smile. “You know what? You guys just have fun tonight. You’ve earned it.”

  Vlad shrugged and threw back the whiskey shot Merry shoved in his face. Merry pushed a shot at Jayne. “No wimping out,” she commanded.

  Jayne obeyed, tossing back her head and feeling the burn of the shot down her throat. It was fuel for the acidic fire in her gut. She chugged the rest of her beer. “Holy shit,” she rasped, “big mistake.”

  Merry’s body contorted with a maniacal cackle. She squealed with delight. “That was fucking awesome!”

  Jayne signaled for Berty. Once she caught the bartender’s attention, she ordered a water.

  “And another beer!” Merry chimed in.

  Berty looked at Jayne for confirmation. Jayne shook her head to the negative. Merry folded her arms and grimaced at Jayne.

  Jayne shrugged. “I should watch it while I’m on these pain meds.”

  Merry snorted. “Whatever, you wuss.”

  She looked at the stilted expression on Merry’s face and laughed quietly. “Besides, I think you’re putting down enough for both of us.”

  Merry wailed in a high-pitched drawl. “Puttin’ it down like Old Yeller!”

  Fred patted Merry on the shoulder and chuckled. “I think you should make that the last one, Merry. You’re a little…”

  Merry grinned. “Super fucked up?” She nodded proudly. “Yes, yes I am.”

  Fred sprouted a twisted grin. “Maybe now you can tell Vlad how you really feel about him.”

  Merry turned to Fred, almost falling on him. “I tell Vlad how I really feel about him every day. Like this,” she turned to face Vlad, “fuck you, Vlad.”

  “Heaven help us all,” Vlad muttered under his breath.

  Merry looked at Jayne, her eyes half-mast. “Actually, I think I should tell Jayne how I feel.”

  Vlad snorted. “The poor girl’s been through enough, Ms. Winterbourne.”

  Merry punched Vlad on the arm. “Shut it, you canned ham!” She turned to Jayne. “I’ve been thinking…”

  Fred raised an eyebrow. “Congratulations.”

  Vlad laughed hysterically and high-fived Fred. “You’re a mean drunk, but I like it.”

  Jayne smiled at Merry. “What was your thought?” She jumped slightly at the sight of an older gentleman in a blue jacket walking through the door. Jayne acknowledged Merry, but her mind turned once again to Burrett.

  Merry signaled for Jayne to wait while she gathered her thoughts. “What was I thinking…? Oh yeah! I was thinking…” Merry paused to burp. “I was thinking maybe with all this notoriety, you know…”

  Jayne propped Merry up as she swayed closer to the bar. “I know what?”

  “We could start doing more high-profile stuff for more money.”

  Jayne shook her head and sighed. “No way. I don’t think I’m ready.”

  Merry sloppily pointed at Jayne. “You don’t like earning money or what?”

  Jayne looked away. She caught sight of another blue jacket out of the corner of her eye. Jayne shuddered. She noticed Vlad was watching her carefully.

  Merry shoved her face closer to Jayne. “Well? Why not? What do you have against the high-profile stuff?”

  Jayne shrugged. “I’m just not ready.”

  “Impossible! We have the people and we have the technology. We can do it!”

  Jayne gently directed Merry to a barstool. “Yeah, we have the materials, but I can’t justify it with Burrett still out there.”

  Merry propped herself up and looked for Berty. “Hey Berty!”

  Berty approached Merry. Fred shook his head and made the hand sign for drinking at Berty. Berty nodded.

  Merry looked confused.

  Fred shrugged. “You told him you didn’t want any more.”

  Merry scratched her head, then turned back to Jayne. “I don’t get you sometimes, you know that? Why do we need to hold ourselves back because of him?”

  Jayne spoke slowly so Merry would understand. “We need to catch Burrett first because we unleashed a dangerous individual on the world. That’s on us.” Jayne saw the weight of her words dampen the celebration in Merry’s eyes. “He’s our responsibility now.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  ISA Offices, Malicarsh Building, L45, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros

  Heavy smog, brown and caustic as nicotine tar, boiled slowly up through the metal grating of the walkway to coil around Jayne's boots. She walked fast, her steps ringing on the metal. But the sound was lost in the clamor of voices and vehicles which came like a constant roar from the levels below her, their origins lost in the fog of pollution. Jayne turned up the music playing in her headphones to drown it all out. Behind dark glasses and a white filter mask meant to keep the smog out of her eyes and her lungs, she was just another faceless stranger hurrying through the choking air.

  Another walkway, to the left and slightly above her, rattled as two young men ran across it, dragging their shirts up to cover their mouths for lack of proper masks. They had probably forgotten their masks at home, if they owned any. That might have gotten them killed if they'd lived a dozen levels down. But on level forty-five, even on a bad smog day like this, the concentrations were only dangerous when the updraft from the lower levels was strong. Jayne resisted the urge to scan their faces, keeping her eyes straight ahead. They wouldn't be the face she was looking for. And if she allowed herself to give in to the urge to search for that face everywhere, she'd never be able to stop.

  She opened the door to the office, practically bringing in a bank of smog with her.

  "Jesus, Jayne, I can smell the smog on you!" Merry shouted from her desk. "Are you trying to kill us?"

  Jayne slammed the door shut and dragged her mask off.

  "No, that'd be the landlord for not putting doors and filters at the entrance," she answered. There was an air filter near the door and she cranked it up to high before taking off her coat. "Not to mention, the city utilities department… news says they cut funding for cleanup on the lower fifty again."

  "Of course they did." Merry rolled her eyes and turned up the smaller filter sitting on the edge of her desk. "Where else are they going to get the money for yet another wind barrier construction project for the hundred levels? They're saying level fifty is only
a couple of years from being swallowed by a permanent smog bank and turning into another slum."

  "It's just a bad smog day Merry, not the death of the middle class." Jayne flopped onto the black settee upholstered with lab-grown leather and propped her feet up on their new black and silver coffee table. The black and silver motif matched Merry’s desk and she was thrilled the day it arrived. Jayne had laughed until she cried when Merry exclaimed with glee, “Finally! I was getting worried that resting a tablet on my lap all the time would fry my ovaries.”

  She'd recently ordered them both from the same furniture distributor on Level 70. An extravagance that Jayne prioritized. Unfortunately, first impressions swayed clients more easily than the ISA’s rapidly growing track record. Maintaining that professionalism meant hiding the sofa bed in the back, where Jayne slept on the nights she couldn't find friendlier beds to occupy. Jayne’s specific vision for a welcoming yet down-to-brass-tacks office didn’t concern her when all she wanted to do was sleep. The sofa bed was sturdy, but Jayne had chosen comfort over style. She kept the backroom door closed at all times, lest a potential client judge her by the plaid monstrosity she spent too many nights on.

  Merry had tucked her new desk in the rear corner and crowded it with monitors, signal scanners, and the surveillance equipment associated with Merry's hacking pursuits. Jayne was about as sure what any of it was for as she was certain about its dubious legality, but Jayne trusted Merry. She worked best when she was left to her own devices, literally. Vlad playfully referred to the corner as “Merry’s Porno Station”. The name stuck, even after Jayne convinced Merry to stop watching porn at work.

  Jayne’s own desk, rarely used lately, was more central and faced the front door, holographic orchids flickering in a vase on the corner.

  The office itself had proved its worth impressing clients. Exposed iron beams that the ad had called "charming and modern" kept the place from feeling too sterile. Jayne loved the serious sound of her boots thudding across the hardwood floor on her way out to solve a case.

  Merry had hung up one of those fake windows on the wall behind the settee. Its cheeriest setting was an unnaturally green hill beneath a bright blue sky. Jayne welcomed the cheesy image today. It almost emitted enough simulated sunlight to combat the depression caused by the ever-present smog.

  "It's the third Category 7 smog day in as many weeks," Merry argued, while Jayne scraped at the brown soot on her boots, and then grimaced at the layer of solid pollution left under her fingernail. "Level forty-five used to only get hit with these a few times a year. Now it's getting record breaking smog banks one after another."

  "Yeah, and you made me walk through it to get here," Jayne pointed out as she walked behind her desk to examine the smog out of the real window. "Sorry, Merry, I think the smog is getting to me. Anyway, let’s get to the point.”

  "The point is that breathable air is a basic human right and—"

  "The point in calling me into the office today, Merry." Jayne cut Merry off before she could launch into a speech about the malicious apathy of the wealthy and the war on the poor. She agreed with Merry in principle, but god the speeches were tedious.

  Merry pursed her lips in annoyance and crossed her arms.

  "First of all," Merry said, "I shouldn't have to call you into the office at all. You should be here. Working. You live on the couch, Jayne. There's really no excuse."

  "I'm allowed to have a life outside the office," Jayne said, leaving the settee to visit the small office bathroom. Its narrow sink was playing storage to every hygiene and makeup product Jayne owned. One of her bras hung drying from the corner of the mirror. The one amenity they lied about was their bathroom. “Sorry, that’s a utility closet,” they told clients who needed to pee.

  Jayne grabbed a can of instant shampoo from the cluttered mess on the sink and began spraying it into her long, chestnut hair, trying to get the smog smell out.

  "Having a life outside the office implies you have any life in it," Merry countered, leaving her desk to stand in the door.

  Jayne chuckled, and teased Merry right back. “And what do you know about life, Merry?”

  “Only one thing.” She held up her knuckle tattoos: LIFE SUXX.

  Jayne and Merry laughed together. They had made it through the morning irritables, and their comradeship was as strong as the floral scent of the instant shampoo wafting out into the office. "Is that Moonlight Magnolia?"

  "Yeah," Jayne confirmed. "You said the Cherry Blossom Serenade gave you headaches."

  "This isn’t better. What happened to the Warm Vanilla Sugar Cookie Holiday one I gave you?"

  "Fred stole it."

  "Why?"

  "He thought it was coffee creamer."

  “I’m worried about our son, Jayne.” Merry joked. At this point, they knew it was a dead-end trying to understand Fred’s quirks. "Anyway! The reason I called you was because I've been looking at some cases for us and I—"

  Jayne groaned loudly, leaning against the sink in exaggerated exhaustion.

  "Not again Merry..."

  "I’m finding jobs, it’s not my fault you don’t want to work any of them." Merry said, gesturing towards Jayne's desk. "And the few you have done you half-assed!"

  "I'm not interested in more petty corporate backstabbing, or—”

  “Or cheating spouses! I know. Seriously, Jayne, if I have to listen to your cheating spouse speech, then I should be able to finish my clean air monologue.”

  Jayne shouldered past Merry and shut the bathroom door harder than necessary. She deliberately ignored the crash that followed which suggested she'd upset the delicate balance of junk on the sink. "I always said I wouldn’t take on those cases. But I took a few, because I agree that staying sharp and keeping momentum is important. Sure. But no more. We both have more important things to be doing."

  "Like what?"

  "Like finding Burrett." Jayne said, bracing for Merry’s counterpoint.

  "Finding Burrett won't pay the bills." Merry pointed out.

  “What happened to the 500,000 credits we earned with our first big case? I doubt we’ve already blown it on kava.”

  “Those 500,000 credits were a great start. They got us here,” Merry waved her arms around the office and all of their equipment, “but it won’t keep us here. I can’t believe I’m being the pragmatic one, but let me show you this simulation of our projected finances over the next six months.”

  She turned her computer screen towards Jayne for emphasis, where their theoretical budget was open on the screen. There was a distressing amount of red.

  "It's my fault that psychopath is out there," Jayne argued, staring Merry down. "If he hurts someone, that'll be on me. And no amount of money will be worth a damn."

  "And how are you going to find him when you're homeless, Jayne? When I can’t afford the equipment I need?" Merry asked. "Because that's where we're heading. We're never going to find Burrett if we can't keep this business alive, and that means taking whatever jobs we can get, whether you like it or not, so that we can pay the bills and build a client base."

  Jayne looked away, her jaw tight. She knew Merry was right, but it wasn't as easy as just taking other jobs. Slowly, she sat down on the settee, running her hands over her face as she tried to calm down.

  "... I can't focus," she admitted, her voice quiet and stiff with reluctance. "Working on something else, knowing he's out there, it feels wrong. I can't think about another case when he could be—" She cut herself off, not wanting to imagine it. "I've got to catch him, Merry. Fast."

  "When's the last time you slept?" Merry asked sitting down next to Jayne. "You look exhausted."

  "I got a couple of hours last night," Jayne said with a shrug, not mentioning that it was the most she'd had in days, before the nightmares had woken her up.

  "This isn't just about Burrett, is it?" Merry asked. Jayne tensed. Merry was too observant sometimes. She could have made a decent spy if she wasn't so wildly unpredictable in the
heat of the moment. When Jayne didn’t reply, she said, “One case. It’s a good case, quick job, indirectly linked to corporate interests. Easy money. Let’s throw this in the bank, and we can focus on Burrett. Deal?”

  "Okay. Just tell me about the case you found," Jayne said, changing the subject.

  Merry hesitated for a moment, looking like she wanted to press the issue, but then shook her head and gave in. She got up long enough to grab a tablet off her desk, scrolling through the files on it.

  "Alright, this one is pretty straightforward," she said, handing the file to Jayne. "It should be a quick pay day if there are no unexpected complications."

  "I am a walking unexpected complication," Jayne replied dryly, scanning the text.

  "Yep, the math checks out," Merry joked back. "Still. It's a one-off mediation. Even you shouldn't be able to mess it up too much. Two independent agents approached us. They need to make some kind of exchange, but there's bad blood between them and neither trusts the other not to screw them over. But they've heard of you, they know you're reliable and, more importantly, neutral. You don't have any major ties to anyone yet. So you're trustworthy. They want you to mediate the exchange, make sure it all goes down smoothly. Easy as pie."

  "You want me to play middle man?" Jayne summarized, looking at the photos attached to the file. The blurry street-cam photo of the first agent provided more of an impression of her appearance than it did a detailed description. She looked tall, possibly dark blond. The second agent's photo by contrast looked like it had been pulled from a company website. A clean cut young man whose smile didn't reach his steely gray eyes.

  "If you think you can handle it," Merry replied. "They're paying well for what should be a pretty easy job."

  "Keeping two highly trained agents with a decade long blood feud from double-crossing each other long enough to trade highly valuable classified information?" Jayne scoffed. "Sure. How hard could it be?"

  +++

  "Pizza delivery!"

  About an hour later, Fred announced his arrival by flinging the door open wide to accommodate the large pizza box he was carrying.