He paused. When neither woman immediately said anything else, he added, “I did provide them with a popular local shopping guide. Can I help with anything else?”
Geena, after a glance at Lexi, said, “If you can provide us with a list of those restaurants, I think we’re good. Also if you made any specific recommendations about booking a sailboat excursion? Frankly, I wouldn’t mind taking one while we’re here. I love sailing.”
“I always suggest Bagran Water Excursions to guests staying at the Elegan. They’re costly, but that outfit has one of the best overall reputations. If you mention you’re staying at the hotel, the on-board refreshments are free. Even the wealthy appreciate freebies.”
Geena smiled at him. “Well, Mr. Gee, assuming my partner has no further questions,” Lexi shook her head, “I want to thank you for your time and wish you a very pleasant afternoon.”
“You’re more than welcome. I do hope those poor people are found soon.”
Outside of the hotel, Geena said, “He seemed pleasant enough. I want to take a car back to the Urania’s berth so we can change out of these hot clothes. It already feels like my undershirt is plastered to me and it’s only late morning. Then we can start checking those restaurants. I don’t expect much, but you never know.”
“No,” Lexi said. “That’s just a waste of our time. He lied to us about not making suggestions regarding shopping.”
Geena frowned at her. “Remember, I’m Obi-wan and you’re the trainee. I know what I’m doing. You don’t. Are you taking over this investigation like you did my team? Is this what I have to look forward to, going forward?”
Lexi stopped, her face expressionless. “I had to take over, love. You wouldn’t have turned us back to Earth for the Rose. You didn’t really believe I knew where to find it. I thought you were pleased with how our situation is working out. Admittedly, your experience is greater than mine. I don’t really have any. I know that. I just want to be an insurance investigator. I want to work with you guys. The only thing I’m going to insist on is that we keep up the self-defense training. If you want the leadership role back, it’s yours. I’m not trying to take over the investigation. It’s just I know he was lying.”
Geena’s face momentarily became expressionless, too. “I am pleased with our situation, Lexi, as far as your leading the team goes. Besides, I’m last year’s model. You’re still a little wet behind the ears, maybe, but we all start out that way. No, I do not want the team leader role back. Darling, I already have the sense that you were born to lead. I was questioning your taking lead on this. Why do you say Karl lied? If he did, he’s good. I didn’t catch any tells.”
“I don’t know how I know, but he lied to us Geena, when we asked him about shopping. I suspect that means he did suggest someplace specific for Kahvia to visit. Whatever’s going on, he’s in on it.”
Geena held her gaze for a moment. “If you’re right, that means it’s up to Jis. The two of us will still check out the marina and the restaurants this afternoon, even if we don’t expect to learn anything useful, just in case we’re being watched. I haven’t noticed anybody, but why take chances? Once we’re back at the ship, it’s another brain scan for you young lady. If you can tell when a man is lying to you, that might be a sign that the Rose of Light is stirring. You were working toward that with Jis for over a week.”
Lexi had to agree. Over the comm, she asked, “Jis? How do you know when someone’s lying?
“I can’t explain it, love. I just do.”
“Lexi may be doing that, too,” Geena said. “Where are you?”
“Good. Keep working on the meditations, Lexi. I’m currently enjoying the aquarium. Some of the animals are imported. It’s a pretty impressive exhibit.”
Lexi smiled. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. Don’t get too close to the man-eating serpents, honey. We just finished interviewing your hotel’s concierge. His name is Karl Gee. If he’s still on duty when you get back, ask him for shopping recommendations. He lied to us when we asked him if he made suggestions to Kahvia. At least, I think he did.”
“OK. What am I shopping for?”
Lexi looked to Geena and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Geena joined the conversation. “Jewelry. Formal gowns. Kahvia may have been shopping for something exotic for your ceremony. Maybe toys, but since other than two of our three Grake, all of the people who have been taken were adult, probably not toys. Dammit, Jis, you’re going to be Plicora. Shop for whatever royalty shops for. You should know what that is better than I do.”
With a haughty tone to her voice, which both Lexi and Geena knew was faked, Jis said, “Surely you know, darling, my class of people doesn’t shop. How plebeian. We have the little people for that.” She giggled, again thinking, Just one of the guys!. “I’ll get back to you.”
Before they got into the car that would convey them back to the starport, Lexi said, “Geena, after we change, can we stop somewhere for a late lunch? Maybe at one of the restaurants we want to check anyway? I want you to tell me what it’s like being a cop.”
“Absolutely. By the way, if Jis doesn’t get anything from Karl, the two of us will be spending some time with him tonight. I’m trusting your instinct. Truth serum may be involved. In the meantime, Urania, pull what you can of the man’s financials.”
The ride back to the port was uneventful; the walk from the terminal to Urania’s berth along Aisle 14, anything but.
Chapter 17
Thugs With Guns
Lexi, staring daggers at the four men blocking their path, growled, “I’m never leaving the ship without my sword again.” Geena assumed she was talking to her, rather than the muggers.
Geena shrugged. “All four of them already have guns pointed in our direction. I’m not sure how much of a difference a sword would make.” She had to work at keeping her voice calm and conversational. When and where possible, you start negotiations from a position of strength. When you aren’t actually in a position of strength, you do the best you can.
“I Imagine the best thing is to just kill them,” she calmly said. We don’t need the swords for that, darling. Although, it’s bound to be less exciting without body parts flying all over the place.” The men were all too far away for the women to attack unarmed, but not so far away that they didn’t hear her. Lexi was fast and might just be acrobatic enough to avoid getting shot. Geena doubted she herself was. “What do you boys want?”
“What do we want? We don’t want nothing.” The speaker was a somewhat heavy-set man in ill-fitting clothing. All four of them looked like they needed to shampoo. One of them looked so unkempt he probably hadn’t washed his hair in over a month. They were all eyeing them now with a tinge of uncertainty in their expressions.
A second man, the one with the really bad hair, added, “Just consider this a friendly warning to get off the planet. Understand me? Don’t meddle in stuff that aren’t your concern. You get hurt that way. It’s easier than you think. We’ll be hurting you a little now, just to help you understand. We might even have a little sex. You’ll be OK with that right? Sex with four handsome guys? We was told to make sure you understand the danger you’re in.” He smiled. Yucky hair, poor grammar, perfect teeth.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” Lexi said, apparently speaking to Geena. At any rate, she was looking at her as she said, “I want to know everything they know about the kidnappings and who they’re working for. If they’re willing to cooperate, as much as it galls me, I’ll let them walk away from this.”
Dammit, she’s taking lead. Again. That’s a decision to fight if I ever heard one. It would have been my decision too. Trouble is, I don’t know what she’s planning. Geena eyed the four thugs speculatively. I guess it’s my job to distract them further. “We really only need one of them alive to question,” she observed. They all seemed slightly rattled. Possibly due to two women with their guns still holstered, showing no sign of fear, calmly discussing killing three of them. Tha
t had to be different.
“I have to disagree with you fellows,” Lexi said, now clearly talking to the thugs, “but the kidnappings that brought us here are our concern. We were hired to find the Borgolian victims and return them to their family. Anyone want to help us with that?”
She paused, staring coldly at the four silent men. “Do you know what a buzzsaw is? No? It’s an old machine used in the primitive areas of my world for cutting trees into planks. A very powerful machine. Very dangerous. It’s wise to keep well clear of it while it’s busy cutting wood.” She smiled at them. “We’re here to cut wood.”
Geena continued looking at the men as the handle of Lexi’s shoulder dagger sprouted from the eye socket of the man diagonally across from her at about the same instant Lexi said “We’re here.” I guess we must be the buzzsaw? she thought. And that makes them, what, trees?
No one else noticed one of their number was dead until the dead man’s gun clattered to the ground, followed immediately by a soft thud as his body did likewise. Geena drew her sidearm as the remaining three turned to look at the dead man. By that point Lexi, who had the advantage of not having to wait on her partner for cues, had her gun out.
Geena saw two muzzle flashes, followed by two loud cracks of Lexi’s Glock being fired, but couldn’t immediately tell which two Lexi shot. She was, however, sure two more of the guys were down. She was scanning to see who was still standing when on the heels of the first two she heard a third shot. That one didn’t come from Lexi.
Lexi felt the impact of the bullet followed by the pavement slamming her in the back. It was all she could do to take the brunt of the contact with her shoulders, keeping her head from hitting hard as she fell. After that, things around her went somewhat dim. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. There was just the overwhelming pain.
She vaguely heard Geena, her voice gritty and her gun pointing at the remaining man’s head, say, “Lose the gun now. Gently. Set it down gently. Don’t think about it, just do it. I’m very good at head shots.” Dammit, Geena thought. I should have shot all three of them while I had the chance, even if two of them were already dead. I might have prevented this.
The thug did as he was told. He had no reason to doubt the woman was very good at head shots. The other one certainly was. She walked over and slid the gun away with her foot. “Now face-down on the ground.” Once he was down, she kicked the other three guns away from him, then manacled his right wrist to his left ankle. If we hadn’t dressed in these outfits, I wouldn’t have manacles on my belt. Fortunate wardrobe choice. The manacles didn’t totally immobilize him, but came close. He could still make an escape flopping and rolling if he chose. She’d shoot him if he tried that. Then she rushed over to check Lexi.
Lexi reached up with her good arm to Geena, the bullet took her just below the clavicle on her other side, and said, her voice weak, “Don’t tell Ron.”
“Hold on, darling, we’re going to get you back to Urania in just a moment. I’m sure it feels like it, but I don’t think that wound should be fatal. Urania, you following this?”
“Of course. I’m monitoring her vitals. Get her back here quickly. Shoulder wounds can be bad, but I think she’s in shock more than anything else.”
“Working on it, darling.”
Chapter 18
Cleanup, Aisle 14
Geena stripped off the upper portion of her leather outfit and tossed all four of the men’s guns and phones into it. She added Lexi’s bloody dagger, Lexi’s own gun and the dagger from Lexi’s boot sheath. She fastened the front closures and tied the arms around it to keep the hardware contained. Only then did she turn to deal with the fourth man, walking up to stand over him. “You shot my daughter. If you want even a chance at living through the rest of the day you will do exactly as I say. Understood?”
He mumbled, “Yeah.”
“Good. I’m going to release you. You are going to walk over, pick her up, let me rephrase that, gently pick her up and carry her to my ship. It’s about a ten-minute walk, but I guess you already know that. I’m carry a bundle with all of the guns except the one still in my hand. Get my drift?”
“Got it. Please, don’t kill me. We was just going to rough you up a bit.”
Her voice hard, Geena said, “So the talk of rape was just four fun-loving guys joking around?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
They got to the ship but the hatch didn’t open. Geena sighed. I don’t need this. “Geena Samue. Just open the damn hatch.”
She waited impatiently while the outside speaker said, “Geena Samue. Voice print match. Welcome home, Geena.”
Once the three boarded, she directed her captive to walk in front of her, still carrying Lexi, to the med-bay. Urania was running the medical scanner even before he placed her on the medical bed. “I’m sure it must be painful, but it isn’t that dangerous a wound,” Urania reported, her voice coming through the comm-gear.
“Good.” Geena looked at the man, standing in the corner with a very worried expression on his face. Switching to English, she asked, “That roofie you guys whipped up for Jameson, can you make a version without the side effect? Was it the roofie? Or the second serum? I’m not sure exactly what Lexi did.”
“It was both, taken together,” Urania replied.
Geena had wondered why so many of the med-bay’s mechanical arms were waving around, some of them nowhere near Lexi. Now, as one of them shot out and hit the man, injecting a roofie into his neck, she said, “I guess we’re starting to think alike, darling. Once that starts to wear off, we’ll need to tranq him until Lexi is ready for him. Which reminds me, while you have her in here, would you do another brain scan. She was showing signs of Rose of Light activity earlier today. I’m sure she’ll appreciate knowing if something is happening with that. I need to go and report the bodies we left in the street to the detectives.”
Lexi’s weak voice came from the bed. “Geena?” She was crying softly.
“Yes, darling. I know it hurts, but you’re going to be alright.” Her voice was more compassionate than Lexi ever remembered hearing before.
“I know. I’m crying because you called me your daughter.”
Geena leaned over to hug her, being careful of the shoulder. “Sweetie, I couldn’t separate you from Ron now even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. It’s nice having a pet around. Let me go talk to the CIB. I’ll be back when I’m done.”
Lexi managed to stick out her tongue and mumble, “Aren’t you the comic.” Geena called her a pet, in a derogatory sense, telling Ron they didn’t need a pet on board, thinking she was speaking in a language Lexi couldn’t understand, the first morning Lexi was on the ship. Lexi replied in several different languages she also shouldn’t have been able to speak. Her responses were harsher than being called a pet.
Urania had both Lexi’s leather shirt and her undergarment cut away by the time Geena got back. Geena stepped into the small med-bay as the bullet, which had lodged itself near the shoulder blade, was being extracted. It made a disturbing clinking noise as it dropped into a specimen tray.
In under four minutes, the robotic appliances were done sanitizing the wound, sealing off severed capillaries and gluing the wound closed. “I expect you’ll have a small scar, Lexi,” Urania said. “I gave you something for the pain. It’ll wear off in about six hours. You can switch to pills after that. Keep the arm in a sling for the next week. You can start using it again, carefully, after that.”
“Got it. Can you sit me up, Urania?” She waited until the med-bed elevated her to a sitting position, noticed for the first time the unconscious man slumped on the floor and asked, “What happened to him?”
Geena smiled. “Roofie followed by a knock-out serum. Your standard operating procedure, right? He won’t remember seeing us. We’ll probably want to give him a second one once we’re done questioning him.”
Lexi looked at her, slightly horrified. “Not the one I gave to Professor Jameson?”
“Good. I’m sorry I put you guys to all this trouble.” She sighed. “I thought I could take all four of them down. I’m sorry there wasn’t a chance to discuss it with you first, Geena. I know you were trying to talk our way out of the situation. I didn’t think they were totally buying it.”
Geena shook her head. “They weren’t, although they did find our conversation satisfyingly disturbing. Lexi, you’re faster than I am. And a better shot, overall. We both know that. But you’re not that much better. I saw what you did. You took out the two men who would have been shooting at me before you even tried to get the two who would be targeting you.”
She sighed. “You would have taken them all down. The idiot who shot you wasn’t even looking at you at that point. His gun has a hair trigger and he jerked in surprise. You would have had him otherwise. If you made any mistake at all, it was not shooting the bastard even though you didn’t have a kill shot. So thank you, darling, but don’t do it again. I appreciate the apology as well. Sometimes, there’s no time to share plans. You did well, trainee. How are you feeling?”
Avenger Page 9
