There we go, Jayne thought, relieved. On the right track. “And who was that? Who hired you?”
“Geiger.”
Jayne spat out the water she had just sipped from the faucet. “Dean Geiger?”
Nova nodded.
Jayne couldn’t believe it. Everything was coming together. “Why the hell did you just tell me that?”
Nova figured the answer to that question was obvious. “Because you earned my respect. We’ve fought twice. I defeated you both times. You came back yet again. And you won.” She walked over to the door. “Dean Geiger’s people hired me. I wasn’t supposed to know that, but I’m not an idiot. And I do research on all my clients.” She turned to Jayne and gave her a wicked smile. “I suggest you start doing the same.”
As much as the dig stung Jayne, she also recognized that Nova was right. Partially. They were alike. Two sides of the same coin. Two ends of the same business.
Nova yanked the handicapped bar holding the bathroom door shut out from behind the hand dryer and the door handle. “If that’s all you ever wanted to know, you should have just asked.”
Jayne shut the faucet off. “You never gave me a chance.”
Nova opened the door. “Neither did you. Now I’ll stay out of your hair, if you stay out of mine.” She smiled at Jayne. “Which is really cute, by the way.”
Jayne reached to the hidden holster hanging off the back of her belt. “Thanks. Now there’s one more thing I have to take care of.”
Nova had reached for the bathroom door, but turned around to smile at Jayne. “Oh? And what’s that?”
Jayne pulled the gun out, and thought of the blind yet pleading eyes of Zodiac Zelda. “I have to keep a promise.”
The shot echoed horribly against the tiled floors and the porcelain.
Jayne picked up Nova’s Q-shaped glasses off the floor. She rinsed them off in the sink, then put them on. Time to blend in and get the hell out of there. After all, she was still the Federation’s Number One Most Wanted, and she had just killed a criminal, a traitor and a pain in the ass. But it was a bad look, no matter how necessary.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Admiral’s Park Golf Course, L80, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
Dean Geiger eased his heat-seeking 9-iron right up to the back of the golf ball hovering over the magnetic tee.
He dug his golf shoes into the grass – some of the only grass in Theron Techcropolis – and, with his aim steady, reared the club up in one smooth arc over his shoulder. He was wearing his lucky, bright orange sweater, powder blue golf hat with the tassel, and his plaid legacy pants. Golf was all about psychology. Geiger was famous for showing up to the green dressed as ridiculously as possible so his opponents would be too distracted by his sartorial insanity to focus on the ball.
He swung his club down in a perfect, pendulous arc. THWACK.
The golf ball flew in a perfectly straight line through Theron Techcropolis’ windless air.
His companions clapped politely. Dean Geiger didn’t like or respect any of his millionaire golf buddies, but he found them easy to use so he kept them around. Plus, they constantly complimented him, which he had to admit was a perk.
Geiger held his pose until he saw the golf ball land about a hundred yards away on the green, only a hair’s breadth from the hole. “Now that’s how you play golf!”
His polite, millionaire friends laughed.
Geiger tapped the dirt off his golf shoes. “Alright, now where’s my caddie? Noora! Noora!”
Noora hobbled over from the hover-cart with Dean Geiger’s massive golf bag slung over her shoulder.
Before she had made it halfway, Geiger tossed the golf club in her direction. It flew straight at her stomach, which she fumbled to catch, but not without dropping the golf bag and spilling all of his clubs, balls, and tiny pencils.
“Dammit, Noora! That bag alone is worth more than I pay you in a year. Show some respect!”
His millionaire friends laughed as they followed Geiger over to the hover-cart. Geiger took the driver’s seat and pressed the one-button ignition. “We’ll go ahead, Noora. See you there!”
Dean Geiger hit the pedal and the hover cart scooted forward at a leisurely pace. Noora gathered all of the clubs and gear as fast as she could and struggled to slide them all back into the bag, dropping golf balls and pencils in her wake as she jogged after the hover cart.
“So, anyway!” Dean Geiger gesticulated wildly and turned back to face his millionaire buddies in the back of the hover cart. “Where was I? Oh yes. She’s in my office, crying. I explained to her, very calmly, that we had done everything we could to keep her in the academy, that we had given her more than a second, third, fourth, and fifth chance. She cried and cried and begged and begged… And do you know what she did?”
Geiger’s millionaire friend in the passenger seat clapped his hands together, rubbing them lecherously. “Oh, I got an idea!”
Geiger took a hard left toward the hole. “That’s right. She begged me. She said, ‘Right here! On the desk! I don’t care! Do what you want with me, anything!’” Geiger shook his head. “It was disgusting.”
The shortest of Gieger’s three millionaire friends lit a cigar in the backseat. “I feel like you passed a golden opportunity, Geiger. How many people can say they slept with the Federation’s Most Wanted Fugitive?”
The millionaire next to him, who had a mustache Dean Geiger despised, leaned in to Geiger’s ear. “Not to mention that body! Sexiest criminal I’ve ever seen.”
Geiger tut-tutted as they pulled up to the hole. “No, gentleman. I’m afraid that was the last straw. I’m a man of principle. So I told her no. I offered her all the help in the world to get her on her feet. I didn’t want to see the poor girl leave the Academy with nothing. I’m afraid she resorted to exactly what I feared. In a way, I feel responsible.”
The passenger seat millionaire continued with his lecherous fantasies. “Maybe if you had screwed her, none of this would have happened!”
Geiger pulled the hover cart over and slowed down until they stopped. “I don’t regret my decision. It was the proper decision. And now, I aim to take care of Jayne once and for all… Now, where’s Noora?” He looked back up the hill to see Noora, sweating and exhausted, stumble over the horizon. Geiger whistled at her like a dog. “Hurry up, Noora! We’re losing daylight!”
Noora finally arrived after Geiger and his friends stood in a circle tapping their feet. Geiger took out his putter, then shooed Noora away.
He gingerly tip-toed around his golf ball, judging the best angle, velocity, and push to get the ball into the hole, only a couple yards away.
He crouched down as if getting the golf ball’s point of view. Once he was confident he’d found the surefire position for a three under par stroke, he shook the tension out of his back and arms and entered a meditative stance over the ball.
Focus, he told himself… Focus. All it was going to take was the smallest little push from his putter, clean and even.
Okay… Geiger breathed. One… Two… Three…
He let the natural, gentle force of the lilting putter swing forward just as his comm BUZZED in his right pocket and broke out into a fanfare of whistles and beeps. His grip on the putter twisted. He jerked it upward, popping the golf ball up, over the hole, and into a sand trap. “DAMMIT FUCK!”
Geiger stamped his feet up and down. He banged the putter against the ground until it bent into four different directions.
His millionaire friends waited patiently. They did their best to hide their embarrassment out of some sort of vague obligation to the man.
Noora loved seeing Geiger in a bad mood, although she was upset this would likely extend the length of the game.
The mustached millionaire cleared his throat over Gieger’s ringing comm. “Shouldn’t you have turned that off before the game started?”
Geiger glared at the man’s mustache he hated so much. “I don’t know, Tim. SHOULD I HAVE??!?” He reached into
his pants pocket and yanked out his comm, tearing the seam between the pants and pocket in the process. “SHIT!” He answered the comm, doing nothing to hide the rage in his voice. “What the fuck do you want? Who is this?”
As Geiger listened, his face twisted into a disgusting, greasy knot. The sweat of a day on the green built up between the folds of his forehead. “What? When did this happen?” Geiger listened to the other line. “Damn. Damn. Alright. Goodbye.”
Geiger threw his putter over toward Noora, who let it fall on the ground in front of her. He ripped his golfing gloves off and waved his friends to follow him. “Come on, game’s over.”
Geiger’s disappointed millionaire friends followed him to the hover-cart, reluctantly getting in like kids picked up early from a slumber party.
Geiger cranked the hover cart. “Come on, Noora! Let’s go!”
Noora breathed a sigh of relief. “About damn time.”
+++
Dean Geiger’s Office, Espionage Academy, Avalon Space Station
Geiger spent the entire afternoon watching the security footage from the lightball game. Nova had come highly recommended. She’d impressed Geiger throughout the entire process. She was a professional. She was good at her job, and loyal to the hand that fed her.
Yet, she let Jayne go. Then, perhaps rightly, Jayne put a bullet in her head. The whole thing had made him depressed. He felt lonely. The one person he thought he could trust had let him down.
He felt like no one liked him. He knew no one liked him.
Only one living creature in his entire life had ever liked him, and Jayne destroyed that, too.
Jayne had ruined everything.
He lifted the glass to his lips, but there was no scotch left. When was Noora getting back? He sent her out hours ago. Two bottles of scotch he told her to get.
He couldn’t rely on anyone anymore.
Jayne had to go.
Noora was unreliable.
His train of thought wouldn’t flow. Thanks to the scotch, they fought each other aggressively. His ideas and his emotions warring in his mind and his heart, hitting each other below the belt.
Geiger wandered from the built-in bar over to his desk. He unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out the box containing the shards of the ceramic poodle Jayne had destroyed. He pulled the rubber band off from around the lid and looked inside. All the pieces were still there, uselessly.
Noora opened the door, finally, with two bottles of scotch hidden in brown bags. “Two bottles of scotch. Anything else?” She arrived in errand mode, task-focused to the point where she didn’t even notice the lifeless glaze of Dean Geiger’s eyes as he looked into the box of shards. “Dean Geiger?”
He picked up a large shard, the right leg of the poodle, and rubbed it in his hands. “Am I bad person, Noora?”
“No, Dean Geiger. Not at all.”
Geiger nodded. “I think people are allowed to be complicated. I think… some people are more complicated than others.”
Noora pulled up a chair. It was time to play therapist. “Well, why don’t you elaborate on that?”
Geiger’s fingers lovingly traced the jagged edges of the broken ceramic. “I’ve allowed myself to become very complicated. Do you think that’s bad?”
Noora crossed her legs and shrugged. “I think that’s up to you.”
Geiger placed the shard back in the box and picked up another piece. All that remained of the snout. A small piece that he could roll between his fingers. “I truly want the people to be safe. It’s better this way, right? All of the information. In one place. We can use this to protect them. Can’t we?”
Noora nodded, though her face showed a reticence. “I think that remains to be seen, and will ultimately be up to you.”
Geiger held the glass up to his nose and took a small whiff. “Somewhere I went wrong. Is it bad to benefit off of doing something good? Surely martyrdom is even its own kind of selfishness. I’m no saint, but I truly have tried to do good things. I donate to charities, don’t I?”
Noora wasn’t sure how to answer that one. Dean Geiger made many donations to charities, though largely for political gain, leverage, and tax purposes. “You do. You’re very generous.”
Geiger placed the ceramic snout back in the box and looked down on all the broken pieces resting on the hand towel he folded at the bottom. “Do you believe we have souls, Noora?”
A question out of left field. Noora wasn’t prepared for that one. She deflected it. “Well, do you?”
Geiger felt pressure behind his eyes. Was it the scotch, or was he about to cry? “I think some of us are lucky to have… something. If I ever had one, I think I lost it. I think I gave it up. Can I tell you something?”
Noora put on her warmest smile. “Anything, sir.”
Geiger frowned. “I worry that the day I fired Jayne from the academy was the day I lost my soul. The day I sold it.” But he looked down at the box. “I think that’s what I always wanted.” He picked up the largest chunk of ceramic. It was the poodle’s torso, with an impression in the center where the heart would be. “Do you remember when Rex died?”
Noora nodded. She did. Geiger cancelled all his meetings for a month.
“I thought I could hold onto that feeling. That feeling of being loved. I believed when I had Rex’s ashes mixed into clay… I thought his soul would stay there. I thought my soul would be in there, or something. The good part of me.” He put the lid on the box and shook his head. “Damn.”
He opened one of the new bottles of scotch and filled his glass. He took a long sip. His goal was to pass out, hangover be damned. Running for prime minister was one thing. Having a hired assassin betray you was another.
But losing a dog? Losing the same dog twice? No pain could ever be worse.
Geiger gulped the entire glass of scotch down. He coughed at the sting in his throat.
Noora stood up. “Are you okay?”
Geiger caught his breath. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” He slammed the glass down and reached for the bottle. He poured another glass. “What’s so bad about keeping our people safe? They should thank me. Jayne doesn’t keep them safe. We have to guard them. From people like Jayne.”
Noora stealthily took the second bottle and hid it behind the cushion on her chair. She wasn’t Geiger’s biggest fan, but she didn’t want him to literally drink himself to death in one night. “Is there anything else you need tonight, sir?”
Geiger looked blankly for a long moment, then changed his gaze up to Noora. “We have to kill Jayne.”
Noora had grown accustomed to Geiger’s extreme orders. Would he remember this? Would he arrive at it again, soberly, the next morning?
Geiger saw the uncertainty on Noora’s face. He slammed his fist on his desk. “I want her dead, Noora!”
“Yes, sir,” Noora managed. Her left leg shook with nerves.
“Don’t bother me in the morning. I’ll call you when the hangover is… manageable. Is that clear?”
“Shall I leave now?”
Geiger nodded. He rotated his chair to look out the window behind him. The Avalon Space Station had rotated into position where he could look out into space at the massive horizon of Amaros below.
Noora swiped the panel, closing the office door behind her and leaving Dean Geiger alone with nothing but a bottle of scotch and the remnants of the only creature that ever loved him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Barley Feather Kitchen, L60, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
The bearded hippie with a ponytail who introduced himself as “Chrysalis” returned to the table. “Okay, I got a bowl of lightly steamed unseasoned lentils?”
Merry groaned and raised her finger. “That’s me.”
Chrysalis placed the lentils in front of Merry. “Four cloves of garlic skewered with a twig?”
Fred lightly groaned, all the excitement he could garner for this meal. Their hippie server handed the plate to Fred and turned to Vlad. “Which means the three leaves of let
tuce with lemon juice and one grape is yours.”
“Uh… Yeah.” Vlad grabbed his fork off the table, but he wasn’t even confident if that was the best utensil for eating three leaves of lettuce.
Chrysalis placed his hands together. “Before you eat, we ask that you express admiration for the bounty of nature’s gifts that allows you to eat with us today.”
Fred, Merry, and Vlad all stared at each other. Vlad coughed. “Uh, thanks. Thanks, uh, plants. Thank you, plants.”
The only reason eating the rabbit food at Barley Feather Kitchen was worth it was their air. Encased in a vacuum bubble, no smog could get into the restaurant, which overflowed with lush, green foliage. Their air was delivered weekly, mined from Yonnix-Yonnuba, an Oxygen planet on the outer most rim of the Gemini Sector.
Shipping in oxygen wasn’t cheap, of course.
Chrysalis nodded in appreciation and swiped the tablet in the table. “Here’s your check. You can pay whenever you’re ready.”
As he shuffled away, Merry examined the check. “Oh my god, Vlad, this meal cost one-hundred and forty credits.”
Vlad tried to pick up a piece of lettuce with his fork, but he kept dropping the soggy leaf back on his plate. “Well, it was easier to meet when we had an office! We’re running out of restaurants!”
It was true. The gang had been meeting whenever possible at restaurants all up and down Theron Techcropolis. If the spy agency ultimately didn’t work out, they could start a food blog.
Fred held the naked twig in his hand. “Aw, man. I already ate all my garlic.” He shrugged, then popped the twig into his mouth. He chewed at its dull, woody taste. “This sucks.”
Vlad threw his hands in the air. “Sorry! I thought it sounded interesting, and I was getting tired of pancakes. Fred. It’s nice to have health food every now and then.”
Merry dipped her tiny spoon into her espresso cup sized bowl of lentils. “Starving yourself isn’t healthy.”
Vlad gave up with his fork and just grabbed the lettuce with his hand. He crossed his arms on the table as he chewed away like a malnourished rabbit. “Okay, Merry, what is it you have to tell us?”
Exposed (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 2) Page 22