“Not if you want to see your son alive.”
His words took a moment to penetrate. Then she said, “He’s your son, too.”
In a darkness only partially broken by the streetlight a few yards away, Thorn’s expression was even more unreadable than usual. He met her gaze squarely, and replied, “Right now he’s an asset that needs to be reacquired.”
For a few seconds Miala could only stare back at him, shocked by his coldness. Then she seemed to hear his voice in her mind, the phrase he had uttered only that afternoon. Had it really been just a few hours ago? It felt as if centuries had passed since then. But he had looked at her much as he did now, and said, Connections kill. He couldn’t allow himself to become emotionally involved now. If he did, he risked losing the very edge that was necessary to bring Jerem back to her.
The horrified words that had risen to her lips seemed to evaporate. She had to think he did care at some level, but that concern was the last thing he could indulge right now.
“So what do we do?” Miala asked at length. Suddenly she realized that they were standing on the street in their nightclothes, and barefoot as well. Enough of her neighbors had gone out to watch the fire similarly garbed that perhaps she and Thorn had escaped notice for now, but they couldn’t wander around like this for much longer.
“Get off the street,” he said immediately. “I’d say go back to my ship, but I know it’s being watched. A hotel somewhere, probably.”
Miala wanted to retort that no decent place would take them in looking as they did, but in Rilsport just as everywhere else in the galaxy, money talked. Much of her life had just been swallowed up in flames, but she still had her bank accounts. On Nova Angeles, most smaller transactions were handled through simple thumbprint I.D.—they should be able to walk into any hotel in the city and get a room that way, at least. Most public transport was paid for in a similar fashion.
“Keep heading east,” she said, and began walking. “About five blocks from here is a main street. We should be able to get a taxi there.”
He nodded and kept pace with her. As they moved farther away from her home, Miala could feel the cold beginning to seep up through her bare feet, slowly overtaking her entire body. Perhaps it should have bothered her. Instead, she almost welcomed the numbing sensation. At least when she was numb she didn’t have to feel anything. She didn’t have to think about her son in the hands of kidnappers. She didn’t have to think about the ruin of her home. She didn’t have to think about anything except making sure that her feet kept moving, taking her away from the life she had built over the past eight years.
Thorn said nothing throughout their journey. Only when they reached the main street did he say, “Wait here,” and seat her down on a bench outside a restaurant now shuttered for the night. Then he moved to the curb, watched the traffic move past, and finally raised his hand when a mech-driven jitney approached.
The aircar whooshed to a stop, and Thorn leaned down to ask something of the driver—probably the direction to the closest reputable hotel. Then he straightened and gestured for Miala to join him.
She stood and walked with mechanical steps to the taxi, and settled herself in the back seat. The vehicle smelled of stale breath mints and perspiration, but it was also warm. Thorn climbed in beside her, and the taxi took off.
Only once they were in motion did the mercenary finally turn to give her an appraising look. “You all right?”
She said, “I’ll manage.”
Outside the car’s window the streets of Rilsport streamed past, well-lit, clean, and orderly. It seemed another world from the one that had stolen her son and destroyed her home. Perhaps this was only a nightmare, one from which she would awake to find Jerem still in his room and her home safe around her, with Thorn unwounded and lying next to her in bed. But as much as she’d like to believe that, she knew it was a lie. This was the truth—she was alone, and the home where she had raised her son, seen his first steps, fought with him over sticky counters and spotted beans, was gone forever.
The tears came then finally, flooding down her cheeks as she leaned her head against the battered synth-leather upholstery. It was the only thing she could think to do to ease the enormous aching void within her.
Then she felt him reach out, wrap his arms around her, draw her close to his chest. The rhythm of his heart seemed to offer its own strange comfort, and she let him hold her, even as her tears soaked the loose soot-stained shirt he wore. He said nothing, only reassuring her with his touch, letting her know that, whatever she might think, she wasn’t alone after all.
XXI
Miala had to repress the urge to mutter, Locked myself out, when the desk clerk at the Rilsport Plaza Towers gave a goggle-eyed look at her stained dressing robe and bare feet.
But, as she had thought, her request for one of the top-floor suites was granted once she had placed her thumb against the hotel’s biometric registry and paid for two nights in advance. Eccentricity was obviously allowed when accompanied by a fat credit balance.
“Any baggage?” the desk clerk asked.
“Just him,” she said, with a jerk of her chin toward Thorn, who was watching the exchange with imperturbable dark eyes.
The clerk goggled again, but he handed her the access card to her suite without further comment. She took it and headed toward the bank of elevators at the far end of the lobby, which at this hour was mostly unoccupied except for a sweeper mech off to one side and a bleary-looking man who obviously had spent the better part of the evening in the hotel lounge and who now had propped himself against one of the rock-crystal pillars that held up the brightly painted roof. Possibly he was considering whether it would be better to call a cab or just sleep it off on one of the lobby couches.
Although Miala had never stayed in the Rilsport Plaza, she had attended several conferences here over the years and knew the layout well enough. The suite she had just rented was located in the same tower as the main lobby, so it hadn’t been necessary to cross the courtyard to access the second set of elevators. She stepped in, slid her access card through the slot so the elevator would go all the way to the penthouse level, then gave Thorn a worried look as the doors shut behind them.
“Maybe that wasn’t so smart,” she said, giving voice to the doubt that had plagued her ever since she signed off on the hotel room. “I mean, what if the people who took Jerem and attacked us can figure out where we are from my credit information?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Excuse me?” Miala stared at Thorn, who, with his stained sleeping garments and soot-smeared face, looked somewhat out of place in the travertine and chrome interior of the plush lift. “You mean you want them to find us?”
The elevator doors chose that inopportune moment to open. Even though the small foyer that fronted the entrances to the two penthouse suites was empty, Thorn remained silent until the door of their room slid shut behind them.
“They’re after money,” he said, as he went to the bank of windows that comprised one wall of the suite and activated the sunshield that rendered the glass opaque. “Now we just have to wait and find out how much.”
“I thought paying ransoms never worked,” Miala objected, her throat tight with worry and unshed tears. “At least, that’s what the news reports and vid-flicks always seem to say.”
“Sometimes it does...sometimes it doesn’t.” Thorn moved past her to the bathroom and turned on the hot water. Seemingly unfazed by her glare, he stripped off the stained sleep shirt and baggy pants he wore and stepped into the stream, closing his eyes briefly as the water sluiced off his hair and ran down his shoulders and chest. The waterproof bandage Quin Lassiter had applied looked shockingly white against his dark skin.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Miala refused to let herself get distracted by the sight of his naked body. Except for a few more scars, he looked much the same as he had eight years ago.
“Every situation is different.” Thorn opened hi
s eyes and looked at her through the clouds of steam the hot water was generating. “Want to join me? Plenty of room in here.”
“Thank you, no,” Miala said icily. How could he possibly think she would be interested in sex at a time like this?
“You could use one,” he replied.
“Later,” she gritted.
He shrugged, poured some liquid soap into the palm of his hands, and began working it into his hair. “This is all about Mast’s money. You and I both know that. They failed with you on Iradia, so now they’re trying a different angle. That’s all.”
That’s all? she wanted to scream, but losing control right now wasn’t going to do anyone any good, least of all Jerem. It still infuriated her to think that Murgan and whatever cronies he had left thought they had some divine right to the treasure that had once lain in Mast’s vaults, but so be it. They could have it all. What was money, compared to her son?
While these unpleasant thoughts occupied her mind, Thorn finished his quick, efficient shower and stepped out under the molecular dryer. Within seconds the moisture had been wicked away from his body, and he reached up for the clean white robe that hung from a hook next to the shower unit.
“We’ll need clothes and other supplies,” he said.
“I can order those up in the morning,” Miala replied, her voice dull. Logically she knew that those commonplaces would have to be dealt with at some point, but for now all she could think of was Jerem in the hands of kidnappers, men so desperate they were willing to endanger the life of an innocent boy just to achieve their own mercenary ends.
Thorn gave her a keen look. Then he disappeared into the main room of the suite. After a few seconds he called, “I need your thumb.”
“What?” The bizarre request shook her momentarily out of her stupor, and she followed after him, wondering what the hell it was that he wanted. As soon as she took a few steps, she thought she understood. He had paused in front of the bar unit with which the suite had been supplied, but it had a biometric lock keyed to the person who had rented the rooms.
“You looked like you could use a drink.”
Well, she couldn’t argue with that. Miala crossed to the bar, applied her thumb to the sensor-lock, and then stood there for a moment, staring at the gleaming little bottles and wondering how many it would take to make her forget that her son had been stolen.
“Here,” said Thorn. He reached past her, grasped a bottle filled with some deep reddish-orange liquor that reminded her of the color of an Iradian sunset, and poured a few centimeters of the liquid into a square glass he found conveniently placed on top of the bar unit.
The sharp smell of it hit her nostrils even as he handed her the glass. Lately she hadn’t drunk much at all save a glass of wine with dinner once or twice a week. She didn’t know what Thorn had poured for her—not that it really mattered. Shutting her eyes, Miala tossed back approximately half the drink, feeling the fire of it as it hit the back of her throat and began to burn its way down her esophagus. She wanted to cough but refused to allow Thorn to see her inexperience with this sort of thing, so she settled for a slight throat clearing before she set the glass down on top of the bar.
“Smooth,” she managed.
A corner of his mouth lifted as his dark eyes gave her the lie, but he said nothing.
Still, Miala had to admit the sensation of heat that traveled down to her midsection and then on to all her limbs was fascinating. The blurred gray dullness of a few minutes ago had been wiped away by the potent liquor. Now she felt charged, energized. If Murgan’s henchmen had shown themselves in the suite at that moment, she would have taken them all on with her bare hands.
“Think I’ll have that shower now,” she said, after a brief pause.
“Good idea.”
Although she hated to keep having to acknowledge that Thorn was right, the shower felt sublime. She cranked the heat to the very edge of tolerance and let the massaging waves of water knead away some of the despair and terror that had stained her psyche just as surely as the soot had smudged her clothing. The alcohol coursing through her veins probably helped, too. Things were bad, no doubt about that, but at least she was still alive, and she had Thorn at her side to make sure Jerem was returned to her safely.
Miala stepped out of the shower and let herself be dried off before reaching for the second, smaller robe with which the bathroom had been supplied. When she went back out into the main room, she noticed Thorn had tuned the large vidscreen on the wall opposite the bed to a local news channel.
“Looking for something in particular?”
“Your house.”
“Excuse me?”
He waved the remote at the screen in a gesture of contempt. “Local channels love house fires...especially big, expensive house fires. But I can’t find any mention of yours.”
“So?”
“Obviously someone doesn’t want it publicized.”
Miala stood there for a moment, watching as Thorn flipped through the channels. At this hour of the night, the fare wasn’t particularly appetizing—vid epics most people had seen a hundred times before, hacks peddling improbable inventions guaranteed to make your life better, rebroadcasts of serials for those whose schedules kept them away from the vid during the daylight hours. But there were also three channels locally that broadcast the news twenty-five hours a day, and certainly an item such as her house fire would have caught the attention of one of the crews that trolled the city all day and night in search of those sorts of tasty items.
“What do you think it means?” she asked, the warm glow of the liquor abruptly turning into a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach.
He frowned. “Nothing good.”
“Thanks.”
Ignoring her brittle sarcasm, he turned the remote over in his hands and then abruptly switched off the vscreen. “Those police officers...”
“What about them?” Right now all she cared about was the fact that Thorn had managed to kill them before they killed either him or her. Or both of them at once.
“They didn’t seem like criminals masquerading as cops. They talked like cops, looked like cops, shot like cops.” Thorn ran a thoughtful finger down his chin, as if feeling the stubble there might aid in his logic processes. “I’m starting to think they really were cops.”
“But if they were real cops—if they weren’t just faking it—” Miala trailed off, watching Thorn’s impassive dark face.
“Then I think we have to consider the possibility that the local security force is somehow involved in this,” the mercenary said.
The bottom seemed to fall out of her world. Oh, she’d grown up on Iradia, and she knew how crooked a place the universe could be, but once she’d found refuge here on Nova Angeles and settled her life in line with its orderly, long-civilized routines, she’d thought she was safe. But men were infinitely corruptible, it seemed.
She stood very still for a long moment. Then she looked directly at Thorn and said, “I think I’ll take the second half of that drink now.”
Jerem had never seen a Stacian in person before. Sure, one of his favorite vid heroes was Lem sen Korsadda, a Stacian whose fictional war injuries led to his riding around in a hover-chair everywhere—a hover-chair that had been specially modified with guns and grappling hooks and everything else a chair-bound crime fighter might need. It had been a gamble, casting one of the aliens in the lead when the Stacians and the Gaians maintained at best an armed neutrality. But the show had been a hit, and Jerem loved it because the hero wasn’t some square-chinned Gaian. However, what the vid series never really got across was how big a Stacian in the flesh really was.
Of course, this Stacian wasn’t confined to a hover-chair. He loomed, all fiercely knotted hair and glaring copper eyes, over the boy as the two kidnappers—a pair of scruffy-looking humans—who had stolen Jerem from his room stood slightly behind him. One of them held him by the shoulder. For some reason, he felt almost glad of their spurious protection.
<
br /> Jerem wasn’t really sure how he had gotten here—wherever “here” was. They stood in a smallish room with blank concrete walls. Off to one side was a narrow cot with some meager bedding, and a few feet away from that was a small round table flanked by a pair of no-nonsense metal chairs. There were no windows; unshielded glow tubes glared down from the ceiling.
How it had all happened, he didn’t quite know. Jerem had heard the door chime sound, but he’d figured it must be Dr. Lassiter coming back for some reason. But he’d still slid his bedroom door open a crack, just in time to see his mother pulling on a robe and heading purposefully down the stairs. Jerem had been able to hear some muffled voices, but he couldn’t really understand what they were saying. He’d stood there for a minute, wondering whether he could get away with going over to the landing to hear things better, but suddenly Eryk Thorn had been standing in front of Jerem’s partially open door.
“Not a good idea,” said the mercenary.
Jerem had noticed that his father was dressed for bed, but the baggy sleep shirt he wore couldn’t completely conceal the gun he held down below hip level.
“What’s going on?” Jerem asked.
“That’s what I’m about to find out,” Thorn replied. “But you’re going to stay in your room, and lock the door. Don’t let anyone in except me or your mother.”
Somewhat mystified, Jerem nodded and shut the door. His mind had sprouted with questions, but Thorn could put on an even more no-nonsense glare than his mother, and the boy knew it would be useless to try and get any more information. Instead, he shut the door and locked it, then went back to his bed and waited. All remained quiet for a few more minutes, but then Jerem thought he heard a sound he immediately recognized from his favorite shows—guns going off. Guns! In his house! And all he could do was sit there on the bed like an idiot and miss out on all the excitement.
Of course, that thought had barely crossed his mind before the window next to his bed abruptly swung open, and two dark-clothed figures wriggled through. Jerem let out a little yelp of fright, but he didn’t even stop to think—he dove for the floor, knowing these intruders couldn’t mean any good.
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