She continued to clutch the satchel that held the ten million units; Thorn had offered to hold it for her, but she’d declined. Somehow it seemed important to keep it close to her, as if its proximity would somehow increase their chances of success. He’d taken one look at her face and hadn’t argued.
From the spaceport they went to the outskirts of Rilsport, to a smaller branch of her bank where she wasn’t as well-known. From what Risa had said, it sounded as if the authorities were still looking for her, and Miala and Thorn had agreed that it would be better to handle the remaining withdrawal in a location that was less likely to be watched.
The bank manager gave her a sour look when she made her request to withdraw five million units. “We don’t keep that much on hand here,” he said, his light eyes narrow with disapproval. “We’ll have to send out to another branch.”
Miala shot a questioning glance at Thorn. The mercenary nodded slowly. “That’s fine,” she replied. “We can wait.”
So they stepped off to one side and watched as the manager got on the comm and began making the necessary arrangements, all with that same pinched, disapproving expression on his face. Miala supposed she really couldn’t blame him—it wasn’t as if she looked forward to saying goodbye to those units, either.
Of course, if Eryk Thorn were to be believed, the units were just going to be a short-term loan at best for the kidnappers. Despite the worry that knotted her stomach, she couldn’t help smiling at the thought of what sort of interest Thorn might charge for such a loan.
She looked over at him. He seemed unperturbed, and had reached into one of his suit pockets and pulled out what looked like a tiny video monitor.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Babysitting device.”
Miala raised an eyebrow and waited.
“It monitors my ship. Just want to make sure she’s ready and waiting for whenever we might need her.” For a second the lines around Thorn’s eyes seemed to deepen.
It wasn’t much of an alteration of his expression, but she liked to think she’d gotten better at reading him from those small tells. “What is it?”
“Looks like the Fury’s got company.”
“What?” Miala shifted a little closer to him and peered down at the tiny screen. It showed a flat video image of the Fury, still resting securely in its docking bay at the spaceport. But even as she watched the video feed she saw two small figures—apparently a man and a woman, though it was difficult to make out much detail at that resolution—approaching the ship. They stopped a few meters away and appeared to enter some sort of discussion.
“More of the kidnappers’ goons?” she asked.
Thorn shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He watched for a few more seconds, face impassive. “I’d say it was the cops.”
“The police?” The last syllable came out in a sort of undignified squeak.
The right corner of Thorn’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. “That’s right.”
Miala scowled down the tiny image. “How can you tell?”
“The way they stand, the way they’re talking to each other.”
“But you can’t even hear what they’re saying!”
“Don’t need to,” he replied.
Sometimes he was impossible. Actually, most of the time he was impossible. Miala crossed her arms and stared at him, waiting.
“With cops, it’s all about the procedure,” he said, appearing to relent after gauging exactly how much she was willing to put up with at that moment. “They’re standing back, comparing notes. Observing. That means they probably don’t have a warrant. They’re just gathering information.”
“And you got all that from watching a couple of tiny images a centimeter high?”
“Yeah.”
Still dubious, Miala glanced back down at the minuscule video screen. As Thorn had said, the two...whoever they were...didn’t seem to be doing much besides standing there and looking at the ship. The man had pulled out a tablet and was apparently entering something into it, while the woman walked a few paces away and stopped to stare up at the closed hatchway to the ship. She had very pale blonde hair that caught a sudden gleam of light from the harsh artificial lighting overhead. True, she didn’t much look like a member of Rilsport’s underworld—if the planet even had one—but then again, she didn’t look much like a cop, either.
What happened next, Miala would never know, because of course at that inopportune moment the bank manager decided to materialize at her shoulder.
“Ms. Felaris.”
She jumped, then shot him an accusing stare, even though he really was just carrying out his duties. In her peripheral vision she caught a glimpse of Thorn flipping shut the video unit and sliding it into his pocket once more. The movement was so quick and unobtrusive that she doubted the bank manager even noticed.
“What?” she snapped.
“We’re ready to complete the transaction,” he replied, somehow managing to look even more pained. “If you’ll step this way—”
So she followed him over to his private office, where she signed forms and submitted her thumbprint and retinal scan, knowing as she did so that she was probably setting off alarms all over Rilsport. Oh, well. With any luck, this would all be handled by the time anyone figured out what she was really up to.
After the minutiae were taken care of, the bank manager slid a heavy plastene folder of units toward her.
“Thank you for choosing Rilsport Mutual,” he said, although his tone indicated that he wanted nothing more than to rip the folder of money out of her hands and take it back to the vault where it belonged.
“You’re welcome,” she replied sweetly, gathering up the folder and sliding it into the satchel of units she already carried. The damn thing was getting heavy, and she wondered whether she should entrust it to Thorn after all.
She did notice that he stood even closer to her as they exited the bank and went out to the street to hail a taxi. Now it would be back to the Rilsport Plaza, she supposed, as the kidnappers expected to be able to contact her at the comm number she had registered there.
A mech jitney stopped soon enough to gather them up. Once they were safely inside, Miala felt just the slightest easing of the tension that had knotted her shoulder and neck muscles. At least they had gotten the cash together. One step at a time.
Thorn gave the mechanoid driver a destination—one of Rilsport’s large shopping and entertainment centers. She shot the mercenary a puzzled look, and he replied, after he’d closed the scratched plastic privacy barrier separating them from the driver, “That’s not really where we’re going. I just wanted him to head someplace that would take some time.”
“Time? For what?”
In answer he pulled the video surveillance device out of his pocket and opened it. Now the ship sat on its landing pad quite alone, with no evidence of the two RilSec officers—if that was really who they were—having ever been there.
“They’re gone,” she said.
“I thought they might be.”
“But if the police have left, maybe we should head straight there and get the ship out while we can.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m sure the kidnappers are still watching the landing pad. In fact, I’m counting on it.”
Miala crossed her arms and glared at the mercenary. “So are you going to let a poor naïve Iradian girl in on your little master plan?”
Her plaintive question elicited a faint chuckle. “I don’t think you’ve been naïve for a long time...if you ever were. Anyhow, I’m pretty sure our friends from RilSec haven’t gone far. They’re probably checking their leads, and will come back with a warrant. I’m also fairly certain that the kidnappers are planning to get the drop on them the second they try to gain entry to the ship.”
Although Miala knew logically that she and Thorn should stay as far away from any such a confrontation as possible, something in her felt distinctly uneasy about allowing the two officers to walk right i
nto a trap. “Shouldn’t we do something? Warn them?”
“Guess I was wrong. You really are naïve.”
An angry retort rose to her lips, but then she stopped when she saw the wicked gleam in Thorn’s dark eyes. So she settled for making an exasperated “hmph!” and waited for him to explain himself.
“If we try to warn them, we risk giving our position away. Right now the one thing keeping us safe is that the kidnappers don’t know where we are. Sure, they probably know you headed out to New Chicago today, but we wanted them to know that. They need to think that you’re going along with their plan, that you’re cooperating. Right now whoever is surveilling the Rilsport Plaza is probably waiting for you to return...which you’ll do eventually. In the meantime, though, our main problem is that we don’t know who they are, or where their base of operations is.” He paused, all hint of amusement gone from his face. “The best way to find Jerem is to use our friends there as bait. They draw the kidnappers out, I grab one of them, and we’re set.”
“Set for what?” Miala asked, although she had an uneasy feeling she wouldn’t much like the reply.
For a few seconds he didn’t answer. Then he gave her a ferocious smile and said, “For me to extract a little information.”
And even though Miala would have said she didn’t much care what happened to any of the kidnappers as long as she got Jerem back, she couldn’t help feeling a sort of uneasy sympathy toward whoever ended up as Thorn’s victim. A bit of the impenetrable façade had dropped there, and she got the distinct impression that the mercenary was truly looking forward to the interrogation.
She wished she could say the same for herself.
It wasn’t the enclosed spaces so much, Jerem reflected, pausing at the intersection of two ducts. It was what might be enclosed in there with you.
He could handle the dust and the odd smell, even the overwhelming, unrelieved blackness, which was so absolute that it felt almost like a weight on his eyeballs. Even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see anything, he still found himself staring into the dark, as if he tried hard enough he could make out some sort of detail.
Worse than that, though, were the noises, like the skittering of small feet. Probably the place was infested with tarns, small rodent-like creatures that liked dark, confined spaces. His mother always said they didn’t really hurt anything, but even she’d called the exterminator when a nest of them had been discovered in the basement of their house. Then there were the webs left behind by some of Nova Angeles’ more ambitious arachnids. Again, all the poisonous species had been eradicated ages ago, but it still was no fun to get those sticky webs caught in your hair. He’d broken through one that stretched across the width of the duct and had blundered through it in a panic, wiping at his face and hair with terrified fingers. After he’d gotten the worst of it off, he’d lain flat on the floor of the durasteel tube, breathing heavily. It was only after a few minutes had passed that he was able to calm down enough to chide himself for acting like a baby. It was just a few webs, after all. It wasn’t as if a fer-snake had come crashing through and tried to eat his head or something.
He really couldn’t tell how long he’d been stumbling through the blind dark. Jerem supposed he should just be glad that the kidnappers hadn’t heard his blundering around and started poking holes in the ventilation system at random intervals to track him down.
But for some reason they hadn’t, and even though he didn’t really believe in such things, maybe God or something else was guiding him in the right direction. Maybe there was a power in the universe that looked out for little boys who had gotten in way over their heads.
He hesitated, reaching out with shaking fingers to feel each of the ducts. Down the left-hand one the air felt stuffy and warm, and it smelled funny. But the right-hand passage seemed a little more promising. Jerem thought he felt a slight draft in that one, and he almost fancied he could smell a faint tang of salt, as if the air were coming in from off the ocean.
Well, that settled it. Jerem turned down the rightmost shaft, still inching his way forward. The feel of the air against his face cheered him a little. Maybe it meant he wasn’t too far away from a vent that opened to the outside. If he managed to make it that far unnoticed, then maybe he would have a good chance of getting away entirely. Unless, of course, they had the perimeter staked out with force fields and infrared scanners and all the other nasty stuff his mother used to trot out for the really high-paying clients. Then again, these guys seemed pretty cheap, at least based on what they’d fed him and the room they’d given him to sleep in.
The sound of people speaking stopped him dead, and Jerem pressed himself flat against the floor of the air duct. A few inches from his noise was another smaller duct that left a gap about a half-meter wide. If he hadn’t halted so suddenly, he might have pitched right down into it.
A man’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar said, “So she made it back from New Chicago all right.”
“Looks that way. She disembarked at approximately nineteen-thirty local time.”
“What about this man you spotted with her, Chaddick?” Jerem thought he heard something that sounded suspiciously like a growl, and he realized it was probably the Stacian who was speaking. “I thought we told her to leave the mercenary out of it.”
The other man gave a derisive laugh. “That guy’s no mercenary. Probably her accountant or lawyer or something. I mean, who ever heard of Eryk Thorn wearing a suit?”
A silence. “Maybe...maybe not. Any trace of them?”
“Took a cab, but we’re not sure where they went after that. It’s mealtime—maybe they went to get something to eat. She knows she’s not going to be contacted until tomorrow anyway.”
“But you’re sure she got the money.”
“Oh, yeah. I tell you, Korvan, she’s so scared we’re going to send her precious ickle boy back to her in a box that she’s not going to do anything to risk his skin.”
Korvan—the Stacian, Jerem decided—laughed unpleasantly. “I’d like to see the look on her face after she gives us the cash and then finds out the kid’s already dead.”
The other man chuckled as well, and Jerem felt the gluey meal he’d consumed earlier turn over in his stomach. Well, at least his instincts had been right. He’d done the right thing by getting out of that holding room when he could.
Barely daring to breathe, he reached out across the duct opening and scrabbled for purchase on the other side. It was a stretch for his short arms, but he’d heard enough. He knew he had to keep going and not look back.
A quick question, the words sharp with suspicion. “Did you hear that?”
Jerem immediately froze, fingers clutching the slick metal of the duct surface, the toes of his shoes threatening to slip off the edge of the far side of the gap.
“Just more of those fragging tarns. Told you we should’ve fumigated this place before we moved in.”
The Stacian made another one of those low rumbling noises, and Jerem took advantage of its cover to kick off with his rear feet, propelling himself across the gap and then scrabbling down the tunnel as quickly as he could, his heart an overwhelming drumbeat in his chest, body slick with nervous sweat even though it was relatively cool in the air duct.
He wondered how many more close calls like that he could have before his luck finally ran out.
Warrant safely stored in his tablet, Creel still forced himself to read the corroborating information several times, just in case his overactive imagination had somehow gotten the better of him. Sure, the ship had set off alarm bells in his mind the second he’d laid eyes on it, but he’d never expected to hit pay dirt quite this spectacular. Jessa hadn’t argued with him when he said he wanted to call in for a warrant, but her pointed silence had told him she thought he was grasping at straws. Now, however, he thought he had the data he needed to convince her he hadn’t completely lost his mind.
“Take a look at this,” he called out to Jessa, who had walked a few paces
away from him and was staring up at the strange spacecraft with a speculative expression on her face. He gestured at the tablet.
Frowning slightly, she stepped back toward him and looked down at its screen. Then her finely arched eyebrows lifted. “Is this for real?”
“I think so.”
Jessa glanced back up at the ship. “What in the seven hells would he be doing here?”
Well, that was a good question, wasn’t it? Of course the ship had no identifying markers anywhere, but only one Quasar-class vessel of that particular vintage still existed...if the rumors were true. And that unique starship belonged to someone equally unique.
“Yeah, Nova Angeles isn’t exactly Eryk Thorn’s usual stomping grounds,” Creel replied. “But I’ve got a theory.”
Crossing her arms, Jessa gave him a questioning yet skeptical look, the sort which plainly said that although she might be willing to listen to his argument, she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to believe him.
He didn’t know if he believed it himself. The connections were tenuous at best, but at the same time the mercenary’s presence began to explain some of the niggling loose ends in the Felaris case. “Hear me out,” he said.
The cool green eyes met his. “All right.”
“So we have one missing woman, Mia Felaris, who hails from Iradia originally. At the same time we have a ship owned by the galaxy’s most notorious mercenary showing up in our spaceport. Coincidence? Maybe at first glance.” He slid the tablet into his breast pocket, trying to ignore how piercingly green Jessa’s eyes were, like the purest chromium beryl. They seemed to glow in the hard, blue-white lighting of the light strips overhead. Clearing his throat, he continued, “However, let’s look at the facts. Thorn’s movements are almost impossible to track, but it’s fairly common knowledge that he was seen on Iradia a little over eight years ago, right around the time the insurrection took hold.”
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