From seemingly nowhere appeared a rumpled-looking man only a few inches taller than Jessa. He blinked at her, then at Creel, and said, “The evidence?”
For a second Creel could only gape at the man, who had to have at least ten standard years on Jessa and who probably would have been the last person Creel would have picked out of a lineup as her ex-husband. Then he recovered himself enough to hand over the boot, which had been vacuum-sealed in non-permeable polymer at the crime scene.
Dael took it and immediately set off for an elaborate piece of equipment that Creel thought he recognized as some sort of high-powered microscope. He raised an eyebrow at Jessa, who shot him an amused glance but said nothing, and instead turned to watch as her ex dipped his hands in the self-skinning nano-polymer material that would prevent any contaminants from touching the evidence.
Well, she sure didn’t love him for his people skills, Creel reflected. Or his looks...maybe that means I have a chance.
That pleasant line of thought, however, was interrupted by Dael saying, “Definitely local.”
“What’s definitely local, Howard?” Jessa asked, in tones more patient than Creel would have expected of her. Then again, she’d probably had plenty of time to get used to her ex-husband’s quirks.
“The shell fragments,” he replied, not bothering to look up from the eyepiece of the microscope. “Let’s take another pass...” He made a minute adjustment to a dial, then said, “That’s got it.”
“Got what?” Creel demanded, but Dael just pushed past him to the flat computer screen immediately to his rear.
“That’s what I thought.”
“So what is it, Howard?” Jessa inquired. She appeared to take in Creel’s scowl, and a tiny flicker of a smile ghosted around the corner of her mouth.
“Arthreni rilsportianus,” Dael replied, with a note of triumph in his voice.
“Arth...what?” Creel demanded.
The lab tech blinked, then said, “A rare breed of mollusk, one that’s found in only one location.”
“And where would that be?” Creel asked. Damn, he’d had hostile witnesses who’d given up information more freely than this guy.
“Rendarlin Point,” Jessa said. Creel gave her an incredulous look, and she went on, “I minored in marine biology at the university.”
She’s just full of surprises, isn’t she? Creel thought. “So you’re saying our bad guys are hanging out somewhere on Rendarlin Point?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
It snapped into place then, as he tried to figure out what could possibly attract a bunch of thugs to Rendarlin Point. The old Stony Point amusement park. It had been closed for several years, but the structures were still intact, and it offered rare isolation while still being in close proximity to Rilsport proper. Maybe he still hadn’t quite gotten the why of all this, but at least he’d narrowed down the where.
“Let’s go,” he told Jessa, who looked a little surprised.
“Shouldn’t we be calling in a strike team?” she asked.
Creel shook his head. “Not until I know who—and what—we’re up against.” He nodded at Dael. “Thanks for the intel.”
The man blinked. “It was an interesting specimen.”
There being no real way to reply to that, Creel just nodded again and then headed out to the corridor, with Jessa following him, a slightly puzzled look on her face. Maybe she’d been expecting some sort of sarcastic comment about her ex, but Creel knew better than to go here. Instead, he stopped in the main lobby, and grinned down at her.
“You ready for some good old-fashioned recon?”
She grinned back. “Of course. I’m glad you know how to show a girl a good time.” And with that she sauntered off to the elevators.
Typical, he thought. Always has to get in the last word.
Somehow, though, he found he didn’t mind too much.
Finally Thorn brought her to a small café on the outskirts of town. Miala ordered a tall mug of coffee and hoped it would be enough to see her through the night.
“Isn’t this a waste of time?” she asked. Now more than ever, she had the sense of time flying past her, every precious second increasing the possibility that something terrible could have happened to Jerem.
The mercenary hadn’t bothered with artificial stimulants. He drank some of the local mineral water he’d ordered, and took a bite of the steak he’d gotten to go along with it. Miala knew she should have gotten herself something as well, but between a few horrendous flashbacks to what had happened in that dingy little warehouse and her ever-growing worry over Jerem, she knew her stomach wouldn’t tolerate anything heavier than the coffee.
Thorn shook his head. “The kidnappers are expecting to meet with you in the morning. After this you’re going to take a cab to the Rilsport Plaza and try to get some sleep.”
“Sleep?” Miala repeated, with open incredulity. “How the hell do you expect me to sleep at a time like this?”
“Because you need your rest,” he replied. “I can go seventy-two standard without sleep. Can you?”
Much as she hated to admit it, Miala knew she couldn’t. Even now, despite the spurious energy brought on by the coffee surging through her veins, she knew her current wide-eyed state wouldn’t last. Sooner or later she’d have to get some sleep.
Thorn appeared to take her silence as tacit agreement, for he continued, “I’ll ditch the car someplace in the city. Then I need to get back and retrieve the Fury.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” she asked. “You know RilSec’s going to have people watching the landing pad.”
A lift of one straight dark eyebrow. “Not a problem.”
From anyone else, such a comment would have sounded like false bravado. Coming from Thorn, however, it was probably no more than the simple truth. Something had been bothering her ever since they left the two RilSec officers trussed up on the floor of the docking bay, however. “You know, Thorn, you say you don’t like loose ends, but you didn’t kill those two cops. Why?”
His mouth quirked a bit. “It’s one thing to waste a two-bit hood that nobody’s going to miss. It’s quite another to be a cop-killer. I thought about it, but I decided that having all of RilSec’s resources focused on finding me probably wasn’t that great an idea. Besides, the one officer might have guessed at who I am, but he still doesn’t know for sure...and who’s gonna believe him? Anyway, he doesn’t know where we went, or where to find us. This city’s big enough that I don’t think he’ll be able to track us down by the time you rendezvous with the kidnappers.”
“And then what?” Miala asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
Thorn’s expression didn’t change. “Leave that to me.”
She’d been afraid he’d say something like that, but maybe it was better she didn’t know much about his plans. If something went terribly wrong and she fell into the kidnappers’ hands, at least she couldn’t reveal any important information to them.
“So I go back to the Rilsport Plaza—won’t the police be able to find me there?”
“Calculated risk,” said Thorn. “I’m pretty sure the cops have already come and gone. They might have the place under surveillance, but we can sneak you in disguised. You have to be there, since that’s where the kidnappers will be calling.”
Of course. She’d almost forgotten about that. The only way they had of contacting her was through the hotel comm, since of course she had none of her own with her. Had the conversation she’d held with the head kidnapper only taken place thirty-six standard hours earlier? Somehow it felt like a lifetime.
She took an oversized swallow of coffee and managed a weary smile. “I can’t wait to see what sort of disguise you have planned for me...”
It turned out to be simple enough, just the enveloping cloaks and full-face mask of a Zhore. Thorn procured the items from a secondhand shop near the spaceport that dealt in such off-world oddities and which stayed open around the clock in order to
serve its exotic clientele. Miala waited in the car while he handled the transaction, and then had to climb into the garments as best she could from her place in the front seat of the vehicle. Once that was done—and she could have sworn she saw Thorn’s mouth twitch, as if he were trying to repress a smile at her awkwardness—he dropped her off at a transit station where she could get a cab to take her back to the hotel. At that point the panic almost overtook her, as she realized she would have to do the next part of this alone, but the mercenary gave her hand a reassuring squeeze as she alighted from the vehicle, at the same time pressing a tiny handheld into her palm. That steadied her a bit; at least she knew she could reach him in an emergency.
Still, it took all her strength for her to remain there on the curb, to stand quietly and watch him drive away. No one approached her. Even in this civilized part of the galaxy, the mysterious Zhore were regarded with some suspicion, as they did not often mingle with other races. She was able to hail a mech-driven taxi with no problem—mechs didn’t share the same prejudices as the living—and ride without incident back to the Rilsport Plaza. Once there, she hurried through the lobby, her head down, and slipped into the lift farthest from the front desk. At that hour the ride up to her suite was uninterrupted, and she almost ran the few steps that separated the elevator door and the entrance to her suite. After she had locked the door behind her and checked it twice just to be certain that it really was secure, she pulled the stifling mask from her face and flung it on the bed, followed by the heavy, awkward robes.
A glance at the chrono on the side table next to the bed told her it was a little past 0200. The room seemed preternaturally still after the events of the past few hours. Miala had to quell an urge to turn on the vid-screen that took up the wall opposite the bed and fill the silence with some mindless programming. But no amount of 25-hour news channels or replays of vid dramas she’d seen several times before would change the fact that her son was still being held by kidnappers, or that she’d allowed Thorn to go chasing off on his own in order to secure the Fury. At the moment she felt very superfluous, and very, very tired.
She stood in the center of the room for a long moment, not sure what she should do. Then she sighed and went off to the bathroom. If nothing else, maybe a hot shower would relax her to the point where she could catch a few hours of the sleep Thorn had instructed her to get. Then this useless time would be past, and she could move on to reclaim her son.
He’d fallen asleep at some point. Jerem couldn’t be sure exactly when, since he hadn’t been wearing a chrono when he was taken, and the ventilation tunnel around him was darker than a black hole. After that near-miss with the kidnappers, he’d scuttled on in search of the source of the sea breeze he’d felt coming down the right-hand shaft. It had sloped upward for a while and then leveled out...and then had come to a dead end where the tunnel met a piece of mesh screen that was bolted down so securely Jerem was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to get it off even if he’d had the correct tools, which he didn’t. Feeling exhausted and very near to tears—but he wouldn’t cry, no way, not when his father could show up at any moment to rescue him—he’d curled up in a ball, thinking he’d rest for just a bit. But the next thing he knew, the draft across his face had intensified to almost a breeze, and the sky beyond the grating had turned from black to gray.
His mouth tasted gummy, and the back of his neck had developed a crick from sleeping half-propped up against the wall of the ventilation shaft, but at least Jerem felt a little less tired. And obviously the kidnappers hadn’t yet discovered that he’d broken out of the room where they’d been holding him. But Jerem knew he probably didn’t have much time. The sun was rising, and when they came in to bring him his morning meal, they’d know right away that he was gone.
Moving as quietly as he could, he went back down the ventilation shaft. He remembered passing another junction point, one about ten meters beyond the spot where he’d overheard the kidnappers discussing how they were going to kill him. At the time he’d ignored it, thinking the fresh air and sea salt he’d smelled were the ticket to freedom, but now all he could do was hope that the tunnel he’d overlooked the night before would prove to be the right one. It sloped upward and to the left. He had to press his spine flat against one side and inch his way up through it using his leg muscles to propel him. Good thing he’d spent almost every waking moment running and climbing and tumbling, or he would never have been able to manage it.
Still, it was a hard slog, and Jerem could feel his thigh muscles starting to tremble in protest by the time he got to the top. His parched mouth begged for water, but he couldn’t do anything about that. He could only dry-swallow and hope that he might be able to find something to drink if he ever did manage to get out of this place.
The last meter or so the ventilation shaft went directly upward, and for a few seconds he wasn’t sure he was going to make it—his feet lost their purchase on the slick surface, and he began to slip backward. But he shoved himself against the wall of the shaft, legs shaking with the effort. Overhead he could see a circle of pale grayish-blue sky, and that welcome sight gave him the strength for the last push. At last he half-fell, half-slid out of the shaft and onto a flat roof of gray concrete.
For a few minutes all Jerem could do was lie there, taking in deep gulping breaths of the cool sea air. The light seemed dazzlingly bright, even though he realized after a few minutes that the familiar dawn-clouds hugged the coast, and the morning was actually quite cool and dim. He rose, his legs shaking under him, and tried to take stock of his surroundings.
The building on which he stood appeared to be several stories high. On either side he saw more structures, oddly shaped and garishly painted, but familiar somehow. He frowned, trying to remember where he’d seen them before. But then he spotted the looming shape of the gravity wheel ahead of him—the ride his mother had refused to take him on—and realized that he was right smack in the middle of the abandoned Stony Point amusement park. A good place to hide someone, he supposed, considering the place had been locked up for a couple of years. At least now he knew where he was—and, more importantly, he knew how to get out of there. The park occupied most of the promontory known as Rendarlin Point, but there was a road that led out of the park and back into downtown Rilsport. All he had to do was get to that road without being spotted and make a run for it.
He’d just begun to trot over to the far edge of the rooftop, where he thought he spotted the curved railings of an access ladder—similar to the one he’d climbed back when he’d sabotaged his school’s holo-sign—when he heard the sound of someone shouting. Immediately he dropped to his hands and knees, then scuttled over to the edge and looked down.
The big Stacian—Korvan, Jerem remembered—had just emerged from the building and was yelling at a dark-haired human who had to have been fairly tall himself, since his head met Korvan’s chin. In response the man shouted something back, although Jerem couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then the rat-faced captor Jerem remembered all too well came running outside, and all three of them engaged in a shouting match for a few minutes. Obviously his escape had just been discovered, and as far as Jerem could tell, everyone was trying to blame everyone else for it.
Good. If they were distracted, maybe they wouldn’t be paying attention to the rooftop. He continued to inch along the edge of the roof, trying to keep the kidnappers in view as he headed toward the ladder he had just spotted. Then the Stacian stopped yelling and appeared to be issuing a series of orders. The two humans went off in opposite directions, no doubt to start searching the property for their lost captive.
Well, it was now or never. Jerem swung his legs over the edge of the roof and felt his feet meet the topmost rungs of the ladder. Then he skidded all the way down, not really climbing, but letting himself down in a sort of controlled fall as he gripped the handrails and prayed he could make it to the bottom before any of the kidnappers came around this corner of the building.
&nbs
p; He landed with a thud in an overgrown maranita bush. There wasn’t time to worry about the scratches he’d collected—he rolled over and got back on his feet, then hurried over to the corner of the building and risked a quick glance around. He didn’t see anyone, but what he did see, he didn’t like much—there was no cover between him and the next building, a low shed that had once housed the holographic freak show (yet another attraction his mother wouldn’t let him near). Once there had been a low-walled planter filled with exotic off-world bushes, but they had mostly all died from neglect, and the bare earth left behind didn’t offer much in the way of protection.
Still, if he loitered here much longer, he was going to get caught. He had to run now, while the kidnappers were off someplace else. Even though his heart pounded and he was almost sick with dread, he forced himself to take off toward the freak-show building. Fear lent him a speed he didn’t think he was still capable of, and he covered the distance in far less time than he thought he would. No rough shouts stopped him; no guns fired in his direction. He flattened himself against the wall and moved along a few centimeters at a time, trying to breathe through his nose so his panting wouldn’t give his position away.
Then the sound of a pulse pistol cracked through the air, and Jerem fell to his hands and knees once more. It was only after he had lain there for a few minutes, shoulders hunched against the pain of the bolt he was sure he would feel at any second, that he realized no one was shooting at him. Puzzled, he crawled along the ground, using the shelter of some more scrubby bushes to hide him, until he was able to peer around the corner of the building to see what was going on.
The Stacian was nowhere in sight, but Jerem could see the rat-faced kidnapper and the tall dark-haired man trading pot shots with a pair of intruders who had apparently taken shelter inside one of the abandoned ticket kiosks. At first he thought it might be his mom and dad, but then he caught a glint of pale blonde hair from one of the unknown shooters and realized it had to be someone else. Well, if it wasn’t Thorn and his mother, then it didn’t really matter who it was—what mattered was that they had the kidnappers busy, giving him the perfect chance to slip away.
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