Instead, he said, “Bixian assassins killed your wife. Do you know what they look like?”
Claudius gave a quick nod.
“Then you know they could be in those pouches.”
The security system rang again. “Sir?” the man outside said. “Are you all right?”
Claudius pressed his forefinger again. “Fine,” he said.
“Do you need assistance, sir?”
“No,” Claudius said. “Thank you.”
“Our pleasure, sir.”
The man moved away from the door. Nyquist and Claudius watched the displayed image until the man went into the elevator.
“See?” Claudius said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Check with the building control,” Nyquist said. “See if they sent anyone.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“You’re not being paranoid enough.”
Claudius shook his head, but went to a wall panel, anyway. He moved so that Nyquist couldn’t see what he was doing, but Nyquist heard the automated building response.
Then Claudius gasped. He backed away, shaking his right arm as if it were on fire.
It took Nyquist a moment to realize what was going on. Something had wrapped itself around the arm, something that had taken the color of the arm.
It was smaller than he expected, thinner, but he recognized the extended scales, like little knives slicing into Claudius’s skin.
Nyquist cursed and grabbed his laser pistol. He wasn’t sure what the best thing to do was. If he burned the thing on Claudius’s arm, would it make the thing stronger? Weaker? Would he kill the thing?
Nyquist aimed laser pistol, remembering only at the last second that Bixian assassins worked in pairs.
Sixty
Flint led the way back to Van Alen’s office. He didn’t tell her his plans. She might get angry with him, but he already knew her well enough to know that she would play along.
He opened the door. Ignatius was seated at the table where Flint and Van Alen had had their breakfast. The assistants were beside him, guarding him so that he couldn’t see the confidential material, but also asking him questions that Flint, as another new client, had never been subjected to.
Ignatius stood as Flint and Van Alen entered. He gave Van Alen a watery smile. “That’s quite an introductory procedure you have.”
“I like to cover all bases,” she said. She nodded to her assistants, who left as quickly as they had arrived.
As the door clicked shut behind them, Van Alen opened her mouth, but Flint spoke first.
“We’ll help you,” he said, “on one condition.”
Ignatius’s entire face shut down. He apparently hadn’t expected any conditions—not real ones, anyway. He must have thought they were past that stage.
Van Alen, bless her, didn’t even shoot Flint a glance. Instead, she waited beside him as if she had designated him to speak for her.
“Tell me where your father is.”
Ignatius shook his head ever so slightly. “I don’t know.”
“You know,” Flint said. “When I first met you, you told me that Paloma had told your father I was the most trustworthy person she had ever known.”
Ignatius’s mouth opened, then closed, in obvious surprise. “I told you that?”
Flint nodded. “I can even show you the record, since it was in my office, when you were trying to feed me information on the Tey case. Do you remember that?”
“I mentioned my father?” Ignatius sounded stunned.
“It must have been a slip,” Flint said, “because at that point, your father hadn’t been visible for years. Your mother shouldn’t have had any contact with him. Yet you mentioned both of them, and they had talked about me, someone your mother theoretically should never have discussed with your father because they were estranged.”
Ignatius swallowed hard. Van Alen watched with a slight smile on her face. Rather than being upset, apparently she seemed amused.
“So,” Flint said, “your father is nearby and has had contact with your mother. I would guess that they aren’t estranged at all, that that was just for show, just like her separation from the firm was for show.”
Ignatius bit his lower lip. It was clear why he was the lesser Wagner. He had no ability hide his emotions at all.
“Tell us where your father is, and we’ll help you disappear.”
“Why?” Ignatius asked. “Why should I tell you?”
“You want help, don’t you?” Van Alen asked.
Ignatius nodded. “But my father…I promised…why would you need to know.”
“Because,” Flint said harshly. “Your brother killed your mother. Does he know where your father is?”
“Oh.” Ignatius put his head in his hands. “Oh, God.”
Van Alen shot Flint a look of complete surprise and approval. Flint wondered what she expected out of this. The files? He would have to discuss that with her later.
Ignatius raised his head.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. Just get me and my wife and my kids out of here. Please.”
“We will,” Van Alen said in that crisply professional voice of hers. Flint had found it soothing the day before, and Ignatius seemed to find it soothing now. “Let me tell you our plan.”
Flint held up a hand. “Claudius first.”
“Upstairs,” Ignatius said. “He lives upstairs from Mother. He calls himself Hawke. They loved each other, Mr. Flint. Whatever they did, remember that, okay?”
“You don’t know what they did?” Van Alen asked.
Ignatius shook his head, that small, sad movement again. “I’m the lesser Wagner, remember, Ms. Van Alen? I really don’t know much of anything.”
“If that’s true,” Flint said, “then you’re getting out just in time.”
Sixty-one
Claudius wasn’t screaming; he kept flailing his right arm as if he could shake off the assassin. Nyquist wasn’t even sure Claudius knew what he was doing—the man’s face had gone gray and his eyes were glassy.
Nyquist fired the laser pistol. The shot grazed the assassin, and turned it a brilliant orange.
Now Claudius screamed. He dropped to his knees, and that was when Nyquist saw the second one, wrapped around Claudius’s left foot. The things must have come in as he and Claudius dickered with the fake security man.
Nyquist shot again, and this time, the thing on Claudius’s arm exploded.
Alarms went off all over the building—warning alarms, first about a shot being fired, and second announcing a biochemical contamination.
“The building will be evacuated,” the androgynous voice said.
Nyquist grabbed his other laser pistol from his ankle holster and shot at the thing around Claudius’s leg.
“You have five minutes to leave before all systems get shut down….”
Claudius stopped screaming. He reached for the thing on his leg, not noticing that his right hand was no longer there. He was spraying blood everywhere.
He would die in a matter of minutes if Nyquist didn’t get that bleeding stopped.
“Anyone contaminated must remain inside….”
Nyquist shot a third time, but he couldn’t seem to hit the damn thing. Or maybe it had some kind of shield.
Or maybe it could morph itself enough to protect against the weapon, once it knew what the weapon was.
“If your apartment does not let you out, then you have been contaminated….”
Claudius grabbed the thing with his left hand. It seemed to absorb his skin, but he looked determined, yanking and pulling and trying to force the thing off of him.
“Remain inside until HazMat teams arrive….”
Nyquist glanced into the kitchen. There had to be other weapons. This man couldn’t live in supposed exile without weapons.
Could he?
“Do not worry….”
Claudius gurgled once, then fell forward. Nyquist stepped back. He was covered in blood.
And he couldn’t see the assassin. They were stuck in here together—and it wouldn’t let him out alive.
Sixty-two
Flint felt like a fugitive traveling in a borrowed aircar, headed toward Paloma’s building. Van Alen had loaned him the car, since he wasn’t sure if the warrant was off his. This car moved smoothly but wouldn’t speed—damn lawyers, anyway—and he wanted to hurry.
He had to talk to Claudius about those files. Maybe the old man knew more than Ignatius had.
Flint also wanted to warn Claudius. If Ignatius felt threatened, then Claudius might be in trouble as well.
The buildings near Paloma’s apartment loomed like growths coming out of the dome. This area of Armstrong felt sinister to him now.
And he knew that was because of Paloma’s death.
It felt odd, heading to Paloma’s apartment building, knowing she wasn’t going to be there. He found it amazing that part of him knew she was dead, and another part refused to believe it. A third part was angry at her, and a fourth understood what she’d been doing.
Somewhere along the way, she’d regretted her actions. Whether it was because of the forced exile, or the lost parts of her life, or because she had some kind of ethical conversion, Flint would never know.
But she obviously learned how ruthless her son Justinian had become, and she knew he needed to be stopped. She tried to set up Flint as the person who would stop her son, but Flint never read the files she “accidentally” left in his business computer. He had too many ethics for that.
Then Flint took a long trip after his last case, and during that time, Paloma must have realized that her son had targeted her. She made the will, and she set up the bombs to protect it.
What she should have done was stop her son herself. But obviously, she hadn’t had the strength to shut down her own firm. Her only other choice would have been to neutralize Justinian, and from everything Flint was beginning to understand, the only way to do that—besides destroying the firm—was to kill the man.
Paloma had done neither.
She wanted Flint to do it, and he had been gone.
He parked the aircar in the lot across the street, just as he had done the day before. Then he hurried into the elevator, and as he went down, he realized that people were streaming out of Paloma’s building.
Again.
Another evacuation.
He was too late.
Sixty-three
DeRicci had just finished talking to the mayor about the quarantined ships scattered throughout the port. The mayor understood the need for discretion in dealing with these ships, but he was worried; he thought there might be some kind of health hazard.
DeRicci didn’t. She figured the bad stuff should have happened by now, and she told him that. He wanted some time to think—which meant he wanted to consult with someone smarter—and she let him.
That was when Popova pushed open her door.
“Paloma’s building has just sent another biochemical contamination alarm,” Popova said.
“Bixians?” DeRicci asked.
“I assume so, since the alarm is the same,” Popova said.
“Send as many street cops as you can,” DeRicci said. “Inform Armstrong’s HazMat teams to get there, and have some techs go as well.”
“Shouldn’t we go through the mayor or the chief of police?” Popova said.
“And let those bastards get away again? Are you kidding?” DeRicci asked. “Never mind. I’ll do it.”
Then she sent half a dozen emergency messages through her links, giving orders.
Popova still stood by the door, watching, as if she had never seen anything like this before. Not that there was much to see. A woman using her links looked like a woman staring into space.
“What do you want?” DeRicci snapped when she was finished.
“I thought I should tell you the other thing in person,” Popova said.
DeRicci waited.
“The information I have from building security is that the last person to enter the place was Detective Bartholomew Nyquist.”
DeRicci’s heart skittered. Damn that Popova. She was too observant. She saw how interested DeRicci was in Nyquist.
“You think he’s tied to the Bixians?” DeRicci asked.
“No,” Popova said. “But so far, it looks like he hasn’t gotten out.”
Sixty-four
Nyquist ordered his links to shut down his pain receptors. Claudius lay across the floor, his hands gone, his eyes open. The blood pooled around him. Nyquist would’ve thought the man had drowned in it if he hadn’t known better.
He couldn’t see the second assassin. The first one was a blob of goo against the open panel, just like in Paloma’s apartment.
But the second one…
It had detached itself from Claudius’s leg, probably the moment he died, and had slithered somewhere. And that had happened when Nyquist was looking for another weapon.
Just a glance away, and he’d lost sight of the damn thing.
He couldn’t send for help, either. His links had shut down.
He didn’t know if the building had done that or the assassins.
He wouldn’t be able to tell.
He circled, holding both pistols, looking at the floor, the ceiling, the walls. The assassin-thing had to be here somewhere.
It couldn’t have slithered out, could it?
He circled and circled, waiting for the damn thing to attack.
Sixty-five
They wouldn’t let him in the building.
Flint stood outside, staring upward. No one had come out for ten minutes now, and no one was going inside, not until the HazMat teams cleared the place.
The building itself looked dark and unwelcoming. With everything shut down, it seemed uninhabited, a thing rather than a place.
He had a bad feeling about this, and he wasn’t sure why.
The residents had crowded around him, some of them talking in low tones to the others, complaining about the dangers of the building, complaining that it wasn’t what they had been promised.
He wanted to snap at them, to tell them that someone might be dying in there, but he didn’t.
He stood and waited, and while he waited, he checked the faces around him against the last known image of Claudius Wagner.
So far, he hadn’t found the man, but that meant nothing. Claudius might not have been in the building when the biohazard occurred.
He might not know anything was wrong.
But Flint doubted that, just like he doubted this second biohazard was a coincidence.
He sent a message to Van Alen through his links, warning her about the situation, and telling her to keep Ignatius away from the news. If the man tried to come here, he might die. It might all be a ruse to get Ignatius away from Van Alen’s building.
Van Alen sent a message back instantly: the negotiations were proceeding with the various companies. Ignatius and his family were in an isolated part of the building, and she would make sure they heard nothing.
Flint thanked her and severed the link. He shifted from foot to foot. He thought of breaking in, but he knew the building’s hazard systems were too tight for that. Some random protection system might even harm him, just because the building would see him as a threat.
So he had no choice.
He waited—and hoped this was all a false alarm.
Sixty-six
DeRicci arrived just after the law enforcement teams she’d sent for. Her aircar parked right next to a HazMat van.
She was breathing harshly, Popova’s warnings still ringing in her ears. She wasn’t being professional. She should let the Armstrong police handle this.
She was too involved.
Damn right she was.
Nyquist was in there. She’d seen what Bixian assassins could do, and she was trying not to think about it.
But she was failing.
She got out of the ai
rcar and wasn’t surprised to see Flint at the edge of the crowd, talking to one of the street police, gesturing toward the building.
She hurried toward them, caught something about a Wagner, and grabbed Flint’s arm.
“Nyquist is in there,” she said. “It’s the same alarm that went off with the Bixians. We’re going in.”
Flint seemed to process that without a blink. “You stay.”
“No,” she said, and then she turned to the man Flint had been talking to. “You make sure that no one with these specs gets out of the building.”
She linked to him quickly, sent him all the information about Bixian DNA.
“Make sure your teams search for that—bags, clothes, purses, anything that can carry something small and ropelike. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
“And let us in.”
“Sir, no civilians—”
“We’re not civilians, dammit,” she said, and shoved her way forward, still clinging to Flint’s arm. He was hurrying with her. They got to the door, she held out her hand—her identification blaring—and they hurried inside. Someone handed them HazMat suits, and DeRicci flung them back.
“Noelle,” Flint said. “We might need those.”
“Do you know how those things kill?” she asked. She didn’t wait for his answer. “There’s a Wagner in here? Is that what Nyquist had come for?”
“The father. Ninth floor.”
“Let’s go.” She hurried up the stairs, not seeing if he followed. She took them two at a time, and realized just how out of shape she was.
What would she do if she ran into one of those assassins? She had no idea. She didn’t even have a weapon.
She wondered if Flint did.
The door to the ninth floor was open. The hallway was empty. She sprinted across it, breathing hard, and hammered on the only apartment door.
Flint stopped beside her and pushed her back. Then he did something—she couldn’t see what—and the door opened.
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