Paloma

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The blood propelled her forward. A man was sprawled near the wall, his hands gone. She didn’t recognize him.

  She kept going, even though Flint was shouting at her. She didn’t hear the words—she wouldn’t listen to the words—and she ended up in what had been the kitchen.

  Before someone shot it up.

  Before Nyquist shot it up.

  In a desperate attempt to survive.

  Sixty-seven

  “Miles!” DeRicci screamed. “Miles, help me. He’s still breathing.”

  Flint had been searching the room with all his sensors on, making certain there were no Bixian assassins here. He figured one was a gooey mark on the wall, but he couldn’t see the other.

  “Miles!” DeRicci called. “Now!”

  She was on her hands and knees beside Nyquist, clutching an area near his chest. He was bleeding too heavily for one person to stop it all.

  Flint didn’t go to her. Instead, he headed to the hallway and shouted for a medic. At the same time, he sent an emergency message down his links. He wasn’t sure what would work in here and what wouldn’t. He just knew he had to do both.

  DeRicci was still yelling for him, and as he sprinted back in, he grabbed a soft coat from the closet. He was ripping it as he headed into the kitchen, hoping the second assassin was gone.

  Then he no longer had to hope.

  The dead assassin lay a few meters from Nyquist.

  It looked like Nyquist had given it his all. He’d shot up the entire kitchen, but that had no effect. Then he’d found a good old-fashioned knife, and sliced as he was being sliced.

  Somehow that had worked.

  The assassin had survived long enough to slither away before it just flattened out.

  Flint assumed the juices around it were some kind of life fluid. He’d leave that to the techs to figure out.

  Since he and DeRicci hadn’t been attacked, he also assumed there wasn’t a third one.

  He knelt beside DeRicci, who was putting pressure on a wound near Nyquist’s heart, and tied off everything he could think to tie off. Nyquist’s eyes were fluttering, but Flint wasn’t sure he could see.

  Then the medics burst in and shoved both Flint and DeRicci away. DeRicci wouldn’t leave the area, even though she was covered in blood. Obviously, she and Nyquist had been friends, maybe more than friends, judging by the desperation in DeRicci’s eyes, and she wasn’t about to leave him.

  Flint didn’t want to either, but he knew he would just get in the way. It was amazing, the way Nyquist had managed to fight off those things. He wouldn’t have survived if Flint and DeRicci hadn’t gotten here so quickly.

  That thought made him walk over to the other man. He had to be Claudius Wagner. Flint couldn’t really get a sense of what the man had looked like, only that he had died a horrible death.

  Like Paloma’s.

  Flint shuddered and realized it wasn’t over yet.

  Justinian had done this. He’d let the assassins know where both of his parents were.

  He had killed by remote, just like his mother had, thinking his hands were clean because he hadn’t done the actual murder. He hadn’t even contracted for it. All he had done was impart a small piece of information, one the assassins had overlooked for decades.

  Flint tasted bile against the back of his throat.

  Ignatius was afraid of the man, his own brother, and why not? It would be impossible to prove that Justinian had sent the assassins after his parents.

  Even if Flint tried, Justinian had all the resources of the Moon’s largest and most influential law firm at his disposal.

  If Flint went into that firm—or Justinian’s home—and tried to take out the man, he’d still face those resources. Flint’s own life would end if he ended Justinian’s.

  When DeRicci calmed, Flint would tell her what he suspected. But he also knew that she lacked the clout to take on WSX.

  There was only one way to stop this man.

  The way that he feared from the beginning.

  And Flint would have to act fast.

  Sixty-eight

  Ki Bowles had never been summoned to a law office before. She spent the entire aircar trip to Van Alen and Associates worrying that this might have something to do with her firing. She had already warned her manager and her own attorney just in case.

  So she was extremely surprised to be ushered into Maxine Van Alen’s huge office, only to find Miles Flint sitting in a chair next to the desk. He looked a lot more relaxed than he had the day before, but something about him—the wariness in his gaze, the grief lines on his face—made him seem older than he ever had.

  Van Alen stood beside him, looking imperial. She had always intimidated Bowles, who couldn’t even ask for an interview with her, and now the feeling was worse.

  “First,” Van Alen said, “you need to sign a confidentiality agreement. Then we’ll talk to you.”

  The agreement, sent across her links, seemed to go on forever. It was an actual document with vid text and links to explanations of legal terminology.

  Flint fidgeted while Bowles examined it. He clearly wasn’t as relaxed as he seemed.

  When she finished signing it, Van Alen asked her if she was afraid of Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor.

  Bowles almost said, “Hell, I’m afraid of you. Imagine how I feel about them.” But she didn’t.

  Instead, she said flippantly, “Who isn’t?”

  “Well, if you can’t stand up to them, we’ll get someone else.”

  Bowles held out a hand. “I signed your damn agreement. At least tell me what you want before determining that I can’t do it.”

  So Flint told her about Paloma being married to Old Man Wagner, and how they both died hideously, and that somewhere in the files of WSX was the reason for everything.

  “You have exclusives for the rest of your life if you want them,” he said.

  “You realize I’m no longer with InterDome,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t be getting this offer if you were,” Van Alen said. “I’ll be marketing everything for you. We probably won’t go to Moon-based media, since WSX is tied to most of them. Are you interested? It’s a long term project.”

  Interested? She felt like she had just come back to life. But she tried not to let her feelings show.

  Instead, she turned to Flint. “Why me? You could have gone with a dozen people. You could have done it yourself. Why are you going with me?”

  He studied her for a moment. Then he shrugged, almost as if to say, You asked.

  “You’re ruthless, Ki,” he said.

  She winced. Why did everyone say that about her?

  He continued, “You want the story more than you want to protect people’s lives and reputations. You have no real ethics. If you think you can bring someone down, you will, without regard to the effect on their lives.”

  She felt her cheeks warm. “If this is about Noelle DeRicci—”

  “The governor-general stopped you from destroying her. I’ll help you destroy Justinian Wagner. But you have to be as ruthless—more ruthless—than you were in going after Noelle. Will you do it?”

  “And if the evidence doesn’t warrant going after him?” Bowles asked, feeling insulted. “What then?”

  Flint gave her a small smile. “It does. You put this stuff out, and it’ll destroy WSX.”

  “How?” Bowles asked.

  “We have their legal files,” Van Alen said. “Decades of them. Files the firm has lost or misplaced. Files the firm won’t give back to its own clients because it doesn’t have them. That alone will bring down WSX. That kind of carelessness will make sure clients leave in droves.”

  “The rest will speak for itself,” Flint said.

  Bowles turned to Van Alen. “What about you? Isn’t this unethical for you, too?”

  Van Alen shrugged. “I’m not reading the files. I’m just representing Mr. Flint, who is the legal owner of those files. It’s unethical if I read those files or use them in a
case that I’m trying against WSX. Believe me, I was tempted. But this is a much better plan.”

  “Are you willing?” Flint asked.

  Bowles straightened her back. She hated his characterization of her. But she had to admit, she was tempted. If this worked—and it would be a real gamble; it would be hard to take on the largest law firm on the Moon—then she had not just made her career, she’d found her own place in history.

  “Hell, yeah,” she said. “What do we do next?”

  Sixty-nine

  Flint let himself out of the office while Van Alen explained all the legal ramifications to Bowles. They’d have to keep her under control. They wouldn’t let her break any news without backups and all their legal ammunition in place.

  This would bring down Justinian Wagner, but it would happen slowly.

  And while it did, Flint had to pretend he didn’t care. He had already decided to give Paloma’s entire estate to Justinian. That way, Justinian had no reason to come after him. Flint would reload the information onto the Lost Seas, making sure it looked like the information had never been removed. Then he would give Justinian the official handheld with the material, and say that he hadn’t made other copies.

  It was a lie, of course, but a lie that Justinian might believe, given that Flint wasn’t going to keep anything else from the estate for himself. Justinian would have trouble believing anyone would give back such wealth, even if he didn’t need it.

  Flint didn’t need it and didn’t want it. He was already doing what Paloma wanted. She wouldn’t care if her estate went to her son while Flint, Van Alen, and Bowles used the time it bought them to bring Justinian down.

  Van Alen had been worried that Justinian would send a Bixian assassin after Flint, but he reminded her that Justinian hadn’t hired the assassins. He had just informed them where his parents were. Justinian wouldn’t hire any assassins himself—it was too hands-on. And he would have no reason to, once he had all of Paloma’s files.

  Besides, Wagner had no idea that Flint had damaging information against him that existed outside those files. For once, the size of the files worked in Flint’s favor. He could say that in the few hours that he owned them, he had no time to look at them, particularly since he’d been a fugitive for much of that time.

  Wagner would believe that as well. He might be worried that Flint had made copies, but since Flint was handing him both the original files (in the Lost Seas) and the handheld (which Flint cleaned up as much as he could so that there would be no record of the other backups), Wagner would probably think Flint hadn’t had time to make copies.

  Since it would take months for Flint to give Bowles the right information in the right order, Wagner would think Flint had nothing. Wagner would relax.

  Flint would have to work hard. He was going to take his copies to the Emmeline, since his office still needed cleaning and probably some kind of debugging, given that the police had most likely searched it. He’d probably have to rent a place, either on Earth or Mars, to keep a secondary backup, somewhere far from Armstrong that Wagner wouldn’t think of looking.

  But that was minor.

  When the first story, the one about the lost files, appeared, WSX was doomed.

  It was only a matter of time.

  Flint wished it could be faster. He wished he had been faster. Maybe he would have been able to help Nyquist.

  It was clear that Nyquist would survive now. He’d have an awful recovery—maybe not even a full one—but he would make it.

  Flint knew what that was like. He’d been crushed during a case, but not sliced, and the months of pain, the nanobots repairing things, the medical personnel poking this and that, wasn’t anything he’d wish on someone he admired.

  Hell, he’d barely wish it on someone he disliked.

  DeRicci hadn’t left Nyquist’s side since the medics took him to Armstrong’s best hospital. Flint stepped in to make sure that Nyquist got the best care—usually detectives couldn’t afford the highest-level doctors—and then he let DeRicci take care of things. She found Nyquist’s mother, and got the woman on a bullet train to Armstrong, but DeRicci had also made clear she—not his mother—would oversee his care.

  Flint thought that was a hell of a commitment from someone who hadn’t known him three months before.

  But Flint was learning about commitments. Paloma would be alive if she hadn’t had any personal relationships, just like she had recommended to him. Not only had she violated that, but she hadn’t even tried to keep herself separate from her family.

  Had she known how this would end up? Was this why she had advised him that way?

  He shook his head.

  He still hadn’t processed everything he’d learned about Paloma. He figured it might take as long to understand how he felt about her as it took to destroy her law firm.

  He sank into a chair in the hallway.

  He really and truly was on his own now. And the only way to prevent being blindsided like this again was to make sure he stayed on his own.

  Like Paloma had recommended.

  All those years ago.

  About the Author

  International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won or been nominated for every major award in the science fiction field. She has won Hugos for editing The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and for her short fiction. She has also won the Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Readers Choice Award six times, as well as the Anlab Award from Analog Magazine, Science Fiction Age Readers Choice Award, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her standalone sf novel, Alien Influences, was a finalist for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award. I09 said her Retrieval Artist series featured one of the top ten science fiction detectives ever written. She writes a second sf series, the Diving Universe series, as well as a fantasy series called The Fey. She also writes mystery, romance, and fantasy novels, occasionally using the pen names Kris DeLake, Kristine Grayson and Kris Nelscott. For more information, go to www.KristineKathrynRusch.com.