I’d rather avoid shootouts in the street. Especially when they’re shooting at me, dicks or otherwise.
But if I accepted Jax’s help, I’d all but confirm his suspicions. I may as well put a neon light on my ass claiming it as up for grabs.
Fuck me. Life was so much simpler when I could just kick a man in the teeth and be done with it.
“What’s the cost?” I asked without turning.
His voice hadn’t shifted from his claimed corner, so he was respecting boundaries this time. “A favor, to be named when I need it. No questions.”
“That’s a big damn cost.” But I was definitely thinking about it. One favor. In exchange, I’d get Jax’s resources on the bandwidth, which could turn up nothing or everything. Or something in between. I was flying blind already. And for all his attitude, he wasn’t in the business of screwing around with facts. He knew what he knew, and when he said he’d help, he meant it.
The name Taylor Jax had more cred on it than almost anyone else I knew, save maybe Lucky’s. I ran with an elite cunting crowd.
But this brought up a whole new concern. “Why help at all, Jax?”
“Let’s just say I’m keeping an eye on my bank.”
He didn’t mean a financial institution. Of all the things projectors dealt with, financial worries wasn’t one of them. When the system works on a digital level, ’jectors tend to be rolling in credits. And cred. Lucky, suicidal bastards.
I shot him a look over my shoulder, but his face told me nothing. “Are you prepping something big?”
“Not yet.” His eyebrows rose and lowered, salacious inquiry. “But I can’t have cops luring you over to the forces of good before I’m ready to make an offer myself.”
There it was. I turned. My tech hand clanked on the sink, fingers curving over it. I didn’t pinch the metal, but the act sent a throbbing pulse through my brain.
Damn, it hurt.
My shoulder twitched. “You better not be monitoring me.” I stopped shy of a serious threat. Regardless of our history, neither of us had ever really crossed that line. I wasn’t sure what would happen if we did. I could take him on in meatspace, but I’d lose on the bandwidth. Lose hard. If we ever became enemies for real, I’d get one chance – provided he was in front of me when the gloves came off.
These are the things a saint thinks about. Where to run, where the exits are, and how much time it’d take to reach them. What tech to risk and how best to maximize a killing edge. How to win a hypothetical fight with a buddy, because that buddy could sell you out tomorrow. I barely even noticed it anymore. Survival was king.
Jax’s smile upped about a thousand watts. “Relax, kitten. I was actually stalking him.”
That earned him a blank stare. “Detective Douchedick? Why?”
He shrugged easily, a fluid line of red on black. If the name caught him by surprise, he didn’t show it. “Investments.”
Easily translated. In short, Greg hadn’t made any secret of his financial difficulties, and Jax – maybe other saints – had clued in. I wondered how many fixers had paid for that information already.
And how many had sold it.
Damn. Well, that was life on the street. I couldn’t do much for the detective now. If he wanted creds so badly, I hoped he was smart enough to know the good jobs from the bad.
Unlike me, who knew the difference but currently lacked the backing to get the good ones.
I sighed. “Stay off my freqs,” I told him. “I’m just starting to like you again.”
“Does that mean you’re interested?”
I let go of the sink. “In your offer of help, yeah,” I replied evenly. “But you can keep your babies to yourself, whatever color they are.”
That smile flashed again. “I’ll be in touch for that favor. How long are you staying here?”
“I’m leaving soon as I rep up some clothes.”
“That explains it.” Jax ran a hand over his dreads, pulling them over his shoulder the way a girl would to catch a man’s attention. It wasn’t quite the same with Jax. He just really liked his hair. I did, too, but I also recognized exactly what kind of leverage it gave me in a fight.
“What?” I asked, frowning.
“Lucky kicked you out.”
I briefly thought about arguing, but then I realized his green eyes weren’t looking at me. He’d seen the note.
Of course he’d seen it. Nosy bastard. “So?”
“Well, that’s some shit right there.” With his hair arranged, he ran both hands into his dreadlocks, scratching at his scalp. It lifted the hem of his tanktop, bared a flat, muscled expanse of belly. “Hate to say it, but there’s a few flags flapping out there.”
“‘Course there are,” I said wryly, then stilled. “Wait.” I glared at him. “Did you just bargain with me when you already have info?”
“Sort of.” He tilted his head, lazily studying me from half-lidded eyes. “More like a lead. And I’m willing to part with it. Call it an advance on what I’m thinking is an ongoing problem of epic proportions. In good faith.”
Great. “Why?”
He hesitated. Then, with another one of those lazy shrugs, he replied, “People don’t vanish, Riko. Even when they get themselves splattered, there’s trace. Except then you went and actually vanished.”
“So you tracked me.”
His eyes banked, a trace of anger and more than a little intrigue as he studied me. “No, I tried. You went so far off-grid, it’s like you stopped existing. Only thing I dug up is a little bit of info on a certain virginal little sister.”
“Stop calling her that,” I snapped, and turned my back on him to stab the screen on the hacked printer Lucky maintained. He’d know it when he came back, but regardless of everything else, he wouldn’t begrudge me clothes.
“Indigo hired me to find her.” Jax’s voice carried the verbal equivalent of a shrug. He didn’t care. “Then when the bit surfaced of one Nanjali Koupra going up in chopshop flames, he hired me to find you. Is it true you sold her out?”
That was the kind of news I couldn’t gloss over. “Wait. Back up. Indigo hired you?” My surprise shifted into abject disbelief. My lip curled. “You’re making that up.” They hated each other. I’d never cared enough to know why, but the fact Jax had banged Digo’s sister put some of that into clarity.
I hated feeling kinship with Jax. Ugh.
“Wish I was, sugartits.” Shoving the mass of his dreadlocks back over his shoulder, he shot me a look that didn’t leave any room for amusement – easy or otherwise. “So did you sell her out?”
“No.” Maybe. I didn’t fill in the blanks, but I didn’t waste any breath explaining, either. Word got out fast when a ’jector got involved. “I didn’t sell her out. I ended up in the same place she did, but they had me in some kind of stasis, I think, so I don’t have any memories of the time. I woke up thinking I’d only missed a day.”
“Yeah, bullshit.” But that lash of determination wasn’t aimed at me. I knew Jax well enough to get it. His pride was stinging. “You know I don’t like unanswered questions.”
Fair enough. In the scheme of things, it was better to have Jax annoyed and on my side than annoyed and out to get me. “Fine,” I said. “I can respect that. What do you have for me?”
“Fuck It Jim.”
I blinked. Bukket Jehm was a fixer. A man who parceled out jobs for money, took on goods to sell on the market, and otherwise took care of the annoying details. He was a small man with a thin mustache, weasely enough to do the job but the least trustworthy among the established fixers. That’s how he’d earned the moniker Fuck It Jim. It was easier to say fuck it than try.
Indigo didn’t deal with him as a rule. Too much trouble.
“That guy’s smeglevel,” I said, skeptical. “Why him?”
“’Cause he’s up to his little spunked-up nose in your shit, that’s why.”
Well, that made everything clearer. And so simple. “Okay.” I nodded, like it was no big. “I’m going to
go kill him now.”
“Yeah, that might have flown before you started working with him.”
I froze, my finger hovering over the button that would start the printer. My stare landed on Jax with one part surprise, two parts mocking amusement, and enough teeth to make him raise his hands in a gesture of goodwill. “Bullshit,” I said clearly.
“Yeah, you can say that, but c’mon, Ree. We know. You and me?” His mouth curved in a humorless smile. “We know. And so do enough people who started wondering aloud what the fuck you were doing with a lowlife like Jim.”
Which now explained part of the hit my cred took. If I was rumored to be working with Fuck It Jim, my reputation would slide like a greased chromer spiked naked down an oil slick.
Fucking A, if Lucky got associated with that sniveling little anus wart, he’d lose work. No wonder he was so eager to get me the hell out.
Goddamn son of a bitch fixer and his little ratty fingers got all over my business.
“Only thing I can’t work out,” Jax continued, watching me closely, “is what you were doing with him, but you won’t tell me. So I’ll figure it out.”
If he did, if he beat me to it, I’d be so boned.
But I couldn’t very well admit to running around the city out of my mind since April. Even Jax knew that wasn’t cool. Lucky may have cleared me of corruption, but that didn’t change the fact that somehow, a whole chunk of time was missing from my brain.
Which meant – what if I was working with Jim?
“Fine,” I said, stabbing the button. The printer warmed up. “Why do you think Jim’s the key?”
Jax’s smile crinkled his gleaming eyes. “Because out of everyone you worked with, Riko, he’s the only one everyone knows would screw you over.”
I grimaced. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Hey. I’m just a guy bringing you all the good faith data you need.” Jax kissed his fingers and flicked it my direction. “The rest is all you, pussy.” He said it like an endearment. I growled under my breath as he turned. “Oh.” He glanced back at me over his shoulder, which admittedly did nice things for the shape of the muscles there. “Can I offer some advice?”
“Can I stop you?”
His eyes twinkled in that good humor I knew was as much a front as his cosmetic appeal. “You don’t have to kick the shit out of everyone in your hot pursuit. At least try to be cool.”
I scoffed. “Please. I only do that for losers and chumheads. I don’t have to curb stomp people just for answers.”
“Yeah, sugartits. That’s what I’m saying.” Jax left the kitchen before I could argue.
I shouted at his back, “In good faith, my ass!”
“Give me time.”
My recommendation of what he could do with his time followed him out of the chopshop. He was laughing when the door closed behind him.
Shit. Jax liked to think of me as one of his rivals, but he was weirdly protective of those rivals. If he’d come looking to help me, it meant there was something in it for him. As a ’jector, he was just as connected to the data wave as a fixer was, but he didn’t farm out jobs. He just liked having information, even if he didn’t know how it all came together.
That’s what made ’jectors so damn dangerous, street side and in the corporate broadsheets. You never knew what they’d waded through, and what they’d hold against you later.
Well, that and their rate of tech corruption skyrocketed at an alarming rate compared to the rest of us.
So he led me to Jim, and I owed him a favor. Jax knew I’d keep it; hell, at this point, he might be the only one taking me on faith. I’d all but confirmed the mass amounts of shit I was in, and he still fed me this lead.
At a steep price, admittedly. I recognized a baited hook when I saw one, but it happened to be attached to a lifeline.
If my cred was so bad that Lucky was tossing me out? I’d have an uphill battle. Jax’s favor, suck as it was, would help me earn it back. Hopefully.
I scrubbed at my face with my drying hand, groaning.
Fuck It Jim operated out of a ratbag motel thirty-seven minutes away by cab. Whatever he had, whatever data he knew that I didn’t, it better be worth more than just my tanked cred – it damn well better be worth my life.
There was no telling what Jax would ask me to do later.
12
Fuck It Jim’s place hovered right by squalor plaza and within spitting distance of suicide lane. Dank and dirty as a testicular fistula. The dingy motel didn’t look all that different from the other buildings nestling against it – diseased fuck-buddies all crowding for the same soiled blanket, layers of drab color interrupted here and there by bold paint from street taggers with nothing better to put their mark on.
I didn’t bother checking in with the front desk. Place like this, I was just as likely to meet the business end of a shotgun as a friendly word. I’d had about enough of getting shotguns shoved in my face for a few days.
The row of stained brown doors and curtained, semi-boarded windows smiled at me as I stared at the façade. By the blackened edges, the last seven on the left had all suffered fire damage, which made them only slightly less unlivable than the other thirty-six rooms like it. Bugs, vermin, stains you were better off not asking about, room service that was comprised of a daily hammering on the door, a fat man in a cheap suit screaming for rent...
Yeah, classy place, this.
Unless he’d changed his MO, Jim was behind door number 14 – the age he liked girls best, he’d said when I’d first had the pleasure of meeting him. Inside joke.
Ha, ha.
I’d changed out of the board shorts, swapping them for a pair of printed denim loose enough to take a boot to Jim’s head. I didn’t think I’d have to, but sometimes the man played hard to get.
I wasn’t in the mood today.
Of course, if I did kick his teeth in without at least trying, I’d have to deal with Jax laughing down my neck.
Assholes. Every one.
I took the stairs two at a time, the whole broken down thing wobbling with every step. To my left, I caught movement in another unit’s window – a flutter of a curtain, a glimpse of crooked teeth and shadowed eyes – but nobody came out to see me. I didn’t expect it. This was a pay-by-the-hour kind of joint, where questions weren’t asked because the answers might just get you killed, entrapped, or worse.
My fist against door number 14 echoed hollowly, every thud of flesh against the shabby paint sending jolts of echoed pain down my other arm. “Open up, Jim!”
Silence.
It didn’t occur to me that the fixer wouldn’t be in. The guy had a hate list about three miles long – he hated the world at large and everybody in it. It made him willing to sell information on anyone; a double-edged sword. People hated him, too, and I assumed it was only a matter of time before somebody wrung his scrawny neck.
I slammed my fist against the door so hard, the whole frame juddered. “If I break this down,” I yelled, “you’re going to have to explain it. You know they’ll raise your rates.”
Like most men of Fuck It Jim’s persuasion, he was a stingy bastard.
I counted back from three. On one, a lock clicked.
The hinges creaked as the door cracked open an inch. Just enough to reveal one bloodshot silver eye. It widened. Then it flashed.
“Now I have to warn you that if you do anything with that snapshot,” I continued, not unreasonably, “I will rip the storage chipset out of your shriveled little brain and make you eat it.” My standard policy.
“Riko.” My name on his lips wasn’t welcoming. “What are you doing here?”
“First, delete that file,” I replied, flattening my metal palm on the door and pushing until the chain holding it snapped taut. The impact of the tension sent tiny fingers of pain up my shoulder.
I didn’t wince. Wincing would give the man ammunition, and I needed him unarmed in every sense.
So I gave him my best smile. Something lacking in teet
h. “Second, I want what everyone wants from you.”
The ocular replacement framed in jaundiced skin narrowed. “Do you want to kill me or do you want to give me creds?” He meant money. It didn’t stop me from thinking I’d already given him too much cred and wanted desperately to take it out of his grimy skin.
I didn’t say it aloud. “I need information,” I said instead.
He brightened. “Creds, it is.” The door closed, the chain clinked, and then Fuck It Jim opened the door wide, his smile thin and sharp and naked with greed. “C’mon in. Why didn’t Indigo tell me you were coming?” He paused. “Or, uh, is this for another thing?”
“Nice to see you, too, Jim.” I stepped inside.
Bukket Jehm wasn’t an imposing figure. He was shorter than me, with swarthy skin painted yellow from some defect I didn’t know and his eyes metallic silver in the iris. Ocular implants – straight-up replacements, probably. The whites of his eyes were too white, instead of yellow with whatever condition turned his skin sallow, and it gave his stare an eerily bright disposition. The fact that they were implants and still wormed by startling red told me whatever he was into, it wasn’t good.
His stringy brown hair was kept too long, one of those braids that thinned until it was nothing but a wisp at the broken ends – crowned by the fact that he was balding at the top – and his hooked nose was usually running. Or plugged. Or bleeding, although somebody had usually punched him for that one.
Drug habit, I’d bet. A nasty one. Nanos weren’t much good against drugs these days. As technology got better, so did the smart drug lords, the cookers, and the designers who made narcotics to counteract nano interference.
That’s one of the things that made slank so popular. Easy to make, easy to cut, and easy to deal.
Swish was easier to make, but left a trail of burned-out corpses in its wake. Canker was about the same as rinsing your mouth with piss and bleach – the poor man’s purgatory – and colordust was expensive to produce and harder to score outside corp and rich-world contacts. Strych hadn’t seen a revival in years. That left only, oh, about a hundred other options.
Necrotech Page 14