Blue eyes narrowed.
“I know, Indigo,” I snarled, reaching into my waistband to withdraw the tablet. I tossed this one gently, unwilling to lose evidence to his thick skull. “I know you’ve been selling information on your contacts to seven chopshops. Most recently, one in the Vid Zone. You’ve been making bank, and you’ve been using me to do it, you son of a bitch!”
Indigo processed information like I processed oxygen. He only needed to glance at the featured data, scroll through it once.
I watched the contours of his already sharp features settle into rock-hard planes.
Good. Now he was as pissed as I was, for the same reasons. Explain that, asshole.
“I didn’t do this,” he said, but he didn’t toss the tablet back. I didn’t expect him to. His grip turned his fingers sallow around the scuffed edge. “January dropped on a Mantis run, Deck was blown up in a raid on his swish shack. Nobody’s heard from Lingo in months, but that’s usual for him.”
“Yeah?” I thrust my chin at the tablet. “That says they were handed over to a chopshop. Paid, Digo. Paid in full, with a cut to Jim. You know who else is on that list?” I didn’t let him answer. “Your sister. You fucking sold out your own sister.”
Indigo’s mouth curled in a soundless snarl as he dropped his gaze to the information he clutched.
We stood there in Laila’s cluttered apartment, silent and staring for what seemed like forever. I watched Indigo battle to work through the facts, and the first seeds of doubt unfurled in the middle of all my fury.
This was not the reaction of a man who’d been caught redhanded.
With my heartbeat pounding against the confines of my skull, my hands clenched at my sides. “Cut the act, Digo. There’s your proof. Now tell me what the fuck you did to me. Memory crack? Did you have a ’jector hack me just so I’d be your goddamn errand boy?”
His gaze wrenched to mine. The corners of his mouth pinched. “I did not do this,” he repeated, the intensity of it edged like a razor and tight enough to turn his voice into something brittle. Barely contained anger. “First, I wouldn’t sell my sister, chunk your proof. Second, less importantly, the payouts listed here aren’t nearly enough to cover the losses.”
Well, that was just factual enough to confuse me. “What?”
“The losses, Riko. I run a goddamned business. Each one of them was worth more than the payout listed,” he pointed out impatiently. “Given their skillsets and reliability, we would have made six times as much in a year just working with them.”
“You’re serious.”
“Fuck you, what do you think I am? A charity?”
Not even a little.
Well... shit. That was a point I hadn’t considered, and that bit of logic put a spike in my emotional rollercoaster. I opened my mouth, but caught myself before I asked the question that formed inside my head.
He glanced up at me, eyes flat. “What?”
If Indigo wasn’t the principal, then that left one other candidate: me. Jim had suggested as much. If Indigo was telling the truth, then that evidence now pointed to me. I couldn’t say it wasn’t with any certainty, not while my memories were on the fritz.
And if he was lying, then how could I prove it when I couldn’t even state my innocence with any real certainty?
Fuck me.
Fuck him.
Fuck this whole scumsucking business.
“Looks like Jim’s playing a lot of angles,” Indigo continued. He rotated the tablet between his hands. “But I swear, I didn’t get a single payout for any of them. If this is true, if someone has been selling out my roster, then I damn well intend to find who.”
I couldn’t fault his instinct, but I don’t think he got the whole picture. “We need more than that.”
He raised the scuffed tablet. “This started six months ago. Do you know how many names are on this list?”
I frowned. “Hold up – when?”
“Six months, give or take.” His teeth bared. “Six fucking months, and I didn’t know what the hell was happening to my people.”
Hallelujah, a ray of smegging sunshine. I remembered six months ago. There was no way I was involved with this.
But that didn’t explain the end of April and early May, when Digo said I’d been walking around.
I fisted my hands beside my forehead. “We need to check that chopshop, Digo. The one in the Vid Zone. That’s where all the information will be.”
“How do you know?”
I couldn’t very well admit to getting picked up by the cops. My cred was already in the shitter – suspected dealings with the police would only make it worse. So I lied. Flat out. “When I escaped the place, I was beyond lost. None of my shit was working. But when I hitched out, I was in the Third Junction. That’s walking distance from the Zone.”
“Coincidence.”
“Like hell.”
I could practically hear his teeth click together from across the room.
“Malik Reed said to get him evidence,” I pressed, dropping my hands to grip my thighs and pin him with a stare. “That tablet is evidence.”
He waved the unit at me. “This is enough to turn just about anyone on me, Riko. Look at what you did after a cursory examination.” A none-too-subtle nod to Laila’s ruined door.
“Eat my dick,” I shot back. “You sent me into a trap at Plato’s.”
His nostrils flared; that look he got when I’d just said something he found offensive. “The hell I did.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t have the time or the patience to play the blame game anymore. He said, she said, they all had something to say, and right now, I was way too confused to sort it all out. “Look,” I said sharply, once more surging to my feet with way more energy than I would have figured I’d had stored.
Digo took a barefoot step back.
My heart slammed again. I forced myself to stay still, hands fisted at my side.
Christ on a pipe, I wanted to hurt something.
His expression told me I wasn’t hiding it.
“Look,” I repeated, deliberately going for calm. “Taylor Jax sent me to Jim.”
Digo wasn’t enough of an actor to mask his surprise.
“Yeah,” I said to his silent question. “It surprised me, too. You know what else surprised me?” When he only looked at me, that same wariness warning me I was sprouting another head right in front of his eyes, I bared my teeth. “That you hired him to go looking for me.”
The black fan of his lashes narrowed. I expected him to deny it. He didn’t bother. “I used what I could.”
“Yeah, well.” I rolled my shoulder uncomfortably. Not because it hurt – the ache had mellowed, finally – but because I didn’t know what else to do. “Thanks, at least, for trying.” His mouth tightened, and I shot him a faint, bitter smile. “Even if you only wanted to find me to kill me.”
He didn’t deny that, either. “Jax failed.”
“And he knows it.” A shaft of amusement split my anger into something mildly more tolerable. I took a deep breath. “Thanks for that, too. Humility burns Jax like holy water.”
Indigo held my gaze for a quiet moment, his face unreadable. The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. “Yeah, well.” A repeat of my own discomfort. “You’re welcome.”
We stood awkwardly for a moment, caught in a tangled web of our uncertainties. Old friendships, new hatreds. So much doubt.
I didn’t know how to address it – any of it. All I could do was try to find the information that would explain all of this – my memory gap, Nanji’s conversion. I had to make this better the only way I knew how.
Clear my name, stock my cred, before anyone else came gunning for me.
Without cred, I was losing allies fast. That much was clear. A lone runner? Especially one who’d chunked a few smegheads on the way up? Yeah, it was only a matter of time before I was so much meat.
“Anyway.” I cleared my throat. “Turns out, whatever Jim was up to, it bro
ught MetaCore on his ass. And mine.” I gestured at the mess I presented. “So, I’m a little wired. Sorry. I’ll pay for Laila’s door.”
“You’re balls-out insane,” he muttered, but at least he relaxed enough to start pacing. I watched him stride through the small room, stepping in and out of the curtain-dappled sunlight. He slapped the unit against his palm rhythmically as he did it.
For the first time in, oh, hell, a couple years, I really looked at Indigo’s trim body. Under all that olive skin, I decided that he wore leaner muscle well once I got used to it. His back shifted tightly, rippling the bold colors of the lotus tattoo. With his bare feet and naked, hairless chest, he looked a hell of a lot more lethal than he used to.
No wonder Laila had taken him home.
I almost snorted a laugh, and as he turned to throw me an inquisitive, impatient glare, all that anger, that emotional undercurrent of rage, drained right out of me. With the sudden loss of adrenaline-fueled anger, all those muscles tightened to the breaking point around my synthetic arm. Pain unfurled like a flame.
I rubbed at the curve of my neck as that phantom arm ached from false fingertips to brain, lancing every nerve in between.
Digo glared at the tablet. Then back at me. “Right now,” he said flatly, “you’re on my shitlist in a big way.” He held up the tablet. “This may be something, but you’re still the one who fucking watched my sister die.” He paused. “If you’re even telling me the truth.”
Ouch.
“I’m not sorry I hired Jax to find you,” he said grimly, “but it’s infuriating to think I paid him for counterfeit intel.”
An angle I hadn’t considered. That wouldn’t be good for Jax’s cred, either. At least Indigo acknowledged that there was something wrong with this whole situation. Whatever data Jax had managed to get, it was nothing more than a ruse. A way to ensure nobody went sniffing around after Nanji.
Jax got bad intel. Indigo was losing his roster and didn’t even know. I’d... sold that roster, maybe? Fuck.
So why? Why give Nanjali Koupra a finite end on a chopshop table but leave Lingo with an unexplained disappearance? But January and Deck both had solid reports on their deaths, too.
Whoever did this counted on the fact someone like Indigo would check up on it.
Was it something that would even occur to me? I didn’t think so. But then, sometimes I surprised myself with my random acts of intelligence.
I dug my thumb into my eye to ease the headache pounding behind it. “There’s a source for all of this,” I said, weary now. “That tablet tells me where to start. And now I have Reed’s evidence. He can get me a team.”
He frowned at the unit. Stopped pacing. Then, to my surprise, he tucked the tablet into his waistband. Mine. He may as well have pissed on it. “Then we’re going to go question Reed,” he said. Like it was already decided.
I blinked. “We?”
“The hell I’m letting you do another meeting in secret,” he said, his jaw stone hard as he glared at me. “I’m going this time, and I’ll be asking all the questions.”
I stood. Fuck me sideways, I didn’t have a choice. Very deliberately, I curled my hands into fists, ignoring the shot of pain through my shoulder. I’d have to spend every moment of this meeting balancing Malik Reed’s douche factor with Indigo Koupra’s raging trust issues. While hiding the fact that I was keeping something from them both.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.
“You want to play with the big boys, Riko?” He jammed his feet into his boots, kicking at the programmed lacing until the material tightened up around his ankles. “Then you start figuring out when you’re supposed to stroke your dick and when you’re supposed to stow it.” He shot a hard look at me, thrusting at his own face with a finger. “That’s my specialty. Don’t fucking forget you’re just a splatter specialist off her goddamn rails.”
I forced myself to hold still, to lock down the automatic need to drive a fist into his twisted face. A lump swelled thick and ugly in my throat.
He was right. Much as I hated it, I couldn’t meet Reed without him, and I wasn’t willing to kill him over a maybe. I needed Digo to set up the meeting.
I needed Reed to fund a run to that Vid Zone chopshop.
I needed to play the smegging game.
And I was so cunting tired of needing everyone else to do it.
“Fine,” I gritted out. “Set up the meeting.” He exhaled soundlessly, like he’d been holding his breath. Only to curl his lip when I couldn’t stop myself from adding, “Asshole.”
“Keep stroking it, Riko.”
His inflection suggested I needed to shut up.
15
Indigo left a few credsticks for Laila. To replace the door, I think, without my help. I said nothing, but I did avail myself of her shower and printer while he made the call. Unlike mine, her radiation shower was fast enough to deal with. She had decent digs, for the shithole the building was, and at least she tried to make it comfortable.
“Let’s go,” was all he said when I stepped out to find him dressed and waiting.
I’d opted for black, because trite as it is to go for a badass vibe in black, it hid blood well and didn’t stand out in the street. I actually preferred color, but this was me. Being practical.
Lucky would be so proud. Except for that part where I tanked my cred, assaulted and alienated one of the only friends I had left, and pinned a MetaCore target to my back.
My pants were close to the ones I lost to Lucky’s table, though Laila’s database didn’t have my chosen make and model. I’d traded the ruined baby blue for a skintight sleeveless shirt that wouldn’t bunch under the harness I intended to requisition soon. I’d even pulled out a pair of cheap wraparound sunglasses. I looked like the streetcore mercenary I was.
Indigo had replaced his own neoprene blue with black, which made us look like a twin set, but whatever. If anyone had anything cute to say, I was itching for a fight.
He said nothing as I followed him out of Laila’s apartment. He did mutter a string of profanities when the door refused to sit straight, and I very determinedly refrained from contributing to the non-conversation. I doubted anything I had to say would have helped.
He was still fuming as he backed his motorcycle out of the alley he’d stashed it in. I got to ride bitch. Lucky, lucky me.
There was no sense of easy camaraderie between us as we headed out past the rack and hit one of the boundary byways. I watched the scenery go by, focusing on the sharp, jagged streaks of pain the cycle juddered through my left side because it hurt less than the knowledge that I’d lost pretty much everything I’d made for myself in the past few years. My reputation, my team, my mentor.
My girlfriend. Even if she was one in a string of many.
Poor me. A real quality pity party on the back of Indigo’s babied Wolfram K-700. Built for sleek menace, high visual appeal and road domination, the metallic blue and chromed motorcycle had been his longterm girlfriend of choice for as long as I’d known him. I loved the bike – had even considered replacing my less sleek Vix Jp with a similar model after a run had trashed the Vix a couple years back.
Maybe one day. Runners aren’t great at saving. We risk our lives for thrills and pay, and spend that pay for more thrills. Without Indigo in my corner, I’d have to freelance. That meant it’d be a long ass time before I could afford it.
He threaded through traffic like the cars around us were other people’s problem. For an hour, we rode straight through. No talking. No stopping. By the time we pulled up to what I assumed was our destination, we were ass-deep in corporate polish. The bike slowed, darting out of the steady flow of vehicles that had steadily turned cleaner, sleeker, classier with every block in.
He idled at the curb, next to a complex whose glassy front started at street level and climbed into the pristine blue sky. It was clearer here than the districts I haunted, less baked into a crust by the sun bloated and brilliant overhead. Tighter shields.
Just enough to let the summer season in, not enough to turn loose the pollutants that infected every part of the city to some degree or another.
Fancy.
I leaned a little bit over, tapping his shoulder. “You’re telling me Reed actually shacks up in C-Town?”
C-Town was what we called most of the corporate boroughs from the Fourteenth Divide on up. The “C” stood for Capital, but was often replaced by any number of epithets. Corporate, cred, chum, cunt. Insert your own at your leisure. It was full of suits, polished to a shine, and screamed corporate propaganda.
We were about seventeen blocks in, surrounded on all sides by soulless metal and glass. But way less ads flooding my filters. I clocked it in at three seconds before my chipset calibrated to the district and they all winked out. Much, much nicer than the standard fifteen.
Indigo spared me a shrug. “He’s got a credline that goes deep. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“Oh, I noticed.” Once the blood had cleared from my eyes.
The bike tilted, all the warning I had, before he zipped back into traffic – earning three horns and a flash of LEDs – and circled around to a parking garage. The air abruptly turned cool, the light dimmed, and I breathed in gratefully as Indigo found and claimed a parking spot in the shadowed interior.
I hopped off first, stretching my aching arm. “How did you know about this?”
“It’s my business.” A short answer. Fair enough.
He flicked a screen with a finger and stepped back as a faint blue shimmer rolled over the machine. Security. The kind that would deliver a blackout jolt of juice to anyone who laid a finger on it. Standard street procedure. Only complete fuckwits risk touching a SINless vehicle without testing it first, and I didn’t think it’d be a problem this time. He’d been nice and legal about parking.
Indigo strode for a bank of elevators at the far wall of the garage. He didn’t have to hit a button. That wouldn’t have been classy at all. Instead, sensors picked up on our presence and one of the doors slid right open with a merry little chime.
We stepped in, and I took the opportunity to smooth one hand over my tousled hair, untangling it with a quick run of my fingers.
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