by M. D. Cooper
She searched for a short explanation that would satisfy him, but the truth was, she didn’t have any good reason for not dating. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too busy with work and can’t clear the head space for a relationship. Or maybe I just don’t frequent the kind of places that are good for meeting the kind of people who would interest me.”
“People? No particular preference?”
“Men,” she clarified.
“Aha. Somehow, I thought so. Not sure why, though.”
She remembered Ian, the singer she’d met on Geha station. He’d seemed interesting, and nice, too. But she could hardly date someone who didn’t even live in her star system. She had no intention of sharing that thought with Trey, though. He’d already been nosy enough.
“I’m going to take a nap,” she decided, closing her eyes. “Wake me when we make it to the Metro.”
“Wow.”
She cracked one eye open to peek at him. “What?”
“A couple little personal questions and you refuse to even stay conscious. Someone’s got intimacy issues. I can see why you aren’t dating anyone.”
Rather than respond, she closed her eye and ignored him.
A full minute later, his statement still annoyed her.
“I do not have intimacy issues,” she said, eyes still closed.
He probably thought she couldn’t tell that he was silently laughing, but she could.
* * * * *
“Should we go in to the office?” Trey asked when they boarded the Metro.
Reece chose a seat that put her back to a window. “We could, but there’s little point since Schramm hasn’t called us in. We can do research from my house. We’ll be more comfortable there.”
The fact that their boss hadn’t contacted them with any developments struck Reece as unusual. How was it that Schramm’s impressive network of contacts hadn’t turned something up? The people who had invaded H&P couldn’t be that hard to identify and investigate—especially with Kaddox to interrogate.
Schramm wouldn’t contact her until he’d exhausted all avenues, though. He must not yet be done.
She was still tired, though, and when the Metro started, the lulling motion made her drowsy. “If I take a nap, you’ll stay right here and watch out for me, right?”
“How can you sleep on the Metro?” he asked, perplexed.
“Very well indeed—if I’m sure no one’s going to mess with me.”
“Fine. I’ll make sure no one puts gum in your hair or steals your shoes.”
She smirked. “Good. We can ride this line right to the Sunstone neighborhood stop. My house is just a few blocks from there.”
“I know, Reece. I’ve been there, remember?”
“Just making sure.” She slouched down in her seat and lay her head against the headrest.
* * * * *
“Up and at ‘em, little buckaroo.”
Trey gently cuffed Reece’s shoulder until she lifted her head.
“Are we here?” she rubbed her eyes.
“Yep. Will your Aunt Ruth be home?”
“Maybe. There’s no telling. She goes out when she feels like going out.” Reece ran her fingers through her hair to make sure it wasn’t doing anything strange.
She stood and reached for her bags.
“I can carry those if you want,” Trey offered.
She could do it, of course. She traveled light. But it was hot outside, and the less she had to carry, the less she’d sweat.
It wasn’t like she needed to prove anything by carrying her own stuff. “Sure,” she agreed. “Thanks.”
Squinting as she stepped out into the sun, Reece mostly kept her eyes down. She knew the landscape of her neighborhood by heart, anyway. Mature trees and well-kept lawns characterized this residential area, making for a picturesque and pleasant place to live.
The tidy little home she shared with Aunt Ruth compared favorably with most of the other homes, thanks to keeping it in good repair, and thanks to Aunt Ruth’s gardening efforts. It was far from a large home and property, but it belonged to them, and was all they needed.
“Aunt Ruth?” Reece called as she entered.
Silence.
Reece took her bags up to her room, checked Aunt Ruth’s room, then went back downstairs. “She’s gone out. Want some iced tea?”
“Definitely.”
“Cool off on the couch while I get it,” she advised.
Rio hopped up on the counter as she dropped ice into tall glasses and poured a pitcher of already-cold tea over it. The cat sniffed at a glass, then fixed his big, round eyes on Reece.
“No treats,” she told him. “You’re spoiled as it is.”
He sat, still staring at her, unblinking.
“I mean it,” she insisted.
He continued to stare.
Reece chuckled and tickled him under the chin. “You’re a terrible creature. You’re lucky I love you.”
She whisked the glasses away to the other room.
“Okay.” She set a glass in front of Trey, then sat next to him on the couch and sipped her tea. “Let’s get to work. Our number one question right now is ‘who is Matty?’ Let’s start combing through the list of competitors Nizhoni gave us and see if we can find a match. If we can find him, we can figure out why he would target H&P.”
They each took half of the list and began investigating. Reece developed a rhythm as she identified a company, its major officers, its business strategy, and why it might see H&P as a threat.
As it turned out, each of the companies she looked into had a reason to want to harm H&P. She wasn’t able to rule any of them out for certain.
She didn’t come across anyone named Matthew, Mateo, Matty, or any variation thereof, either.
Four hours later, she sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Any luck?”
Trey shrugged. “I learned a lot. Didn’t find any particularly red flags, though. What do you do when you don’t find a hot lead?”
She sighed. “Start from the top again and dig deeper. Sometimes that means going somewhere in person or befriending someone who can be useful. It takes a lot more effort.”
“It sounds more interesting than digging around for dirt on the Link, at least.”
“It’s not a good thing,” she said. “Never show your face if you don’t have to. Manipulating behind the scenes is always better.”
As helpful as he’d proven to be, Trey still had a lot to learn about this job.
“Okay, so what’s our next move, then?”
She drummed her fingers on her knee. “You tell me.”
He let out a breath in a rush and screwed up his face comically. “Well, I think we can discount all but the top six companies, for now. The others are so small that it seems unlikely they could capitalize on any difficulty they might cause Nizhoni.”
Reece nodded. She’d come to the same conclusion.
He continued, “Infiltrating six different companies would take a whole lot of time and effort. It seems like we’d be better served to draw them out.”
“How would we do that?” She kept her tone bland, but she was impressed by that deductive leap.
“Not sure.”
She pursed her lips, thinking, then an idea began to form in her brain.
“Uh oh.” Trey looked concerned. “I don’t think I like that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re going to start some kind of trouble that might end up with me paying the price for it.”
She smiled.
His frown deepened. “That’s not, like, an actual part of the plan, is it?”
Reece laughed. “No. But we can bring all these people together by appealing to the one thing they all have in common.”
“And what’s that?”
“Greed.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “So how are we going to appeal to their greed?”
“I’ll have to do some legwork and see what I can arrange. Why don’t you
go check up on Dex while I make some inquiries?”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Are you just trying to get rid of me for a while?”
“No. There’s just nothing for you to do while I do that, and I know Dex tends to get anxious if you’re gone for too long. It’s up to you. You can stay if you want.”
His suspicion faded. “Nah, you’re right. I should hang out with him for a while. I just didn’t want you leaving me out of anything important—or fun. Like the time you ran out the back of the Ringtoad.”
“I’m never going to live that one down, am I?”
“Nope.” He stood and, on his way to the door, flicked her forehead gently with his middle finger. “It was lame, and I’m going to keep reminding you of it.”
She watched him through the window as he strolled down the street toward the metro station. He had a lot to learn still, but he was coming along as a fixer. She’d gotten lucky. She’d never wanted a partner, but the one she’d been stuck with had proven to be useful, and of a compatible temperament. If her assigned partner had been some perky early-riser or a tee-totaling goody-goody, one of them would not have survived the first week of partnership.
Plus, Aunt Ruth liked Trey.
Once he was out of sight, Reece turned her attention back to their problem.
She activated her Link with a flick of her eyes and opened a channel to Marky.
THE GAME
DATE: 05.05.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“I didn’t have my eyeballs removed and replaced with implants so I could dress in a suit and serve champagne on a tray.” Trey glanced at Reece briefly before plastering a polite smile on his face and moved to extend his tray to a beckoning guest.
Reece remained where she was, holding a tray of finger sandwiches.
“At least you look nice,” she said to Trey when he returned.
He gave her a surly look. “Trade me.”
Rather than wait, he took the tray with the sandwiches and handed her the one with four flutes of champagne remaining.
“What are you—” she cut off her question when he headed back toward the flipper games.
The Debtor’s Haven was popping with activity. Each of the six suspects had invited a guest or two to the ‘themed night’ Marky had asked them to attend. Such events took place at Marky’s betting lounge every month or so, and this one fit right into her efforts to keep things interesting and give new people a reason to visit.
As a result, Marky had great talent at putting something like this together. The ‘Local Distilleries’ theme lent itself to food and drinks that showed off the six special guests’ products while giving attendees plenty to enjoy.
Even the games of the evening had been selected to suit the theme. “Rum rummy” and beer bingo” had both proved to be crowd pleasers.
Reece didn’t love leaving her Rikulf Specials and her pulse pistol behind, but she had a part to play.
Trey returned, carrying an empty tray. While it was possible that guests had snatched up all the snacks, Reece thought it more likely that Trey had scarfed them himself.
As long as no one noticed, she didn’t care.
Trey went to the back of the lounge and through the door, presumably to get some more food or drinks to pass around. He’d agreed to wear his cosmetic overlays for the night to keep attention off him, but his size and reasonably tolerable looks got him some attention here and there anyway.
Just as she seemed to have caught the eye of Davin, the owner of Barstock Brewery. He’d happened to cross her path three or four times more than could possibly be attributed to chance. Fortunately, he seemed a pleasant enough guy, and had so far kept his hands to himself.
“Rum rummy!”
A cheer went up at Marky’s personal card table in the back of the lounge, along with shouts, laughter, and a few groans.
Trey emerged with twenty tumblers of H&P whiskey. Reece sidled closer to the table to watch expressions and listen for under-the-breath mutterings.
“Hatchet and Pipe whiskey?” Trey asked the manager of Rum and Cork.
The man brightened. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Trey continued around the table, and nearly everyone accepted a tumbler of whiskey. The only exception was the young owner of A48, a large generations-old operation that manufactured a wide variety of alcohols.
The girl was only twenty, with bright eyes and long fringed hair that fell almost into her eyes. She was a rare example of a young person working in the family business. She had an unusual name, which was useful, since it made it more memorable. Reece had never met someone named Jillsen before.
The woman in question smiled at Trey and waved away the whiskey along with a shy duck of her head.
Reece noted how Jillsen’s gaze remained on Trey for a beat too long. Interesting. That might be useful later.
The other three major competitors of H&P hadn’t yet made much of an impression on Reece. The youngest was a charismatic, stylish man in his thirties who seemed like he’d be easy to engage in conversation. In contrast, the woman in her forties said little to anyone and revealed almost nothing about herself except that she apparently enjoyed dressing like a corporate executive. Lastly, the sharp-tongued woman in her sixties had a way of keeping people at arms’ length with her biting comments.
Quite an assemblage of ages, backgrounds and personalities. Their business specialties, too, varied. Only one of them distilled whiskey. The others produced different alcoholic beverages that catered to the niche market of premium products at a premium price.
A shame they hadn’t brought gift baskets—or at least samples to share with everyone. Reece would have liked the opportunity to sample the wares. For strictly professional research purposes, of course.
Okay, not just for professional purposes. Not even mostly. It would have been nice, though.
After Trey had distributed the H&P whiskey, he returned to where Reece stood. For the sake of appearances, she was attending the group, waiting to be called upon. In reality, she was using the semi-transparence that came with servitude to observe the guests.
Trey caught her attention and arched his eyebrows. She shook her head, then arched her eyebrows back at him. He shrugged.
Neither of them had solved the mystery yet, then. Too bad. It would have been nice if it could have been that easy.
After another game of Rum Rummy, Marky asked, “Anyone up for a game of gin?”
Everyone laughed, even Kelia, the fortyish woman who ran Verge-Gin, which made Akon’s highest-quality gin.
“As a matter of fact, I play a mean game of gin,” she said. “When I interviewed for my job, the decision came down to me or another candidate. One grim death match of gin later, I emerged victorious.”
A ripple of laughter went around the table. Reece hoped that story was true, and not just a party joke.
“Now that sounds like a fun game,” Marky mused with a sly look around the table. “Let’s all go around and say how we got our current jobs. The results could be illuminating. Kelia started us off, so let’s go to her right and continue around the table. Carissa?”
The oldest among them lifted her chin, looking haughty. Reece wondered if she might refuse to play.
But then Carissa folded her hands on the table and gave a small nod. “I took a trip to Geha once to discuss a business matter. On the transport, I met a man. An insufferable prig of a man who seemed to believe it was his sole purpose in the universe to pedantically debate semantics with anyone who was unfortunate enough to cross his path. When I caught him doing this for the third time with a cabin steward, I’d had enough.”
Marky leaned toward Carissa, her eyes bright with anticipation. “Oh, I do hope this is about to get very, very dark.”
Carissa laughed. It was a brassy sound that rang out even in the hum of white noise that enveloped the betting lounge. “I’d heard him taking the barte
nder to task for not carrying his brand of liqueurs, so I knew his company name. And while he explained to the long-suffering server that it was proper to hand a fork to a guest with her right hand rather than her left, I activated my Link and bought the whole damn company just so I could fire his ass. Which I did, right then and there.”
Reece laughed along with everyone else.
“Did you have any experience with liqueurs at the time?” Sage, the trendy man from Smooth asked.
“None,” Carissa said. “But I’d been looking for a new project, and had capital sitting around from a recent selloff. So I figured why not? And it worked out well. I’ve become very fond of the business, and I’ve grown Haunting Spirits by four hundred percent since taking over.”
“Well done.” Marky toasted her with her whiskey. “Sometimes things work out better than we could have imagined.”
“What about you?” Carissa asked. “How does someone as charming and clever as you end up with a betting lounge? You’d make a perfect corporate weapon.”
Marky laughed. “And be stuck working for guys like the former manager of Haunting Spirits? No, thank you. I’m far too much of a social creature to be happy doing that. I grew up wanting to be a betting queen, and I built this place from the ground up, bit by bit. I started out with one flipper game and a deck of cards.”
“You don’t have any regrets?” Carissa asked.
“Do you?” Marky retorted with a grin. “I suspect you don’t. No, I wouldn’t want to do anything else. How else could I make up a themed night like this as an excuse to meet interesting people?”
She led them all in a laugh, and when the laughter died down, she nodded to Sage. “We got out of order. You’re next in line. Tell us your story.”
Sage smoothed his trendy jacket. Reece suspected it was made of one of the latest synthetic materials that had enough weight to lie nicely, but also breathed so well it could still work in the heat of a perihelion conjunction year.
He said, “I actually started out in food science. Corporate research and development. Over time, an idea evolved. What if I could create alcoholic beverages with the pleasant effects of alcohol, which taste as delicious as fresh fruit juice, and don’t result in a hangover?”