by M. H. Mead
Apparently Talic thought so too. He must have caught sight of the Challenger in his rear display because one moment, the Mustang was there and the next it had dipped between two freight-haulers and was gone. Andre swore and moved in. He rode the ridge onto the raised right shoulder to be sure Talic didn’t take an exit and lose him. He wondered if Talic would use the upcoming interchange with 96. There was the green car, hovering between two minivans. It disappeared left.
Andre tried to follow, but slashing across that many lanes involved a dodge-and-weave that cut way too close to neighboring traffic. He could bet that the proximity sensors were screaming in his wake, and in the end he only managed to change lanes three times. That would have to be enough. There was nowhere for Talic to go on the left—unless he was going to use an Official-Vehicle-Only turnaround—damn! Andre cut sharply left, and saw traffic slow around him as the other cars sensed an obstacle. He moved one more lane and hit the brakes on instinct, gritting his teeth as the Challenger almost ate the Mustang’s tailpipe.
“Shit,” he muttered, trying to get his breathing under control. Too close. Way too close. He could have completely wrecked the Challenger, not to mention injuring and possibly killing Nikhil.
Talic had already pulled away and across several lanes. Andre hit the gas and peeled out after him. Talic had been going for the turnaround. Now he couldn’t and he would fly on the highway as long as he could, letting Overdrive help him, while Andre—a woefully inadequate driver invisible to a powerful system—did all the work.
But perhaps he could get Overdrive to do some of his work after all. He changed lanes yet again, the tachymeter needle jerking toward the redline as he struggled to catch up. He positioned himself right behind Talic’s Mustang. Talic was stuck, hemmed in with cars in front and to the left, nothing but shoulder to the right, where Overdrive would not let him go. Someone driving his own car would weave, preventing Andre from coming alongside. With a computer in charge? Not happening.
Andre waited for his opening. One kilometer passed. Two. Traffic thinned as they neared the edge of the city, offering him a shot. He popped left into the next lane before Talic could.
And then he started. Nudged the wheel right so that the Mustang’s proximity sensor would force Talic right. Then right again. Not too much and not too suddenly, or Overdrive would take over and either slow Talic down or speed him up and get him into a safer lane. Andre had to prevent that. He matched Talic’s speed and made sure his right front tire was next to Talic’s left rear one. Over. A little more. A little more. And there was an exit. He herded Talic’s car onto the ramp like cattle into a chute.
He felt an absurd gratitude for the brake pedal as he gave it a gentle push and slowed the car. Adrenaline made his mouth dry, and his fingers tingled as if they’d been iced. His panting breaths filled the car as he finally had a chance to see where he was. Telegraph Road. Heading toward the worst part of the zone. Talic could skirt it by turning left. But the light was with him and he took a sharp right instead, then straight for a single block, then another turn, and they were fully in the zone.
No other traffic. People scattering into hiding at the sight of two well-kept cars.
No witnesses.
The rubble in the road was an obstacle course, but Talic didn’t let much slow him and not for long. He took several more turns, left and right. Smart. Talic was too damned smart. His Mustang, designed for higher speeds and quick maneuvering, took tighter turns than the Challenger. As long as Talic kept turning, Andre would fall back. His palms were slick on the wheel, his swollen right hand barely hanging on, but he didn’t dare adjust his grip. He had to stop Talic and stop him now.
Talic slowed to under fifty KPH as he reached a straight stretch of road that was littered with the burned-out husks of former automobiles. Many had parts spilling out into the roadway and Talic had to weave between them. Andre nosed closer, and then almost alongside.
“This won’t hurt,” he told the Challenger. “Much.” Making unspoken vows to personally hammer out any dents, he turned the car sharply right. He put his front bumper between Talic’s rear bumper and rear tire. He tugged the steering wheel and hit the gas. Talic’s smaller, lighter car spun out quite satisfactorily.
And then smashed itself into the steel frame of what used to be a pick-up truck.
Talic was on the brakes the moment he lost control of the vehicle, but it wasn’t enough to stop the momentum. In a juddering wail of overheating tires, crushing plastic and squalling steel, the cars came to a halt in a gaudy T, the back of Talic’s car a ruined mess. Airbags had popped out all over the front of the car, but not the back, where the impact must have destroyed the airweb mechanism before it could deploy.
Andre’s chest felt cut in two from the shoulder harness. He unlatched it and dragged himself out from under the seatbelt and around the door, staying low. He drew his gun and aimed it over the hood of the car. The Challenger had suffered three deep dents, plus one nasty scrape at least a meter long, probably from Talic’s bumper.
The bigger problem was staring him down from behind the other car. Talic aimed at him over the Mustang’s trunk, his Smith and Wesson Guardian looking like a tunnel.
“Nikhil!” Andre yelled. No answer. “Nikhil!”
“Unconscious.” Talic sounded breathless and harried. “Bleeding.”
Andre felt the sweat leaking down his ribcage. If Nikhil was bleeding out, he wouldn’t have much time. There was no way to trigger an emergency alert—the Challenger was far too old to have a screamer. Would Talic’s car do it? If I hadn’t clipped him so hard, if I’d watched where I was going, if I hadn’t . . . if I hadn’t . . . No matter how he clamped down on that thought, the self-blame kept spinning through his head. He couldn’t fix things as long as Talic held a very loaded, very lethal weapon on him.
“Let him go!” Andre yelled across the three-meter expanse between their cars. “Nikhil is nothing to you.”
“But he’s everything to you,” Talic said. “I still want Price-Powell.”
“So do I. But not like this.”
“Ah. So you do see things my way. We simply disagree on methods.”
“I’m sure that’s not all we disagree on.” Andre used his left hand to steady the Yavorit in his swollen right one. “What does it matter? Topher Price-Powell is long gone.”
“He’ll never leave,” Talic called. “Not until he gets what he came for.”
Andre brandished the Yavorit. “Give me my nephew.”
“So this is it,” Talic said, his voice remarkably calm. “You want to shoot me. This is where you’ve drawn your blue line. Right here.”
“That depends, Talic. Depends on where you draw yours.”
“No one can take back a bullet fired.”
“I know. You taught me that. First-year weapons training.”
“Your partner—”
“Danny. You shot Lieutenant Danny Cariatti.”
Talic dropped his gaze and ran a hand along his jaw. “And is the Lieutenant . . .”
“He’s okay.” Andre blew a breath through pursed lips. “Stupid, but okay.”
“He’s more than okay,” Talic lifted his head. “You be sure to tell him that.”
Andre slowly, carefully lifted both arms in the air. He turned the Yavorit in his hand and lowered it to the top of the Challenger. He let it go and took a step backward.
After a moment, Talic holstered his Guardian and showed empty hands. He looked at Andre under wrinkled eyebrows, as if he hadn’t quite seen him before. Then he nodded. “What now?”
Andre holstered his gun and moved to the side of the Mustang. Through the open door he could see Nikhil half off the seat, eyes closed, blood welling from a nasty-looking gash high on his forehead. Talic had cuffed his wrists to the floor ring, leaving Nikhil almost completely unprotected in the crash.
Talic was leaning in from the other side where the window had stress-shattered into rounded safety beads. “Don’t move him.”
“A dead hostage is no good to you.”
“The ambulance will be along soon. My car called for it the moment you ran me off the road.”
“You didn’t cancel it?”
“No.” Talic pointed to the car’s companel, where the display counted down the time until the ambulance’s expected arrival. Six long minutes, and that was if the ambulance driver would agree to go into the zone at all.
“I wouldn’t move him,” Talic said. “He could have a neck injury.”
Andre ignored him, patting the pockets of his borrowed coat until he found Danny’s cuff cutters. He removed the zipcuffs from Nikhil’s wrists and laid him prone on the seat. Nikhil groaned, which Andre considered a very good sign. One of his arms seemed wobbly, dislocated or broken in the crash. The gash on his forehead was oozing blood. “Hold on, buddy,” Andre told him. “Just hold on a few minutes.”
[ATTENTION! ATTENTION!]
Andre frowned and reached behind his ear to acknowledge the page.
The computerized voice of the AI dispatcher came through his implant. “Sergeant LaCroix, please report to the mayor’s office.”
Andre could tell from Talic’s rigid posture that he was receiving the same summons. What was Zuchek playing at?
He clicked in. “Detective Sergeant LaCroix is currently suspended from the Detroit police force. Detective Sergeant LaCroix will not be responding to official police messages at this time.” He clicked off and shut down the implant.
Talic gave him a shake of the head and a breathless whistle. “You got some steel-plated gonads.”
Andre held up one finger. Wait for it. His datapad vibrated in his pocket. He picked it up and looked at the display before answering. “May I help you?”
Mother Mad was in some kind of floral dress—probably a ball gown—her hair and makeup flawless. She sat in front of a bank of windows overlooking the city. She must have left Greenfield Village as soon as she missed her meeting with Topher and was now back at her office. She sneered into the camera. “I don’t care where you are or what you think you’re doing, but sometime in the next ten minutes, I expect to see you on the twentieth floor of the New Building.”
“That’s going to be difficult,” Andre said.
“It will be more difficult if you don’t.” She snapped off.
Andre stowed the pad and looked at Talic, eyebrows raised.
Talic shook his head. “Don’t.”
“I have to.” Hell, if he could prove half of what he knew she’d done, she’d go away forever.
“Don’t,” Talic repeated. “The considerations here are beyond the rules of law.”
Andre clawed in his jacket, whipped out the Yavorit, and aimed it at Talic’s face. Talic’s eyes widened as he raised his hands.
“You know what’s above the law, Talic? Nothing. No one. Not your puppet master Madison Zuchek, not you.”
“You want to arrest me? You want to put me in your wagon and escort me downtown? Go ahead.” Talic lowered his hands and held them together at the wrists. “Put the cuffs on me right now. But to do that, you’ll have to leave your nephew behind.”
Andre glanced at the screamer. Three more minutes. Nikhil’s breathing was shallow and labored, his face ghostly. The Yavorit felt like a five-kilo weight in his hand.
Talic angled his head toward Nikhil. “You can stand there and point a gun at me all day, but that does nothing to help him.”
THE ELEVATOR IN THE New Building was almost identical to the lifts in headquarters and as the doors slid open on the twentieth floor, Andre tried for the same blank calmness he felt approaching the target range. Just a drill, he told himself. Keep it fast and light. His dread of a confrontation with security in the lobby had turned to relief when they’d waved him through, and then to low-level panic when he thought about what that implied. Clearly Mother Mad was expecting him, and did not care if he was armed, which meant she was holding something bigger than a gun. He still had no idea where Mayor Smith stood in this, and until he did, any move he made would be the wrong one.
The door opened easily and the conference room’s air conditioning blew into him like a November wind. The sweat around his collar cooled instantly, encircling his neck like an icy noose. The last time he’d been in this room, it had been full of overheated bodies and hot coffee and the simmering tension of wolves establishing pack dominance. Now, the dim lights and cool air held the brittleness of a thinly-frozen lake about to shatter under his feet.
Madison Zuchek sat at the head of the table. A datapad was open on the desk, set aside and ignored. Instead, she was drawing vicious lines on a short stack of papers. When he would have spoken, she held up a just-a-moment hand that made Andre want to shoot her on the spot. She smiled and put down her pen, then turned her attention to him. “I should thank you, Sergeant.” Her voice was soft and high, the all-seeing mother managing her brood. “Today’s fiasco at Greenfield Village has made a mockery of the economic summit, but at least it brought me Topher.”
“Where is Price-Powell? Did you kill him too?”
“Certainly not. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I’m beginning to.” She’d called Topher by his given name. He was no longer an enemy.
“This case, Sergeant LaCroix, is no longer your concern. All will be put right in a few days and the city can put this whole nasty business behind it.” Her tone became reproving. “I would think after the mess you’ve made, you’d be as pleased as anyone by the restoration of order.”
“So murder in the name of order is just part of doing business.”
“I don’t expect someone like you to understand what we do to protect and safeguard the people of this city—”
“And the crashes? Who protected the people of the city from the Overdrive sabotage?”
“You are responsible. You started this investigation.” Madison pushed off from the chair’s arms and stood. “From the start, you have ruined everything. I was seeing to things, quietly, doing what was best for the city without causing any panic, or transportation issues, or even a whiff of scandal. The spinners didn’t even notice. Then you forced my hand and I had to form the task force.”
Andre glanced at the door to the adjoining office. “Was that with or without Mayor Smith’s approval? Did she even know?”
“I was handling this!” Madison walked behind her chair and gripped the back of it. “If you had let us do our jobs, there wouldn’t have been a single Overdrive crash. Fourths would be happy, commuters would be happy, and the investment dollars would be pouring in right now.”
“It’s not your job to murder people.”
“They were killers. They were terrorists who would hold my city hostage.”
“So you took care of it.”
“I’m still taking care of it.”
“By working with Topher Price-Powell?” He gestured to the papers on the desk. “Let me guess. He’s your new advisor, bringing you a ‘bold new vision’ for Detroit.”
“Politics and bedfellows, Detective. You are the one who forced me to co-opt the Council for Economic Justice instead of merely allowing Talic to deal with them. Until your interference I had everyone looking the wrong way. Now . . .” She sighed. “I’ve had to make some significant compromises.”
“And you expect me to compromise as well.”
“Indeed. You’ll start by signing this.” Madison selected a small piece of paper from the stack and slid it across the table. Whatever it was, she didn’t find it worthy of an entire sheet. Andre stepped closer to the table and read the short paragraph.
It was mild, as far as confessions went. He’d half-expected it to pin the murders, the Overdrive crashes, and probably Madison’s last chipped fingernail on him. But it simply said that Andre had falsified evidence and that Topher Price-Powell was, in fact, innocent. Did Madison truly believe that would be enough to protect her? Then again, it was probably just the opening move in an intricate plan. She would cover what she needed to cover, rev
eal what she needed to reveal, her influence and authority swirling around her, deflecting all blame.
Madison strolled toward him, standing closer. Too close. She looked into his eyes, tilting her chin proudly to do so. Andre could feel the energy radiating off her, like the very scent of power.
“This is merely a formality,” she said. “An insurance policy, if you will. You sign this, I hold onto this, and as long as you keep your mouth shut, it stays buried forever. Pen?” She picked up the one she’d been using when he arrived and pointed it at him, nearly poking him with it.
Andre took a step away from her and pressed his back to the wall. He pulled open his jacket and unholstered the Yavorit. He held it low, but the message was unmistakable. “Or, I tell you to stick that pen up your ass, arrest you right now, and start blabbing to the first spinner I see.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Although you don’t deserve it, you’re going to come out of this quite well. Your efforts in handling today’s crisis can be given a very different spin. You’re the goat now, but we need a hero and you’ll do fine.”
Madison paced in a semi-circle around him, marking the perimeter of his cage. “The fourths didn’t sabotage Overdrive. That bad press the fourths are getting? The mayor’s office will put a stop to that. When this case is solved and every single report has your name on it, how could we fail to promote you? I predict you’ll make Lieutenant by the new year. All you have to do is sign that piece of paper and you’re free to go, with the gratitude of the citizens of Detroit to keep you warm at night.”
Madison turned her back, marched to the window, and stared down at the city laid out before her. Andre shifted against the wall, more uncomfortable now than when she’d invaded his personal space. Mother Mad had turned her back on an armed man. Could she truly be that fearless? The Yavorit seemed to be sliding through his sweaty fingers, but he couldn’t move his hand to grip it.