“Morning sunshine,” I cheerily say to Winn. Interpret that, you brooding piece of man-candy.
“Morning,” he says woodenly.
Maybe it hurts to talk? Either way, point to Isa.
Winn heads to the refrigerator and starts making Puo’s breakfast.
“Now that we’re all here,” I say. “What’d you learn?” I ask Puo again.
Puo answers, watching Winn gather ingredients, “That they package egg whites into containers like milk. Seriously, that’s gross. Does it have an expiration date?”
I gently bang my forehead on the cool glass countertop in front of me. “About the data, Puo. What’d you learn about the data?”
Puo never takes his eyes off Winn starting to cut up an onion. “There’s no cheese—”
“Puo!” I yell at him.
Puo sticks his tongue out at me. “You want the bad news, worse news, or the we’re-totally-fudged news first?”
I actually freeze for a few seconds, trying to think of an answer.
“See,” Puo says, “I just wanted to enjoy my breakfast like everything was normal. Like we weren’t going to have to do some crazy ops. Like Isa wasn’t going to reject perfectly dangerous crazy ideas for even stupider, bat-poo crazier plans of her own—”
“Out with it,” I cut him off.
Puo says right on top of me, “The Cleaners are pressuring Nix to come after us.”
My mouth goes slack. That’s not good.
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Puo says. “Enter the first crazy thing we need to do.”
“How do you know this?” Winn asks as he starts slicing cherry tomatoes in half.
My stomach starts to rumble. Before Puo answers, I ask Winn, “You making enough for two?”
Winn doesn’t acknowledge me, but instead goes to gather more ingredients from the refrigerator.
Puo and I share a look behind his back. Winn’s still wound up. Not that I’m all better, mind you, but sleep helps. I’m almost tempted to ask him if he watched some one-legged flamingo porn last night and relieved himself, but I know that wouldn’t be helpful—look at me being a grown up.
Puo answers Winn’s question, “They were holding you in a safe house. I was able to pull the video and audio feed they keep on a four hour buffer before scrubbing. Nix came to visit and discuss our situation.”
“Wait,” I say. “A Boss showed up to a Cleaners’ safe house to have a chat?”
Puo shrugs. “What do you want from me? I’m telling you what I found.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” I say. “It’s like a Mayor visiting a local police precinct to talk business with a Lieutenant.”
“Is the video legit?” Winn asks. “Did the Cleaners mess with it?”
I point at Winn, indicating that’s a good question. Misinformation could really mess with us here.
“It’s legit,” Puo says with finality.
The digital realm is Puo’s domain. If he says it’s legit, it’s legit. Even on the off chance I thought Puo made a mistake (which I don’t), where am I going to take it for a second opinion? The local electronic store, manned by acne-riddled teenagers?
“Okay,” I say to give myself time to think. “If Nix visited the safe house ... then the local Guild Master had to be there,” I conclude.
Puo nods. “I already started files on everyone that was there with that in mind.”
Everyone knows a Guild Master exists, the queen/king of the local hairy-asshole squad, but the identity of the person that occupies that gilded toilet-seat of power is supposed to be a secret to outsiders.
“You didn’t notice these people?” I ask Winn. “Didn’t notice Nix?”
Winn responds while cutting up another onion, “I was in a room alone most of the time, tied to a chair. I never saw anyone except the bald white masochist that questioned me.”
Puo cuts in, “One person questioned Winn, the others watched on a video from another room and fed the person questions through a comm-link. Which is probably why they even kept the video and audio around for a few hours, while they decided whether to archive it or not.”
“Okay, but,” I say assimilating what I’m learning, “Cleaners can’t just order a Boss around. What’s their leverage? And why are they applying it now?”
Puo’s face lights up like he has an actual answer, and then says in an upbeat voice, “I don’t know, and I don’t know.” He lets his face fall back into the sourpuss expression he uses when delivering bad news. “Enter the second crazy thing we need to do.”
Great. I rub at my temples. Then I try to take a sip of my latte which is frustratingly empty.
“So,” I say summing up, “The Cleaners are using a leverage we don’t understand to pressure Nix into killing us for reasons we don’t know.”
“Sounds about right,” Puo says. He looks suddenly uncomfortable and then adds, “I also learned the Cleaners were in the hospital’s system that night. That’s how they were able to track you. They knew I was in the system and were able to grab our tablet info—”
“You didn’t catch it?” I ask him, worried.
“No.” Puo squirms. “Heart attack, remember?”
Coronary spasm.
After I stare at him wordlessly he adds, “So good call on ditching the tablets.”
Well that’s unsettling. I rely exclusively on Puo to be better than everyone else. If he’s not up to the task—
“I’m fine,” Puo says, reading my worried thoughts. “I know what happened and how. And why I missed it. I’m fine,” he adds again.
I nod. “Okay.” I know Puo well enough to know that if he thought he was compromising us or would put us in a compromising position, he’d admit it or speak up before it was a problem.
“So,” I say, bringing us back to the problem at hand, “remove the leverage, remove the reason Nix has for killing us.”
Puo raises his clear glass of water to toast me. “Enter stupid crazy ideas: now.”
“We’re going to have to dig into Nix,” I say. “Figure out if there’s a way we can shake loose what the Cleaners’ leverage is. If we figure out where her headquarters are, we may be able to riff her system.”
“Yeah,” Puo says, “I’ve been working on that since we blew the warehouse job.”
Puo and I both glare at Winn.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Winn says. “They knew who I was. And maybe I’m missing some super-secret reason here, but why can’t you just ask Nix what their leverage is?”
“Ah—” Puo now toasts Winn with his glass. “I’ve missed your shockingly obvious observations. Isa,” Puo addresses me, “close your mouth.”
I snap my jaw shut. “Oh, shut up, Puo. Fine, it’s a good idea. But we have to get her alone. And preferably when she’s away from weapons.”
“She’s a Boss,” Puo observes. “She’s never away from weapons.”
“Okay,” I say, continuing to think out loud. “But we do need to catch her alone, so she can opt to not kill us and have plausible deniability.”
“She’s a Boss,” Puo reiterates. “She’s never without a security detail.”
“Then we’ll have to run a game—”
“Uh,” Winn pipes in, who’s kneeling down digging around for a frying pan, “why can’t you just call her?”
Uhh.
“Isa,” Puo says, “close your mouth.”
“Arrghh!” I snort through my nose in frustration, which of course makes snot fly out. Lovely.
Puo laughs uproariously at me, which brings Winn’s attention to my snotty predicament, and that man-candy goober can’t help trying to hide a smile as I frantically try to deal with snot dripping out of my nose.
I stomp off to find a tissue and blow my nose. When I come back, I say, “We don’t have her number, and she’s not exactly listed. So before I start thinking of how we get that number, why don’t you,” I say to Winn, “oh, wise and obvious one, tell us how to get the number.”
&n
bsp; Winn answers, “Call Colvin and ask for it.”
“I hate you,” I say.
Puo barks more laughter.
Winn gives himself a self-satisfied shrug and continues making the omelets. One-quarter of a point to Winn.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go call Colvin.”
“Be careful,” Puo warns.
“Duh.” I put my thumb on my nose and wiggle my fingers at him while making a face.
“We still don’t know what Ham was warning us about,” Puo calls after me.
“Warning you?” Winn asks curiously.
Ham, the repellent shit-stain Cleaner we stole our copies of the Cleaners’ code from, ran into us in England, giving vague warnings about “knowing what we did” and “going to be bad for both sides.” I explain the run-in to Winn, who looks worried, but doesn’t add anything as he labors over the omelettes.
Is that what this is about? Or about what happened with Christina? Or something else entirely?
Puo says, “And Colvin doesn’t know about the skim job. So don’t tell him.”
“Double duh.” I stick my tongue out at him. The skim job is where we skimmed Ham’s code. Ugh. Shit. This is getting more and more complicated.
“But he knows we have a copy of the Cleaners’ code,” I say. “He knows we acquired Christina’s squeegee in the marina.”
“But Ham doesn’t,” Puo says. “He was accusing us of stealing his code. All I’m saying is, if this is all connected, then that is what this may all be about. So, just be careful what you reveal to Colvin.”
I say, “I’m going back to my original statement to this side-branch of conversation to say: duh.”
Puo rolls his eyes.
I head upstairs to get my comm-link and have some privacy.
“Wait,” Puo calls after me. “We should record it, or you should at least pipe us in so we can all hear it.”
I nod once after a second’s hesitation. It’s a good idea. Then I walk up to my bedroom, pondering why I was reluctant about the idea at first.
* * *
“Go,” Colvin orders over the comm-link, answering my call.
“Go? That’s how you answer a call?” I can’t help myself. “What, are you masturbating or something and need to get back to it?”
Puo, Winn and I are in Puo’s room after breakfast, with the comm-link hooked up to Puo’s system, recording the conversation and typing it out on the screen for Puo and Winn. It smells mustier in here than it did before—Puo needs to air this place out.
Puo drops his head into his hands, shaking it at my innovative response.
Winn too, looks like he admires my verbal jousts of genius by shaking his head at me with his mouth slack.
“Oh, how I’ve missed your impulse control, Sapphire—” Colvin says.
Sapphire is the fake name I gave myself when first dealing with Colvin. He knows it’s a fake, but he still uses it.
Colvin continues, “But I told you not to contact me unless it was an emergency.”
“Yeah, well,” I say, “this is not that kind of an emergency—”
Colvin paid Puo and me a hefty sum (which went straight to the stupid Citizen Maker, replacing the payment we should’ve made with the solid-state job) to keep Colvin’s sisters and their kids, whose deaths he faked, safe. That’s probably what he assumed this call was about.
“—But,” I continue, “if you squint at it from a certain point of view, it could be an emergency.”
“What is going on?” Colvin asks in a no-nonsense tone.
Yeah, he’s probably in the middle of squeezing one out and needs to get back to it. “You see the tour boat explosion on the news?”
“Yeah.”
“That was us,” I say.
“You did that?” Colvin asks surprised. “Why the fuck are you calling me to tell me that?”
“No!” I say. “We were on it—”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and Sebastian—” Puo’s fake name.
“They said there were no survivors,” Colvin says.
“Really?” That’s strange. The American Consulate sent someone over, who met us. They know we’re alive. We’ve been a bit preoccupied to be following the news feeds in detail.
“Really,” Colvin says. “They’re calling it a terrorist act.”
“No,” I say. “We were on it, and barely survived. Your female equivalent up here was behind it. The Gang of Limp-Dicks have some leverage on her, and forced her into it.”
Colvin’s deadly quiet on the other end, showing he understands. He finally says, “Go on.”
“She knows who we are,” I continue, “specifically my familial connections. There have been more attempts, except they’re orchestrated to look like accidents. I need to talk to her to figure out what the Limp-Dicks’ leverage is. I need her number—”
“Sapphire,” Colvin says, “this is not good.”
“Hey,” I say and wink at Puo, “you sound like Sebastian.”
“The decapitation that occurred here,” Colvin says, “has had reverberations in the community.” Killing Christina, the Seattle Guild Master, which we may have played a small role in. Colvin continues, “The Limpies are riled up—”
I shoot my fist up in triumph. I got Colvin to make a dick joke. I feel like I should win something.
“—but they haven’t done anything yet, largely because of the evidence you collected that showed her as part of the attempted coup. But there have been rumblings about them gearing up for something. Hopefully, this is all that is.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say. Yeah, hopefully that’s all this is, just killing Puo and I.
Criminal rules are nebulous things. Generally, high-level members of different orgs don’t go around killing each other as that sparks a broader conflict or could even trigger a war. But in the event that you can prove one high-level member was plotting against your life, you’re within your rights to act as Colvin did. It’s a defensive posture. It may sound crazy, but these things matter, particularly if things escalate to a war and people need to choose sides and form alliances.
“I can talk to her,” Colvin offers.
“No,” I say quickly. We had discussed this before calling him. I explain, “The less tangled this gets the better the chance for an optimal resolution.”
We don’t know yet what Nix knows, and what it is she may be able to tell Colvin. But now, more importantly, after talking with Colvin, the last thing we need is Colvin deciding killing us would be a necessary sacrifice to stave off a war with the Cleaners.
Colvin’s quiet on the other end.
“Look,” I say, “believe me, we’ll get ahold of you if we need to. Right now, all we need is her number.”
“I want to be kept apprised,” Colvin bargains.
Damn it. “Fine.” This just got more tangled.
Puo rolls his eyes in exasperation at me.
I flick Puo off.
Colvin holds all the power in this conversation. He has what we want, and I have no way to force him to give it to me.
“Deal,” Colvin says. He then tells me he’ll call me back with the number when he gets it and we disconnect.
“Good job,” Puo says dryly.
“What?” I ask. “We’re getting the number—”
“But now we have to answer to Colvin!” Puo says.
“Not answer, just keep him apprised,” I say.
Puo just stares at me.
Winn asks, “What’s the difference?”
“Exactly!” Puo says, pointing a finger at Winn.
“No,” Winn says, “I was seriously asking.”
Puo ignores Winn. “I don’t know, Isa. This thing stinks. Something big is going on. You heard Colvin. I don’t like it.”
“You want to cut and run,” I say, reading Puo. And what stinks is this room.
Puo’s face is a mask of seriousness. “I don’t want to. I’m starting to think we need to. That boat explosion may have just been an opening move
. That’s all we are at the Boss level, pawns. And what always happens to the pawns? And why are the authorities reporting us dead? How big a fix needs to be in place to pull that off?”
I exhale and lean back against a dresser. Puo’s right, and he’s starting to freak me out.
Winn looks between us. “So what do we do?”
Winn’s use of the word “we” here brings up a whole other level of angst. Is he sticking around now? Am I going to let him even if he wants to? The caduceus necklace floats to mind, carefully coiled up and squirreled away in a dresser drawer in my bedroom—out of sight, if not apparently out of mind.
Colvin calls me back, pulling me out of my thoughts, gives me the number and then hangs up.
To answer Winn’s question, I say, “We call Nix and see if there’s a way out of this.”
“And if there isn’t?” Winn asks.
I lock eyes with Puo. “Then, if it really is a start of a war ...” I trail off into bad memories. “Then I agree with Puo. We cut and run.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AFTER ANOTHER fortifying latte and some time to let the weight of what we learned from Colvin pass, all three of us are back in Puo’s room getting ready for me to call Nix.
I stretch my neck and crack my back, trying not to yawn—exciting stuff watching Puo work on his computers.
“Ready, yet?” I ask Puo.
“Not yet,” Puo responds. “Patience.”
“Ooh, yeah,” I mock. “Phone calls are so exciting. I can barely contain myself. Yippee that we got to do two of them in a row now.”
Puo ignores me, while Winn says, “Anyone ever told you you’re an adrenaline junkie?”
I stick my tongue at him. Duh. Not that he minded that part of me when we were dating.
Puo taps his keyboard more and then announces, “Okay, now I’m ready.” He gestures toward to me to go ahead.
I slip the comm-link into my ear and dial the number Colvin gave me on my new tablet connected to Puo’s computer.
“Who is this?” a lean feminine voice asks. I’d peg her at lower forties on her voice alone.
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