With Guns Blazing (Aeon 14: Machete System Bounty Hunter Book 3)

by M. D. Cooper

  “I’ll take the chili one,” Trey decided.

  “That one’s spicy,” the woman said.

  “I like spicy,” he assured her.

  “Very good. I’ll get these orders in. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  She wasn’t kidding. What seemed like just a few minutes later, steaming bowls of food arrived at their table, emitting ridiculously appetizing aromas of onion, vegetables, chilis, among others.

  They dug in with delight. Within a couple of minutes, though, Trey began wiping his forehead.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  He wiped his forehead again and squirmed.

  “No, I’m fine.” He took a long drink of tea.

  “You’re sweating.”

  “She wasn’t kidding about this being hot.” He sniffed. “It’s really good though.”

  “Do you want to switch?” She pointed at her bowl.

  “Only if you’re cool with scorching your insides. I’m trying to play it cool here, but truth is, I’m pretty sure I’m dissolving from the inside out.”

  She laughed and switched their bowls. “It’s fine. Akon spice has no equal that I know of. We have pernicious peppers that we actually use for pest control. We have spicy tomatoes and squash, and even a variety of spicy apple. We have some very unique crops.”

  He watched her, and she realized he was waiting for her to take a bite.

  She scooped some up and slurped it down. A ball of flame formed in her mouth. She blew out a breath. “Yep. That’s hot all right.”

  She took another bite.

  He shrugged and began eating the mushroom ramen. She was pretty sure she heard him let out a small sigh of relief.

  She hid her amusement for his sake. It felt like the thing to do.

  As she was sipping the last of the broth from her bowl, a message alert came up on the left side of her vision. That was interesting, since she’d squelched everything except for her closest contacts.

  She accessed the message, which was a brief text, and set her bowl down. Then she picked it back up and drained it of the last dregs of broth because doing otherwise would no doubt end up being a regret somewhere down the line. It was too delicious to waste.

  “Done?” she asked Trey.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “No. But why do I get the feeling you know something I don’t?”

  “Our new friend just left me a message. She’s got something.”

  He tilted his head back and, with astonishing ease, downed the remainder of his ramen—noodles, mushrooms, and all, with one long pour.

  She’d never been so impressed with him.

  Trey pushed back from the table. “Let’s go.”

  EYES EVERYWHERE

  DATE: 05.25.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: Apolla’s Appartment, Ohiyo, Akonwara

  REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance

  “I like that you found something so fast,” Trey said, standing in Apolla’s entry room. “This bodes well.”

  “Don’t get too excited.” Apolla seemed oddly reserved for someone who had managed to be successful in a very short amount of time.

  Reece doubted that it boded entirely well for them.

  Apolla beckoned them forward and led them to her work area. She took her sim out of rest mode and gestured at the images on display. “There. See?”

  Reece wasn’t sure she did. She squinted at the images, which were mostly blurs and shadows to her eyes. “Why don’t you give us your professional opinion?”

  Apolla began manipulating two 3D sims at the same time, spinning them around. One, she arranged from the top down, and the other, she spun into a straight-on view of what looked like a hallway corridor.

  “This is your guy.” She pointed at the hallway view. “He’s leaving his apartment right at the time you indicated. No doubt on his way to see you. But check this out.”

  She made a gesture with her hands and the top-down view illuminated with night vision, showing a street view with one person in it. She activated it, and it showed Erving walking toward a taxi. Then two people came in quickly from out of frame and shoved Erving into a different vehicle, their actions quick and efficient.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Reece observed. “Can you get detailed visuals on the faces of his abductors?”

  Apolla looked over her shoulder at Reece and smirked. “Of course, I can. I see everything that happens under my cameras.”

  Apolla rolled the footage back, then reached out to the sim and flexed her fingers. She bent them then pulled her wrists back, and the view expanded, but didn’t lose clarity. In fact, somehow, the detail increased.

  Yeah, Apolla was good at her job. Damn good.

  How had Reece not discovered her before? She’d have been helpful in other cases Reece had worked.

  “Mapping the faces and running them against the registered database,” Apolla muttered.

  After a couple of tense minutes, Apolla said “Got ‘em.” Then her tone changed and she added, “Well, that’s weird.”

  Reece and Trey exchanged a glance. Whatever Apolla was seeing, it didn’t seem to be a good thing.

  “Those two are low-level thugs for Pritney-Dax,” Apolla said. “Any idea why they’d want to abduct the assistant of a top-level exec of arguably the biggest corporation in Machete?”

  “No,” Reece admitted. “Declaring war on Rexcare by abducting a critical employee is out of Pritney-Dax’s league. And abducting an executive assistant just isn’t done. Critical or not, no one’s going to pay a ransom for him. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Apolla shook her head and rotated her chair around to face Reece and Trey. “That’s what I thought. So, you two have a mystery on your hands.”

  “Yeah,” Reece said. “Looks like it. Can you see if you can tell exactly where these guys were before abducting Erving?”

  “Is that a bigger priority than seeing where they went afterward?” Apolla asked.

  “No. That’s second priority. Let me know as soon as you have any idea where they’ve taken Erving, and you can tell me whatever you come up with via the Link.”

  Apolla paused. “Is that wise? Your company could be listening.”

  Right. It wouldn’t be the greatest idea to let Apolla know that Reece had jailbroken her hardware. “I meant via Trey. His Link wasn’t paid for by Rexcare, so it’s clean.”

  Apolla nodded. “Understood. And since I have a feeling you aren’t going to just go plant posies in the garden while you wait to hear from me, let me know if you turn up anything that could be useful, okay? If they’ve left my zone—and there’s a good chance of that—I’ll have to reach out to colleagues to track them. Any hints about what district they could have gone to would save time.”

  “Of course,” Reece said. “Good luck.”

  “You too,” Apolla said. “Seems like you’ll need it. You two can let yourselves out. I have a lot to do.”

  When they got out to the hallway, Trey said, “I’ll contact her while we walk down.”

  “Who?” Reece asked.

  “Raya. We both know that Pritney-Dax’s primary fixer is Shepherd, and that you’ve never been nice to him. Raya has a much better relationship with him, and therefore, if we want his help, we need her help to get it.”

  They entered stairwell and Reece eyed him for a moment before beginning the descent. “Well done. Pretty soon, you won’t need me at all.”

  “Sure, but I’ll keep you around anyway, for morale.” He nudged her with his elbow gently.

  She jabbed back, not so gently. “So, what does Raya say? When can she meet?”

  “It’s been fifteen seconds! Relax.”

  “What a stupid thing to say. We’re on the run and our boss and his assistant are missing. How am I supposed to relax?”

  He sighed. “What I meant was that you need to be patient.”

  “I can be patient if I have to. Relaxed, not so much.”

  “Tell me about it,” he mut
tered so quietly that she almost didn’t catch it.

  She couldn’t disagree with him. Their recent beach trip notwithstanding, she did have difficulty relaxing, generally speaking. “So what does she say?”

  “Augh! Can you give me at least two full minutes to observe the usual greeting, asking how she is, and then requesting her help?”

  “If I have to. But I won’t like it.” She began counting the stairs as they walked down them, estimating that she took two of them for every second.

  By the time they reached the landing to the second floor, she was sure two minutes had passed. “Well?”

  “She’ll meet us. I told her we should stay out of camera view whenever possible, and she said we could go to the urban park on the northeast side and meet her by the pond.”

  “Good. I’ll call a taxi.” Reece sent an alert for one to be sent to the building and when they exited a couple minutes later, a taxi was already waiting.

  Reece hurried through the heat to slide into the vehicle.

  She gave the driver their destination and off they went. She guessed they were only about ten minutes from their destination, so she stayed awake, watching the city go by outside her window.

  Trey asked her via the Link.

 

 

 

  He turned his head to give her a sad look.

 

 

  She gave him her best you’re-an-idiot expression, then pointedly turned her head toward the window so she couldn’t see him.

  Instead, she focused her attention on meeting with Raya. How could they best secure her help? The offer of money, or using Trey’s budding relationship with her?

  Probably a mix of both, but since he didn’t talk about Raya much, Reece would have to try to gauge their relationship based on their behavior when they were all together.

  She thought about it all the way to the park, and right up until she saw Raya. Reece had to wonder where she’d been that she could arrive at the park before them.

  Hanging back, she let Trey approach Raya first. They gave each other a casual, beside-the-mouth greeting kiss that was personal but not intimate. It was the kind of smooch family members gave one another, or longtime friends, making it an inconclusive indicator of the intensity of their relationship.

  Raya moved in and gave Reece the same beside-the-mouth smooch, taking her by surprise.

  Raya grinned. “We meet again, under shady circumstances.”

  “Why do you assume they’re shady.”

  Raya waved at the trees overhead. “Shade. Ha ha. You’re way too serious.”

  “You would be, too, if your company had burned you.”

  Raya’s eyes widened. “What? Come sit. Tell me everything.”

  Reece and Trey laid it out to her, relaying the facts quickly, while not mentioning Apolla’s name. Chances were, Raya already knew of her, but Reece didn’t see any reason to stick Apolla into all this. Besides, Reece hoped to make an asset of Apolla in the future and didn’t want to share her with Raya.

  “So you want me to butter Shepherd up and find out about the thugs that abducted Erving?”

  “That about covers it,” Trey agreed. “We can get you their faces, in case you need them.”

  “I’m sure if they work for Pritney-Dax, Shepherd will know them, but what if he doesn’t want to tell me? What should I offer him?”

  “If you can’t get by on sheer charm alone, which I doubt,” Reece said, “you’ll have to offer him something he’d want. So what would he want?”

  “A job at Rexcare or Donnercorp,” Raya answered promptly.

  The thought of having to work in the same company with Shepherd made Reece’s guts turn to ice. She might never get her job back at Rexcare, but she wanted to maintain the possibility of going back. “Okay, offer him a job at Donnercorp.”

  Raya laughed. “No way. Not even if I needed the information for myself.”

  “Then we’ll need something else,” Trey said.

  “We could owe him a favor,” Reece said reluctantly.

  “What ‘we’?” Raya asked. “You and Trey kind of ‘we’, or the kind of ‘we’ that involves me, too?”

  “Either. Both. Whatever gets the identity of those two guys.”

  Raya sighed. “Fine. But you’ll owe me a favor.”

  “What kind of ‘you’ is that?” Trey asked. “The kind that’s just Reece, or the kind that involves me, too?”

  Raya laughed at his repeating her words. “Let’s talk about it over dinner tonight.”

  Reece opened her mouth but Raya cut her off.

  “Just him.” Raya smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said to Trey. “I’ll keep you out of sight.”

  Trey sent Reece a questioning look.

  Reece nodded. “No reason not to, so long as you’re careful. I’ll stay holed up at the safehouse.”

  Trey looked surprised. “I expected you to say something about there being no time for dating under these circumstances.”

  “The way I figure it,” Reece said, “if you and Raya can’t handle whatever you might come up against, we’re screwed anyway.”

  “Hadn’t thought of it that way.” Trey scratched his chin. “But it makes sense.”

  Raya nodded. “Okay. I’ll go see Shepherd, meet Trey for dinner tonight, and then we’ll see what we know at that point.”

  “Let us know right away if you get names,” Reece said.

  “And if your surveillance person comes up with more, let me know about that,” Raya answered.

  Reece nodded.

  “As much as I hate to leave, I’m sure you want me to get right on this. Besides, if I sweat any more, I’m going to need to change before I can go to Pritney-Dax.” Raya put her hand on Trey’s arm for a moment, then strode away.

  Trey watched her go, obviously enjoying the view.

  Reece nudged him. “Besides a perfect face, legs a kilometer long, and a great personality, what do you see in her?”

  Trey grinned at her. “You like to pretend you’re jealous of her, but you’re not.”

  “Who says?” Reece challenged.

  “You aren’t that hung up on your looks, or on what people think of you. You don’t need that stuff.”

  She didn’t know whether to be pleased or disturbed that he’d come to understand her so well. “Let’s go before I melt.”

  “Want to grab some container-ice on the way back to the safehouse?” he asked. “I noticed it was the one thing Tommy hadn’t thought to stock up on.”

  “That’s an emphatic yes. Let’s go!”

  * * * * *

  While Trey was out on his date, and Apolla was looking for information, Reece had nothing to do.

  Literally nothing. The safehouse didn’t even have a place to work out. It did have a sim, so she switched on one of Aunt Ruth’s game shows and got a container-ice.

  She sat down, cracked the package, and gave it a few seconds to freeze over. Then she opened it and took a bite.

  Raspberry. Yum.

  It wasn’t so bad, she supposed, having some down time. She definitely didn’t mind the privacy. It felt a little weird not even having Dex around, though.

  Nah. She’d rather be out getting the job done. She could work on the “going with the flow” thing when she no longer had concerns about her company trying to make her disappear. Or whatever it was they were doing.

  Too bad they would have cut off her access to Rexcare’s systems right away.

  Actually. She jerked herself upright and dropped her container-ice on the table. They would have cut off the access they knew about.

  Without a
doubt, they had blocked the registered accounts for Reece and Trey. But Trey had recently been a new employee, and new employees had provisional access until their entire employment package was processed. Since corporations tended to be slow with paperwork, and departments didn’t always communicate that well, Trey’s provisional account might still work.

  Holding her breath, she activated her Link and connected to Rexcare’s front end system, manually entered Trey’s provisional access token, and waited.

  It worked.

  She blinked in surprise, then cackled like a lunatic. Immediately, she looked up the company’s official roster. Yep. There Schramm was in his rightful place as chief officer. There were only two people in the company with as much power, and two with almost as much.

  Were those four her main suspects? If Schramm had been forced to go on the run, only an order from above him would have caused him to take such drastic steps. Which begged the question: who could, and would, do that?

  Of course, this was assuming Schramm hadn’t done something to bring this on himself. Reece had to consider that possibility too. And she did—for about fifteen seconds. Then she discarded it. Schramm lived for his job, and he lived for the company. He wouldn’t do anything contrary to company interests.

  That brought her back to who would want him out of Rexcare.

  The other top two execs could do it. Tillson and Jono.

  Would they, though? Probably. In the right situation. But what would that situation be?

  The other possibility was the head of the board of the directors, Janice. Her job didn’t involve running the company, but rather keeping the company’s officers accountable to the shareholders. She often had a contentious relationship with Rexcare’s officers, but mostly she got along with them quite well. Usually, it depended on how the company was doing financially at the time.

  If Reece limited her searches to Tillson, Jono, and Janice, she might come up with a most likely candidate. Or she might simply have more background information when Apolla got back to her. Or when Raya got something useful out of Shepherd.

  Information was good. Reece couldn’t have too much of it at this point.

  She didn’t have access to the deeper, more secretive stuff her own account would have provided, but she was able to see the recent schedules of the three, the meetings they’d taken, and the minutes of recent board meetings.