Stalker's Luck (Solitude Saga Book 1)

by Chris Strange

  The woman. She was the one Eddie was looking for. She had to be. The same woman Williams was trying to reclaim.

  Eddie didn’t know. He didn’t know she’d betrayed him on Fractured Jaw. If he found her, if he talked to her, then what? Would he walk right into her arms? Would he even notice the gun barrel pressed against his stomach until she pulled the trigger and it all went dark?

  Damn it, Eddie. What the hell had he gotten himself into now?

  She strode faster, pulling her tab from her pocket as she went. She bleeped Eddie and pressed the device against her ear.

  “Pick up,” she said. “Pick up, pick up. Pick up the damn tab, Eddie!”

  27

  Eddie pressed the barrel of his pistol against Victoria Palmer’s temple.

  “Let’s go back into your apartment,” he said. “I don’t like the smell in here.”

  He glanced back at the tortured man bound to the chair. His head had slumped forward. It looked like he’d passed out again. Maybe died. Eddie felt for the guy, but there was nothing he could do.

  Victoria trembled, licked her lips. Eddie withdrew his gun a couple of centimetres.

  “Calm down. Let’s just be calm. Back into your apartment. Let’s go.”

  He waved his pistol and she nodded, slowly backing up. He bent down to climb through the hole into her apartment.

  She bolted for the door. Swearing, Eddie climbed through the hole and followed her. She slammed into the door, hands fumbling on the deadbolt.

  Eddie came alongside her, took a deep breath, and put a hand over the lock, pushing her fingers away. He pressed the gun against her side.

  “This is going to be a long wait if you don’t play along. He glanced down at a suitcase sitting next to the door. “You planning on going somewhere?”

  “Get out of my house,” she said.

  Eddie smiled. “I’m not in a particularly cooperative mood today, lady. Go and close that panel. Go on, now.” He jerked his head towards the hole in the wall.

  She walked across the room on wobbling legs and slid the panel closed. She was looking even worse than the first time he’d come here. Her eye shadow had smudged and she’d changed out of one ripped shirt into another. There was a bruise on her wrist he hadn’t seen before. Roy Williams’ doing, he didn’t doubt.

  Maybe that gave him an opening, an angle to play. He’d done worse things today than manipulate a woman into betraying her friend.

  She slid the panel closed, but didn’t turn back towards him. A few of the smaller ornaments had been cleared off the shelves, but most of the books still remained. He spotted his own still lying on the shelf.

  “Let’s have a seat.” He gestured to the couch. Woodenly, she sat down. He angled the armchair to face both the front door and the hidden panel and took a seat, keeping the gun pointed in Victoria’s general direction.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m gonna do some straight talking now, and I hope you’ll do the same. I don’t want to hurt you and I’ve got no reason to. Don’t get me wrong, if I need to kill you to save my own life I will shoot you down. But I don’t see that that’s going to be necessary.”

  Victoria’s hands squirmed against each other in her lap. She didn’t take her eyes off them.

  “I think you know who I am and why I’m here,” he said. “I’m a stalker, and I’m looking to apprehend Roy Williams. That’s not the only reason I’m here, but we’ll get to that. I want to ask you some questions.”

  She rubbed her fingers, picked at her nails.

  “I’d like you to answer me honestly,” he said. “I get the feeling you’re in deeper than you’d like with Williams. I think he scares you. I think it scares you what he’s done to that man in the next room. I think he’s hurt you, or threatened to. I think you’ve realised that anything he promised you was a lie. I think you don’t want to have anything to do with the bastard anymore. So I’m going to ask you some questions. If you tell me the truth, if you help me out, then I can help you. I can take Roy out of your life.”

  She licked her lips. “And if I don’t tell you the truth?”

  He studied her for a second. “You want to know if you’ll end up like the man in the next room?”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Victoria. If I have to kill you it will be fast and as simple as a bullet to the head. But I’m not going to kill you for not cooperating with me. I’m not going to torture you either. If you don’t want to answer, fine, don’t answer. I’ll just sit here and take my chances when Williams shows up. But I’m not your enemy. I’m your chance to get out of all this.”

  She was quiet a long time. The building creaked around them as he waited for her to work through it in her head. She was at war with herself, he could see it in the twitches that flickered across her face. A memory returned to him, a diplomacy class he’d been half-sleeping through back on Ophelia, back when he was a little rich kid so convinced of his own importance, his own immortality.

  All you have to do is make them hesitate. Make your case not in facts and logic but with emotion. Appeal to their base desires: love, acceptance, safety. Just make them hesitate. Once they hesitate, they’re yours. They just don’t know it yet.

  “I hate him,” Victoria said quietly. She said it to herself at first. Then she looked at Eddie and her face twisted and her voice grew loud. “I hate him!”

  Manipulation. It was so easy it made him sick.

  “How did you get involved with him?” he asked.

  “I was dancing and working bar at Lady Luck. I didn’t know it was owned by Feleti Leone at the time. Or maybe I did, I don’t know, everything around here is owned by him now. I took the job because a friend said it was a good place to work. Or I thought he was a friend.” She stared through Eddie. “They didn’t treat us well. I won’t go into it. I’d been working there a month or two when Lilian started. Daisy, they called her. Two men brought her in, Leone’s men, I guess. Took her into the back with the manager and talked for a long time. I never knew what they talked about. But she came out with a cigarette burn on her wrist and a broken look in her eyes.”

  Eddie’s free hand curled into a fist on his knee. He should’ve killed Leone when he had the chance.

  “She worked every night after that. Every single night. Two men would bring her in, she’d dance, they’d take her tips, and then the men would take her away. I tried to talk to her a few times, but the men were always there. At first I thought she must’ve owed some money or something, but it wasn’t that. She was being punished for something.”

  “For what?”

  “I didn’t know. I still don’t, really. I just knew they were trying to degrade her. And it was working. It went on like that for a year or more. The men—her handlers—they started to get complacent. I actually managed to talk to her after a few months. In the bathroom, as we passed on the way to the stage, just snatches of conversation. I found out her name was Lilian Mayweather. That the only pleasure she got came from reading. And then later, much later, I found out she’d been married. Still was. To a convict named Roy Williams, the man who used to run the White Hand syndicate.”

  “They were married?”

  For some reason that little detail was like an electrodrill to the heart. How many guns had been aimed at her to make her walk down the aisle with a man like Roy Williams? Christ, what had she been through since Fractured Jaw? No wonder her songs were so sad.

  If Victoria noticed his pain, she didn’t give any indication. “That’s what she said. It was the last time we talked. One day I came into work and she wasn’t there. A few weeks later our manager torched the club and tried to flee Temperance. I…I thought Lilian might have been killed. It was just a gut feeling. Those men, her handlers, they were dangerous. I didn’t want to ask any questions in case I got killed myself. It wasn’t until later I heard than Lilian was working at the Crimson Curtain.”

  “And then Roy Williams found you,” he said.

  She
licked her lips and nodded. “I’d run into money troubles again. I was in a bad place. Taking a lot of stims. Out on the street. Roy tracked me down. He knew I’d worked with Lilian. He set me up here.” She gestured around the apartment.

  “It was Lilian’s place?”

  “I don’t know how he found it or why he decided to come here, of all the places in this city. He can be…sentimental.”

  “I think the guy in the next room would disagree.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t an evil man. Even evil men can have sentimentality.”

  “Sure,” he said. “And some of the worst evil I’ve seen comes from that sentimentality.”

  He stood and poured himself a glass of water from the kitchenette, keeping an eye on Victoria as he did so. But she didn’t move. She didn’t even look up.

  “You want a drink?” he said.

  She shook her head, eyes still on her hands. He sat back down, sipping his water.

  “All right,” he said. “Sentimental or not, Williams didn’t put you in this place out of the kindness of his heart. What did he want from you?”

  “Information. He traded stims for information. What I knew about Lilian. What I knew about Leone. Who Lilian’s handlers had been at Lady Luck.” Her eyes drifted towards the hidden panel in the wall. “That man, Scott Hudson, he was one of them.”

  “A handler?”

  She nodded. “One of the worst. Always insulting her, feeling her up, pushing her around.” Her eyes went cold. “I guess he got his comeuppance. And then some.”

  “And now?” Eddie gestured to the suitcase. “What’s happening now? You’re leaving.”

  “He’s…he’s….” She clammed up.

  “Victoria.”

  She pressed her hands against the side of her head. “I don’t want to die here. He said he’d get me off the station. I believed him. Now…now I don’t know. But what if he was telling the truth? I have family, I have friends. I don’t want to die.”

  “Williams has a ship?”

  “What am I going to do?” she said, ignoring him. “He doesn’t care about me. He never would have saved me. Would he? Jesus. I can’t stay with him any longer. The man’s a monster. Drip-feeding me stims like he owns me. What am I going to do?”

  Eddie stood up, put down his drink, took her by the shoulders. “Victoria. Look at me. Does he have a ship?”

  She blinked, as if only just remembering he was there. “Yes. A small cruiser. He gave me the money and told me to buy it.”

  “What’s it called? Where’s it docked?”

  “It’s the Sophia Almeida. Airlock two-three-three.” She looked up into his eyes. “Can you get me off Temperance? I’ve told you everything I know. Please.”

  His stomach twisted into a knot. It was going to be hard enough getting Cassandra off Temperance. He couldn’t keep collecting strays. He didn’t have to ask to know that Victoria didn’t have a travel pass.

  “Please,” she said again. Her eyes were damp. “He’ll be back any second. I’ve helped you, haven’t I? Now you have to help me.”

  He turned away. “I can get Williams away from you. But I can’t save you from Temperance. I don’t have that kind of authority. I’m sorry.”

  “But you’re going to try to save her, aren’t you?” Her voice went flat. “You’ll take Lilian away.”

  “If I can.”

  “And you’re going to leave me to die here.”

  “That’s right. Just like I’m going to leave everyone else on this station . Most of them don’t deserve to die either.”

  She was quiet a long time. He couldn’t look at her. Cassandra. You’re doing this for Cassandra.

  “How can you do this?” she said. “How can you come to this place just to capture a man like Roy Williams? How can you save him and leave the rest of us to die?”

  “Because you’re all dead whether I capture Williams or not. I’m not paid to be anyone’s saviour. I’m paid to deal justice.”

  “Is that what this is? Justice?”

  “It’s as near as anyone’s going to get.”

  She opened her mouth. But she didn’t get a chance to speak. A door creaked open in the next room. A moment later came the sound of a floorboard groaning softly.

  Eddie put up his hand to silence Victoria and readied his pistol. Silently, he moved towards the panel in the wall. He pressed his ear against the panel. The sound of a zip, a swish of the wardrobe door closing. Williams was packing up, getting ready to go.

  Eddie glanced back at Victoria, motioned for her to stay seated. She bit her lip and nodded.

  This was it. Calm and quiet. Take him down. Get Cassandra back. And then everything would be all right. He pressed his palm against the panel and prepared to slide it aside.

  His tab beeped wildly in his pocket. He froze at the sudden noise. The shuffling in the next room went silent. Then a creak as someone shifted their weight on the floorboards.

  Eddie dived to the floor as half a dozen holes were torn in the panel. Gunshots ripped through the air above him. Victoria screamed.

  Splinters rained down on him. Firing blindly back was too risky—if he killed Williams he lost everything. All he could do was crawl across the ground as the gunfire burst above him.

  Victoria crouched, her hands over her head. He grabbed her and shoved her flat on the floor as another rain of bullets carved through the air. All the while his tab continued to beep at him.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the gunfire ceased. Eddie’s ears rang. A door slammed and footsteps sprinted away down the corridor.

  Eddie scrambled to his feet. Victoria still screamed.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted over his shoulder at her. “Go and don’t come back.”

  He threw open the front door to see Williams’ shadow disappearing down the stairs.

  No. He can’t get away.

  Eddie gave chase, all his aches complaining as he ran. His tab wouldn’t shut up. He ripped it from his pocket and pressed it against his ear.

  “What?” he snarled.

  “Eddie,” Dom said. “Where the hell are you? I’ve just been talking to—”

  “Later. I’m chasing Williams.” He skidded around the corner and sprinted down the stairs three at a time.

  “What?”

  “He’s running for it. He has a ship at airlock two-three-three. Cut him off.”

  “I’m nowhere near—”

  “Then get there!”

  He cut the connection and burst out of the front door of Green Acres. Ahead, Williams shoved aside a trio of tourists and sprinted down the street. The bag of money was slung across his shoulder.

  Williams paused at a corner and raised a machine pistol, aiming it at Eddie.

  “Everyone down!” Eddie yelled to the scattered tourists as he ducked into a tattoo parlour doorway. A burst of gunfire rang out. People screamed.

  Eddie peeked around the doorway. Williams was out of sight. The tourists were scattering in all directions. He started running again.

  He came around the corner as another burst of gunfire sounded up ahead. He ran towards it. Two of Leone’s thugs lay dead in the street, guns lying just out of reach of their outstretched hands. Eddie bent down and grabbed one of the pistols without slowing.

  He was losing Williams. His injuries were slowing him down. He pushed his burning legs and aching ribs to keep going.

  As he sprinted around another corner onto the end of the strip, the spaceport came into sight. He ran towards the stairs, passing knocked down civilians and another dead syndicate woman.

  The airlocks of the spaceport were arranged in long rows stacked atop each other, with stairs and elevators leading up to the higher rows. Down below were docks for commercial ships and traders, linking directly into the underground train system. Eddie ran up the stairs to the spaceport, examining the numbers above each airlock. Leone would have men inside the spaceport authority, so there was no asking them for directions.

  Through
the transparent walls of the spaceport, he could see dozens of ships crammed together outside the station, maglocked in place to their respective gangway and airlock. A small cruiser, that’s what he was looking for. The Sophia Almeida. One little ship among dozens.

  Someone cried out ahead. A figure darted up a set of stairs, heading for an airlock. Above the airlock was written 233.

  Got you, you son of a bitch.

  As Eddie started up the stairs, he spotted another group of figures running towards the spaceport from the opposite direction, all in long coats and hats. More of Leone’s men. More than he could handle on his own.

  He pulled out his tab, slipped his glasses on to use the earpiece, and jabbed at the tab’s screen until it started calling Dom. He listened to the beep of the attempted connection until a crackle cut through.

  “What?” Dom said.

  “I’m nearly at his ship, but he killed a bunch of syndicate men and more are coming. I need you to get your arse over here and help me take them out.”

  “No!”

  “What?”

  “We’re not killing any more syndicate men.”

  “What are you talking about? Do you want Williams or not?” he said, panting as he reached the top of the stairs.

  “Pine says—never mind what Pine says. Just trust me, for the love of Man. I’m on my way.”

  Shit. “All right, all right. I won’t kill them. But we need to keep Williams on the station. Tip off Port Authority and get the ship put on lockdown. It’s the Sophia Almeida.”

  “Don’t you need backup?”

  “Just do it. If he gets away, we’re fucked. Shut him down and do it now.”

  He shoved his tab back in his pocket but kept the connection open. Leone’s men were shouting from far away. He readied both his guns as he came to airlock 233. It was still open. He went in with both guns leading the way.

  The time for stealth had passed. He made his way along the short umbilicus. He could see the interior of the small cruiser through the ship’s airlock doors, the rust-coloured walls half-hidden in shadow.

  “Williams!” he called out. “It’s too late. You’re not running from this one. You know Temperance Port Authority isn’t going to let you disengage in a hurry. This is a gambling town, Jack, and they know how much gamblers like to skip out on their debts. They’re going to check you closely, and by that time my partner will have given them good reason to hold you here.”