Investigating Deceit

by Michael Anderle

  “Oh.” Jia chuckled. “I’m only Jia here, another Dragons’ fan.”

  The woman giggled. “I hope you don’t hate me. I’m actually a Sharks’ fan.”

  Jia smiled. “I think there’s room enough for the both of us in Neo SoCal.”

  The woman turned to Erik. “And who is this?”

  Jia’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. She wasn’t used to people recognizing her and not Erik. She didn’t think it was possible, but people focused on different things.

  Erik’s huge grin pointed to him enjoying the one-sided fame.

  “My partner,” Jia explained. “He’s my partner.”

  “Oh?” The woman looked disappointed. Her head turned between the two of them, and her eyes flicked to Jia’s ring finger. “Not married, then? You should tie this one down before he gets away.”

  Erik could no longer hold it in. He burst out laughing.

  “Uh, it’s…” Jia sputtered. It should have been an easy response, but for some reason, she didn’t want to clarify the relationship in front of him. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, though. We have to get going.”

  The woman nodded. “It was nice to meet you, Detective. I hope you keep fighting the good fight, but I hope your team doesn’t.” She waved and joined the rest of the exiting crowd.

  Jia shook a finger at Erik. “Not one word.”

  He grinned. “Oh, come on, honey, don’t be like that.”

  “That’s eight words.” Jia scoffed, but a smile quickly took over her face. She wanted it to be only playful.

  But she couldn’t deny the warmth inside.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Erik leaned against the breakroom counter and took a bite of his beignet as he watched Jia. She was doing a passable job of pantomiming some of the more spectacular plays from the match as she discussed it with Halil.

  The other detective shook his head, looking disappointed. “You know, I was totally going to at least watch that match at home,” he replied in his rich, deep bass. “I missed out. The Sharks usually don’t play that well against the Dragons.”

  “You did miss out,” Jia insisted. “It was exhilarating. I’ve put together a statistical analysis of the Dragons’ starting line, and I’m surprised by some of their choices.”

  Halil laughed. “Oh, you’re one of those fans.”

  Jia huffed. “Nothing wrong with applying math to sports.”

  “Not saying there is, Jia. Just remember to have fun, too.”

  They descended into a quick debate concerning the merits of intellectual enjoyment of sports.

  Erik swallowed another bite of his pastry. He didn’t want to admit he was surprised, both that Jia had taken him up on the offer and that she’d enjoyed it so much. Players smashing into each other over a ball seemed like something she would consider uncivilized. It was good to have more in common with his partner.

  He paused mid-chew as he thought about that. There was something else there. He didn’t just want to have more in common with a partner. He wanted to have more in common with Jia. That desire could be trouble in a lot of ways.

  A harsh, familiar voice snapped him out of his reflection.

  Jared Thompson stood in the breakroom doorway. “Of course, Lin doesn’t know how to appreciate sphere ball. And of course, she thinks she knows better than people who have been fans for years.”

  Erik pushed off from the counter but froze as Jia shook her head at him. He nodded back. She needed to know he always had her back, but she also needed to defend herself.

  Jia scoffed. “I didn’t say anything like that, Detective Thompson.”

  Halil frowned. “We were just having a good time.”

  “Talking sphere ball with someone who probably didn’t even know the rules until a few days ago?” Jared sneered. “How is that even possible?”

  “You don’t have to be like that, Jared,” Halil told him.

  Jared glared at the other man. “Sometimes I feel like I’m one of the few sane people left in the 1-2-2. Has everyone forgotten who she is?”

  Erik grunted.

  Jia rolled her eyes. “You’re the sane one? Could have fooled me.”

  Jared’s gaze flicked between Jia and Erik. “I know I’m just a normal detective. I’m not the Obsidian Detective or Lady Justice, but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad cop.”

  “Not having a media-given nickname doesn’t make you a bad cop,” Jia commented. “And being annoyed when other cops are just doing their jobs doesn’t make you a bad cop, but it does make you a whiner.”

  He stomped toward her. Halil stepped in front of him. Erik didn’t move. Jia could kick Jared’s ass with ease.

  Jared scoffed. “What, you’re a fanboy now, Detective Mustafa? You think hanging around the corp princess and the soldier boy is going to make you better?”

  Halil replied with a feral grin, “No, I don’t think anything like that, and I’m not the one walking around like someone shoved a stick up my ass. If you don’t want people questioning you, don’t give them a reason.”

  Jared licked his lips. “Oh, is that how it’s going to be? I thought you and me had an understanding. I thought you were one of us, not one of them.”

  “I’m a cop,” Halil insisted. “Always have been, will be until the day I die. That means I’m going to have the backs of cops, and I’m not going to tear down other cops, which is why this crap of yours is annoying me. She didn’t come at you, Jared. You went at her. I don’t want to have a problem with you, but if you have a problem with Jia, or you have a problem with Erik, then you have a problem with me? Understood?”

  Jared backed away, red-faced. “You don’t even care about Captain Monahan? You don’t care about Ryan or Sharon?” He pointed at Jia. “She ran them out of here. Those were good cops who served for a lot longer than she has.”

  “You know the measure of a real man, Jared? It’s his ability to admit he made a mistake. I’ve been where you are, and I admitted I was wrong.” Halil shook his head. “I felt the hate, and I had to look in the mirror and ask myself why I was so pissed off. A man can’t justify his weakness by trying to take down someone who doesn’t have it. That’s just pathetic.”

  “Screw you,” Jared hissed. “You’re only on their side because they’re famous.”

  “I’m on the side of anyone who wants to make Neo SoCal better.” Halil stared at him. “Can you honestly say we were making things better, the way we were doing things before? That Monahan was making things better?”

  Jared ground his teeth and clenched his fists. Jia tried to step forward but stopped at Erik’s headshake. Halil knew what he was doing and what it meant. Interfering now would undermine him.

  “They’re going to screw up someday,” Jared muttered through clenched teeth. “Then you’ll look like an idiot.”

  “I’m willing to take that chance. You need to figure out if you’re more interested in being a cop or kissing the ass of a man who doesn’t work here anymore.”

  Jared pivoted on his heel and stormed out of the breakroom, muttering a series of creative profanities under his breath.

  Jia turned to him. “Thanks, Halil,” she offered. “You didn’t need to do that. I can handle Thompson fine.”

  “I’m sure you can.” He shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some things to make up for. I should get back to my reports. We can chat about the next game. Erik, Jia.” With a final nod, he strode out of the room.

  Jia chuckled. “Is it awful that my first instinct was to throat-punch Thompson?”

  Erik took another bite of his beignet. “Better than wanting to shoot him.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jia belly-crawled through the muddy stream, her head and rifle barely above the water. “Alpha, report.”

  “No enemy sighted,” replied the sniper.

  In all the times she had trained with Erik, they had always been partners. For the first time, she was going up against him.

  Emma had fashioned three AI s
quadmates for each of them. Erik’s military experience might give him an advantage in commanding trained soldiers, but Jia doubted Emma’s virtual dolls would be as effective as real soldiers under his orders. That didn’t presuppose they would do any better working for her.

  Thus far, she was pointedly unimpressed by their ability to understand natural language.

  Jia had to beat Erik. Everything in her told her she did. She needed to prove something both to him and herself. The feeling had only grown in intensity in recent months.

  “Beta and Gamma, stay on both sides, and keep low.”

  “Roger,” the two riflemen replied. Their camouflaged uniforms and painted faces blended with the mud and moss covering the area.

  Her sniper had spotted movement in this direction ten minutes prior, and they’d slowly closed on the area without any noise or tracks. Doubts piled up. Erik was a career soldier.

  Would he really make the mistake of getting spotted?

  At the same time, he wasn’t working with trained Special Forces operators, and Emma wasn’t running the reinforcements. She’d preprogrammed them with a limited range of responses. Erik might have slipped into the reflexive patterns he was used to from the Army and confused the programming.

  Jia had accepted their limitations.

  “I wish Emma didn’t spend so much time forcing me to crawl through dirt, mud, and piles of dead bugs,” Jia muttered. “I swear she enjoys it.”

  The AI didn’t respond, but her simulations did.

  “You can say that again, Sergeant.”

  That was their stock response for any command they didn’t understand, likely another joke on Emma’s part.

  “I’ve got eyes on four tangos, Sergeant,” the sniper reported. “Coming in from eleven o’clock, about two hundred meters out.”

  Jia grinned. “Let’s set up to finish them off. We need to get to the trees. Don’t splash. Aim in the indicated direction, and fire only after I’ve taken a shot.” She wanted to get the entire squad. Picking off a single squad member but giving up their position might hand the advantage back to Erik.

  “Roger,” the squad members replied.

  She stood and waded through the water toward a dense copse of trees a few meters away from the bank of the stream. Her squadmates followed her.

  It took an agonizing half-minute before they were in position.

  Her heart pounded as she pointed her gun, waiting for Erik and his squad to arrive. She might not win against him in a straightforward battle, but an ambush equalized everything. The seconds ticked by. She took shallow breaths and tried to keep her heart under control.

  The crack of a branch betrayed the incoming squad.

  “I’ve got you,” she whispered. She held her breath and waited for a target to emerge. If she was lucky, it’d be Erik. Eliminating him right away all but guaranteed her the win.

  The shadow of a thin male soldier holding a rifle appeared. Jia pointed her gun and waited. One soldier wasn’t enough. She needed the rest of the squad.

  She needed Erik.

  The soldier moved forward, sweeping the area with his rifle, a frown on his face. She could barely make out the outline of three other men.

  His squad would have the same composition, three riflemen and a sniper. She aimed toward one of the men in the back and pulled the trigger. The initial crack of her rifle echoed as the other riflemen opened up with their weapons. The huge boom of the sniper rifle followed. The members of the squad jerked several times before collapsing.

  “Let’s confirm the kills,” Jia ordered. “Stick to the trees. Their sniper is still out there, but if we’re careful, we can pick him off easily enough. Now that we’ve downed their sergeant, we’ve got this.”

  “Roger.”

  Jia ran from tree to tree, trying to reinforce the point-to-point movement Erik had drilled into her head in previous training sessions. Her squad followed, and if their movements were less precise, it didn’t matter much.

  The enemy sniper wouldn’t have a decent line of sight in the forest.

  She closed on the first body, one of the riflemen. Her advance brought her to the other two downed soldiers.

  “So, what do you have to say…” Jia’s eyes widened. Erik wasn’t there. “Their sergeant is still active. Everyone, take cover and sweep the area.” She jumped behind a tree and hissed.

  Jia had not anticipated that Erik would sacrifice his squad. In a real battle, he would never do anything like that, but these weren’t real soldiers.

  She was getting a lesson on underestimating her opponent.

  “Alpha, do you have eyes on their squad leader?” she whispered. The sniper’s earlier warning had only noted she’d spotted the enemy. Jia hadn’t thought to ask specifically what she had seen. She waited for several seconds. “Alpha, do you copy?”

  There was no response.

  Jia’s stomach clenched. Even without Emma helping him, Erik had decades of experience and instinct. He could track down a sniper, given enough shots. The only thing Jia didn’t understand is why he would go after her sniper instead of finishing off the squad.

  Jia gasped. She spun around the tree and leapt for the downed sniper. She dropped her assault rifle and snatched up Alpha’s sniper rifle, then flattened her back against the tree. “Make sure you’re on the north side of the trees and prepare to return fire!”

  A sniper rifle sounded in the distance, and her first soldier went down. Headshot. She dropped to the ground. The next round took out her second soldier. Her final survivor’s feeble attempt to spray bullets ended with him taking a chest round.

  “Erik, you tricky little snake,” Jia muttered. She took a few deep breaths. Maybe if she’d warned her squad as soon as she’d realized what was happening, they might have survived, but she’d learned from Erik.

  They weren’t real people. They were disposable tools, and she’d used them to confirm Erik’s location.

  She knew where he was likely set up. There was no reason for him to kill her sniper and take a less advantageous position. If she could line up a shot in time, she could win.

  A round ripped through the tree a foot above her head, showering dust and wood chips in her hair.

  “One point for ducking,” Jia muttered. She rotated slowly and dropped to her knees. Waiting Erik out was waiting to die.

  She had one chance.

  Jia set up the tripod on the rifle that was still safe behind the tree. Controlling her breathing, she waited for him to take another shot. The seconds ticked by, her heart thundering. No shot came.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Take the shot so I have my opening.” Her plea didn’t accomplish anything.

  She’d need to force his hand.

  She snatched up a nearby rock, counted to five, and tossed it to her left. Jia shoved the rifle to the side and peered through the scope, trying to line up her sights. The other rifle came into view, along with a woman’s body.

  Jia took the shot. The body jerked, and she hissed in irritation as she recognized Alpha. All she’d done was shot her already dead sniper. Had she made a mistake? Had Erik never been there?

  No, that couldn’t be the case. She might not be a weapons expert, but she could tell the difference between the sniper rifle and the assault rifles used in the simulation. He’d taken the shots, and now he wasn’t there. That meant he was on his way.

  Jia released the sniper rifle and listened carefully for a few seconds before rolling toward a nearby dead soldier and grabbing his weapon. She hopped to her feet and knelt behind another tree trunk, listening carefully.

  Alpha had been positioned about three hundred meters away.

  Erik couldn’t barrel through the forest without all but screaming his position, but she couldn’t counter him without knowing what side he was coming from.

  I’m going to lose, Jia thought. Her advantage had evaporated. It made sense that a former Special Forces operative would outperform her, despite all the training he’d been giving her. />
  Jia licked her lips. She had one last idea. Her hand drifted to her belt and grabbed the small plasma grenade clipped there. She primed the weapon, and still holding it with her left hand, slipped it into her pocket.

  A light breeze blew a few strands of her dark hair in front of her eyes. She almost burst out laughing as a musky scent filled her nostrils. She had never anticipated smelling him first. That was another lesson.

  Always stay downwind.

  Jia jerked to the side. A rifle killed the silence and a bullet whizzed by her head, missing by centimeters. She tossed her gun to the ground to feign being disabled and pulled the grenade out of her pocket. He would have to come to verify the kill.

  She heard Erik’s familiar chuckle, followed by a grunt of exertion. Jia hissed and leapt from the tree. A plasma grenade tumbled right toward her. Her partner stood in the distance, not even bothering to open fire despite his rifle being pointed right at her. She flung her own grenade.

  A bright explosion blinded her, and a moment later, the rugged and uneven forest floor gave way to the smooth tac room floor.

  Erik watched her with a satisfied look. “Good instincts. If you’re going to die, at least take the bastard with you when you go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Erik had noticed an important thing since returning to Earth.

  He had become bound by specific habits. It might have been an attempt to recover some of the structure of his military life. Ironically, it wasn’t that his Army life had been predictable. Since he had been sent to new places so often, the idea of having a favorite haunt seemed pointless.

  Neo SoCal had a larger population than most colonies in the UTC. He could go to a different bar or restaurant for every meal for the rest of his life and never have to return to the same place.

  That made tonight’s adventure to a bar far away from either his home or the station all the more notable.

  His head swam with a light buzz. He wanted to be somewhere no one knew him, and he’d even gone to the trouble of transferring money to a tab and then going back to his car to drop off his PNIU. Trusting Emma to respect his privacy and being sure about it were two different things, and there were some secrets she didn’t need to know.