There were worse problems to have.
“I know you love the ambiance of different places, but sometimes delivery is where it’s at,” she offered. “Although, something does vaguely bother me about a drone delivering my beignets, but not other food. I wonder why that is?”
“It’s weird,” Erik muttered under his breath. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was staring at the wall, his eyes narrowed.
Jia looked at Erik, the wall, and the beignets a few times, trying to figure out if this was some weird new game he was playing with Emma. “So, you agree with me? You’ve never objected to delivery before, the few times we used it at least. I never pressed you on it because I figured most of the time you wanted an excuse to leave the station.”
“Not that. Delivery isn’t weird. As long as the beignets are from a good place, I don’t care how they get to me. And you’re right, a lot of the time it’s about me leaving the station.” Erik chuckled and shook his head. “And it’s not my life. I shouldn’t worry so much about it.”
“Not your life?” Jia closed the door. “What’s weird about my life?”
“Not your life, either.” Erik shook his head. “Hey, Emma, keep it private for us, will you?”
“Very well, Detective Blackwell,” the AI replied. She didn’t materialize.
Jia handed Erik a beignet before heading to her desk. She nibbled on it, eyeing her partner, not bothering to try to hide her confusion on her face. “Care to clue me in? Because right now, I’m wondering if I’m having another one of those dreams where I’m about to be given some ridiculous and impossible case to solve.”
Erik stared at her. “What dreams? You never mentioned them before.”
Jia smiled sheepishly. “They’re stupid. Like in one I had recently, I had to somehow prove a Shiba Inu was responsible for assassinating a government official.”
His face scrunched for a second. “A dog?” Erik laughed.
“Yes. Somehow the dog was trained to fire a high-powered sniper rifle in the dream.” Jia shrugged. “That’s one of the least weird ones, but don’t turn this around on me. You’re the one who’s acting strange. What were you mumbling about when I came in?”
Erik tore off a huge chunk of his beignet with one bite, leaving powdered sugar all over the bottom of his face. “Malcom went out on a date with Camila the other night. He mentioned it to me this morning when I went to talk to him about some stuff.”
“Really? I know she mentioned it might be okay, but I thought that was just a line she was feeding him.” Jia settled into her chair. “She actually likes him?”
“She’s a spy. She came on to him to test him originally. You’d think it would be hard to trust her.” Erik brushed some of the sugar off. “I suppose there are weirder ways to start a relationship, and he seems to be into her, so it’s not my business.”
“There are weirder ways, for sure.” Jia let her gaze linger on Erik. She didn’t think he was leading into anything with that statement, but it was hard to be sure. “I agree. If it works for him, I don’t see the problem. He knows what he’s getting into, and the big secret’s already out. For her, it’s an advantage, too. She’s lucky.”
“How?” He looked at her, puzzled. “She into Hawaiian shirts? Opposites attract, fashion edition?”
Jia laughed. “She can date him without any pressure. He knows the truth, and she knows he can keep his mouth shut. That’s got to be worth something, considering how often people can’t do that, even for far less important stuff. When you’re a person who has to keep secrets about your life, knowing there’s someone out there you can be honest with must be a tremendous relief.”
She gave him a meaningful look. There was nothing wrong with making the parallels in their life situations more explicit. She didn’t want to push it too hard, but she couldn’t pass up an obvious opportunity.
Erik chewed the beignet in his mouth, looking faintly confused. He didn’t say anything, just continued eating his pastry until he’d polished it off. “And what’s up with Alina?”
“What do you mean?” Jia asked, surprised he hadn’t said anything about their dating situation. “I don’t think she’s dating anyone in the 1-2-2. To be honest, maybe I’m trying to read too much into a woman we’ve dealt with in very limited contexts, but I don’t think she’s the kind of person who cares about anything as normal as dating.”
“Probably not, but I’m not talking about dating. She said she’d have something for us in a few days, and it’s been more than that.” Erik shrugged. “I guess ghosts have a different definition of time. She should have just said it was going to take a while.”
“You’re disappointed because you didn’t get your toy on schedule?” Jia brought up four data windows. They’d completed an embezzlement case the week before. It’d almost been too easy, with the suspect confessing almost everything the moment they brought him in, but she still had reports to fill out. The wheels of justice would turn as long as they were liberally lubricated by reports.
Erik threw his feet up on his desk. “I don’t know. Call me old-fashioned, but when you promise someone something, you should give it to them. Besides, it’s messing with my planning. I’m trying to be efficient here.”
She pursed her lips. “You’re planning something? What does it have to do with Alina’s gift?”
“I’m trying to figure out if I should modify the MX 60 more.” Erik stared at the ceiling with an almost wistful expression on his face. “If she’s going to give me a ghostmobile with the latest tech, no reason to spend a lot of time and money doing more to my flitter. If she’s just talking about a cool new gun, well, I’m not going to complain about that, either. You know me; I like to have options when it comes to taking bastards down.”
Jia laughed so hard she accidentally swiped her hand through a data window and closed it.
Erik dropped his feet to the floor and wrinkled his forehead. “It’s not that funny.”
“It kind of is,” she pointed out. “I think getting that laser rifle from the colonel spoiled you.” Jia snickered as she brought up a new data window. “Now you’re thinking about all the fancy gadgets someone might throw at you.”
“Having better gear is useful,” Erik argued. “And you didn’t seem to mind at the range.”
“No, I didn’t mind, and I’m not saying it isn’t good to have more options. Whatever makes our job easier is fine by me. I’m realistic. We wouldn’t have been able to solve or even survive half of what we’ve done without the help of the equipment we’ve managed to get our hands on.” Jia let out a dark snicker. “You better hope Camila’s and Malcolm’s new thing doesn’t blow up anytime soon. The next thing you know, Camila will be asking Alina to freeze you out, and you’ll be reduced to begging to Generous Gao for gifts because you’ve been a good boy.” She put her hands together. “Please, Generous Gao, I need a plasma torpedo small enough to launch from my flitter.”
She tittered for a second.
“Very funny,” Erik grumped. “But I have been a good boy.” He scratched his chin. “A plasma torpedo could come in handy.”
“For what?” Jia blinked in surprise. “You planning to blow up a ship?”
“You never know. Options, remember?”
Jia considered that and his boyish smile. “You have killed a lot of people. He might give you some rotten fruit for that.”
“Yeah, but they all had it coming,” Erik insisted. “Those assholes at Alicia’s place didn’t let us land before they started shooting. How can I be docked by Gao if they never even let me say hi?”
“You have a point there,” Jia replied. “Maybe Gao has something about massive property destruction?”
Erik snorted. “It hasn’t even been that bad for a while, and there’s only so much I can do when the other guy is blowing up the building. It’s not like I go out of my way to blow up buildings. Most of the time.”
“Maybe you’ll get your present, after all.” Jia shook her head, a smile pla
ying across her lips. “Here’s hoping. I can’t wait to read the article about the Obsidian Detective launching Navy weapons from his MX 60.”
Erik gave her a deep, meaningful look, as if he were shifting from the humor for a brief moment to evaluate something deeper. “What about you? There’s nothing Alina could show up with that you might want? I know you wouldn’t complain if you got your own laser rifle.”
Jia shook her head. “I wouldn’t, but you’re collecting enough weapons for the both of us. It might be nice to have one of her anti-spying devices as a backup for Emma, especially in situations where she’s jammed.” She waited for a few seconds, but the AI didn’t say anything. “And especially for my apartment. Maybe some sort of disguise device? Who knows what she’s got in a box somewhere? She works for the Intelligence Directorate. They don’t have to mass-produce the stuff, and it’d be nice to know…”
“Nice to know what?” Erik probed.
“The limits of the possible.” Jia grinned. “Maybe the ID has perfected the ultimate beignet. We could use a few of those delivered by some ultra-advanced ghost drones.”
“They probably have developed those,” Erik replied. He leaned forward with an eager look. “That makes me think about something else. We got HTPs from the Navigators, so why not better pastry?”
“Better pastry?” Jia laughed. “The most advanced aliens in the history of the galaxy, and they developed better pastry?”
“Maybe the government scientists found some Navigator recipes and decoded them.” Erik winked. “It’s not impossible.”
“They’re slowly perfecting the ultimate pastry in some lab somewhere because the Zitarks and Leems already have a big lead on us.” Jia gave a solemn nod that didn’t match her mood. “Right now, the Prime Minister is in a hushed meeting with his cabinet, discussing the technological pastry gap we have with the Local Neighborhood races.”
“Lizards can’t make good pastry,” Erik insisted with mock indignation. “But maybe that was what the Leems were really doing in Roswell—hunting for the secrets of human pastry dominance. They knew we’d grow to be a threat and spread across the galaxy, and they wanted to be ready, those little gray-headed bastards.”
“I bet they screwed up and transmitted an apple pie recipe back to their home planet,” Jia continued.
A lively warmth suffused her whole body. There was something liberating about such a ridiculously elaborate joke scenario.
She might be attracted to Erik’s bravery and skill, but there was something else there, too, something he liked to pretend was just a mask as part of his personal quest. At his core, the man truly did appreciate life. Molino had buried much of that, but she had started to see it emerge in recent months.
Erik shook a finger. “Yeah. Or cherry. They’re sitting there on Leem World or whatever the hell they call it, waiting years, and then they finally get it, and they’re like, ‘You stupid idiots, that’s not what we ordered when we sent you for takeout!’”
Jia burst out laughing, doubling at her desk. Erik didn’t laugh, but his face-wide grin showed he was as satisfied with the whole joke as she was.
“No, that wasn’t the worst part,” Jia insisted.
“What was?” Erik asked.
“They forgot to steal the recipe for whipped cream.”
“So that’s it then.” Erik nodded to himself, looking satisfied. “If I wait long enough, Alina will deliver me the perfect Navigator-enhanced beignet, a pastry a million years in the making.”
“Let’s keep hoping,” Jia offered with a smile. “I think we’d appreciate that more than another laser rifle.”
“Now that depends on how big a laser rifle we’re talking about.”
She looked at him, a mischievous glint in her eye. “So, you admit size matters?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Erik took a bite of his burger with a frown. “I can’t get it out of my head. The taste.”
Jia looked around from their table. The diner they had hit for lunch was a place they’d been to plenty of times. It was close to the station, and they gave police discounts. Erik had never had a problem with their food before. He’d commented he thought it was pretty good, especially for the price.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with their food printer?” she suggested. “Remember the problem we had at that Greek place a few weeks ago with the olives? I’m surprised we were the only ones complaining.”
Erik set his burger down and shook his head. “The food here is fine, but I was thinking about what we were talking about this morning. It’s stuck with me.”
“Wait, are you talking about the Navigator beignets?” Jia asked, almost shocked that the words were coming out of her mouth in public. It was certainly one of the more bizarre things she’d discussed for an extended period, even as a joke.
“It’s not completely crazy when you think about it.” Erik laughed. “I’m not saying I believe there’s a big recipe book out there of the ultimate pastries in the galaxy. I’m just thinking we don’t know crap about the Navigators, not even what they looked like. Everyone says they were big, but that’s a guess.”
“There’s not much we can do about that. They’ve been dead for a long time, and they weren’t nice enough to leave us fossils or much in the way of biological remains.”
“I know,” Erik replied. “But it’s kind of messed up when you think about it. We got their antigrav stuff and the HTPs and other gadgets from reverse-engineering, but maybe they have an awesome Beijing Duck recipe or really can make great beignets.”
“They could have been photosynthetic, for all we know.” Jia raised her cup to her lips, now imagining the Navigator as walking sunflowers for whatever odd reason. She chuckled and ended up inhaling some of her coffee.
A few hacking coughs later, she managed to breathe again.
Erik chuckled. “Don’t die drinking coffee. I’m sure the media would love it if either of us went down while having lunch. They’d have days of fun with the stupid headlines.”
Jia’s cheeks heated. That would be the ultimate irony, but she wasn’t sure if death by coffee was shameful or a grand way to leave life. She probed the implications for a few moments before a heavy gaze from a brown-haired man in a booth caught her attention.
He was staring right at her. It wasn’t the first time she’d caught a man staring at her.
After a moment, Jia realized that he wasn’t staring at her, but at Erik. There wasn’t any hostility in the man’s face, only curiosity, as if he were trying to decide on a course of action.
Jia cleared her throat and leaned closer. “I think you’ve got a fanboy in the back. We might have to avoid this place for a while if it’s going to be a hangout for those types.”
Erik looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with the brown-haired man. “Huh. Yeah. Definitely watching me.”
“How can a detective be so unsubtle?” Jia chuckled. “You might as well have Emma throw up holographic flares stating, ‘I’m watching you.’”
“I’ve got a gun with four barrels and an expensive sports flitter I modified to carry even heavier weapons around. Subtle is a curse word for me.”
She grabbed a French fry and dabbed it in an orange sauce. “You said it, not me.”
“It’s not like I’m ashamed of it.” Erik gave the man a polite nod and waited. “Might as well hurry this along.”
The man stood and strolled toward the table. Erik and Jia waited until he arrived. The man’s pace didn’t suggest any big plans for an ambush.
“You’re Detective Erik Blackwell, right?” the man asked. “The Obsidian Detective from the news?”
“Yeah,” Erik answered. “That’s me. You want a picture or something? Not trying to be an ass, but I don’t really have the time for much more than that right now.”
“Picture? Why would I…” The man blinked as if confused by the question. “Oh, that makes sense now that I think about it. People would want their pictures with a man who is a paragon
of justice. That’s not illogical when I analyze it.”
“Something like that.” Erik shrugged, shooting a look at Jia.
She shrugged back, no longer sure about the man’s intentions. There was something off in the cadence of his voice. It reminded her vaguely of the Grayhead terrorists they had interrogated.
“I’ve read a lot about you,” the man explained. He extended his left hand for a shake. “And all your cases. I was moved by how you took on those monsters in the Scar.” He shuddered. “It’s scary to think about what’s happening underneath us and how the police and military are a thin line protecting us from such serious danger, even on Earth.”
Erik hesitated for a moment before extending his own left to shake the man’s hand. “It’s just part of the job. We’re police. We’re here to serve and protect, whether it’s from the two-legged dangers or the six-legged ones with tentacles. I’m not one to ask someone else to risk their lives unless I’m also willing to risk mine.”
The man’s hand lingered on Erik’s for a moment before he pulled it away. “My name is Victor, Detective Blackwell.” He offered a tight smile to Jia. “Pleasure to meet both you and Detective Lin. You could say I’m a big fan of what you’ve done to protect this city. I’m sorry to bother you during lunch, but I just couldn’t stop myself from coming over to talk to you.”
Jia waited until he looked back at Erik and mouthed, “Told you it was a fanboy.”
“Nice to meet you, Victor,” Erik offered. “Most of our cases aren’t that exotic, just normal criminals. A lot aren’t even that violent. The news just hypes those up because it’s good for attracting eyeballs. I can’t blame them, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, either.”
Victor stared at Erik’s hand. “It didn’t feel any different.” He shook his head. “I thought it would. That makes it worse—the pain of expectation.”
Jia liked Erik’s new friend less with each sentence that came out of his mouth.
“What didn’t feel different?” Erik asked.
Cabal of Lies Page 21