Chapter 3
The car had to be driven manually. Elantra had never seen such a thing in her life. She’d sure never seen anything like Slum Town. The machines here were old and in bad repair if they worked at all. The buildings didn’t look much better. And everywhere there were neon signs and holograms showing pictures of people doing things they shouldn’t have been doing without a very heavy screen and certainly not in the public eye. She wasn’t an idiot, and she’d seen some of the more unsavory programs the HV had to show. She knew what these places were; they were clubs, clubs that sold alcohol and drugs and sex, or at least something very close to it. She stroked Mr. Buttons as she looked out at the strange streets. “What is fuck?” she asked.
Conner choked on her own laughter. “Intercourse,” she answered using a word the young woman was likely to understand.
Elantra shuddered. “That’s what I thought... It’s funny. Just tonight I wanted to get out of the building so bad that I bypassed my father’s security system and slipped out. Now all I want to do is get back home. How long will it take?”
“I’m not taking you home, not yet anyway,” Conner said matter-of-factly. “Your father wants you taken to a safe house. He’s afraid they’ll come after you again.”
“They who? I mean... Who were those men? I don’t understand. You are a cop, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m a cop.” Conner nodded towards the agency tattoo on her shoulder and the girl nodded. “It’s really very simple. Your father has been trying to take over Mishy’s operation for years, but he hasn’t succeeded. Tarent recently had Mishy’s wife and son killed. Apparently he thought this would completely demoralize Mishy and then he could easily take over Mishy’s turf. What he didn’t count on was that Mishy now feels he has nothing to live for, and he’s putting all of his efforts into taking your father down. Taking you was only the first step in his plan, and things aren’t likely to be safe around your father for a very long time.”
“This is all a mistake!” Elantra laughed nervously. “My father is a business man. He does something like import-export of... things. He could never kill anyone.”
Conner stared out at the night, brooding and silent.
“Well he couldn’t,” Elantra explained.
“Isn’t it hard to breathe with your head so firmly stuck up your ass?” Conner asked with a sly smile.
“That would be physically impossible, so I’m assuming it has some double meaning, and I’m thinking it’s probably not nice,” Elantra said hotly.
“Forget about it.”
“Where are we going? We’re not staying here, are we? I don’t like it here.”
“No one actually likes it in Slum Town. But, no, we’re not staying here.” She ignored the girl’s first question.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you. You take me home. I want to go home.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Conner mumbled, then turned an angry face on the girl and said in a low hiss. “I don’t give a good do-diddily-damn what you want. I do what I want—you get that? I only ever do what I want. I don’t take orders from you. I don’t take orders from anyone.”
The computer in the car buzzed up. “Hammer. Man, what are you doing?” Jason asked. “You’re heading further into Slum Town.”
“Leave me alone, Jason,” Conner hissed back.
“You have the girl, don’t you?”
“I said leave me alone, Jason,” Conner said in a more menacing tone.
“Oh, God, man! What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Hammer?” he asked in a panic, then ordered, “Car! Drive faster.”
“I have to do what I have to do, Jason. Transmission close.” The computer screen cleared.
“What’s going on?” Elantra asked suspiciously.
“Cop shit. Don’t worry about it,” Conner answered.
James had just assured Tarent that all was well when Jason Hunter’s panicked face filled the screen. “Boss! Hammer’s gone off the end.”
James took a deep breath. “What do you mean?”
“She’s got the girl, but she’s running into Slum Town. Boss, I think she’s kidnapping the girl herself.”
“Stay on her, Jay. Computer, find Conner McVee.” Conner’s face appeared on the screen, and she smiled broadly at him. “McVee, what the hell are you up to?”
“Tarent asked me to keep the girl out of the way until things with Mishy cool down. By law he can hire me out from under you without me giving you notice. I’ll come back to work for the Brakston Agency as soon as this job is done, don’t you worry. The money is just too good to pass, you understand...”
“I know what you’re doing, McVee. Do you really think you can cover your butt..?”
“If I have a big enough net, sir.” She smiled. “Computer, terminate link with Central.”
“McVee! Damn it, McVee!” The transmission ended and all attempts to link back up with her were a waste of time. “Computer, find Jason Hunter.” Jason appeared. “I’m transferring the trace signal from Conner’s body to your computer. Don’t lose her, the device only works on short radio frequency and it has no GPS capabilities...”
“What! Why the hell not?”
“Because if it did anyone including the bad guys could find her at any time. It’s there to help us locate her in case of an emergency, not them.”
“But this way... It’s damn near useless!”
“Not if you don’t lose her.”
Jason sighed and watched his computer; he smiled when a little blip appeared on his screen. “Transfer complete. Boss, what’s Hammer up to?”
James thought about it only a minute. “Tarent hired McVee to protect his daughter until Mishy cools off.”
Jason laughed. “Isn’t that a little lame?”
“That’s the story, Jason.”
Tarent called Mishy, and Mishy looked gloatingly back. “What will she do to Elantra?” Tarent asked in a defeated tone.
“Conner loved Peggy a lot. At Peggy’s funeral she told me she wouldn’t rest until you paid for what you did, and I don’t think that she has. She’s spent most of the last five years trying to put your ass away, or kill you, but of course you cover your ass too well and you never stick your cowardly neck out of your hole. So nothing—that’s a lot of frustration. They threw this opportunity in her lap, and she’s running with it...”
“But what do you think she’s going to do to Elantra? She’s just a girl. She knows nothing about the business, nothing about me, nothing about the world out there...”
Mishy shook violently. “My son was only ten years old. Do you really think you can do whatever you like and that nothing will ever happen to you? Peggy was a wonderful person; she wouldn’t have hurt a fly, a true innocent. She had her whole life ahead of her and everything to live for. If you want to know what’s going to happen to your daughter, I suggest you try remembering what you did to my sister. The way I remember it, Conner and I had to identify the pieces. Transmission close.”
The screen returned to swirling colors. Tarent took in a deep breath. He remembered what he’d had done to Peggy Mishy. “The sins of the fathers,” he muttered.
“What’s that, boss?” Wayne asked.
“Nothing, Wayne. Computer, get me everything you can call up on a police agent named Conner McVee.”
Conner looked over at the girl. She was sound asleep and snoring in a not very lady-like manner. She’d probably gotten more exercise last night than she’d had in her whole life up till then, not to mention more excitement.
The sun was starting to come up and Jason Hunter was still on her tail. They were in the middle of nowhere—or at least they were fifty miles out of Freight City. She had shielded her car against such things as the global positioning system long ago. If Jason lost her now, there would be no way for them to use the tracer on her. If she got rid of Jason she could buy herself some time; maybe enough time.
She pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. She got out, grabbing her nail gun off the back seat as she went. As Jason pulled in behind her she set her gun on high, aimed and fired. First the tires, and then the block itself. The girl started screaming. “Get down and shut up!” Conner ordered. She walked over to the car with a hammer, and kept hitting the side window of Jason’s car until it smashed. Jason was cringing in the front seat screaming at his computer.
“James! She’s fucking lost it, man! She’s...” He looked at Conner’s smiling face as she reached in the broken window of his car and opened his door. Jason reached slowly for his gun. “Now, Hammer, I don’t want to have to...” She took his weapon away from him and threw him out of his car in one motion. With the hammer in hand she smashed his entire computer console. Jason picked himself up off the dirt. “Damn it, Hammer! What are you playing at?”
Conner turned slowly around and in those few awful seconds Jason imagined all sorts of horrors. He fully expected her to kill him with one of her primitive weapons. She didn’t, she just stared at him with her one eye full of contempt. She had never liked him, never liked the kind of cop he was, and if he hadn’t known it before he knew it now as she looked him up and down, as if trying to decide whether he was worth killing or not.
Finally she hissed at him, “Tell Rank to stay the fuck away from me. I’m going out of tracer range and I’m taking the girl. If anybody asks, I’m working a protection job for Tarent Powers. It doesn’t matter if he denies it. Don’t come looking for me. If you do I’ll kill ya. Leave me the fuck alone. I’ve given a lot to Brakston, and I’ve given a lot to the citizens of Freight City. Now it’s time for them to give something back. If this works I’ll take Tarent Powers down and ensure Brakston Agency stays on top, but Rank is going to have to trust me. You all are.”
Jason nodded, not daring to disagree with her. “How am I going to get back to town?”
“God gave you feet so that you could walk.” Conner turned, walked to her car, got in and drove off.
Jason watched her drive away and then yelled after her. “You... Fucking religious fanatic!”
The girl was still screaming. She might have even been saying something. Conner didn’t know because she wasn’t really listening. Conner popped a CD in the player, turned it up on high, and started singing along. The girl stopped screaming. After a moment she moved to look into Conner’s mouth.
“What are you doing?” she asked, obviously confused.
“I’m singing.”
“Machines do that for us,” she said in disbelief. She stared at the CD player. “What’s that?” she asked pointing.
“It’s a CD player. There’s music by live performers, and you record it on the disk and then you put it in and you get to hear them sing.”
“The same thing over and over again!” Elantra asked in disbelief.
“There are usually five to ten songs on a disk, but yeah over and over again.”
“Why? A dyarhythms system will play music on voice command, and it never plays the same thing twice.”
“Well that’s a good reason all in itself. Besides, it sounds like shit and there are no words, no soul. You can’t sing along with it. Hearing it doesn’t remind you of the time you were laying this really hot blond chick under an oak tree. Not that a budding building brat such as yourself would know the first thing about nostalgia,” Conner hissed. She took in a breath and tried to conjure up some patience. “Didn’t you ever hear a tune that you wished you could hear again?”
Elantra thought about that for a second. “No,” she answered truthfully.
“Because all you’ve heard is that dyarhythms crap!”
The girl was silent just staring at Conner. “What the fuck are you looking at now?” Conner hissed when the length of time and the intensity with which she was looking at her started to annoy Conner.
“If fuck means sex, I don’t understand the use of fuck in that sentence. You have a lot of scars.” If she was upset at all about Conner’s’ screaming or apparent bad temper she wasn’t letting on, but then what could you really expect? She was Tarent Power’s brat.
“So nice of you to point that out,” Conner said through gritted teeth.
“I was only wondering why you hadn’t had the surgery done in such a manner that it wouldn’t scar.”
“You won’t understand this any more than the idea that I enjoy listening to the same song over and over again, but each one of these scars represents an event—a part of my past that may be gone but is not forgotten. Think of it as a very personal scrapbook. If God had meant for us to forget the pain of our past, It wouldn’t have made us scar...”
“You’re a Constructionist!” Elantra screeched in disbelief.
“Well, duh!” Conner laughed.
“Where are you taking me? I... I want to talk to my father.”
Conner realized that was probably what the girl had been screaming while she had been busy not paying attention earlier. “I told you before, I don’t care what you want. I’m taking you someplace safe, and when we get there I’ll let you talk to your father, if I feel like it.”
“I’m scared. I want to go home.” Elantra started crying.
She kept crying, and Conner kept ignoring her and her stupid cat.
“I don’t like you!” the girl finally yelled. “In fact I hate you!”
“Then I guess we’ll hold off sending out the wedding invites,” Conner said.
Elantra dried her nose on her sleeve and longed for her cleaning cabinet. She felt filthy. She stared at Conner and the cop smiled broadly back.
“I guess we could just live together for awhile first.”
“If you’re trying to make me vomit you’re doing a good job,” Elantra said in her best snooty voice.
“Oh you’ll want me. Sooner or later all the girls want me,” Conner said. She reached out and grabbed hold of Elantra’s leg close to her hip. The girl slapped at her hand till she let go.
“I like men,” Elantra said matter-of-factly.
“Funny, they all say that, too.” Conner laughed at the expression on the girl’s face.
“You’re just trying to annoy me,” Elantra said. “And succeeding beyond your wildest dreams. I don’t believe you’re working for my father. If you were, you’d let me talk to him. My father would never hire someone like you. My father...”
“I wonder if you’re as naive as you seem, or if you know just what kind of scum your father is...”
“My father is the greatest, most noble man I have ever known...”
“How did your mother die, Elantra?” Conner asked.
It was night. She had heard a noise—someone screaming. She stumbled through the dark. For some reason the walkways weren’t running, and lights weren’t anticipating her direction and going on. There was a glint of light coming from her parents’ bedroom. Her father was standing there with something shiny and long in his hand. It was dripping something red on the floor. Her mother lay on the ground behind him. There was red stuff all over her, and she was still. Her eyes were open, staring at Elantra, but she couldn’t see. Elantra knew she couldn’t. Her father was screaming, “Computer! Send police! Send doctors! My wife has just killed herself.” He looked at Elantra then yelled. “Elantra, go to your room!”
She couldn’t move. She just stood there looking at her mother, wondering why she didn’t smile at her, wondering what all that red stuff was.
“Elantra!” her father bellowed again. “Go… to… your… room!”
This time her feet worked. She ran into her room and into the corner where she sank down on the floor and started to cry. Her life had changed forever that night. Her mother had touched her, held her when she was scared. Since her mother had died... Well, her father never held her. He wouldn’t even touch her. Contact made him nervous.
“My mother killed herself,” Elantra answered coldly.
“Yeah, that’s the official report,” Conner said plainly. “They couldn’t ever prove he did it. Of course, we can never prove he did anything.”
“My father is not a criminal! He didn’t kill my mother!” Elantra screamed at Conner.
Conner shrugged. “Okay. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that she did kill herself. Did you ever wonder why?” Conner asked.
“She was unhappy,” Elantra snapped back. “Who knows why someone kills themselves?”
“Or for that matter if they really did.”