CHAPTER SEVEN
I’d been planning to settle down in my newly chosen doorway while I checked on Selene’s progress. Now, instead, I lurched back into the pedestrian flow and hurried toward the Golden Pyramid as fast as I could without drawing attention. “Where are you?” I asked.
“Room 2007,” she murmured. “It’s the next room over, the one beside the suite’s bedroom. I’m in the far back corner right now, the farthest I could get away from them. They used a freight elevator in the back of the hotel to get Sleeping Beauty up here—”
“His name’s Eziji Mottola, by the way.”
“Oh. That was fast. Did Tera recognize him?”
“No, but the ISLE database did,” I said. “Seems he’s one of Luko Varsi’s chief thugs.”
There was a moment of silence. “I see,” she said. “Varsi must have smoothed things over with the Patth.”
I frowned at that comment, then remembered the Patth scent she’d picked up from the poacher ship. “Could be,” I said. “Never mind that now. What happened with you?”
“I saw where the car went and moved from the lobby to one of the private dining rooms,” she said. “Through the window I watched them park and then carry Mottola in through an employee entrance. I searched through the hallways until I found that entrance, which had a freight elevator nearby. I took it up and found out which floor they’d gone to, then went back down and took one of the guest elevators to that floor. I found out which room they’d gone into, and snicked the lock into the room beside it.”
I nodded. It was a trick she’d pulled many times back when we were bounty hunters: Travel to each floor until she picked up the target’s scent, then walk down the hallway until she spotted that same scent drifting out from under their door.
At which point she should have gone straight back to the lobby to wait for me. “What went wrong?”
“It wasn’t anything I did,” she said, some defensiveness in her tone. “I took off one of the outlet plates on the adjoining wall and was listening in through the gap when one of the men told two of the others that Mottola’s boss was on his way and to go outside and wait for him. Before I could get out, they were already in the hallway.”
And if they saw a stranger leave an adjoining room—especially if the organization owned the whole floor and knew that room was empty—she’d be worse than just trapped. “No chance they’ll go down to the lobby and meet the Pup there, I suppose?”
“They haven’t moved yet.”
“How many men total?”
“Counting the two in the hallway, there are six,” she said. “But one of them is Mottola, and he’s still asleep.”
I looked up at the Golden Pyramid now looming over me as I crossed toward its main entrance. So if I had to take them on, it would be at five-to-one odds. Terrific. “We have to find a way to make them move,” I said. “Did you hear anything else interesting?”
“They seemed amused that Mottola had been taken out so easily,” she said. “From that I assume he’s reasonably well known.”
“According to Tera, he’s one of Varsi’s senior enforcers,” I said. “Assuming the other guys are high enough in the local branch, they’d almost certainly have heard of him. Any mention of us?”
“Not by name,” Selene said. “They also don’t seem to know why Mottola is here, though one of them suggested they could call Brandywine and ask. I don’t know if there was something Mottola was carrying that indicated he’d come from there or whether that’s just Varsi’s current headquarters. I had a sense it was the latter, but it’s just a sense. Oh, and I haven’t heard them use the name Pup, so maybe that’s something private between him and Mottola.”
“Or between Mottola and the rest of the team,” I said. “All right, let’s think this through. Mottola and the guys you smelled on the poaching ship have been chasing us, first from CR-207-T to New Kyiv, then back to CR-207-T, and now here to Marjolaine.”
“They may also have been following us before CR-207-T.”
“And we just never spotted them,” I agreed, nodding. “Okay—good point. So. Mottola’s high up in Varsi’s organization, and since he apparently answers to the Pup that suggests the Pup is even higher up.”
“And from what Mottola said earlier it sounds like the Pup’s on his way from one of Marjolaine’s other StarrComm centers,” Selene reminded me. “Even if he was at the one closest to Khayelitsha, we should have another hour or two before he gets here.”
“That depends on what kind of air vehicle he’s got,” I warned. “And where exactly he was when he was alerted.”
“So you’re saying he could be here any time?”
“Basically,” I said. “Hopefully, once he gets here they’ll all go back inside. But I don’t think we can count on that.”
“I agree,” she said. “Do you have a plan?”
I looked up at the hotel again, trying to think. Strolling out of the elevator, pretending to be confused or drunk, and hoping I could get and hold the thugs’ attention long enough for Selene to slip out and make it to the far end of the corridor was too risky to seriously consider. Trying to bluff them by claiming I was another of Varsi’s people was only marginally better. Charging out of the elevator with plasmic blazing was completely out of the question.
On the other hand . . .
Varsi was mad at me. That part was undeniable, though the amount of actual blame I deserved for what had happened was debatable. He was the head of a criminal organization, and his reputation for how he dealt with his enemies was important to him, if for no other reason than to make sure the heads of similar organizations didn’t start thinking he’d lost his edge.
But he was also a businessman. If I could convince him that Selene and I were more valuable alive than we were as object lessons he might go for it.
“Of course I have a plan,” I said. “I’m going to go up there, tell your two loiterers that I want to talk to Mottola, and get them to take me inside. As soon as—”
“Mottola is still asleep.”
“Right, but since I wasn’t the one who decked him I don’t know that,” I said. “As soon as the hallway is clear, get out of the room and the hotel. Get to the StarrComm center, call Tera, and bring her up to date.”
“With the information that you’re now their prisoner?” Selene protested. “That won’t be at all well received. Let’s just wait until they leave and I’ll get out then.”
“That could be hours,” I said. “And if we wait too long they may be able to drill through our fake ID and tag the Ruth. If that happens, we’ll be trapped here.”
“Like you’ll be if you go in there?”
“But I’ve got something to trade for my freedom,” I said. “I’ll identify myself, hand over the ampule I’ve got up my sleeve, and tell them to ask Varsi if he wants to deal for our other CR-207-T samples.”
“We don’t have any other samples.”
“Right, but he doesn’t know that,” I said. “And it doesn’t matter, because somewhere down the line we will find something useful to give him. He surely knows that by now.”
“It’s crazy,” Selene repeated. “Please, Gregory. Just let me wait it out here.”
“I wish we could,” I said. “But the fact that the Gray Suits’ response was so quick suggests that the Golden Pyramid is Varsi’s local headquarters, which means they probably own the whole floor. If the Pup or the locals have called in any additional thugs along the way, the rooms flanking the main suite are the first ones where they’ll put them. I’ve got a bargaining chip I can wave under their noses. You don’t.”
There was a short pause, and I could visualize the play of emotions flowing across her pupils. “What do you want me to say to Tera?” she asked at last.
“Start by telling her the new plan,” I said. “If I can make peace with Varsi, that should go a long way toward clearing out our path to Dent. She might also want to alert the local badgemen that Mottola’s in town, in case there are any outstanding warrants against him.”
“You think getting one of Varsi’s people arrested will endear you to him?”
“I’m thinking we could hold that gambit in reserve,” I said. I’d reached the hotel’s outer door, and strode into a large and elaborately decorated foyer. I looked around for the elevator bank, spotted it off to my right. “If the locals are reluctant to deal, having badgemen show up to grab Mottola ought to distract him, hopefully long enough to let us slip out under his radar. Alternatively, if Mottola seems interested in repairing bridges, I can maybe cement that by being the hero who gets him out from under the authorities’ noses.”
“I still don’t like it,” Selene said with a sigh. “But if you’re really determined to go ahead with this, I can’t stop you.”
“I don’t much like it, either,” I conceded. “But it’s that or I leap out of the elevator with plasmic blazing. I think our odds are better if we make sure everyone’s guns stay in their holsters. Varsi’s mad enough without me gunning down a couple of his thugs.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Selene said. “Let me know when.”
I reached the elevator bank and pressed the up button. “On my way now,” I told her. “Wait by the door, and when all of us go inside get going.”
“All right. Be careful, Gregory.”
“You too.” The car arrived and I stepped inside. The doors closed, and I was on my way up.
I took a deep breath. As my father used to say, In for a penny, in for a pound, provided the pounding isn’t coming in your direction. Varsi had probably never really liked me, but I’d made him occasional piles of money during our rather one-sided relationship. I could only hope he was smart enough to let greed trump anger. The elevator hummed its way upward . . .
My phone signaled a message. I pulled it out—
The other three men from the poacher ship are here! Don’t come up!
I took a quick step toward the control panel. The elevator was just passing thirteen on its way to twenty; quickly, I jabbed the buttons for fourteen and fifteen. I’d get off at a lower floor, then head back to the lobby and rework my strategy. The car reached fourteen—
And kept going.
I swore again and hit the buttons for sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. The car breezed through those as well.
I yanked out my plasmic, knowing even as I did so it was a useless gesture. Elevators in fancy hotels didn’t malfunction, at least not like this. Someone must have spotted and identified me as I crossed the lobby.
And I’d even saved them the trouble of getting me out of the public eye by walking into one of their elevators under my own steam.
As my father used to say, When you’re a fly, and your potential host is gesturing you into their parlor with more than six hands, run like hell.
Only I couldn’t. Selene was still trapped, and I still had to get her out of there.
The car glided to a stop, and the doors slid open to reveal three men waiting for me. Two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder just outside the elevator doors, their handguns leveled and ready, the eyes and faces above those guns hard and cold. Like Mottola, they seemed way too old to be pointing weapons into elevators. Half visible behind them was a third man, his eyes just as hard as the others’, but the rest of his face wearing a malicious grin.
“Hello,” I said cheerfully, nodding to the group as if I walked out of elevators into a pair of Skripka 4mms all the time. “I suppose you’re going to want this.” Shifting my grip to my plasmic’s barrel, I turned it around and held it out politely toward them. “You don’t know me, but I used to work for Mr. Varsi—”
“Don’t be so modest, Roarke,” the man in back growled as one of the others took my gun. “We know all about you.”
“I’m flattered,” I said, frowning at him. The face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Have we met?”
“You’ve forgotten already?” the man retorted, his mocking tone going suddenly dark. “Havershem City? Pinnkus? That nice little private park?”
I felt my eyes narrow as the prompting and the face suddenly clicked together in my memory. “Fulbright?”
“See? You do remember,” he said, his voice going a little meaner. “You remember pounding my face into the sand?”
“I think so,” I said, feeling a hard knot settle into my stomach. Varsi I could maybe trust to put profit over revenge. I had no such expectations with Fulbright. “There’ve been so many others over the years.”
“Yeah, and it’s about time someone did that back to you,” Fulbright said.
“Well, you and your friends certainly tried,” I said, focusing on the two still pointing their guns at me. Whoever they were, they weren’t the friends Fulbright had been running with during that earlier incident. “I see you’ve picked up a couple of new ones.”
“Come on,” Fulbright said, ignoring my comment and nodding to his right. “Let’s grab ourselves a little privacy.”
He turned and headed down the hallway. The two aging thugs stepped back out of my way, and as I left the elevator one of them holstered his gun and got a firm grip on my upper left arm. Marching along together, we headed off in Fulbright’s wake. The two men Selene had mentioned were still flanking the suite door. Locals, presumably, and much closer to the appropriate age for this job than the two men walking me toward them. They were eyeing our procession with a sort of subdued interest, and maybe even a hint of respect.
Did that make my two guards more of Varsi’s upper-level elite?
“So I take it you’re the Pup?” I called past them to Fulbright.
Fulbright didn’t turn around, but the sudden stiffness in his back was as expressive as a glare would have been. “That’s a yes, then,” I concluded. “A term of endearment from your colleagues, no doubt.”
“Shut him up,” Fulbright ordered over his shoulder.
“You heard him,” the man holding my arm growled. “Can it.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said. So Fulbright was definitely the boss of this little group.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help noticing that while the thug’s demand to me had been harsh enough, the hand gripping my arm hadn’t given it the warning squeeze I would have expected from a man who really meant what he’d been told to say.
So Tera had been right. Pup was an epithet that had been assigned to Fulbright by associates who were less than enthusiastic about their current subservient roles.
Which made Fulbright . . . what?
I had no idea. But for the moment I didn’t care. All I cared about was clearing all of us out of the hallway so Selene could get free.
Fulbright pointed toward the two men loitering beside the suite door. “Open it,” he ordered. One of them nodded and gave the door an oddly syncopated knock, clearly a prearranged signal to the men inside.
But as he did so, I noticed a slight smile twitch briefly at his lips, the kind of smile that might appear behind someone’s back. At a guess, he’d overheard my Pup comment, and was just as unimpressed by Fulbright as Fulbright’s own cadre were.
Fulbright either missed the smile or else didn’t care. “Cole, you wait out here,” he said, looking back at the man walking on my right. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Sure,” the thug said.
I felt my stomach tighten. If anyone stayed in the hall, this whole thing would be for nothing. But it wasn’t like I could tell Fulbright that.
Or maybe I could. I didn’t know the depths of Fulbright’s personality, but from our brief encounter in Havershem City I did know he could be counted on to react properly if the cues were presented in the right way.
And so, as he started to turn back toward the door, I smiled.
Not a big smile. Hardly a smile at all, really. Just enough of a lip curl to indicate that I was pleased about something and trying hard not to show it. Hopefully, he would notice.
He did. His head snapped back toward me as I quickly wiped away the smile. “What?” he demanded.
“What what?” I countered.
For a second he just stared, his eyes narrowed. The door opened—
“Never mind,” he said. “Roarke looks like the type who enjoys company. Everyone inside.” He gestured to the other two men. “Everyone. Floyd?”
“Sure,” the man holding my arm said, giving me a nudge.
Obediently, I followed Fulbright into the suite. Floyd and Cole continued at my sides, with the two younger thugs following the parade and sealing the door behind us.
I gave a quiet sigh of relief. Whatever Fulbright planned for me, at least now Selene was clear.
And whatever he planned, he certainly had the resources for it. Aside from the two men he’d brought and the two who’d been in the hallway, there were the other three Selene had tagged hanging around the suite’s conversation area. One of them was standing by the door he’d just opened for us, one was lounging in a chair across from a low coffee table, and the third was sitting at the suite’s desk, staring at a monitor split-screened into a dozen different vid images. The hotel’s security cameras, I saw, probably how they’d spotted my otherwise surreptitious entrance into the lobby.
Fleetingly, I wondered if he would spot Selene’s exit, then put it out of my mind. Selene wasn’t nearly as recognizable with her scarf covering her distinctive hair as she was otherwise. Anyway, even if they spotted her there was a good chance most of Khayelitsha’s local thug contingent was up here with me right now. At the very least she would have a good head start.
There was no sign of Mottola, but there was a door off to the right that presumably led into the bedroom Selene had also mentioned. He was probably in there, snoozing off the pill I’d given him.
Hopefully he wouldn’t wake up any time soon. Everyone probably already suspected I was the one who’d taken him out, and Fulbright’s current mood was bad enough without Mottola confirming that.
“Sit,” Fulbright ordered, jabbing a finger at the chair at the far side of the coffee table. “Everything on the table. Cole, get his phone. Where’s your partner?”
“Who, Selene?” I asked, handing Cole my phone and starting around the table toward the indicated chair. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my other guard, Floyd, make a beeline for the bedroom, presumably to check on Mottola. “She’s out shopping.”
“Right,” Fulbright said sarcastically. “So tell me about the other guy.”
“What other guy?” I asked as I sat down and began emptying my pockets onto the table.
“Don’t play stupid,” Fulbright growled. “The guy on New Kyiv.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” I told him. I’d figured that Fulbright would know about Dent, given Tera’s warning that the Patth were on Dent’s trail and that there’d been Patth odor aboard the poacher ship.
What I hadn’t expected was that Fulbright’s men weren’t similarly up to speed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cole give Fulbright an obviously puzzled look. I understood the concept of need-to-know, but when that group didn’t include your own team something was seriously wrong.
“Yeah, sure you don’t,” Fulbright said. “That everything?”
I focused on the small collection of items I’d set out on the table: wallet, notebook, flashlight, card holder, multitool, and two spare charge mags for my plasmic. “Yes,” I said.
“You travel pretty light.”
“I’m on a budget.”
Someone snickered. Fulbright sent a brief look around the room, sent me a more focused glare, then turned to Cole. “Well?”
While I’d been cleaning out my pockets Cole had hooked up my phone to one of the gadgets on the desk. “Nothing much here,” he told Fulbright. “Lots of calls to one number—probably his partner—plus small clusters of others. Probably fueling and maintenance numbers when he’s on the ground.”
“What about the partner?” Fulbright asked. “Has her phone got a locator?”
“You’re wasting your time,” I put in. “Selene’s a master of disguise. You could have her location down to ten square meters and you still wouldn’t see her.”
“Cole?” Fulbright pressed.
“Yeah, I got her,” Cole confirmed. He keyed the device, and the display that had been showing the hotel cameras changed to a map of Khayelitsha. Another adjustment, and he’d zoomed in on the section centered around the Golden Pyramid. “There,” he said, pointing to a red triangle. “That’s her. Six blocks due west of us. Looks like she’s on foot and moving south.”
I tightened my throat briefly, just enough to show the apprehension a man in my position ought to feel at the revelation that his partner was a sitting duck. I sent a hooded look at Fulbright, partly to play up my supposed concern, partly to make sure he was watching my performance.
His twitch of a smile showed that he was. “Good,” he said briskly. “Get someone over there and bring her back.”
“I thought you wanted all of us to stay here and protect you,” the man at the desk said with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Don’t play stupid,” Fulbright growled, glaring at him. “Mr. Draelon told me you had over a thousand people on Marjolaine.”
“Eleven hundred, actually,” the man at the desk countered stiffly. “But they’re not all in Khayelitsha, and they’re not all enforcers.”
“So get me the ones who are enforcers.”
“You’re looking at us,” one of the others retorted. “And I suggest your tongue watch how it wags unless it wants a steak knife stuck in it.”
For a second Fulbright seemed to draw back. But only for a second. “It’s not my tongue that needs to watch itself,” he said. “Cole, you want to remind him what Mr. Draelon said about full cooperation?”
Cole’s lip twitched. “Mr. Fulbright—”
“I said tell him!”
Cole clamped his mouth shut . . . and suddenly the room was rigid with tension.
I winced. I’d already figured out that none of them particularly liked Fulbright. But I hadn’t realized how much they didn’t like him. And if he pushed that animosity too far, there could be serious and immediate consequences.
“Fine,” I spoke up into the brittle silence. “I’ll go get her.”
It would be too much to say that the scowls that turned in my direction had any genuine relief mixed into them. But I could feel the easing of the tension as I gave all of them someone else to be mad at instead of each other.
In fact, I could almost imagine I saw a brief and very small smile cross Cole’s face.
Fulbright again either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Cute,” he growled. “Fine. You two”—he pointed to the men who’d been guarding the hallway when we first arrived—“go get her. Roarke isn’t going to make any trouble, are you, Roarke?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But really, you’re wasting your time going after Selene. You won’t find her.”
“We’ll see,” Fulbright said. He looked at the two thugs as if he wanted to give them further instructions, apparently thought better of it, and merely nodded toward the door. They nodded back just as silently and left the suite.
“While we wait, let’s talk about Mottola,” Fulbright said, turning back to me. “What exactly did you do to him?”
“I don’t know any Mottola, and I haven’t been doing anything to anyone,” I assured him. “I just came to Khayelitsha to make a StarrComm call.”
“A call to . . . ?”
“To the person at the other end,” I said patiently. “Come on, Fulbright, you’re a bounty hunter. Employer confidentiality works the same way with Trailblazers.”
He snorted. “Trailblazer. Right. Nice cover. So who paid you to kill Easton Dent on New Kyiv?”
I felt my stomach knot up. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that he would know about that.
But then, I didn’t know until an hour ago that he was with Varsi, and Varsi’s organization had fingers and ears everywhere. “Still comes under the confidentiality clause,” I said.
“What if there’s a gun pointed at your head?” he countered, slipping a Balgren 5mm from under his jacket and waving it idly around.
“Interesting question,” I said consideringly. “Given that you’ve been stalking me at least since CR-207-T, I’m guessing that this Mr. Draelon you mentioned is probably hoping to talk to me personally sometime in the near future. I doubt he’d be thrilled if you delivered me in damaged condition.”
Fulbright’s face darkened. “Maybe you tried to get away.”
“Maybe these other gentlemen would rather be on Mr. Draelon’s good side than on yours,” I countered. “Certainly when it comes to lying for you.”
For a moment Fulbright just stared at me. Behind him, Floyd emerged silently from the bedroom, his own face carved in stone, his eyes on the back of Fulbright’s head. His hand wasn’t quite reaching for his jacket opening, but I had the feeling it wouldn’t take much effort for him to get to whatever was concealed there.
Maybe Fulbright sensed that, or maybe he just knew when to walk back from the edge. Trying to make it look casual, he put away the Balgren. “Come to think of it, Mr. Draelon would probably like you delivered in working condition. Well. As soon as we have your partner, we’ll be off.”
“Mm,” I said, looking at the map and the track of Selene’s phone. Actually, despite what I’d said about her being able to disappear into crowds, her white hair and distinctive Kadolian facial features made that virtually impossible.
Which was why Admiral Graym-Barker and his Icarus Group techs had gimmicked Selene’s phone to always show her tracking marker as being exactly one point nine kilometers due west of where the phone actually was.
And right now, subtracting that skewing, I could see she was in the StarrComm center, hopefully talking to Tera or Graym-Barker and figuring out our next move. Tera had said she didn’t have any backup that could get to us on Gremon, but maybe she had something close enough to Marjolaine—
“So you made a StarrComm call and then came here?” Fulbright asked suddenly. “Why?”
As my father used to say, When in doubt, a half-truth is always better than a lie, provided you pick the right half. “I was told Mr. Varsi’s organization worked out of the Golden Pyramid,” I told him. “He and I didn’t part on the best of terms, and since I had a few hours to spare I was hoping I could touch base with him and see if we could clear the air.”
“Who told you Mr. Varsi’s people were here?”
“The person I talked to,” I said patiently. “I hope he was right. I never heard of your Mr. Draelon—I assume he’s one of Mr. Varsi’s top people?”
“You could say that,” Fulbright said. “You could also say he’s the top person.”
“Ah,” I said. So whatever Varsi wanted with me, this was being handled at a very high level. I hoped that was a good sign.
The room fell silent, Fulbright apparently uninterested in responding to my brilliant riposte, me not having anything of interest to add. Cole walked over to Floyd, and I caught enough of their whispered conversation to learn that Mottola was still sleeping, but that his breathing was steady and he didn’t seem to be too badly beat up. Floyd sent me a speculative look; I gave him an innocent one in return and he lapsed back into silence.
I watched the display and the little triangle that was Selene, wondering when the thugs Fulbright had sent would reach that location and realize they’d been had. I’d assumed they’d taken a car instead of walking, so that outraged revelation could come at any time. At that point, if Fulbright was smart, he would figure out what had happened and check the locator on my phone for comparison.
Not that it would do him any good. Mine was gimmicked with an entirely different skew, marking it as half a kilometer northeast of where it really was.
I frowned at the display. That triangle hadn’t moved for a long time. Was Selene still waiting for a booth? Or had she gotten through to Tera and they were still working to find a way out of this mess?
From behind Fulbright came the snick of an opening lock. I looked over as the door swung open—
“Look who we found trying to sneak back into the hotel,” one of the thugs said cheerfully as he strode in. Walking right behind him—
Selene.
“I’m sorry, Gregory,” she said softly. Her head was bowed in shame, her face half hidden beneath the front edge of her scarf, her eyes focused on the floor in front of her. “I know you told me to leave. But I couldn’t.”
I took a careful breath. “Selene—”
“It’s different with humans,” she went on, her voice almost pleading now. “You can leave someone without even thinking. But for me, I had to come back. I couldn’t tear away, you see. Asked to do so . . . ” She trailed off and raised her head to look me in the eye.
And now, finally, I got a clear look at her pupils.
“That was fast,” Fulbright commented, standing up and giving Selene a once-over. “You get her phone?”
“No, she didn’t have it on her,” the thug said.
“We barely got out of the hotel,” the other one added as he came in behind Selene and closed the door. “She was trying to find a way in back where we parked the van.”
“She must have figured we were tracking her phone and ditched it,” the first thug said.
“No loss,” Fulbright said. “Well, that was easy. Floyd, call the aircar and tell them to fire up—we’ll be heading to the field where Roarke parked. You don’t mind if we all ride with you, do you?”
“Why not?” I said sourly. “The more the merrier.”
“Good,” he said. “Because some idiot rammed my ship and the airlock needs fixing. Cole, get some restraints on them—we’ll go back down the freight elevator.”
“What about Mottola?” Floyd asked as Cole produced a set of plastic restraints and motioned me to my feet.
“He can stay here until he wakes up.”
“He comes with us,” Floyd said.
“He can follow once he’s better,” Fulbright said. “Right now he’s just dead weight.”
“He comes with us,” Floyd repeated, and this time there was something in his voice that warned against further argument.
For a wonder, Fulbright got the message. “Fine,” he growled. “Your men can help get him in the van.”
Ten minutes later we were in the black van, maneuvering our way down the busy Khayelitsha streets. One of the local thugs was at the wheel, with Cole seated beside him in shotgun position. Selene and Fulbright occupied the two seats directly behind them, while Floyd and I were in the next pair of seats back. The still snoozing Mottola was all the way in the back, laid out across the rear bench seat.
“I hope we’re not planning to go very far,” I warned. “The Ruth is pretty cramped, even for just Selene and me. Adding in four more will make it a hell of a lot tighter. And it only sleeps three, so we’re all going to have to do that in shifts.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Fulbright said, craning his neck to look over his shoulder at me. He was seated between Selene and the sliding door, of course, just in case she had a sudden urge to leap out into city traffic. Floyd had thoughtfully set himself to guard against the same impulse on my part. “You know, in case you were hoping for a chance to escape while everyone’s asleep. But we’re just hopping over to Brandywine.”
“Ah,” I said. So Selene’s pickup of Brandywine’s name and her sense of the planet’s significance to this group had been right on the money. “That’s, what, forty hours away?”
“About that,” Fulbright said. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” I said. Forty hours there and back, plus whatever time we spent on the ground, should still give us time to get to Gremon for Dent’s meeting. Providing I was still in shape to travel at that point. “Still a little long to go without sleep.”
“You can sleep all you want,” Fulbright said. “You won’t have anything else to do. My team and I can handle a trip that short just fine.”
“Ah,” I said again. “You should probably be careful about that. Stim drinks eventually catch up with you if you use too many of them.”
His eyes hardened, just slightly. He gave Selene a quick look, then without another word turned back to face forward.
I focused on the back of Selene’s head. She hadn’t spoken since her broken-voiced apology back in the suite, not to me or anyone else. And if Fulbright was smart, he’d make sure that lack of private communication continued once we were aboard the Ruth.
Which was fine by me. I’d already seen he was the suspicious type, and doing anything to inflame those qualms would only make things worse.
Besides, I’d already gotten Selene’s message. Both through the words, and through the calmness and resolve I’d seen in her pupils.
But for me, I had to come back, she’d said. I couldn’t tear away, you see. Asked to do so. Tear away, you see. Tear away. See.
Tera C.
Selene hadn’t come back out of panic or some misguided hope of rescuing me. She’d come back because Tera had told her to. Clearly, the two of them had cooked up a plan.
I was looking forward to finding out what the hell it was.