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CHAPTER SIX

Lisa’s breath was coming in a slow rumble that was just a notch below actual snoring when Travis awoke from his light doze to realize his right arm, wedged beneath Lisa’s neck, had fallen asleep.

For a minute he listened to her, imagining her face in the darkness of his cabin on Diactoros as he gently wiggled his fingers in an attempt to wake up the nerves without similarly waking up his wife.

He was halfway successful. The arm remained numb, but the movement didn’t disturb Lisa. He relaxed the fingers and instead pressed his arm down into the pillow, hoping he could create enough of a gap with her neck and shoulders to slide the arm free.

Again, no luck. He tried again, pressing down harder this time, then gave up the effort. With a quiet sigh, he relaxed his body, pressed against hers, and tried to figure out what else he might try.

And so, of course, what movements of hand and arm hadn’t accomplished the sigh did. With her final raspy breath morphing into a gentle snort, she woke up. “Travis?” she murmured.

“I’m here,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” he assured her. “But if you could just…?”

“Oh—your arm,” she said guiltily as she lifted her head and shoulders off his arm. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Travis said as he pulled the arm free, wincing as the pins and needles set in. “My fault for not changing position before you went to sleep.”

“Next time wake me sooner,” Lisa said, rolling up on her left shoulder and resting her right hand against his chest. “Especially if it’ll get me out of a dream like the one I was having there at the end.”

“Another pop inspection where the whole ship is a mess and the admiral blames you?”

“That’s your nightmare, silly,” Lisa admonished, poking him gently in the ribs. “No, this one was Admiral Basaltberg going crazy and gunning down the whole bridge crew because they’d gotten lost and couldn’t get him back to New Berlin.”

“And you couldn’t help?”

“I tried,” Lisa said. “But suddenly he was speaking Chinese or Korean or something, and I couldn’t understand a single word.”

“Did you try speaking German to him?”

“Right, like I can remember how to speak German in a dream.” She hunched up on her elbow and Travis had the impression that she was glaring down at him. “Wait a second. Are you telling me that you speak German in your dreams?”

“Not really,” Travis hedged. “I can sometimes get some of the words, but my grammar structure usually falls apart.”

“Nice save,” Lisa said, mock-severely. “But watch yourself. After all those claims about being bad with languages, you are not going to get workable German before I do.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Travis protested.

“Because remember, I’m still a superior officer,” Lisa said, lying down again. “If we get to New Berlin before I’ve got this language thing licked, I’m commandeering you as my translator.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Travis said. “Should I warn Gavin that my kidnapping might be in the offing?”

“No, let’s let him be surprised like everyone else.” Lisa paused. “How’s he doing?”

Travis shook his head. “I don’t know. He won’t talk about it, at least not to me. But I think he knows he’s in way over his head.”

“Does he think anyone else on Manticore would have been more up to the task?”

“He probably thinks everyone on Manticore would do a better job,” Travis said with a sigh.

“It’s kind of sad, really,” Lisa mused. “Has he ever really had a challenge?”

“Nothing remotely like this,” Travis said. “He went into the Lords after his sister died and had barely gotten himself established when he was taken under Breakwater’s wing. Up until then he’d been working—electrical system maintenance, mostly—and not really paying much attention to politics. For years after that he was more or less following the Chancellor’s lead on everything. Now, he’s suddenly been thrown into the deep end of the pool.”

“Maybe you should go to him and tell him that’s how we all feel when we first get this kind of responsibility.”

Do we feel that way?” Travis asked. “Have we ever—you and I—been in this same situation?”

“Of course we have.”

“Have we?” Travis countered. “We’ve never been fully in charge of anything. We’ve always had someone over us—bosun, division head, department head, captain—who we can go to for advice.”

“Not that the advice has always been good.”

Travis wrinkled his nose. He’d had his share of bad superior officers through his career, too. “My point is that we’ve never held the full weight of anything on our shoulders, and we won’t until we’re captaining ships of our own. On the other hand, Gavin’s carrying the full weight of Manticoran foreign policy right now.”

“I hadn’t looked at it that way,” Lisa said thoughtfully. “No, you’re right. And Basaltberg isn’t making it easy on him.”

“Basaltberg is worried,” Travis said. “I gather Emperor Gustav wasn’t in the best of health when they left New Berlin. Basaltberg’s personal nightmare is that the emperor will have passed before he gets back.”

“Really? He didn’t show any of that while he was on Manticore.”

“Of course not,” Travis said. “He had his orders, and he was following them. Good thing, too. Can’t you see the reaction to a grumpy, growling Basaltberg glaring at the Lords and Cabinet, with an Andermani battlecruiser overhead?”

“There’d have been panic in the streets,” Lisa agreed. “And you know all this about Basaltberg how?”

Travis shrugged. “I overheard a couple of the senior officers talking about it when I was aboard a few days ago.”

“And they didn’t think you could understand them? You rat,” Lisa interrupted herself. “Dreams be darned—you’re way ahead of where you said you were. Aren’t you?”

“Not way ahead,” Travis protested. “Maybe just a little.”

“You rat,” Lisa repeated, giving him a mock-serious punch in the ribs. “Okay, pal, this means war.” She rolled over and keyed on her side table light.

“What are you doing?” Travis asked, squinting against the sudden glare.

“If you think I’m going to sleep when you’re—what, three? Four?—four lessons ahead of me, you’re sadly mistaken,” she said firmly. “Go on—go back to sleep. Traitor.”

“Oh, come on,” Travis said. “Really?”

“Go back to sleep,” she repeated.

“What if I made you a better offer?”

She paused, looking warily back over her shoulder. “Are you making me a better offer?”

“I don’t know,” Travis said. “Is there anything you’d like better than an hour of conjugating German verbs?”

“I guess there’s one way to find out,” she said, turning off the light again. “You did say a whole hour, right?”

* * *

“…and they signed the capitulation that evening,” Quint said, taking a sip of her brandy. Her eyes were distant, Llyn noted, embracing the memory.

Over dinner he’d given her a couple of highly edited stories from his past and encouraged her to do the same. He hadn’t expected the suggestion to open this kind of floodgate. For all her prestige, for all her military successes, Commodore Catt Quint apparently hadn’t had anyone to talk to—to really talk to—for a long time.

Why she’d picked Llyn for that job he couldn’t fathom. Yes, he was playing the bon vivant, sympathetic, friendly ally sort; but surely she wasn’t taken in by the act. Was she?

Maybe she’d been played that way so often that she no longer cared. She needed to talk, she wanted to talk, and Llyn was the only port in the storm.

Or maybe she was looking ahead toward her own death.

A shiver ran up Llyn’s back. He’d known others who somehow sensed that a given job or trip or meeting would be their last. Sometimes they’d been wrong, but the sense of destiny and powerlessness that subsequently became a permanent part of them had been eerie.

And sometimes, they’d been right.

“Why are you doing this?”

Llyn forced himself back to the present. The lure of the past was apparently contagious. “Excuse me?”

“Why are you doing this?” Quint repeated. “I don’t mean why your associates want you to do it—I know you won’t tell me that. I mean why you?”

“You mean why me instead of Bryce? I can’t really—”

“No,” Quint said. “You’re about to provoke a war. That begs explanation.”

“I prefer to think of it as righting a wrong,” Llyn said. “I assume Ms. Bryce explained the circumstances.”

“Damn long delayed justice, if you ask me.” Quint cocked her head a little, as if that would let her read Llyn better. “What do you have against Gustav Anderman?”

“Never met the man,” Llyn said. There’d been something in her face and voice just then… “I take it you have?”

“No,” Quint said quietly. Her face was suddenly carved stone, her eyes looking back at a more horrible memory than even the tales of carnage she’d been sharing with him. “But I will. Very soon.

“And then I’ll kill him.”

Llyn’s first instinct was to smoothly change the subject. It was risky to let assets, especially military ones, wallow too deeply into psychological darkness.

His second instinct was to sit quietly, not move, and hear her out.

“I was six T-years old,” she said, her voice gone from quiet to barely audible. “My parents were mercenaries with the Condotta Group. A few of us were in New Bombay, doing a little R and R, when Anderman and his group arrived and picked the same town for their own hellraising. I was worried, but I remember my mother telling me not to worry, that we were in the same business they were and they wouldn’t bother us.”

She took a long, shaking breath, followed by a long drink of her brandy. “My father told me about it afterward,” she said. “Gustav Anderman himself came into our hotel. He blistered my mother for ten minutes about something he thought she’d done to his people. My father had put me in the bedroom before Anderman arrived, but I could hear the angry voices.

“And when he was done spewing his hate and anger over something she hadn’t even done…he killed her.”

Llyn had guessed that was where the story was going. But the last three words still sent a fresh shiver up his back. “Did your father…?” He broke off.

“Anderman let him go,” Quint said. “I guess he hadn’t done anything the great mercenary chief thought was worth killing him for. Anderman and his men were gone before he came back into the bedroom to get me.”

“Was there an investigation? Surely the New Bombay authorities—”

“There was nothing,” Quint snarled. “They took us to Police HQ so my father could give his statement. After that, nothing. Three days later we left with the rest of the Condotta, and nothing was ever done.”

Llyn felt his lip twitch. Gustav Anderman’s past was a colorful read, but he’d never heard anything like that about the man. Whoever he’d paid off to keep a murder off the record, he’d gotten his money’s worth.

Quint took a deep breath; and with that, the shadow disappeared and the mask was back in place. “So you see, I’m just seeking justice, too,” she said, giving him a hard-edged smile.

“Nice to know we’re on the same page.”

“But I didn’t tell you that just for your amusement,” Quint went on. “I have a favor to ask.”

“I’m listening.”

“When all this is over, if I don’t succeed in killing Gustav Anderman—” She locked eyes with him. “I want you to do it.”

Llyn stared at her, feeling like a rug had just been pulled out from under him. What the hell?

He didn’t want Gustav dead. Neither did Axelrod. They certainly didn’t want him dead at the hands of an assassin. That kind of destabilization might well plunge his Empire into civil war.

And with the military resources the sides in that war would have available, it could conceivably spill over into Silesia, Manticore, and even Haven, possibly plunging the whole sector into chaos. Clearly, Quint hadn’t thought this through.

Or maybe she had. Maybe her thirst for vengeance and justice stretched beyond the man himself into a rage that would be satisfied only by bringing down everything he’d built. The fact that her failure to assassinate him carried the implicit assumption that she herself would already be dead and in no position to gloat was apparently of no consequence to her.

She wanted Gustav’s universe to burn. And she was counting on Llyn to make it happen.

And so he took a deep breath, swallowed hard like a man making a difficult decision, and looked straight back into her eyes. “All right,” he said quietly. “If it’s really that important to you…all right. I’ll do it.”

* * *

Conversation ceased after that. Llyn and Quint finished their brandy in silence, each wrapped in his or her own thoughts. Llyn made sure she finished her drink before he did, and when she left to make a final check of Retribution’s bridge, he asked permission to remain behind in her private dining room until he likewise finished.

Given that he’d just agreed to commit murder for her, she was graciously accommodating.

He was down to a couple of small sips, and wondering if he should add a little more to his glass, when Amos, the commodore’s personal steward, finally arrived.

“Good evening, sir,” Amos said, nodding politely as he began gathering the dinner dishes together. “Pardon me, but Commodore Quint likes to have everything put away before she returns from her postprandial inspection.”

“That’s all right, Amos,” Llyn said. “I was hoping for a chance to talk to you.”

Amos’s eyebrows went up a couple of millimeters. “With me, sir?”

“Indeed,” Llyn said. “How long have you been with the Quintessence Mercenaries?”

“Not long,” Amos said. “I was one of those who were hired when the commodore began gathering crews for her new ships.” He raised his eyebrows. “I understand that you were the one instrumental in obtaining them for her?”

“I’d have thought a personal steward would be low on her priority list,” Llyn said, ignoring the question. “A good weapons tech would seem more useful.”

“Never underestimate the value of a good steward, sir,” Amos said with a small smile. “Especially when that steward is also an expert scrounger. Why, the items I was able to obtain for her kitchen alone—”

“That’s all right,” Llyn interrupted. “Probably best that I don’t know. Tell me, what was your last ship?”

“The Jackstraw, sir,” Amos said. “Heavy cruiser of the Black Hand Consortium. Lost my job when, well, when the Black Hands ran into someone bigger and meaner.”

“I remember reading about that,” Llyn said, nodding. “Nice.”

Amos frowned. “Nice?”

“I mean it works well because the Black Hands took so much damage in their last stand that their records were basically vaporized,” Llyn explained.

“Along with much of their crews,” Amos said ruefully.

“Right,” Llyn said. “As last stands go, it was pretty spectacular. My point is that because the records were lost there’s no complete data trail on who was actually with the Consortium and who wasn’t.”

Amos’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir.”

“Really?” Llyn asked calmly. “I thought the bread crumb trail was pretty clear. Fine, follow this. You never served with the Black Hands. You were brought aboard by Ms. Bryce—very subtly, no doubt, with Commodore Quint convinced it was her decision—to serve as an extra set of eyes and ears aboard the Retribution. Was invoking the Jackstraw Bryce’s idea, or yours?”

“Sir, I have no idea—”

“Don’t waste my time, Amos,” Llyn bit out, dropping his voice into liquid hydrogen range. “I know Freya Bryce. She would never send her ship away and let herself be trapped under an asset’s control unless she had an ace up her sleeve. I’ve known she had a shadow for years; now I know that shadow was you. What were her orders?”

For a pair of seconds he thought Amos was going to stick stubbornly to his cover identity. Such mindless rigidity would have given Llyn another data point on the man and possibly shifted him across that fine line between asset and liability.

Luckily for Amos, the man wasn’t that stupid. “Fine,” he said calmly. “Like you already said, I was supposed to keep an eye on things. There were a couple of officers in particular that Ms. Bryce wanted me to watch.”

“Because…?”

“Not sure,” Amos admitted. “Possibly because they might oppose the commodore; possibly because they were sharp enough to see through our plan soon enough to make trouble.”

“Mm,” Llyn said. So it was our plan now. Either Amos was an enthusiastic team player, or he had a sadly overblown idea of his own importance in the grand scheme of things. Probably a delusion he’d picked up during all those years as Bryce’s shadow. “And Commodore Quint herself?”

Amos’s throat worked. “You heard her, sir. She wants to bring down Gustav and the whole Andermani Empire. Ms. Bryce didn’t think that would be in our best interests.”

“Ms. Bryce was entirely correct,” Llyn agreed. “So what did Ms. Bryce want you to do about it?”

The throat twitch again. “She said that if she gave me the order, I was to kill the commodore.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Amos said. “She also told me that if for some reason she wasn’t in position to give that order, I was to use my own judgment.”

“Good orders,” Llyn said approvingly. “Succinct, clear, easy to remember. Now that I’m in charge, though, there’ll be a couple of changes.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll continue to observe the crew and report on anything odd,” Llyn said. “You’ll also keep a close eye on the commodore and her mental state. I presume that’s why Bryce maneuvered you into the steward’s slot?”

Amos shrugged. “The other option was somewhere in the impeller room where I could open the ship to deadly attack if Ms. Bryce deemed that necessary. She decided steward would give us warning sooner.”

“Early warning is key,” Llyn agreed. “So, watch and report. But as for any action against her, you will do nothing. Do you understand? Nothing.

“But what if—?”

“Do I need to repeat myself?”

Amos’s lips compressed briefly. “No. Sir.”

“Good,” Llyn said. “If there’s action to be taken, I will take that action. There will be no contingency with regards to my incapacitation because there will be no incapacitation.”

Amos seemed to measure him with his eyes. “If you say so.”

“I say so,” Llyn confirmed. “You seem unconvinced.”

“No, sir, not at all,” Amos said evenly. “I know my place in the food chain. And I do know how to take orders.”

“Excellent,” Llyn said, offering Amos a hint of a genuine smile. “Then we should get along just fine.”

“Yes, sir.” Amos held out his hand. “Take your glass, sir?”

Llyn looked at his snifter. It was indeed empty. “Thank you,” he said, handing it to the other. “Good evening.”

“Good evening, sir.” Nodding again, Amos left the compartment.

“Yes, indeed,” Llyn murmured toward the closed hatch. “We should get along just fine.”

* * *

“So,” Ralph said casually as the evening meal wound to a close. “Any idea how much longer you’ll be staying?”

“Not really sure,” Chomps said. “I was told I’d be up for a hearing soon. But that was a couple of months ago. I’m starting to wonder if they’ve forgotten me.”

“Maybe Chief Gorkich can put in a good word for you,” Eileen suggested. “He finished his studies and headed back to Landing this morning.”

“Yes, I know,” Chomps said. He’d had a couple of short conversations with former Chief Gorkich over the past few weeks, mainly to get Eileen off his back about his lack of socializing. But the chats had been strained, and he was more than happy to see the man go. “But I doubt any of his old friends will be able to do anything. Which leaves me stuck here.” He raised his eyebrows. “Unless you want me to leave, of course. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“No, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” Eileen assured him.

“Thanks,” Chomps said. “Kind of boring out here. Though I hear you had an interesting accident in the area a few months ago.”

He could feel the sudden spike in tension around the table. “I don’t know if interesting is the word I’d use,” Eileen said carefully.

“Tragic, maybe,” Terry muttered. “Horrible. Disgusting. Stupid. Completely avoidable.”

“I suppose most accidents come under those headings,” Chomps said. “So where exactly did it happen?”

“In the forest,” Terry said. “Why do you care?”

“I just wondered,” Chomps said. “Could you see it from here? Could I see the site from here? Where exactly was it?”

“You want to play tourist?” Terry demanded. She slapped her fork onto the table beside her empty plate. “Fine,” she bit out, pushing back her chair. “We’re here to serve. Let’s go.”

“What, now?”

“You got something better to do?” Terry retorted. “Come on, we’re losing light.”

Chomps looked at Ralph and Eileen. “Don’t look at us,” Eileen warned. “She’s been stubborn since she was a child.”

“And now she’s also armed,” Ralph added. “Enjoy the walk, Chomps.”

Two minutes later he and Terry crossed the roads in front of the inn and headed down the hiking trail into the woods.

“Watch for stray roots,” Terry called to him over her shoulder. “And if you see something that looks like a giant freckled pickle alongside the path, for God’s sake don’t kick it.”

“Got it,” Chomps said, eyeing a giant freckled pickle warily as he passed it.

Forty minutes later, with the sky noticeably darker than it had been at the beginning of their trek, they were there.

“So this is it?” Chomps asked, looking around the clearing as they walked across it.

“Yes,” Terry said. Her voice was no longer drill-sergeant tough, but had changed to something soft and pained and haunted. She finished crossing the clearing, then turned around and pointed behind him “There. Right there is where Duke Serisburg ran his air car into a tree and killed himself and his family. And pretty much the whole duchy along with it.”

“Yeah,” Chomps said, turning beside her and looking around. “That’s the tree?”

“That’s it.” Terry pointed upward. “You can still see the scars where the impact tore into the bark.”

“And nearly killed the whole tree,” Chomps commented, craning his neck. The tree was the tallest one in the immediate vicinity, sticking up a good five meters above its neighbors, and was nearly four meters across at its base. Even from thirty meters below the impact point he could clearly see the deep gash where the air car had hit, and a lot of the branches above that point were twisted and leafless. “He was drinking when it happened, right?”

“That’s what the autopsy showed,” Terry said. “Three times the legal blood-alcohol content.”

“Was that typical for him?”

“What, driving drunk on manual?” Terry growled. “How should I know?”

“You once told me you dealt a lot with drunks,” Chomps reminded her. “So did you ever give him a ride home?”

“I never saw him drunk in public,” she said stiffly. “What he did up in his private retreat I don’t know. I do know we don’t speak ill of the dead around here.”

“No disrespect meant,” Chomps assured her. “Just trying to figure out what happened.”

“What happened was that he was flying on manual, went too fast and too low, and crashed into a tree,” Terry bit out. “End of story.”

“So it would seem,” Chomps murmured, gazing up at the tree. He looked back behind him at the other trees rising up along the small spinal ridge that ran down the middle of the forest. From the position of the gash, it appeared that Serisburg had been flying in from that direction. He looked back at the impact tree.

And felt a small tingle raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

“There are just a few points I still don’t understand,” he continued. “You say he was flying drunk. But his wife was also in the car, wasn’t she?”

And his three children.”

“Right, but they couldn’t drive. She could. If he was drunk, why wasn’t she the one flying?”

“Their youngest son had a bad cold,” Terry said. “Maybe she was tending to him. Some people think Benjamin’s sneezing might have distracted the duke at the wrong time.”

“Yes, but—”

“Look, you might as well ask why he didn’t engage the autopilot,” Terry said. “We don’t know. He loved to fly and always liked to be in charge. All we know for sure was that he hit that tree hard enough to completely wreck the counter-grav and send the car dropping straight to the ground. It’s a toss-up as to which of those impacts killed them.”

“Yeah,” Chomps said, looking around him. The grass and local bushes had recovered from the catastrophe, but there were still a couple of deep gouges where jagged edges of metal from the crushed and half-disintegrated vehicle had slammed into the ground. “Where was he coming from at the time? His retreat?”

“Yes,” Terry said, frowning at him. “Why?”

“Just wondering,” Chomps said. “This is kind of an out-of-the-way part of the duchy, isn’t it?”

“You should know—you’re just spent two months here,” Terry reminded him. “If you’ve been anywhere more out-of-the-way, I’d love to hear about it.”

“Actually, I have,” Chomps said. “It’s called Sphinx. You have a map?”

Terry shook her head. “Look, I really don’t want to do this. You want to play ghoul, do it on your own time.”

Chomps eyed her, a second tingle running through him. “You were here, weren’t you?” he asked quietly. “At the scene of the crash. You helped pull him out of the wreckage.”

“Not him, no,” Terry said. There was a deep pain behind her eyes, but her jaw was set defiantly. “No, I got to pull out the children. Even strapped in and with all the airbag deployments they were…you want details, go look at the crash scene photos.”

“I’m sorry,” Chomps said. “I just want to understand.”

“Then understand this,” she said. “It happened. The duke killed himself and his family, and in the process changed life in Serisburg for all of us. Forever.”

For a brief moment Chomps considered telling her that he, too, had gone through his share of life-changing experiences. But this wasn’t the time or place. “I just want to understand,” he said again. “Can you at least show me where they started from that night?”

For a long moment she stared at him. Then, some of the pain receded—or more likely was forced back by a sheer act of will—and her professional police officer’s expression reinstated itself across her face. “If you like,” she said, pulling out her tablet and keying it. “Here. Serisburg Point, the duchy seat and the ducal home. And here’s his private retreat.”

Chomps peered at the map. The direct line between the two points did indeed pass over the area where they were standing. “Any servants with them at the retreat?”

“No,” Terry said. “Otherwise they would have taken the larger air car.”

“And would have had a driver, I suppose?”

“Maybe,” Terry said. “But like I said, the duke liked to drive.” She frowned at him. “What exactly are you getting at?”

“Nothing specific,” Chomps assured her. “Just noting the fact that everyone who would have known how much the duke was drinking that evening is conveniently dead.”

“I don’t think conveniently is the word I’d use.” Terry sighed. “Come on, Townsend, don’t you think everyone and his brother hasn’t dug into this like a terrier after a rat? The rumors and suspicions were like lumps in a lump factory for weeks afterward. But no one’s turned up anything to indicate it wasn’t just a tragic accident.”

Nothing to indicate is hardly a ringing endorsement.”

“The official report has been filed,” Terry growled. “The case is closed, and we move on.”

“To what? Drunks and disorderlies?”

For a long moment he thought she was actually going to hit him. She took a deep breath, and the fresh flame in her eyes faded into a slightly less ominous glow. “Okay, Mr. Senior Chief who knows everything,” she growled. “Here’s the scene. Tell me what the report got wrong.”

Chomps looked up at the tree again. It was right on the edge of the clearing they were standing in, rather like the handle on a ladle. “I suppose the location of his mountain retreat wasn’t exactly secret?”

“Nope,” Terry said. “Neither was the fact that he was there. Or when he headed up there, or when he was coming back. When Duke Serisburg moved, he wanted the limelight to be waiting for him when he got there.”

“What was the weather like that night?”

“Some low clouds,” Terry said. “Nothing that should have been a problem.”

“Was there an urgent meeting or something at Serisburg Point the next day?”

“Nothing on the record,” Terry said. “I know—you’re wondering why he headed back home in the middle of the night with a sick son and a snoot full. I wonder that myself. A lot.”

“What answer do you get?”

Terry seemed to brace herself. “That the man was an idiot. An arrogant, overconfident idiot.” She snorted. “Did I mention he hadn’t been wearing his restraints at the time of the crash?”

“No, you didn’t,” Chomps said, frowning. “Not even loosely?”

“No, he’d taken them off completely,” Terry said. “Hence the theory that Benjamin’s coughing or sneezing distracted him. Hard to get a good look behind you when your restraints are on.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with that problem,” Chomps said, looking up at the tree again. The sunlight had now faded to the point that he could barely make out the gash. “Best thing for your parents’ business, though, I’d guess,” he said. “You must have had gawkers by the dozens swarming out here afterward.”

“Try by the hundreds,” Terry said sourly. “And yes, a bunch of them ended up staying at Three Corners. All in all, we’d rather host one of the duchy’s birdwatcher groups. We should head back before it gets completely dark.”

Chomps looked around the clearing one more time. “Lead the way,” he said. “One other thing.”

“Yes?” she asked as she started back along the track.

“You said I could see the photos from the scene?”

“If you really want to,” she said. “There are half a dozen from the news reports you can pull up. Knock yourself out.”

“I meant the real pictures, the ones you and the other police took,” Chomps said. “Even better, can I see the wrecked air car? I assume it’s still around somewhere.”

She slowed to a stop, taking her time about it, and turned to face him. “Dad calls you Chomps. Is that just him, or is it for general usage?”

“It’s an all-purpose nickname, yes.”

“Well then, Chomps, listen up,” Terry said in that same tone. “This is police business. Correction: it was police business. Pick a tense; either way it’s not for amateur busybodies from Landing to poke their fingers into.”

“What if I told you something was wrong here?”

“What if I told you that there’s always something wrong with a person’s violent death?” she countered.

“Yes, but—”

“It’s closed, Townsend,” she said, her voice hardening. “You hear me? Closed. There’s been a final report, and the residents’ fear and uncertainty has faded—”

“But if there’s new evidence—”

“—and we’re all just waiting for whatever’s going to happen now that the Crown has our duchy,” Terry continued stiffly. “We don’t want anyone stirring the pot, okay? Especially some amateur detective who has no idea what the hell he’s doing. Clear?”

Chomps took a deep breath. “Clear,” he said reluctantly.

“Good.” She spun around and started back toward the inn.

Chomps followed, staring at her back. He couldn’t see the muscles through her shirt, but her whole stride and body language screamed tension at him.

The question was, was the tension because she was afraid Chomps was going to reopen a can of worms? Or was it because she hoped Chomps would reopen it?

He didn’t know her well enough to guess which one it was. But he was going to get to know her better. A lot better.

Because she was his information source for this thing, and he wasn’t going to let it go. Not yet. Not until he’d proven to his own satisfaction that it was indeed an accident.

Or until he’d proven otherwise.


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Framed