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CHAPTER 11

A few hours later I drove across the city, fighting through afternoon traffic as I went, headed for the Bauhaus Gaststätte. I took the canister from Dr. Ivery’s home with me, stuffed in a small satchel.

When I walked into the restaurant I was greeted by an actual human hostess, something you see only in the fancier establishments in town. She was a pretty thing in a black dress, college-aged I thought, with her bright blue hair done up nicely and sparkly earrings hanging from her ears.

“Good afternoon, sir!” she said, bubbling with authentic-sounding enthusiasm. “Welcome to Bauhaus Gaststätte! Can I have your name?”

“Ezekiel Novak,” I said, taking off my hat.

She glanced at the transparent eyepiece over her right eye. “I see you have a reservation for one.”

“I do,” I said. “Say, are you new? I’m something of a regular here and I haven’t seen you around before.”

“I just started!” she said. “Do you have a seating preference?”

“I’d like a private booth, please, and give my compliments to Herr Hauser, if you would.”

Something must have clicked when I said that. “Oh. Oh, I see. We have a private booth available. Just follow the robot.”

I thanked her and let the robot lead the way. It was a tall, slender machine, a conical body balanced on thin central shaft that ended in a single, big wheel. It rolled quietly across the carpeted floor as it led me to the booth in question. “Here you are, sir,” it said, in a tinny, synthesized voice.

I nodded at the robot before I could stop myself and sat down in the booth. It was a big pod built into the back wall, with a padded bench circling a round table in the middle. The door slid closed and the noise from the rest of the restaurant was muted. It was so quiet it could have doubled as one of those little closets they stick you in to test your hearing. You could choose from a selection of music if you wanted, but I didn’t mind the silence.

I was famished though, not having eaten since breakfast, and I figured getting some food in me would help with the headache. I ordered from the provided tablet and sipped at a glass of room-temperature carbonated water. My meal, sauerbraten with a side of rotkohl, arrived at the same time the Baron did, about fifteen minutes later. He stood aside as the server robot placed the dishes on the table, then sat down across from me. The door slid shut and we were alone in silence.

“I did not expect to hear from you so soon, Easy,” he said, cautiously, “or on such short notice. Are you alright?”

“You mind if I eat?” I asked. “I’m starving.” He waved me on so I dug in, only talking after I’d swallowed a bite. “I wasn’t planning on meeting you this soon either, but it’s been a hell of a couple of days. To answer your question, no, I’m not alright. Yesterday morning, I got jumped by a couple of Ascension corporate security types.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You were attacked?”

“They used me for soccer practice before drugging me and shoving me in their car, but I’ll live” I aggressively sawed another piece off of my beef roast and ate it before speaking again. “Last night, I made a house call to the late Dr. Ivery’s residence.”

“I see. Did you find anything?”

I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “The food is fantastic, as usual.”

The Baron sipped his wine before speaking and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid you’ll have to fill me in on what’s happened since we last spoke. Start with these Ascension security people and tell me what happened.”

“I decided the best way forward was to have a talk with Arthur Carmichael, so I contacted him directly. Turns out he wanted to have a talk with me, too, and sent a couple of his boys to fetch me. They weren’t gentle about it but he and I came to and understanding, I think. More importantly, I know where Cassandra Carmichael is.”

It was obvious that he was not expecting me to say that. “I see. Am I to assume that she’s still alive, then?”

“She is. At least, that’s what I was told.”

“That is good news. Where is she?”

“According to her stepfather, she’s being held at the Ventura Medical Research Center under a false identity. They won’t let him see her and apparently don’t know that he knows where she is. They’re holding her as leverage to keep him in line and he wants me to get her out. If I can, he’s willing to spill everything he knows about Site 471, Project Isaiah, and the Seraph.”

“I see.”

“I need a way to get into that place and get her out without ending up in prison.”

“He expects you to do all this?”

“It seems nuts, right? I asked him the same thing. He’s desperate. He doesn’t have access to anyone who could pull off such a job that wouldn’t rat him out to the company. He doesn’t have any concrete proof that she’s being held there, either, just the word of people he trusts. He won’t go to the Security Forces because he thinks they either won’t believe him or that word will get back to the company if he does.”

“And you agreed to this?”

“I did, and I need your help.”

“What makes you think I can help you gain access to a private research facility?”

I sighed, loudly. “Deitrik, please. I know there are things you can’t and won’t tell me, and normally that doesn’t bother me too much, but this has been a hell of a couple of days. I have reason to believe that my client and my assistant are both in danger. You convinced a district attorney to not press charges on me. I don’t understand your exact place in all this, but you obviously have some pull.”

My place? You came to me.”

“That’s true, I did . . . and then you used the threat of jailtime to get me to agree to feed you information, so here I am. Doc Ivery believed there were observers from Confederate intelligence at Site 471. Cassandra Carmichael, on the other hand, didn’t think that the proper notifications to local and Confederation authorities were made when the Seraph was found.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’m a detective, Deitrik. This is what I do. I need to be honest, it’s getting to be a little insulting how everyone is surprised that I’m competent at my job.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Easy. It’s not like you to act this way.”

“Yeah, well, in the last couple of days I’ve been shot at, watched a woman die, spent the night in jail, got kicked in the ribs, and was drugged, kidnapped, and strapped to a chair. My business, my friends, and my life have all been threatened. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little short with you, but I have questions I need answered.”

He studied me for a moment as if contemplating what to say. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you still answer to the SIS?”

Deitrik took a long swing of his wine and closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes, I still report to the Security Intelligence Service. As far as public records are concerned I’m retired, but my status can better be described as in reserve. One of my roles is to serve as a sort of auditor, watching the watchmen, ensuring operational security and legal compliance.”

“Are you aware of any SIS involvement with Project Isaiah?”

“No. Believe me when I say that if this were an SIS-run operation I would not have brought you in. What is it that Dr. Ivery told you? You wouldn’t tell me before, except for that she thought there were intelligence people on-site.”

“The doc told me that the Seraph is real. I couldn’t get a lot of specifics about what it is, exactly. She said it’s a life-form of some sort, somehow not dead after sixty-eight million years.”

Deitrik raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

“Yes. It was found buried under Mount Gilead and they were able to communicate with it somehow. They killed her to stop her from going off-world. They wouldn’t have done that if she was just making things up.”

“Someone killed her, yes, but even if Ascension was behind it, that doesn’t mean that anyone from the SIS is involved. Dr. Ivery may have simply been mistaken about who she saw.”

That was a possibility, even if I didn’t want to admit it. “Well, if you want my investigation to go forward, we need to get Cassandra Carmichael out of that facility. Finding her was what I was hired to do. You help me do that and I’m your man. I’ll dig into whatever you want me to dig into. This has to come first, though.”

“Easy,” the Baron said, softly, “that is, as they say, a big ask.”

“I realize that, but it’s necessary.”

“Do you have any evidence that she’s there?”

“Her stepfather is a career security manager for Ascension. He located her.”

“And you think you can trust him?”

“He was willing to pay cash up front. If this is some kind of a setup, it’s the most elaborate one ever. Why contact me at all, much less pay me, if the goal was to keep me from finding her?”

“Arthur Carmichael may not be the one setting you up. He may be the intended target.”

“That’s a possibility, but given the stakes, I’m willing to take the risk. Aren’t you? Whatever the Seraph is, it’s alien and it could be dangerous. They might be putting the whole colony at risk.”

Deitrik sipped his wine again. “When alien artifacts are found anywhere in Confederation space, there is a reporting procedure established by treaty, specifically the Conventions on the Discovery and Control of Alien Technology, Organisms, and Remains. These were ratified after the Medusae Fossae incident on Mars. You’ve heard of it, I trust?”

I nodded.

He continued, “Such finds must be reported to Confederation authorities, who then come to oversee the find and secure it, if necessary. Nova Columbian law has similar, parallel reporting requirements. In fact, the Confederation cannot legally keep it secret from the member government if the artifact is found on one of the colonies. This is expressly prohibited by the treaty.”

I kept eating and let him talk.

“The process is supposed to be quite transparent and such finds are not kept from the public. In certain specific cases the find can be kept secret, but the reporting requirements remain in place. I have been aware of Site 471 for some time, but no report of the discovery of alien artifacts ever crossed my desk.”

“Why do you want me to report my findings to you if you don’t believe anything is going on?”

“I never said I don’t believe anything is going on. In any case, it’s not a question of what I believe; it’s a question of what I can prove. Helping you break into private property is illegal and carries a high risk of exposure, not just for myself, but for the entire organization. There are ways it can be justified and sanctioned, but only as an emergency contingency operation. If I back you on this and you’re wrong, we could both end up in prison. The word of Dr. Ivery and Arthur Carmichael isn’t enough for me to act on, at least not in such a brazen fashion.”

“I figured you might say that,” I said, reaching into my satchel. “Here, I brought you something.” I handed him the canister containing the shard.

“What is this?” he asked, taking it into his hands.

“I got it from a hidden safe in Dr. Ivery’s home. The last thing she did before she died was give me the key. See for yourself.”

Deitrik slowly unscrewed the lid of the metal canister and removed it. He reached in and withdrew both the shard and the little card that came with it. He set the fragment down on the table and read the plastic card.

I watched the color drain from his face. “Anomalous materials,” he read. He set the card down and looked at the silver-white object on the table. “Fascinating.” The shard caught the light in odd ways. It didn’t emit light on its own, but appeared brighter than it should in the ambient light.

“It seems Doc Ivery smuggled this out of Site 471 and was intending on taking it off-world with her. Maybe that’s why they had her killed.”

“I’ll have to have it tested,” he said, hesitantly, not taking his eyes off the fragment as he spoke. “To verify its authenticity.”

“Whatever you do, do it carefully. I don’t know what the hell that thing is made of, and I don’t think Ascension does, either.” Having finished eating, I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “The food was excellent, by the way.”

“Dinner’s on the house tonight, Easy,” he said, still looking at the fragment.

“You sure? I’m good for it. I’ve got a wad of Arthur Carmichael’s money burning a hole in my pocket.”

“I’m sure, it’s no trouble.” He looked up at me again. “You should go. I’ll have the security recordings scrubbed. You were never here.”

“Of course.”

“I will contact you with more information after the analysis.” He put the fragment and the card back into the canister, sealed it, and placed it in his lap under the table.

“Alright, then,” I said, standing up. I could tell that he was taking this seriously, which was what I needed. I tapped the control to open the booth; the curved doors slid open with a quiet hiss, and the sounds of the restaurant dining room could be heard once again. “I’ll wait for your call.” I paused at the door. “Deitrik? I wouldn’t take too long. I’ve got a feeling we don’t have a lot of time to sort this out.” I closed the door and was on my way.


It took a few days and a little diplomacy on my part, but I managed to arrange a meeting with the folks from Arcanum. We weren’t down in their club this time, but were instead using a secure conference room in the same building, sitting around a big table. It was late at night and Lily and Dagny were both with me. Representing the activist organization was Dante, an elderly gentleman they called Doc, and a woman named Mi Kyong. I understood that the rest of the leadership of Arcanum was watching the meeting over video.

I went over everything that had gone down since I took the case, leaving out only a few details to protect Dagny’s privacy. I didn’t name the Baron, either, but I made it clear that I expected support from the Security Intelligence Service and an insider at Ascension. My hosts were not thrilled with this.

“If you would have asked me last week if I’d be contemplating an operation involving not only Ascension but the damned SIS, I’d have laughed at you,” Doc said. “Yet here we are.” He was bald and had to have been in his eighties. Despite his age (or maybe because of it), he commanded great respect from the others at Arcanum. His left arm was a clunky-looking cybernetic prosthetic and he wore a smart visor over his eyes. Lily told me that he was one of the founding members of the organization.

Mi Kyong spoke next. She was a petite Asian woman, maybe the same age as me, who stood no more than five foot two. She carried herself unpretentiously, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with no makeup. “This entails significant risk,” she said, speaking clearly and precisely. “What assurance do we have that this isn’t all an effort to infiltrate our organization?”

“Are you serious?” Lily asked. “I used to be one of you! Look at the information we gave you!”

“You used to be one of us, yes,” Mi Kyong said, coldly.

“The files they gave us on Ascension have all been authenticated,” Dante pointed out. “They’ve been on the level with us so far.”

“Let me ask you something,” I said, calmly. “If the SIS or Ascension were trying to infiltrate Arcanum, don’t you think there are better ways of going about it than through a private eye who straight-up tells you he’s got a contact with ties to the SIS? I’ve been pretty transparent from the get-go. I didn’t have to tell you about my contacts. Why would I tip my hand if I was trying to pull one over on you?”

Mi Kyong was unmoved. “A liar will always insist he is being honest with you,” she said.

I sighed, trying not to get frustrated. “If I was trying to infiltrate your organization on behalf of the SIS or Ascension, I’d say I’ve already done a pretty good job, don’t you think? Here I am, having a face-to-face meeting with Arcanum leadership. You weren’t worried about it until I told you about their involvement.”

Mi Kyong narrowed her eyes. “Some of us were worried about it.” She turned to Doc. “We are already more exposed than we should be. I think we have gone far enough.”

Doc looked thoughtful for a moment, sighed, and looked at me across the table. “My colleague is as blunt as a baseball bat, but she’s not wrong. It was one thing to exchange information with you. It’s another matter altogether to actively help you break into an Ascension-owned facility and abduct a patient. Even if you ignore the possible involvement of the SIS, that’s still a long list of felonies we’d be abetting, if not committing. Kidnapping. Breaking and entering. Conspiracy. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, a lot of risk. As if that wasn’t enough, you told us that they had one of their own scientists killed.”

“Dante, come on,” Lily said.

Dante took off his smart glasses and looked at her apologetically. “We’re hackers, activists, information brokers. This? This is secret agent stuff.”

“And I have a secret agent on the team,” I said.

“So you claim,” Mi Kyong said, “but you have not explained what it is this secret agent of yours can do for us.”

“He got me out of jail once,” I said, “and convinced a district attorney not to press charges on me. He’s got a network of contacts in the city and colonial governments as well in the intelligence services. He’s willing to stick his neck out on this one, provide us with some top cover, keep SecFor off us if things get sideways.”

“Assuming this is true,” Mi Kyong asked, “what about Ascension’s corporate security?”

“I’ve got an in with them, too,” I reminded them. “Arthur Carmichael.”

“And you risk exposing us to them as well!”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Lily said, arms folded across her chest. “Arcanum is afraid of Ascension security now? Holy shit, Dante, things have changed since I left.”

“A lot has happened that you don’t know about,” Dante said, defensively.

“It is not your concern,” Mi Kyong added. She really didn’t like Lily. If looks could kill, my assistant would have dropped dead right there.

Doc held up a hand then, quieting everyone down. There was some bad blood at the table and he was trying to keep things calm. “It’s not a matter of being afraid, Lilith, it’s a matter of risk.” He turned to me. “What you are suggesting is not only illegal, Mr. Novak, it entails a litany of serious offenses, and all we have to go on is your word.”

“I’ve been completely honest with you people from the start,” I said.

“I believe that to be the case,” Doc said, “but there are other possibilities to consider. One is that I might be wrong about you. Another is that you’re unwittingly being used in a sting operation to entrap our people. A third possibility is that you sincerely believe things that aren’t true. You have come to us with an incredible story—Ascension experimenting on some ancient alien artifact and that they were willing to kill a scientist to keep their secrets. It’s a compelling story.”

“It’s not a story, it’s the truth.”

“I would ask you to consider this from our perspective. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you have presented us with no evidence so far. We have only your word, and you, by your own admission, only have the word of a handful of other people—someone in the SIS, an Ascension security manager, and a dead scientist.”

I hadn’t told them about the object I recovered from Dr. Ivery’s home. The fact that I handed it over to Deitrik would only make my mentioning it seem more suspicious.

“You also have my sister.” Everyone turned to Dagny, who had spoken up for the first time since the meeting began. “Her name is Cassandra. Remember her? You people had no problem encouraging her to take personal risks when it benefitted you. You asked her to trust you to protect her identity. What proof did you give her that you were trustworthy? Huh? All she had to go on was your word and your reputation. It looks to me like that reputation is overblown, because as soon as she needs your help, you want nothing to do with it. Do you treat all your sources this way? Do they know that you’ll abandon them as soon as they’re no longer useful?”

I could tell that what Dagny said got to Dante. He was looking down at the table now. Even Doc was bothered by it. He was trying not to show it, but I could tell wanted to help. Mi Kyong, though, she wasn’t having it. “Most of our sources don’t expect us to break them out of secure facilities!” she snapped.

Dagny pushed against the conference table and stood up. “Nobody’s expecting you to do anything, bitch!” Mi Kyong’s eyes flashed with anger and she stood up, too.

I put a hand on Dagny’s arm and gently squeezed, getting her attention, and raised my voice. “Let’s everybody calm down, hey?” I turned my attention to Doc. “We’re not asking you to break anyone out of that place. If anyone goes in it’ll be me.”

“How do you propose to do this?” Doc asked. Both Dagny and Mi Kyong sat back down and looked daggers at each other across the table.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “Before I come up with a plan, I need to know what tools I have at my disposal. Do you think your hackers could disrupt their security? You know, unlock some doors, disable some cameras, maybe trip a fire alarm?”

“It’s possible,” Dante said, “but there’s no guarantee we’d be able to get into their system from the outside. Our best bet would be to upload our programs to their internal network. You could load them into one of their computers from a removeable drive, maybe, or, I don’t know, do a hard line splice and access it directly. Both would require physical access to the building, though.”

“I have ways of getting into places I’m not supposed to be,” I said. “Say I was able to successfully upload these programs of yours to their system. What could you do then?”

“Assuming their internal network architecture is typical, it should give us full control of their networked systems. It depends on a lot of factors, though. I’d have to see a map of their network to be able to say for sure.” He looked over at Doc. “I request that I be allowed to help them do this. I’ll go it alone to minimize the exposure to others, if necessary.”

“Thank you, Dante,” Lily said. I nodded at the kid.

“A decision like this requires a vote,” he said, then turned to me. “Is there anything else you want to say to make your case?”

“Yeah. If everything I’ve learned is true, the entire colony could be in danger. It’s big enough that even Ascension, with all their money and lawyers, couldn’t get away with it if exposed. Whatever information I’m able to obtain about the Seraph, about Ascension’s internal operations, I’ll share all of it with you.”

“You think your benefactor with the SIS will allow that?” Mi Kyong asked, sarcastically.

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” I replied, then looked at Doc again. “What do you say?”

“We will vote,” he said, then fell silent. Mi Kyong looked down at a tablet in her hands. They didn’t speak again for almost a minute.

“Well?” Dagny asked. “Will you help us?”

“I’m sorry,” Doc said. He hesitated for a moment. “It has been decided. We cannot risk our people being implicated in something so risky, not when there are so many outside actors involved.”

Before Dagny could say anything, I put a hand on her arm again. She looked at me and I shook my head slightly. There was no point in getting into it with these people again. “I understand,” I said. I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up. “Thank you for hearing us out.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Dagny said. “Come on, Easy, let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll show them out,” Dante said. Kid looked like he’d been gut-punched. I could tell he wasn’t happy with Arcanum’s decision. No one spoke until we were back out on the street. It was the middle of the night; traffic was light and the sidewalks were mostly empty. A light rain sprinkled down on us, and it was just cool enough out that you could see your breath.

Dante walked with us to the small parking lot behind the building, where my car was. He hung back and talked to Lily as Dagny and I got into the car. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from where I was, but the conversation got a little animated. Lily lost her usually cool demeanor and was yelling at the poor kid. After some more angry hand gestures and raised voices, Dante walked away, head down. Lily came up to the car window, arms folded across her chest. She was trying really hard not to cry.

“Get in,” I told her. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Thank you,” she said with a sniffle, “but I’m fine. I’ll get an auto-taxi.”

“You sure? I don’t feel great about leaving you out here by yourself. It’s no trouble.”

“I’ll be okay, Boss,” Lily said. “This is my old stomping grounds, remember? I’ll hang out by the club entrance until my ride gets here. I just kinda want to be alone right now. Take Dagny home.”

“Alright,” I said. “Thanks for coming out with us. It was worth a shot, even if it didn’t pan out.”

“You mind if I come in a little late this morning?”

I looked at the clock on the dashboard. “You know what? Take a day.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m not going to keep you up half the night and then tell you to show up at work eight hours later. Besides, I need to figure out what our next move is, and we can’t really do anything until we hear back from Deitrik.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Sure thing, kid. If you think of any good ideas, you let me know, okay?”

“I will, Boss. Have a good night.”

“You too. Be safe. I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, I drove off, leaving Lily behind.

“You really think she’ll be okay?” Dagny asked.

“She can take care of herself,” I said. “Besides, Arcanum has enough security around the building that she’ll be safe there.”

“What now?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I need to stew on this for a while. The Arcanum people weren’t wrong, though, this whole scheme carries a lot of risk. I can’t really blame them for not wanting anything to do with it. In the meantime, let’s get you home. It’s been a long day.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want to go home. I don’t . . . I don’t feel safe there. I don’t like being alone there anymore, not since . . . well, you know.”

Getting shot is more traumatic than most people realize. It’s not like hurting yourself by accident. Even if she makes a quick physical recovery, as Dagny did, having someone try to murder you can leave a person in a bad way.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being silly.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve been through a hell of a lot since this whole thing started.” I was stopped at a traffic light, not sure of which way to turn. “Where would you like me to take you? Do you have a safe place you can go?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Tell you what,” I said, making a right turn. “You can stay at my place if you want.” I hoped she wouldn’t take that the wrong way. I just didn’t know where else to bring her, short of getting her a hotel room someplace.

“I’d like that,” she said quietly. “Are you sure it’s no trouble?”

I grinned. “No trouble at all.”


It took me another hour to get home, and Dagny fell asleep in the car on the way. She was quiet in the elevator up to the 109th floor and during the walk to my apartment.

“Excuse the mess,” I said, unlocking the door. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

The lights turned on as we stepped into the apartment. Penny automatically activated. “Welcome home, Easy,” she said, in her polite, synthesized voice. “I see you have a guest.”

“This is Dagny,” I told her, hanging my coat up. “She’ll be staying with us for a while.”

“Hello, Dagny,” Penny said.

“You hungry?” I asked Dagny.

“I’m starving.”

“Help yourself to the kitchen,” I said. “There’s plenty of stuff that Penny can make for you. Sit, relax, put on some music. I’ll go scare up some towels so you can take a shower.”

We had dinner together and didn’t talk much. While Dagny was showering I grabbed myself a pillow and a blanket and tossed them onto my big armchair. It was plenty comfy, especially reclined, and I’d slept in it plenty of times before. Dagny protested, insisted that I didn’t need to give up my bed, but I told her she was getting the bed and that’s all there was to it.

A while later I was settling into my chair when Dagny called me from the other room. “Easy?” she said, her voice muffled through the door. “Can you come in here, please?”

I got up and walked to the bedroom. I tapped the button and the door slid open. “What do you . . . need?”

“You,” Dagny said. She stood at the front of my bed, naked as the day she was born. Her hair, highlighted blue again, hung carelessly over her bare shoulders. Her smooth skin was only blemished by a few scars, like the one on her face. The serpent tattooed on her left thigh continued up over her hip, with its head protruding down her pelvis. She stepped forward, pressing her perfect breasts against me, and threw her arms around my neck. “I need you,” she repeated, looking up into my eyes.

Sleeping with a client is about the most unprofessional thing a detective can do. It’s bad form, it can compromise your investigation, and it can lead to complicated, entangled relationships with someone you’re in a contractual business agreement with. It’s something I’d never done before, something I never even considered doing.

This case had me doing a lot of things I never considered doing before. I knew in the back of my mind that this was going too far, that the smart thing to do would be to back away. My God, though, she was beautiful. I slid my hands down her back, across her tight butt, and grabbed the backs of her thighs. She gasped, then giggled as I picked her up, wrapping her legs around me as I carried her to the bed.


I woke up late the next morning feeling like a million bucks. I disentangled myself from Dagny, who was softly snoring, dead to the world, and quietly left the bedroom. I took a shower while Penny made breakfast and brewed a pot of coffee.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee, and scrolling on my tablet when Lily called on an end-to-end encrypted connection. Her face appeared on my tablet screen when I accepted the call.

“Good morning, boss,” she said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Nah, I’ve been up for a while. Did you have any trouble getting home last night?”

“No, it was fine.”

“You’re looking a little rough there, kid. Did you get any sleep?”

“Some. I stayed up pretty late turning all this over in my head, you know?”

“I’m open to ideas.”

“That’s why I called. I just got a message from Dante. He told me he’ll help us.”

“He did, huh? Did Arcanum change their minds, then?”

“He said he quit.”

“Is that right? Lily, I think that boy is still sweet on you.”

She blushed a little. “What? You think that’s why he’s doing this? He has a girlfriend.”

I shrugged. “I’m not saying he doesn’t genuinely want to help, but I’d bet my hat that he wouldn’t be doing this if not for you.”

“Oh, God. Am I using him?”

“You didn’t ask him to quit Arcanum. He’s an adult, he can make his own decisions. If he really wants to help, we could sure use him.”

“You really think we can pull this off?”

“That depends on what Deitrik decides. No matter how we approach this, it’s going to entail some pretty serious risks. You sure you still want to be a part of this?”

“I’m with you no matter what, Boss,” Lily said. “You know that.”

I smiled. I like to think I’m pretty good to work for, but I couldn’t think of anything I’d done for Lily to garner this kind of loyalty from her. I considered it my responsibility to not let that loyalty get her in trouble. She trusted me and I didn’t want to lead her astray. “I know you are, kid, but we’re going to be smart about this. We all need to sit down together and come up with some ideas.”

“You want to meet at the office?”

“Let me contact Arthur Carmichael first. We’re going to need his help to pull this off, so he should be in on the planning. Unless something comes up before then, don’t worry about going into the office until the usual time Monday morning.”

“Understood. You want me to call the client and tell her what’s going on?”

“That’s not necessary. I’ll tell her.”

“Okay.” Lily paused, looking at me quizzically. “Wait a second. Is she there with you? Did she go home with you last night?” I tried to fumble through a non-denial, but Lily saw right through it. “Oh my God,” she said, smiling coyly at me. “You sly dog! I knew there was chemistry between you two, I could tell the first time I saw you together.”

“Listen, this wasn’t something I, you know, planned, it just kind of happened. It’s a breach of professional conduct.”

“Uh-huh. I want details. Tell me everything. What’s she like? Easy, are you blushing?”

I did feel my face getting flush, as a matter of fact. “If you’re done giving me a hard time, how about you call Dante?”

“I’m sorry, Boss. I’m just happy for you! You haven’t gone out with anyone in a long time. It’s cute.”

“Cute,” I repeated.

“It is! You’re a great guy. You deserve to be happy.”

“Yeah, well, I just hope I didn’t make things worse. This case is already complicated enough.”

“Of all the things we have to worry about right now, that’s something I’d worry about the least. Besides,” she said with a smile, “life is short. Sometimes you have to take a chance. Maybe she’s worth it!”

I looked up when I heard my bedroom door slide open. “Easy?” It was Dagny, wearing nothing but a pair of panties and my shirt. Unbuttoned, it was way too big for her, but damn, she looked good all the same.

I turned back to the tablet. “Maybe she is. I’m going to let you go.”

“Will do,” Lily said. “Have fun!” She winked at me then disconnected the call.

I shook my head, set the tablet down, and turned to Dagny. “Good morning, beautiful. Want some coffee?” I was curious to see how she’d act. You can get a pretty good idea of how a woman feels about having slept with you by how she handles herself the next morning. If she quickly gathers her things and leaves, that’s probably not a good sign. It usually means that it was nothing but a one-night stand. She might even regret the whole thing. If she stays, though? Then it might go somewhere.

“I would love some coffee,” she said. She padded into the kitchen, barefoot, and kissed me on the cheek.

I grabbed a mug from my cupboard and poured her a cup of coffee. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like the dead,” she said. She took the mug and sat down across from me at my small kitchen table. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost ten,” I said. “I’ve only been up for about an hour.”

“You could have gotten me up.”

“Eh, you looked comfortable. I figured I’d let you rest.” I took another sip of coffee. “I heard from Lily. Her friend Dante decided to help us after all.”

“Really? That’s great!”

“It’s just him, though, not Arcanum proper. He’s doing it on his own.”

“So we’re really doing this? We’re going to try and rescue Cassie?”

“A lot of it depends on what my SIS contact says. Look, I need to level with you. All those concerns the Arcanum people had last night? Those are legitimate. There is a lot of personal and legal risk that we will be undertaking if we do this, even if we are somehow sanctioned by the SIS. We could both end up in jail or dead.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “Cassie is all the family I have left. If you’re not willing to risk it all for your own sister, what kind of person are you?”

“I admire your guts. I just want to make sure you understand what we’re getting ourselves into here. We’re way past any normal case.”

Putting an elbow on the table, she rested her chin in her hand and grinned at me. “I think we went way past a normal case last night. Either that or you really go the extra mile for your clients.”

There was that smile again, that dangerous smile that could make a man contemplate damned near anything. It was disarming, too; despite the seriousness of what we were discussing, I actually chuckled. “Heh. No, that is definitely not included in my normal investigatory process. In fact, it’s never happened before.”

Dagny raised her eyebrows. “Really? Not once?”

I shook my head while I sipped my coffee. “Not once. I’ve had a couple clients make advances now and again. I always politely declined.”

“That’s interesting. How come?”

“Mostly it was just prudent. One time a rich man’s wife hired me to find out if her husband was cheating on her. When I confirmed that he was, she tried to jump me right in my office. Revenge sex. I didn’t want any part of that.”

“Ew, no. That’s just asking for trouble.”

“It is. I got to be honest with you, what happened last night was unprofessional of me, especially while the case is open.”

“I wouldn’t call it unprofessional,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “You were more than competent.”

I tried hard to stop myself from blushing but I don’t think it worked. “That’s . . . not what I meant.”

“I know. You don’t regret it, do you?”

“I don’t,” I said, honestly.

“Good, because I don’t, either. Believe it or not, I don’t sleep around much, and it’s not for a lack of men trying to get in my pants.”

“I didn’t try to get into your pants.”

“I know. You were nothing but professional. You believed me and were willing to help when no one else was. You risked your life to protect me. You saved my life. Now you’re talking about doing something crazy and illegal to rescue my sister.”

“I hope you don’t think I did all that to try and get you into bed,” I said.

“I don’t. Not at all. It just made me realize what a good guy you are. So stop worrying about me, okay? It’s sweet, but I’m a big girl and I know what I’m doing.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“This SIS contact of yours, any idea when you’ll hear from him?”

“It’s hard to say with him. Our interactions are strictly off the books and he usually doesn’t trust electronic messaging, even if it’s encrypted.”

“Then how will he get ahold of you?”

“He has his ways. In fact, let me check something.” I picked up my tablet again and scrolled through my calls and messages. There hadn’t been any calls overnight, but I had one new message in my inbox. Penny didn’t alert me to it when I got up because it wasn’t from one of my saved contacts. It was from an unknown account and I was surprised that it made it past my junk mail filter. I tapped the screen to open the message.

Easy:

Come to the restaurant ASAP. Most urgent, do not wait for normal business hours. Come alone.

“What is it?” Dagny asked.

“My guy at the SIS,” I said, setting the tablet down and standing up. “I’m going to get dressed. I need to go meet him.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“He told me to come alone.”

“That sounds sketchy. Are you sure?”

I smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I’ve known this guy for years. You, uh . . . you don’t have to go home if you don’t want to. You’re welcome to stay here.”

A wicked little smile appeared on Dagny’s face. “The sex was good, Easy, but don’t you think it’s a little soon to ask me to move in?”

Once again I tried not to blush and failed. All I could do was chuckle and shake my head.

“I’m just teasing you,” Dagny said. She stood up and threw her arms over my shoulders. “Go do what you need to do. I’ll be here when you get back. Be safe.”

Then she kissed me and, for a brief moment, things didn’t seem so bad.


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Framed