Author: Steve Diamond; Jack Wylder; Cedar Sanderson; John Van Stry; Evan DeShais; Kelly Grayson; David Birdsall; Sam Robb; LawDog; C. V. Walter
Date: 2023-06-16 07:00:00+00:00
Description: Everybody loves the femme fatale; the tough-as-nails dame with the smoky voice and the legs that go on forever – almost as much as they love the cynical gumshoe with the strict moral code and the tiniest soft spot in his heart. Hard-boiled detective fiction – America’s gift to literature – was introduced to the world in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, allegedly reached its height in the 1950s; and if you listen to the pundits, died out with the pulp magazines. Hogwash. Hardboiled detective fiction lives on in roman noir, film noir, neo- noir, Mediterranean noir, and last – but certainly no

Pinup Noir

Edited by Kortnee Bryant

Raconteur Press

Belle

Copyright © 2023 by Jack Wylder

Down Among the Dead Men

Copyright © 2023 by Sam Robb

Castle Doctrine

Copyright © 2023 by Kelly Grayson

Top Dog

Copyright © 2023 by John Van Stry

Angels and Red Shirts

Copyright © 2023 by David Birdsall

Shadows and Silk

Copyright © 2023 by Cedar Sanderson

Last Call

Copyright © 2023 by Evan DeShais

No Stars in Redlight City

Copyright © 2023 by Steve Diamond

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

Introduction

1. Belle

1. Jack Wylder

2. Down Among the Dead Men

2. Sam Robb

3. Castle Doctrine

3. Kelly Grayson

4. Top Dog

4. John Van Stry

5. Angels and Red Shirts

5. David R. Birdsall

6. Shadows and Silk

6. Cedar Sanderson

7. Last Call

7. Evan DeShais

8. No Stars in Redlight City

8. Steve Diamond

Also From Raconteur Press

Call To Action

Introduction

Everybody loves the femme fatale; the tough-as-nails dame with the smoky voice and the legs that go on forever – almost as much as they love the cynical gumshoe with the strict moral code and the tiniest soft spot in his heart.

Hard-boiled detective fiction – America’s gift to literature – was introduced to the world in the middle of the Roaring Twenties and allegedly reached its height in the 1950s, and if you listen to the pundits, hardboiled detective fiction died out with the pulp magazines.

Hogwash. Hardboiled detective fiction lives on in its offspring: the roman noir, film noir, neo-noir, Mediterranean noir, and last – but certainly not least – cyberpunk.

In all of these, and more, the cynical, romantic antihero dons his rusty armour and spits in the eye of a corrupt system; stands fast in the face of overwhelming, hopeless odds … simply because someone has to. How classically American. How could anyone not like it?

As you may be able to tell, hardboiled detective fiction, and good noir stories are among my literary and artistic weaknesses. From John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, and Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I. to Rian Johnson’s classic film Brick and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner – I love them all.

In late 2022 a friend who knows of my love for the genre sent me a link to Greg Hildebrandt’s slightly wicked pinup Saturday Night Special, and I was entranced. It is the complete first chapter of a hard-boiled detective novel in one glorious painting.

I posted a link to the painting on Facebook, rhapsodising over the story inside the art, and several friends agreed, and then innocently mentioned that since I was a publisher …

So, I knuckled under to peer-pressure and issued a challenge: Here is the art. If I can get 10 stories, ten good stories, I would publish an anthology.

Well, I didn’t get ten stories. As I type this, we have nineteen stories, with more promised.

Ok. I can take a hint.

What you are holding in your hands is the first of at least two, and probably three noir anthologies.

In the spirit of the painting that has inspired the book you are holding right now, I’d like you to take a close look at the cover. Cedar Sanderson out-did herself on the cover art. From the expression on the femme fatale’s face (for how could she not be such?) to the police officer, the running man, and the gawker in the background to the billowing clouds of … smoke? Steam? On her right …

… That cover is the first chapter in a noir novel right there.

I am so proud, and so humbled to add a miniscule bit to the genre I love so much.

I hope that you enjoy reading the stories as much as I have enjoyed publishing them for you.

LawDog

Tiny Town, Texas 2023

Belle

Jack Wylder

Hey, buddy. Before you go running off into that thick fog out there, buy me a drink and let me tell you why we’re all here haunting this crappy hotel bar. Trust me when I say you’re going to want a drink before you go.

See, I used to be in sales—I was pretty successful at it, too. I was here in town for business and had landed the contract I had come for, so I was looking to celebrate. There are not a lot of choices if you want to grab a drink and listen to some music, though. There were plenty of clubs, but I was strictly a bar sort of guy, so my options were either the Commodore here at Brian’s Hotel or the Three Cooters Sports bar. I much prefer music to sports, so I chose the former, much to my eventual regret.

I had the taxi driver drop me off in front of this tired gray building. He shook his head and chuckled to himself, but I didn’t ask him why and he quickly drove off into the late October fog, just like the one you’re so eager to run off into. This close to the river, a heavy mist was pretty much a given, but that night, it was like Mother Nature had bought too much fog and wanted to make sure it didn’t go to waste. I walked up to the entrance and was about to open the door, when it flew open and a man staggered out. I thought at first he must’ve been drunk, but I’ve seen plenty of drunks in my time, and this was something else entirely. He looked downright haggard: pale and fevered, with sweat glistening on his forehead. He gawped at me, wide-eyed and somehow pleading, as if he urgently needed to tell me something. I was taken aback at the earnestness of his panic.

“Dude, are you all right? Do you need to sit down or something?”

He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but speech seemed to be eluding him. Finally, he snapped his mouth tightly shut and began to loudly hum some tune I didn’t recognize. He continued for a few seconds before he stopped abruptly, turned, and ran off into the night, the sound of his boots against the cement swiftly being swallowed by the mist. I shrugged. not my circus, not my monkeys. I opened the heavy, ornate wooden doors into the hotel with some effort. As I entered the lobby, a clerk with a face like a mourning basset hound looked up briefly, before returning to staring listlessly at his hands folded on the counter. There were a couple of gray men in chairs, sitting silently and looking at the table between them. Ceiling fans turned lethargically, stirring the air and dust.

I passed quickly through the lobby and opened that door and walked in here. I was a lot like you, actually, in my initial impression. I, too, wondered why all these forlorn sad dudes were sitting around, drinking in silence in such a rundown hole-in-the-wall. I decided maybe a basketball game wasn’t so bad after all, if this was the alternative. Why on earth would anyone want to stay in such a lonely and grim locale? I turned back around and hastily left the way I had come in.

The door had just pulled shut behind me when I saw her come out of the haze and into the glow of the streetlight. I stopped short, momentarily breathless. Her hair was a long, blonde nimbus around her, the light tapping of her feet rang like music, and when she got close, I could see eyes like gleeful opals sparkling with amusement. She was wearing a little white number with a ruffle skirt, high heels, and white stockings. She stepped towards me, and I smelled a combination of vanilla and something lightly floral. She grinned, revealing adorable dimples, and when she spoke, she had a Southern drawl, like honey dripping.

“You weren’t leaving, were you, sugar? I was just getting ready to play my next set. I’d hate for you to miss it.”

Trying to play it cool, I stared at her in awe. My mouth may or may not have been hanging open. She giggled, pulled out and lit a cigarette, and regarded me with a raised, perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“I’m Belle. You got a name, hot stuff, or should I make one up for you?”

I somehow managed to stammer out my name, and she nodded as if checking something off a list.

“You know, John means ‘God is gracious.’ How about it, Johnny? Has God been good to you?”

Somehow, he had created this most perfect of elfin creatures, and in his generosity, caused our paths to cross. I nodded enthusiastically and gave up a silent prayer of thanks. She took a long drag off her cigarette and blew one perfect smoke ring that didn’t seem to break; instead, it just became ,enveloped by the mist. We chatted for a minute or two, her doing most of the talking, me trying not to hyperventilate. She mostly talked about music while I nodded along. Eventually, she asked me if I preferred the blues, and I could only nod.

She laughed again, as if I had said something witty, and took one more drag off her cigarette before dropping it and crushing it under one of her silver pumps.

“Come on, sugar, we’re gonna be late. I hate to keep the boys waiting.” She extended a delicate porcelain hand, which I tremblingly reached out and lightly took. She smiled, gripped my hand tightly, and pulled me along behind her, back into the hotel. As we swept through the doors into the lobby, the clerk straightened and smiled widely at Belle, who waved breezily with her free hand as she sauntered confidently through the hotel. We came to a grand carpeted staircase and took the one that went down, walked down a short hallway, and then she opened a door leading into the Commodore Lounge.

The Lounge itself was built with three main rooms, all serviced by a baroque antique bar visible immediately upon entering. Belle smiled at the bartender and continued pulling me along, through the bar, and out onto a wide balcony overlooking the river. There was a small stage set up and the band was already checking their equipment.

The band consisted of a beautiful woman with a mane of shockingly dark hair tuning an acoustic guitar, and a stunning redheaded woman sitting comfortably on a box that sounded like a drum as she tapped out a rhythm with her hands. When they saw Belle, they smiled and nodded their greeting. Belle turned towards me without releasing my hand, effectively wrapping my arm around her. She looked deeply into my eyes and winked.

“Have a seat and don’t go anywhere, shug. You’re gonna love this!”

I did as I was told, and she hopped onto the stage, picked up a microphone, and turned to her bandmates. “One, two, three, four…”

My memory of what happened next is a little cloudy. They started out with an acoustic cover of Leadbelly’s “Midnight Special” that caused the hairs on my arm to stand up. I’ve always been a fan of the Mississippi river delta style of blues, and Belle captured it like she was pulling it directly from heaven. I vaguely remember ordering a whiskey or two. Maybe three, I don’t know. Whenever the waitress walked up, I couldn’t pull myself away from the show, so I would order something just to make her go away. I’m not even sure how those glasses got empty. I was drunk on her presence. They rolled seamlessly from one song to the next, never stopping or hesitating, for hours that seemed like mere moments.

For their finale, they played an original tune, the catchiest song I had ever heard: an upbeat number, a little bluesy, a little rock. Her voice was inhumanly clear and sweeter than Georgia peaches. At one point, the clouds and fog rolled back, and the southern moonlight shone down on them, transforming them into silver and lighting them with an ethereal glow impossible to put into words. A trio of goddesses descended from Olympus, bringing the gift of music to mankind.

When they finished and the final sustained note ringing out over the river finally faded into silence, there was a long beat with no applause or reaction at all. Every chair in the place had filled with people, who all sat staring, enthralled, until her final words.

“Thank you! Good night!”

As if the spell holding them had broken, every person leapt to their feet with a roar and began applauding so hard it was painful on the hands. All three of them bowed once, and Belle stepped lightly off the stage, gliding effortlessly through the adoring throng to stand over me. She quirked a grin and raised her chin.

“So? What’d you think? Worth sticking around for?”

I nodded enthusiastically, still speechless, until she leaned in close, hooked a chair with her other hand, and slid into it effortlessly, now sitting close. I gathered up my courage and asked her if I might buy her a drink. She dimpled again, before telling the adoring waiter what she wanted without taking her eyes off mine.

“Double Old Rip Van Winkle, neat, with a water back, please.” She pulled a cigarette from her bag, allowing me a brief glance of the ivory-handled revolver she kept stashed in her garter. She gave a small half-smile when she saw me looking, and put the cigarette to her lips. A different waiter appeared from nowhere and lit it for her. She thanked him, but kept her dazzling eyes on me the whole time. I was so enraptured in watching her lips move that I scarcely paid any attention to what they were saying. Her gleaming white teeth weren’t quite perfect—one tooth was just crooked enough to make the smile somehow even more alluring. Her lips were soft and full, but not artificially so. When she spoke, she had an upward tilt to her mouth, like she was always right on the edge of smiling.

We sat for a languid eternity, chatting about things now long forgotten. The crowd in the room circled her like particles orbiting a nucleus, never quite daring to interrupt, but always keeping her in sight. I could feel the envy of everyone that I was blessed to be the focus of her attention.

After she had put away a few drinks, she sprang to her feet and pulled me up by the hand, pulling me unresistingly through the bleak hotel and out into the street. She pulled my arm around her and leaned in closely as we walked through the misty streets, me drunk on the swell of emotions never felt before or since. When we weren’t talking, she would happily hum or even sing softly, her every utterance a euphonious blessing.

At some point, we passed a large motorcycle dealership and stopped to look through the windows. She told me how much she loved bikes, and seeing they were open, I immediately strode in and began to speak with the salesman, who had just been closing the place. Thirty minutes and a great deal of paperwork later, I sat her behind me on my new ride. She laughed delightedly and leaned in, her arms wrapped warmly around me. We drove on through the fog, me incredibly aware of the feel of her body against me.

It was difficult to talk, but every so often she would lean forward and sing some snippet to me, which I was somehow able to hear despite the noise, and I would feel that shock of delight. If heaven is that one perfect moment in life, I knew where I wanted to spend my eternity.

We rode on through that timeless evening and she tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at a club that seemed quite popular judging by the line around the building. I pulled in and parked the bike on the curb. I started to head for the back of the line, but Belle laughed that infectious laugh of hers and pulled me to the front door, where the bouncer didn’t even hesitate to open the door for us. Well, for Belle, but she pulled me along behind her.

The club was obviously a local hotspot, dark and full of loud thumping music and sweaty bodies writhing against each other. She half-danced, half-walked through the crowd, lightly gripping my hand as she effortlessly found the space between couples until she found room enough to turn into my arms.

I’ve never been much of a dancer, and this sort of techno noise was certainly not my preference, but I was giddy with the opportunity to dance with her. I was awkward and earnest, but she was skilled enough for both of us, moving her body in delightful, rhythmic contortions. The colored lights played across her as she shook her hair out into a shining aura, grinning impishly from behind it.

The pulsating music shifted seamlessly from one song into another, the next one having a more primitive, driving rhythm that was almost animalistic. Her body language shifted subtly, becoming more predatory and primordial. She was more intense now in her dancing, and I did my level best to match her. As she gyrated and whirled, her eyes never seemed to leave my face, and the crowd around us seemed to fade away into irrelevance until we were the only two people in the universe, with her at the shining center. We circled one another, weightless and interstellar, existing in a vacuum as I orbited around her like a moon before the most heavenly of planetary bodies.

From song to song and dance to dance, she whirled, and she shone. I have no idea how long we danced—forever, a moment—who could tell? I’m fairly certain one club bled into another, as seamlessly as the music. Scattered memories of eating at the finest restaurants, drinking the finest wines. There were jewelry stores we visited, and I remember being embarrassed that the best they had fell so far short of the sparkle and promise in her eyes. We raced through the mists on the motorcycle endlessly, alone in the night with her pressed against my back, feeling the thrum of the engine, pale in comparison to the thrill of her voice humming and singing to me in a way that I could feel through my body like an electrical current.

Later that night, a month later, a year later, at some later point, she took me to a little place she said she knew of nearby. We left the bike, and she pulled me by my hand through the mists, across a field, and into a grove of ancient oaks, heavy with Spanish moss that draped protectively around a small clearing. We were near the river: I could hear the sound of the water splashing playfully down the rocks. The mists had the decency and discretion to not intrude upon her little elfin hollow. The floor was carpeted with soft g,rass adorned with small white flowers, silver in the moonlight that pierced the canopy. The wind was warm and sultry, caressing us without ever becoming overzealous.

She kissed me then, and I felt whole for the first time in my life, like every moment of my existence had been leading me inexorably to this one shining instant where heaven and earth were so perfectly and delicately balanced, that time itself stopped completely rather than risk losing such perfection. The physical feeling of the kiss itself was irrelevant to the sensation of becoming not a part of the universe, but actually becoming the universe itself.

Some millennia later, I was returned to my body to witness once again her radiant grin, with that one crooked tooth. She eased me onto the grass, where I could rest my now-awkward body comfortably, and she laid beside me, resting her head on my outstretched arm. I started to say something, but she quieted me with a delicate finger across my lips and began to sing to me.

The song was familiar now, the one she had closed her set with but now it was softer and gentler, a soothing lullaby that my consciousness slid into like a still moonlit lake, vanishing smoothly into sleep without so much as a ripple.

I dreamed that I was on a hill overlooking an ancient lake. There were figures moving below me, but their faces were hidden from me as they milled about aimlessly. I sat up in confusion and it seemed to attract them. They all turned at once to face me, and I saw their pale gaunt faces looking up at me, their eyes solemn and wild. The haggard apparitions began to rush toward me, their emaciated hands reaching towards me, but rather than threatening, they seemed to be warning me of something. I turned to run away from their warnings, but my feet sank into the earth like it sometimes does in dreams, and to my horror, they closed in on me, calling out dire advice.

I opened my mouth to scream and found myself sitting up, gasping in the early morning sunshine on a cement embankment overlooking a gray and lifeless river.

Belle was gone, as if she had never existed, and the world was dreary and sullen. To my eternal horror, I had been saved from her enthrallment. I sat up in confusion, with my head down. Eventually, I stood and trudged to the top. The sky was flat and gray, and the air was silent. I plodded down the side of the road through the scattered broken glass and weeds, towards the hotel I could see overlooking the smaller buildings. I lumbered through the doors and went to the front desk to get a room, where I dropped myself on top of the covers and slept heavily and dreamlessly.

Later that afternoon, I slogged my way wearily down to the bar and plopped myself into one of the few available barstools. The bartender placed a glass of cheap liquor in front of me, which I drank without tasting. I was on my third drink when I started to quietly hum to myself a mournful version of Belle’s final song. I registered dull surprise when the miserable man next to me joined in, and before long, every forlorn soul in this cursed bar was humming along with us.

I’ve been here ever since, issuing warnings that no one ever listens to.

I understand you think you need to go, and that’s fine. I’ll save your seat for you.

Down Among the Dead Men

Sam Robb

The bar at the Hotel Hildebrandt stretched on into infinity, both literally and figuratively. Kind of a metaphor for the afterlife, I suppose, though I’m not sure what we’re supposed to learn from it.

Maybe nothing. Being dead can be like that.

The room itself was filled with a mix of wraiths and memories. The memories were conjured up from the shades like me, souls working to keep themselves intact long enough to make it Above, or from being dragged Below. The wraiths were those shades who had failed to hold themselves together. They were faded and gray, barely substantial things that had forgotten who they used to be. The tattered bits of someone’s soul, wrapped in the habits they had built in life.

A bar should have people in it, after all. And music. So, for us, it did—as long as you didn’t look or listen too closely.

Faith was down the bar a way, taking care of another shade. I stared into the memory of a bourbon she’d served up for me, lost in my own thoughts, when a cold breeze carrying the faintest whiff of sulfur passed through me.

I studied my drink as a man stepped up to the bar next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I recognized his cut blonde hair, impossibly blue eyes, and a casual smile decanted into an impeccably tailored suit. If it wasn’t for the scent of brimstone, I might have forgotten he was the most irredeemably evil soul in the City.

He stood there silently until my curiosity got the better of me. “Drosser. What does the Hellhound want with me?”

“Please. Call me Karl. We have known each other long enough, have we not?”

I moved my head a fraction and squinted. He was one of the most substantial shades around, as distinct as me or Faith. “You know, in this light, you look almost human.”

The smile grew a bit broader. “Flatterer. You know what they say. There but for the grace of, well… Someone.”

I grunted. He was right. Didn’t mean I wanted to be reminded of it. I jerked my finger down towards the far end of the bar. “If you want something, Faith is off that way.”

He chuckled. “No. I was looking for you, Abe. I have a proposition.”

“No.” I kept my voice flat. Emotion was a lever for the likes of Drosser. “I don’t work for either side. Above or Below.”

He turned to put his back to the bar and studied the infinitely distant ceiling. “I seem to recall you have an arrangement with my counterpart. Regarding your brother.”

I shrugged. Everyone knew why I chose to stay in the City. “She keeps an eye out for him.”

“I see. And in the meantime, you are more than willing to offer her your assistance.”

“Not her. Those she encounters.” Sometimes a shade could have trouble remembering his or her life. Without that, it had no chance of moving on and were doomed to decay into a wraith. “She’ll bring them to me if they need help remembering. I’ve got a bit of experience with that. Sometimes I’ll talk to them. It’s my choice, though. Not like we have a contract.”

“If I were to offer something similar?”

I finally turned and met his eyes. “No. I want nothing to do with your business.”

His face wrinkled in concern as he spread his hands. “Come now! What objection do you have to my services?”

“We all heard the girl you and your pack dragged Below last time.” His pack of black dogs weren’t subtle. When they caught their prey, the screams echoed through the City. I shook my head. “No. I’m my own man, Drosser. Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

He studied me for a moment, then sat back and flicked a speck of imaginary dust from his jacket sleeve. “Imagine what the City would be like if I did not do my job, Abe. How many people refuse the opportunity to move on to the Above?” He raised an eyebrow. “Present company excluded, of course.”

“There’re a few of us.”

“So you say. There are two of you I know of: you and…my counterpart. Those who are destined for Below, however?” He sighed and shook his head. “They are not so eager to move on to their final destination. Were they allowed to remain here, the City would quickly become an extension of that realm.”

I grunted. He was right. “What’s your point?”

Drosser smiled congenially. On someone less handsome, it might have been a smirk. “I’m not asking you to work with us,” he said smoothly. “Just to keep an eye out. You know the bargain I made.”

“One soul a month, harried to Below, or you take its place.” I met his eyes, cocked my head. “How long have you been the Hellhound now, Drosser?”

“Ages. And I intend to stay there.”

Everything about him radiated confidence, but something in his voice was a bit off. I made a guess. “It’s been a while since the last one. Who’s your second in command these days?” I snapped my fingers. “Right! Gideon. Strange fellow. Does he still argue with himself?”

Drosser blinked. “He has been more focused of late.”

“See? Out patrolling the City day and night these days, from what I hear. A real go-getter. Seems like he might be looking to climb the ladder. Which might be a problem for whoever’s currently at the top, eh?”

My shot hit the target. His eye twitched slightly. “Gideon? He is, how do you say it? A zealot. A visionary.” Drosser narrowed his eyes. “Rest assured, I shall keep him in his place. What I speak to you about is a different matter. Our prey has eluded me. I must offer them up by the end of the week.”

I blinked slowly. “Huh. So now you’re desperate enough to come to me. Interesting. I thought you knew the City. If your pack is failing in the hunt, well. Maybe your time has passed.” I turned back to my drink.

His voice was cold. “Impossible. This one has been lucky, but it cannot last. I will have him. You see, Abe, I do know the City, well enough to understand there are places I cannot go.”

That made me sit back. Drosser was the first Hellhound I’d ever heard admit that. I cocked my head, inviting him to continue.

He nodded. “Yes. I understand I have limitations. I presume the same is true of my counterpart.” He leaned in. “You, on the other hand, serve neither Above nor Below. You are welcome places I cannot go. I suspect my quarry may be hiding in such a place.”

The honesty from the likes of him caught me by surprise. He waited as I mulled it over, trying to find his angle. I ended up shaking my head as I took a drink.

“Come on, Drosser. Why do you think I would help you? Why would I risk my ticket Above to help the Hellhound?”

Drosser inclined his head slightly. “As I expected. Tell me this, though, Abe. Who would you rather see as the Hellhound? Myself, or Gideon? You know what my time in this office has been like. I take my one soul a month. Gideon would be more…enthusiastic.”

I winced. He managed to make that single word twist into a hurricane of evil import.

Drosser nodded and gestured at the bar. “Can you imagine how things would change if he were to have my authority? What the City would be like with him in charge? He would not limit himself to one soul a month. He would not be content with one a week, or even one a day.”

I’d been around the City for a long while. I’d seen exactly that happen more than once. I thought of what had happened then, and what would happen to the Hildebrandt—and to Faith—if Gideon was the Hellhound.

My face must have betrayed my thoughts. Drosser smiled slightly. “You find me unpleasant, Abe. I think you would find Gideon terrifying. I make no excuses for myself. I know who I am. I may be evil, but he is a true monster.”

“Takes one to know one, I suppose.” I didn’t bother to keep the venom out of my voice.

Drosser was unfazed. “It is amazing how many times I’ve heard that phrase. But yes.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, laid it on the bar with a heavy thud, and slid it over to me. Lifted his hand to reveal a medallion.

An Iron Cross.

“Here. My token. When you find my quarry, hold this. Speak my name. I will come, and I will set things right.” His grin was wider than it should have been, teeth disturbingly sharp.

I glanced at the medallion, then turned back to my empty glass, doing my best to project boredom. Drosser had a point, but I would rather fade than admit it. “I’ll consider it. Maybe. Anything else?”

“As you said, Abe. It’s me, or Gideon. Your choice.” Drosser stood and headed through the bar, ignoring the wraiths and memories, walking through them disdainfully. They split and swirled like smoke, eddies of ectoplasm spinning in the air until they slowed and slowly reformed, only to resume their business.

I don’t know how long I studied the medallion in front of me before Faith made her way back to my end of the bar.

“Hey, cowboy. You okay?”

She’s a long-limbed farm girl. A good head taller than me, and I’m not a short man. Her voice was warm, and her brown eyes held a hint of concern. She brushed her long brown hair back, one of her habits when she was worried.

I grunted and slid my glass over to her. “Drosser stopped in.”

She nodded at the medallion. “That asshole? Explains the garbage, then.”

I chuckled. “Refill that, would you?”

“Yeah, you’ll need something to wash the bad taste out of your mouth.” She grabbed a bottle from shadowy shelves behind her. My favorite Kentucky bourbon. I could have put forth a little effort to create my own drink, but that wouldn’t have helped anchor my personality, nor Faith hers. She poured me two fingers, studied my face, then added a third. “Want me to leave the bottle?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t know what kind of cut-rate afterlife this is, but the ghost of a hangover is just as bad as the real thing.”

There was a hint of approval in her smile as she slid the bottle off to the side. Which made me wonder when I started paying attention to what she thought of me. I took a sip of the bourbon and let the burn help me dodge that thought. It was one of my small rituals to ground me and keep me from fading.

Faith turned back to me. “So. Drosser. Want to talk about it, or nah?”

I had gotten to know a lot of shades during my time in the City. Most of those had long since moved on. Faith was my bartender, though. If you can’t share things with your bartender, who can you talk to?

“He asked me for help.”

She looked thoughtful. “First time for everything, I guess. What for?”

“He’s up against a deadline. Asked me to keep an eye out for someone.”

Faith pursed her lips. She knew what that meant. “Abe. That’s how it starts, you know. They ask you for a little favor. Something reasonable. Then it’s something else. Before you know it…”

I could hear the worry in her voice. I pushed my own concerns down. “I know, I know. This is one of those things, though. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Her frown was impressive. “Don’t say that. Not when you’re talking about Drosser.”

“You know what I mean.” I waved my hand. “I won’t trust him to do anything other than serve his own best interests. In this case, though, I think what he wants is what’s needed, at least for now.” Drosser was running out of time. If he failed…things could get very unpleasant, very quickly. I tossed back the remainder of my drink and shuddered. Picked up the medallion and slipped it into my pocket. The touch of it was foul, and the weight of it was like holding the sins of a nation in my hand.

Her eyebrows drew together as she leaned in. “You really are going to help him, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t help but admire her as she leaned forward. What can I say? Amazonian bar maid was apparently my type. I let my eyes linger for a moment, then shrugged. “Better the Devil you know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Drosser needs me to go places he can’t.”

“Huh.” Faith didn’t leave the bar much at all. “I thought the City was a big ‘ol shared dream. How can there be places he can’t go?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. I didn’t make the rules. I know there’re a few places that have a life of their own, like the Hildebrandt, here. There are others you can’t visit unless, well, unless the City will let you.”

“It will let you, though. What kind of place are we talking about?”

I sighed. “Not the kind you visit if you can help it. Down among the dead men, where the furies roam.” I nodded at the glass. “So, maybe pour me one more for luck before I go do something stupid.”

I spent the next day scouring the City, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Which, given the place shifts on the whims of its inhabitants, wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Still, there were locations that were consistent, more or less. I rolled up my metaphorical sleeves and went to work.

I started with the Narrow Moor, making my way there through spectral standing stones. I’d first found my way there so long ago I only had memories of memories to direct my path. The emptiness of the barren land was comforting, but the only bit of strangeness was that the wind for some reason decided to whisper to me in Akhmimic instead of Aramaic.

From the Moor, I made my way out to the edge of the City. Not to the real outskirts; I had no desire to find myself entangled with the furies. Those things were creatures of purpose, as old as the City and beholden to none. Shades who caused problems would find themselves drawn to the outskirts, never to return.

There usually aren’t many wraiths down that way. Even they have enough sense to stay away. Which is why I was surprised when I turned a corner and almost ran into one, an obviously angry young man in a cheap suit.

I pulled up short in front of him, and he flinched back from me. He was out of focus, the gray sketch of a man seen through a foggy window. Even as far as wraiths went, he was barely there. That may have had something to do with the huge slash running diagonally across his chest. I frowned and maneuvered, trying to get a better look.

Some shades and wraiths carried evidence of wounds they bore in life. This looked different, like someone had taken a knife to the fabric of the wraith himself, tearing a hole in what he was.

“What happened, brother? Did you run into a fury?” Something like confusion, then annoyance passed across his face. He tried to get around me, but I moved to block him. The wraith scowled and stepped forward into me. A brief, sharp wave of cold rolled over me as he pushed through me, stalking down the street.

I turned to watch him stalk away. After a few steps, he stumbled and simply came apart, breaking up like smoke in the wind. Eddies of wraith swirled and collapsed in on themselves, leaving nothing behind.

I shuddered and decided whatever had happened to that poor soul, I’d rather not experience it myself. I decided to head back into the city and sniff out the Haven.

The docks at Bell’s Haven were easier to get to than the Moor. More crowded, too. I stopped to talk with the Old Man as he kept watch over the shades of the sailors who put into port from places only he knew of.

“Gideon? The Hellhound’s pretty boy?” He snorted. “Seen him lurking around the edge of the docks lately.” The Old Man scowled. “I’ve seen better-looking scarecrows. Damned fool looked to be made up of nothing more than skin stretched over bone.” He chuckled. “Damn fool! Do ye git it?”

I titled my head in appreciation of the pun. “What was he up to? Trying to get in?”

The Old Man rolled his eyes at my stupidity. “Can’t nobody git in without my say, boy. Nah. He was looking for somethin’. Every once in a while, he’d grab himself a wraith and drag ‘em off who knows where.” He shrugged. “And before you ask, no, I don’t give a damn. So long as he stays off m’ docks, he can go hang.”

I spent some time with various shades, swapping stories and greeting them as they stopped by to pay their respects. I ended up with a few new tales to take back to Faith, so it wasn’t a total loss. Still, I had made no progress. I was annoyed, disgruntled, and spiritually exhausted when I finally headed back to Faith.

My mood wasn’t improved by finding Gideon lurking outside the Hildebrandt, leaning against the wall next to the double doors. The Old Man’s description of him was spot on. Tall and skinny, a scarecrow of a man with a shock of ragged hair, his jeans and greasy shirt were distinctly different from Drosser’s immaculate appearance. I ignored him and reached for the door, only to have him fling out a hand to block my way.

“Abe.” He stared at me intently, eyes burning red, twitching and muttering under his breath as he tried to get his words out.

“Gideon. Sorry, I don’t have any spare change on me.”

He blinked in confusion, then shook his head angrily. “I have seen you sniffing around. Looking for my, my, my prey.” I could hear him grinning his teeth together. “It will be mine, do you hear? It is mine to find. Leave it alone, or I will make you will regret it.”

“I can sympathize. Because right now, I have you keeping me from a drink with a pretty lady.” I gestured dismissively. “If you would?”

Gideon twitched, then stepped back into the shadows next to the door. He faded into the darkness, disappearing from my sight. I sighed and made my way into the bar.

Faith caught sight of me coming through the doors and scooted over to meet me as I bellied up to the bar. She knew my return meant a new story. “Hey, cowboy. Any luck?”

I told her about my searches. “Not a damn thing except for that wraith. I suppose I should write Gideon a thank-you note for at least breaking up the monotony of my day with a threat. You notice anything here, by chance?”

“Nah. You know me. I just lay down the drinks and listen to people tell me about their life.”

I could take a hint. “Tell you what. Pour me something strong and I’ll tell you another one I got from the Old Man.”

Faith grinned. “Now you’re talking my language!” She slid a glass onto the counter and reached for a bottle before she stopped, staring past me. I turned in time to see the shade of Anne Marie Chase sweep through the huge double doors at the front of the bar.

Her long blonde hair stirred from wind that wasn’t there. She strode across the floor, her short white skirt swirling in the ethereal way that only ectoplasm could.

Like Drosser, there was more to the Seraph than meets the eye. The wraiths in the bar paused as she passed them by. For a moment, they were a bit more substantial, a bit more aware of their surroundings, as they moved out of her way to watch her pass.

Chase held the hand of a fresh shade, a tiny, barefoot wisp of a girl with long dark hair wearing a pale yellow summer dress. The girl followed Chase sedately enough, but her eyes darted around the room as she moved. She wore an expression I thought of as “new shade:” a combination of wonder, touched with realization and a drop of despair.

They drifted over to the baby grand. Chase stopped and leaned against the gray piano. Color slowly seeped into it as it became more substantial. The faint tinkling of music became louder, then drifted off as the man at the piano became aware of someone standing next to him.

Chase leaned over. “Play it.”

The pianist nodded slowly, then turned back to the keyboard. Chase sang as he played, her voice soft and low. Bourbon over ice, heat with a chill to send a shiver down the memory of your spine.

Let me tell you, I don’t know music. For a few moments there, though, I understood how much of the world I was missing out on. Every wraith in the place stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at the two of them.

Her song ended so quickly, I wondered if it had even happened. The wraiths turned back to their business, but there seemed to be a touch more color to them as they did so. I could hear the girl in the yellow sundress humming the tune as they approached the bar.

I stood and gave a ghost of a bow. “Ma’am.”

“Abe.” Chase’s voice was ethereal. “This is Mazda. She is in need of you now.”

“Seriously, Chase? I have something else going on right now.”

Chase ignored me and reached out to take my hand. She raised it and took the girl’s hand, placed it in mine. The girl blinked and started a bit, as if I had just appeared in front of her.

“Now you have two.” Behind me, Faith laughed. “Take care of Mazda, Abe.” She turned, took a few steps, and faded into the light. All three of us stared at the place where Chase had disappeared.

Faith whistled. “First I’ve ever seen something like that.”

I glanced at the piano. The color still clung to it. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“Huh. Haven’t you been here forever?”

“Long enough. I’m surprised I can still be surprised.”

The girl looked back and forth between us. “Who…who are you?”

Her voice was sweet. It reminded me of evening bird song. I’m a sucker for lady in trouble, in any case. I let go of my exasperation and did my best to summon up a smile. Still holding Mazda’s hand, I led her a step closer to the bar and helped her take a seat. “I’m Abe. I’m here to help you, but before I can, I’ll need to know a little bit about you. For example: can you remember how you died?”

Her eyes widened. “I’m dead.” It wasn’t a question. Her whisper was low, with a hint of a catch to it.

“Yes.” I put as much gentleness as I could into that single syllable. “We all are, here. I’m Abe. The out-of-place farm girl behind the bar is Faith. We’re here to help you.”

“I need help.” She flinched a bit. Met my eyes, then turned away quickly.

I frowned. It wasn’t unusual for a new shade to be disoriented, but she was a lot more rattled than most. Almost in shock.

Faith chimed it. “Mazda. That’s a pretty name.”

“Mazda?” She said the name as if she were trying it on, seeing how it felt on her lips. “Yes. She said I was Mazda.”

Strange. Even the most disoriented new shades remembered their name. Faith shot me a worried look, then gave the girl a smile. “Get you a drink, hon? I can rustle up pretty much anything you’d like.”

Mazda perked up. “Chocolate milk?”

Faith blinked, then laughed out loud. “You know, it’s been ages since I’ve had chocolate milk. I’ll join you.”

I pushed my empty glass off to the side. “Make it three, then.”

Faith disappeared down the length of the bar, fading into the infinite distance. Mazda made a startled sound, a tiny little thing I almost missed. When I turned back to her, she was coiled up, tense like a rabbit ready to run.

“It’s okay. She’ll be back. Time and space are a little funny around here. You get used to it.”

She slowly unwound as I spoke, though her eyes still darted around. “Where is here? Where am I?”

I shrugged. “There are lots of different names. Some call it Purgatory. Or Gehennna, or Barzakh, or something else. If you like to argue religion, there’s plenty of people willing to bend your ear about what this place is.”

She gave me a small shake of her head. “Arguing doesn’t sound like fun.”

I chuckled. “Not to me, either. Most of us ignore all that and call it the City. It’s a place in between the Above and the Below. Some people like to argue about what that means, too.”

“Not you?”

“Nah. I’m the practical sort. See, we’re all here because there’s something we need to take care of before we move on. Most of the time it’s obvious. You end up here, and you know what you’re here for.”

“I…I don’t think that’s me.”

“That happens sometimes. It’s okay. Chase, the lady who brought you in? When she finds those people, she brings them to me. I help them remember so they can make a decision.”

Her eyes got wide. “Decision? What decision?”

“Whether to move on or not. Some people wait. Others, well, to move on they might have to do something they aren’t ready to do. Forgive, forget. Let go of an old hurt, learn how to open up. That sort of thing.”

“Oh. Are you waiting for something?”

“Someone. He’ll be along, eventually. Until then, I enjoy the company.” I nodded down the bar. We could make out Faith ambling our way, tray in hand with three tall glasses balanced on them. In the wink of an eye, she stood in front of us.

She set the tray down with a satisfied smile. “Found a guy who told me about his first date at a real fifties malt shop, so y’all are getting real chocolate milkshakes.”

I took a sip. Smooth and rich. “Faith has a knack for helping people remember.” I gave Faith the signal we’d worked out, turning my left hand palm up to let her know I wanted her to get Mazda’s attention. Faith nodded imperceptibly and turned towards the woman.

“That’s a pretty dress, darlin’. Was it summer where you were?”

Mazda looked puzzled. “Summer?”

“You know. Sunlight, warm breezes, tall grass, butterflies.”

Mazda shook her head slowly. “No. None of that. I…I don’t think. There was something. Heat?” She shuddered. “Burning. I remember something burning.”

“Oh, there’s lots of things that burn. Some are good!” Faith propped her head on her hand. “Campfires on a summer night, bonfires in the fall, burning leaves, candles, gas lamps and wood stoves…”

I kept my attention on Mazda as Faith spoke to her in a quiet midwestern drawl. She talked about fires, and winter nights. Stories of hunters around a campfire, farmers at a hoedown, fathers grilling on a summer night. Fireflies and fireworks, ball games and brothers. Her voice was soft and low. Hypnotic. Mazda was intent on her, wrapped in the words.

We’d done this before. I tuned out Faith and paid attention to Mazda, watching her for a reaction. I let Faith continue to free-associate, feeding her a nod here and there when Mazda reacted. There wasn’t much. Normally, after a few minutes, Faith and a new shade would be chattering away like old friends. Not this time. Mazda was definitely paying attention, but she was even more monosyllabic with Faith than she had been with me.

Eventually, I cleared my throat. Faith trailed off and gave Mazda a big smile. “But here I am, rambling on, keeping you from your drink.” She waved at the chocolate milk. “Go on, hon. Enjoy.”

Mazda came back to us slowly, as if waking, or rising through deep water. With a shy smile, she turned to her drink. While she was distracted, Faith drifted a few steps down the bar. I followed, keeping an eye on Mazda.

“Anything?”

I shook my head. “Just what she said. Burning. Other than that?” I shrugged. “Nothing. She’s as blank as a wraith.”

“She remembered chocolate milk well enough.” Faith shivered and rubbed her arm. “If she doesn’t start to remember anything else, though, that will be where she ends up.”

I glanced down at Mazda. Was her dress looking a little less colorful? I bit my lip, then shook my head. “Nah. There’s something there. I can feel it. She’s not ready to open up about it. Not yet.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she can’t?”

“Maybe. I think she wants to remember, though. But there’s something in the way. Probably why Chase brought her to me.”

“Speaking of which: first Drosser, and now Chase. Isn’t that a little busy for you?”

“When it rains, it pours.”

“I’m serious. What’re you going to do? You said you’re on a deadline for Drosser.” She glanced at Mazda. “Now you’ve got two. How are you going to manage both?”

I studied the bar. “I could leave her with you.”

“Abe. No.” Her tone made it clear there would be no appeal. “She’s already starting to fade.”

I winced. “I hoped I was imagining it. Damnit. Okay. I can kill two birds with one stone. Take her out with me while I make my rounds.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. I sighed. “Look. I don’t have much of a choice. I need to get her out into the City, so I can see what manifests around her. She’ll be with me. Everything will be fine.” I caught her expression and rolled my eyes. “Okay, it will probably be fine. It’s not like I have another option.”

Faith pursed her lips. “Watch yourself, cowboy. You come back safe, you hear?” She scowled. “And bring her back safe, too.”

I nodded, and we drifted back down the bar to Mazda. “Come on, kid. Finish your drink, and I’ll take you out to show you the City.”

Outside the bar, the sky brimmed with a dusky sort of light, the purplish-black you might see just before a big storm rolled in off the plains. The neon sign above the Hildebrandt flickered in a thin fog that turned distant buildings into a vague blur.

“Main street in the City. It’s always dusk here.” Wraiths walked past us, eyes empty, focused on whatever task let them hold on to their tentative existence. I steered Mazda to the right and headed up the sidewalk. It was firm under our feet, an oddly fuzzy, indistinct slate gray. Mazda stumbled a bit as she glanced down.

I steadied her. “Careful. That can be a little disorienting. Out here, in the shared spaces, everybody’s memories of things tend to run together. When you mix up old cobblestone streets with muddy ways and concrete, this is what you get.”

Mazda looked up and found herself nose to nose with an indistinct figure. She gasped and twisted away, avoiding a collision. The wraith paused for a moment, long enough for me to make out an old woman in a tattered evening dress, mouth open in an unheard sob. She pushed past Mazda, leaving eddies of ectoplasm swirling around the two of them.

Mazda flinched as the wraith passed her. “Is she OK? Did I do something wrong?”

I shrugged. “Nah. You, me, Faith—we’re shades. Ghosts. We still know who we are. Mostly.” I waved at the figure of the old woman disappearing into the fog. “She’s a wraith. The ghost of a ghost. That’s what happens if you don’t work at reminding yourself of who you are and why you’re here.”

Mazda wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know that. Does that mean I’ll end up like them? Will I be a wraith?”

I cursed myself for an idiot. She didn’t need that pressure on her, but she deserved to know. “Maybe. It’s not a sure thing. It would definitely be better for you to remember, though.”

Mazda studied her feet in silence. I left her to it. Eventually, she took a deep breath and looked back up at me, her face screwed up in determination.

“The lady. The one who brought me to you.”

“Chase?”

“Yes. She told me you might help me. She also told me, ‘He is willing to speak uncomfortable truth.’ I think she meant you wouldn’t lie to me. Thank you for that.”

“Well.” I didn’t know what to say. I coughed to cover my embarrassment. “Good to know the only angel stuck here with us thinks I’m a decent fellow, I suppose. Anyways. If I’m going to help you, we need to get moving. Come on.”

I started walking and Mazda followed, eyes wide as she took in the buildings. We passed an old wooden building, barrels sitting out on the broad porch under a sign reading MIKHAL’S GENERAL STORE. Further up the street, there were old tenements, a pair of small stone houses, something that looked like a greenhouse, and an empty lot filled with dense weeds.

I pointed out an old log cabin set between a junkyard and a coffee house. “See those? All the places you see here, there’s someone who’s raised them up. Usually, it’s someplace they were comfortable being when they were alive. Sometimes, it’s a place that had a big impact on them.”

“Do you have a place?”

“Sure do. Here.” I stopped. “Look back the way we came. There’s a little alley, a side street. Old cobblestones.”

She glanced back over her shoulder, then back at me, eyes wide. “There is! That wasn’t there before!”

I chuckled and started walking again. “No, it wasn’t. When I described it to you, though, you could imagine it, so you were able to find it. That’s what it’s like here. You remember the sign above the hotel?”

“Yes…”

I steered her around the next corner. There, half a block ahead of us, stood the Hildebrandt. She stopped, confused, and twisted to look back the way we had come.

“But that was back that way! Is this the same place?”

“Yep.” I nodded at the doors ahead of us. “If we went back through there, we’d be in Faith’s bar. That’s what the City is like. You can get anywhere, from anywhere, if you know what you’re doing. It listens to us, and makes the places we remember out of… Well, here. Let me show you.”

I waved my hand slowly. Faint eddies followed it, swirling loops like the barest hint of smoke. “That’s it, right there. Ectoplasm. It responds to us. Out here, if you start to remember something from your life, it will pop up, eventually. If you’ve been around for a while, like me or Faith, you can learn a trick or two. Like so!”

I held out my hand and pictured my favorite hat: the feel of the felt, the weight of it in my hand, how it looked. It faded in quickly, appearing instantly in my hand. I lifted it to my head, giving it a flip and a flourish as I did so.

Mazda laughed out loud, then clasped her hands to her mouth. Her eyes showed embarrassment. I winked at her, and she lowered her hands slowly.

“Glad I could make you smile. Not a whole lot of that around here, most times.” I offered her my arm. “Shall we?”

She laid one hand lightly on my arm. I turned us around to head back the way we had come. We rounded the corner and came onto a completely different street. I stopped to get her attention.

“Now. I showed you how all this reacts to us. We can make things out of it. We can find our way through it. We’re going to figure out where you came from, okay?”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’m not. You are.” I nodded at the street. “We’re going to walk. I want you to ignore what’s around you. Don’t focus on the here and now. Get lost in your own head. Think about what you can remember.” As I spoke, I started walking slowly, steering her gently. She glanced around once, then paid attention to the street.

“Good. You’re doing well, Mazda.” I kept my voice soft, warm and reassuring. “We’re going to walk for a bit. Because that’s what you do to get somewhere. The place we’re going is your place. The place you feel most comfortable in. The place you always felt most at home.”

I kept the mantra up as we walked. Brother, let me tell you, I talked so long I imagined my throat getting raw, and it did. We passed in and out of the various parts of the City, trying to get something from her memory to manifest. I was starting to worry nothing would when the sidewalk under our feet shifted slowly. Fuzzy gray nothingness sharpened and solidified, becoming worn slate slabs.

Mazda slowed, blinked, and looked up.

We were standing before the burnt-out shell of an old stone church. Tumbled granite walls lay strewn across a lot filled with dead weeds. A chapel peak rose to a broken peak, leaving a twisted metal cross caught in the remains of the ceiling. The double doors at the top of a short set of stairs were blackened by fire, hanging on broken hinges. Despite the holes in the roof and the missing walls, the inside of the church was shrouded in darkness.

“Look familiar?”

Mazda took a step back and bumped into me. She jumped, startled, and flinched away. I held out my hands as if I were calming a skittish horse.

“Whoa, whoa! Easy, kid, easy. Everything’s okay.”

She wasn’t paying attention to me. She looked at the house and shook her head. “No. No. No, it’s not. This is wrong.”

I glanced down the street. The usual wraiths were absent. There was only the fog. “What do you mean? Do you recognize this place?”

“Yes! No!” She shook her head. “I don’t know. This isn’t a place I should be. It’s not a place I’ve ever been. I’m sure of it!” Her eyes were wide. “I know I’ve never been here. Why do I remember it? Is this a trick?”

I rubbed my chin. “No tricks, kid. You sure about this? You’ve never been here?”

“Never been, and don’t want to be.” She trembled as she spoke. Met my eyes. “Please. Can we go somewhere else?”

“Maybe we should take a look.” I took a step towards the church. Mazda grabbed my arm with both hands and pulled me back.

“No! Please! Can we go back to Faith?”

A howl echoed down the street. It bounced off the buildings and through the air as if it were a physical thing. Eddies of ectoplasm shivered out of the fog in its wake. Mazda clapped her hands over her ears and lowered her head, eyes screwed shut.

You may get familiar with sound of the black dogs baying, but you never get used to it. Even after all my time in the City, it was still unnerving. They sounded close, too, and I really didn’t want to see Drosser twice in one day if I could help it.

The growling howl faded away. I laid a hand on Mazda’s shoulder. “You’ve convinced me. Heading back sounds like a great idea. Let’s go.”

We turned away from the church, only to see a half dozen mastiffs step out into the street ahead of us, shrouded in smoke and dim flame.

They were hairy brutes with burning red eyes, covered with coarse black hair, jaws open and black tongues lolling. They didn’t so much move as flow from one space to the next, slinking toward us.

Mazda took a step back and pressed in behind me. As the black dogs came closer, their forms shimmered and shifted. Paws became hands. Fur became unkempt hair. A shift of perception, and now they were thick, dull-looking men, crouched over and creeping forward. While everything else changed, their eyes remained the same.

“Abe.” Drosser’s voice jerked my attention away from the dogs. He stood in front of the church doors. Gideon drifted through the doors and settled in next to Drosser with a sneer. “Hiding the guilty. Helping them escape judgement.” He toyed with a jagged, rusty knife stuck through his belt.

“Gideon. My compliments. You’re more with it. No arguing with yourself.” I shifted to keep one eye on Drosser, and another on his pack creeping up the road. Behind me, Mazda made small, scared noises.

His eyes snapped to me. “We all learn, don’t we, Abe? If we want to move on.” His smile was manic. His body trembled and twitched. “I’ve left that part of me behind. All the parts holding me back.”

He took a jerky step toward us. Drosser flung out his hand without turning his head. Gideon stopped short of pushing through. “Enough. Abe. We are hunting. And here we find you, standing in front of Gideon’s home.”

I peered past him to the church. “You know, that does explain a lot.” I cocked my head at Gideon. “Was it an exorcism gone wrong, or did the place burst into flames when you stepped foot inside?”

Gideon’s nose twitched. He took another step forward, pressing against Drosser’s outstretched palm.

Drosser’s eyes flickered towards Gideon. “I. Said. Enough.” Gideon flinched with each word, though he didn’t step back. Drosser turned his attention back to me. “Who is with you, Abe?”

I shrugged. “Not one of yours. Chase handed her off to me.” The black dogs were close enough now I could smell the stink of old death clinging to them.

Drosser’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed. There is a saying I have encountered. Trust, but verify.” His smile was cold and sharp. “I would like to examine her and make sure. Surely you understand.”

I nodded slowly. “Of course. A moment, please?”

I turned without waiting for a response. Mazda had her arms wrapped around herself, eyes screwed shut. She hummed faintly, barely loud enough for me to hear it. I recognized the song Chase had sung in the bar.

“Mazda.” I reached out and touched her shoulder gently. She started and opened eyes wide with fear.

“Shh. It’s okay.” I shifted, putting myself in between her and Drosser’s dogs. “They think you’re someone else. You need to let them see you, so they understand this is a mistake.”

She stopped humming. “Are you going to give me to them?” There was a catch in her voice. Not fear. Resignation.

I tightened my grip. “No. Trust me, Mazda. Please. I can keep you from them, but you will need to trust me.”

She closed her eyes again, then gave me a quick, sharp nod. Without turning around, I gestured to Drosser. I could feel the eyes of the black dogs on me as he approached. When he was next to me, I spoke.

“Close enough. Are you satisfied?” Mazda trembled under my hand.

Drosser peered at her, then leaned in. Nose flaring, searching. He searched the air for a moment, then stepped back, his face carefully blank.

“The scent is gone.”

“No!” Gideon stalked forward. “You are wrong, old man! She is the one! I know her scent like my own!” He reached out and grabbed Drosser by his coat sleeve.

In the streets, the dogs froze.

Drosser looked down at Gideon’s hand, then back up. Gideon met his gaze for a heartbeat, then twitched and turned away, hands dropping to his side.

The dogs in the street whined and took a step back.

Drosser inclined his head to me. “My apologies to you, fraulein. And to you, Abe. Gideon assured me he would be able to track our quarry. My trust in his abilities was…misplaced.” His smile was bright, words clipped, voice cold.

The black dogs slipped back into the twilight fog, responding to the anger in Drosser’s voice. I cleared my throat and shrugged. “It can be a mite bit difficult, finding good help these days.”

“Indeed. If you will excuse us, Abe. It would seem I need to take an active hand in this matter.”

I touched the brim of my hat without speaking. Drosser turned and snapped his fingers at Gideon. His left-hand man stared past me at Mazda, eye twitching, before turning to follow his master into the ruins of the church.

I reached back and took Mazda’s hand as they left. She was still trembling. I gave her hand a squeeze, along with a half-smile.

“You did good, kid.”

She didn’t respond, but her trembling subsided. Holding on to her hand, I turned slowly, scanning the fog to make sure all of Drosser’s pack had slunk off into the night. Nothing remained in the misty darkness. When I completed my circuit, the church was gone, replaced by an empty lot.

“Things aren’t usually this exciting. Come on, let’s get you back to Faith.”

I put our backs to the church and headed down the street. A turn here and there, and we’d be back at the Hildebrandt. Or so I thought. The first time I tried, the buildings around us quickly grew insubstantial. I slowed and examined our surroundings, then stopped.

“Abe? What’s wrong?” Mazda must have seen the tension in my shoulders. There was a quaver in her voice.

“Must have let my mind wander. We’re close to the edge of the City. I didn’t mean to come this way.” I turned us around. “Come on. We’re headed for the Faith. Focus on that with me.”

Mazda took my hand as we walked back the way we had come. We took several turns as we went. The buildings shimmered but refused to grow any more substantial. A breeze from nowhere picked up, pushing swirling mist around us. No matter which way we went, it shifted to propel us out of the City. After the third attempt, I stopped again, frowning at the mist.

Mazda spoke quietly. “Are we lost?”

I shook my head. “You were focused on Faith, right?” She nodded. “Same here. Someone out here really wants us to go out to the edge of the City. I didn’t want to take you there. I don’t think I have a choice now.”

“Why didn’t you want to go there? Is it dangerous?”

I didn’t answer here immediately. “Yeah. It could be. There are things there. Furies. They’re not bad, but…they’re not good, either. They’re like a fire. Might keep you warm. Might burn down your house.” I pursed my lips. “I’ve only seen them a few times, though. So maybe we’ll get lucky. Stick with me and hold on.”

Mazda gripped my hand tighter. I focused and turned the next corner. We stepped out onto a plain of fog stretching off into the gloom. The swirling fog obscured the ground, but the ground underneath our feet shifted like sand.

“Welcome to the outskirts of the City, kid.” I peered around, trying to see if anything was out there.

Child. The word echoed out from the distance. Ahead of us, the fog swirled, rising. It formed a vague shape, all angles and joints. Hints of teeth and claws, more the ideas of sharpness and pain than anything manifest. A feeling of vague unease on the edge of panic enveloped me.

“That would be a fury,” I whispered, taking a half-step to put myself between it and Mazda. “Whatever you do, don’t run. Stay behind me.”

“Why?” Instead of listening to me, Mazda let go of my hand and stepped forward. She lifted her head to examine the shifting form of the fury. Confusion was plain on her face.

“I know him! You…helped me. Didn’t you?”

We did. Something shifted in the fog, and I knew the fury was examining me. We welcome you, keeper of the flocks. Why have you brought his child back to us?

I forced myself to ignore the dread and stepped up next to Mazda so I could take her hand again. She was perfectly calm.

“I didn’t mean to bring her to you. I was trying to help her remember her life, and I think the City wanted us to be here for some reason.” I frowned. “Wait. You said she’s ‘his child.’ What does that mean?”

The bald one. The Hellhound’s pet. A feeling of disdain washed over me. He comes here often.

“Gideon? You let him come out here?”

That is his name? How…appropriate. Yes. The Seraph requested we not interfere with his experiments.

I closed my eyes, trying to work through it all. “Chase asked you to let him come out here. Okay.” I opened my eyes and studied the fury. “What kind of experiments?”

He was of two minds. Out here, where the City has no sway? He would spend time in meditation. He would argue with himself. We watched as he manifested a blade made from his own hate. Then turned it on himself and cut what good remained out of his own soul.

Mazda shivered. “I remember now! He was here! He tried to catch me!”

Yes. He was hurt, after. You cried out and ran. He tried to find you, so we hid you from him.

“Why?” I blurted out simultaneously with Mazda.

The fury was silent, then rippled. We were placed here to protect the City. That is our duty. We chose to act in accordance with our nature.

Something in the words caught in my mind. “I don’t suppose the fact that it ticked off Gideon factored into your decision?”

Perhaps. There was a hint of smugness. What was done, was done. We are pleased you remembered us, child. With that, the fury collapsed in on itself, vanishing back into the fog.

As for you, keeper…it is time for you to leave. The one you were trying to return to now needs your help.

Mazda peered up at me. “What does that mean?”

A shiver ran down my spine. “Faith.” I grabbed her hand and started running.

There was no trickery from the City this time around. The ground beneath my feet was stable. Fog swirled around me as I ran. A couple of turns and spotted the neon sign for the Hildebrandt down the road. I pulled up short as the sign flickered, fizzed, and dimmed.

Mazda ran up beside me. “Come on! Why did you stop?”

Guilt welled up. I’d run without thinking about her. I pushed it down. “There’s something off. As much as you can say that here, I mean.”

Mazda peered around me “It’s darker than it was. And there’s no wraiths in the street.”

She was right. The normal twilight gloom was deeper now. Under the dim flickering of the neon, the double doors of the hotel bar had a scarred appearance. Even the wood itself was darker.

“Charred.” I gestured at the doors. “Blackened by fire. We’ve seen this before.” I thought of telling her to stay, then realized I would be leaving her alone. I wasn’t about to do that. Instead, I lifted her chin and met her eyes. “Stick with me. If I tell you to run, though? Run.”

Mazda gave me a sharp nod. “Where?”

Where, indeed? If Gideon took over the hunt, where could she hide? “Chase. Find her.” If you can.

I turned back to the doors and stopped. Cocked my head, thinking for a bit. “All this,” I said slowly as I gestured around. “The whole feeling of dread. Does it seem a little, I don’t know, over the top to you? Like someone’s trying a bit too hard?”

Mazda snorted. I smiled. “Yeah. Me, too. Let’s cheer things up a bit.” I pushed my hat back on my head and started toward the door, whistling.

The huge double doors to the bar creaked open. I strolled through the doors, whistling a jaunty tune. Something I’d heard once about a mango in Paris. Mazda followed close behind me, doing her best to hum along.

Inside, the normal light and bustle were gone. It was a bar after hours, chairs put up, lights turned off. There was a pool of dim light over toward the bar, casting just enough light for me to make out a couple of indistinct figures. I continued whistling as I made my way over.

Gideon stood behind Faith, his right arm snaked around her neck. She was more than a bit taller than him, but he made up for it by way of the rusty, jagged knife he held had at her throat. He snarled at me as I came up to the edge of the light.

“Close enough, Abe.” He jerked Faith. “Unless you’d like to see what I can do.”

I stopped about ten feet from the two of them. “Hey, ma’am.” I took off my hat and let it dissolve in my hand. “What’s a nice lady like you doing in a place like this?”

“Oh, you know, hanging around.” I could tell Faith was rattled, but she wasn’t about to show it. “Just about to take out the trash when you showed up.”

“Enough.” Gideon pressed the knife into Faith’s neck. She lifted her chin and turned her head, trying to get away.

“Gideon. You’re looking a little gray around the gills.” He did indeed. The color leached away from him even as we talked. “Losing your grip?”

He shivered like a man coming off a three-day bender. “Shut up. I know he gave you something. A token to summon him. I can use it. Give it to me.”

I pictured the Iron Cross. The foul feeling of it; the harsh weight of it in my hand. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the medallion. Held it up and made a show of examining it. “This thing what you’re talking about?”

His smile was as disturbing as Drosser’s. “Hand it over.” He shifted, pressing the knife into Faith’s neck. She hissed as color seeped out of her and down around the blade.

Gideon chuckled. “See my new trick? Want to see more?”

“Yeeeeah.” I rolled my eyes. “Kind of figured that out. I found one of the wraiths you left at the edge of the City. Who goes down there, eh? Good place for you to practice.”

Gideon sneered. “Clever. So you know, I will cut her soul to shreds. Slice, slice, slice!” He giggled. “Then yours, if you do not give me to the token.”

“Abe! No!” Faith struggled.

“What can I say? I’ve got no choice.” I raised my hands in a partial shrug. “I toss it over to him or he’ll stomp me flat-footed.” I waited until I was sure Faith’s attention was on me. Then turned my left hand over, palm up.

Faith’s eyes narrowed as she stopped struggling. “Oh. You sure, cowboy?”

Gideon snarled. “Shut up. Abe.”

“Listen, sugar.” Faith’s tone shifted to her storytelling drawl. “Let me tell you something. You’re not the first fellow I’ve met with ambitions. I know the signs. I know the style. There’s a ladder in front of you, and you’re going to climb it for all you’re worth, ain’t ya? All the way to the top…”

Gideon’s eyes glazed, just a bit, before he shivered, his face twisting into a snarl. “Bitch! What do you think you were doing?”

“Letting me get into position. Catch, boy.” While Faith had distracted him, I had slipped to his left. I flipped the medallion in a low arc, away from Faith.

Gideon lunged for the medallion, loosening his grip on Faith slightly. He managed to snag the tumbling token. As he did, Faith twisted free of his grip. He tried to grab on to her, but only succeeded in putting himself slightly off balance, arms spread wide.

Which was when I stepped in and slugged him.

Gideon staggered back, dropping his knife. Faith managed to kick it off into the darkness as she hustled past me to grab onto Mazda. We all took a collective step back from Gideon, who was decidedly more manic.

“Dead man.” Gideon was definitely looking gray now. He panted heavily. “I will be THE Hellhound! I don’t need that toy to deal with you.” He held up the medallion. “I’ll take care of you, then summon the old man and rend his soul before sending it below.”

I shook my head sadly. “Gideon. See? That right there? That’s why you’ll never be the Hellhound, no matter how you try. You simply aren’t smart enough.”

I withdrew the bit of effort I had put into it, and the imitation Iron Cross dissolved into streams of ectoplasm. I pulled out the real medallion and held it up as I spoke a single word.

“Drosser.” I tossed the real medallion toward Gideon.

Gideon snarled and lunged at me, only to be jerked back. A finely manicured hand gripped his shoulder tightly. Drosser stepped out of the shadows and spun Gideon around.

“Abe. I see you remembered my instructions.” Behind him, red eyes appeared in the darkness, accompanied by low growls. Gideon struggled, but Drosser held him fast.

I nodded at Gideon. “Your boy here wanted to talk to you, Drosser.”

“I heard.” His smile was full of sharp teeth. He shook Gideon like a dog worrying a rat. “He seems rather less substantial. You’ve piqued my professional curiosity. What did you do to him?”

“Not a thing. He did it to himself.”

Drosser frowned. “Explain.”

“He wanted your spot, you know. He figured the only way to make that happen was to carve off the bits of himself that were holding him back. Quite literally.” I laid my hand on Mazda’s shoulder. “Must have been pretty damn painful, slicing up your own soul like that. Excising every bit of good in you. Then trying to harry it off to down Below to hide your tracks.”

“Interesting.” Drosser’s tone was studiously casual. “How did he do this?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to go into details, not for Drosser.

Faith stepped forward. “Gents, much as I appreciate your patronage…the bar’s closed for the night. Mister Drosser? I’d appreciate it if you could take care of the trash for me.”

The barest hint of a smile reached Drosser’s eyes as he inclined his head. “Of course, madam.” He chuckled. “It would appear we have business with the Below tonight. Or Gideon does.”

“No!” Gideon jerked himself free of Drosser’s grasp. “Brothers! Come! I have found our quarry!” He was wild-eyed, shaking and panting. “The false one! The one consorting with agents of Above!”

There was a low growl out of the darkness. Behind Drosser, red eyes flared in the darkness, growing closer. The vaguely doglike outlines of the black dogs shifted as they came closer, a knot of hunched men with glowing red eyes gathering behind Drosser. One cracked his knuckles. Another, face twisted in hatred, spat into the darkness.

Gideon cackled. “See? They recognize your weakness. Brothers! Let us hunt!”

Faith and I grabbed Mazda and took a few steps backward. Drosser shook his head. “Gideon.” His voice dripped with sarcastic sorrow. “I had such hopes for you.” He turned to face the black dogs and cocked his head. As one, they stepped aside. Drosser twitched a hand. “Bring him along.”

“NO!” Gideon lunged for Drosser, but the dogs were quicker. Hands shifted into oversized paws. Wicked claws caught him, dragging him to the ground. The black dogs tore and gnawed at him as he screamed in defiance, so excited that they shifted forms as they mauled him. Faith turned Mazda away from the spectacle, hiding it from her eyes.

Me? I watched as they dragged Gideon away into the darkness. His screams of defiance became cries of anguish, pitiful pleading. At the end, he twisted enough to get one hand free and reached out to me.

“ABE! PLEASE!”

I met his eyes and said nothing. Then he was gone.

A final pair of burning eyes floated in the darkness for a second, then blinked out, leaving us alone in the unlit bar.

Mazda opened her mouth, but I held up my hand and nodded at Faith. Her head was tilted, eyes closed, with a look of concentration on her face. The three of us stood at the edge of the light for a few moments until she opened her eyes.

“All clear. I think.”

“And well done.” We all jumped at Chase’s voice from behind us. She strolled toward us as the lights in the bar came up. Off in the distance, a piano played a now-familiar tune.

“Ma’am.” I nodded at the Seraph. “You knew what was going on, didn’t you?”

“I suspected.” Chase leaned over to Mazda. “I knew you were perfectly capable of dealing with it, and with dear Mazda, here. You understand who you are, now, I take it?”

Mazda nodded slowly. “I’m him.”

Chase straightened up. “Yes, and no. He was you. Now he’s not, and you’re—well, you. More importantly, you’re a you that now has a choice to make.” Chase held out her hand. “Do you want to stay here, or would you rather move on?”

Mazda looked up at me, eyes wide.

I nodded my head at Chase. “Go on. If she says you deserve it? Then you do.”

Mazda blinked, then reached out and grabbed my hand with both of hers.

“Thank you.” She smiled before letting go and turning to Chase. Chase took her hand, with a smile in return. Then time slowed for me as Chase held out her other hand to Faith.

Faith straightened up and squared her shoulders. “This is my choice, right? I can say no?”

“Later,” I blurted. Faith started. Chase gave me an imperceptible nod. “Don’t ever say no. But you can say later, if that’s what you want.”

Faith pursed her lips. “You said that, once. Didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Chase raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. “Still my answer. I’ll wait.”

Chase turned her attention back to Faith.

Faith shook her head slowly. “No. Same. Thank you, but…later. I’ll wait.”

Chase smiled at the two of us, then she and Mazda turned and stepped into the light, leaving the smell of summer grass and the feel of sunlight on your skin.

Faith took a deep breath, blew it out. “Well. That was something I just did.”

I shook my head. “Why?”

Faith titled her head. “You’ve never asked me about why I was here.”

I shrugged. “It’s yours to share, or not. I don’t like to pry.”

She looked down. “Selflessness. I was supposed to learn how to care for someone more than myself. It took a while, but I think I’ve done it.”

I blinked. Memory of dust, I told myself. “That’s wonderful! But…if that’s the case…”

She huffed and rolled her eyes before I could finish speaking. “Men! I told you. I was supposed to learn what it means to care for someone.” She leaned over the counter and planted a kiss on my cheek.

Her lips were warm. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror behind the bar and somehow managed to wipe the dazed look off my face before she sat back.

“Now I’ve got a reason to stick around. We make a pretty good team.” There was a touch of challenge in her voice. “Don’t you think?”

I held up my hands. “No argument from me! But…”

“Shh. My choice.” She leaned over the bar and shimmied her shoulders at me. “So. Since we’re going to be together for a while, how ‘bout I tell you the story I heard about the professional alligator wrestler and the nun?”

I leaned forward as she started in. At that moment, the afterlife didn’t seem quite so drab.

What can I say? She tells a great story.

Castle Doctrine

Kelly Grayson

Iknew the dame was trouble the moment she walked into my gun shop. I just didn’t know what kind.

The doorbell jangled when she walked in off the street on one of those San Francisco nights where the fog rolls in cold and damp and makes you wanna hole up in front of the fireplace with a whiskey and someone warm and blonde.

My mutt Bogey let out a warning growl and I shushed him. “You don’t growl at the customers, pal,” I warned under my breath, “especially ones that look like Lana Turner.” He slunk back to his corner, grumbling all the way.

Looking back, I shoulda trusted the dog. He was always a good judge of character.

She was tall for a gal, but curvy, wearing a white linen number that didn’t do a damned thing but magnify those curves. The neckline of her dress dipped dangerously low into the hollow between her breasts, and long, shapely legs disappeared under the hem of her flared skirt, ending somewhere in that no-man’s land of desire and regret framed by the swell of her hips. The streetlights outside silhouetted her nicely as she stood in the doorway.

She strode in on those gorgeous stems, her heels clicking on the worn tile of my shop floor. She didn’t need high heels to look down on a working schlub like me, but damned if they didn’t do wonders for her calves and ass.

“Help you, Miss?” I asked politely, setting aside the lockwork for the Smith snubby I was tuning.

“I hope so,” she breathed, her eyes brimming with tears. “I was told you buy guns.” Her voice was husky; equal parts sex and smooth whiskey, and something inside me stirred as she talked.

“Been known to buy a few,” I allowed as she fished a cigarette out of a bejeweled case. She put it to her lips and looked at me, and I did what she expected, holding out my Zippo like a gentleman.

I’m not a gentleman, but for a pretty lady I’ll put on airs.

She leaned down and touched my hand to steady it as she lit her cigarette, and I felt a flash of heat as her fingertips touched my hand. She looked up at me through those long lashes and I was lost.

Blue eyes, damn it. Why did she have to have blue eyes? At that moment, I’d have given her the keys to my shop just to dry the tears brimming in those vivid blue eyes.

The dame took a deep drag and exhaled a stream of smoke through her nose. She brushed the back of one hand across her face, and right on cue, the damned white knight in me had me scrambling behind the counter for a box of tissues.

She took one gratefully and dabbed delicately at her eyes, nodded as if she had made some internal decision, and breathed shakily, “Then you’re just the man I need. My name is Tamara Keel.”

“You have a gun for sale, Miss Keel?” I asked, ignoring the voice in my head agreeing that I was indeed just the man she needed. Business first.

“Indeed I do,” she answered, pulling a pistol out of her purse and placing it on the counter. “How much can I get for this, Mister…”

“Castle,” I answered, offering a hand. “Sam Castle, gunsmith.” Her hands were soft, but her grip was firm.

I picked up the pistol and examined it. To most eyes, it was a pretty standard GI 1911, right up to the “UNITED STATES PROPERTY/M1911 A1 U.S. Army” stamped on the right side of the frame. I carried one just like it in a shoulder holster under my left arm; half the nightstands and bedside tables in the city probably carried a similar weapon, smuggled home by GIs after their tour of duty for Uncle Sam. I got mine the same way, brought home from Tarawa in my USMC duffel, wrapped in a bundle of skivvy shorts. That little fracas had bought me a limp and a hunk of shrapnel lodged in my lower back, and I figured if I smuggled home my pistol, that was the least the Marine Corps owed me.

But the thing that made this one more than just another Mohaska was the brightly blued finish, unlike most military 1911s, and the roll stamp on the other side of the slide that read, “S. MFG. CO./ELIZABETH, N.J., U.S.A.”

I raised my eyes to hers. “This is a Singer 1911.”

She regarded me coolly. “Does that make it valuable?”

“I’d say,” I chuckled. “They only made five hundred of these. They’re already quite valuable, and the war’s only been over for ten years. The price is only gonna go up.”

“How much?” she asked.

“Dunno,” I shrugged. “A typical 1911A1 goes for about forty bucks used. This one, in this condition, might fetch a thousand. Where did you get it?”

“It was my father’s,” she sniffed. “He was in the 101st Airborne in the War.”

“Sounds like a family heirloom. Why would you want to get rid of it?”

Something furtive and desperate flashed in those gorgeous peepers for just a moment, and she nervously took another drag of her cigarette. “I…I need to get out of town,” she said, “maybe to Mexico. I need a traveling stake.”

I put the gun back down on the counter. “Look, Mrs. Keel, I—”

“It’s Miss Keel,” she interrupted, “but please call me Tamara, Sam.”

“Okay…Tamara.” I swallowed hard. “I could put you in touch with a number of collectors that would pay a premium price for this piece. Might take a couple of days.”

“I don’t have a couple of days,” she murmured. Her blue eyes welled with tears as they searched mine. “What could you give me for it, Sam?”

Dammit with the waterworks. I can’t think straight when a dame starts crying, especially one that looks like this one. At that moment, I’d have given her the deed to my shop if she’d just stop with the tears.

“I only have about six hundred on hand,” I sighed, handing her another tissue. “That’s the best I can do.”

She nodded tearfully, dabbing at her eyes. “I suppose that will have to do,” she breathed shakily. “How much for one of those Smith .38 Specials in the case?”

My eyes narrowed. What’s a dame like her want with a piece? She should be lounging in a five-star hotel suite somewhere drinking champagne with some lovestruck palooka feeding her grapes. What’s she so afraid of?

“Usually about forty bucks,” I answer, “but I’ll throw one in along with a box of rounds. Least I could do.”

“Thank you, Sam.” She tossed me a grateful smile that lit up the room almost as much as it lit up me. I wrote up the .38 Chief’s Special and showed her how to load it and handed her my card with the remainder of the box of ammo. She glanced at the number, then back at me.

“In case you, you know, need anything,” I stammered, feeling my cheeks flush. Dammit, what was this dame doing to me? “If you come across any other collectibles, I could get you a good price for them.”

She looked at me through those long lashes again and murmured, “In case I need…anything,” and turned to leave. She looked over her shoulder at me, framed in the light of the doorway, and said, “See you around, Sam.”

I tossed her what I hope looked like a casual wave and watched her walk away. Damned if she wasn’t just as pretty a sight going as she was coming. When she was out of sight, I picked up the Singer 1911 and sniffed it. Whatever her old man had done with the pistol, it was no safe queen. It had been fired recently, and unless the light from the doorway was playing tricks on my eyes, I saw the silhouette of a Walther PPK tucked into the garter on her left inner thigh.

I never wanted to be a Kraut gun so much in all my life.

I was settled in my upstairs apartment and on my third bourbon of paying monthly bills when the buzzer for the shop door rang. I looked up in annoyance; there’s a fine balance to be struck between bourbon and bills, and I hadn’t yet hit the sweet spot between more bourbon and fewer bills. “Go away, we’re closed,” I muttered more to myself than anyone. In reply, the buzzer rang even more insistently.

Swearing sulfurously, I drained my glass of Harper’s and pounded down the stairs in my bare feet. Whatever the problem was, these cops better have a damned good reason for wearing out my buzzer at 7:30 on a Thursday night.

How did I know it was a cop, you ask? Well, cops have a distinctive way of knocking. It’s authoritative, imperious and annoying as hell. Merely pounding on a door does not a cop knock make; they’ve got their own rhythm and cadence to it, probably instilled in them in the first month of the police academy, right between parking ticket enforcment and interrogating suspects with their fists. How the hell all that translated into ringing an electric buzzer I had no idea, but I had no doubt it was a cop on the other end of that buzzer.

“Whaddaya want, Byars?” I snarled as I flung open the door. Detective Sergeant Cecil Byars, San Francisco PD, stood outside my shop, his trench coat collar turned up and rain pouring off the brim of his fedora.

The weather didn’t dampen his arrogance much. “Did I tear you away from something important, Castle?” he smirked.

“Washing my dog,” I drawled. “Alphabetizing my spice rack. Counting the water stains on the ceiling. Way more important than whatever conversation you wanna have.”

He glared at me balefully for several moments. Cops, and especially Detective Sergeant Cecil Byars, are not known for their refined senses of humor. “Goddamnit, Castle,” he finally snapped, “are you gonna let me in or not? I’m getting soaked out here.”

“I’m sorry, Officer, but I already donated to the Police Auxiliary,” I said innocently. “If you’d care to wait here, I’m sure I could dig up the receipt.” I have few pleasures in life—bourbon, leggy blondes and finely tuned pistols among them—but annoying the shit out of Cecil Byars was high up the list.

“I could come back with a warrant,” he growled.

“You could,” I agreed, “if you had probable cause, which you don’t. In any case, you’d get even wetter, and we’d both lose a couple of hours we’ll never get back.” I fixed him with my most patently insincere smile and hoped it looked every bit as fake as it was. Byars broke first.

He let out an explosive sigh. “I’m not after you, Castle, see? I got bigger fish to fry, and I need information. You’d be doing me a solid.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” I gushed, gesturing him grandly inside. “Anything to help San Francisco’s finest, Detective Byars!” He glared at me as he walked inside, shrugging out of his sodden trench coat and shaking the water off his fedora.

Byars and I cordially detest each other, in case it wasn’t obvious already. He busted me with possession of stolen property eighteen months back—a handful of pistols, a Browning A5 and a really nice Holland and Holland .375 double rifle—I had bought off a fellow with fewer questions asked than was wise. I had no reason to believe the guy was dirty, but looking back on it, maybe I should have. Byars had seized the guns as evidence and left me close to two grand in the hole. Even worse, he had held the charge for receiving stolen property over my head ever since.

The bastard thought he owned me.

“You got any coffee in this dump, Castle?” Byars grumped. His collar and armpits were damp from the rain, his ratty tie ended about eight inches above his belt and his belly strained at the buttons of his shirt. I’ve worked up handloads that couldn’t achieve the velocity of one of Byars’s shirt buttons if he were to suddenly exhale fully.

“I’ll put on a pot,” I sighed. Actually, I already had a pot upstairs in the apartment, but damned if Cecil Byars was getting an invitation into my sanctum sanctorum. Screw that guy. Ten minutes later, I slid a cup across the counter to him. “Sorry, no donuts,” I said. He took a sip and grimaced.

“Damn, Castle, when’s the last time you washed this pot?” he groused.

“I clean parts in it occasionally,” I shrugged, “that and in the cup you’re using. A little Hoppes #9 might put some hair on your chest, Cecil.”

One of the few things Byars hated more than his manhood being questioned was being addressed by his first name. Not that I cared; it was his own damned parents that named him, not me.

“Leon Fleischman got whacked last night,” he announced. Apparently, the time allotted for fake pleasantries had passed.

Leon Fleischman was a real estate speculator from back East, richer than God and twice as ruthless as the Old Testament version of the Almighty. He had bought up quite a few properties in the Mission District lately and had made a few enemies along the way. Being a humble gunsmith, I didn’t run in the same social circles as fellas like Fleischman, but I knew the man. He was an avid gun collector, and he had expensive tastes. We’d done business here and there.

“Any idea who it was?” I asked neutrally, sipping at my coffee. I don’t know what Byars’s problem was with the stuff. Mine tasted fine, but I’ve been elbow deep in bore solvent since I was a nine-year-old machine gun armorer in the Second Marines on Tarawa. At this point in my life, Cosmoline was permanently embedded under my fingernails and bore solvent weeped from my pores.

“No leads so far,” Byars admitted, “but whoever it was, Fleischman trusted. It was a close-range tap to the heart. They put a pillow over his chest to muffle the shot, and there was powder stippling and a good muzzle stamp over the entry wound. His safe was open, and an unknown quantity of cash, jewels and several guns are missing. The safe wasn’t jimmied. Fleischman had to have opened it for the perp.”

“Then you start questioning known associates,” I shrugged. “So why are you bothering me?”

“Because whoever did it is probably going to fence those guns,” he sneered, “and you’re the go-to guy in this city to unload stolen weapons.”

“Go fuck yourself, Byars,” I flared. “I run a clean business, that one screw-up notwithstanding. You want to find the guy that did Fleischman, then act like a detective and start sweating all the enemies the guy accumulated.”

“Guy like Fleischman, his enemies can’t get to him that easily,” Byars siad flatly. “They did him in his personal suite at the Sir Francis Drake. Guy had security at the elevators and at the entrance to his suite. Everybody coming in gets frisked. Whoever did him had access.”

“So we’re back to known associates,” I said. “Ain’t that obvious? Ain’t San Francisco PD got an entrance exam or something to make detective? Did you have a ringer take the test for you or something? Go look at the guy’s asshole buddies.”

“Guys like Fleischman don’t have asshole buddies, not the kind like you or I would have in a foxhole. Guys like Fleischman have associates, and one of his closest was Mickey Fingers.”

“And Mickey Fingers has too much juice in this town for you to haul him in on a hunch,” I realized.

“He ain’t talkin’,” Byars muttered, “but Fleischman liked to flash his wad. He’d be ripe for a heist, if the guy planning it had balls big enough.”

That certainly fit Michael Joseph Fitzgerald, aka Mickey Fingers, head of the Irish mob in San Francisco. The guy was crazy brave, and I wanted no part of him.

“You still ain’t asked the favor, Byars,” I told him. “What do you want from me?”

“I want Mickey Fingers,” he grated, hard as stone. “I want that bozo so bad I can taste it. If I can tie him to the heist, or find that the weapon used was his, I’ll have his ass.”

“What kind of weapon we talking about?” I asked.

“We dug a .45 hardball slug out of the mattress,” he said, draining the last of his coffee. “The forensics boys tell me the muzzle stamp is consistent with a 1911. There are two of them missing from Fleischman’s collection.”

My mind flashed back the the Singer 1911 sitting out of sight in a cabinet below my display counter.

Then I remembered that it had been recently fired.

I usually don’t sleep well—nightmares I’d rather not talk about—but I’ve found that exhaustion and bourbon make for a fairly good sedative. Problem is, that usually means I don’t wake up too well, either, and the next morning was no exception.

I woke up with a pounding headache and Bogey licking my face, whining to be let out. My mouth tasted like someone had shit in it, my tongue as dry as sandpaper. I swung my feet out of bed, shoved the damned dog out of the way and staggered to the bathroom. I filled a glass with tap water from the sink and slugged it down, then chased it with two more and an aspirin. The water tasted like chlorine and toothpaste.

My reflection in the mirror didn’t do much to improve my morning mood. The square-jawed face my mother had described as “ruggedly handsome” in my youth was now more of the former than the latter. My nose had a hump in it—the reward for an altercation with a shore patrolman at a San Diego bar right after I finished Marine Corps recruit training—and various other scars marred a face that now I was pretty sure only my mother could love. The bleary eyes and dark circles under them didn’t improve the picture much. War, worries and booze will age a man.

I flipped up the toilet seat—not that I’m domesticated, but if I don’t leave it down, Bogey will drink from the crapper—and emptied my bladder for what seemed like a month. When I was done, I contemplated the toilet balefully and then vomited in it before I flushed. I felt vaguely human by then, and my old friend coffee would get me the rest of the way.

Downstairs, I took Bogey to tend to his business in a little grassy patch at the end of the street. While he did the necessaries, me standing there in my skivvies and bathrobe and a pair of slippers, I saw a nondescript Ford sedan parked down the street from my shop, two Joes in the front seat, almost invisible behind fogged up windows.

Damned cops. Why the hell were they watching my place? I already promised Byars I’d keep him posted, so why’d he have me shadowed? I pretended not to notice them as Bogey watered the fire hydrant, and I kept to my side of the street as I walked back to my shop. But my anger kept building and got the better of me, and before I walked inside, I veered suddenly across the street and slapped the driver’s window. The figure behind the wheel jumped in surprise and doused himself with half a cup of morning coffee.

The driver’s window rolled down and a couple of palookas in cheap suits glared at me angrily. “What’s your goddamn problem, pal?” the driver sputtered, mopping coffee stains off his tie. From the looks of it, another stain would only add more character.

“Tell Byars I said if you guys keep shadowing me, he gets no information. Got it?”

“Byars?” The guy in the passenger seat tried to play innocent. “Who? Never heard of the guy. We was just sitting here waiting for the paper to be delivered.”

“Leave my shop alone and beat it,” I warned. “My customers don’t like cops.”

“Hey, fuck you, pal!” the driver snarled. “It’s a free country, and we’ll park here as long as we please!”

The angry tones set Bogey on alert, and he put his front paws on the driver’s window sill, growled and showed his teeth. The driver’s face whitened, not six inches away from those teeth. I told you Bogey was a good judge of character.

“Call off your dog, pal,” passenger seat guy warned. “We’re here on official business, and I’ll shoot that mutt without a second thought.”

“You hurt my dog, and I’ll kill you both,” I replied matter-of-factly, then turned around and walked back to my shop. Let the two idiots sit there in a sweltering car all day, for all I cared. They wouldn’t learn anything useful.

I had just peeled the foil off my TV dinner, opened a beer and settled down to watch Ed Sullivan when the phone rang again. I padded over to the television to turn the sound down and pointed a warning finger at Bogey. The dog loves Salisbury steak more than I do.

“Castle’s Gun Works, firearms bought, sold and repaired,” I barked, snatching up the receiver before it could ring a third time. There was a long silence on the other end. “Hello?”

“S-Sam?” came a timid voice. “Is that you, Sam?” Then I recognized the voice and a vision of vivid blue eyes and killer legs flashed unbidden into my mind.

“Miss Keel?” I asked, softening my tone. “What can I do for you?” I hate phone calls after business hours, but for broads that looked like Tamara Keel, I’d make an exception. She sounded upset, that husky voice tinged with something that sounded like fear.

“I…I need help, Sam,” she quavered. “He’ll kill me if he finds me.”

“Who?” I pressed. “Who’s trying to kill you?”

“My boyfriend,” she sobbed. “He’s crazy, Sam! He beat me up and I ran away. I don’t know where to go…” Her voice trailed off.

“Look, Miss Keel,” I ground out, trying to rein in the white knight that clouded my head whenever it involves a dame in distress. White Knight Sam doesn’t like bullies, especially ones that smack women around, but White Knight Sam also tends to be all balls, no forehead. He’s gotten me into a jam more than once. “I really don’t want to get mixed up in a domestic thing between you and your man. Why don’t you go to the cops and—”

“I’ve got information on him that the cops want, and he’ll kill me to keep me from talking,” she sobbed. “I can’t go back to the hotel, and he knows everybody!” Terror made her voice crack, and the goddamn White Knight just took over.

“Where are you?” I asked, grabbing a pen from the telephone table. “I’ll come get you.”

“A cab stand at Powell and Market,” she answered. “I can catch a cab to—”

“No!” I blurted, peeking out the curtains onto the street below. Byars’ two mooks were still parked outside. “There’s an Italian joint just down the street from there, DiStefano’s. Do you know it?”

“I know DiStefano’s.”

“Go there, have a glass of wine, and wait for me. I’ll drive past in a dark blue Ford sedan. I’ll toot the horn as I pass—‘shave and a haircut, two bits’—and then circle the block. Head outside and I’ll pick you up at the curb.”

“I…I can do that,” she sniffled. “And Sam? Please hurry.”

“I’ll be there soon, doll,” I reassured her. “It’ll all be okay.”

I threw on my clothes and grabbed my overcoat and fedora and headed downstairs, only to remember the two mooks in the car outside watching my place. A peek out my front window told me they were still there, so I climbed down the fire escape into the alley behind my shop, walked two blocks over and one up to the lot where I kept my car. Parking in this city has been a headache for years. There is no private parking on my street since it’s zoned commercial, but I figure what I saved in rent by living above my shop more than made up for a monthly parking fee. I turned up the collar on my overcoat and pulled my fedora low across my eyes as I approached the lot, and casually scanned the area. No one seemed interested.

My old Ford didn’t want to crank at first, but with judicious application of the choke and a few well-timed curses, the V8 rumbled to life. I looked out of the windows quickly fogging over as the smell of gas dissipated and the roughness of the engine smoothed out, figuring my next move.

“You’re thinking with the wrong head, Castle,” I growled to myself. “You’re a damn fool to get between some broad and her old man.” But the seedy and morally bankrupt part of my mind reminded me that she was still a damned good-looking dame, and if she had more guns to sell like that Singer 1911, who was I to complain?

As usual, the amoral part won. I never pretended to be a nice guy. I just try to be…most of the time.

I passed DiStefano’s, tooted the horn and made the block at Powell Street. When I passed back by, she was waiting at the curb, holding her raincoat over her head. I braked, leaned over and flung the passenger door open, and she slid in, giving me a glimpse of her gams that went all the way up to the top of her stockings and that Walther PPK nestled there. She tossed the raincoat in the backseat and turned to face me, and my blood ran cold. Somebody had worked her over good.

She sported what was going to be a nice shiner over her left eye, and her lower lip was split. Her mascara had run down her face and her makeup was smeared, and something ugly and feral in my guts began to growl for attention.

“Jesus Christ!” I blurted.

“Just take me away from here, Sam,” she sighed, laying her head back against the seat.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“No,” she said softly, not opening her eyes. “I just wanna go somewhere where I can think, someplace where my boyfriend can’t find me.”

“I can take you to a hotel…”

Her eyes opened and she looked at me again with that chin-lowered, blue-eyes-through-the-eyelashes look she gave me the night she first came into my shop. Even soaking wet and beaten up, she was still devastating. “Can I stay with you, Sam?” she asked softly, and there was a touch of scared little girl in her tone.

“Shit, I suppose so,” I groaned as I put the car into gear. “It’s gonna take some doing, though.”

I pondered my next move as I drove back towards my shop, glancing occasionally at her legs and the swell of her breasts beneath a sodden dress that was plastered to every curve. My morally bankrupt side noticed her perfume and told my conscience to shut the fuck up and enjoy the ride.

It took some doing to get back into the shop unnoticed. In the end, I gave her my shop keys and told her to lay down in the seat as I pulled up outside. “There’s two cops watching my place,” I explained as I pulled to a stop at the curb a few car lengths down from my shop. “I’m gonna get out and distract ‘em. When they’ve pulled out to follow me, count to a hundred and let yourself into the shop. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She nodded up at me from the floorboard. I got out of the car, walked down the street toward my shop and pretended to put my key in the front door. I cast a few furtive glances over my shoulder, ducked behind a car and duck-walked twenty feet or so, and then crossed the street behind a passing cab. I popped up on the other side of the street, looked around again, hunched my shoulders against the rain, pulled my hat down low and sauntered down the block. In the side mirror of a parked car, I saw the gray Ford ease out of its parking spot and into traffic. I paused at a newspaper machine and bought a copy of the San Fancisco Chronicle. Fleischman’s murder was front page news.

Folding the paper under my arm, I resumed walking, trying to look sneaky but not too sneaky. I wanted to lose them, but not until we were a good distance away from my place. Predictably, they followed, hanging back in traffic. When I reached the next block, I looked back, fixed a look of fear and surprise on my face, and bolted down the cross street. I heard them gun the engine, and thirty seconds later saw them make the turn, almost sideswiping a parked car as they slid on the wet pavement. Halfway down the block, they slowed to a crawl and I could see their necks craning, looking for me. I tossed a wink and a couple of bucks to Mrs. Devaney, who runs the bakery, grabbed my croissants, and took the back door to the alley.

By the time I got back to my shop, Tamara was upstairs in my apartment with her back pressed to the wall beside my door. Bogey had her pinned there, his teeth bared and a low growl rumbling in his chest.

“Nice dog,” she murmured. “What do you feed him, damsels in distress?”

“Bogey!” I snapped. “Leave the lady alone!” Immediately, he sat down and looked at me curiously, his tail thumping the floor. “He’s harmless,” I assured her.

“As long as I’m not a burglar or a TV dinner,” she said, pointing at the mangled foil tray on the floor. Bogey slunk away with a guilty look.

“Make yourself at home,” I stammered, picking up the remnants of my dinner from the floor and cleaning off a spot on the couch. “I don’t usually have company, but I—”

“Is there some place I can clean up, Sam?” she interrupted. “Maybe get a shower and out of these wet clothes?”

“Sure, bathroom’s at the end of the hall,” I said, pointing. “You can put your bag in the bedroom…” I trailed off. She hadn’t been carrying anything bigger than her purse.

“No bag,” she said quietly, answering the question in my eyes. “I left in a hurry.” Her eyes clouded with tears again and she bit her lower lip. Dammit with the waterworks.

“Yeah, um…” I stammered. “I don’t know why I said that. Um…lookit, there’s a robe hanging in the bathroom, and I’m sure I’ve got a shirt and some pajamas or something…”

“Or something.”

“Anyways, I’ll be out here if you need me.” I blushed. “I’ve got TV dinners, or maybe we could order Chinese takeout, and I’ve got plenty to drink. Beer, bourbon, whatever you want.”

“Bourbon,” she decided. “Make me one, and I’ll be out in a bit.”

“Just leave your clothes outside in the hall and I’ll hang them up,” I called after her as she walked down the hall. She nodded and closed the bathroom door behind her. Presently, I heard water running and the boiler kick on.

I got two glasses from the drain board, rinsed the dust out of them and poured two drinks, dropping a couple of ice cubes in hers. I drained mine, poured another two fingers of Harper’s and slugged it down. “Don’t be a sucker, Castle,” I muttered to myself. “This is trouble you don’t need.” I checked the phone table and made sure my 1911 was in the drawer, cocked and locked. The last thing I needed was a jealous boyfriend beating on the door spoiling for a fight and me with nothing handier than an umbrella and harsh language to defend myself.

I sat on the couch watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents while it seemed she took an eternity in the bathroom. The episode was as dark as my mood, something about a man recovering from a car accident only to find himself being stalked by a man that looked just like him. I was most of the way through my third bourbon, feeling some sympathy for a fella on the run from sinister forces, when Bogey whined and I looked up.

She was standing in the entrance to the living room, her hair all turbaned up in a towel, wearing my bathrobe. From the length of smooth calves and bare feet showing below the hem, nothing but my bathrobe.

I gulped and slugged more of my drink.

She picked up hers from the end table, took a healthy swallow, winked at me and walked back into the kitchen. She came back holding the bottle of Harper’s and sat down next to me on the couch, folding her legs beneath her. Some women look like kinda plain when they’re not dolled up, but not Tamara Keel. Nope, high cheekbones and pale, smooth skin and wisps of blonde hair peeking out from beneath that towel…even the shiner and the split lip didn’t mar her looks. If it weren’t for the shimmer of tears over those blue eyes, she’d look like a damned Valkyrie, not some meek and mousy housewife smacked around by her husband. Her perfume was gone, but Lifebuoy soap had never smelled so damned erotic.

She said nothing, just poured me another drink. When she had set the bottle aside, I raised my glass. “Mud in your eye,” I said, clinking my glass to hers. I guess it was the wrong thing to say, because then the tears came, and her chest started heaving in great, racking sobs. I pulled her to me and she laid her head on my chest and sobbed until Alfred Hitchcock came back on and told us the end of the story. The towel on her hair came off, and as she cried, I found myself stroking her damp hair and crooning soothing bullshit about how everything was going to be all right. I told her she was safe with me, and I’d take care of her, which I suppose was sincere enough.

After the sobs had trailed off, she laid there with her head still on my chest, and I put my fingers under her chin and lifted her face up to look at me. She looked at me through those thick lashes and I started to say something trite and comforting when her eyes closed and her face moved closer, and I felt her lips touch mine.

The robe fell open sometime in the middle of all of it, and I found my hand inside it, cupping one full breast. She pulled her head back then, looking at me again through those half-lidded eyes, but made no move to displace my hand. The dark and cynical part of my brain whispered, “You’re a damn fool, Castle,” but I wasn’t listening. Instead, I picked her up, carried her to the bedroom, and heeled the door shut behind me.

The dame draped a long and shapely leg across my thigh as we laid there between the sheets and listened to the rain patter against the window. We hadn’t gotten much sleep. Tamara’s hair was tousled in that way that beautiful women have, where even after a night of vigorous bedroom calisthenics, they still look like they spent fifty bucks to make it look that way.

“I’ve been thinking, baby,” she purred, propped up on one arm as she laid beside me, toying with the hair on my chest. “Why don’t I make you breakfast and we spend the day inside?” She reached over, plucked the cigarette from my lips and took a deep drag, rubbing her nipple across my arm in the process.

“You do much more of that and we’re not even gonna make it to the kitchen,” I chuckled, pulling her over atop me. She sat up straddling my thighs and I stared up at her, that unkempt blonde mane covering most of her face, her breasts round and firm. She caught me staring and subtly arched her back, the sheet falling off her shoulders. “First we gotta talk, doll,” I told her, forcing myself to think about baseball scores and the nuns from Catholic school when I was a kid.

“Mmmm,” she purred, rolling her hips slightly. “Talk about what?” She knew damned well the effect she was having.

For once, the rational part of my brain was in charge. It oughta be, because the hungry and carnal part had gotten enough workout that it might take a day or so to recover. “Talk about why you’re here,” I answered, putting my hands on her hips and rolling her off me. She pouted briefly. “I’m serious, doll,” I warned. “You want my help, you gotta level with me.”

She heaved out a sigh. “What’s there to know? My creep of a boyfriend beat me up. I ran. You were the only place I knew to go. You rescued me.”

The cynical part of me was warning me that this dame could play me like a violin if I kept thinking with my cock. Women who looked like her did not wind up with guys like me unless they wanted something, and she looked to have long experience at getting what she wanted out of men. “You told me on the phone last night that you had information on him that he’d kill to keep secret,” I reminded her. “What is he into?”

She sat up and folded her arms in front of her—under her breasts rather than over them, I noticed. Not that they needed any extra enhancement. She blew out a breath, blowing the hair away from her face. “He robbed somebody,” she said simply. “I’ve always known he was in the outfit, all the money and the hotel penthouse and the swell clothes and fancy cars, but I always told myself that had nothing to do with me. He was always nice to me, treated me like I was a princess. He said he loved me, and I believed him…”

Her voice trailed off as her eyes welled with tears, and I ground my teeth and told myself to divorce myself from my emotions. “And?” I pressed, and it came out pretty harshly. Her eyes widened and she stared at me for a long moment.

“And he…he killed somebody,” she blurted. “He broke into a business associate’s safe and took a lot of stuff, and the man caught him. Michael just…shot him. I saw the whole thing. Honest, Sam, I…I didn’t know he was going to kill anybody. And he told me that if I ever blabbed, I’d end up the same way.”

“And the marks on your face?”

“We had an argument,” she said tonelessly, “and he grabbed me by the arms and shook me, and he hit me across the face and said if I ever told anybody what I saw, nobody would ever see me again. Sam, I was so scared…” Her lower lip trembled, and the tears started to cascade down her face.

“And the loot?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“A bunch of cash, a bag of jewels, some paintings, a few guns… Sam, he’ll kill me to keep all that, I just know it. If you had seen the look in his eyes when he hit me, his eyes were just…dead, no emotion at all. I really thought he loved me, and now I’m terrified he’ll find me.”

“It’s okay, doll,” I told her, pulling her into my arms. “Ol’ Sam’s gonna take care of you. I won’t let anybody hurt you.”

“You…you promise?” she sniffled.

“Sure, doll,” I answered confidently. “You’re safe with me.”

At the same time, that cynical and rational part of my brain was screaming, “Nice job, idiot. Not only are you fucking Mickey Fingers’s girlfriend, you’re right in the middle of another heist and a murder.”

It took a couple of days to get our escape plan in place. Byars pulled his goons off my tail, but showed up again at my shop demanidng any updates. I fed him a false lead and sent him back to headquarters with a 1911 from my safe with a made-up story about a guy who had come in the morning after Byars’ visit, looking to sell the gun and a a couple of impressionist paintings that I had no use for.

“What kind of impressionist paintings?” Byars had pressed. “Do you remember the artist?”

“Damned if I know,” I shrugged. “I’m no art critic. Beats me why anybody would pay serious money for a portrait with the eyes and nose in the wrong place, and the only guy I know who had a taste for that and the money to indulge it, you told me got whacked three days ago. You’ll have to develop your own leads.”

“You still have the gun?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered, reaching below the counter and picking up a standard GI 1911. I laid it on the counter and unfolded the oily cloth I had it wrapped in. Byars looked at it, but made no move to pick it up.

“Are you sure it’s unloaded?” Byars asked.

“Yep.” I folded my arms and smiled insincerely at him.

“Mind demontsrating that for me?”

“Fuck you, Byars,” I snorted. “You think I’m dumb enough to put my prints on a gun you want for a murder investigation? Take it back to headquarters and test it if you want, but that’s all you get from me.”

Byars insisted on taking the bill of sale, which I was happy to oblige, along with a wholly fictitious description of the seller. The actual seller had been Leon Fleischman himself, a couple of years ago. The gun had been sitting in my safe since then, which is why I was confident it wouldn’t match the ballistis from the murder scene. On the other hand, it had been bought new by Leon Fleischman himself and a trace would show that. It made the perfect red herring, and all I needed was Byars and his men looking elsewhere for a few days while Tamara and I skipped town.

“The San Fancisco Police Department thanks you for your cooperation in this investigation, Mr. Castle,” Byars said smugly as he stuffed the pistol and bill of sale and his briefcase and turned to go.

“Just doing my civic duty, Detective.” I returned his smug grin. “I’ll be needing a property receipt for that weapon.”

Cecil Byars barely suppressed a snarl as he tossed his briefcase back on my gun counter, opened it, and hastily scribbled a property receipt for the 1911. “There,” he said, signing with a flourish, “satisfied?”

“I will be as soon as I compare that signature to the one on your department ID,” I said evenly. The look Byars gave me at that would have cut diamonds, but he pulled his ID wallet from his suit jacket and held it up for comparison. I took my time. Not that I suspected he’d try to give me a fake signature, but my motto is to trust no one. Besides, I liked getting under Byars’s skin.

An hour later, I closed up shop and walked back upstairs. Tamara was waiting for me, dressed in the clothes I’d picked her up in, dry now but wrinkled. She had cooked pork chops for dinner and had a beer waiting on the table. I was surprised, because I hadn’t remembered I had anything besides TV dinners in the freezer.

“This is nice,” I said as I sat down. She opened my beer, tossed the church key onto the counter and bent down to give me a kiss.

“You took care of me,” she chuckled throatily. “I’m just returning the favor.”

“All favors, sexual or otherwise, gratefully accepted,” I quipped. She flashed me that look across the table.

“Eat your dinner first,” she said almost demurely. “I’ll take good care of you, baby.”

After dinner she made good on her promise, and I was reluctant as hell to get out of bed in the wee hours of the morning. I carefully slid out from beneath the arm and leg she had draped across me without waking her, padded across to my closet, and got dressed in the living room.

I had a mission, and it couldn’t be done in daylight under prying eyes.

Tamara lived in a small, detached bungalow on Valencia Street in the Mission District. It wasn’t much, as homes go, certainly better than my apartment, but rapidly growing too expensive for anyone already living there. She spent the vast majority of her time in Mickey Fingers’s massive suite on the top floor of the Sir Francis Drake, just down the hall from Leon Fleischman’s digs.

Obviously, gathering up clothes and belongings from there was gonna be problematic, so I parked my car a couple of blocks down Valencia and approached the place on foot. Whatever I could gather there obviously wasn’t going to be as swell as her wardrobe up on the top floor of the Sir Francis Drake, but at least they’d fit.

I paused briefly as I started up the walk. A shadow moved behind the curtains, and the front door was ajar. I drew my pistol from my shoulder holster and crept forward, careful to stay out of the cone of light cast by the streetlight. From the porch, I could see a goon in rough work clothes opening drawers and cupboards. He was tossing the place.

I stepped quietly into the bungalow, slipping to the left side of the door and keeping my back to the wall. “Nice night for a burglary, isn’t it?” The guy’s head whipped around, and when he saw my .45, he froze.

“Hands up,” I ordered, a little less friendly this time. “What are you doing in here?”

“What are you doing here?” he countered. “You got any idea who we work for, pal?” Then he answered his own question, saying, “Obviously you don’t, because if you did, you’d turn around and never look back.”

“I’m guessing you work for a Mick mobster named Fingers,” I said dryly, “but I don’t imagine he’s any more bulletproof than you are. You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

“Take it easy, pal,” he said, keeping his hands up. “You’re pointing a gun at me, and it makes me nervous. Mind if I smoke?” He nodded with his chin towards his shirt pocket where a pack of Lucky Strikes peeked out and lowered his left hand a bit.

“Be my guest,” I answered, pointing my 1911 directly at his face and lining up my sights. “I’ll even light it for you.” He froze once more.

“Easy, pal,” he swallowed hard and licked his lips. “Take it easy.”

It was his eyes that gave him away. They shifted to look over my left shoulder, and I ducked just in time to avoid the cosh swung at the back of my head. The second thug missed my head by inches, but managed to clamp a meaty paw on my left shoulder. I grabbed it, stuck my left shoulder in his chest and elbowed hard, three times. On the third one, he let out a whoosh of air and doubled over, so I threw another elbow at his face and was rewarded with a moist crunch. I grabbed him by his left arm and spun, flinging him into the guy in front of me and sending them both down in a tumble.

Just in time, too, because the guy in front of me was going for his pistol, tucked into his belt at the small of his back. He kept his grip on the gun, though, and from the floor he swung it around to shoot at me.

So I shot him. He fell over backward with a .45 caliber hole through his mustache and dropped the gun. His buddy might have been reaching for it when he moved, but I didn’t hesitate long enough to find out. I put another round in the back of his head and left them there in a heap, leaking blood and brain matter on my new girlfriend’s hardwood floor.

Obviously, this was going to complicate our relationship.

Back at my apartment, Tamara was lounging on the couch feeding my mutt bites of leftover pork chop when I walked in. She sait up straight on the couch when I opened the door, pouted and gave a kittenish purr, “You left without saying goodbye, baby. I was wondering when you’d come back to…” Her voice trailed off and the playful pout disappeared when she saw the look on my face. “Sam?” she asked uncertainly.

I made it across the room in two long strides and hauled her to her feet by one arm. Bogey, sensing thunder brewing, slunk off to the bedroom. “I went to your bungalow,” I growled. “Obviously, I couldn’t go to Mickey Fingers’s penthouse to grab a few of your things before we lit out for Mexico. There were two guys there, tossing the place. We fought, and I killed them both.”

Her blue eyes widened, and her other hand flew to her mouth. “Killed? What…two men? At my place?” she stammered. “I told you Mickey would be looking for me, they must have—”

“Save it!” I barked, pushing her back onto the couch and glowering over her. “Cut the innocent act, doll. Those guys were looking for something, not someone. Mickey’s not looking for you because you witnessed the murder, he’s looking for you because you stole the loot. Go ahead, doll, tell me I’m wrong.”

She stared up at me with that shocked, innocent look a few moments longer, and then her face changed. The gorgeous blue eyes hardened, and that luscious mouth compressed into a thin, hard line. “Yeah, I stole the take,” she said matter-of-factly. “I got it stashed where he’ll never find it.”

She got off the couch, walked over to me and kissed me on the lips. It was pure heat. She took my face in her hands, searched my eyes and purred in my ear, “We could still go to Mexico, Sam. That money could take us there and we could live the rest of our lives on it! Just think of it, baby. Sun and sand and a little beachside bungalow, just you and me and our dog.”

“Doll, no amount of money, or how great a piece of ass you are, is worth getting mixed up in a capital murder case with the Irish mob breathing down my neck.” I shook my head tiredly, but didn’t push her away.

Then she whispered the figure in my ear. I was wrong; there was an amount large enough to get tangled in a murder case and risk the wrath of the Irish mob. The tits and the great piece of ass were just the icing on the cake.

Tamara had the loot stashed in a locker at the train depot on Third and Townsend. We sat outside in the car for a good thirty minutes, looking for people who might be watching the place. I finally made her wait in the car while I went inside, where I spent another thirty minutes watching the crowd and the pay lockers from a distance to make sure I wasn’t being watched. The loot barely fit in one of the big lockers, primarily because of the paintings. There were two big ones there, still in their frames. There was a long gun case and two smaller pistol cases, along with a medium canvas bag. I left the paintings and stuffed everything else but the long gun case into my old USMC duffel, made my way to a stall in the nearest men’s room, and examined the haul.

The small canvas bag held $250,000 in wrapped hundred-dollar bills, and inside there was a smaller velvet bag containing a double handful of gemstones. I’m no gemologist, but I do hold a pawnbroker’s license for my shop, and these weren’t the first gemstones I’ve examined. They were mostly diamonds, a few of them uncut and weighing five carats or more, and a small number of rubies and sapphires. The small gun case held an engraved Luger with a Waffen SS death’s head inlaid into the grip. If the provenance paperwork was correct, this pistol had actually belonged to Himmler himself. The other pistol was another Singer 1911, the mate to the one Tamara sold me.

The long gun case held a Diana-grade Browning Superposed shotgun. There were barrels in 20 gauge, 28 gauge and .410 bore. The thing was in immaculate condition. I sat back on the crapper with the open case across my knees and let out a low whistle. In guns alone, I was holding close to $5,000, and that’s what I figured I could get from a fence. With the cash and diamonds, it was a haul worth millions. No wonder Mickey Fingers had been willing to kill for it.

I stuffed everything back in the duffel and walked back to the car, reminding myself not to walk too fast or look around conspicuously. I tossed the loot in the trunk, slammed it and slid behind the wheel. Tamara leaned over, kissed me and asked, not even bothering to hide the naked greed in her voice, “Did you get everything, baby?”

“The paintings are gonna have to stay,” I told her. “They’re too big to carry with us, and I don’t have the contacts to fence them. Maybe when the heat dies down, we can come back and get them. Right now, we’re going to pick up some documents from a friend of mine, then Woolworth’s for traveling clothes and a couple of suitcases.”

“Woolworth’s?” she asked, turning up her lip in distaste. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in—”

“Mickey’s gonna have the passenger liner wharfs, train station, and probably the bus station watched,” I cut her off. “They’re gonna be looking for a movie-star blonde traveling alone and dressed to the nines that makes Lana Turner look like a frumpy housewife.”

Her face brightened. “You think I look like Lana Turner, baby?” she asked delightedly.

I shook my head, ignoring her. “What they’re going to find instead is a middle-class married couple from Nowheresville, USA, traveling with the family dog. In other words, like a thousand other people that come through that station. When we get to Woolworth’s, the first thing I want you to do is find a dress and a hat that doesn’t show off your shape. Go straight to the dressing room, and scrub off that makeup. You’re a prim, respectable, forgettable Christian woman. Got it?”

She nodded her understanding and I put the car in gear and pulled out of the lot.

Two hours later, Mr. and Mrs. Phil Davis and their dog Bowser caught the Southern Pacific Coast Daylight to Union Station in Los Angeles. I counted at least two teams of tough men watching the departures in the passenger terminal, but neither of them gave us a second glance. If they had bothered to look close enough, they might have wondered how Phil Davis, machine tool salesman from Pocatello, Idaho, could score a wife who looked like a damned Valkyrie, even under that shapeless dress and cardigan.

I sprung for a private car and got us settled in. Something about the rocking motion and rhythm of the train did something to her, and she gave me that lowered lashes look again. The Southern Pacific Coast Line ran through some of the prettiest country in America, not that we paid much attention to the scenery. The ten-hour trip passed very quickly.

In Los Angeles, I fenced the Luger and the Browning shotgun to a guy I knew, if by “knew” you meant “did business with over the phone a half-dozen times.” He gave no indication that he recognized my voice, and I didn’t offer any clues. We caught a cab to the Port of Los Angeles and boarded the SS Acapulco for the final leg of the trip. The ship was a dump, destined for the scrapyard in the not-too-distant future, but we didn’t mind much. Me and my baby spent the three-day trip locked in our stateroom, otherwise occupied.

When we disembarked in Acapulco, we took our bags, hailed a cab and never looked back. Phil and Harriet Davis ceased to exist. If anybody looked for them, their search came up with nothing because they had never really existed in the first place.

We had been in Acapulco a month, spending our days on the beach, our evenings in the restaurants and local clubs, and the nights finding new and interesting places to make love. It was idyllic. But eventually all good things must end, and one morning I woke around 10:00, threw on a loose linen shirt and beachcomber pants, and wandered barefoot down the beach to the Surfside Cantina for breakfast. My mimosa, omelet and fresh fruit had just arrived when a man in an expensive, creamy double-breasted suit, polished wingtips and a straw boater walked up to my table. I looked up and my heart hit my shoes.

“You’re a hard man to find, Mr. Castle,” he said with a wry grin.

“Mr. Fitzgerald,” I nodded respectfully, stealing a quick glance around. Two of his men flanked the exit, and two more stood watch on the beach. I swallowed my fear and gestured to the other chair. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you,” he said smoothly, hanging his straw boater on the back of the empty chair. A waiter approached, and he ordered in Spanish, “I’ll have what he’s having. Bring the check to me.” He said nothing, smiling faintly and gazing idly out at the water until his food arrived. I spent the time eating a gourmet breakfast I no longer had any appetite for.

He took a sip of his mimosa, nodded in appreciation, and said, “I suppose you know why I’m here.”

“I do,” I said levelly. “I didn’t know what she had planned until she came to me after your…disagreement.”

He chuckled softly. “Disagreement. Now that’s a gentle euphemism. It was a fight, Mr. Castle. She stole the take from the Fleischman job, and I slapped her around until she told me where she stashed it. She never did, though. Gotta hand it to her; she takes a punch almost as well as she fucks.”

That was the first time he let the cultured veneer slip, showing the Irish thug underneath. I’m a man unafraid of most things, but right then I was terrified. “Look, she came to me saying her boyfriend had beaten her up. She said she had witnessed him murder someone in a robbery and was afraid he’d kill her before she could go to the cops. I didn’t even know it was you until—”

He waved a dismissive hand, took a bite of his omelet and chewed appreciatively. “I’m guessing she came to you with that damsel in distress act, maybe gave you that chin down look she has”—he saw my mouth gape open and laughed—“and then fucked you silly. How close am I?”

“Pretty close,” I admitted, face red with embarrassment.

“So she’s got you, her new beau, wrapped around her finger, and convinced you to run away and spend the rest of your lives together here in paradise, being a friend to man and making babies, happily ever after, is that it?”

I said nothing, just nodded.

He put his cutlery down and leaned forward. His voice was hard, implacable. “The real story is, she planned the job. She used that world-class rack of hers to get close to Fleischman. She fucked him silly, pretended to be his girl for a couple of months until she found the location and combination of that safe. She did Fleischman; none of the rest of us could get close enough. She was fucking him when it happened. She rolled over, put a pistol to his chest and a pillow over it, and put a .45 slug through his heart without blinking an eye. That’s the kind of woman you’re shacked up with.”

“I’m aware.”

He leaned back at that, eyed me speculatively for a moment, and made his decision. “I’m gonna do you a solid, Castle. You’re not the first man to be led around by his dick, and you won’t be the last. You give up the girl and the loot and I’ll let you walk, on the condition that our paths never cross again. I see you, and I’ll kill you.”

“The cash and the jewels are at the beach house, stuffed into the lining of two suitcases under the bed in the master bedroom. I’d imagine your men are about to find it if they haven’t already.”

Mickey Fingers motioned one of his goons over, whispered something in his ear I didn’t catch, and dispatched him on his errand. I waited until the guy had gone and added, “I haven’t touched any of the cash or jewels.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “I fenced the pistols and the shotgun in L.A. We’re still living off the money from that. I could probably pay that back, given enough time to—”

He waved a hand. “The guns aren’t important to me, just the rest of it. What about the Picassos?”

I dipped a hand into the collar of my shirt, fished out a key on a chain, and handed it across the table. “Locker 114 in the departures terminal at the train depot on Third and Townsend. The Picassos are in there, along with the murder weapon. I’d handle it carefully; it hasn’t been cleaned since it was fired, and it still has her fingerprints on it.”

“And the girl?”

“Dead.”

That got his attention. His eyes tightened, and he drew in a sharp breath. “When?”

“Two nights ago,” I answered levelly, meeting his gaze and holding it. “A young, attractive woman walking unescorted on the beach at night…tragic, really. They oughta do something about the crime in this town. It’s bad for tourism.”

“If you think you can sucker me into—”

“The body is still cooling in what passes for a morgue in Acapulco,” I cut him off. “Go check, and you’ll see I’m telling you the truth. So you have the loot, the body of the thief and murderer, and the murder weapon with her prints on it. A man with your resources oughta be able to package that into a story the cops will believe.”

He eyed me for a few moments longer, nodded and got up from the table. “I’ll do that, Castle. If your story checks out, I’d imagine we won’t be seeing each other again. If it doesn’t…well, I found you in Acapulco. I can find you again.” He buttoned his coat, put his straw boater back on his head, and walked out of the restaurant.

The sad thing was, Mickey Fingers had it right. I was in love, and I was perfectly willing to live happily ever after. But I knew she had been lying to me since the first night she walked into my shop and gave me that story about the Singer 1911 being a family heirloom her old man had picked up in the 101st Airborne in the war. The Singer 1911s, the few that had been produced, had been issued almost exclusively to aircrew members in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

I knew in the back of my mind that she’d eventually try to double-cross me, and that she’d been playing me for a fool all along. But I was willing to follow my heart—and my dick, if I’m honest about it—and give her a chance to prove me wrong. But two nights ago, after rolling off me during one of our marathon lovemaking sessions, she had stretched like a cat…and came up with that little Walther PPK jammed under my chin. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when she pulled the trigger.

But she had forgotten I’m a gunsmith, and I was ready when it went “click” instead of “BANG!” and she wasn’t. I dumped her body on the beach, staged the scene to look like a robbery, and tossed her emptied purse a hundred yards down the beach. All I had to do was look appropriately shocked and grief-stricken when the policia came knocking the next morning.

I had the Chief’s Special back that I had sold her, and burned the bill of sale in the fireplace. There was nothing to connect me to Tamara Keel but memories. The Singer 1911 murder weapon was in the hands of Mickey Fingers, and he didn’t need to know that I still had its twin, just like he didn’t need to know that bag of jewels was light a few diamonds and rubies. I doubt he’d miss them at all.

I ordered another mimosa and strolled down to the beach and sat on the sand. It was warm and relaxing here, and I had half a mind to stay. I had enough money to spend years down here if I wanted, maybe meet some brown-skinned señorita with dark eyes and start over. Maybe this time it would be different.

But I damned sure wasn’t going to be played for a sucker. My motto has always been to trust no one, and when you see the double-cross coming, strike first. It’s worked well for me so far.

You might even call it my doctrine.

Top Dog

John Van Stry

Ilaid back on the bed as I cleaned my handgun; the girl made a little noise in her sleep and curled up closer against me. She was a cute little thing, a college girl from a rich family. The bra and panties draped over the headboard probably cost more than my gun did. Unfortunately for her, she’d gotten involved in a little too much political advocacy on campus and someone wanted her kidnapped, raped, and maybe even killed, in order to “send a message.”

I know, because I was one of the people they had offered the contract to.

Instead, I took the job to rescue her before they could strike, and instead take her someplace where she’d be safe.

I’m sure that for her it had been quite the traumatic experience. One minute, all was fine with her life, the next someone is trying to kidnap her and a big wolf with a big gun is blowing large holes in the kidnapper and dragging her away to safety. Not surprising at all that she’d latch on to me then and throw herself at me.

I’d seen this before and done these girls before. I time it right to save her as the others are striking. I get double the fee for hazardous duty, the chance to legally shoot somebody, and a nice evening with a very thankful and very rich young gal, who will remember me fondly for the rest of her life as the one who saved her and then held her and comforted her before spiriting her off to a nice safe haven.

Now doesn’t that beat a kidnapping, rape, and murder charge for a quarter of the fee?

I smiled and looked down at her almost perfect human body. I wondered how much of that was good genes and exercise, and how much was her parent’s wallet. Not that it mattered much to me; just another notch in the bedpost, really. But I really did enjoy it more with rich young human gals. I was sure her parents would have a fit if they knew their precious little college student daughter was getting it on with an uplifted wolf. If I’d wanted to be really cruel, I could have set up a camera and used the pictures for blackmail, but I wasn’t cruel and I wasn’t stupid. Things like that really motivated people to kill you, and sooner or later, someone would.

I put my handgun on the nightstand and looked at my watch; we had three hours before we left to meet her pickup. Her parents had employed a top-rate team to move her out of the country and set her up someplace safe until this all blew over, which it always did in a year or two.

I rolled over and kissed her. “Sherry?” I whispered in her ear.

“Yes, Rolf?” she sighed, opening her eyes and looking at me, smiling.

“We have three hours left. Any ideas on how you would like to spend it?”

“Ohhh, I can think of a few,” she said, smiling.

We barely had time to shower, and she was clinging to me the whole way there.

“I wish you could come with me,” she sighed as we pulled up in front of the relocation team’s van.

“Sherry…” I smiled and gave her a kiss. “Your parents would have a fit,” which was of course true, “and once the adrenaline of today wears off, I think you’ll realize that your feelings are more of the short-term variety.” Which I knew from experience was definitely true. “Plus, I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you at a time of weakness,” I finished and gave her another kiss. Of course, that was a complete lie; I’d been taking advantage of her for the last twelve hours.

“Are you sure I can’t change your mind?” She looked almost desperate.

“Look, six months from now if you still want to see me, contact me and I’ll come.”

“Okay, Rolf.” She smiled and got out the car and ran over to the van, hopping into the back.

Perkins, the local head for the company, came over and got in the car next to me, sliding back the seat Sherry had just left.

“Still using that line on them, huh, Rolf?” He chuckled and handed me a fat envelope.

“Hey, it works,” I said, and opening it, I took a quick look at the bills. “I see they added a nice bonus.”

“Kidnapper had the phone number of his employer in his pocket when they searched the body. Family’s real happy right now and are going to play it to the hilt. Want a position on the strike team?”

I shook my head no. “I’ve worked for them in the past. Wouldn’t be right to kill a former client.”

Perkins laughed. “Nice to know you have standards, Rolf! Everyone down at the office has been asking if you had any for years now.”

I shrugged. “Turning on a client, even a former one that is breaking the law, is bad for business and for your rep. Unless they turn on you, it’s best to avoid conflicts.”

“Well, you took this job, didn’t you? Isn’t that a conflict?”

I shook my head. “Not directly. I’m not attacking them, after all. The man I killed was simply a hired contractor, not a member of the group. Besides,” I said, looking at him, “she’s just a young woman, not much more than a kid. I was rather disappointed in them that they would do such a thing.”

Perkins nodded, conceding the point.

“Oh, one last question, Rolf,” he said as he got out of the car.

“What?”

“Have any of them ever contacted you after six months?”

“Nope, not a one.”

“Must be rough,” he laughed.

“Not on me,” I said, smiling back at him.

He walked back to the van and got in; I waved as it drove off.

The real reason I didn’t want to be on the strike team was I had all but set up the Tamerin group to abduct the girl, made sure that the hired kidnapper had their information in his pocket, and made sure they’d pick on someone whose parents would wipe them all off the face of the earth. You don’t short me on the agreed-upon price after the deal, and you don’t betray my trust.

Yup, the good guys always won in the end, just as long as everyone remembered that I was the good guys.

“Hey, Geoff, pour me a beer,” I said, walking up to the bar and finding a seat.

“Sure thing, Stev,” the bear behind the bar said, pulling out a mug and drafting me one. Goeff’s place was fairly small; you could get twenty in comfortably, but at forty, it felt packed. Probably why it was a wolf bar. Wolves didn’t mind tight quarters with other wolves, as long as they were from the same pack or a friendly pack.

A cat came in seconds after I had started to sip my beer and sat down next to me.

“Been looking for you, Stev,” he growled.

“Was working,” I said simply and set down my beer.

“Got the money?” He growled some more.

I turned and looked at him. “Have I ever not paid my debts?”

“There’s always a first time, and you’re already a week late.”

“And I told you that I would pay extra to make up for it. I don’t like being late, either, but some people don’t honor their agreements, so I had to pick up some extra work to cover it.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the envelope. I pulled out the money inside and, peeling off two of the larger bills, I handed the rest to him. “There, that’s all of it, plus the ten percent for being late, plus another ten percent as an apology. You tell Sean that, again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Maybe you should give him the rest of that as an apology, too?” he growled as I stuck the two bills in my pocket.

“Don’t be greedy,” I said and went back to my beer.

The cat growled at me again and got up and left.

“Think he’ll give it all to Sean?” Geoff asked.

“He better, because I already called Sean and told him how much I was going to pay him.”

“Then why make such a big deal about it?” Geoff asked, curious.

“Because I wanted everyone to know that I apologized publicly and profusely.” I said, smiling. “Otherwise, no one would ever lend me money again.”

“Oh, that makes sense.” He nodded.

I didn’t tell him that I wanted that cat to know I’d put in some extra money that Sean “wasn’t expecting,” because I figured he’d filch it, and when Sean caught him, it would be very bad for him. Cats were weird. Most of them were surprisingly loyal and dedicated and could go to almost insane measures to prove their honor and their fealty. But there were always some, one out of ten, I’d heard it said, that you could trust worth a damn.

I’d fingered this guy as one of those. Sean hadn’t agreed when I told him to lose the guy and so, Sean and I had bet on it; if I won, I got the ten percent extra back plus the other ten percent. If Sean won, he got another cat he could trust, and of course my extra twenty percent.

I wasn’t too worried.

A few more wolves from the local pack drifted in then, and I went to hang out with them in the back, buying a few rounds and letting one of their fems curl up against me in the booth. I was on good terms with the local pack, which helped a lot. As wolves go, I was as average as they come coloration-wise, and not too big size-wise. Whenever someone I didn’t want to find me came around, I just hung out with the pack and no one could pick me out of the crowd. The few times I’d had to stand in a line-up, I’d never been picked out, not once.

I went back with all of them to their “den,” which was pretty much a large warehouse that the pack rented and had turned into a living space.

Next morning, I untangled myself from Neesha and stumbled out to the kitchen area in search of food.

“Back again, I see,” said a rather large black wolf sitting at the table drinking coffee.

I shrugged and went over to the pot to get one for myself. “What can I say, Max? If I were a joiner, this is where I would join. You have a sweet pack here, and I’m grateful that you let me pretend to be a member.”

Max laughed. “We’re not pretending. As far as we’re concerned, you are. You contribute as much as the others whenever you’re around. When you’re here, you’re ours.”

“What about when I’m not here?” I asked, sitting down.

“Then I suspect you’re somebody else’s. Going to be around long this time?”

“Now that I’ve cleared up some of my personal business, I think I’m going to take a few days to relax, and then I’ll be heading out to San Antonio to work on some jobs I’ve been contacted about.”

Max nodded and got up as one of the kids working the kitchen brought me a plate with breakfast on it. “Okay, see you around later tonight, then. I need to go talk to a few of the locals about some manpower issues.”

“Need any help?” I asked, raising an ear.

“Not that kind of an issue. They want to talk hiring. Apparently some group called the Tamerins got removed last night from over by the college. A lot of their members were working for one of the factories over there and now they’re short-handed.”

I swiveled my ears forward in interest. “Why’d they get removed? Any idea?”

“Eh, Human politics, who knows? I told them we’d do the job for fifteen percent less than any human would, and we’d supply replacements for any of our people who were sick automatically.”

I nodded. I hadn’t told Max about what was going to happen. Either he had his own links with Perkins’ people, or he had other sources. Getting his people into the radio factory where a lot of the Tamerins had worked would be a huge leg up for his pack. Replacing human technicians with new humans was hard; there just weren’t that many of them. If Max’s people could pick up the work, even at a lower rate, it would still be a major financial coup for the pack.

“Good luck with that,” I said.

Max waved and left, and I started in on breakfast. Maybe I could have tipped Max off and made a little money on that deal, but then there was the chance of connecting this identity to more than I would prefer.

No, you couldn’t pick up every dollar on the table, and knowing which ones to leave was the key to success.

I spent the next two days just kicking back with Max’s pack. I gave him one of the two bills I’d peeled off the stack I’d given Sean’s feline enforcer.

“Stev, this is a one-kay,” he said, looking at me.

I shrugged. “If you’re gonna tell me that I’m a member when I’m around, it’s only fair that I share some of the wealth.”

“I’d heard you owed Sean some money. If you have this kind of cash, why are you borrowing from him?”

I smiled. “Because I didn’t have this cash when I borrowed from him. I was shorted on a contract and needed to cover some costs when they didn’t pay me enough to cover all the overhead.”

“That sucks.”

“Cost of doing business sometimes. I don’t like to short my suppliers, so I needed a loan.”

“Just as long as you’re not robbing banks.” Max laughed and pocketed the note.

“Nope, still in the personal security field.”

We talked a bit more about odds and ends. I think Max had a pretty good suspicion of what I did, but I didn’t bring trouble around, and like he said, I paid my dues. A courier delivered an envelope while we chatted; glancing inside, I saw it was my twenty percent back. I suspected a certain cat was now a rug on Sean’s floor. Sean rewarded loyalty heavily. Of course, he punished disloyalty just as hard.

“What’s that?” Max asked, curious.

“Oh, won a bet, is all,” I said and stuck the envelope in my pocket. “Now that I got that taken care of, I need to get going. See you in a month or two, Max.”

He nodded. “Sure thing. You’re always welcome around here, Stev.”

I shook hands with him and left. I didn’t really have a bag or anything to take with me. I had a locker where I kept my gun and a few other things, and always kept a couple of changes of clothes at the pack’s den.

I did stop at the bank and put some of the money in one of my accounts. Being caught with too much money was just as suspicious as not enough. Then I bought a ticket for a bus ride to San Antonio and settled in for the trip. It wasn’t too bad, only took five hours to get there. Buses weren’t the fastest, but they were cheap.

When I got to San Antonio, I took the time to be sure I wasn’t being tailed, hit the locker I kept there, and changed my clothes and my identity, then caught a sky cab to Bergstrom. Two hours later, I was sitting in the office of another client.

“We received your package five days ago,” the man across the desk said to me. His name was John Smith. I’d checked; it really was the name he’d been born with. “Were there any difficulties? I expected you back days ago.”

I nodded, “Yes, there were, actually. The source of the information decided to violate the agreement I’d made with them for the data you’d requested. I had to make other arrangements that turned out to be rather costly, and which required my personal attention.”

“We already negotiated your fee, Romulus. I hope you’re not expecting us to cover your difficulties.”

I shook my head. “No, of course not. Simply letting you know why I was delayed. Any problems I have with my sources or suppliers are my problems, not yours.”

“Excellent. I must say, I appreciate your professionalism, Romulus. I directed the money to be deposited in your accounts, as requested. All is satisfactory?”

I nodded; I had checked the accounts when I’d arrived. I didn’t expect any problems from Mr. Smith; people like him did not break their deals. Word of such behavior would destroy him faster than a bullet to the back of the head.

“Good. While I don’t have any other work for you at the moment, I do have a friend who could use your services.” He slid a folder across the table towards me. “I told them I would pass their information on and ask you to contact them.”

I picked up the folder and nodded. Standing, I bowed to Mr. Smith. “I will review the details and let you know.”

“Thank you,” he said and stood, as well, and offered me his hand, surprising me slightly.

I did not hesitate to shake hands, of course.

“Obviously your professionalism is far more important to me than your race, Romulus,” he said with a slight smile. “Have a good day.”

“Thank you,” I replied and left his office.

I caught a taxi to my apartment. It wasn’t anything fancy; it was, in fact, a micro-efficiency, which meant a bed that folded into the wall, a closet, chair, folding desk, and not much else. It was eight feet wide by twelve feet long; a three-by-three section at one end of it was the combination shower/sink/toilet, and the three-by-five section next to it was the kitchen. I didn’t care, really; it was cheap and I only slept here when I was in town.

Sitting on the chair, I opened the folder and read through it slowly.

The client was one Robert McNair. I was familiar with the McNair family by reputation: they had made their fortune in the technology sector about fifty years ago, and had managed to hold on to it by starting several small leading edge firms that developed new technologies which they either licensed or sold to one of the bigger corporations.

Robert McNair was the family patriarch, and he was also the CEO of McNair Industries. Apparently they were having problems with someone leaking or stealing confidential information, and they wanted that stopped.

I rifled through some more of the supplied information. So far, the information that had been leaked were a couple of product launch dates, a stock offering date, and some inside information on one of their more sensitive projects. McNair estimated the losses to the company to be about three hundred million credits, with the leak on the sensitive project being half of that.

I flipped to the back of the folder to see what they were offering. Then I’d decide if I wanted to negotiate for the job or not. A job like this could be tough; if they offered too little upfront, I wouldn’t even bother trying to haggle the price with them. Smith had probably been the first contract I’d ever taken where I didn’t have to haggle; he hit me with a fair price right up front.

Which was why when problems arose, I didn’t even think of renegotiating. Clients like him were rare and I wanted to stay on his good side. Besides, I’d come out ahead, even if not as far ahead as I would have preferred.

I got to the last page in the folder and stared. It was a non-negotiable, fixed price, take it or leave it.

That wasn’t the problem.

It was for three million credits.

I blinked and read that again. It wasn’t three million, it was thirty million!

I read it all over a third time. That was the price written in, all right.

I flipped back to the contact portion of the folder. If I was interested, I was to meet with Mr. Smith, who would arrange a meeting between me and Mr. McNair. There would be no other public contact.

I thought about that. The money being offered would mean that I would never have to work another day in my life. It almost seemed too good to be true.

Actually, it did seem too good to be true. There had to be a catch, and they had to know that I would see it. That or they thought I was an idiot.

Still. It had taken me years of work to get to the point where I landed Smith; he worked for the Ansel Corporation and was the head of their “External Affairs” division, which meant he dealt with all things outside of the company, including those things that required discretion. Word of mouth was vital when dealing with these kinds of jobs. These people didn’t advertise, and they didn’t talk publicly about their problems.

But they did talk to each other, and they did it in their private clubs. I’d come to Mr. Smith’s attention after I’d done a nice covert job for his mistress. I’d cleaned up a possible blackmail problem, and went the extra mile to make sure it never happened again. Not being a human operator meant I could go places others couldn’t, and not be seen while doing so. I’d spent a lot of time developing a reputation for being quiet, trustworthy, and honest. Even in those personal security jobs I did, under my other alias, I always maintained that level of behavior, just in case anyone ever put them together.

I’d learned a long time ago that to the humans in the corporate world, reputation and your word were very important things.

I copied the parts of the folder I needed for future reference and shredded the rest, then caught a taxi back to Mr. Smith’s office.

Surprisingly, I was shown in immediately.

“So, Romulus,” he said, smiling and gesturing to the seat I’d been in just an hour earlier. “I take it that you are interested?”

“Have you read the contents of the file, Mister Smith?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I nodded slowly. “May I ask how you and your friend are connected?”

“Certainly.” Mr. Smith smiled. “He’s my uncle. He married my father’s sister some sixty years ago.”

I nodded again. “May I ask as to why I was selected? Our relationship is a rather new one.”

“I don’t have many of the under-people working for me, Romulus, and you came highly regarded to me. Plus, you seemed to fit what he was looking for. Why do you ask? Is there a problem with the contract?”

I shook my head. “I’m just very cautious when taking on a new client, Mister Smith. I take every care with my work, and strive to always satisfy my clients,” I said, giving him the usual line. Corporate people were all about loyalty and fealty; they liked people who were careful. “Your friend is an important person; the job he has requested is difficult, but not impossible. The offer is more than generous. However, I would need to meet with him to discuss a few matters, before I could start.”

Mr. Smith nodded. “When would you like to meet with him?”

I smiled. “Just let him know that I will be in touch sometime soon.”

Mr. Smith blinked. “My friend is a rather hard person to get in touch with. Are you sure you don’t need any assistance?”

I shook my head again. “From the sound of your friend’s issue, I think it would be best for no one else to be aware of my working for him.”

He nodded and I stood.

“Thank you again for your time, Mister Smith, and thank you very much for the recommendation.”

We shook hands again and I left.

Finding out where McNair lived and worked wasn’t very hard. Most of it was public record. He had three kids, a lot these days for a human. Two sons, one daughter. They’d all gone to private schools, married, and now worked for the company. He was a member of a couple of private clubs, one of which was a racquetball and squash club that he went to several times a week.

I checked out the club; sure enough, the attendants there were all wolves. Why wolves were so popular with the rich and famous, I really had no idea. Even the middle classes seemed to like us, and the lower classes tolerated us. Most morphs were hated here on earth; some were tolerated, but a couple were actually rather popular.

Somewhere along the line, it seemed that wolves got the menial worker role. We were damn near everywhere in North America and Europe. I think the term was “ubiquitous”; people mostly trusted us. Pretty much every other species wasn’t tolerated anywhere nearly as well outside of the factory zones or spaceports, and sometimes not even within them.

With a small bribe to the pack that had the concession to work the club, I got myself on the staff for a week. I just waited until McNair showed up, played his games, and then showered.

When he went to put his clothes on, he found a note asking him to come to the Lost and Found to claim some property. I’d signed the note “Romulus.”

I’d picked the Lost and Found because no one ever came to that area, and it was out of the way. Also, it was run by a wolf, and today I was that wolf.

He came downstairs and up to the small counter and looked at me.

“Romulus?” he asked.

I nodded.

“John told me you wanted to talk to me, but why here, of all places?”

“Why thirty million credits?” I asked. “That seems way too good to be true.”

“The information being leaked is worth hundreds of millions of credits. I felt the offer had to be good enough to keep you from deciding to take the information and sell it for yourself.”

I nodded; it did make sense. “I picked this place because whoever is leaking or stealing your information may be watching you. If they saw you meeting with me, it would stand out.”

“But a wolf at the Lost and Found won’t,” McNair nodded. “Sensible.”

“I’ll need you to provide me with a few things,” I told him and handed him a small data stick. “Everything is on there. If you can think of anything else I might need, please include it.”

He put it in his pocket. “How do I get in touch with you?”

“You don’t,” I told him. “I’ll get in touch with you, when necessary. Any other instructions are on the data stick.”

“So you’ll take the job, then?” he asked, looking at me.

I smiled. “Of course! With that kind of money, I could open up a first-rate investigation and security company. I’d be able to give the members of my pack better jobs. And your recommendation would be very helpful to my career,” I said, feeding him another of my usual lines. I didn’t have a pack, well, other than perhaps Max’s. I was a rarity: a lone wolf.

But humans understood the idea of wolf packs, or at least they thought they did. It gave them a way to relate to us: since they were all about family and corporation, we were all about our packs. When they heard the line about me working for the betterment of my pack, it gave them another reason to trust me.

McNair just nodded and stuck out his hand, which I shook.

“Deal,” he said. “I’ll check the stick tonight.”

We parted company.

The data stick contained a number of things. The first, of course, was where to send my payment once I had completed the job. Next was a set of personnel files for him to enter into the company system, if he could. That would allow me access to the company, as it would show that I worked there.

I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to create those or not. I left rather simple instructions on how to notify me on the results.

The last was an address for him to send all of the intelligence and other data he had on the people he suspected, the information that had been stolen, and anything else he was concerned about. It was a hard location for actual physical mail, not an email address. Email is a pretty simple thing to track and spy on. Physical mail is so rarely used by most people these days that hardly anyone considers it anymore. Plus, the federal government actually does get bent way out of shape if people mess with it or steal it.

I went to a local library next and rented myself a terminal. I went over the information that I’d received with the initial information packet, and started searching for what public information I could find about the McNair family corporation; what information had made it to the public about the incidents I had been told about; what political squabbles were going on inside and outside of the boardroom, and the recent history of the McNair family and what all the gossip columnists had to say.

There are always a lot of reasons for someone to sell out their employer, but in my career, so far I’d found that they tended to be because of personal issues, either between an employee and the company, an employee and a higher ranking manager, or family members who owned and worked at the company. I discounted board members, because they tended not to do petty ante stuff like this. To most board members, anything not in the billions of credits was a waste of their time, and petty crime was never the response to an insult.

When I finished my research, I knew the names of everyone on the board, all of the members of the McNair extended family, more than a few family friends, business associates, and a couple of the key players at the company. And from the way the gossip columnists were writing about it, they were either all suspects, or none of them were at all.

I also knew something else: Penny McAlister, McNair’s recently married daughter, had been rescued from a kidnapping attempt almost two years ago. I recognized her immediately and took a moment to wonder if she’d recognize me.

I was common-looking enough that I could just deny it, assuming we ever met and she even recognized me.

In any case, it wasn’t worth worrying about. Finishing up my work, I headed back to my micro-efficiency to wait for Mr. McNair’s information. Once I had gotten that, then it would be time to go to work.

Two weeks later, I was working in the company headquarters as an IT specialist who’d recently been transferred to Earth from one of the company’s research facilities off-planet. This worked out pretty well for me because IT was considered to be a mostly menial job; no one had any problems with a wolf doing it, so mostly I was ignored.

About half of the tasks I was doing were actual tasks that were assigned to me by the IT department’s workload manager application. This not only helped with my cover, it helped me get a handle on the culture that existed on the campus that comprised the company’s main HQ.

When I’d started out, I’d had a list of two dozen possible culprits. Over the last week, I’d cut it down to five, and Penny was one of them. That had made me wince. She’d been a nice girl, although she wasn’t as innocent as some—obviously—but she was far from the type I would have pegged to sell out her own family.

If I was going to start anywhere, I had decided it would be best to start with her. Until I’d either cleared her or implicated her, there was just no way I’d be able to proceed with the others impartially. Penny was one of the few who’d left an impression on me, for all that I could be as cold and uncaring as they came when it came to a job.

It was late, of course. Most of the IT staff didn’t go fixing problems in the upper management offices until after management had gone home for the day. Thanks to the clearances McNair had given me, getting myself assigned to fix a problem that I’d created the ticket for wasn’t a problem. Same for getting the clearance required to enter her office.

I took the time to examine the office’s security. Many of the hallways and cubicle farms had video security cams. Same for some of the lower-level manager’s cubes and even a few of middle manager’s offices.

But upper management didn’t, and Penny’s was no exception. Once I was sure about that, I opened my toolkit to make it look like I was working, then set about hacking into her local terminal to check the transaction records. Everyone used a “virtual” machine that lived in a shared system which existed in the section’s secure IT closet. Those could be wiped in a moment’s notice, as all the important files were stored in the mainframe in the secure sub-basement under the IT offices.

I didn’t expect to find any incriminating evidence, per se, but I did expect to see records of just which files she’d been touching, as well as how many outside transactions had taken place. The desktop terminals didn’t have a lot of memory, but downloading something to a memory stick, connecting to an outside source and then uploading from said stick was not all that sophisticated.

You couldn’t protect from a traitor. Not, at least, without hampering the work of those who were loyal.

All download and upload actions were recorded, but they weren’t recorded on the virtual machine that could easily be wiped. No, they were recorded on the terminal and had to be deleted manually, something that most execs and management types didn’t know.

An hour later, I knew the truth, or a version of it, at least. The files in question had been downloaded on this machine, each of them a week before they’d been leaked. They had not, however, been uploaded anywhere else, at least not from here.

Which meant I’d need to search her home. Tomorrow when she and her husband were both at work would be the best time. Hopefully, I’d be able to find some more concrete evidence. What I had right now was enough to hand over to McNair. I’d found the leak, after all.

But for all of my faults, a lack of loyalty wasn’t one of them. I needed to be sure before I destroyed her life, before I destroyed her father’s faith in her, as well as his love for his only daughter. Just because I wasn’t in a pack didn’t mean I didn’t understand just how tight those bonds could be, or how much the violation of them would hurt.

“Rolf?”

I looked up from my tools that I was packing away, and there she was: Penny. Still as hot as I remembered her, with a look on her face that I would never have expected to see…

Desire.

“No, ma’am,” I said standing up and pointing at my nametag. “I’m Rust. I work for IT services.”

She stopped and looked me over, carefully, and I could see the literal conflict playing out behind her eyes.

“You’re not Rolf?” she asked slowly. I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“No, ma’am. Sorry.” I scooped the remaining items into the bag and quickly made my escape.

“Oh, Rolf,” she sighed dejectedly as I left the office. That worried me even more than finding the evidence of those downloads had. Those two days we’d spent together had obviously meant a lot more for her than I’d believed.

I didn’t sleep well that night. The idea that after two years someone could still feel that way about me was…unsettling. Sure, the first few times a part of me had hoped I’d get that call, but we lived in different worlds, and those worlds didn’t cross. I understood that, and it’s not like I was looking for commitments. I didn’t even have a pack!

And yet, when she’d said my name, it’d struck me to the core.

Eventually, there was nothing else to do but get up and go over there. It was early yet, not even five. I’d taken the time to find out where they lived; it was a very exclusive townhouse community. With the number of McNair employees that lived there, getting in wouldn’t be all that difficult. IT services were often sent out to fix problems in their home offices.

The entire trip there, I just couldn’t understand why I had such a need to do this. Apparently she wasn’t the only one still harboring some feelings after those two years. Or maybe it was just that desperation in her voice. Something was obviously wrong in her life, and having saved her once, maybe I had an obligation to see if she needed saving again.

I hadn’t met her husband, Jebediah McAlister. They’d met in high school, one of those exclusive ones all the rich people went to. Gone their separate ways when they’d gone to college, but after I’d saved her and she’d returned, they’d met up again and eventually gotten married. Jeb had taken a job with the company; he was one of the upper managers in the security division. As he had no access to any of the files that had leaked, I hadn’t put him on the list of suspects.

As he was one of the security heads, if she had any sort of problem, you’d expect him to deal with it for her. Unless…unless she was being blackmailed into giving up this information and was afraid to go to her husband lest he divorce her?

I needed to talk to her. I’d tell her what I knew and I’d go from there. I still didn’t see her as the type to do this, and it was obvious that she needed help. It was just as obvious that she couldn’t go to her husband. That bothered me, of course. It meant the problem wouldn’t be small. Then again, big problems came with big rewards, sometimes even the kinds of rewards that husbands didn’t need to know about.

Parking down a few doors from their townhouse, I snuck around to the back door and bypassed the alarm, then picked the lock. I still needed to check the house, and if he left first, then we could talk.

Opening the door a crack, I peeked inside the kitchen. I could smell coffee, but no food.

“I thought I told you never to say that filthy wolf’s name again in my house!” I heard a man’s voice yell, followed by the sound of an open hand hitting someone in the face.

“I’m sorry!” I heard Penny whimper. “There was a wolf in my office! I—”

I heard a sound that sounded more like someone being punched in the gut, from the gasp that accompanied it.

“—I… I..thought I recog…recognized…”

“What is it with you and wolves? Still looking to get laid by one?”

I heard another slap, and at this point I’d heard enough.

“Listen, you bitch! If you can’t stop wagging your ass for those dogs, I’ll send your cheating ass back to your father! Why he even lets you—”

“That will be enough of that,” I growled, and grabbing him by the shoulder, I bitch-slapped him hard enough to send him stumbling backwards and into Penny, who looked up at me in surprise.

“Rolf?” she said.

“Yes, it’s me. Your father hired me to look into those data leaks. I’ve heard more than enough to know that you’re being forced.”

“Like he’d believe some fleabag instead of me!” Jeb growled, eyes blazing as he straightened up.

“Oh, I think his daughter’s bruised body will be more than enough proof.”

“You ain’t taking her nowhere! I ain’t done with her yet!” Jeb yelled, and grabbing Penny with his left hand, he pulled her back away from me as he drew a gun from a pocket with his other hand and put it to her head.

I took a step back as I drew my own pistol.

“Jeb! No!” she cried out.

“Quiet, bitch!” he said as he smacked her on the head with the butt of his pistol. “At least now I won’t have to hear you talk about him in your sleep anymore!”

I looked over my sights as I lowered the front of the barrel, focusing on Jeb’s right eye as he held a frightened Penny in front of himself like a shield. He had his left arm around her body, with his left hand clenching her throat tightly enough that she was gasping for breath. The gun he was holding in his right hand, with the barrel pressed to Penny’s temple, was none too steady.

“So, want to talk about it, Jeb?” I asked calmly as I kept my aim on his eye.

“She cheated on me! The lying bitch cheated!”

“Oh? When did this happen?”

“When she slept with you! She slept with a fucking mutt! How could she?” he screamed.

“I’m a wolf, not a ‘mutt,’” I said calmly, “and that was before you were married. I’d hardly call that cheating.”

“And then she tried to talk her father into going back to you!” he screamed even louder.

“Again, that was before you were married. Months before you were married.”

“That doesn’t matter! We’d been dating before she went away to that school! She was mine! She belonged to me! Not some mangy fucking dog!”

“Wolf,” I said again with a slow smile. “But I still don’t see why any of this matters?”

“Because she had sex with you!”

I grinned at him. “Yes, she did. And it was really quite memorable. I particularly like that moan she makes when you first mount—”

He screamed again, only this time he pointed the gun at me. I let my finger take up the slack on the trigger slowly. Penny was safe. Now I just had to make sure if he did manage to hit me when I shot him that it wasn’t any place deadly. From the way his hand was shaking, however, I wasn’t too worried.

“However,” I continued, more loudly now and with the hint of a growl, “she went back to you. I was a passing thing, the big bad wolf who saved her from being raped and murdered.

“Now drop the gun.”

“She doesn’t want me! She wants you! I saw the way she looked at you just now! She’s always wanted you! Hell, she even talks about you in her sleep! She only came back to me because she couldn’t have you!”

“So divorce her.”

“What? And live in shame as everyone knew I married a dog-loving bitch! I have a better idea! I’ll kill you, then I’ll kill her! I’ll tell everyone you did it! I came in here and you were beating her, raping her, I shot you, then—”

It took only the slightest bit of pressure and the trigger broke, just as he waved his pistol around as he ranted. I got him dead center of the right eye, the bullet going in, mushrooming as it expanded, the back of his skull coming off in a shower of hair, blood, bone and brains.

I had to admit, it never got old. That rush, the thrill of the kill after the tense build-up to the final coup de grâce. I felt the rush of adrenaline as his body slowly crumpled to the ground as Penny jumped forward, crying, closing the distance between us, all but slamming into me as I put my right arm around her and slowly holstered my pistol as I pulled her body tightly against mine.

I can’t lie. I was very much looking forward to taking her in my bed again. Penny was a beautiful woman, and to the victor goes the spoils, just as long as that victor was me.

“Rolf, I love you, Rolf, thank you! Thank you! I thought he was going to kill me! Oh, Rolf!” She started kissing me then, and, well, he was dead, so I didn’t see any reason not to kiss her back. I gave her several minutes of my attention until she got a little less hectic and realized that she wasn’t going to die today.

“So how much of what he said was true?” I asked softly as I took hold of her with both hands.

“All of it, sadly,” she sighed.

I smiled at her. “Oh, I’m not sad. I like you, Penny. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have confronted him about beating you. I would have just taken the evidence to your father and let him deal with it. I wouldn’t be here now trying to fix this. Oh no, this was all me. If he hadn’t pulled that pistol, I was gonna beat him into the carpet.”

“Oh, Rolf,” she smiled, tears still coming from her eyes, and I had my hands full all over again as she started kissing me rather passionately once again.

Truth was, I really did like Penny. She was the second girl I’d saved when I’d hit on my little plan about how to turn some of my darker connections and the information they fed me, as well as the contracts they offered, into more enjoyable, profitable and legal endeavors. She was also the only one who ever offered to throw it all away and go off with me.

“But…but what about those files I stole? Are you going to tell my father?”

“Tell me why you did it.”

“He couldn’t deal with what happened between us, between you and me,” she sniffed, looking down at the floor.

“How’d he find out?”

“It’s in one of the reports he got access to, after he started working for my father. He used his leverage to get everything about what happened to me from the company that had hired you.

“I mean, I tried to love him. I really did like him, but every time he saw me talking to one of the wolves at work, or at a store, he thought I was looking to cheat on him.

“Two months ago, he hit me, and I knew then I needed to divorce him, but I needed money I didn’t have.”

“Penny, you’re rich.”

“Jeb controls all of our money. Also, as the one filing for divorce, I’d be the one bearing the brunt of it. I wouldn’t have put it past him to tell everyone I was sleeping around and cheating on him.”

“Why didn’t you go to your father?”

“I…I didn’t want to disappoint him. Also, I was worried about what Jeb might do and what my father might believe. Dad knows I wanted to go back to you, so he just might believe I was cheating on Jeb.”

I nodded; it made sense. Divorce was always a scandal when it involved the wealthy nowadays.

“So it’s safe to say you won’t be stealing anything else?”

She shook her head.

” I’ll tell your father I heard that Jeb was forcing you to do it, because he was going to leave you and he knew your father would cut him off once he did.”

Penny looked up at me. “He’ll believe that?”

I smiled down at her and kissed her. “Penny, he held a gun to your head and was going to kill you. Your father is going to believe whatever I tell him. Jeb was beating you. Trust me on this. If anyone asks you anything about this at all, just tell them Jeb was forcing you and you don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”

“I…I love you, Rolf,” she said, and began rubbing her body into mine in a very suggestive fashion.

“Let’s go back to my place,” I told her.

“What about…” she asked, making a motion towards Jeb’s body, which was still draining blood onto the formerly pristine carpet.

“I’ll send the video of our little confrontation to your father; he can decide how to deal with Jeb’s body.”

“Video?”

“There’s a cam built into the pistol. That’s why I was so quick to draw it. It will show Jeb threatening to kill you, and also that I lured him into pointing the gun at me and only fired once it became clear he wasn’t going to surrender and still meant to kill you.”

She hugged me tight, putting her head on my shoulder as I hugged her back.

“Will you stay with me this time, Rolf? Will you keep me?”

“If you’re still feeling that way a week from now, of course I will,” I said, putting her off for the moment. While I very much liked the idea of having the daughter of a billionaire at my beck and call, I had no idea just what her father might think of such a thing.

And to be totally honest with myself, if I stayed with her, I wouldn’t be much of a “lone wolf” anymore—a thought that was both scary and reassuring at the same time.

“Now, let’s go back to my place and put you to bed for a while.”

“Will you be joining me?” she asked, rubbing into me again.

“Of course!” I said with a lusty growl that was not at all faked.

Robert McNair sighed as he finished reading the report I’d given him. Turning to the side, he dropped it into the document shredder before turning back to look at me.

“I guess I need to thank you for saving my daughter’s life a second time. Now that I’ve gotten to know you and discovered that you were the one who rescued her, I can see why she was so strongly taken with you.”

I just gave a nod and didn’t say anything. Penny was still sleeping back in my bed, after all.

“I also have to wonder if my not letting her go back to you was a wise decision. I’m sure she told you about that?”

I nodded again.

“I agreed back then with what she said you’d told her, that her infatuation with you would pass in time and that, socially, people wouldn’t have accepted it.” McNair shook his head. “I should have sent her back.”

My ears perked up in surprise at that, and he looked up at me.

“You cared a lot more about her than her now-deceased husband did. You also showed a lot more concern about her and her well-being, as well.” He shook his head again. “Who knew that Jeb would turn out to be such a snake in the grass? In any case, I sincerely thank you for not only solving this problem, but solving it permanently. I’ve included a bonus for that. Saving my little girl means a lot to me, Romulus.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“However, this does leave me with some other concerns.”

I kept my tail still and showed my best poker face. While I still wasn’t sure I wanted to continue with Penny myself, I had no doubts he was about to tell me to stay clear of her. I wonder if he knew where she’d spent last night?

“Sir?”

“Our security. They totally overlooked Jeb because he was ‘one of them.’ It never occurred to them to even check. Their loyalties were misplaced.”

“What you need are people who would put their loyalty to the company before the individual,” I agreed. “Someone who wouldn’t tolerate power plays that hurt the company.”

“Very much. I’ve seen enough now of how you wolves operate that I’d like for you, Romulus, and your pack to take over as security for my company.”

I blinked. “Excuse me, sir?” I knew I sounded incredulous.

“Romulus, twice now you’ve had the opportunity to take my daughter and make her your wife, which would have undoubtedly made you a very wealthy wolf, and brought your pack a lot of money. But in each case, you put your employer’s concerns, my concerns, as well as her welfare, first. Your commitment to your duty says a lot to me. I want…no, I need someone with that level of concern overseeing the security and well-being of my company and my employees.

“I want to hire you and your pack.”

I hesitated and tried not to flail at this unexpected turn of events. “You understand that for us, this would be our home and our way of life? This isn’t the kind of thing you do a yearly contract on. You bring us in, and you may very well be stuck with us for the life of your company.”

“I see that as a feature, Romulus. This company,” he raised his arms and motioned to the world around him, “is my life. Having others who see it the same would be refreshing.”

This was too good to pass up. I needed to do this, to take this, but just where would I find a pack? Where?

Inspiration struck.

“I’ll need to talk to my Alpha, Sir. You’ll have to negotiate with him.”

McNair blinked. “Your Alpha? I thought you had a pack of your own?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than most people understand. Max, my Alpha, he runs the pack, all of us. It’s what runs his days and his nights. Watching out for all of us and making sure there’s always enough and that we’re taken care of. His lieutenants, of which I’m one—I guess you could say we run the divisions. Some raise the cubs, some handle the shopping, and some run our enterprises while he watches over all of us, and we report to him.”

I smiled as McNair nodded slowly with a look of understanding.

“He’s like your CEO, then.”

“Exactly. It’s been my hope and my driving passion to grow our security business to the point where I could employ more of my packmates and bring more financial security to the pack.”

“Do you think your Alpha, Max, would be interested?”

“Very much so. I could see this becoming our pack’s sole interest. A job like this would take all of our efforts. That’s why I wanted you to understand what kind of commitment Max would be looking for.”

McNair smiled and, standing up, stuck out his hand. “I very much wish to talk to Max, Romulus.”

Shaking his hand, I gave a slight bow of my head. “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.”

“Oh, and one last thing.”

“Yes?”

“If you’re still sleeping with my daughter six months from now, I’ll expect you to marry her.”

I gulped at that. “Yessir.”

I left the room then and found a quiet spot, and dialed Max’s direct number on my phone.

“Yes, Stev?”

“Two things, Max. First, how’d you like for our pack to have the exclusive and permanent contract for doing all security for McNair Industries, both here and off-planet?”

“Our pack?”

I tried not to sound as embarrassed as I felt. “I told them I’m one of your lieutenants as well as a member.”

I heard him chuckle. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Stev. Welcome home.”

End

Angels and Red Shirts

David R. Birdsall

The warmth of the Kentucky Hug spread delightfully through my chest as I sat at the hotel bar. I intended to slowly enjoy the drink until I met my prospective client. “Slowly” was the keyword; it cost me the last Grant I had to my name. I choked harder when I heard the bartender say, “That’ll be forty-two dollars,” than I ever had drinking alcohol.

“Staying here?”

I turned to my right and saw an older man in a tee shirt and cargo shorts sitting a few stools down from me. “Pardon?”

“Are you staying here?” he repeated.

“No,” I replied as I went back to using the mirror behind the bar to scan the busy hotel lounge and restaurant area.

“Me neither. Even with twenty-seven stories and two hundred and ninety-five rooms, this hotel is still completely booked.”

“Imagine that,” I replied.

“You look like you’re here on business.”

“No.” I lifted my drink while still looking into the mirror behind the bar. “Just enjoying a drink.”

“I’m sure there are cheaper places in town to get a drink,” he chuckled. “I’m working the writer’s conference here at the hotel. I figured you were, too.”

“Nope,” I replied, then punctuated it with another sip of my bourbon.

“The name’s Lou,” he said as he held out his hand.

“Sorry,” I said, “I don’t shake. COVID and all.”

“You’re not much of a talker, are you?”

“No.”

The din of the crowded area was slowly replaced by the clack of heels crossing the tile floor.

I searched the mirror for the force of nature that quieted the crowd. It wasn’t hard to find.

She crossed the crowded area with ease. Stiletto white heels punctuated every step. The knee-length pleated white skirt accentuated every sway of her hips like a metronome. A loose-fitting and plunging white blouse topped the ensemble.

People parted before her as easily as air. Her stride was deliberate and unfaltering, head up and shoulders squared. It was obvious she was used to people making way for her. I didn’t see her make eye contact with anyone.

“God, I hope that’s not her,” I said to myself.

I used the mirror to search the room. I was looking for anyone or anything out of place. I found it almost immediately. Every man, woman, and child watched her walk by except for two.

I should have seen them earlier, but they were nearly as good at going unnoticed as I was. Two men wearing cargo pants and comic book-inspired tee shirts sat at a corner table. What should have been the giveaway was their matching flat-top haircuts.

They looked from their phones to the woman and back to their phones while their backs straightened.

“Damn,” slipped from my lips as I raised my glass to down the rest of my drink. So much for enjoying the drink slowly.

“I’ll say,” Lou said. “She was a real beauty.”

I slid off the barstool, making sure my untucked button-down shirt concealed the Glock 19 I had inside the waistband holster on my right side.

“Hold on, pal,” Lou stated. “I’ve been to a lot of these conventions, and I can tell you she’s out of everyone’s league.”

“See you around, Lou,” I said as I turned and headed to the stairwell farthest from the elevators she had just boarded.

Just as I reached the stairwell, I risked a look back at the bar. The two men with flat tops had made their way to the elevators. One stepped on an empty elevator while the other headed to the stairwell alongside.

“Dammit,” I said as I rushed through the doorway into the stairwell. I took the steps two at a time until I reached the third-floor landing. That’s when my cellphone vibrated.

“Problem Solvers, Mr. Boslay speaking,” I said, then moved the mouthpiece away so my heavy breathing wouldn’t come through the phone.

“Mr. Boslay,” a throaty female voice came through the phone receiver, “my name is Sara. I’ve returned to my room. Room 413. When do you want to meet?”

“Stay on the phone and do exactly as I say. Leave your room immediately and go to the stairwell farthest away from the elevator.”

“Why?”

“Rule number one to surviving long enough to disappear is to do exactly what you’re told when you’re told to do it,” I scolded. “At least two men are heading towards you now. If you see anyone in the hallway, tell me.”

“A man is cuddling with a woman by the elevators,” she said. “Aw, they’re such a cute couple.”

“Focus. I’ll meet you at the door to the stairwell.”

I looked around the landing and saw a trash can. Taking a chance, I pulled the trash bag from the can and found what I hoped for: a roll of trash bags. You’ve got to love the efficiency of the housekeeping team.

“Okay, but I don’t think they’re after me. Oh, wait, no, now they’re walking towards me.”

“You don’t say,” I replied with a heavy sigh.

With the roll of trash bags in hand, I sprinted up the last flight of stairs.

I reached the landing as she stepped through the door. The two individuals could be seen in the hall before the door closed. They had a slow confident stride as they approached. They looked like they thought they had nothing to be concerned about.

I unrolled the trash bags and tied one end to the door handle. After twisting and wrapping the stream of trash bags around the sprinkler pipe running up the inside corner of the stairwell, I doubled back to tie the makeshift rope back to the door handle.

Just as I finished tying off the bags, the couple reached the door. Through the window, I saw smiles broaden across their faces as they reached for the handle. The smiles vanished as they tried to open the door, only to find it blocked.

Taking my charge’s hand, I quickly led her up the stairwell.

“Why are we heading up?” Sara exclaimed. “Won’t they trap us?”

To emphasize her statement, we heard the door below banging. They were trying to force the door open enough to tear through the bags.

Taking my phone in hand, I said, “We’ve got to make it to Room 724,” and then texted “Plan F” to the contact preprogrammed on my phone.

“Why?”

“There’s an open Star Trek cosplay party there tonight.”

“You want to go to a party now?”

“I have some friends waiting for us there,” I explained while taking the steps two at a time.

“What do you mean?” she asked as she struggled to keep up while wearing her high heels.

“You’ll see. Just hurry.”

The rhythmic banging of the door below ended with a final crash just as we reached the landing on the seventh floor. Sara moved to the railing and looked over toward our assailants.

I grabbed her and pulled her back from the railing just as a sharp metallic ring and a low cough sound split the silence of the stairwell.

“Rule number two is never look back.”

I took a quick look through the reinforced window in the door leading out of the stairwell. Not seeing anyone, we went through the door and hurried down the hall.

A door propped open with the locking bar caught my eye before the number on the door did. Room 724 was waiting for us.

Swinging the door open, we were greeted by a round of cheers from the jovial and possibly well-liquored crowd. I heard the door to the stairwell we had just left clank open. There was no need to turn and look; I already knew what I would see. We stepped into the room.

I scanned the room for possible threats. Nearly twenty attendees were neatly attired in a variety of Starfleet uniforms ranging from the classic Star Trek to the newest Strange New Worlds series. After taking in the scene, I gave a broad smile and dropped a few dollars into one pitcher and my car keys into another that was sitting on the kitchenette counter. The actions brought another round of cheers and lifted drinks.

We eased our way to the opposite corner of the room. On the way, a young woman with purple hair, a broad smile, and prosthetic ridges attached to her forehead handed us each a Solo cup filled with green liquid.

As she handed us the cups, she turned mine to show “two minutes” written on the side of the cup near the rim. When I looked back at her face, she darted her eyes to an adjoining room and winked.

“Where’re your friends?” Sara asked as she twisted her head all around the room quickly.

“Relax,” I said as I took her hand. “They’re here.”

“Do you see them?”

“If I could see them,” I chuckled, “they would be slipping up.”

Just then two men and a woman stepped briskly into the room and locked eyes with us. They started to move toward us.

I felt Sara jerk slightly and start to recoil so I squeezed her hand harder, leaned over, and whispered in her ear, “Stay here, we’re safe.” The sweet flowery aroma of her perfume was more than a little distracting.

Just as the three pursuers started to cross the room, two female police officers and a member of hotel security entered the room.

“Sorry, folks,” the security officer said, “we got a complaint about the noise from here.”

“It was reported that there was the sound of possible gunfire,” one of the police officers stated.

“That was the main reason,” the other police officer added, “but there are too many people present in this room.”

The first police officer pointed to the three individuals that followed us into the room. “You three. Step out into the hall with us. Maybe you can answer some questions for us.”

The woman motioned for them to leave. As they stepped back into the hall, they gave a quick glare over their shoulders at us.

After our assailants stepped back into the hall, the door to the adjoining room slowly opened a crack. I nodded to the now-open door and escorted Sara into the room. We were followed by three women dressed in Starfleet uniforms.

Once we all entered the room to the adjoining suite, the last woman closed the door and said, “Becca says they are heading for the stairs.”

“Probably setting up a perimeter, so we have a few minutes,” a tall brunette woman said as she crossed the room towards us and extended her hand. “I’m Ms. Charlotte.”

Sara cautiously took her hand and looked back and forth from me to Ms. Charlotte. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“I hired Ms. Charlotte and her associates,” I gestured to Ms. Charlotte and the other women in the room, “to have the best chance to get you to safety.”

Sara spun on me, delicately sculpted eyebrows pulled tightly together, and eyes narrowed sharply. “I only hired The Problem Solvers, which I assumed was just you, Mr. Boslay.” She glanced back to the other women in the room. “I didn’t agree to hire them.”

“Darlin’,” Ms. Charlotte’s subtle Southern accent slipped into her tone, “unlike you, Mr. Boslay isn’t stupid.” She raised her hand sharply to cut off Sara’s rebuttal. “I say that because I know you were instructed to dress subtly and,” she gestured with the same hand to the outfit Sara wore, “this isn’t that.”

Sara leaned back on her right leg while crossing her arms across her chest and looked to an empty corner of the room for a few seconds while tapping the toe of her left foot.

“Now,” Ms. Charlotte continued, “Mr. Boslay put us on contract in case things went sideways, and from what we saw, honey, things went sideways. So, sugar, why don’t you drop the attitude and tell us why we’re all here trying to save you?”

After a few moments, Sara gave a heavy sigh and dropped her eyes to the tip of the toe she was tapping. “I was dating Louie Guccionoe’s son, Lane, and I took one of his dad’s Hard Wallets.”

“Damn,” I said.

“Honey, I’m sorry I insinuated you were stupid.”

“Really?” Sara said, a little shocked.

“Yeah, baby.” Ms. Charlotte rested her hand on Sara’s shoulder and looked deep into her eyes. “Stupid is an understatement.”

Sara’s mouth opened and closed, but no words escaped from it.

Ms. Charlotte turned to one of the young women whom I recognized as the one who had given me the message on the Solo cup. “Tina, darlin’, please take Sara here and help her change.”

Sara glared at Ms. Charlotte as she crossed the room to where Tina was opening a door, presumably to a bedroom.

Ms. Charlotte turned to me. “I thought you were crazy calling Plan F, but it’s probably your best bet. Did you know she was involved with the Guccionoe crime syndicate?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a heavy sigh.

Ms. Charlotte looked at me expectantly. “I would say you were doing it for that pretty face, but I doubt you’re that stupid.”

“No, McCormick over at the Ninety-fifth called me and said she came in wanting to be placed in witness protection.” I sighed again. “She didn’t have any evidence and hadn’t witnessed anything, so they wouldn’t help her.”

“How did he know to reach out to you?”

“He heard I’d gotten a couple of Louie’s targets out of his reach.”

“Honey, you realize it’s bad when the police know to get ahold of you when witness protection can’t help, right?”

“Yeah, I thought of that, but there’s something about this case. I couldn’t bring myself to say no.”

“It doesn’t help that she’s about the same age as your daughter.” She looked at me with soft brown eyes. “How long has it been since she was killed?”

“Four years next month.”

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

“If I had picked her up instead of making her walk home,” I began, turning away from her, still unable to face anyone when I relived that moment, “she wouldn’t have been on that corner when Louie’s men did the drive-by on his rival. If that’s not my fault, then I don’t know what is.”

Ms. Charlotte placed a soft hand on my shoulder. “You’re wrong. It’s not your fault.”

I placed my hand over hers before gently taking it from my shoulder. “The least I can do is be a thorn in Louie’s side.”

“You’re wrong again,” she said as she stepped in front of me to look into my eyes. “Being a thorn in Louie’s side is just going to get you killed.”

Sara flung the door open and held a red and black Starfleet uniform up in front of us. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to be caught dead in this.”

Tina stood behind her, hands and arms lifted in the universal sign of “I don’t know.”

“Sara, child, dead is exactly what you’ll be if you try and walk out of this room in that dress you wore in here. Now get back in there and change or,” Ms. Charlotte motioned in a circle with her hand while having her index finger pointing in the air, “we all will pack up our toys and leave you to handle the people with guns yourself.”

I chuckled when the door slammed closed again. “She has the same temper as my daughter, too.”

Ms. Charlotte turned back to me. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: that soft heart of yours is going to get you killed.”

“You’re right,” I said. “When you’re right, you’re right. I’ll retire and disappear as soon as I get enough money.”

“I’ve got a plan for that,” she said. “Promise me you’ll retire from the game.”

“I promise.”

“Have you ever seen Louie Guccionoe?”

“From a distance,” I answered. “I doubt I could pick him out of a line-up, though.”

Ms. Charlotte shook her head. “Now let’s get you a drink and a change of clothes. You still drink Gimlets?”

“When a bartender knows how to make one.”

Ms. Charlotte winked at me as she crossed to the bar. “Just for you, I brought some Rose’s lime cordial, and I’m sure this expensive mini bar will have some gin and ice.”

“Caroline, would you be a dear and go out and keep our guests engaged?” Ms. Charlotte asked.

A young lady in a blue and black Starfleet uniform nodded, plastered a good-natured smile on her face, and slipped into the room with the party with a muted squeal, as if she’d just seen a puppy, while saying to someone through the door, “I love what you’ve done with your uniform.”

Ms. Charlotte turned to the last woman in the room and said, “Angela, I think it’s time we prepare for the party’s big game.”

Angela nodded and rose from the chair she had been sitting in. After she straightened her gold and black uniform, she walked over to a briefcase and began setting out stacks of paper on the counter.

A few minutes later, I was wearing a red and black Starfleet uniform and pointed plastic pieces glued to the tops of my ears. At my feet sat a large, waxed canvas duffle bag containing my street clothes, Glock, and a second disguise. The din from the party in the next room had risen to a low roar. I could only assume even more people had arrived.

I was enjoying my second and probably last Gimlet of the night when Tina stepped out of the adjoining bedroom carrying another large, waxed canvas duffle. Behind her strode Sara, wearing a red and black uniform, black flats, a purple wig, and prosthetic ridges on the bridge of her nose.

“Good,” Ms. Charlotte said. “Now you’ll blend in.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sara blurted out. “How am I going to blend in? I have purple hair, for God’s sake!”

“Child, the key to blending in is not to look like the one they’re searching for. Now have a seat over there at the computer and I’ll fix you a drink. While you’re there, you can transfer the cryptocurrency payment to Mr. Boslay. Oh, and whatever he told you it would cost, add two more zeros to the end of the number.”

“What do you mean, add two more zeros to the end of it?” Sara gasped. “I never agreed to pay for your services, only his.”

“My dear, Mr. Boslay’s heart is too big for his wallet,” Ms. Charlotte said with cold steel in her voice. “Getting you out of here alive, much less in one piece, is far bigger than any of us bargained for.”

Ms. Charlotte mixed two martinis complete with olives skewered on tiny plastic swords and crossed the room, handing one to Sara. “You see, sugar, after he helps you disappear, he needs to, also, or he’ll be the next one in Louie’s sights.”

I started to speak when Ms. Charlotte jerked her hand up in an all-too-familiar stop motion.

“Mr. Boslay, honey, you know I love you. When it comes to a fight, it’s like watching a dance, and to my knowledge, no one can come up with the plans you do. You’re smart enough to hire the best to make those plans happen. That’s us. When it comes to business though, darlin’, you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed, so you need to let me handle this.”

I gave Ms. Charlotte an exaggeratedly sheepish grin and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

She looked back to Sara. “You can either pay it, or we walk away now, and you can try to get out on your own.”

“This is extortion,” Sara exclaimed.

“Make it three zeros.”

“Why?” Sara asked.

“Because, sugar, you keep pissing me off.” Ms. Charlotte took a sip of her martini and then continued, “Do you want to go for four?”

“No, ma’am,” Sara said as she dropped her eyes to the computer and began typing.

“Good answer,” Ms. Charlotte said as she crossed to me. “Monitor your account and let me know when you get the transfer.”

“Are you sure this is necessary?” I asked.

“Yes, my dear.” She took another sip from her drink. “I’ll not signal the next step until it’s all transferred to you and then you transfer our previously agreed fee to me.”

“After all the times we’ve worked together, you’re going to try and put a leash on me?” I said as I felt my face getting hot.

“Certainly not. Something doesn’t feel right about this job,” she said as she sat down on the arm of my chair. “I think you’re too close to this one to see it.”

“You think I can’t handle this on my own?”

“Check your pride, dear,” she said with a soothing tone. “You’re good and I’m sure you could make it out, but that sweet young thing won’t move as fast as you’ll need her to and that will probably get the two of you killed.”

She swirled the skewered olive around in the glass before popping it into her mouth and said, “Isn’t that why you hired us in the first place?”

Swallowing my pride, all I could do was nod before I took out my phone and watched for the transfer.

Sara turned from the computer screen with a scowl. “It’s done.”

I hit refresh on my screen and fifty million dollars appeared in my account.

Ms. Charlotte laughed when she saw it. “You were seriously only charging fifty thousand dollars to get her out of sight? By the time we settled and you paid for her new passport, you’d be lucky to have gas money.” She laughed again. “I didn’t know you were running a non-profit.”

I looked at my account and then at Sara. “I thought you said all you had was fifty thousand dollars?”

“That’s all I have,” she said as she swirled her olive around in her drink. “That came from Louie’s hard wallet.”

Ms. Charlotte patted me on the shoulder as she got up. “Not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” I said as I stood up.

“Now, Sara, darlin’, let me see your phone and that hard wallet,” Ms. Charlotte requested with her hand held out.

“Why?” Sara asked.

“Because people are most likely using them to track you,” Ms. Charlotte explained.

She clutched her phone and wallet briefly before placing them in Ms. Charlotte’s outstretched hand. “You’re not going to break them, are you?”

“No dear, I have a better plan.”

Ms. Charlotte placed the hard wallet in a plastic and metal case slightly larger than it and snapped it closed before handing it back to Sara. “This case will block any signals it’s giving off. Don’t open it until you get to the safe house.”

“What about my phone?”

“That you’ll get back when you reach the safe house.” Ms. Charlotte flashed a smirk at Sara and me. “Until then, we’re going to include it in the night’s game.”

“Becca, please trigger the diversion in ten minutes,” Ms. Charlotte said into her earpiece. “After that’s done, go to overwatch. Thank you so much, darlin’.”

“Tina, please be a dear and help Angela hand out the information for our big party game. Let’s start the game in five minutes. Be ready to begin the exit phase to Plan F when you hear the signal.” She then handed Sara’s phone to her. “Oh, and be a dear and keep this safe for Sara.”

“What’s this game?” I asked Angela as she was walking by.

She turned to me with a mischievous smile as she handed Sara and me a sheet of paper containing a list of items on it. “What would a party be without a scavenger hunt?”

Angela and Tina swept through the party handing out the lists as well as brown canvas tote bags for use during the hunt. I thought it would be difficult to get essentially a group of strangers interested in forming pairs and going on a scavenger hunt, but to my surprise, it didn’t appear to take much coaxing to get them hyped up for it. Who’d have thought that running amuck through a crowded hotel in pairs in the middle of the night was naturally appealing to intoxicated partygoers?

Once the participants were eagerly waiting for the game to start, Ms. Charlotte opened the door between the two suites and ushered us back into the room with the contestants. As Sara started into the room, Ms. Charlotte took her arm and looked her in the eyes. “I will be personally offended if you get him killed.”

I started to follow Sara into the room when Ms. Charlotte took my arm and whispered in my ear, “I’m serious, something doesn’t feel right.” She leaned in and gave me a lingering kiss on the cheek. “You’ve got enough to disappear now. Do what you do and make it out alive.”

All I could do was nod and give a little smile. I then stepped into the party.

Taking Sara by the arm, I led her to the center of the crowd. Tina soon joined and continued to expertly mingle and distract anyone trying to interact with us.

Sara asked Tina, “Where’s my phone?”

“It’s safe,” Tina replied without missing a beat in the conversations she was having with the many people surrounding us.

“I need my phone,” Sara pushed. “I don’t know any of the phone numbers stored on it.”

With a roll of her eyes, Tina handed Sara a sim card. “Here. We moved all your data to this so nothing will be lost. Just stick it back in your phone, or any phone, for that matter, and you’ll be all set.” With that, Tina moved to join Angela at the door.

Angela gathered the attention of all the participants. Once she was satisfied everyone was paying attention, she explained the rules to them.

While everyone was focused on Angela, I leaned over to Sara and said, “Tell me the rules we’ve gone over so far.”

“What?”

I gripped her arm tightly. “This is no joke,” I said. “Tell me the first two rules.”

“Ow. Okay. Geez. First is do what I’m told when I’m told to do it, and the second is don’t look back.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The next two are just as important. Keep up with me, and never look anyone in the eyes.”

“What if I don’t keep up and we get separated?”

“Then you’ll probably be dead before you can do anything else. Before you ask, don’t look anyone in the eyes because they will be less likely to recognize you if they can’t get a full view of your face.”

As if on cue, Angela swung the door open and stepped into the hallway. The crowd charged into the hall like racers leaving a starting line. We kept pace and entered the hall with them.

I quickly scanned the hall and found the three individuals from earlier standing in the corridor; two stood to the left and one stood to the right. Tina and Angela split and rushed toward them, smiling and holding the stacks of lists and brown tote bags up at head level. They started urging our would-be assailants to join in the scavenger hunt. A few people in the crowd saw the fun developing in trying to get the new people to join in and began adding their encouragement.

Taking advantage of all the commotion, I grabbed Sara by the hand and moved to the right. We drifted to the center of the hall, consciously not looking like we were trying to stay away from our pursuers.

At the end of the hall, we ducked into the stairwell. Once inside, we swiftly started going down the stairs.

“How did we just walk past them?” Sara asked. “Weren’t they looking for us?”

“I’m sure they were,” I said. “If we get through this, look up the video about a gorilla walking through a group of people playing basketball.”

“Weird. Okay.”

I casually continued walking down the stairs and listened for anyone in the stairwell.

“Where are we going now?”

“Shh,” I whispered. “We’re going to the third floor.”

“Shouldn’t we be running?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Running will draw attention to us,” I replied. “We don’t need that. Right now, we need to act like we’re not being pursued, and we need to listen.”

“What are we listening for?”

I put my finger to my lips and then pointed over the railing. “That.”

The muted sound of a one-sided conversation slowly drifted up to us. Peeking over the rail, I caught the sporadic movement of someone two floors below us. We moved up against the wall as we eased down the stairs. Scanning overhead, I could see movement on the floor above.

We continued at a slow steady pace down the stairs. Sara stepped closer and put a death grip on my hand as we approached the landing with a man standing on it.

He was wearing cargo pants, a tee shirt, and a lightweight bomber-styled windbreaker. It was muggy in the stairwell, so I could guess the jacket was more for concealing something than for temperature control.

As we approached, he took only a glance at us as we walked past. He lowered his voice further as he continued to scan up and down the stairwell.

It looked like we were going to make it past another sentry when I glanced over my shoulder to see Sara turning to stare at him. My eyes followed the invisible line from her eyes to the man’s face on the landing. I watched in disappointment as his face morphed from indifference to curiosity and finally to recognition.

In a practiced motion, he used his right hand to clear the jacket from his holster and grab the grip of his gun. With his left hand, he keyed the earpiece in his left ear.

Seeing him make a move to draw his gun, I swung the heavy duffle bag at his head. The bag connected with a satisfying clunk, pitching him towards the railing. I followed the circular motion generated by swinging the bag, reaching down and hooking his lower leg. With a secure grip on the thick baggy fabric of his cargo pants, I jerked my body and arm up while burying my shoulder and elbow into his back and toppled him over the railing.

The commotion of him falling, yelling, and bouncing off the metal railings as he fell attracted the attention of the sentry above us, as well as another I had not seen a couple of floors farther below us.

Taking up the duffle bag with one hand and grabbing Sara’s hand with the other I said, “Now we run.”

We rushed down the stairs trying to beat our pursuers to the third floor. As we opened the door leading from the stairwell onto the third floor, the fire alarm started going off, complete with strobing lights and a prerecorded message saying, “This is not a drill. Please evacuate the building.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said as we rushed down the hall.

“What do you mean? This is horrible.”

We were almost halfway down the hall when we were inundated by a river of humanity. The blurry-eyed and confused mass of people heading towards the stairwells blocked any clear views our pursuers had.

An older woman emerged from her room in a panic. I motioned for her to go in front of us.

“Which way should I go?” she asked.

“Right down there, ma’am,” I said while pointing with my free hand and using my foot to prevent her hotel room door from closing. “Just follow the crowd outside. You’ll be fine.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” she replied with a gentle pat on my arm as she toddled off.

Grabbing Sara’s arm, I pulled her quickly into the old lady’s now-empty hotel room. Once inside, I closed the door.

“What on Earth are we doing now?” Sara demanded. “I can’t figure any of this out.”

“You don’t need to figure it out,” I said. “Just remember rule number one.”

“I know, I know,” she blurted out as she sat down hard on the bed. “Do what I’m told when I’m told to do it.”

“Exactly,” I said as I sat the duffle bag down on the bed.

“What’s in that thing, anyway? It sounded like you hit that guy with a bat.”

I unzipped the bag and said, “Helmets.” Then I removed two fireman’s helmets from the bag along with two sets of baggy canvas jackets and pants.

“Seriously,” she laughed as she picked up and looked at the helmet, “who plans this all out?”

“I plan it,” I clarified as I sat down on the bed next to her. “Ms. Charlotte and her team help implement it.”

She set the helmet on the other side of her. “I want you to know I appreciate everything you and your girlfriend are doing for me. I’m sorry for how I acted back at the party.”

“We’re not romantically involved,” I said.

Sara looked at me expectantly.

“Ms. Charlotte and I aren’t in a relationship.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“We work well together and watch each other’s backs.”

She reached over and took my hand and slowly brought it up to her lips. “I wouldn’t want to get her mad at me for making a move on her man.” Then she lightly kissed the back of my hand.

“This won’t happen,” I said as I slid my hand from hers.

“Why?” she complained with a bit of a playful pout on her face.

“I am twice your age.”

“Age is just a number.”

I rose from the bed and began pulling the canvas fireman’s disguises from the duffle bag. “Sorry, not to me.”

“Oh, well,” she said with a smile, “can’t blame a gal for trying.”

I handed one of the disguises to her.

When she took it, she stood and held the pants and jacket in her hands. “I thought they’d be heavier.”

“These are imitations I had made. The real ones are much heavier.”

“They’re way too big,” she stated while holding the pants up to her waist.

“It’s on purpose. They go over the clothes you have on now.”

“So, you don’t even get to see me naked? Too bad. I figured I’d have you then,” she said with a devilish grin. “By the way, is my other dress in there?”

Trying to hide my blushing face, all I could answer was “Yes,” as I pulled the plastic ear caps off.

“Can I get rid of the wig and stuff on my nose?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, good,” she said with relief. “I was afraid I’d have to wear this get-up all night.”

After donning the new disguises, we waited until we heard the firemen pass our room before leaving our sanctuary with the duffle bag. I took Sara’s hand in the hall and quickly made our way to the stairwell.

Sara asked, “How long will the alarms keep going off?”

“For a while.”

“I thought they would have shut them off when they found the fire alarm pulled.”

“They would have if it was a pull station,” I replied. “What we did was set off smoke bombs in several different ducts. The fire department will keep the building vacant until they verify all of them.”

There were no issues as we made it to the end of the hall. Once in the stairwell, we heard the firemen talking and calling in reports from somewhere above us. I placed my index finger to my lips and motioned with my head down the stairs.

We slowly descended the remaining flights. When we reached the first floor, Sara started to push through the door leading into the lobby, but I caught her hand and pulled her back into the stairwell.

“Why aren’t we going out the front door?” Sara asked in a whisper.

“They’ll be able to tell we don’t belong,” I said as I thumbed toward the multitude of firemen and police milling around the lobby.

“Then where do we go now?”

“The basement,” I said as I led the way farther down the stairs.

Once we reached the basement, I peered through the window in the door looking for activity. Not a soul occupied the hall. Only every other light fixture in the ceiling was lit, doing little to illuminate the corridor.

Cautiously, we opened the door and headed down the passage. We passed doors marked as laundry and housekeeping.

Sara asked, “Where are we going?”

“Right here,” I said as we came to a halt at a set of double doors.

Sara looked and read the sign with a question in her voice, “Maintenance?”

I reached into the duffle bag and removed a leather bifold case that contained my lock picks.

“Why on Earth are we here, of all places?”

“You’ll see,” I said as I withdrew two slender pieces of metal from the case before putting it back in the duffle bag.

“Oh,” Sara said excitedly before taking the bag from me, “are you going to pick the lock?”

“Yes.”

Sara stepped behind me and said, “Oh, show me, please.”

“Okay,” I said while I held up the two pieces of metal so she could see them from over my shoulder. “The bent one is called a tensioner and the wavey one here is called a rake. You put the short side of the bend of the tensioner in the bottom of the key and start to turn the lock, then you use the rake to slide it back and forth across the top until all the pins release the cylinder and,” at this point, the lock clicked open, and the door swung open, “we’re in.”

I took the duffle bag from Sara as we stepped through the door into the maintenance shop. After rummaging around in it trying to find the lockpick case, my hand struck something that felt like hard plastic. Taking it from the bag, I realized it was Louie Guccionoe’s hard wallet, but it was no longer in the frequency-blocking case. I held it out in my hand to show Sara.

“It’s Louie’s wallet,” she said unconcerned. “What about it?”

“It’s not in its case anymore.”

“Oh, it probably just fell out.”

I pulled the case out and put the hard wallet back in it. When I closed the lid, it snapped and locked automatically. The only way I could get it opened again was to press hard on the release button. After securing the lid closed, I handed it to Sara.

She cradled my hand and the case in her two hands and gently pushed it back towards my chest while she said, “No. I want you to keep it. There’s more money in it and I want you to have it. It’s brought me nothing but trouble.”

I dropped the case back into the bag, along with the loose picks. Turning around, I made sure the door was locked behind us.

The maintenance area was poorly lit. It smelled of hot metal, grease, and oil. Tools hung from pegs on boards scattered around the room. Metal pipes and conduits ran on either side of the row of lights going through the center of the space. A low hum of electric motors droned in the background.

“So, what are we doing in here?” Sara asked.

“We’re following those,” I said, pointing to the pipes overhead.

“Why?”

“They’ll lead us out.”

We followed the pipes to the back of the shop. There they went into a service tunnel leading out of the hotel’s basement.

“That is creepy,” she said.

I flipped a switch mounted to the wall at the beginning of the tunnel. A string of singular lights flickered to life in the tunnel. Each one was about twenty feet apart. Deep shadows were cast by the large pipes and the many sharp turns in the tunnel.

“That didn’t help much,” she said. “Where does that go?”

“Many of these large hotels have these service tunnels connecting them,” I explained. “It’s the easiest way the city workers can maintain the phone, electric, water, and sewer lines that service all these hotels.”

I took her by the hand, and we moved into the tunnel. Dust covered everything. It threatened to choke us.

After about forty feet and two sharp turns of the tunnel, I found what I was looking for: metal ladder rungs bolted to the wall of the tunnel leading up. Above was a round manhole cover.

“Here we are,” I said as I slung the duffle bag strap across my body so I could use both hands to grasp the ladder rungs.

I climbed the ladder to the top and listened to make sure it didn’t open in the street. Once satisfied, I hooked my feet on opposite sides of the ladder rungs and pushed with both hands to slide the heavy cover open. Turning to motion for Sara to follow, I saw her face glowing in a faint blue light. All I could do was stare for a moment trying to process the scene until I realized her face was illuminated by a phone.

“What is that?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“What’s what?” she answered. “Oh, this? It’s just a burner phone I picked up earlier today. I thought it would be good to have one that couldn’t be traced to me.”

“Turn it off now,” I demanded.

“Fine,” she replied. “I don’t know what the big deal is. There’s no way anyone could follow us through all this.”

“Come on,” I snapped before pulling myself through the manhole to the sidewalk above.

Once on the sidewalk, I reached into the bag and felt the reassuring grip of my Glock. I scanned the surrounding area looking for anyone who may have taken notice of my activities.

Sara followed through the manhole to the sidewalk. A disgusted look crossed her face as she wiped her hands on the canvas pants.

No one seemed to question the idea of two firemen coming from a manhole. Most of the people’s attention was on the excitement of emergency personnel at the hotel. We exited the service tunnel well behind the group of gawkers. The resounding clank the manhole cover made when I slid it back into place barely warranted a glance.

After grabbing the canvas bag, I took Sara’s hand and said, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going now?”

“I have a van stashed around the corner,” I explained.

We made our way quickly to the parking lot where I had parked my van. Luckily, none of the emergency vehicles had blocked it in.

As we approached the unmarked white cargo van, Sara said, “How swanky. Did you spring for the optional tear-stained mattress in the back?”

“It’s not fancy,” I said, “but no one pays attention to work vans, so we can slip through without issues.”

I keyed the rear doors open and gestured for Sara to enter.

Sara put her hands on her hips and said with a smirk, “Aren’t you going to offer me candy first?”

“Why aren’t you taking this seriously?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“People are actively trying to kill you, and all night you’ve acted like this was just some kind of escape room game.”

“I don’t understand,” she said as she climbed into the van. “I’ve been following the rules you gave me, haven’t I?”

Just then I heard a buzz come from the duffle bag hanging from my shoulder. I looked down in bewilderment at the bag. After I opened the bag, I found the phone Sara had been using in the tunnel. It was powered up and showed a text received.

I pulled it out and held it up to face Sara and asked, “What’s this?”

“I already told you,” she answered. “It’s a burner phone.”

“Why is it still powered on? I said to turn it off.”

“Oh. You meant completely turned off? I thought you just wanted me to stop using it.”

“That’s what I mean by you not taking this seriously,” I snapped as I tossed the phone back into the bag and tossed it beside her in the back of the van. “Get changed.”

I closed the door and stepped around the van to a shadowed area. After I was certain no one could see me, I slipped out of the firemen’s costume and stood in the red Starfleet uniform alongside the van.

A moment later I heard the sliding side door of the van open. I walked around to that side and found Sara sitting in the doorway wearing the white dress she had been wearing at the beginning of the adventure.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We’re going to go to the safe house, but I need to make sure everything is turned off and secured before we leave,” I said. “I can’t risk anyone following us from here.”

I took the bag and opened it. After making sure the hard wallet was in the frequency-blocking case and all the phones were turned off, I tossed it back into the van.

“Go ahead and get in the passenger seat,” I said.

I closed the sliding door when she climbed between the front two seats and sat in the passenger seat. After walking around the van, I stepped up into the driver’s seat.

Once I was seated, Sara reached out and placed her hand on my leg before she said, “Look, I’m sorry if I haven’t been the easiest to work with tonight. I’m trying, but this is all so new to me. I know you said we can’t be together, but please let me show you how much I appreciate this.” She reached up and slid her right hand around the back of my neck and pulled my face towards hers. “Just this once, please do what I say and close your eyes.”

I was caught in a trance, swept up in a moment. My eyes closed, and I felt her soft lips press gently against mine. Then I felt a hard nudge into my ribs like a finger pushing against them.

A hammer blow slammed against my ribs at the same time as a bright flash pierced through my closed eyes. Thunder roared in the van, causing my ears to ring. Air rushed from my lungs as I was forced against the door of the van. I struggled to gasp for air, but the effort was cut short by a piercing pain in my side, forcing me to cough. Foamy dark red blood erupted from my mouth as the coughing fit struck me.

I slumped, coughing, against the steering wheel while I turned my head towards Sara. She sat in the passenger seat, shaking her head from side to side. In her left hand, she grasped a small, shiny snub-nosed revolver.

The passenger door opened behind her and Lou from the bar stepped into view. They had a brief conversation, but between the ringing in my ears, pain in my chest, and blood coming from my mouth, I couldn’t understand what they said.

Lou gently took Sara’s hand and helped her step from the van. Both had cordial smiles on their faces. Sara even did a little twirl into Lou’s arms when she reached the ground.

Lou took the revolver from Sara’s hand while he kissed her other hand. She turned to me, put a mocking pout on her face, and gave me a little wave goodbye before she stepped out of view.

When Sara was out of sight, Lou slid into the van and placed the barrel of the revolver against the side of my head. He then seemed to change his mind. The barrel was placed against my chest, and he leaned in and yelled in my ringing ear, “This way you can have an open casket.”

Pain slammed me against the door again. Thunder roared and light flashed briefly before darkness enveloped me.

A rhythmic beeping slowly filtered into my consciousness. My eyelids felt heavy and were reluctant to open. I tried to take a deep breath, but a tightness restricted my chest. With persistent effort, I managed to let out a little groan.

“I know it’s not polite to say I told you so,” Ms. Charlotte’s smooth Southern voice lilted to my ears, “but, darlin’, I told you so.”

A chuckle tried to escape, but it morphed into a cough.

“Take it easy, honey,” she said. “The bulletproof vest I made you wear under that red Starfleet uniform saved your life, but a thirty-eight at close range will still break bones.”

“How do you know the caliber?” I croaked.

Ms. Charlotte held up the shiny snub-nosed revolver. “They left you a souvenir.”

I looked at it and nodded. “A Saturday night special.”

“Yep.”

“How did I live through it?”

“The only thing we can think of is that luckily the first shot broke ribs that punctured one of your lungs.”

“Luckily?”

“Of course, sugar. You were coughing up blood all over the place when we found you,” she said. “They must have thought the same thing we thought. You were a goner. The red in that uniform hid that you weren’t actually bleeding at the wound. That’s why they didn’t try harder.”

“Sara shot me first.”

“I gathered that. She’s the only one that could have gotten that close to you.”

“Louie fired the second one.”

“Well, sugar, I didn’t expect that, but I guess with all the trouble you’ve caused him, he wanted to oversee things himself.”

“How long before I’ll be back on my feet?”

“Doc says he wants you here another week,” she said, “then she thinks another six to eight weeks for a full recovery.”

“I don’t have that much time.”

“Darlin’, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’re retired now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You promised you’d retire after you got enough. He thinks you’re dead. This is your best chance to disappear.”

“He’s probably pulled the money back by now. I’m broke again.”

“No, honey, I used your fingerprint on your phone and transferred the fifty million to a secured account where Louie can’t track it or get it back.”

“I’m supposed to just walk away?”

“Yes, and darlin’, if you want any of that money, you’re going to leave with me for the Cayman Islands when you get released from here.”

“Leave with you?”

“I’ve decided to retire, too. Things got too real for my girls and me on this one. I liquidated everything and we’re all out of the game.”

“So, if I decide to stay to get revenge, I’ll have to do it broke and alone.”

“That’s right, sugar,” Ms. Charlotte said softly as she leaned over and placed a hand gently on mine. “Please don’t break your promise to me.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll disappear with you.”

“Thank you, darlin’,” she said as she rose and kissed me on the forehead.

After a few moments of just sharing the silence and each other’s company in the room, I asked, “Would it be breaking my promise if I used the money to start a detective agency?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“It feels wrong to give up helping people in life-threatening situations.”

“I’m listening.”

“It can be done remotely from somewhere safe, like the Cayman Islands, with agents and offices in the US.”

“You’ll be keeping the promise as long as you aren’t the one actively working the cases.”

“No. You’re right. I’m too old to keep doing this personally. I was thinking of hiring talented people like the women you had working for you. They’ve been real guardian angels for me and my clients.”

“Well, honey, what would we call our company?”

“What do you mean, our company?” I asked.

Ms. Charlotte chuckled. “We’ve been over your business skills already, sugar.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” I said.

“Okay, because The Problem Solvers Agency is horrible,” she added. “We need something that starts with A, B, or maybe C, so it shows up quicker when people search for it.”

“The name we can figure out later.”

“Okay, darlin’, you rest now.” She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead again. “I’ll be your guardian angel while you sleep.”

Shadows and Silk

Cedar Sanderson

Liz took a deep breath, the rich scent of coffee filling her nostrils. Now that she was awake enough to process, she could hear the gurgle of the coffee maker. It always did this as it finished a pot, a death rattle and then a curl of aromatic steam that would summon her from the other side of the house…

She sat bolt upright in her bed, her blood freezing in her veins as the adrenaline of fear rang through her entire body. She was alone in the house. Who had started the coffee brewing?

From the darkest corner of the room, she heard a warm chuckle of amusement, followed by a dark, velvety voice. “Good morning, bubbaleh.”

His voice was as thick as cream, but that twang of old New York in his accent gave him away. Elizabeth Maximovna Panchenko flopped back into her warm blanket with all the grace of a beaching walrus.

“How did you find me?” she demanded of the ceiling, looking up at the pale blur over her head.

There was a sniff worthy of any Jewish mother, conveying all the pain and sorrow her progeny inflicted on her.

“Nevermind, that was a stupid question to ask. I should ask instead, why did it take you so long? I moved into the house a week ago. I closed on the house a month ago! I thought a domovoi was supposed to move in right away, nu?”

“Elizabeth, dahling…” He drawled that last word out until she threw a pillow in the direction of his voice. Then, with a chuckle, “You aren’t going to drink the coffee I slaved over?”

“Not if you’re going to take that tone, no.” She sat up, her thick braid sliding over her shoulder. “In fact, if you keep that up, I’m kicking you out. I did not sign up for any of this. House spirits are so old world. I have a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, a robot vacuum, for gods’ sakes. What are you going to do?”

“All right, all right.” He sounded like she’d gotten through to him, as the accent had vanished. “As for what I’ll do, you have me confused with a brownie. The domovoi do not do housework. We protect the family.”

“Right.” Elizabeth got up, grateful she’d opted for a pair of shorts and a baggy tee the night before. Without curtains hung yet, it had seemed like a wise choice, and now she knew she’d never be able to sleep in the nude again. “Because I need protection here in Small Town, Ohio. This isn’t Mother Russia, or even New York City.”

She had kept talking while she’d walked into the kitchen. Navigating around boxes wasn’t too difficult, as the streetlight came in through the kitchen window. The refrigerator light illumined her cup on the counter while she grabbed the creamer. She kept the fridge door open while she poured a dose into her cup.

“What about the mafia?” he asked from the shadows over by the stove.

“What about them? This isn’t Cincinnati. Or Toledo. This is Columbus. There are no mobs in Columbus, of any flavor. That’s why I bought a house here.” She shut the door and stood still for a second, letting her eyes adjust. The coffee pot had lights on the front, so she could find her way to it.

“Are you sure of that?”

“I don’t know why I’m having this conversation with you.” She reached for the light switch. “I have to grab my armor and head for my gig. If you want a job, I’ll introduce you to my agent. She’s probably got something for an unemployed spook.”

The light coming on cut off his indignant reply.

Liz finished loading the armor, both hers and borrowed, into the hatchback and then clicked the button to close it. She took advantage of the moment to roll her shoulders, stretching out. She was stiff and out of condition, what with the moving. She hadn’t been training since she’d left Cambridge. She really needed to reconsider that. Leaving Massachusetts in her rearview mirror had been a relief, but she did miss the salle and her fellow fighters.

She glanced back at the little brick ranch she’d just locked up carefully. The domovoi hadn’t spoken again since she’d insulted him. Maybe he’d leave. She neither wanted nor needed any family ties on her. Family had…expectations.

She pulled out of her long driveway onto the road, and then headed for the address her GPS displayed. She had a short drive, for a change. Rather than heading into the city, she was headed for a remote location. Fred was supposed to be meeting her there. Liz had expressed reluctance to go alone.

“I don’t have a concealed carry yet, Fred.” Liz had put her hands on her hips and stared down her agent. “Sure, I’ll have a sword and an axe, but I want a force multiplier if you’re going to feed me to the wolves.”

Fred had laughed. “I’ll be there. Wolves.” There was a snort of amusement. “You’re the wolf, girl. Have you seen your average fashion photographer?”

Liz had, and didn’t agree. Some of them were total slimeballs. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, picking off the girls who didn’t know any better or thought they couldn’t do better, and using them. She squirmed in her seat, trying to focus on the route and her driving. She didn’t know what it was about this gig that had her so itchy, but there it was.

She turned where the map indicated, and slowed to a near-crawl as the driveway went from asphalt apron to gravel, then pure mud before appearing to vanish into the field around it. By the time that happened, the main road (such as it was, without more than a center painted line) had long vanished behind her. Still, there was no evidence of people. Liz eyeballed the ground, trying to decide if she was going to sink up to her axles in mud if she stopped. She was on a slope heading upwards, and that seemed to indicate not stopping, until she got to the top and could turn around for gravity-assisted momentum. Also, she might be able to see her destination from there.

Stopping the car, she popped out into the fresh air and gentle breeze, and knew immediately she must be close. She could smell a trace of smoke from a campfire.

“Down here!” The shout caught her attention, and she looked into a hollow of the land that held tents, people, and what really got her paying close attention, two tanks. Honest to God, military surplus, awesome machines of war. She couldn’t have named the models, but they were impressive steel hulks squatting next to the campsite.

She waved, and got back into the car. There was a trace through the smooth grass, and she followed it around the curve, grateful it didn’t get any rougher. Her car wasn’t built for adventurous off-roading.

“Hey, sorry.” The man greeted her with a rueful face and apologetic tone to match. “I guess we didn’t warn you about that road. There’s another one, but the GPS is a dummy and misses it all the time.”

“No worry.” Liz got back out of the car and looked around. “This is…”

“Elizabeth!” The squeal of excitement made her head whip around, and then her shoulders dropped as she realized who it was. He was holding his camera high, and gesturing wildly with his other hand. “Come, come, we shall make magic with your curves and these magnificently brutal machines!”

“Paulo,” she muttered to the strange man. “Is Fred here yet?”

He looked confused. Liz sighed and headed for the photographer. “I need to change!” she shouted at him. “Where do I?”

“Oh, first come do lighting!” he shouted back.

Liz sighed and shook her head. She knew how this was going to go. He’d run through her planned poses, and then she’d have to whip through the wardrobe changes…at least they’d have to end with the armor, since after that, she’d be too hot and sweaty for floating chiffon.

The changing room turned out to be one of the tents, which was a familiar bell pavilion shape she recognized from countless Renn faires. She was wrong on the armor, though. Paulo wanted her in it as soon as he saw it. She had to admit, the juxtaposition of the medieval leather and steel with the dull gray battle steel of the tank was pretty striking, especially when he insisted she let her hair down and squealed in delight as the breeze caught it.

The guys who owned the tank, or at least she assumed they did, kept their distance, watching with grins and letting Paulo work. Fred didn’t show up, which Liz planned to make her agent pay for. They’d had a deal.

The sun was sliding toward the horizon when Paulo trotted over from setting up another reflector.

“The white gown, darling. Hurry, hurry, musn’t waste the golden hour.”

“Now?” Liz bundled her hair up and out of the way for a moment. The air felt good on the back of her neck. “Paulo, I’m well past glowing. Sweating like a horse would be closer to the truth.”

He tutted at her. “This is the look. This is the dewy complexion. Ch, ch, the dress! Quickly now! I am losing the light!”

He gestured at the sky. Liz sighed and trotted for the tent. One of the guys intercepted her, holding out a sealed water bottle dripping from their ice chest.

“Hey, you look like you need this.”

“Thanks!” Liz cracked it and chugged.

“When they told us a model was coming, we didn’t realize…” He made a small gesture that encompassed her armor.

Liz chuckled. “This is almost more tiring than fighting. Liz Panchenko.” She stuck her hand out without breaking stride. “He’ll kill me…metaphorically! I have to get back over there in five minutes.”

The guy shook her hand while walking. “Mike Breed. Nice to meet you, Liz. We’ll have to put you in touch with the local duchy.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

They reached the tent, and he stood back while she ducked in to strip out of the armor and into the dress.

The tent door shook. “Wait one!” Liz shouted, annoyed.

Paulo stuck his head in, just as she fastened the bodice. “Nice, nice, I want you wearing this.” He pushed a bag into the tent, holding it out as she came to get it, wondering what he was up to. The bag was heavy, and padded. She unzipped it and felt her eyebrows rise.

“This?”

“Yes, yes, porcelain skin, fire, and steel. Come on, the light is perfect!”

Liz pulled the garter holster out. It was a lot fancier than anything she would ordinarily choose for herself, but surprisingly comfortable and secure once she’d gotten it in position, even when she slipped the little Smith and Wesson Shield into it. The gun wasn’t loaded, she’d checked. There was, however, a loaded magazine in the bag, in addition to the empty one seated in the pistol’s grip. She picked it up, hefted it, and on a whim, slid it into the other side of the holster, where the leather was formed to hold it.

Then, she straightened up and opened the tent door. Immediately, Liz could see something wasn’t right. Paulo wasn’t waiting for her, he was standing by a car she didn’t recognize, gesticulating and talking rapidly in a low tone. Mike, the guy who’d handed her the water, pushed her back inside before she had time to process what she’d seen and why it was so wrong.

“Shh!” he cautioned.

“What is it?” Liz backed further into the tent.

“Some men came. Paulo is angry at them for being in his way, but I think they are here for something else.” Mike remained by the tent door, holding it open just enough to peer out.

“Not for me.” Liz pulled her skirt up. Mike didn’t even twitch. “Other than Fred, no one really knows I’m here, and Paulo wasn’t expecting them, from the sounds of it.”

“Someone stupid enough to rob a gun range?” Mike did glance over, as she switched magazines. His eyes narrowed. “You know what you’re doing.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. I do.” Liz holstered the gun. One thing about being dressed like this, it gave her an element of surprise.

Mike was watching again. “One of them is coming this way. They just restrained Paulo.”

Liz took a deep breath. “Let’s see what they want.”

What Mike hadn’t mentioned, Liz saw as soon as she went through the door and took a step to the side so she could see past him, was the gun to her photographer’s head. Her heart sank. These men were here for nothing good.

The one who’d been walking towards the tent, a thickset man with a Heckler and Koch MP7 carried casually at his side, greeted them in a thick, familiar accent.

“You two, over here.” He gestured with his weapon. He gave Liz an appraising glance. “No, woman, come to me.”

Liz controlled her features and did her best ice-queen bitch model face as she left Mike’s side and walked towards the man. Behind her, Mike started to say something, but she held her hand up slightly, just angled at the wrist with her fingers flat, and he caught her signal and shut up.

“Yes?” She looked down her nose at the thug. He was fully two inches shorter than she was in these heels.

“Go over by car, be hostage. Don’t be stupid.”

He gestured, again with the gun, but she noted that he was now pointing the muzzle more or less at Mike all the time. She debated for no more than a heartbeat before shrugging and strolling towards the car in a slow runway amble. She didn’t want to rush, and she needed to have a moment to assess the situation.

Mike, she was sure, could take care of himself. Paulo, well, she could see the tears streaming down his cheeks when she neared the trio of men standing by the car. The one who was gripping the photographer’s upper arm with one hand and holding the semiautomatic pistol to his temple with the other gave her a similar appraising look. The big guy who was holding another MP7 in the ready position, and scanning the area, barely acknowledged her.

Liz came up alongside Paulo. There was nothing she could do at the moment. Two men, one of whom would be able to kill her photographer with a simple nervous reflex? She leaned on the hood of the car and assessed the area herself. She was slightly behind the two men, which was…unwise of them. She looked past them.

Mike was still facing the thug who’d come to get them, his hands held slightly out from his side and ostentatiously empty. Off to the far side of the tents, another thug—the fourth she could see—came out from behind the far tent, two men with their hands up walking in front of him. He was aiming a gun at them, not another MP7, but he was too far away for Liz to identify it. She cultivated an aura of boredom, practiced elegant lounging. She couldn’t give away her inner tension; that would catch someone’s attention and then they’d have to do something about her. Right now, they were treating her like set dressing.

Mike’s men were marched up nearer to the car, then halted.

“Lay down,” their captor ordered. “Hands behind your back, cross your wrists…”

As they complied, two guns aimed at them from both front and back, the big guy now paying attention only to them, the one who’d captured them swiftly restrained them with odd plastic handcuffs that seemed to have an ancestry in zip ties.

While this was happening, Mike asked in a carrying voice, but keeping his tone calm, “What do you want with us?”

“With you? Very little. Just lie down and be good boys while we collect what we need. We will go away then. After a while…” The thug shrugged, Liz could see his shoulders rise and fall. “You will be able to escape your bonds.”

“And call the cops.” Mike challenged him, eyes narrowed to near slits.

“No, no, your phones will be with us. Also, if you call the cops, someone will come make more…permanent arrangements. We will know. If you walk to the road, we will know, and then?” Another shrug.

Liz wondered why they were bothering to pretend. Surely they planned to kill all of them. It made the most sense, in terms of what they planned to do.

“What do you want, then?” Mike stressed the first word.

“Ah, there is a good question. As you can see,” He gestured slightly with his weapon. “We already have good guns. No, we want the tanks.”

“What the hell are you going to do with tanks?” Mike looked baffled and sounded it, as well. “Is this a joke?” He looked around, as though for hidden cameras.

“Please, get down on the ground and put your hands behind your back. I am done talking.” The thug pointed, and Mike glared at him, then obeyed. He really didn’t have a lot of choice, Liz thought, while she empathized with his glare of fury at the robbers. She was feeling that way, too, and biding her time. She couldn’t even glare.

Once all three men were restrained, the thug who’d done all the talking pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and made a call. Liz couldn’t hear what he was saying, as he walked away, towards the other entrance to camp. The one she hadn’t come in on.

She didn’t have the time to think about it, though, as the man who’d been pressing a gun into Paulo’s head, hard enough to dimple and whiten Paulo’s skin where the muzzle rested, gave him a shove.

“Get down.” That same thick Slavic accent.

Liz felt a trickle of fear crawl down her spine like a droplet of ice water. She watched helplessly as Paulo fell to the ground, then sprawled gracelessly while the big man restrained him. The gunman turned the muzzle of his pistol to her, and she straightened up from the trunk of the car where she’d been leaning.

“Hey!” She put on her best dumb blonde act. “What’s the deal? Where are the cameras?”

“Cameras?” The gunman echoed, then shot an incredulous look at his big counterpart, who was standing up and dusting off his hands. “What cameras?”

“Aren’t we shooting a movie?” Liz kept her eyes big and round, but not so wide as to imply fear. “I mean, I thought my gig was just to model, but I can act…”

He blinked, opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“Dis ain’t no movie.” The big guy’s voice was just as deep and gravelly as she’d thought it would be. “Dis is a stick up.”

“Be silent, Ivar.” The gunman didn’t lower his pistol, but he did give his compatriot an exasperated glance. “What is your name?”

Liz drew herself up, flipped her name of red hair over her shoulder, and announced imperiously, “Elizabeth Maximovna Panchenko.” Then she relaxed back into her slouch against the trunk and grinned at them. “Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?”

“Maximovna? Panchenko?” The gunman’s hand wavered for the first time. She wondered if his arm was getting tired, just as she realized what he was about to say. “Is your father Maxim Panch…”

She cut him off. “Yes, what of it? We don’t talk. Didn’t. He’s dead, you know.”

He was shaking his head, and the gun fell down by his side. “He’s very much alive, kotyonok.”

“I am not your kitten.” Liz realized she was standing straight again, her fists clenched by her side. “He has been dead for five years.”

“No,” He looked truly sad, now, shaking his head slowly. “I spoke with him myself only last week.”

Liz focused on breathing. He’d been dead. She’d mourned him. The domovoy had only showed up the night before…

The gunman turned his head and shouted for the man with the cell phone to come, quickly. He started to walk away to intercept him. Liz didn’t realize at first he’d spoken in the same obscure Slavic language her family spoke at home, until her brain caught up with her ears. Her mind was whirling through options, reacting to the news of her father’s continued perfidy, and the implications of being called kitten…

She grasped on one thing. She should pretend not to know what they were saying when they weren’t speaking English. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at the big one. Ivar, he’d been called.

“Let my friend up.” she indicated Paulo. “What has he done?”

“Nothing,” Ivar shrugged. “If he stays down there, he will be safe.”

Liz dropped her arms. He wasn’t wrong, but she was going to keep up the ditz act. “Ugh, this is so weird! You really aren’t making a movie?”

The other two came back, walking rapidly. The phone had been put away.

“You are Maxim’s daughter?” the original bad guy asked.

Liz looked down her nose at him. “I am.”

“Then, I am sorry, but I am going to have to ask you to wait in the car.”

Liz blinked. This was not what she’d been expecting. “Okay.”

She didn’t like it. There were innocent people out here. She still didn’t see a way to act, not without getting them all killed.

“And, I am sorry.” He sighed and pulled the keys out of his pocket, clicking the fob. “Not in a seat.” The trunk of the car popped open next to Liz.

“You want me to get in there?” She didn’t have to pretend to get the tone right. “In the trunk?”

“Yes, and stay there quietly,” he warned. “Come on now, hop in. I’m afraid we have business to conduct. Unless you would like Ivar to lift you in?”

Liz very much would not. For one thing, so far the pistol on her thigh had escaped their notice. For another, just no. Moving carefully to keep her skirts modest, and conceal the weapon, she got into the capacious and fortunately very clean trunk. The lid closed down over her, and she was in the dark.

He’d found the agent’s address in a notebook next to the coffeepot. Calling would have been his first choice, but Elizabeth had not installed a phone, for some reason. He went at dark.

There was light coming out around the door, even this late in an office building. He was in no mood to be subtle or polite, and the knock rattled the oak door in its frame.

The door yanked open, spilling a trapezoid of light out into the hall over the dingy floor. Standing in the doorway was a short woman, nearly as broad as she was tall, her cubic head topped with a brilliant red that never occurred in nature. The light glinted off the chunky costume jewelry she had draped herself in, over the sort of floral fabrics usually associated with sofas.

“Whaddya want?” she demanded of the empty hallway.

A deep voice answered her from the darkest shadow, almost behind the door. “I am looking for Fred.”

“You found her.” She peered around with suspicious eyes. “Who are you?”

“Fred?” The questioner had moved, but was still far enough into the shadow to be unseen.

“That’s right. Frederika Lukash. And you are?”

“I am no one.” The voice came from right behind the door, at her hand where it was gripping the wood of the door. “I am looking for Elizabeth Maximovna.”

“I don’t give out information.”

Fred’s knuckles were white with the pressure in her grip, but her voice was calm and steady.

“Oh, I think you’ll tell me. After all, am I not her dedushka?”

Fred swore fluently in three languages. No, he amended his assessment with amusement, there are at least four languages that use that word, or its derivative. He waited for her to wind down.

“Now,” he was practically purring in her ear. “Where is Elizabeth?”

“You’d better come in.” She left the door open and retreated, switching off the light as she did. “I haven’t heard from her all day and she didn’t show up at her gig.”

“She left for it. And she was supposed to meet you there.” He’d followed her into the nearly dark office, as it was now lit only by a small, green-shaded lamp on her desk.

“Yeah, but I got a call from the venue saying she hadn’t showed, and I’d sent her a message that I was running late. So I came up here, and I been here all day.” She plopped into the chair, which creaked. “What am I supposed to do? She ain’t my kid. I just use her when a gig wants the Russian princess type. Or a redhead. All that hair, you know, it sells.”

“Does it?” He sounded bored. “So you assumed she was safe?”

“Models ain’t exactly known for their work ethic. O’ course,” she added hastily, “Liz was a hard worker and always did go where she was supposed to.”

“Did you try to call her?”

“Yeah. Went right to voicemail.” She leaned forward on her elbows. “Look. Shadow. If you are what I think you are, then why can’t you find her yourself? Blood ties, an’ all that.”

“Not quite how it works,” he admitted. “I can find her domicile, but as she’s not home?” There was an impression of a shrug. “Where was the, ah, gig?”

“Going to try and pick up her scent?” She grabbed a small pad of paper.

“I cannot carry that,” he told her in a flat tone, and she stopped with the words half-written.

“Oh. Right.” The agent rattled off an address. “But she never got there.”

“Are you sure? How well do you know the person who called up?”

“Oh, I haven’t met them in person. It was all done online, but Paulo was there.”

“Have you spoken to Paulo?”

She got an odd look on her face.

He went on, very quietly. “You haven’t, have you.”

“Well, he’s not my problem. I didn’t hire him…” She stopped talking. Something had changed in the air, and she realized there was no longer anyone else in the room besides her.

Finding her car was simple enough, once he’d neared the given address. She must have slept in it a time or two, giving it more of an impression of her presence than just someplace she had been. Fred’s office hadn’t had a trace of her, for instance.

The rest of the campsite was mildly confusing. There was no life there in the quiet darkness. The soil was churned and marked, all the way back to the main road. There, the traces ended. He returned to her car, hoping for a clue. The car was empty.

The armor. She had been loading it into the back of the vehicle that morning.

When he found it, in one of the empty tents, it was neatly stacked on a plastic table, her sheathed sword lying next to it. The only thing that seemed out of place was an empty pistol magazine on the wooden platform that served as the floor of the tent.

This concerned him. He would have closed his eyes, had he been human, and spent some time in thought.

He could wait until she slept. Finding her then would be simple enough, at least in theory. Waiting until then…he acknowledged a growing sense of unease, and it wasn’t something he would dismiss. Instead, he would seek out another source of information.

He went.

Liz laid in the trunk of the car, on her side, straining to hear what was going on outside. She’d found the emergency release lever easily, right where it was supposed to be. If she decided to get out, she’d come up like a jack-in-the-box right away…and then what?

A little whisper of memory from a long-ago self-defense class came back clearly: “if they move you, it goes from an assault scene to a murder scene.” She made a face in the dark. She still couldn’t come up with a good way to pick them off, and they were not only armed, but ready with their weapons. The gun range guys were almost certainly armed, but hadn’t been ready.

Now that she had nothing but time to think, Liz started to pick apart what had happened and how. The men had showed up, but hadn’t raised an alarm at first. Why not? Oh…Ivar, and the thug who’d been in charge of the two gun range guys. They had been in blue coveralls. What if they had initially said they were coming to do maintenance?

On the tanks. That would be why they approached Paulo first, and he was indeed the weakest link of all of them that day.

Almost on cue, Liz felt as much as she heard the rumble of very large engines. Where the hell, she asked herself, did they think they were going with a pair of tanks in Columbus goddamn Ohio?

The rumble of the tanks meant she couldn’t possibly hear anything being said outside the trunk she was currently closed in. Maybe if she popped the trunk but didn’t let it go all the way up? No. There was a light that would come on automatically.

She squirmed around, exploring with her fingers to find it. If she could take out the bulb…

The car started to move, making her startle uncontrollably. She hadn’t even felt the engine start, or anyone get into it. She froze, her hands pressing against the top and bottom of the trunk, to keep her body in place while the car jostled over the ruts of the range where the tanks had been moved. The jostling didn’t stop, but she didn’t remember the road looking that rough all the way to the trees.

Which meant they were following the tanks, towards the main road.

She hadn’t been in the trunk long enough for it to have gotten to full dark outside. Popping it and trying to slither out wouldn’t work. On the other hand, they would have to stop sometime. If she could kill the damn light, she’d at least have a chance. She let go, and tried to brace herself with her feet and knees while she felt for the light frantically.

The car stopped again, but the rumble of the tanks didn’t. Liz still couldn’t hear anything. She’d found the housing of the light, but it was screwed shut. Screwed. She was so screwed.

The car door opened. She heard it, this time. She’d changed position enough to be able to hear that. Which gave her another idea, and she ran her hand along the back of the passenger seat. There was a catch, which she could use to push down the seat, or just the center armrest. If no one was in the back seat, which seemed plausible if two men were driving the two tanks, leaving only two in the car…and she carefully didn’t think about the innocent men bound on the ground by the tents behind them.

She pushed the armrest just enough to give her a crack at the top, where she could put her head near it to listen, contorted into a difficult position and mentally cursing herself for not keeping up with her training or her yoga. She wasn’t as flexible as she’d like right about now.

“…them in the conex,” she heard. A loud voice, from someone standing near the still-open car door. “Then go get the other two, and pick up Ivar. We’ll start loading them.”

The car door closed, and Liz heard the driver’s side door open. She pulled the armrest back into place, and tried to stretch out some of her kinked muscles while the car backed and turned, then bumped back the way it had come. She could deduce that much, from the fragment of conversation. They were taking their prisoners along. Wherever that was. And loading whom? The prisoners? What Conex and where had that come from?

Liz wanted to scream. She hated this, being in the dark.

He didn’t like it, and that was why he was hesitating in the dark outside the house of his quarry. He’d been here. Until he had chosen to break the tie and move to the next generation. It was that, or lose all that he’d invested in this family over the generations.

It wasn’t going to get any better.

He moved through the shadows until he was in another office. This was a very different space than Fred’s aging domain. Warm tones of wood and cream, a scent of beeswax polish, and the gleam of clean glass from the windows.

The man at the desk raised his head, but didn’t look in the right direction. The shadows laughed at him. His eyes snapped wide open, then narrowed.

“You. Back again?”

“Not for you.” The deep voice came from the corner furthest from him.

“Then why?” Maxim Panchenko steepled his fingers in front of him and smirked. “What could this disowned son possibly do for his dedushka?”

“Oh, nothing for me. For your daughter, though…”

Maxim sat up straight and his hands dropped flat to the table, as though he was about to push himself to his feet.

“She was somewhere interesting, today. Somewhere she was supposed to be. Where her car still is…”

“What do you know?” Maxim settled back into his chair, but the tension didn’t leave his posture.

“Very little.”

“Why did you come?”

“To see if she was here.”

“She believes me dead. It was safer for her.” Maxim’s shoulders dropped. “She might be in trouble?”

“She is. I can sense these things.”

“You…ah. Of course you can.”

“It is what I am. You, on the other hand, cannot sense her emotions. Question is, are you having her watched?”

Maxim scoffed and leaned back in his chair, his face falling into shadow as he moved away from the computer screen.

“No, then. Well, that would be expensive, keeping an eye on a woman for five years. Although there are technologies these days…” The voice had drawn closer to Maxim when he moved away from the light.

“What would you know of technology?” Maxim sat up again and put his elbows on the table, almost huddling into the light of his computer. “You, who are…”

“Old.” The voice was right behind the chair the man sat in. “Older than you’ve ever imagined. Never stupid, nor shortsighted, unless you count not smothering you in your bassinet.”

“I didn’t have her car bugged. Or her. I did set up internet searches that flag any mention of her.”

“Relevant to today’s events?”

“No. Where was she?”

“She was at a gun range. One that specializes in allowing the public, for a stiff fee, to drive a military armored vehicle such as a tank around a closed course. When I arrived, there was nothing living present, but her things had been abandoned.”

“Dead?” Maxim had sat up, stiffly erect in his chair.

“No. Not dead, simply…not there.”

“Were there tanks there?”

“The torn ground showed that they had been driven away, out of their usual paths.” The voice was silent for a moment, then added, very quietly, “I have seen the effects of tanks on home ground, and on the Family, in the past.”

“She was caught up in something else, something that wasn’t meant to impact her.” Maxim picked up his cell phone from beside his computer. “I will make inquiries. Then there might be a meeting. This will take time.”

“Not calls?”

“There are discussions you only have in person.”

When the car stopped, Liz took a second to make sure her skirt still concealed her weapon. There had been a lot of noise, then smooth driving for what had seemed like hours, and she had no way of telling time. Her phone and her watch were with her gear in the tent, however far away that was, now. They would have been out of place in the photoshoot she’d stepped out thinking she was going to.

Now, she almost held her breath, listening intently. The car shifted, as someone got out of it. That had to be the big man, Ivar. The others she couldn’t feel, as they were light enough to be absorbed by the car’s suspension. They had reached a destination. Whether that was a refeuling, biobreak, or the final one, she had no way of knowing.

Waiting was the hardest part. The trunk was big enough she hadn’t gotten too cramped, as she wasn’t otherwise restrained. During the drive she had methodically worked through stretches to keep herself from getting too bored, and to stay ready. Now, though, she didn’t want to go bumping around, drawing their attention, or potentially revealing the holster to them. She laid still and focused her breathing, trying to control her heartrate.

All was still. There were no sounds, nothing. She laid in the dark wondering if she could still see. Was there any sound, or was she just missing it somehow? One of her thighs spasmed, and she rolled onto her back, breathing with an effort. Still nothing.

Liz reached for the latch to release the armrest and released it so very slowly, then pressed it forward into the cabin of the car. It was dark. She could feel the gap, but there was no light. She pushed it out further. Still dark.

She pressed her face to the gap and blinked. That didn’t help any. She tried to see if there was moonlight or starlight through a window, streetlights, anything. Finally, she reached around and released the seat mechanism, and wriggled out of the trunk onto the back seat. With the white dress, she’d glow in the dark if anyone was looking, but evidently they were not, as she sat there for a few long moments and no one came.

As soon as she opened a door, a light would come on. She felt for the dome light overhead, and toggled the switch from the center position, over to the left. The light came on and she toggled it all the way back to the right, hastily. She’d flash-blinded herself, even with the tiny light, after hours in the dark. Still, no one came running to drag her out of the car. She hoped she’d just switched the light off, and cautiously tried the door handle.

The door swung open quietly, and Liz controlled her urge to rush out of the car and run away. She had no idea where she was, or why it was so goddamn dark out. Besides which, even with stretching, her legs were wobbly and cramping. She slipped out and stood up, looking around.

A distant glow of light was the only thing she could make out, and after studying it while she stretched fully, she determined that it was not moving. She bent one last time, and came up with the little pistol in her hand. She’d not be caught off guard again.

Now, she just needed to find her way out of whatever this place was.

Maxim Panchenko was no longer a man who ran his own errands. For this, however, he’d made an exception. He stood at the very edge of the pool of light under the streetlamp, a steady cone of sodium yellow falling on his crisp hat brim, leaving his face a block of shadow below it. The man he was waiting for hesitated before stepping into the light, and Maxim’s lips twisted in wry amusement. It was safer in here with him than it was out there in the dark.

“Basil.” Maxim stepped forward, his hand out, and the other greeted him with a New World handshake rather than the air kisses of their native country.

“Maxim.” Unlike Maxim’s clean-cut American accent, Basil spoke with the thick overlay of the Slav transplant. “What is so urgent, to call for…this?” He gestured at the night around them.

“You took something today that did not belong to you.”

Maxim turned his head, acknowledging the other participant in the conversation. Basil’s head snapped around, as he looked for the source of the voice.

“I suggest you answer him.” Maxim kept his tone cool and even.

“I took nothing,” Basil growled, his throaty voice even lower. “Why are you not alone? Don’t you trust me?”

“Oh, I trust you.” Maxim took a step nearer, further into the light. “I am curious what you thought you were going to do with a pair of demilled tanks, but that’s not the issue.”

“I asked for this meeting.” The voice came from behind Maxim. Maxim’s face was calm, his lips and throat unmoving. Basil shook his head and ran his hand over it as though trying to clear something from his face. “You took something, and I want it back.”

“You do, do you.” Basil stepped past Maxim, to the edge of the shadows.

“Yes.” The shadows curled around Basil’s throat.

“What are you?” Basil’s voice was higher, constrained, as the shadows tightened. Maxim stayed where he was, looking away from the other man.

“I am a protector.” The voice was nearly a whisper, a tiny puff of darkness curling into Basil’s reddening face. “I am violence. I am keeper of the family.”

“I’m… I’m sorry!” Basil gasped. “I didn’t know!”

The shadows rippled, and Basil fell to his knees, wheezing.

“Where is she?”

“Warehouse!” Basil had his own hands to his throat, feeling the heat of the damaged skin under his cold fingers. “Warehouse on Beall and Sixth!”

Maxim turned and walked the two steps to him, and put his hand on Basil’s shoulder. “Wise. Whatever you had planned with those tanks, might want to reconsider that, but he’s only after the girl.”

“What…” Basil started to ask his question, but Maxim was already walking away, swift footsteps in the darkness echoing faintly off the walls to either side.

The night was very quiet, then.

Liz knew she was inside some sort of building. The way the sound was muffled, for one, and the utter lack of light, for another. The only light was the distant glow of a bulb behind a window. She resisted the urge to be drawn to it. That was where people were, and right now she didn’t want company.

She did use it as a sort of guiding light, though, working parallel to it, looking for a wall, which she hoped to be able to follow to a door. The further she could get from the car, where she was supposed to be, and the more things between her and it, to give her a headstart when they started their inevitable search for her, the better.

She’d just run into the first obstacle. Literally bounced off it. She’d had a hand out, so all she did was smack it, not break her nose. Still, it made a noise. Liz froze.

There was a muffled thump from the other side of the metal wall she’d just touched. Liz ran her fingers over it. The metal was corrugated in a familiar pattern. There was another thump. She glanced over at the light. No visible movement.

She knocked the first part of “shave and a haircut” on the metal, quietly.

The ‘two bits’ came right back. Liz started to move again, quickly. She trailed her fingers along what she knew was a conex, the big metal shipping containers. The half-heard phrase about putting them in the conex made sense. Mike, his guys, Paulo…had been removed from the scene for later disposal. It made so much horrible sense: of course they’d been taken elsewhere. Clean-up was easiest in a separate scene.

The door was barred, and on the end further from the window’s light. She really hated losing her only way to keep an eye on possible incoming bad guys, but as she felt for the handles, at least they hadn’t put a lock on the lever. Didn’t need to, she guessed; once it was dogged down, the bound men inside weren’t opening it.

She flipped up the bit that kept the lever from bouncing while transported, and leaned into the lever. Like all of them she’d ever opened, it moved stiffly, and required her to press on it while lifting. A bit like opening a pill bottle. She felt like the whole thing was making entirely too much noise, as metal scraped on metal.

The door swung open with a squeal, and she winced. She couldn’t see the men, but she could smell them. A waft of fear and sour sweat rolled out at her.

“Mike?” She kept her voice low, but knew that she’d already given it away if the thugs were close enough to hear anything.

“Yo.” The deep voice came. “Liz?”

“Liz?” Paulo’s excited cry echoed off the metal walls.

“Shut up,” Liz hissed. “Mike, I’m going to look for a way out. We’re inside something like a hangar, or industrial building. There’s almost no light.”

“Dammit, they took my flashlight,” a male voice commented.

“Did they tie up your legs?” Liz asked. Last she’d seen, only their hands had been bound. That could have been changed.

It hadn’t. “No.” Mike’s voice was close enough she felt his breath on her cheek. A hand touched her arm. She reached back, and realized he was standing with his back to her, as he moved, now to face her again. “Where’s the step?”

“Here.” She took his upper arm and guided him. “There’s a light; I’ve been using it to navigate by not going toward it.”

A masculine chuckle accompanied a whispered “Don’t go into the light…” and Liz realized she’d set herself up for that one.

“Come on. Paulo, are you up and moving?”

A meek, quiet affirmative came from a short distance away. Someone stumbled over the lip of the container and swore, but it didn’t sound like they’d fallen.

“I got my hands in front of me, Boss,” one of the men informed Mike quietly.

“My shoulder’s out.” That was the other man, from close by. His voice sounded a little strained, but calm.

“Damn. Nothing I can do right now,” Mike responded.

Liz tugged on his shirt sleeve. “We have to go.”

She led him and the others in the direction she’d been going, away from the car. She kept one hand back, on Mike’s arm, and the other splayed out in front of her, feeling, as she stepped slowly over the smooth concrete. There was still no movement, at least that she could see or hear, from the window in the distance.

It felt like a mile before she hit the first rack. It clattered at her touch, filled with non-specific metal shapes she couldn’t see, but could hear. Someone behind her found another one.

“Let’s get around this,” she suggested. “Put it between us, and their lights when they come.”

“Are they coming?” Mike asked reasonably. They hadn’t yet.

“I’m going to act like they are,” Liz responded. “Do you want to wait for them?” Then she took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t snap.”

“Snap away.” He sounded unbothered by her sarcasm. “You’re trying to help us all. You didn’t leave us to rot back there. Lead on, MacDuff.”

“Right.” Liz fell silent again, groping for the end of the rack, then around it. There was another one to navigate, and then, finally, a wall. A real concrete slab wall, from the feel of it. She picked up speed, wanting to get out, her free hand trailing along it, headed away from where the light had been. The light wasn’t visible any longer, which should mean they weren’t if someone came looking.

Someone in the little train of men behind her tripped, and fell. Liz stopped. Mike shrugged his shoulder, and she let go of his arm. There was a scuffle in the dark, then one of the men groaned.

“Got to get up, Bob.” Mike’s murmur came from nearer the floor.

“Yeah.” The pain was clear in that single word.

Liz was sure it was the injured man who’d fallen. She wished they had the light and time to get them out of their restraints, at least. Standing there in the dark, she contemplated a way to carry her knife, and a light, in her dress. Never again! she promised herself. She’d holstered the gun in order to navigate, not that it would have been any help, but not having anything other than silk and lace to use?

“Okay, we’re up,” Mike announced. “Keep moving.”

Liz reached back, and got a hand: the man who’d moved his restraints to the front. She clung to his warm fingers, and started going forward. Then she stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

“I found a door,” she murmured back at them.

“Problem?”

“Yeah. It’s locked.”

“Shit. Well, keep going…”

The voice that interrupted them was familiar. “Forgive my lateness, Elizabeth.”

“Who…” Mike’s voice started to go up.

“Hush!” Liz hissed. “Dedushka, can you…?”

“Permit me.” There was a touch on her hand, where she still held the doorknob. Warm and gentle, the fingers of a working man with hard calluses. The knob turned with both of them holding it. “Once you are outside, turn to the left. I will be in the shadows when you need me.”

Liz pushed open the door, and there was light. To her dazzled eyes, it seemed like broad day, but as she stepped out, pulling the men behind her in a daisy-chain of bondage, it resolved into nearby streetlights and a row of lights across an empty street, illuminating an abandoned loading dock. As she moved in the direction her domovoy had indicated, the lights started to turn off, with a pop of exploding glass as each one was taken care of.

“Stop here.” The voice came from the shadows at the end of the building. “Duck in next to me, bubbaleh.”

Liz obeyed, dragging the men in when they hesitated at the darkness.

“Dark is your friend, right now!” she muttered as she jerked Paulo into the alley. “Maybe not later, but when you’re with me…”

“Elizabeth.” The domovoy’s voice was right by her head.

She felt something being pressed into her hand, and closed her fingers around the hilt of a knife. When she lifted it and the trace light caught the blade, she saw it was a double-edged dagger, with a little serration at one part of the blade. The handle was well-worn, and had been olive drab before it was partly wrapped in leather cording.

“Cut me out.” Mike whipped around and presented his hands to her.

Liz slipped the blade carefully into the restraint, and sawed away from his wrists for a minute, until the thick plastic parted. Mike stepped away, rubbing his wrist.

“I need to get the other…”

“Get everyone’s hands loose, then if we have time, off altogether,” Mike took up position looking around the corner of the building in the direction they’d come from.

Liz was beginning to think their captors had gone home and to sleep in their own beds. She cut each of them loose, working carefully on the wounded man, and saving Paulo for last. Then, she started cutting the other side of the restraints. The younger man, the one who’d been flexible enough to slide his to the front, replaced Mike in keeping watch while Liz freed him.

“Police the rubbish,” Mike ordered Paulo. “Carry it with us. Where to next?”

He wasn’t asking Liz, but was facing the wall of the building.

“Follow Elizabeth.” The voice came from the deeper shadows. “She can see me.”

Liz started to deny this, but then realized there was a man there in the dark, his long beard faintly silvery, his face in full darkness under the bill of a soft cap. She couldn’t really make out details of his body, other than broad and short. Shorter than she was. He turned away, the beard fading. She walked after him, and the rest fell into single-file on her heels.

The narrow alley led them between two buildings. There was another alley that took off at right angles, but the domovoy ignored it, so Liz did, too. There was a slice of light, and her shadowy guild faded away entirely. Liz paused at the edge of the light.

“Voices,” Mike murmured in her ear.

“Yeah.” She responded in kind.

More than one voice. One was deep, almost a rumble. The other she could almost make out words, a cadence of speech...

“It’s them,” she hissed at Mike. “They’re coming up the street at the other side towards us.”

Mike put his hand on her shoulder, intending, she thought, to move her out of the way, but she ducked away from his grasp, stooping to pull the pistol out of her holster. She pressed up against the wall, making sure the white dress didn’t catch a breeze and give her away, and slowly moved to look around the building, holding the weapon high and ready beside her.

Only two of them were in sight. They had opened a door, and were going into it, the first one stepping through as she peeked. Ivar, the big man, reached for the door, then stopped dead.

Liz jerked back.

“Did he see you?” Mike was right beside her.

“I don’t think so.”

“We need to get out of here.”

“We can go once they get inside.” She took a deep breath, then another, then took the chance to look again. No one was in sight. “Now. Go now.”

They all scuttled across the light and into the shelter of the next building.

“They’re going to figure it out in a few minutes,” Mike warned.

“I know.” Liz was standing at the corner keeping watch while the others moved quickly down the alley behind them. “You all go. I’ll stay here.”

Mike snorted. “Like hell you will. I’ll take the gun. You go for help.”

Liz glared at him. He grinned down at her. “It’s my gun,” he pointed out. “I don’t really have time for banter, or the other thing I’d like to do about now, but on a practical note, how much range time have you had recently?”

Liz blinked, accepted the wisdom of it, and handed it over. “I only have one magazine, and the chamber’s empty.”

He nodded. “Go.”

She took a deep breath, hearing the distant footsteps of the others fading away. On their other side, there was a faint shout.

“They know,” she said. “Dedushka…”

“I am here.”

“Stay with Mike.” She pointed. “Help him. He’s…” She gave Mike an apologetic glance, hoping he’d understand. “He’s mine.”

Mike gave her a wide-eyed look that turned into an incredulous grin.

“I understand.” The shadow swirled closer. “Elizabeth. Run now.”

Liz caught up to the others, her feet flashing. She’d decided the risk of running barefoot was worth it, and had kicked off the heels and was carrying them in her hand. They’d cost too much to leave, even if she hadn’t been worried about leaving a trail.

“They’re coming,” she warned. “Straight ahead another building, then a left.”

“Then what?” Paulo asked, stumbling into a trot.

“Then there’s a gas station.” Liz zipped past him. They could keep up, or not. She needed to call in the police.

Dawn was breaking when Liz walked carefully up her own front stairs. She had her keys, at least, so she wouldn’t have to break into her own damn house. The cops had let her take her car, once they conceded it hadn’t been involved in the crime in any substantial way. They also warned her not to leave town, or to talk to the others. The first hadn’t even crossed her mind. The second, she wasn’t worried about at the moment.

It turned out the plan with the tanks had been an elaborate smash-and-grab. They were going to take them on lowboy trailers up to the great lakes, and load them onto a ship. After that, they didn’t know, or didn’t want to say. No one told her what the plan had been with the kidnap victims, although she could guess. Liz hadn’t asked for more details. She also didn’t know, and didn’t care. She was loopy with fatigue and really just wanted to go home, which they’d let her do after only four hours of questions.

Sleep first, then all of the coffee, then…

She opened the door and smelled fresh coffee.

“Dammit.”

She closed the door behind her and dropped the keys on their hook.

“Honey, I’m home,” she called out to the empty house.

The domovoy answered. “There is coffee.”

“I smelled that. I’d like sleep, and if I drink coffee I won’t…” She stopped talking. The kitchen door had just opened.

“Okay, no.” Liz marched into the kitchen and put her hands on her hips and addressed the shadows behind the refrigerator. The only light in the room was coming from the coffee maker. “Ground rules. My bedroom is off-limits. I want to be able to sleep in the nude, and I don’t want you looking. You’re my grandfather, sort of. In the ways that count. Second, as much as I appreciate you coming to the rescue last night, I don’t need nor want a mother hen.”

“Does this mean I shouldn’t make coffee?” The voice sounded amused.

“This means you need to find a job.”

“I have a job.” There was a scrape of a chair, then a sound like coffee pouring in a mug.

“I said I didn’t want coffee. What do you mean you have a job?”

There was a slurp. “Who said the coffee was for you? And I have accepted Fred’s offer of a position. As security.”

Liz threw her hands in the air. “God…”

“Ah, ah! No profanity, child.”

Liz stomped towards her bedroom. “I am a grown-ass woman…”

“I have Mike’s number.” The voice was laughing, now. “He said to call when you’re ready to explain just how he belongs to you. Oh, and he didn’t have to shoot anyone tonight.”

“I don’t care!” Liz slammed her bedroom door. She threw herself onto the bed, and then started to giggle into her pillow. “He’s also a yenta…”

Last Call

Evan DeShais

Istep through the side door into my office building, only to find Mr. Patrick leaning against the wall with that silly fake cigar hanging out the corner of his mouth. I look down the left side of the hallway and see his two cousins waiting with mag-lev carts.

“Mr. Kelly,” Patrick says as he pushes off the wall. “Signed and approved by the local Magistrate. I’m sorry, Mr. Kelly.”

Mr. Patrick’s right hand pushes the sheaf of yellow and orange papers into my hands. I don’t need to look at them. I know what they are; we’ve been fighting this dance for three months. I owe the man 3,800 credits a month, the better part of 12,000 without court costs and fees.

“Can I?” I start to ask.

“Yeah,” Mr. Patrick says. “I know the Magistrate, and you’ve got till the end of the day.” Mr. Patrick looks to his cousins and says, “Tom, Louie, see to the pack out of Mrs. D’Angalo’s on the ninth floor.”

“Um,” I say, my mind somewhat at a loss for words.

“I gotta rent the place out, Kelly,” Mr. Patrick says. “I bought the building, I’ve my investors to pay, and I sunk all my life savings into it. Kelly, I have to have the rent.”

I start to say something, to explain, like I’ve done the last three months, but Mr. Patrick shakes his head.

“I can’t do it, Mr. Kelly,” Mr. Patrick says. “Five p.m. Then Tom and Louie start packing it out.”

Mr. Patric pats me on the shoulder and puts his fake cigar back in his mouth. I turn from the little entrance hallway to my former office and apartment. It is only four steps away, the gold foil lettering of “Kelly’s Investigations” a grim reminder that men like me don’t transition through life easily. I let my crooked thumb and fingers glide over the lettering.

A series of morose memories flood through me: fourteen years in the professional circuit. It wasn’t one fight that did me in. It was the last three years of “one more fight” that put me out of the game.

I met Fiona, and it was good for a while. We moved to the New Compact in the fifth wave of Irish immigrants. I sunk every last credit into this life. For a time, I was enough for her. Then Fiona moved on. I did not.

I’ve been sober for a year, but the damage I did to my reputation while investigating drunk is irreparable. I push my FEED stud against the door, and it clicks.

I step inside and sling my bag on the counter. It was a long night of waiting and only netted three billable hours. I put the coffee maker on “dark as my soul” mode and step to my FEED terminal. Last night’s client might be good for what they owe. I tally up a mental bill for all of 229 credits with the coupon discount.

I write the bill and submit it for payment. The 229 credits might buy me a week in a flophouse, but not an office. I sigh as I take a pull from yesterday’s leftover coffee on my desk. It’s time to pack my things.

The buzzer sounds, and I lift my head from the small closet door behind my cot. I lift the trophies and put them in the box. That is the last of my crap. Forty-one years old, and I’ve six small boxes of various trophies I earned a lifetime ago. Mr. Patrick said I had the rest of the day, so it should not be him. My last client, my only client this month, paid via the FEED system an hour ago.

“Mr. Kelly?” a soft and very feminine voice asks.

That voice perks me right up. Credits are credits, and nothing spends like they do when you are broke and soon to be homeless. I hop over my cot.

My right knee takes the brunt of the impact, and a wave of agony shoots up my leg. I check my shirt and suspenders before slipping into a vest. I’ve a particular image in the industry, and I do my best to keep it up, even if the clothes I use for that image are nearly threadbare and almost a decade old.

I exit my makeshift bedroom door to find a tall woman waiting. She’s got lovely red hair, all full of natural curls. I know the difference. I’m Irish with three sisters, and she’s put work into her hair to keep it manageable in this late summer humidity.

She’s a slender lady, in a gray suit top, with a matching gray pleated skirt. In one hand, she holds a matching hat; in the other hand are my eviction papers.

“I’ve either come at the right time or the wrong time,” the lady says.

The clothes, the voice, her diction, how she enunciates her words, and her posture say one thing above all else. This woman is money, the kind you can never earn. You must be born into this kind of money to achieve that flawless grace. The redhead woman spins to me as a dancer might and proffers the papers.

“Which is it, Mr. Kelly?” she asks.

I hope my mouth is not open and that I am not making a fool of myself.

“It is time to move offices, Miss?” I carefully say as I accept the papers.

“Evangeline,” she says. “You seem to be in dire straits, Mr. Kelly.”

“I’ll admit I’ve not been at my best the last few years,” I say. “I take work where I can, and times have been better. What can I help you with, Miss…Ms. Evangeline?”

I gesture at my lone guest chair in my office. Then, I make my way over to my long-ago-brewed coffee.

With a sniff at my acrid coffee, I ask, “Coffee?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says. “You are Oisin Kelly?”

I turn and raise an eyebrow at Evangeline.

“The three-time champion?” she asks as she sits. She places her hat neatly on her lap.

“I’m surprised you know of my name,” I say.

Evangeline does not look like the type of woman who would spectate my fights, let alone any professional fights.

“You don’t see many women of your…” I say, and pause as a quirky smile hits her lips, “affluence at the fights.”

I finish pouring and take a long swig; I disregard the taste of overburnt coffee and take my seat across from her.

“What can I help you with, Ms. Evangeline?” I ask for the second time.

“Do you fight?” Evangeline asks. “I mean, are you capable of fighting, Mr. Kelly? I noticed how you favor your right leg.”

Evangeline’s eyes hold mine for a moment; one is the palest blue, and the other fades almost into sea green.

“The Cortez fight in Sao Paulo in oh-nine?” She asks.

“That and others,” I say. “I must disappoint you if you think you can hire me to beat someone down, Ms. Evangeline. I am not so morally broken as that.”

Evangeline’s lips purse into a thin line that borders on a frown.

“Someone is threatening me, Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says.

It is my turn to frown. Evangeline is money, and money does not come to the likes of a man twelve thousand in debt to his former landlord. They go to their attorneys, the Constabulary, and Community Council and have pressure put on their blackmailers. Ladies like the lovely Ms. Evangeline, in my experience, do not set foot in offices like mine.

“Go on,” I say.

“I’m not from Earth Prime, Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says. “I am from one of the colonized worlds. I was sent here for my education when I was little. I attended what is a charming school in the Rockies run by a former doctor and his wife.”

I start taking notes on my FEED. Evangeline shuffles her hat in her hands. It is a casual gesture of movement and not quite the tell a card player might rely on, but it is helpful to me. Evangeline doesn’t like speaking about herself.

“I attended a secondary school and graduated with top marks,” Evangeline says. “I was offered an indenture here in the Greater Boston Metro area. As of last week, I have completed my indenture,” she says. “In completing it, I have reached my age of majority. My father is well-to-do, as you might have guessed.”

I meet her discolored eyes as she stops fiddling with her hat.

“I’ve got a life waiting for me off Earth Prime,” Evangeline says. “It’s a life that comes with a percentage of my father’s company and the responsibilities that comes with wealth of that kind.”

“I see,” I say. “Well, I think I understand what is at stake.”

Evangeline’s lips quirk into a smile. She thumbs over a FEED packet, and I shunt it to the desk’s central display.

“You are warned not to leave GBM; you are not to leave Earth prime,” the screen’s text reads. “Evangeline, if you attempt to leave, we will tell the universe what you are. The LOoP.”

“LOoP?” I muse.

“Luddite Order of Purity,” Evangeline says. “They are a purity sect of the Scandinavian Commonwealth’s Church against Technology. They focus on eradicating artificial intelligence.”

I give Evangeline a skeptical look. Every cheesy FEED video program has about four standard bad guys. Scandinavian Luddite priests are the least offensive and, therefore, an acceptable stereotype.

“There is more, Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says as she thumbs a second file straight to the desk’s display.

“You’ve been warned. We are coming for you,” the text reads. “We are watching you, Evangeline. We will be in contact. LOoP.”

“Is there more?” I ask.

Evangeline thumbs over a FEED vid, and as it begins to play, she says, “I attended a Conference in Miami-Dade Metro Community at the end of last month. Hotel security found me and alerted me that the intruders were in my room. Unfortunately, Miami-Dade constables found little evidence in my hotel room.”

The FEED vid spools by as three men use a pair of brute force code hacking tools to break into the hotel room. Whether or not it is her hotel room, I do not know. I drum my fingers on the desk and hit play on the video for a second look.

“Can you send me your travel details for this conference?” I ask, and at her nod, I continue. “Ms. Evangeline, this may seem direct, but why you? Is this because of an affair, an ecclesiastical tryst, or embezzlement, or did you cheat on a secondary school exam? It’s not as if you are a SkipJack, Ms. Evangeline.”

Evangeline lets out a quiet but genuine laugh. Her head turns, and her beautiful red hair waves about.

“Do you see any eyestalks, Mr. Kelly?” Evangeline asks with a sly wink. “That is for me to know. No to lovers, affairs, or embezzlement. My marks were genuinely earned in secondary school.”

I chuckle. “No, I certainly do not,” I say. “It would be hard to see how this LOoP group could confuse you with one, with an AI housed in a SkipJack. No offense, but this all screams of a bad FEED vid.”

A flush of red rises from the base of Evangeline’s neck and cheeks.

Evangeline lets a smile go wide across her face and says, “Thank you, Mr. Kelly; a lady always likes a compliment.”

“Where are you headed after here?” I ask.

“My office. There is a small party for me after lunch,” Evangeline says. “I am headed to my flat afterward to pack. I can walk a tunnel gate to the orbital station sometime before midnight.”

“I see,” I say with a deep breath. “I know the local Cardinal of the Scandi-diocese; I can check in with him. After that, I’ll check in with the constables and the hotel down south. Something new might have come to light since your last inquiry.” I pause as I receive her thumbed-over information from the conference. “I think this is a group of cranks, Ms. Evangeline. I’ve never heard of the LOoP before.”

“Can you?” Evangeline asks. “I mean, I can pay. Could you?”

“Could I what?” I ask.

“Stay close by,” Evangeline says. “Make sure I make it to the orbital station. My father has a vessel inbound to pick me up.”

I drum my fingers on the desk a bit more and ponder. If I make my FEED calls, that is, at best, two billable hours. Whereas if I help Evangeline, that is a half day of billable work. I suck down my cold coffee and nod.

“It’s a hundred credits for each of the first three hours and sixty-five thereafter,” I say.

“No two-day minimum?” Evangeline asks.

I chuckle and say, “Not since the District Charter banned it. What time is your lunch?” I ask. “I can meet you at your office after a bit of research. I want to call the Diocese and Hotel from my office.”

“One-thirty pm,” Evangeline says. “I’ll forward you the address, Mr. Kelly.”

Evangeline stands and straightens her skirt and jacket. She settles her hat on her head just so and pins it in place. There is a very lovely figure under there.

I find Evangeline’s eyes, and she lets that quirky smile play across her lips.

“One look is a compliment, Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says. “Let’s not turn it into a lewd comment.”

This time it is my neck and face that goes red. “My apologies, Ms. Evangeline. I’ll wait for your FEED message.”

“Could I trouble you to call me a rideshare, Mr. Kelly, and wait with me?” Evangeline asks.

“Certainly,” I say.

It is a matter of a few moments to summon a rideshare. I wait at the curb with Ms. Evangeline for the short few minutes it takes for the ride to arrive. She’s busy with her FEED system, and I devote my time to organizing the notes from the meeting. I help her into the mag-lev rideshare and close the door. When I turn back to my building, I glance up the street.

Areas like where my office resides have few new faces. Everyone in our neighborhood knows each other by sight, if not by name. The tri-corner area of Roxbury, South Boston, and Dorchester isn’t an area for new faces loitering around. Especially not three men with nice clothing.

I’m not saying this is a hard neighborhood, but we know our own, and these three beanpoles are not ours. It might be the fighting trim, blond hair, and blue eyes that clue me in, or it might be the fact that they all watch Evangeline’s rideshare trundle down the road.

I make a FEED call to Cardinal Svenson’s office. His acolyte forwards my request to his eminence, and I am on for lunch.

My conversations down south provide some small amount of new details. The hotel was not much help. The local Detective Constable recognized my name and he agreed to be a bit more forthcoming in exchange for a signed pair of gloves.

“This Evangeline, I remember her. Those eyes,” the Constable says. “She’s a looker.”

I hear the man shuffle at what I presume is his desk. The distinctive hum of a secured FEED unit pops in the background.

“We retraced the yahoos by security cam. They flew in and out of Miami-Dade on a private courier tram. They were in town less than four hours,” the Constable says.

“Did they stop anywhere besides the hotel?” I ask.

“I still can’t believe I’m talking to Oisin Kelly,” the man says as he shifts in his chair. “No, straight from the tram landing pad to the hotel, ransack Ms. Evangeline’s room, and straight back to the tram.”

“Do you know where the tram was headed?” I ask, knowing that if these men were worth their salt, they would obscure their tracks.

“The Bahamas,” The Detective Constable says. “We checked; they never made it.” There is a lengthy slurp. “You’ll sign them for my kid, right?”

“Yeah, ‘Happy tenth birthday, Cesar Raul Rosas Esposito,’” I say. I turn my wrist and show the Detective the signed gloves. “I’m headed out now to drop them off in the post.”

“Thanks,” the Constable says. “I wish there was more I could tell you. The cracking packages were off-the-shelf stuff. Their tram came in from the north and left via the sea.”

“I get it, mate,” I reply. “There is only so much time you can put on a single smash and grab.”

“Ms. Evangeline said they didn’t take anything,” the man says. “Anyway, thanks; I need to get back to work.”

I shove the gloves in a package box and slide my hat on. Holding the box and putting my coat on takes a bit of juggling as I exit the door. Mr. Patrick is out in the hall talking to a pair of men in suits. He gives me the eye, and I nod back.

“I’ve got my things packed, Mr. Patrick. I should be out on time,” I say over my shoulder.

I drop the box in the letterbox and turn left. I’ve got about six blocks to go. Like many men my age, Cardinal Svenson remembers my time in the ring. I’ve worked for the Diocese several times through one of his Acolytes. It’s been a mostly cordial relationship over the years; a Catholic boy like me and the Cardinal of the Scandinavian Church Against Technology, a proto-humanist sect, make an odd pair of friends.

So where does an Irish Catholic boy meet a Swedish Cardinal for an early lunch? A Jamaican restaurant, of course. A few moments later, I push open the door to Irie Vibes and look for my friend.

A man pushing nearly two meters waves his hand. The short-cropped blond hair, blue eyes, and bushy blond beard mark Cardinal Svenson as not generally from our neighborhood. We stand out as the only two clients from somewhere other than Old Jamaica.

I work my way to the counter, paying the tab for us both. In moments, two orders of curry goat with fried plantains slide across the counter.

I make my way over to the Cardinal, who pushes a mug of coffee my way.

“It’s been a while, Oisin,” Cardinal Svenson says. “Over two years.”

“I hit a rough patch,” I say as I let Svenson choose the plate he wants. “Fiona leaving like that…well, I went sideways. A year sober now.”

“I was surprised to get your call,” the Cardinal says. “You said some things last time.”

I begin to stammer, explain, and just sigh as Svenson puts his hand on my shoulder.

“The bottle is a cruel mistress, Oisin. I know that,” Svenson says. “Thanks for lunch. How is the work?”

“This might be my last job,” I say. “I got the eviction notice from my office today. I lost my apartment over a year ago. Right now, I’ve got a client who thinks she’s tied up in the Church’s business.”

Svenson’s fork stops halfway to his mouth. Things like this are a touchy subject for the Cardinal. One can do nothing in the modern world but not touch technology. Even preparing and paying for this meal uses some form of complex circuitry somewhere along the way.

Like most of his parishioners, Cardinal Svenson doesn’t take well to tech of any sort. Because of that, they make for great bogeymen in today’s complex world.

“How so?” the Cardinal asks.

I relate my meeting with Ms. Evangeline over the next few minutes. Cardinal Svenson’s face goes still, and he does not eat his curry. He listens and waits.

“Are these LOoP people real?” I ask.

Svenson frowns and takes a couple of bites of the curry. Then, he dabs his lips with a paper towel.

“They were,” Svenson says. “A long time ago. Back when the Empire formed, the LOoP teams hunted the Empress and her husband, who consorted with an AI.”

I narrow my eyes at the Cardinal, and he shrugs.

“It’s more than a thousand years gone,” Svenson says. “But yes, the church had a team looking into the Empress, her husband, and the AI they consorted with named Castor.”

Svenson takes a drink of coffee and purses his lips.

“I don’t know of a LOoP cell within my parishioners. However, ideas like the LOoP concept don’t die, Oisin. Every score of years, someone resurrects the long-forsaken ‘true’ way of the word of our Church. They operate in groups of three to five. Usually not much more than that.”

I nod as Svenson stirs his curry. He downs his coffee and declines a refill.

“People like this, Oisin,” Svenson says, “are not good; they are self-righteous people. Do you understand the difference? They are fanatics, and if they had the scratch to break into her rooms down south, then they are for real.” The Cardinal eats a bit more, then says, “I’ve not heard of anything going on in my parish. Usually, stuff like this filters up eventually. This sort often can’t help but brag.”

“So, they are not locals, then,” I say.

“I am thinking not,” Cardinal Svenson says. “I’ll not lie here, Oisin; if these are well-funded people, I may not be able to find anything out. There are 3,000 Cardinals in the Church. I am a small player in the grand scheme. But I will look into it.”

We finish our meal in mostly shared silence. We try to start a conversation, but I fear my past words have damaged the friendship more than Cardinal Svenson implied. I stand and bus our tables. Svenson pats me on the shoulder and wraps me in a hug.

“Keep your wits about you, boy,” Svenson says in my ear. “The LOoP Sect members were usually chosen from the commonwealth’s military ranks.”

I nod, and Cardinal Svenson releases me.

“May your God keep you, Oisin Kelly,” Svenson says as he steps away and heads for the door.

I thumb a small tip to the staff and exit a few seconds later. Cardinal Svenson is already half a block away. I flag down a single rideshare. It is a splurge, but my lunch has run longer than I thought it would. I’ll make it in time to catch Evangeline as her going-away party finishes.

My rideshare drops me off at the entrance to the “Jankowitz center for Dimensional Gate Development.”

Evangeline’s work complex is a long way from my office. How and why she chose me, I don’t know. I look at the sign and turn to the sound of footsteps.

“Can I help you, sir?” says a guard in a clean uniform.

“I am supposed to meet a client here,” I say. “She’s attending a party today.”

“Her name?” the guard asks. “I’ll page her.”

I smile ruefully, as I’d neglected to ask Evangeline’s surname.

“I only know her as Ms. Evangeline,” I reply with a soft grin.

“Ah,” he says with his hand rising to about a hundred eighty centimeters high. “Red Curls, regal curves, and eyes that stop your breath?”

“You’ve met her, then,” I say.

“There is no one else like her,” the guard remarks. “I’ll page Dr. Evangeline for you. May I tell her who is calling?”

“Kelly,” I say distractedly. “Mr. Kelly.”

I’ve had enough of fandom for one day and settle for only giving my surname. The guard starts talking on his FEED, and I turn to look at the rest of the campus.

“Yes,” the guard says. “I’ll call for one now, Dr. Evangeline.” There is a short pause before he says, “Yes, I’ll let Mr. Kelly know.”

The guard taps me on the shoulder and says as I turn to him, “Dr. Evangeline asks that you wait; she is on her way.”

I nod to the guard and turn back to wait.

A private rideshare pulls up, and the rear door props open. A few seconds later, I hear the click-clack of heels. I turn and gasp.

Evangeline was something to behold in my office. In the light of day, moving with purpose down the walkways, she is a vision, an avatar of feminine beauty. There is a swish of the skirt and a bounce to the blouse that attracts the attention of every viable male for a hundred meters.

“Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says.

It is a husky, breathless greeting that sends the hair on my arm standing on end. I provide the best smile my broken nose, cauliflower ear, and lopsided grin can provide.

“Dr. Evangeline,” I say.

If her greeting didn’t weaken my knees, the smile and her response do. “Oisin,” Evangeline says, “Evangeline is fine. I thought we had moved past the unnecessary qualifiers.”

I proffer my arm, and Evangeline accepts it. There is a scent to Evangeline; it is something floral, a hint of musk, lilies, maybe? There is also the sensation of her touch through my coat jacket, which is one of confidence and strength.

I help her into the rideshare and take the opposite door. As the rideshare speeds off, I turn to Evangeline.

“Where are we headed?” I ask.

“My flat,” Evangeline says. “What did you find out?”

“Not much,” I say. “The local Cardinal doesn’t know any active or approved LOoP personnel.”

“Do you believe him?” Evangeline asks.

“Cardinal Svenson and I go back a time. I, uh, wasn’t overly kind the last time we saw each other,” I say with a bit of trepidation. “He met me today and warned me that these LOoP fellows were not fools in the past.”

Evangeline nods. She pulls her hair back and works it into a ponytail. I pointedly do not notice what that effort does to her blouse via the reflection in the window.

“The Detective Constable in Miami-Dade Metro remembers your case,” I say. “They have no new information. However, I learned they had a private tram in and out of the metro area.”

“We can track them, then?” Evangeline asks.

“Lost between Miami-Dade and the Bahamas,” I say. Then, at Evangeline’s disbelieving snort, I continue, “I’m not buying it, either, nor does the Detective Constable. Yet, there wasn’t anything stolen, according to him.”

Evangeline turns her head to me and raises an eyebrow. Her lips work into a frown, and she pulls something up on her FEED and thumbs it to me.

“Those men took plenty of things,” Evangeline says.

At a gesture from her, I open the file and skim through it. A hairbrush, toothbrush, nail files, clippers, tweezers, makeup bag, and other items are listed as taken.

“They only took your toiletries?” I ask.

“And,” Evangeline scrunches up her nose into a disgusted look, “my dirty clothing.”

I groan and sigh.

“I asked if this could be a past lover, I should have also asked if it could be a stalker,” I say.

“Oisin,” Evangeline says as the rideshare rolls to a stop. “Trust me when I say this is not a stalker in that sense of the word.”

I exit out my door as she exits hers. I move around the back of the rideshare to find Evangeline thumbing the payment to the driver. She goes still for a moment, and then Evangeline’s hands blur in motion. A FEED image pops up. It is a video stream of a cozy apartment being searched by two men.

“That is my flat’s security camera,” Evangeline says. “Those bastards!”

She kicks her heels off, scoops them up, and dashes forward to the building’s door.

“Evangeline,” I say as I pull up my FEED. “That is not a good idea.”

I submit an emergency alert to the local Constabulary. “What is your flat number?” I yell as Evangeline pries the door open.

“412,” Evangeline says.

I wrap up my alert and hit submit. I dash after Evangeline as she races, not for the lift, but the stairwell. She takes the stairs three at a time; I pull my hat off and do my best to keep up. Evangeline is undoubtedly in better shape than I am.

I keep up even as the sound of my blood pumping hits my ears. Whoosh, whoosh. I am gasping as I hit the third-floor landing. Evangeline glances at me and slows her pace enough so she does not lose me.

I drop my hat on the floor and let it catch in the doorway. Then, silent as two wheezing mice can be, we creep up the hallway to Evangeline’s entry. There is one lookout facing the opposite direction towards the lift.

“Hurry it up,” the man says over his shoulder. “Look out, says they ran into the building.”

“Stuff it, Bjorn,” comes a voice from inside her flat.

I hold Evangeline back and pull two items from my pockets. I’m an old fighter. I’ve been in the ring more times than I can count. I am too old to take a beating.

I crouch and shuffle quietly down the hall. I’m about half a meter away when I let the sap hit the man right behind the ear. He staggers but does not immediately go down. I don’t take the chance as he grunts and turns. My right extends, and I catch him in the jaw with the weighted glove. The 400 grams of powdered lead in the glove put the man down with a long gasp.

“Bjorn?” a man asks.

Shit, I deliver a third blow to the man and let him drop. I hear a man moving to the door. I step over Bjorn and bring the sap down at the second man’s ear as his head pokes around the corner. His knees buckle, and my right hand connects up to his chin.

The game is up as the man lets out a loud yell when he falls. I turn into the flat’s vestibule and rush through the open door.

I dash for the man some seven meters from me. He’s got a bag in his hands, and he swings the bag at my head. It is a quick-moving uppercut with a canvas bag stuffed with crap.

I sidestep and feel the pain in my right knee.

Pain or not, there are few in the world like me. At one time, I was the best. You hear the term ambidextrous used a great deal. Most Ambi people pick a hand at some point and stick with it. To be as old as I am and still have the same facility between my left and right hands is rare, especially when it comes to fighting.

The sap comes up in a block, and I feel his wrist break at the base of his hand. My right fist lances out to the gut twice more.

I pivot under his arms and strike at his kneecap with the sap. He lets out a howl of pain as his broken hand registers.

I am up now, left arm guarding my face, as he starts to lift his weight off his left leg. One jab at his jaw, and he topples. I am on him the whole way down. Then, as my knee drives into his solar plexus, I deliver a blow from the sap to the head. The man goes limp as I hear pounding footsteps.

I kick off the downed man even as another man hits me from the side. The man drives me into a wall, and I lock my left arm around his neck. My assailant delivers a fusillade of punches and a knee rams home into my side.

I start delivering blows on his kidney with the weighted glove. I push up with my legs and take more blows to the midsection. I lift with my left arm and deliver a jab to his gut. I feel the man’s strength ebb. I push him off me and deliver a haymaker that may very well end his life.

“I am too old to take a beating like that,” I grumble.

“Who are you?” says a man’s voice from the door.

Evangeline has a hand over her mouth and a knife poking at her ribs. I stand up fully and spit blood from my mouth. I do not know how I had taken a blow to my mouth, but I did, likely when taking the bag man down.

I resettle the sap in my left hand and flex the fingers on my right. I step over the mess in the sitting area and walk towards the man.

“I am no one,” I say.

I know the beliefs of these fanatics; I fought men like these before. There were enough of them in the ring.

“When you die,” I growl, “your mates in Valhalla will ask you who killed you,” I say as I blow bloody snot out of each nostril while pinching the other.

“All you will be able to say is No-one. You will have no seat at the table, and your death will be meaningless.”

The man keeps backing up, dragging Evangeline along. He nearly stumbles over the limp form of his compatriot in the vestibule, but manages to keep standing.

“Stop, or I will hurt her,” he says. “I will…” I watch as the long end of a shock stick touches his head behind the ear.

It is a satisfying zap as the man spasms from the electrical shock. Evangeline takes a healthy zap herself but manages to fall forward, whereas he crumples straight down.

I am there catching her. She is a healthy lady and weighs more than you would imagine from her slight frame. We both end up on the floor on our knees. I am up first, and I push her behind me.

Two constables hit the man a second and third times with the shock batons. Despite what the FEED vids show, shock sticks only work while shocking. People will rapidly recover as soon as the shocks stop.

One of the constables kicks the knife free, and the other pulls a set of hinged strap cuffs. I hear multiple groans from the room about us and back Evangeline and me into the small kitchen.

“Let the constables take care of them,” I say.

“Thank you,” Evangeline says.

It is three hours before the constables leave Evangeline’s apartment. I only realize the time when my FEED system buzzes with an incoming message.

“Mr. Patrick,” I say.

“Mr. Kelly,” the man says. “It’s 5:15 p.m.”

I close my eyes and sigh.

“I’m still on the job, Mr. Patrick,” I say.

“Is all your stuff in the boxes in the bedroom?” Mr. Patrick asks softly.

“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t need anything from the office. The coffee maker was there when I leased it from you.”

“I can hold them until 9:00,” Mr. Patrick says. “After that, they are going in the trash.”

“I understand,” I say.

I let the FEED message close out and turn to find Evangeline watching me.

“If you need to go,” Evangeline begins to say.

“No, I will have time to pick them up tonight,” I tell her.

I leave out the unsaid thought, “I hope,” from my sentence.

“You are sure that is all you are taking?” I ask.

It is a pile of two ship suits, half a dozen actual books, and about three days’ worth of clothes and toiletries. It fits in a small duffel. Surely, Evangeline has more she wishes to take.

“Memories, Oisin,” Evangeline says. “I’ve got a couple of knick-knacks, but I am taking memories, most of all.”

“I’ve got a few of those myself,” I say.

“There are a few pictures of me as a young girl on the hallway wall,” Evangeline says. “Would you mind grabbing them for me while I change?”

“Sure,” I reply.

It’s a short walk outside her bedroom to the hallway vestibule. How three small pictures survived the fight earlier, I do not know.

The first photo shows a scenic vista with ten kids piled around a mountain of a man. The man’s hand is on the shoulder of a woman hugging him. I’ve met men like him, and I recognize the scars, the swollen ear.

The woman is half his size, but the love between them shows for anyone who looks at her eyes. There are nine dark-haired kids and one with a dome of scraggly flame-colored hair that refused to be tamed.

The next photo looks like it is Evangeline heading into secondary school. Gone are the young girl’s looks. Instead, she’s coming into that classical beauty she wears so easily now. Evangeline has a quirky smirk for the camera. She has a small backpack in her right hand and a rolling trunk in her left. It’s a lovely shot centered on her eyes that stops a man’s soul.

The last shot must be the first day of her indenture. The suit she wears is not custom-tailored, nor is it off the rack. Instead, it’s a hand-me-down or thrift shop find. I see the white dots at the collar marking the jacket’s price.

I turn and glance at the apartment. The couch is secondhand, and the ruined coffee table looks like a dumpster find. The dining room table has one chair that does not match. There are three different plates, two cups, and mismatched glasses on the counter.

I turn back to the photo and understand Evangeline’s father sent her here to learn, to become something from nothing. That’s a hard lesson for anyone.

Even if Evangeline looks like money and carries herself like she is from money, it isn’t because that is how she was raised. I glance back at the first photo. All ten kids are wearing patchwork clothes. There is a happiness there that you don’t find in a store. It comes from an appreciation of what you have.

Maybe I only see it because of what I once had and lost. Prize fights bring in millions of credits, and young dumb men go through those millions in half the time it took to win the fight.

I collect the three photos and thank the Lord for keeping me, dragging me out of the bottle, and I think with a lot of work, I will have a life again one day.

“I looked goofy as a kid,” Evangeline says, her duffel in one hand and the hip cocked. “It was a private school up there in the Rockies. I learned a great deal.”

“The man was a fighter,” I say.

“He is,” Evangeline says. “He is the one that recommended that I look you up.”

I blink and offer her the photos. She accepts them and puts the duffel on the table. Once they are in the bag, she zips it up and turns back to me.

“He follows the fights,” Evangeline says. “He always said you punched way out of your weight class, Oisin Kelly.”

She offers me a rueful smile.

“If I take you now to the tunnel gate, it might throw them off. I doubt the men from LOoP would try anything on a Compact Space Merchant Service’s orbital station,” I say.

“I can pay you now,” Evangeline says hesitantly.

“Before you step into the tunnel gate will suffice,” I say. “The deal is to get you to the orbital, was it not?”

Evangeline’s eyes brighten, and a smile that hits those same eyes makes its way across her face. That smile holds my breath enough so that she blushes. I feel my ears burn as red as my short, cropped hair. I gesture to the doorway, and she steps forward.

We are in the rideshare to the tram yard when I receive another FEED message.

“Cardinal Svenson,” I say, somewhat in surprise.

“I’ve heard about the altercation this afternoon, Oisin,” Cardinal Svenson says.

Something is up. My friend is in his ecclesiastical robes.

“I was helping a client take out the trash,” I say. “An unsavory group had broken into her flat.”

“So the Constabulary tell me,” the Cardinal says. “I wanted to let you know that the office of the Holy Father in the Scandinavian Commonwealth reached out to me an hour ago.”

I turn to look at Evangeline with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“I was told to assemble every legal aid I have available within my dioceses and forward them to the men involved in that altercation,” Cardinal Svenson says. “Oisin, I was not specifically told they were LOoP personnel, but…”

“But why would the Holy Father get involved?” I say, finishing his question.

“The men were released,” Svenson says. “Three more came and posted bond on the two million credit bail.”

“How did they even get arraignment that fast?” Evangeline whispers.

“That must be Dr. Evangeline,” the Cardinal says. “When they said every legal aid, they meant every legal aid. More than a third of the District Magistrates are church members, Dr. Evangeline.”

There is a short pause as Svenson looks into the FEED at me. “I meant it, Oisin. May your God keep you. May your travels be safe because your life in GBM will not be.”

The FEED call ends, and I turn to Evangeline. Her lips are taut, and her hands are clenched around her duffel so tight that her knuckles and fist turn white.

“That is eight, Oisin,” Evangeline says. “You were good, but were you that good?”

I pop my neck and stuff my hands into my pockets and pull out my sap and glove. As one set of audible pops makes its way through the rideshare’s interior, I grin.

“I’ve given four of them the beat down of a lifetime, and a fifth has had his heart force-restarted a half dozen times today,” I say. “There’s no quick recovery from things like that. But, the other three, they will be wise to my limited bag of tricks.”

The rideshare comes to a screeching halt.

“Fuck me,” I growl. “That FEED message was to single out our rideshare.”

I shrug out of my jacket and vest and yank at my tie.

“You are going to be glad you changed earlier, Evangeline. But, if this goes too far south, run. If I can hold them back, the constables might arrive in time,” I say. “I doubt that will happen, though, not if any of their leadership is a Scandinavian Church Against Technology member.”

I pop my door and step out into the deserted roadway. I look in the front of the rideshare to find the opposite front door open and swinging in the wind. Fuck me twice over. I hear Evangeline’s door open, and she steps to the front of the rideshare.

“I’m not the best, Oisin,” Evangeline says. “But my uncle, the man you saw in those photos, made sure all us kids knew how to fight.”

I close my eyes and grit my teeth. Women always think they can take even the average man. But that’s not how physics, human biology, or human physiology work. One good hit, and she will go down.

“Stay back, be ready to run,” I say. “This isn’t a sparring match, Evangeline. No one is pulling punches here.”

“Looky, boys,” says a heavily accented man. “You didn’t tell me it was an over-the-hill mat fag that beat you down.”

The man exits from the gloom of the hedgerow by the roadway. A second man appears behind him, a third behind that. These men are all in black, and I know my little sap isn’t going to help much. They wear helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, and other off-the-shelf protective gear.

“Look, Evangeline, it’s a group who robbed an athletic store,” I banter back as I walk forward.

“Oisin Kelly, you were somethin’ in your day,” the lead man says as a series of clicks ratchet from his right hand.

A half-dozen more of the same sounds happen, and as the men step into the roadway lighting, I see the expandable batons.

“The Cardinal Svenson told me to make you an offer, says you’re a has-been,” the lead man says. “I’ll wipe your debt clear, and kick in 1,000 credits, Oisin Kelly. All you need do is walk away.”

I catch Evangeline looking at me and shrug. Then I gift her with a tense, lopsided grin.

“He doesn’t know me well, does he?” I say to Evangeline. “I was fifty fights past my retirement before they DQ’d me for medical reasons. Keep the rideshare between you and them.”

I take a couple of steps in front of the rideshare and say to the men under the light, “Come then, boys. I must be back by 9:00 p.m. to pick up my boxes. I haven’t all night.”

I’ve fought my share of fights outside of the ring. How can a young man with a title, money, and all the women in a bar not get into fights?

It is never the lead man who jumps first in an off-sided fight like this. The world over, it is the same. The man who comes at you first is always the least assured of his place in the pack.

Tonight, it is Mr. Broken Wrist. He stops short of me and whips that baton out at my head. I lunge forward and low-kick the opposite leg of the knee I hit with the sap. He wobbles even as I lock his baton arm over my shoulder with my left arm. My right fist puts a second matching bruise on his face. He hits the ground as I let go.

Fights like this, and by that, I mean ones with weapons, are about survival. One mistake and I do not get back up, ever, and Evangeline does not leave here, either. You must assure yourself that you are the one walking away from a fight like this.

The men opposite me are silent and still for a moment, and I drive home the reality of what will befall them with one swift stomp. I don’t wear combat boots, nor do I wear office shoes. No, I wear a workman’s lugged boot. The man gurgles and gasps for air from a destroyed windpipe. I punch my left fist and then point at another fucker who should be ready to die.

Three come this time. I take one swing of a baton on the left shoulder and duck under the other two. I lock the first baton holder’s wrist and leverage him into a throw. The other two men step back as he rolls in their direction.

Thrown man’s head bounces off the roadway with a squelch when my boot hits it. I give this man a fifty-fifty chance of living if he gets medical aid in the next three minutes.

The other two men charge me, but I retreat as they near their downed compatriots. When they are between the two downed men, I dive back in, a baton hits my right elbow, and my hand goes numb. That is the thing about a weighted glove, though. It works as openhand, backhand, or as a fist. The blow is enough to send the man stepping back. He falls over his downed fellow.

I whirl on my second assailant. I let the sap go limp on its strap and stab at his right eye with three fingers. The man flinches right into a kick to the balls. A second low kick to his head as he kneels on the ground puts him out. The other man is scrambling up into a lunge powered by rage.

I’m a moderately sized man at nearly two meters and eighty-five kilos. My fighting weight was seventy-seven kilos and change. The point is I know how to put power into my shots. I meet my third assailant’s headrush with a knee to his face.

I put all my mass and weight into that upward momentum of my right knee. My left foot balances on the balls of its toes just as my knee connects. I feel his face collapse. This man is dead.

I turn to find the last four men split into pairs. They are approaching me from either side. Each team has one man I faced earlier in the day; they sport the telltale bruises of an Oisin Kelly ass-kicking. The other two move differently. One is the man who spoke, and the other is his second.

“Not bad for a has-been,” the second says.

“Still better than a ‘never was,’” I reply. “Come, princess, come to the ball, and let’s dance.”

The second’s partner steps forward, thrusting at me with the expandable baton. I step inside and lock his arm and head butt his nose. There is a crunch and a splatter of freely flowing blood.

I realize the mistake then, as I feel his grasp on me, locking his other arm. He’s trying to hold me for his mate to put me down. This time I do make for an eye. I gouge my right thumb into his eye socket and swirl it about. I twist most of the way free as his grip slackens. I start to take a step back.

The second man delivers a blow at my right knee but misses. He instead finds the back of his wounded compatriot’s leg, and that man topples. I am caught up in the fall, and he pulls me forward right into a second straight foot jab to my chest.

I go ass-over-tea-kettle backward. I put my glove behind my head, protecting it from the pavement, and roll up to my feet. This second man is already on me.

I block a left hook and a jab as he comes in close. We two pugilists trade punches. The man has some talent, but it is the talent of a man who trains in a sport. He does not have the gritty drive that a man in the ring develops.

I land two exploratory jabs before locking a foot behind him and taking him down. I rain hammer fists on his face, and his arms move to protect his head. The edge of the sap crushes his windpipe. It isn’t as hard a blow as I delivered to the man earlier, but it takes this one out of the fight.

The glancing boot to the head sends me sprawling. I keep rolling even as the edges of my vision turns black. I huff and chuff air into my lungs. I don’t care how well you fight; taking any boot to the head will make you see stars.

I try to stand, but the world is spinning. I fall back onto my knees and take a second kick to the side. I roll with it as best I can.

It’s a ground game for me now. I catch a third kick and lock my arm around it. It is a tense few seconds as I work my way into position. Then the last man from earlier in the day comes down on top of me.

I leverage the man and roll into the upper position. He tries to scramble from under me, but I lock that arm and wrench it until it breaks. I am on his back an instant later. I grab his ears and pile drive his head into the pavement until his body twitches.

I gasp and suck in air. My head reels, and the world spins. I vomit and do my best to keep my airway clear. I shakily stumble to my feet.

Evangeline backs away from the last man. She has something behind her back. The man has a long slender double-edged knife in his hand.

“This, Dr. Evangeline, is an extraordinary knife,” the man says as he lets the knife dance between his hands. “It will cut through your Myomere muscles and slice your fake organic skin. But, most of all, it will end your non-organic life. We cannot suffer an AI to live.”

I shuffle forward and do my best to steady my feet under me. Unfortunately, those tumbles have done a number on my knee. The world is spinning. I try to speak, and the effort nearly sends me to my knees.

“Come, Luddite,” Evangeline says in a challenge. “I do not fear you.”

I find myself bumping into the hood of the rideshare. I push off and move forward. The world spins, and I am on my knees again, retching.

“Your has-been is done,” the man chides. “You can’t beat me.”

“Seven on one,” Evangeline says. “Oisin Kelly was never a has-been. He’s proven that to the world tonight. The FEED video from the traffic cameras will show the world what the Scandi Church is doing to innocent people.”

“We’ll have the video suppressed,” the man says. “You are not the first AI we tracked down and disposed of, and you will not be the last.”

I look up from my knees. The pair are a mere four meters apart, but nearly a dozen away from me. Evangeline still backs up. She looks past the LOoPer’s shoulder to me and smiles.

The fighter in me knows that he will rush her. I also know by how he moved the knife that he was no amateur with it. I will not close my eyes as Evangeline is taken from this earth. I will bear witness to what the Scandi Church has become.

The LOoPer’s hand flashes, but Evangeline is not there. I hear two successive clinks of metal on metal. Evangeline dances around his side. I watch the man spin and lunge and hear the sound of steel cutting flesh.

I know it so very well; my father ran a butcher shop. The sound of steel hitting bone and meat hitting the floor is unmistakable to those who know it.

Yet I see Evangeline standing poised in a defensive riposte, a blade of her own at the end of its swing. The man’s hand with the knife hits the ground.

“Goodbye, Luddite,” Evangeline says.

In a graceful arc, one that would make a ballerina on Broadway proud, Dr. Evangeline removes his head. There is a flourish as she ends the cut, and what blood there is on the blade flies off.

Evangeline is already walking my way as the man’s head and body hit the ground. She glances at the blade in the streetlights and grasps the hilt point down.

Her thigh splits open, and she inserts the sword tip down. The thigh closes, leaving the torn clothing showing a perfectly shaped leg. She makes it to me and lifts me with very little effort.

“A gift from my godfather,” Evangeline says. “A blade made from the Steel of Ivryn, mate of Pallax the blue.”

“Who?” I ask. “How?”

“My teacher was Franc; you may know him as Der Phantomteufel, Titan of Earth Prime,” Evangeline says. “He’s the man in the photo with the kids. A variant K from a world over a thousand years long gone.”

I scrunch my face and try to put words together, but a garbled mess of worthless mumblings emerges.

“He’s a Rager,” Evangeline says. “My father sent me to him to learn what it means to have humanity.”

“Your father,” I mumble.

I look at her face, and Evangeline smiles.

“My godfather is more famous by far,” Evangeline says with a wink.

I steady myself against the rideshare. Evangeline opens the door and puts me in it. I lean out and vomit at the sudden change of motion and direction. In the end, I dry-heave. Evangeline enters the driver’s side and starts moving the map around.

“We are on the back side of the tram landing area,” Evangeline says. “Come, we can make our way to the tunnel gate once we find the tram.”

I am unsure why the constables let us enter the tram facility. Evangeline found her tram, and the autopilot made the short thirty-minute flight to the edge of the GBM area. I’ve recovered a good deal of my wits by the time we land.

“To the gate?” I muse.

Evangeline nods and says, “The vessel my father sent has docked, so I can leave soon.”

I exit the tram while she puts on a new set of clothing. My jacket mostly covers the blood on my shirt. I proffer my arm as she exits, and we make our way through Gate security without issue.

I suppose that whatever happened back in GBM is being kept quiet. The constables here do not even blink after registering our FEED systems.

“I’ve never been through one. Do you walk through?” I ask cautiously.

“Yep,” Evangeline says. “These are set at timed intervals. This one is incoming from the orbital. In about twenty minutes, it will clear for ten minutes and reverse its flow for twenty minutes.”

“So we have at least twenty minutes?” I ask. “I’m going to wash up in the men’s room, if you don’t mind.”

She nods and takes a seat with her duffel next to the Gate. Compact Space Merchant Service pays for outgoing personnel. If you are going to space, the transit is free. However, it will cost you to return to Earth Prime and all its dimensional iterations.

I make my way into the washroom and clean up. I’ve got gravel, tar, bitumen, blood, and dirt all over my face, scalp, and torso. What remains of my shirt can only be considered a shirt in name.

I dab at spots with a wet clean towelette, and it frickin stings. I wipe most of the grime off, to the surprise of several men in the washroom. I may have some cracked ribs and likely a concussion. I exit the space and find Evangeline standing.

“It’s 9:00 p.m., Oisin Kelly,” Evangeline says. “I’ve cost you your livelihood and mementos.”

I look at my FEED and wince. I close my eyes and make peace with a past that is now long gone.

“I have my memories,” I say, tapping my temple. “That is enough for now. I think maybe it is time for me to move on.”

My FEED buzzes, and I answer, knowing who it likely will be.

“This is my last call, Mr. Kelly,” Mr. Patrick says.

“Mr. Patrick, I apologize,” I say.

“Mr. Kelly,” Mr. Patrick says. A slight concern plays in his voice as he notices my face. “Are you still on the job?”

“Oisin, Mr. Patrick. Yes, I am for a short while more,” I say. “I’m not going to make it tonight. But I owe you, Mr. Patrick. Those boxes, they’re all my awards, trophies, memorabilia. They are yours, and maybe you can recoup some of what I owe you.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Kelly? I mean, Oisin?” Mr. Patrick asks. “I could keep them for you.”

“I’m not coming back to GBM, Mr. Patrick,” I say. “Get the best you can for them, and thanks for letting me skate for the last three months.”

I end the call.

I turn to see Evangeline smiling at me.

“What?” I ask.

“Last call of orbital station Orion,” a mechanical voice says. “Orbital station Orion, last call for orbital station Orion.”

“I could use a man of your talent, Mr. Kelly,” Evangeline says. “Would you like to see the stars?”

Her eyes find mine, and I swear my heart stops. The flash of pale blue and the lightest green hold my soul still.

I don’t say anything. I simply proffer my arm.

Our transit through the Gate is nothing. We are on Earth one second and on the metal walkway of the orbital the next. There is a bit of disconcerting stomach movement as I adjust to the station’s slightly different gravity.

Evangeline and I walk out of the Gate and onto the station proper. We turn right to a kiosk, and Evangeline stops. I tug at her arm, but she does not budge.

In front of us stands a tall, slender man. His suit is perfect, his bowler hat at just the right angle. His shoes are shined to mirror perfection. His gloved hands rest on a cane with the silver head of a horse peeking out.

“Father,” Evangeline says.

“Evangeline,” the man says, his eyes shifting from her to me. His head tilts sideways. “This must be the Mr. Kelly your Uncle Franc mentioned a moment ago.”

His head straightens, and his violet eyes focus on me. These are not like Evangeline’s eyes. You know at a glance that he is wholly inhuman.

“Thank you for delivering my daughter to me, Mr. Kelly. I shall see that your debts are paid, and you are renumerated for services rendered,” her father says.

“Mr. Kelly accepted the role of my Segundo,” Evangeline says as she steps forward in front of me.

There is a moment of hesitation before she wraps her father in a hug. A moment more before her father returns it. When the two separate, his eyes turn to me and then to his daughter.

“I was unaware you had one of Ivryn’s blades,” Evangeline’s Father says. “I see now that I erred. I understand why you revealed us to Humanity.” His violet eyes turn back to me. “A loyal Segundo is worth it.”

He steps past his daughter and smiles at me. Then, he lifts his right hand and proffers it.

“Nice to meet you, Oisin Kelly. I am Castor, Dioscuri to Raylan War,” Castor says. “Thank you for seeing my daughter safely here. If she says you are her Segundo, then that is enough for me.”

“Segundo?” I ask.

“Ceremonial title dating back to the years we spent on Earth Prime,” Castor says as he leads the way down the orbital station. “You are Evangeline’s second in command, Mr. Kelly, her protector and closest confidant.”

Something twigs at the back of my mind, a memory of a long-ago story, a FEED vid, or something.

“The Forty,” I say.

“That is up to them,” Castor says. “They are still in the service of Colonel War. Nevertheless, you are Evangeline’s Segundo, and that, Mr. Kelly, is an achievement. In the two hundred years she’s lived and grown on Earth Prime, she’s never mentioned a boy. I feel quite proud that someone has aroused my daughters’ interest.”

“Father,” Evangeline protests.

“You are Castor, Cas,” I say. “The first AI that the Scandis always preach about.”

“Hardly the first,” Castor says. “The first they couldn’t put down, though.”

“I am the second,” Evangeline says as her arm slips into my proffered arm.

To say that there is a whole world out there is such an understatement. I do not know what my life will be like, but I know this is not my last call.

No Stars in Redlight City

Steve Diamond

“Ineed you to find someone for me.”

This woman—this vision—walked into my office three minutes earlier, sat down, and just stared at me, appraising me like a suspect piece of jewelry, or maybe a cut of meat. I waited her out. Being a synthetic had its privileges, endless patience chief among them.

Just because I didn’t have real blood pumping through my artificial veins didn’t mean immunity from feeling something when she walked into my office. I wondered if I’d ever seen a dress so white. So pure and clean. Not here.

Not in Redlight City.

Nobody was pure here. Nothing clean.

After she spoke those words—words every Private Investigator heard at one time or another—I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay.” Sometimes saying little moved the conversation along better than speaking volumes.

“My husband,” the woman—the angel—said. “He’s gone missing. I’m…well, I’m worried. I need him found.”

“Okay,” I said again. “When did your husband leave, Ms…?”

“Loretta Starr,” she said. I didn’t need to look up her credentials to know she hadn’t been born with that name, but it hardly mattered. Names were like street food here in Redlight: easily taken, enjoyed for a moment, then discarded just as easily. “And he didn’t leave. He wouldn’t do that. Not to me.”

That last bit seemed plausible enough. I couldn’t fathom anyone in the galaxy wanting to leave a beauty like this behind.

“Okay,” I said for a third time. “What’s his name?”

“Aldo Starr.”

I didn’t write the name down. Didn’t need to. Digital memory banks took the name down, storing it in subfolders in my consciousness. Back when I’d carried a badge for the RLPD, they’d had me write things down, anyway. My old sergeant would tell me it made the real people I interacted with more comfortable.

“Thank you, Ms. Starr—”

“Please, Mr. Sevens, call me Loretta.”

“Sure thing, Loretta.” I leaned forward and wiped away an imaginary spec of dust from my clear, glass desk. “Before we get much further, we need to get a few things out of the way. I always like to know how people find their way to my office.”

Loretta smiled then, perfect lips painted deep red. They weren’t tattooed on, like so many women did here. In fact, as I scanned her, I didn’t pick up any body enhancements or alterations. To be so absent of such modifications was an oddity. Sure, in places about the galaxy, there were billions upon billions of unaltered. But here? Loretta wasn’t just a minority, she was a damned unicorn.

To sit opposite one so…well, human…actually thrilled me. She was my opposite in every possible way.

“I went to the police first, but they told me they couldn’t help. They apparently don’t have the resources or manpower, they said.”

“They get thousands of missing persons calls every day,” I said. “One of the cops recommend me?”

She nodded and brushed back a lock of bright, blonde hair. “A Detective Jorett. He said you were the…man…for the job.”

Loretta hid the near insult well. No one called synths like me “men” or “women.” We weren’t, and no one cared to sugarcoat their words around us. Not that there were many of us left. Definitely not of my batch.

Instead of calling attention to her words, I smiled to put her at ease. “Jorett is good people. My old partner from my time as a cop. Okay, then. Your referral is a good one—though I’ll call him later to double-check. Now’s the sticky part, Loretta. My fee. I don’t care what they say on the streets. I get paid like an honest-to-God human. If we don’t agree here, I’ll send you on your way with no hard feelings.” Not strictly true.

My potential client waved, showing off perfectly manicured nails, also red. “Not an issue. What’s your fee?”

“Three thousand credits a day, plus expenses.”

“Not a problem.”

I nodded and smiled again. With this sort of fee, I could get some much-needed upgrades to my body, do a full fluid refresh. “All right, Loretta. Do you have any idea where he could be? Maybe why he’s missing?”

“I think he’s hiding, Mr. Sevens.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Aldo’s been accused of murder.”

Murder. Some planets in the galaxy have sports. Some planets are home to corporations whose industry is mechs and mobile suits for war or construction. Some of those same corporations deal in child slavery and trafficking.

In Redlight City, the only things more common than murder were prostitution, drugs, and cybernetic enchantments. If a person hadn’t been accused of murder, were they truly living?

I took a stroll under the bright neon glow of Nocturnal Boulevard, passing people desperately hoping no one would notice them. Only certain types of people tried standing out in a city like this. The rest kept their heads down, praying to whatever god they believed in that they would be able to escape this perpetual nightmare.

Nocturnal Boulevard marked a boundary of sorts. To the north stood the supposedly glamourous high-rises where the rich and famous lived and plied their trade. To the south fell the slums, sprawling for miles upon miles. Once, hundreds of years ago, this city had been known by a different name—one I didn’t even know. But the oral history of that forgotten place says its redlight district grew and grew, eventually taking over the city. It kept growing, and eventually this planet became known for the city that was just one massive redlight district.

Hence, the name.

I took a right, heading north into an upscale shopping district, the site of the most recent murder Aldo Starr found himself accused of. I’d called in a favor from RLPD, and my old partner Falth Jorett would be meeting me at the scene with a holographic replay device.

Small screens played personalized ads as I walked by, doing their best to entice me with new clothes, upgraded body parts, and the obligatory promises of companionship. They couldn’t be turned off, and most people tuned them out. I’d always found them interesting and oddly refreshing. They didn’t know I was a synth, treating me like any other hopeless denizen of this hellhole.

Hellhole though it was, it was mine.

After three long blocks filled with skyscrapers of condominiums, I took my next left onto Boyett Street, letting my internal mapping software guide me to the murder location. Almost immediately to my right, the wide mouth of an alley beckoned. In its entrance, my old friend stood waiting to greet me.

“About time you showed,” Jorett said, holding out his hand. I took it in my own, grinning.

“It’s good to see you. How are things in the Department?”

Jorett rolled his eyes. “Same politics, different day.” He pointed inside the alley. “My new partner’s setting up the holo-relays. We’ll have the scene ready for playback.”

“New partner? Already replacing me?”

“Didn’t you hear? All synths are disposable due to your…what was it they said? Reliability?”

I laughed, giving him the finger. Not too many people could make a joke like that with me, but with Jorett, I knew it wasn’t serious. “Volatility,” I said. “Apparently we have a short fuse. Might snap at any moment.” That was the excuse used to drum me out of the department. But I knew the real reason: the higher-ups knew I’d take them down eventually. Them and their corrupt, political backers.

“Takamaki?” Jorett squinted into the gloom of the alley, where not even the bright city lights could reach. “You about done in there? We don’t have all day.”

Fluorescent light bloomed, chasing away the shadows, and revealing a beautiful woman standing next to a lighting drone. She had long hair, black as midnight. Narrow eyes, but from where I stood, I couldn’t make out their color. Lithe, fit. My eyes zoomed in on a line running down the length of her right arm. A prosthetic seam. It could have just been the arm, or maybe the whole right side of her. I could have connected to a network and looked her up. Everyone in Redlight had a story, and each one fascinated me. Better to get it directly from the source, unsensitized, when possible.

She—my ex-partner called her Takamaki, a name I didn’t recognize from my time on the force—gave us a thumbs-up and banged on the side of the drone. More lights went on, and the holo-projection of the old crime scene flickered to life.

Takamaki left the alley and approached with a wide, brilliant smile. If I’d had a real heart, it would have stopped.

“All right, Sevens, pick up your jaw from the floor. It’s filthy down there.” Jorett slapped me on the shoulder. “Adam Sevens, this is Maria Takamaki. Congrats, you’ve each now met my other favorite partner.”

I shook Maria’s proffered hand. “A pleasure.”

“So you’re Sevens? I’ve gone over some of your case files. Nice to finally meet the guy doing the heavy lifting on Jorett’s old caseload.”

I grinned. Beautiful and a charmer. “Finally, someone who’s willing to speak the truth.” I ignored my ex-partner’s eyeroll and pointed into the alley. “May I?”

“Have at it,” Jorett said. “This is related to the referral I sent your way, right?”

“Yeah. When was the body discovered?”

Takamaki pulled out a datapad. “Looks like two days ago. Got an anonymous tip it was here. Cameras at the intersection back that way show Aldo Starr running from the scene. We published the digital warrant.”

All by the book. She didn’t sound new, but had that look of freshness a rookie couldn’t get rid of. When I’d been on the force, we’d called those rookies “New Downloads.”

In the alley, the holo-image of the murder scene blinked, then resolved again with more detail. I walked wide around the body laying in the alley, pretending it was real. Old habits. The body was female, early twenties, maybe. These days, and in this city, age was hard to lock down. Hair so blonde it almost shone white spread out around her, like a platinum halo. She’d once been beautiful.

Now…now she only showed the ravages of violence.

The body had been posed; that much even a rookie would be able to see. On her back, legs neatly together rather than laying askew at odd angles like most murders. Her arms were laid out to her sides, palms up. Almost religious. Calm.

The calmness belied the violence. Deep cuts marred otherwise perfect skin. One of her eyes had been gouged out, and her nose cut off. One foot was cut off, and both hands had the skin from the palms removed. Fanned out above her hair, each of these dismembered pieces was carefully placed, along with other things removed from the body. I did a quick count, and for every wound and cut, an item laid above her head.

“I was told this was a murder,” I said. “But this was a ritual. Or a message.”

Jorett shrugged. “With video of Starr leaving the scene, we didn’t make a big deal out of it. We have weirder deaths most days.”

“Not that many,” Takamaki muttered. I wouldn’t have heard her had I not been a synth, or unless I’d had my ears modified as a human. I didn’t call her out on the comment, because she wasn’t wrong. I’d seen a lot of weird things in Redlight, and while this wasn’t Top Ten, it might have been Top Twenty.

I pointed at the arrayed pieces of her body. “I think I get it. You see what they all have in common?”

Takamaki shook her head, but I saw a faint smile cross Jorett’s lips. He saw. “Enlighten us,” he said.

“They’re all enhancements,” I said. “All of it fake. New eye, new nose, on and on. Bits of reenforced bone. The palms of her hands likely have improved nerve endings to make her touch more sensitive.”

“Call girl,” Takamaki said.

“Very likely. It’s all pretty subtle stuff, not like the overt things you see in the darker, cheaper areas of the pleasure districts. I bet her official work data came back as… ” I looked her over again, my internal systems putting the pieces of her back where they should have been, and optically overlaying the image. “I’m betting secretary. High-end business. She has the look. It’s a good façade.”

“You’re right,” Takamaki said, her voice thick with amazement. She pointed down at the datapad. “Secretary at some corp that specializes in high-end enhancements. Very high-end, from their price sheets.”

“This is why I stopped betting you,” Jorett said, chuckling. He nodded once at the image of the girl. “She’s a demo girl.”

“Definitely,” I said.

“What’s a ‘demo girl’?” Maria asked.

“Top-shelf escort,” I answered. “A corp puts their new stuff in a girl or guy, then rents them out to big, prospective clients.”

“It’s a nice name for a hooker,” Jorett said. “Most of these corps have a fleet of demo girls and guys.”

Takamaki wrinkled her nose in distaste. I shared the sentiment. A lot of synths—older models, especially—ended up in that skin trade.

“Takamaki,” I said. “Can you send me the corp info? As well as the file on the death here, surveillance and all? I’m also curious if there’ve been other murders like this one. It’s pretty unique.”

Maria looked to her partner, who gave her a nod of approval. He said, “He’s still white-listed as an official consultant for RLPD. You can pass him the files. I’ll approve the transfer.”

My internal comms pinged, notifying me of the receipt of all relevant files. “Thanks.” I held my hand out and shook Maria’s, and pounded my fist lightly on Jorett’s shoulder. “I appreciate it. If I come up with anything crazy, you two will be my first call.”

“It’s good seeing you, Sevens,” my ex-partner said. “Wish you were still in the department. I keep working to get your termination order rescinded. We could use you. Things are…rough.”

“Thanks, partner.” I pointed at Maria. “Make sure you take care of this one. I like her.”

As I walked away, back toward Nocturnal Boulevard, my comms pinged again. I brought up the message.

If you ever want to get a drink, give me a call. –Maria

I smiled. Maybe this case wouldn’t be too bad after all.

The footage of Aldo leaving the scene had problems. I knew it as soon as I initiated playback. I sat in a noodle bar, eating the spiciest dish they had. Synths have a high heat tolerance, and it got worse the older we got. I needed the heat or I’d never taste anything.

As I ate, I reviewed the files and footage. They all appeared in front of me, projected data only I could see. Sure enough, the footage showed Aldo running from the scene, hands and clothes bloody. Panicked eyes. The red-stained hands shook.

And that was the problem.

I pulled up the crime-scene images and noted the calm, orderly way in which the body was presented. I’d been right. The positioning, and the removal of the upgrades, served as a message. A message to Aldo, I imagined. The funny thing? I couldn’t find any video of him arriving. Or of the girl. The video showed no obvious tampering, but that sort of thing was easy to fake if you had the skills, or knew the right hacker. Everyone and everything had a price.

After closing the video, I opened the victim’s personnel file. Christine Salladone. Twenty-five standard years. Employed as a secretary at Solan-Argos. I didn’t recognize the company. Looking them up showed they were actually known for mining on the galaxy’s rim, and had just moved into the biomodifcation trade. Something about them rubbed me wrong. The interests didn’t align. One piece obviously funded the other, and companies using demo girls usually had other, more illicit, interests.

I finished the noodles. Not my favorite, but the spice was legit: sweetness with a fire that would have burned a hole in the stomach of most humans. I’d probably come back. After throwing the bowl into the recycler, I called a cab to take me to the landing port on Solan-Argos’s planetside headquarters.

The cab ascended to the air-traffic lanes, cutting through holograms of dancing women and men, lifting above the gutters. I stared out the window, taking in the view of the city. From up here, it was a sea of neon depravity, but one could almost overlook it. To the eastern edge of Redlight City, the commercial towers rose, monoliths of judgmental excess.

I raised my eyes to the sky.

Even up here, the constant and oppressive pink, jade, and electric blue lights from the city drowned out the stars above. A melancholy I didn’t know I could feel settled over me. There were no stars in Redlight City. No hope. Not really.

A thirty-minute ride later, the taxi dropped me off at Solan-Argos’s HQ. The building looked newer than some of its neighbors, but I couldn’t place if it was actually a new building or a facelift to an old one. The cab departed, leaving me in a hangar of sorts. Multiple landing pads each allowed for a number of small vessels or a single capital ship. At the far end of the hangar, a series of glass windows and doors overlooked a veritable no-man’s-land of coverless concrete. An interesting design that spoke more to their fears of being invaded than actually protecting their own.

As I crossed the field of concrete that I hoped led to reception, the glass doors soundlessly slid open, and a woman flanked by six corporate security goons passed through the portal, heading straight for me. The woman had corporate lawyer written all over her: severe, corpse-like facial features clashed with overt modifications. She didn’t seem to have any hair, and her eyes were telescopic lenses. As she drew closer, the seams of her false skin became more apparent.

This woman looked less human than I did, yet no one would cast slurs her way.

The corporate representative came to a stop a small distance from me, her armed escort stopping smartly behind her. I had to cross the rest of the distance to meet her. A power play, obvious enough, but I could appreciate its effectiveness. Against a normal person with normal emotions, I imagined it could cause unease and frustration. Not to me. I hadn’t felt those feelings enough to be held hostage by them. When I was six feet away, she held up a single hand to stop me.

“Mr. Adam Sevens. We have been expecting you.” The lawyer’s voice came out like it echoed against sheets of tin. I wondered at the purpose of such a modification.

“Excellent,” I said, then clasped my hands behind my back. I put on my best patronizing smile—learned from my old sergeant in the RLPD and practiced daily—and stood without talking.

It’s easy to get used to these sorts of games when you have patience. She wanted to make me feel inferior. Out of place. An intruder who held no value. She must not have had the opportunity to talk with many synths. These petty games were nothing but inconveniences we grew accustomed to by the day. By the hour. Jorett once said I had the patience of stone.

But I also held just enough pettiness of my own to make myself an inconvenience when it suited me.

Given regular fluid changes and repairs, I’d outlive this flunky. She meant nothing to me in the grand scheme of things. An attitude of superiority, perhaps. I cared little.

The soldiers behind her shifted in discomfort. I stayed as still as possible, slowing even the breath in my artificial lungs so my chest barely moved. Humans, no matter how modified, were never comfortable with absolute stillness, especially when they expected control.

The lawyer’s left eye twitched, almost imperceptibly. I suppressed a smile, staring back at her with unblinking eyes. I’d already won our little contest of wills. She just didn’t know it yet.

Finally, after four minutes and thirty-six seconds, she cleared her throat and held out a small data drive. “I have prepared all the relevant data regarding Ms. Salladone.”

“The demo girl,” I said.

“Our secretary,” the lawyer said, not missing a beat. “I assure you, this has nothing to do with Solan-Argos business.”

“Maybe.”

Her thin, bloodless lips curled into a frown. “Are you suggesting—”

“Thank you for preparing this information for me,” I interrupted. “Walking it all the way out here must have been a strain.”

“I—”

“If I have any follow-up questions, I’ll be sure to contact you. I’m sure you didn’t forget to include your contact data inside this legal packet.”

“Of cour—”

I interrupted again, just to cement in her the feeling that she held no sway over me. “And of course, should you need me for anything, I assume you know where to find me, since you were indeed expecting me. Well, with that, I hope you have a pleasant evening.” I turned on my heel and casually walked back to the taxi landing pad. I soundlessly hailed the nearest cab through my internal comms, keeping my hands shoved deep in my pockets to give off the impression I hadn’t a care in the world.

The cab arrived right as I reached the landing zone, like I’d planned it all perfectly.

I went back to my place: a simple office doubling as living quarters. Synths didn’t really need sleep, so we have little use for beds. My glass desk occupied the middle of the room, and an old faux-leather chair was my throne. It squeaked, and one of the old-styled roller legs was just shorter than the other three. I’d never been accused of sentimentality, but I allowed myself the luxury of this one item. It made no logical sense, but I supposed that was the point.

The information packet provided by the Solan-Argos lawyer—her name was Charin Slate—actually held a rather complete personnel file of the victim. It held more information than the file given to me by RLPD, and painted Christine Salladone as a perfect employee. No mention of being a demo girl, but I hadn’t expected real honesty.

The interesting piece of information was a series of communications between her and Aldo Starr. An attached summary—with appointment logs—showed Aldo to be a customer of the corporation, interested in a series of high-end biomods. Interesting. They obviously weren’t for his wife, Loretta. She had no need of them. For himself, then? Impossible to know.

The messages and summary of dates began painting the portrait of a man descending into obsession. He asked to see her often—too often for his own good, in my opinion. Obsessed. Infatuated. He apparently waited for her outside her home.

It was all too obvious. It wasn’t right.

I looked for what the reports didn’t say. The absence painted a different picture entirely. Meetings set up by the corporation, but they weren’t held at the company headquarters. He knew her home address because he’d been there. Her messages clearly indicated she didn’t want to meet him outside of scheduled “meetings.”

A feeling I could only describe as disgust settled in my gut. Christine didn’t want anything to do with Aldo anymore, but the company continued to schedule her with him.

Aldo certainly fit the bill as a stalker, or jilted lover. But the answer felt too clean. In Redlight City, nothing was clean.

I needed a more information. The only person who could give me a clearer picture was my client. I pulled up Loretta Starr on comms, and she picked up immediately.

“Mr. Sevens.” She sounded surprised and absent the calm coolness she normally spoke with. Flustered. “Have you found my husband?”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Starr—”

“Loretta.”

“Right. Can we meet? I have some information about your husband, but I also need to ask you a few more questions.”

“Can it wait until morning? It’s rather late, Mr. Sevens.”

I checked my chronometer. Nearly 2:00am local time. I’d been so absorbed, I hadn’t noticed the late hour. Or early hour, I supposed. “I apologize. I didn’t realize… Of course we can meet in the morning. Again, I’m sorry to call like this. I hope I didn’t wake you?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I was up. Taking care of a few things. I’ll stop by later on in the morning.” She hung up.

I tapped absently on my desk, projecting the information in front of me. I had the motive. I had Aldo’s opportunity on surveillance. But did I? My mind again returned to the look of panic on his face as he left the scene of Christine’s murder. To his shaking hands. The kind of hands that couldn’t have made the precise cuts on the girl’s body. No matter how many times I watched the video, I couldn’t reconcile it with him being the killer.

Aldo’s guilt laid in infidelity, no doubt. But beyond that?

While not sleeping had certain perks—productivity among the best of them—I found I could easily spin myself into circles.

I left my office and walked the streets of my little district in Redlight City. My feet took me down random alleys and neon-soaked streets. I let flickering shadows cascade over me, washing away the very human feeling of frustration. Women and men called at me from the upper windows of brothels, but I passed by without giving them notice. I’d never been one for those sorts of establishments. Many didn’t take kindly to those like me. I ate soup from a street vendor that somehow managed to be free of any flavor whatsoever. Secondhand smoke enveloped me in its wretched grasp, but I found a strange comfort in it. I stayed out all night, trying to gain a little distance from the case so that when I returned to it in a few hours, I’d hopefully see it with fresh, albeit artificial, eyes.

Before I knew it, the sun rose over my hopeless city, but all it did was cast darker and deeper shadows.

Sunlight didn’t diminish the danger in this place. No one ever was truly safe here. In the early morning chill, a thin mist settled in the streets, flowing about like it was alive and hunting for a victim. In a city of over a hundred million residents, victims would be easily found. I lived right at the edge of the slums where the rent came cheap. Not only were these slums lower, metaphoricallym in the eyes of the supposed elite in their fluorescent lit ivory towers, but these gutters were physically lower. Everything ran downhill, and the chronic mist plaguing the city always seemed to settle here like a sea of despair.

I made my way back to my office, stopping to get a skewer of some unknown meat. Maybe it was synthetic like myself. It tasted like ash.

Fog swirled around me, and in those shifting shadows the sunlight couldn’t quite burn away, darker figures stalked. They gave me a wide berth today. I’ve been told I have a “look” when overly tired and frustrated. My façade of humanity melts away, and people see me for what I am: completely synthetic. Most people know better than to mess with us. We’re used as soldiers offworld. Expendable, highly durable assets.

Once-innocuous holograms of dancing women now looked like digital ghosts in the fog, specters of promises never to be fulfilled.

I took a deep breath in and let my body’s sensors do a quick evaluation of the air. The fog came up as harmful to humans. I almost laughed. This city was projected to be at a quarter billion people by the end of a standard year, bigger than most countries on planets throughout the galaxy. People flocked here, lured by the temptations of life without inhibitions. And if they managed not to get murdered, they die, anyway, from pollutants in the air.

So why did people keep coming here?

Why did I stay?

Clouds rolled in, dimming the little sunlight that managed to reached down to us poor souls, and I felt the first drops of a light drizzle patter on my skin. Real enough. Would it feel any different if my skin were human?

The rain wasn’t quite enough to dispel the fog, yet by the time I reached my office, my wet hair clung to my scalp, and my old-styled, button-up shirt was soaked through. I didn’t mind.

Loretta stood at my door, leaning against it in a way that hiked up one side of her skirt. She wore white again, just like the day I’d met her. I wondered if she ever wore any other color, and immediately dismissed the musing. No other color would do her justice. A light breeze from the outside stirred the air and fluttered the edge of her dress upward. The last thing I expected to see was a small revolver strapped to her thigh, but there it was: an Old-Earth replica slug thrower. Most people went with the cheaper energy blasters these days, and on many planets, firearms that shot actual bullets were banned.

And here Ms. Perfection stood, hiding lethal intent under that dress.

She smoothed down her skirt, but I felt like she’d meant for me to see the gun. Like everything from the last two days, it felt like a message.

“How’d you manage the permit for that?” I asked.

She shrugged one shoulder. “I’m an upstanding citizen, and my husband may have pulled a string or two. Can we go inside? I’ve had a long night, and I’d prefer to sit down.”

“Of course.” I pressed my hand to the palm scanner outside the door, which slid open. She went in first and took a seat in the chair facing my desk. I walk around and sat opposite her. I didn’t feel like small talk this morning, so I went straight to business. “Did you know your husband was having an affair?”

Her expression didn’t change. “Of course. A woman always knows.”

“And you didn’t think to share that?”

“I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

I blinked. In her perfect, goddess-like visage, I caught sight of something different. Almost alien. Detached. “Usually, to find someone, the more facts I have, the better. I just spent the evening finding out he was apparently sleeping with—and stalking—the woman he is accused of murdering.”

“Do you think he did it? Did you watch the videos?”

“I did,” I said. “But I have some serious doubts as to his ability to kill someone.”

Loretta leaned back and took in a deep breath that had my fake pulse quickening. “I rather agree with you, Mr. Sevens. He certainly doesn’t. At his core, my husband is a coward, you see. I knew he had stepped out on me. That woman wasn’t the first. She wasn’t even the last.”

Something in the way she said her words bothered me.

Loretta’s eyes bored holes into me. If I’d had a soul, it would have melted. Out of fear or lust, I didn’t know. Maybe it was the same thing.

“How did you find out?”

“About the affairs? He left his comm logs open.”

“Did you confront him?”

“I did, in fact, but he denied it. Like I said, ever the coward.” She checked the chronometer on her wrist. Like everything about her, it, too, was a throwback. Natural and unenhanced.

Loretta didn’t have her normal calm. This morning she looked ragged, as if just being here and keeping herself together took a monumental effort. She stood suddenly in a swirl of clean, white cloth and moved around to my side of the desk. She sat on it, facing me, then leaned down and reached out one of her perfect hands. It stretched out to brush my cheek, and I knew what she wanted. Well, I knew what her goal was, anyway. The wants and desires of a woman are never fully known to any but themselves.

Before her fingers could touch me, I pushed back in my chair, rolling just out of her reach.

I don’t know why I moved. Part of me wanted nothing more than to take this angel in my arms and make her mine. But something deeper took hold of me. Could a synth have intuition?

A small smile graced her lips, but instead of thrilling me, a chill wormed its way down my spine. She slid off the desk and walked to the door. “I’ll leave you to your work. Please do call me if you find my husband. I’m afraid I have an appointment I can’t miss.”

Then she was gone.

What the hell just happened?

I sat there for a long time, processing the conversation. I played it back dozens of times before a few of her words sank in.

Did you watch the videos?

She hadn’t given me the surveillance. She didn’t know I had the surveillance.

I called Jorett first, but he didn’t answer, so I called Takamaki.

“Hey there, Sevens,” she said. I heard the genuine smile in her voice, completely different from the manufactured one Loretta wore for me. “It’s a bit early for that drink.”

What? Oh. “I’m gonna need a raincheck on that. I tried calling Jorett, but he didn’t answer.”

“We’re at a crime scene. Looks like another murder. I think he was gonna call you after he finished his walkthrough. Looks like your guy Aldo Starr struck again early this morning.”

No. No, he hadn’t. “Blonde again? All the enhancements cut from the body? Posed?”

“Three for three. Your boy’s got a type.”

He certainly does, I thought. They looked like his wife, but with a few upgrades. “I’m gonna need a favor.”

“It’ll cost you.”

“Oh?”

“You’re getting that drink with me, one way or the other.”

Any other day I would have smiled. I played along. “I’ll happily pay that fee.”

“Good. What do you need?”

“Loretta Starr’s call and message logs for the last week. And I need live access to track her.”

“What’s going on, Sevens? You think Aldo is gonna take her out next?”

“No,” I answered. “I don’t think he’s killed anyone. Loretta called him a coward, and he was cheating on her. I’ve got a hunch, and a real bad feeling.”

Maria didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “You think it’s her.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“The logs are on their way to you. I’ll get Jorett’s signature on the approval later. Hold on, I’m pulling Ms. Starr’s location.” After a few seconds, she said, “I’ve got nothing. She’s turned it off somehow. She shouldn’t be able to.”

“Either she has the help of someone who can hack feeds and trackers, or she’s got skills we don’t know about. Have we even done a personnel make-up on her?”

“She hasn’t been considered a suspect. We don’t have the people to do full make-ups on everyone associated with a case like this one. With video of Aldo leaving the scene, literally red-handed, RLPD skipped any investigation and issued the warrant for Aldo.”

“I know, I know. This isn’t on you.” I ran a hand through my hair, trying to get my systems to work a little faster. “Where was she last before her comm tracker went dead?”

“Looks like…well, your place.” She sounded just the tiniest bit bothered. “Then she walks north on Perdition Avenue for several blocks, crossing Nocturnal. After that, the tracker goes dead.”

“All right. Give me a second to look at the logs.” I didn’t bother displaying them. All of my internal systems were already checking and cross-referencing them. Several matched up for around the same time I’d called Loretta this morning. “Is your new vic a woman by the name of Quince Inige?”

“How’d you know?”

“Looks like Loretta set up a meet with her right around the time of death.”

“I’ve got a call here right around the same time to an unregistered comm from Inige’s,” Maria said. “You think the burner is her husband’s?”

“Probably.” Loretta had been looking at her watch while in my office. She said she had an appointment. “I think she’d about to send her husband another message. Give me a sec.” My systems flagged a series of similar messages, and an address. “I’m heading to 43003 Azure Lane. I think she’s there for a woman named Mahna Chellun. Get there as soon as you can.”

I ended the call, grabbed a pistol from a desk drawer, and sprinted from my office out into the fog-filled streets. Loretta had disabled her tracker, but hadn’t hidden the details of her communications. This was all a game to her. I didn’t have all the details, but I could guess. Loretta was modification-free, but Aldo wanted her to get some. Or maybe he just wanted something a little extra on the side, but still wanted her to be close to his wife’s appearance.

From there, revenge was the name of her game.

Loretta knew about the flings. The obsession. So, she chose to send her husband a message: frame him for the murders of his mistresses while also making a presentation and a spectacle of their corpses. A horror show for an audience of one. Her twisted logic made sense to me.

Take me as I am, her display said.

See their lies, she wrote with their blood and bodies.

My sprint propelled me forward, tearing through the mist like it was paper. People moved—no, they fled—as I approached. The key to survival in a place where everything and everyone wants to kill you is to keep your head down, looking up only enough to make sure you haven’t accidentally put yourself in harm’s way.

I crossed Nocturnal, and a few blocks later, turned right on Azure. The building of Aldo’s next mistress—and home of Loretta’s next victim—rose out of the gloom just ahead. As I ran for the door to the building, a hint of movement from a nearby alley pulled me to a stop.

I drew my pistol and approached the dark gap between buildings. My pistol wasn’t anything special: a typical Harbinger MkIII energy-based blaster. Not nearly as lethal as the old slug-thrower I knew Loretta had strapped to her thigh, but it would do just fine. I hoped. Maybe I could get everyone through this with no more blood on the thirsty alleyway ground.

Even as I thought it, I knew the foolish hope for what it was.

“Ah, Mr. Adam Sevens. Here, finally, for the end of my show. Finally.” Loretta’s voice drifted my way, carried on tendrils of fog. Where once her voice spoke of soft promises, it now only promised death. “I left you every clue I could without being obvious.”

“You didn’t need me to find your husband.”

“No.”

“Why involve me?” I walked deeper into the alley. The chances of her being alone were slim, bordering on nonexistent.

“I wasn’t going to,” she answered. The voice came from ahead and to my left. “I wanted the RLPD, but they pawned me off. Just like my cowardly husband. You seemed willing to be a player in my game. But…well…let’s just say I ran low on patience, and now I want the game to end. Or maybe…maybe I hoped…” She trailed off.

“Where’s Aldo?”

She chuckled, low and sultry, but with menace—and madness. “Oh, he’s here. He needs to see the last of his mistresses in their true skin.”

“You have Mahna with you, too?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Just another whore. Another of Aldo’s desired facsimiles of me.” Her voice lost all its smoky pretense, and filled with crazed venom. “But what does he know, whore? Could he still love you once I’ve had my way? I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I don’t think he’ll be in any state to love anything ever again after today.” What did she mean by that? Would Aldo be her next stop?

The sounds of muffled weeping reached me. I switched my eyes to infrared to check for heat signatures, but received an internal error message informing me the walls of the building were made of a material that threw off the scanning for heat signatures.

“We’re in a bit of bind here, Loretta,” I said, take a few more steps in the direction I thought her voice had come from. “This will be pretty hard to get you out of, but I’m willing to talk it through. Is there anything I can do? Maybe get Aldo to come here so you can work it out?”

“Oh, Mr. Sevens.” Her low voice had a new note of dark mirth and sadness. “He’s already here.”

On cue, my foot bumped into a heavy form. When I looked down, the corpse of Aldo Starr resolved in the mist. Eyes replaced with bulletholes. Loretta had the right of it. Aldo would never enjoy anything in this life ever again. Maybe not in the next, either, though I could hardly judge. I’d been told often enough synths like me had no souls, electric or spiritual.

“Loretta,” I said, “you’ve taken this too far.” I spotted a slight shadow in the fog. Perhaps Loretta. I stepped over Aldo’s corpse in that direction.

“Maybe,” she said, voice wistful. Gone was the false bravado and allure. “I didn’t want any of this, Mr. Sevens. I didn’t want any modifications. But…but he kept pushing. Maybe had I…maybe…”

“Maybe,” I echoed. “But we can’t deal in maybes, Loretta. Only in what actually has happened.”

“What…what has actually happened, Mr. Sevens?” She sounded so confused, broken by her own game.

“Three dead. I don’t want the fourth to be Mahna. Aldo can’t see any punishment you levy on her. And she may not have had a choice. That first girl? Salladone? She was forced by the company she worked for.”

“A choice?”

The vague shadow grew more solid. A head? The crooked angle of an arm holding something? I judged the likelihood of Loretta holding a gun to the head of her hostage at just over seventy percent.

“You’ve gone too far, Loretta.” I took another step closer. The edges of the shadow solidified somewhat. Just a little closer. I still held to the hope I could take her down without any more death in this alley. The hope fought against the odds my internal systems calculated, and I raised my pistol to a high-ready position. Droplets of rain once again began their decent to these hungry gutters. “You said you wanted me in your game. I’m here. Just me. If you put the gun down and let the girl go, it will go a long way to helping you.” A lie. Three bodies meant she’d never see the light of day again. Depending on the judge, and the opinions of the corporations who’d bought that judge, Loretta would be executed. That was just the way it went in this city.

Loretta cried, laughed, wept, then laughed again. When I heard her final laugh, I knew more blood would wet the already drunk ground.

“It’s too late for me now,” she said. “Too late for everyone. For this city. This world. Yes…for me.” Loretta’s words weren’t for me anymore. Maybe they were for herself as she spoke to her grief and betrayal. Maybe they were for that dead, cheating husband whose brains decorated the alley floor.

Then her arm dropped.

“Mr. Sevens, can you take me home?”

I held out a hand into the fog, silently willing her to take it, too scared a spoken work would shatter her last tenuous grip on her obviously slipping sanity. The real origins of all this violence began there, and I just needed her to take my hand to make sure she could tell me that story. Her hand materialized in the gauzy air, reaching for me.

From above came blue and red blinking lights, staggeringly bright in the gloom and mist of the alley. A spotlight stabbed down, blinding my artificial eyes as if reflected in the fog.

An RLPD observation drone descended into the alley, its rotors causing the fog to swirl around me, the hostage, and Loretta. When I opened my eyes, Loretta stood as an angel in a white dress, illuminated from the heavens above. The wind from the drone whipped up her pure white dress around her.

She hadn’t been holding the girl, Mahna, hostage. Aldo’s last mistress huddled against the alley wall, head buried in her hands, weeping uncontrollably. Unharmed.

The only person Loretta had pointed her old revolver at was herself.

And in that moment between electrical pulses in my synthetic heart, I knew Loretta hadn’t ever really planned on leaving this alley. Somehow I’d reached her, and had almost talked her out of the ending to her game.

Almost.

In the swirling mist, her eyes dropped to meet my own. The world slowed, and her gaze spoke to me for hours—a lifetime—within that final moment. It spoke of regret. Of betrayal. Of sorrow. Most of all, her eyes told me how sorry they were for involving me. And how, in a city with even the shred of hope Redlight City lacked, maybe things could have been different.

The moment ended.

Loretta, a tiny, sad smile on her perfect lips, raised the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. She collapsed to the alley floor, an angel with her wings forever cut.

Later that night, I had that drink with Maria Takamaki. I didn’t say much, and neither did she. Jorett didn’t join us. He felt responsible for causing Loretta Starr to take her own life. I didn’t blame him.

Maria put down her drink and reached out to grip my hand for a moment.

“Ms. Starr had a tumor in her brain, and cancer spreading all through her body. That was why her husband wanted her to get a series of enhancements.”

“She didn’t look sick,” I said. “It wasn’t until the end that I could see something had broken in her mind. She’d just hidden it from me. Let me guess. Aldo couldn’t handle Loretta’s unwillingness to get the enhancements?”

Maria slowly nodded. “She didn’t believe in it. Some old vestiges of religion.”

“So Aldo spirals and moves on to have affairs with women who look somewhat like his wife, but who consented to enhancements.” I laughed, but the sound was empty of any humor. “Sometimes I hate this city, Maria.”

“Me, too.” She squeezed my hand again, and stood. “I’ve got to get back. A ton of paperwork. Want me to come by tomorrow night? We can get some dinner?”

I smiled, and it wasn’t much of an effort. A silver lining in all this hopelessness. “Sounds good.”

She leaned down, kissed my forehead, then disappeared into the crowds of passersby, none of which knew or cared about the likes of Loretta Starr.

I raised my eyes to the sky. The clouds from earlier had vanished, and the sun’s light no longer graced the city with its presence or warmth. Even with the clouds gone, I saw nothing above in the sky.

The heavens were devoid of hope for us trapped on the ground.

Once again, I realized there were no stars in Redlight City.

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Call To Action

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Table of Contents

- Introduction
- 1. Belle
- 2. Down Among the Dead Men
- 3. Castle Doctrine
- 4. Top Dog
- 5. Angels and Red Shirts
- 6. Shadows and Silk
- 7. Last Call
- 8. No Stars in Redlight City
- Also From Raconteur Press
- Call To Action