Preying for keeps

13

Skater peered through the peephole and found himself staring out at Elvis.

The troll was nonchalant, standing patiently at the door as if he had all day, not looking around to see if anyone was watching him. He carried a green and white-striped shopping bag in one huge-knuckled hand.

Skater dropped the Predator to his side and opened the door. He announced the troll to Duran, who sat watching the news round-up on the trideo, a pistol sitting on the armrest of his chair.

"Present for you," Elvis rumbled as he stepped into the room. He held the bag out for Skater. "I knew you'd probably still be drekking around in those Lone Star togs."

Skater opened the bag. Inside were several sets of clothing, denim jeans interwoven with Kevlar, a burgundy work shin, a turquoise Seattle Mariners sweatshirt if he wanted to dress down even more, and ultra-thin black driving gloves. At the bottom of the bag was a brown bomber-style jacket. Last but not least were a pair of reinforced Doc Martins that laced up to the knee.

"Clothes make the man," Elvis said. "I thought maybe you'd feel more like yourself dressed right."

"Thanks," Skater said.

"This place always come with a geeked dwarf?" Elvis asked casually as he scanned the corpse in the center of the room.

"Duran threw him in for no extra charge," Skater said. He headed toward the small bedroom in the back.

"Well," the troll said, "I can throw him out for about the same." He fisted the corpse's shirt and lifted it from the floor. "You got a bathroom around here?"

Duran pointed.

"Probabiy a safe place to stash him. I don't figure anybody's gonna want to go in there after taking a look at this cheesebox anyway." The troll lumbered off with the dwarf in one hand.

In the bedroom. Skater stripped off the Lone Star one-piece and threw it on the floor. He wished he could shower, shave, sink into feeling a little more human. But there wasn’t time.

He pulled on the jeans, then the Chambray work shirt, tucking the tails in. He was surprised at the fit. "Hey, Elvis, you did good with the sizes," Skater called through the door as he surveyed his reflection in the full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door. The troll was right; he felt better already.

"He had some help," a cool feminine voice said.

Skater turned and saw Archangel standing next to the door.

She was dressed in a caramel-colored skirt that hugged her thighs, a white blouse with a tiger's-eye studded collar chain, and a short-waisted blazer that matched the skirt. Bronze-lensed sunglasses covered her eyes, and her hair was pulled back in a French braid. "You look much more like yourself."

"How long have you been there?" Skater asked.

A wintry smile flickered at her lips. "Long enough to see the difference."

"And the others? When are they coming?"

'They're already here."

"Oh." Skater slipped the Predator into the waistband of his jeans, then walked back into the living room.

Duran was still in the easy chair. Elvis was sharing the sofa with Cullen Trey, who was deftly using a pair of chopsticks to work his way through a carton of Chinese take-out from Lee Chee Garden. The mage nodded a hello, as elegantly dressed as ever. His cloak was spread out beneath him so his clothing wouldn't touch the sofa.

Wheeler Iron-Nerve was carrying two chairs in from the kitchen. He placed one for Archangel, then looked at Skater. "Chair?"

Skater shook his head. He liked to move around while he talked, and he had a lot to say. He started with Larisa, then let them have it all.

"She tipped you to the Sapphire Seahawk," Elvis said, "and you thought you could trust her, but who gave her the scan?" "She never realty told me, just kept the whole thing kind

"Then why trust her?"

"I did some legwork of my own before taking the run to Archangel. It looked good." Skater let his eyes travel over all their faces. "We all agreed on that."

"She was a dancer," Trey said. "She could have gotten the scan from anywhere."

"That freighter was from Tir Tairngire," Duran said. "They're pretty fragging tight-lipped about anything they do. Hard to believe somebody connected with that ship would have been in SybreSpace bragging to some joygirl."

A spark of anger ignited in Skater, bringing him around to face the ork.

"Jack," Archangel interrupted softly. "Duran didn't mean anything. He's just saying how someone else might see it."

Taking in a tight, deep breath, Skater held it for just a moment, not meeting anyone's eyes, then releasing. "The information Larisa gave me was about as much as we ever get from any corporate Mr. Johnson. If you take out the bald faced lies, the layers of bulldrek they shovel at us, and the info they think is on the level, we had about as much on the freighter as for any other run we've ever pulled. The manifests weren't on the level. Archangel found that out. Not much else, granted."

"But even the way those files were protected in the freighter's system told us it was a prize worth going after," Archangel said.

"Okay," Duran said, "we agreed we had a target. What about Larisa's info? Where did it come from?"

"She was looking for frag-you money," Skater said with a conviction he suddenly felt. "She got hold of some information she knew I could use-she knew what I did even if she didn't know who I did it with-and she thought she could cut herself in for a percentage."

"You gave it to her," Trey said.

Skater nodded. "Until this, I never had a reason not to trust her."

"She was holding out on you, though," Duran said.

Skater turned the possibility around in his mind. He didn't like it, but it felt right. Larisa had been scared at the end; he knew that as well as he knew his own heart was still beating. "She was frightened," he said softly. Then repeated the conjecture with more conviction.

"But she was obviously doing okay," Elvis said. "That Bellevue doss didn't come cheap."

Skater glanced at Archangel. "Have you checked out her numbers?" He was sure Duran would have asked Archangel to chip whatever she could about Larisa when he'd called the team in.

Archangel nodded. "Prelim's done. Some things I'm still chasing. Considering her income from four months ago, she was living well past her means."

"Can you trace the rent transfers?"

"I can try."

"Do it." Skater put his cup on the low table in front of the sofa and returned to the kitchen long enough to pick up packets of salt, pepper, ketchup, and sugar. Archibald had evidently frequented McHugh's. because they all bore the fast-food restaurant's logo. "Any luck with the files we boosted from the Sapphire Seakawk?'

"No. I've run some home-grown edit utilities with a decrypt cocktail to crash any scramble IC, and an evaluate program as an after-dinner mint. If I can crack any of the files, I may be able to find some bits that will give us more to work with. But I'm certain it's not all there."

Skater placed the salt packet on the low table. "Makes you wonder if it was all there to begin with."

Duran leaned forward. "What are you saying?"

Skater pointed to the red and white salt packet. "O.K., just to simplify things. Let's say we're the salt." He placed the black and gray pepper packet a few centimeters above the salt. "This represents the elves-Tir Taimgire-and their interest in recovering the files we stole."

"Damage control?" Elvis asked.

"On the surface, I think so. The people who broke out of Lone Star seemed to be more interested in getting those files back than anything else."

''Means they're worth something to someone," Trey said. "Which, incidentally, could work in our favor."

"If we live to collect," Wheeler put in-

"True, chummer, but let's look at this optimistically." Trey shifted, then leaned forward' and tapped the pepper packet. "What if we tried selling the files back to the elves? Cut out the middle man?"

"If it comes to that," Skater said, "maybe we will. The downside is they'll find out fragging quick that we don't have all the files. In which case they're going think we're either trying to stiff them, or that we didn't have them to begin with, or that we're just trying to get them off our backs to make another deal."

"Either way," Elvis said, "we stand a good chance of getting our hoops flushed down the tubes so they can bury this."

"It also keeps us from tracking down whoever set us up to begin with." Skater looked around the table as he placed the ketchup packet below the salt. "Personally, I want a shot at whoever it was. They killed Larisa and. by proxy, they killed Shiva. Someone's got to pay."

"I agree," Duran stated. "The elf and troll who tried to scrag Skater outside SybreSpace, they're connected somewhere. Probably to whoever was pulling your girl's strings."

"Dion and Shayx," Skater said. 'They might be working for a guy named Synclair Tone. He and Dion came up out of the Barrens together. A chummer's trying to find out more for me right now." If Kestrel would only return his call.

"I can make some discreet inquiries into Tone's affiliations." Trey said. "Some of my own contacts wouldn't mind trading info for some handy little trinkets I could whip up for them."

"Do that." Skater put the pink sugar envelope down, equidistant from the pepper and ketchup. "This here's the yakuza. I'm not sure where they fit in yet, but we can't ignore them."

"Not with them hunting us," Wheeler said.

"Even if we were able to cut a deal with the Tir Taimgire folks," Skater said, "the yaks just might think we kept a copy of the files as a bargaining chip for some later opportunity. There's a good possibility they'll keep coming at us unless we get certain closure on this."

"I'll look into the yak angle," Elvis said.

Skater nodded. "Outside of those three groups, we're also up against the best Lone Star has to offer, as well as every street hustler who figures on chiseling a piece of our butts." He stood and let his eyes travel over the faces of the others. "Could be our best bet is to do a quick fade and forget we ever heard of Seattle."

"Me," Duran said, "I never liked running from a fight, and I absolutely hate being set up."

"As for myself," Trey said, "I've become accustomed to a certain lifestyle in this town, and that lifestyle has been augmented by our various forays. To venture from here would mean losing that."

Wheeler and Elvis echoed the sentiments with reasons of their own.

"I'm in," Archangel stated simply.

Skater guessed that whatever past she was hiding might not be quite so easily lost if she had to pull up stakes and go elsewhere. "Archangel will do some fishing in the Matrix for any card we might play, while Trey checks out Synclair Tone and Elvis does the same for the yaks. We need an ops base, plus a bolthole in case things turn nasty."

"This place?" Wheeler obviously didn't like the idea.

"For the moment," Duran said, "this is as good as it gets."

'I'll see what I can do," Wheeler said. "You ask me, though, this is the end of the road even for losers."

"And transport," Skater said.

"What kind?"

"Ground and air. Keep it ready to jump." Skater turned away and walked to the kitchen. He took the stuffed bear from the table and brought it back to Trey. "I need to know about this."

The mage took the stuffed animal, absently wiping at the soot stains. "You serious?"

"Yeah." Even though his mind was racing, planning and counter-planning, shooting him onto an adrenaline edge. Skater felt the cold fear that came from touching the bear.

"Whose was it?" Trey asked.

"That's part of what I need to know." Skater told him about finding the stuffed animal in Larisa's apartment.

"You think it belonged to the child?" Trey asked.

"If there was one," Skater said. "If it was hers."

"Was it yours?"

The question hung out there, naked and blunt. "I don't know," Skater replied. "I don't think so. Larisa would have told me."

Trey stood up, shaking the wrinkles from his cloak. "I'll need some things. Paper. Something to mark with. I'll be back." He laid the stuffed bear on the table and walked into the kitchen.

Skater looked over at Archangel. "There may be hospital records on the birth."

"I'll check."

"And if the father is named-"

"I'll let you know." Her face never changed expression.

"What are you going to be doing all this time?" Wheeler asked.

"Looking through Larisa's life. Trying to figure out as many of the things she didn't tell me as I can." Skater looked at the ork. "You'll cover me because I can't grow eyes in the back of my head. If she was lying to me, her friends will try it too. I can't keep my eyes on them and watch to see I don't get my hoop fragged at the same time."

Duran nodded.

Returning from the other room. Trey pulled the bird-embroidered rug from the plascrete floor, then sat with his legs crossed. He ripped up a McHugh's paper bag till he had a flat surface to lay on the floor. After putting the stuffed bear in the center of it, he used a green pen advertising a bank service to mark sygils on the paper at six different positions around the stuffed animal.

"You've never seen this child?" Trey asked.

"No." Skater shook his head.

"A shame. That might have helped. Still, I'll see what I can do." The mage closed his eyes, his arms relaxed on his thighs. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and looked over at Skater. "There was something. Maybe. It moved so quickly that I'm not sure. The spell would work better if I knew the child's name. Give me something of yours."

Skater thought a minute, then handed Trey the Predator.

Trey put it into the circle, then inscribed a new sygil over three pre-existing symbols. Then he closed his eyes again. Minutes passed. Perspiration dewed across Trey's broad forehead. This time his shirt was drenched and he slumped after coming out of his astral search.

"The child's alive," Trey said in a frayed voice. "But she's either very far away, or is being warded by someone. If I had a more secure connect, I'd be able to tell." He pushed himself to his feet. "As to whether she's your daughter. Jack, I can't honestly say. I was able to reach her, but I don't know if it's because she's yours, or because of your connection with her mother."

"Thanks for trying."

Trey bowed his head. "Of course."

Skater returned to the bedroom and gathered the synth-leather bomber jacket. He slid into it on his way back out, adjusting the Predator so it couldn't be seen. "You ready?" he asked Duran.

"Yeah." The ork stood up, cracked the knuckles of his gnarled hands, and went to the door.

Skater pulled on the driving gloves Elvis had brought him, not totally surprised to find that the fingers and palm edges were lined with macroplast armor, turning them into a not-too-modest set of dusters. He went out the door, driven by a need for vengeance that would have shamed a fallen angel. Duran followed.

It wasn't about profit anymore. Not all of it.