Preying for keeps

17

"It's me," Skater said when Archangel answered the telecom at the safe house. "I've got a name I want to run by you. Ridge Maddock. Small-time fixer. He was connected with Larisa, and maybe to the accounts at the Montgomery doss."

"Maybe you should stop pushing for a little while," Archangel said. "Get some distance on things."

The comment confused Skater. He figured she was concerned he'd blow their cover arid somehow lead the people who were hunting them back to the team. Bui for a moment, it sounded like she was concerned about him, too. "I'm okay. Duran's here to make sure I don't hose up too bad."

She didn't say anything.

"Have you found out anything about the diplomatic plates?" he asked. He didn't really expect anything, but asking was a way of ending the tense silence. Skater had noticed the official vehicles when viewing the newscast around the warehouse, and it seemed worth looking into.

"No." Her voice was cool, distant, like all this had nothing to do with her. "There's a lot of IC around those Files, and cracking anything political runs the risk of getting my brain fried to a crisp."

"Be careful in there."

"Unlike you, I know when to stop, no matier how responsible I feel." The connection broke.

Puzzled and more than a little irritated over the conversation even though he didn't know why. Skater broke the connection and walked back to the Eurowind. "She's running Maddock."

Duran nodded, glanced quickly in the rearview mirrors, and screeched into traffic. "Something wrong?"

"Nothing I know of," Skater replied as he watched the street around them. A Lone Star cruiser passed them, going the other way fast enough that he knew the blue crew had a definite destination in mind. "We're not any deeper in drek than we were before, but Archangel sounded bent about something."

Duran handled the car easily, sweeping around the comer of Vine Street and heading north. "What'd she say?"

Skater told him.

"It's hard for her," Duran said when he finished.

"What?"

“Ties."

"Between us?"

"Between her and anybody," the ork answered. "I don't know much about Archangel, including her real name, even though I've known her longer than you. What I do know, though, is that I've never seen her with a friend, or ever mention having one."

It had been Archangel who'd brought Duran in after working with Skater off and off for three or four months. Elvis was already working with Skater, and he'd brought in Wheeler. Skater had recruited Cullen Trey from a number of possibilities when it became obvious they needed a mage with combat skills. Duran had suggested Shiva to round out the team with chromed muscle.

"Whatever happened to her along the way to getting here," Duran continued, "she doesn't let anyone next to her."

"I've noticed," Skater said.

"Right now," die ork said, "she's scared. She's let herself get closer to us than she planned." He paused. "I think maybe all of us have. Otherwise, we'd have split when we said we were going to. It was the best course of action at first glance."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I was checking you out," Duran said. "We discussed that. Elvis had already said he wasn't turning his back on you."

"I didn't know that."

"Wheeler stuck by you last night, too, when we were talking about divvying up the files. And Trey isn't the kind of guy to leave a chummer in the lurch if there's something he can do. And Archangel, well, she stuck for her own reasons."

Skater let the ork's words spin in his head, trying to get used to them. He remembered how alone he'd felt the previous night when the team had left him in the back room of the Bloody Rosebud of Phelia.

Duran stopped at a red light. "You put together a good team," he said, studying the rearview mirrors. "That's an achievement all by itself. If this had been some private action on your part and you'd gotten your hoop in the wringer all on your own, maybe none of us would have wanted to get mixed up in it. But it wasn't. You went into this thinking it was going to be a big score for all of us, and you got hosed for it."

"We all did," Skater pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's beginning to shape up like some of this was personal. Someone used you, and us along with you." The ork made a lane change, running a sedate ten kilometers over the posted speed limit. His fangs were edged ivory against his scarred cheeks. "A fragging lot of weight is hanging out there, waiting to come down on somebody. Even if we ran we'd probably get chased down and geeked one by one. Since we don't know, there's a safety in numbers. Could be whoever set this up figured the team would split up and be easier to get to. Most would have."

"I know."

"We run the shadows together," Duran said. "Doesn't make us bosom chummers, but we do have a responsibility to each other. A leader sets the standard on that, lack, and you've set a high one these past three years."

Skater started to disagree, feeling uncomfortable, but Duran cut him off.

"It's no bulldrek. When Archangel got me into that first piece of biz with you, I saw a punk kid standing where a man ought to have been. I'd worked with Archangel and couldn't believe she'd have the time of day for someone like you, much less consider following your lead on a run. I never intended to stay on, but in the end your smarts and your nerve sold me."

"I was surprised you stayed," Skater said, remembering the tension that had existed then.

"So was I. But the run came off just like you thought it would. And four runs later, it was still the same. Then, when Trey got zapped by that drone during the raid on the simporn blackmailing scam and you went back for him, I knew you were a guy who'd stick even when things got tough."

"No way I could have left him there."

"Sure you could have." Duran made the corner, beating out the yellow light at the intersection. "A lot of people would have. I've seen some do it. I respect how you handled it, and so do the others."

"That hasn't been the only close call," Skater pointed out. "Everyone on this team has covered somebody else's hoop when the chips were down."

Duran nodded. "Ain't none of us all good or all bad, but not everyone can do the biz together without rubbing each other raw. You kept some of us from each other's throats at different times and made the team work. Me and Shiva, we didn't exactly see eye to eye, but you kept us operational."

That was putting it mildly, Skater knew, but he didn't offer a comment.

"I couldn't ever see us getting social together," the ork said. "But the working relationship was good. Better than most I've been involved with. We live in the shadows, and life is just a run through the shadows, too. That's easy to forget sometimes. And when you're running through those shadows, it's good to know you've got someone you can trust watching your back door."

"You didn't sound so trusting last night," Skater said, looking at Duran.

The ork smiled, and the effect looked positively serrated. "You get pushy, kid."

"Yeah."

"That's what I meant about being a good leader. Why'd you say that?"

"So I'd know," Skater answered.

"And in order for you to know how I think?"

"You're going to have to know how you think," Skater said.

"Right. Squares me up with myself first. Takes the focus off whether I should trust you and puts it back where it belongs-on whether I should trust myself."

"Something like that."

"So where did you learn to think like that?"

"Inside my own skin. Lot of drek I had to sort out for myself. Best way I figured to do that was know for sure what was on my mind, how I felt about a person or a situation."

Duran shook his head. "You'd have made a hell of a first sergeant, kid. In answer to your questions, though, last night I was questioning your loyalty more than I was questioning whether I could trust you. Today, I decided."

Skater nodded. It was fair.

"Another thing"

"What?"

"That elf dancer you were involved with. How do you feel about her now?"

Skater was silent for a moment, trying to skull it through but coming up cross-slotted every time. "I don't know. Too much I found out that I didn't know, and too many questions left about things I thought I did know."

"How about I give you something to kick around in your head?"

Skater was hesitant. He'd always liked to do his own thinking, then he realized that Duran had probably been leading up to this the whole time. The ork was no slouch, either. "Yeah."

"You trusted this woman, maybe even loved her. On the surface, it looks like she fragged you over, looking for some kind of score to keep her own hoop from getting jammed."

Skater remained silent, distancing himself from the emotions that suddenly twisted up through him.

"I'm going to walk through it for you, and you can make of it what you want. I don't know much about your track record with the ladies, but I've seen you with Archangel, and you don't cross any lines. I see this woman, she loves you enough to try to save you when this Maddock comes along. She gets herself in deeper, becomes a surrogate mother because Maddock tells her that's what she's got to do. So she does, and loses everything: you, her job, her independence. That's why she was living in Bellevue. Right?"

Skater nodded. He remembered the doss in the Montgomery, painted by the flames. Not much had existed of the Larisa he'd known. Suddenly he realized it wasn't because she'd changed. It was because she hadn't lived there. A prisoner had.

"Maddock obviously had a lot invested in this piece of biz, whatever it was," Duran went on. "Larisa takes a good look around. Maddock has her by the short hairs, hosed any which way she goes. Maybe she gets mad at you during this time, but not enough to simply frag you over. Some slitches would. But you're good at reading people, right, so she didn't come across like that?"

"No," Skater said, and felt the certainty of that conviction sink into him. There'd been other women before Larisa, and their various betrayals hadn't surprised him.

"She's trapped, not knowing what to do. By this time she's been able to take a good look around. You haven't been breaking down the door trying to see her at the old doss, so she knows she can trust you to keep your word about staying away. Probably she knew that anyway. Only this time, it's working against her."

The image of Larisa's caramelized face filled Skater's mind and brought a pain that hurt deep and sharp.

"She takes a good look," the ork said. "She sees you, a shadowrunner. Can she save you? Can she get you to stay away from the action?"

Skater recalled the few arguments he'd had with Larisa. She'd wanted him to leave the shadows, even threatened to end it if he didn't. But she'd never been able to. Not until five months ago. "No," he said in a tight voice.

"No," Duran repeated with emphasis. "Because you're not moving from it. Hooked by the nuyen, the lifestyle, or the pump of the jazz running brings."

Thinking of all the Caribbean accounts that had been seized, Skater knew it wasn't any of those. He'd been hooked by the lure of security, of having enough to simply vanish one day. Larisa had always said that would never happen, because he'd never know when he had enough.

"Could be for awhile she ignored that," Duran said. "Then Maddock comes along with his blackmail scheme. She took the deal hoping to buy some time. Brynna told us that. Only time is all she's buying, and suddenly she realizes that's running out. But during this last five months, she gets to thinking maybe there is someone she can save."

"The baby."

Duran nodded. "That's what I think. So when she got her hands on the info about the Sapphire Seahawk, she calls you. If the biz goes down right, she has a way out for the baby, and possibly she's even thinking about herself now."

"Why not just call me?" Skater asked. "I could have gotten her away from there."

"And lose everything in doing it?" Duran shook his head. "There was no reason to believe you'd do it. She'd asked you before and you'd always said no. I think she probably had her own plans together, and was just waiting for financing. She could disappear. And if it came off right, you'd still be free to do whatever the hell you wanted to and she'd have earned her own way clear."

Examining the scenario. Skater tested it for any flaws. It fit with what he knew of Larisa. She'd been fiercely independent in her own right.

Duran was quiet for a time. "I think you had a hell of a woman on your hands for a time, and she loved you down deep where it counts. I think, too, that you knew it and it scared the drek out of you. So when you look at this thing, look past the surface."

"I have been. I just haven't been able to find anything else there."

"We'll talk to Maddock," the ork replied, "and see where that takes us. Once we get this Sapphire Seahawk biz squared away, you can find out who killed her and why." Duran glanced over at him. "Out of respect for the lady, I'd like to give you a hand with that." He stuck out a fist.

After only a moment's hesitation. Skater closed his fist and dropped it on the ork's, knowing that the offer wasn't meant lightly. He also knew neither the offer nor the acceptance came without a price. He was stepping way beyond the limits he'd imposed on his relationships with the team and it scared the hell out of him. "I'd appreciate it," he said, because the price was worth paying.

"Got him," Duran said.

Without moving too fast. Skater turned from the long bar and scanned the throbbing crowd that filled one of the huge glass dance floors of Dante's inferno. The pulsating lights and crisscrossing lasers were fragging up his low-light vision, and the thump of the shag metal blasting out of dozens of speakers made subdermals out of the question. The band's theme was the afterlife, but only a gruesome afterlife achieved through arcane means. Dressed as rotting corpses and writhing maggots, they occupied the third level stage.

Skater and Duran had been scoping out the lowest three of the nine dance floors-not including Hell. They'd paid six waitresses, two on each floor, to let them know when Ridge Maddock put in his appearance. Sophie, one of the cocktail servers working the second floor, came over to them. She was tall and shapely, her left cheek covered with a tattoo of a flaming angel.

"Maddock's here," she said. "Come with me and I'll point

Duran slotted her tipstick the balance of the finder's fee, then started following her. Skater fell into step behind them.

After exiting on the second floor, Skater and Duran separated but stayed within sight of each other as they wound their way through the knots of dancers and party-goers in the waitress's wake. Dante's Inferno was one of the more popular nightclubs in the sprawl, and-if you could get in-it was usually standing room only, even at nine p.m.

Ridge Maddock had rated a small table by himself in the corner of an L-shaped plant box boasting a twisting jungle of bioengineered plants and flowers. Neon-pseudo-jewels glittered among the growth.

He was tall, standing over two meters in height. His broad shoulders and the cut of his jacket hid most of his paunch. The ponytail he wore was severely pulled back, and a crimson and black dragon was etched into pale skin, climbing from under his left ear, curling around his cheek, with its head and front legs up over his eyebrow. Cut green gems glinted in the lobes of both ears.

"He's heeled," Skater said, noting the bulge under Maddock's right arm. "Left-handed."

"I see it," Duran answered. "You see anyone with him?"

Skater scanned the crowd. "Company's coming," he said, then quietly pointed out the woman approaching Maddock.

She was elven, but of an oriental caste. Her blushed skin was flawless, and a lot of it showed. The chartreuse gown she wore had long sleeves, but ended well above mid-thigh.

"Pleasure," Duran asked, "or biz?"

Without preamble, the woman sat down at Maddock's table. She crossed her legs, exposing a healthy expanse of thigh that was visible to the fixer where he sat. He didn't bother trying to feign disinterest in the move. She shook out a long thin brown cigarette and he lit it for her, making small talk till her drink arrived. Then she thanked Maddock and drank without bashfulness.

"Business," Skater replied. "Slime-sucking sleaze like Maddock aren't the kind a woman like that's going to go for."

Duran's grin was without humor. "Kid, you don't know what that slitch is like."

"I'm operating out of an impaired perception," Skater said. "I don't like this guy."

"Understandable, but not very professional." Duran halted near the bar, standing close enough to the mob of people waiting to order drinks that it looked like they were in line. "The question now is, do we step in or wait?"

Skater watched the fixer talking smoothly to the woman, as if he held every ace in the deck. He wondered if Larisa had met Maddock here like this a year ago and been forced to listen to the deal he was offering.

Duran had a small Ares Squirt pistol loaded with a DMSO gamma-scopolamine sedative gel that was extremely quick-acting and would put Maddock out between heartbeats. There was very little talk planned.

Skater took the lead, thinking if Maddock did know him it would distract his attention until Duran could make his move.

Instead, the woman got up from the table and waited for Maddock to take her arm.

Changing directions at once, Skater cut away from the bulk of the crowd. A glance showed him Duran was at his heels.

"Trouble," the ork growled.

Skater had already spotted the three Japanese men who'd altered their course and were closing on Maddock and the woman. They wore black Vashon Island suits and dark sunglasses despite the gloom that filled the Inferno. A smile was on the leader's face.

"Maddock," the leader of the trio called out in a good-natured voice. His right hand was concealed under his jacket.

The fixer came around, and the smile he'd been showing off to the woman melted quickly from his face. "What do you want?"

"My oyabun would like a few moments of your time." The lead Japanese stopped a few meters from Maddock with his hand still out of sight under his jacket. The other two men dropped into flanking positions.

The elven woman beside Maddock moved with the fluid grace of someone who either had extraordinary reflexes or was chipped to the teeth. She stepped behind the fixer and grabbed him by the collar as the doors to the maglev opened with a ping.

"Drek," Duran said softly hut with genuine feeling.

Skater fisted the Predator and slipped it free, holding it out of sight by his leg.

"Get out of the slotting cage," the woman ordered the passengers inside the maglev. She motioned with the gun and they departed with alacrity. Maddock tried to jerk away, but the woman jammed the muzzle of her Tiffani Self-Defender against his temple. "Not so fast, nitbrain. You and I are out of here." She yanked him back into the maglev cage.

The crowd around the maglev suddenly dropped back and pushed their way out onto the dance floor. There were a few screams from nearby women who suddenly realized they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Taking a step forward, sensing the violence about to be unleashed. Skater watched the yak leader make his move.

In the blink of an eye, the yakuza pulled out a Scorpion machine pistol. He barked orders to his two companions as he raked a blistering line of fire across the wall only a few meters from the maglev doors.

Skater pointed his weapon at the leader's knee. Whether the knee was chromed or covered by Kevlar-lined pants, the bullet wound would deliver enough force to knock the man off his feet. He wanted Maddock alive even if the yaks didn't.

Evidently the elven woman did as well, because she emptied all four shots from the Self-Defender into the yak's face even as Skater's bullet caught the dead man in the knee and hammered him off-balance.

The remaining two yakuza turned to face Skater and Duran as the maglev doors closed and the Inferno's sec-teams started vectoring in on them.