Preying for keeps

33

Skater looked up from Archangel's display as Duran led Ariadne Silverstaff into the living room of the suite serving as their safe house. Before returning here, Archangel had checked her over and found two tracking devices. One that the woman must have activated at the time of the attack, and the other set for an eight-hour delay if she didn't use a frequency modulator attached to her portacom. Both had been removed.

Standing, Skater waved to a chair in the circle that had formed around Archangel's work area. "Please. Have a seat."

Ariadne kept herself distant. Her arms were folded tightly over her breasts. She appeared hesitant, not wanting to give in so easily. More than two hours had passed since they'd gotten her, and the trideo stations were full of the news. "My husband," she said in a strong voice that carried a sense of brittleness with it, "I'm sure he will be glad to pay any reasonable ransom."

"You're not being held for ransom," Skater said. "Actually, we may be able to help you. It seems you and your husband have been blackmailed enough lately."

Color drained from her face slightly, but she didn't turn away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about that baby in the other room." Skater returned her gaze full measure.

"My daughter? I don't understand."

"She's not your daughter," Skater said firmly. "That's the whole point." He let that sink in, watching as the woman drew into herself. Anger coiled restlessly inside him when he wondered how much Ariadne Silverstaff knew about Larisa's death.

He'd held the baby briefly while Archangel had been getting her squared away, purchasing diapers, milk, and other things. Surprisingly, it was Elvis, so huge next to Emma that she could almost lie in one big hand, who seemed to calm and soothe her most.

"I know the whole story about McKenzie setting it all up… everything," Skater said. "But I wonder how much you know, like where the baby came from?"

"McKenzie told us he'd found a suitable surrogate mother. It was a business arrangement. No blackmail was involved." Ariadne's words came faster now, and with relief evident in them. "This whole thing, there was so much pressure on us, it was so hard to know what to do, who to trust, where to begin even."

"There was no surrogate mother," Skater said. "McKenzie coerced a young woman into having that baby for you and your husband. Once the baby was born, the mother became a liability so he had her killed, presumably to keep her from telling anyone about it."

She looked at him with knowing eyes. "You knew her."

Skater nodded.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I was hoping talking to you might give me some ideas."

"My husband didn't know about the mother getting killed either," Ariadne said. "He could never have kept something like that from me."

Skater leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, making everything more conspiratorial now. Ariadne Silverstaff was going to be looking for a way out, and if his plan was going to work, she had to buy into the one he was going to offer. "I believe you, but I want Conrad McKenzie to pay for what he's done," he stated.

"He's a very powerful man," she said, "that's why Tavis went to him in the first place. We needed help getting NuGene into Seattle, and it looked like nothing could be done in this city without some kind of help from people like McKenzie. We knew that for a price McKenzie's influence could help protect NuGene's interests once we were established here. My husband linked up with him about a year ago.”

Skater gave a short, bitter laugh. "The corps and the criminals may keep their books differently, but seems like they often have the same interests. And always with an eye on the same bottom line."

A look of desperation entered Ariadne's eyes. "NuGene has been in serious trouble ever since Seattle replaced Portland as the main port for goods going in and out of the Tir. Tavis's father had worked so hard to build NuGene into something, but then the Council of Princes took it all away from him. He'd sunk a lot of money into a new product, and suddenly got the market pulled out from under him. And he wasn't the only one. Hundreds went bankrupt. Portland was a boom town in those days, but that changed almost overnight. NuGene was among those who got hit hardest. It's taken years, but it looked like we'd finally found a way out." Skater listened to the emotion behind the words, sensing that he was getting the truth.

"By the time Torin died, some very promising research had already begun on a promising new organic replacement tissue. The research continued after his death, though the financial strain was tremendous. Last year we were finally ready to go into production, but access to the market was virtually blocked. Tavis's only chance to save NuGene and his family was to get as many Portland backers as he could, promising to set up a branch of NuGene in Seattle. Tavis himself underwent a transplant treatment on his injured knee, using our new tissue. It worked wonderfully, but he was waiting until his position in Seattle was established before announcing it. Things seemed to be going fine until the raid on the Sapphire Seahawk. Tavis had no choice but to go public with the stock in hopes of making enough profit that he could buy it all back at a later date, or at least maintain a controlling interest. We had to go into production immediately before someone else beat us to it. But the cost overruns on moving so fast have been incredible."

“The company is vulnerable," Archangel said.

With the amount of stock that had surfaced in the various exchanges. Skater figured it would be two or three years before NuGene made it back into the black. Assuming the company survived.

"Yes," Ariadne admitted. "When the media picked up the rumor that someone had stolen the secret of NuGene's important new discovery, the stocks plummeted. We had to stop releasing it because we couldn't afford to cover the paper once people started to panic and sell. We'd never be able to buy it all back."

"Your husband told you copies of the files were stolen?" Duran asked.

"Yes. He tells me everything. That's why I'm so sure he didn't know anything about the baby's mother being murdered."

Skater stood up, pacing, working it through. Synclair Tone was in another room, kept drugged and cuffed. Now that they also had Ariadne, there were two people who could tie Larisa's murder to McKenzie.

"McKenzie knows you're a human passing as an elf?" Skater asked.

Ariadne stiffened, and then started to tremble. "Yes," she said in a faltering voice, the tears welling up, "We told him I was sterile and that was why we were looking for a surrogate mother. We never intended for him to know, but he's a clever man, cleverer than we thought. He found out somehow.”

"Did he threaten you with what he'd found out?"

"No." Tears streamed down Ariadne's face. "But with me being human, we couldn't take the chance of conceiving a child of our own. The chances are fifty-fifty that it would have been born human, and then everyone would know Tavis had married outside the elves."

"And that would destroy him in the Tir," Archangel said.

Ariadne nodded. "Elves aren't the most tolerant of races." She wiped at her eyes. "After I had the cosmetic surgeries, I emigrated into the elflands hoping to find a better life. I found it wasn't that much different really. There were castles and princes, but none of them were mine. But I did find Tavis, and we love each other so. When he asked me to marry him, I told him the truth, but it didn't make any difference to him."

"But it does now," Duran said.

"Not to Tavis," Ariadne answered. "But we married when he thought his father was going to see NuGene through the hard times. With his death, all that responsibility fell to Tavis. I don't know how much longer either of us can handle the pressure.”

"You had no problem taking the baby." Skater looked at her, wanting a full read on her answer.

"We were told the mother needed the money and had no interest in keeping the child. We knew we could give the baby a lot of love and a good home."

Skater crossed the room to Archangel and her deck. "McKenzie might not be blackmailing your husband outright, but he sure as drek is running him up the river. We stole the files from the freighter, but they were already trashed."

"Then how did they show up in Seattle?" Ariadne's brow furrowed. "Those are the same files we downloaded into our mainframes at ReGEN."

"My guess is that McKenzie had someone working for him aboard the freighter," Skater said. "He had them load the corrupted files into the ship's system, while the actual files came across on another ship. One that McKenzie controlled. The switch was made sometime before the download could be processed."

"You're talking about a conspiracy within NuGene."

"At the very least," Skater agreed. "What you don't know is mat the tip I got on the freighter came from the baby's mother before she was killed. She heard a man named Synclair Tone talking about it-a man also on McKenzie's payroll-but it was all a setup. They intended for her to hear. They also tipped the yakuza that night, probably through a third party, so that everything that happened on the Sapphire Seahawk would be even more confusing. Covering up McKenzie all nice and pretty."

"But why would he do that?" Ariadne asked.

Skater pointed to the display as Archangel booted up the files she had waiting. "These are the figures for the ReGEN stock as they went on sale." He tapped the columns. "On the surface, it looks as though a lot of buyers are picking up the stock."

Ariadne glanced at the spinning digital numbers, her rapt attention showing she knew enough of the inner workings of NuGene's finances to understand what she was seeing. "The stocks were selling much more quickly than we'd imagined. Until the media coverage broke."

"Now we begin to break it down," Skater said. "We set up a controlled buy on the stocks, knowing that once NuGene brought the new tech to the market, it would probably go through the roof."

On the screen, a portion of the stocks slid in one direction, then renamed themselves Wayfarer, the gathering place for all stocks purchased through Lofwyr's Ocean Tiller Exports in Seattle. The corporation specialized in exotic trans-Pacific shipping and overseas investments in textile and food futures.

"Ultimately, these stocks became ours, under different holding names and fronts," Skater said.

Ariadne shook her head slowly as she watched the screen. "But how?"

"We brought in a backer," Skater said. "Someone with really deep pockets and an interest already developed in NuGene."

"Who?" Ariadne's tone became defensive and demanding.

"I'm not at liberty to say." Skater pointed to the display. "As you can see, we're currently holding about nineteen percent of ReGEN, even after the stock shutdown. Our representatives are still buying outstanding shares. But we've definitely got competition."

The screen shimmered again. The name McKenzie formed, then shares started flocking toward it like lemmings going over a cliff.

"McKenzie has been buying ReGEN stock since day one," Skater said as the screen continued to show stock certificates flowing into McKenzie's name. "As of the last hour, he controls thirty-nine percent of ReGEN. And he's gotten it cheap."

"I recognize some of those buyers' names," Ariadne said. "But I don't understand."

Skater turned to face her. "NuGene had to put this deal together. The company's survival depended on it. McKenzie cut himself in for a piece by agreeing to help set it up, but he got greedy. He staged the raid on the biotech files so your husband would have to rush into production to protect the research.”

"He could have sold it to someone else if he had it," Ariadne said.

"Again," Skater replied, "McKenzie got greedy. He's been making noises about retiring. But in order to do that now, he'd have to forego a considerable amount of his cash flow. NuGene provided him an opportunity to get around that-as long as he could buy up enough of the stock and use it to help him launder other little nest eggs he's socked away. If he sold the files to someone else, all he'd get would be a one-time fee, and having two corps out marketing the same product would lessen the price cap. Competition kills the profit margin."

"So he leaked the story to the trid?" Ariadne asked.

"We did," Skater said. "To get a jump on the competition."

Ariadne slumped back in her chair. "Tavis doesn't know any of this."

"He's suckling a serpent to his breast," Trey said. He handed her a glass of water.

"What are you going to do?" she asked Skater, looking up at him.

"We're going to defang the serpent," Skater said, "then cut off its head."