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CHAPTER 9

I went home after leaving the hospital. It felt good to shower, shave, get breakfast, and put on some clean clothes. I got back into the office a while later and brought Lily up to speed. She went through the files left to us by Cassandra Carmichael and found personal contact information for her stepfather—his address, a private number, things like that. Assuming that information was still valid, getting ahold of him would be pretty straightforward. Whether or not he actually wanted to talk to me was another matter.

If he didn’t? I could confront him face-to-face. That carried a certain amount of risk, though. I had to be careful how I went about it. There’s a fine line between persistence and harassment, and more than one overzealous P.I. has been brought up on stalking charges. The risks aside, under normal circumstances, tracking a guy like that down wouldn’t be too hard. He was a corporate executive, the type who pays his taxes and has a good credit history, not some professional con man who knows how to drop off the grid. Most corporate executives don’t have a remote high-security facility that they can flee to, though. If he was at Site 471, he was out of my reach.

I figured calling him up was my best bet. I just had to be careful about how I confronted him. Telling him I knew about Site 471 and his missing stepdaughter would probably get me slapped with a restraining order before it got me a meeting. If he was willing to talk, he’d probably need to be discreet about it, given the secrecy surrounding Project Isaiah. I called Lily into my office to see what she thought. Yeah, I’m the boss, but a good boss listens to his people, and Lily was a sharp kid.

“We can do this two ways,” she explained. “You can just call him directly from your work number if you want, but then he’ll know who you are and where we are.”

“True,” I said, “but that might show we’re on the up-and-up. Or it could scare him off, assuming he’s even willing to talk in the first place.”

“Otherwise we can use one of the burner accounts and contact him anonymously. We can even spoof the global positioning system and wireless network triangulation so they don’t know where the call is coming from.”

I grinned. “I don’t pay you enough.”

“You don’t,” Lily said with a smirk. “The problem with this is, who answers an anonymous call? Depending on the filter settings on his handheld, he might not ever know that we contacted him.”

“That’s a good point. If his personal handheld is being monitored, he won’t talk to us either way. If he knows who we are, he might be willing to find some other means to talk to us.”

“Or they might just send some goons to kill us like they did with Dr. Ivery.”

I chuckled humorlessly. “If they want me dead, they’re going to have to do better than some street skags like the Green Dragons. But . . .” I looked at my assistant for a moment, choosing my words carefully. “Listen, I want you to take some time off. You haven’t had a vacation this year.”

“Time off? Now? In the middle of our biggest case ever?”

“Yeah. Maybe get out of the city for a couple weeks. Your folks live down in Epsilon City, don’t they? When’s the last time you were home?”

“Last Christmas, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Weather’s a lot nicer down there, too.”

“Boss, what are you talking about? Do you . . . do you not want me on the case anymore?” She looked hurt.

“It’s not that,” I said, looking down at the desk. “You know I couldn’t run this agency without you.” I looked up at her again. “It’s just . . . I don’t know who’s pulling the strings in all this, but like you pointed out, they’re willing to kill. They killed Dr. Ivery, they nearly killed our client, and they tried to kill me. It might not safe to be around me. If anything happened to you?” I shook my head. “I couldn’t live with it. I’d never forgive myself. You’re young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and this job ain’t worth getting killed over.”

Tears welled up in Lily’s eyes. “I’m not leaving. If you want me gone, you’re gonna have to fire me. Our client is counting on you and you need all the help you can get.”

Lily always was a good kid. She worked hard, she didn’t complain, and she was as loyal as any of the men I served in combat with. I didn’t have the heart to force her to go, and even if I did, that was no guarantee that she’d be safe. She was right, too, I needed all the help I could get. “You know I’m not going to fire you.”

“Good,” she said, sniffling. “I hate job hunting.”

She actually got a laugh out of me with that. “You got guts, kid. Maybe I’m making too much of this, but I would feel better if you would at least make some contingency plans.”

“What kind of contingency plans?”

“Have a plan to get out of town if something happens to me, or if I tell you that you need to go for your own safety. Pack a bag. Have cash on hand. Be ready to leave on short notice, and figure out places to go ahead of time. Maybe that means you go to Epsilon City to your parents’ place, maybe it means you go stay with a friend.”

“I can do that, I guess.”

“I won’t tell you to go for nothing, so if I say that you need to get out, you need to leave right away, no hesitation, no arguing with me. Same thing if something happens to me, like I go missing or turn up dead.”

I could tell this was rattling her a little. Good, I thought. If she wanted to stick it out through this one, she needed to understand the risks and take them seriously. She’s no quitter, though.

“Okay,” she said, nodding slowly, thinking over what I said. “I can do that. Do you . . . You don’t think it’ll really be necessary, do you?”

“Well, I sure as hell don’t plan on dying,” I said, “but this one could get dicey. Hell, it’s already dicey. I’d feel better if I knew that you had a safe place you could go, even on short notice.”

“I’ll talk to some friends. I wouldn’t be the first person to turn up needing a place to lay low.”

“Good. Thank you for humoring me on this. I don’t think it’ll come to that, but it’s always better to have a plan. Now . . . let’s talk about Dr. Ivery’s house. Where is it?”

“She lives in a townhouse in North Hampton.” She brought up the address on her tablet and showed it to me. “Won’t SecFor have been there by now?”

“Probably, and that’ll make getting in difficult even if they haven’t already taken whatever it was she wanted me to find.” I held up the electronic wafer that the scientist had given me in her final breath. “This might be an access key to something, but she didn’t say what. She mentioned someone named Diana.”

“Family member?” Lily asked.

I shook my head. “Dr. Ivery lived alone. She might not have been referring to a person, but to something else.”

Lily tapped at her tablet screen. “Diana is a fairly common woman’s name on Nova Columbia. It’s also the name of the Roman goddess of the hunt, going back almost three thousand years.” She showed me several depictions of the deity, including paintings and sculptures. The goddess was usually portrayed as a strong-looking woman with a bow. “The more pressing question is, how are you going to get in and look around if SecFor is there?”

“I’ll have to wait until they leave, then try to get in. If we’re lucky, they’ll just lock the place up and leave it for her estate to sort out. Given that she was murdered, though, they probably went over the place in detail, taking everything they thought might be related to the case. They might even have left security on the house.”

“What will you do if they have security?”

I grinned. “Depends on the security. I have ways.”

“It sounds risky.”

I nodded. “It is, no doubt about it. I’m still going to try. In the meantime, let’s give Mr. Carmichael a call, shall we?”

I called him from my work handheld without bothering to hide my identity. He didn’t answer, so I left a voice message. I explained who I was and that I was hired to find Cassandra Carmichael. I didn’t mention anything about Project Isaiah or Site 471, but I did tell him that Dr. Ocean Ivery was dead and that Dagny was in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. I told him that I feared Cassandra might be in grave danger and that I hoped he could help me get her to safety. I concluded the message with my contact info.

“That should do it,” I said, ending the call. “Now we’ll see if we hear back from him.”

“What if we don’t?” Lily asked.

“Then I hit the street and try to find him the old-fashioned way. If that doesn’t work, then I don’t know.”

“What about the Baron? Why don’t you ask him for help? If he wants to be involved in the investigation he can make himself useful. Maybe he can get in touch with Cassandra’s other contacts without putting them in danger.”

“I thought about that. I just don’t know how much I can trust him. Dr. Ivery thought that there were Terran Confederation intelligence people at Site 471. Deitrik used to work for the SIS. Something like the Seraph would be of particular interest to them.”

“If he’s still working in some capacity for the Confederation, and they already have their people at Site 471 . . .” She trailed off. “I don’t get it. Why did he bail you out of jail and tell you to keep investigating? If he’s with them, why would he be helping you?”

“I don’t know and it’s bothering me. I don’t like being a pawn in somebody else’s game.”

“I don’t like any of this,” Lily said.

“I don’t either, kid.”

The rest of the day ground by slowly and we heard nothing from Arthur Carmichael. I tried to be productive; I read through the files that Cassandra Carmichael had left and studied the blueprints of the block townhomes that Dr. Ivery had lived in. I was tired and found it difficult to concentrate. I did manage to get a technician over to fix the auto-nav on my car, so I at least accomplished something for the day.

After that, I sent Dagny a message, asking her how she was doing. I didn’t mention trying to contact her stepfather. I’d be lying if I said the kiss she’d given me wasn’t on my mind, but I tried to be realistic about it. She had just suffered a traumatic experience, was injured, and had been shot up full of painkillers. Sometimes surviving a dangerous encounter makes people act impulsively, gives them the desire to do something pleasurable and life-affirming. Nothing that happened meant she was in love with me.

Even if she was, I was forced to ask myself how I imagined things could possibly turn out. Did I really think she was going to settle down with me, that we were going to get married and live happily ever after? Get real, I told myself. Whatever infatuation she has with you will be gone if her sister turns up dead, and you know damn well that’s probably what’s going to happen. Besides, I thought, getting romantically involved with a client is unprofessional. Besides that, what was I after? There was no denying that I was attracted to her, but she was drop-dead gorgeous and I’m only human. I hadn’t seriously dated anyone since my divorce. Did I really want to start now, or was this because of the stress I was under?

Hell, I thought, shaking my head, I’m acting like a damn teenager, getting led around by hormones and emotions. What I really needed was a meal, a drink, and a good night’s sleep. It was still hours away from close of business, but I told Lily that we were going to take an early day. I left the disk that Dr. Ivery had given me in the safe in my office and drove Lily home. After dropping her off, I headed back to my own apartment across town. I parked in the underground garage and made my way to the elevators.

I have to admit, my mind was on other things, like Dagny, food, and my bed, and not on my surroundings. I was tired, too, and wasn’t as alert as I should have been. That’s probably why I didn’t notice the two big guys in suits coming up behind me until it was too late.

They shoved a shock baton into my neck before I could pull my gun or even turn around. Every muscle in my body locked up and I fell to the pavement. They stopped zapping me long enough for one of them to give me a good, hard kick in the guts. Even with my body armor resisting the blunt force trauma, it hurt like hell and knocked the wind out of me. The guy kicked me again, flipping me onto my back, and his partner shocked me with the baton one more time.

Lying on the pavement, twitching, gasping for air, I finally got a quick look at my two assailants. The one with the shock baton was younger and looked more athletic. He was black, with short-cropped hair, tinted smart glasses, and looked real slick in a well-fitted suit. His partner was built like a freight truck, probably close to seven feet tall, with thick arms and a body like a tree trunk. He was older, white, and had serious cybernetic augmentation. The suit he wore had to be custom tailored, because nobody with shoulders that wide could wear off-the-rack shirts.

The clanker grabbed me by the collar and hoisted me to my feet. He clamped a huge titanium hand around my throat while his partner restrained my arms behind my back. They patted me down, quickly and efficiently, and stripped me of all my weapons and possessions. They then roughly pulled a black bag over my head and forced me into a car.

The whole thing only took a minute. They injected something into my neck and, as I started to lose consciousness, I hoped to God that Dagny and Lily were alright.


I awoke with a start. My head was pounding and my vision was blurry, but I realized that I was strapped to a metal chair in the middle of what looked like a storage room. Shelves of boxes lined the walls, but I couldn’t make anything out clearly. The floor was bare ceramicrete and the lights were dim.

“Wakey wakey,” a man said, his voice a deep baritone. It was the big clanker, Truck, and he roughly patted me on the head. His partner, Slick, stood next to him.

“Oh good,” I slurred, “you two are here. Gah!” I gasped as Slick stuck another auto-injector into my neck. “What the hell did you dose me with now?”

“Just a stim to help you focus,” he answered. “It will neutralize the effects of the sedative. Your vision should clear up in a minute.”

I coughed, sending pain shooting up my side. “If you were gonna just knock me out anyway, did your big friend there have to kick my ribs in, too?” That seemed to please Truck, whose face split in a mean grin.

Slick chuckled. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Novak. We know what you did to those Green Dragons. We weren’t going to take any chances. You understand.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I had been stripped down to my pants and undershirt. They took my shirt, my jacket, my hat, hell, even my shoes and socks. Seemed like a lot of hassle if they were just going to kill me. “What do you fellas want?”

“What do we want?” Slick asked. “You’re the one who wanted to speak with Mr. Carmichael.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Truck said with a smile.

“Holy hell, all he had to do was call me.”

“You and I both know it’s not that simple,” a new voice said. I heard a door close behind me. Slick stepped back and an older man appeared in front of me. He had silver hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He wore an expensive-looking, double-breasted suit with a smart-screen eyepiece over his right eye.

I was still groggy from the drugs and it took me a second to catch up to what was happening. “Arthur Carmichael?” I recognized him from Cassandra’s files.

“Yes,” he acknowledged, taking the eyepiece off, “and you’re Ezekiel Novak, the private investigator hired by Dagny.” He sounded like the whole situation annoyed him. “I have enough going on without that damned girl injecting herself into the matter.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, laying on a little sarcasm. “We were nearly killed trying to find your stepdaughter, but I do apologize if we inconvenienced you. Will you listen to yourself, man? Your goons kicked the shit out me, kidnapped me, and now you got me strapped to a chair. But sure, let’s talk about how bad your day was.”

“You’ve got a mouth on you, don’t you?” he said, like a teacher scolding a schoolboy. “Clearly you don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation you’re in, Mr. Novak, so allow me to explain it for you. Nobody knows where you are. From the moment you were taken, you’ve been surrounded by EMF shielding. Even if you have a tracking beacon stuffed up your nose, its signal can’t get out of this room. Bluster and bravado aren’t going to get you out of this.”

My vision having cleared up, I took another glance around the room. It looked like a pretty ordinary storage or maintenance room to me. Past the shelves, there was a utility sink on one wall. Opposite that, a Mrs. Tidy cleaning robot was parked in a charging station. Maybe he had this room shielded, maybe he was just bluff. It didn’t really matter because I had no way of calling for help.

“If you wanted me dead I’d be dead already,” I said, “so the question isn’t what I want. What do you want? Why are we having this conversation? What could you possibly want from me that you think you’ll get by abducting me? All I’m trying to do is find Cassandra.”

“I know where Cassandra is!” he snapped. He regained his composure and straightened his tie. “Dagny should have left it alone.”

“Does she really strike you as the type to leave things alone?”

“She ignored her family for years. All she had to do was act like she used to. Now I don’t know if I can protect her.”

“Your company hired some gangbangers to kill her. If that’s your idea of protecting her, I can see why she never liked you.”

His eye twitched when I said that. That got to him. “You don’t understand anything!” he said, raising his voice a little. “You don’t know what I am willing to do to protect my family!” Slick and Truck both took a step forward, but Carmichael waved them off. He leaned down and looked me square in the eyes. “Dagny was . . . a disappointment, in a lot of ways, but do you really think I want her dead? I raised her from when she was a little girl! I loved that girl!”

“You had a funny way of showing it. She came to you for help, wanting to know where her sister went, and you told her to kick rocks.”

He didn’t have a retort for that. It must have gotten under his skin, I thought. I realized then how tired he looked. He had dark circles under his eyes and that strung-out look you get when you’re using stims to make up for a lack of sleep. It was the same look that Cassandra and Dr. Ivery both had.

“I know,” he said, his tone softer now. He stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. “I didn’t know what else to do. Keeping her away from the whole thing was the only way I could think of to protect her.”

“I know about the Seraph, Mr. Carmichael,” I said slowly, “and Site 471. I don’t care about any of it. All I want is to be able to tell Dagny that her sister is okay.”

“You know about the Seraph?” He chuckled, then leaned in again. “No, Mr. Novak, you do not. Whatever it is you think you know, whatever Ocean told you, the truth is beyond your comprehension. It’s beyond any of us.”

“That may be the case, but you brought me in for this little chat for a reason. I’ll ask you again: What is it that you want from me?”

“I told them this was too risky,” he said, ignoring my question. “I told them it would be impossible to conceal something like this. They wouldn’t listen. That damned old fool wouldn’t listen.”

At that point I wasn’t sure he was even talking to me. “What old fool?” I thought about it for a second. “You mean Xavier Taranis? I got the impression he was running this whole thing.”

“I don’t know how you figured this out,” Carmichael said, “but you even being here proves I was right. Did Ocean tell you all this? I warned her. She didn’t listen to me, either.”

“She told me some things,” I said, “but I figured a lot out on my own. I’m pretty good at what I do.”

“Yes, I suppose you are. What do you know about the Cosmic Ontological Foundation?”

“I know Xavier Taranis is one of their biggest supporters.”

“The people running Project Isaiah, half of them are COFfers who think they’ve found a holy relic. The other half just see alien technology they can exploit for profit. None of them know what they’re playing with and it . . . well . . . it leaves me in a difficult position, doesn’t it?”

Whatever was going on with him, he was agitated and clearly under a lot of stress. He looked like he hadn’t slept much. That seemed to happen to everyone from Ascension who got involved in this mess. Instead of antagonizing him some more, I softened my tone. “I asked you twice what you want from me.”

“Yes, you did,” he said, slowly. “I think we might be able to help each other.” Truck and Slick looked at each other, behind Carmichael’s back, when he told me that, but neither of them said anything.

I wasn’t sure what he was going to ask of me, but I wasn’t in any position to argue with him. “I’m listening.”

“You want to find Cassandra? I can help you with that. I know precisely where she is.”

“Well, I would sure like to know that. So would Dagny. Can I assume, then, that she’s still alive? Is she okay?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “Alive? Yes. Okay? No, Mr. Novak, she’s not okay. She’s anything but okay.”

Despite how badly my side and head hurt, hearing that Cassandra Carmichael was still alive was a relief. “Where is she now? What’s her condition?”

“I don’t know for sure,” he said, distantly. “She’s being held for observation at the Ventura Medical Research Center.”

“Let me guess: that’s a company-owned outfit.”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s a wholly owned subsidiary, and that’s part of the reason she’s there. They are outside of my area of responsibility. I can’t access their records, their security systems, any of it. They don’t know that I know where she is, you see. They won’t tell me where she is or let me talk to her.”

“Then how are you so certain she’s there?”

“I’ve been doing this for thirty-two years and I’m good at my job, Mr. Novak,” he said, as if I had just asked a dumb question. “I know how the company handles its business. Thirty-two years and they think they can pull this on me!”

He was getting agitated again, so I tried to sound calm. “The company is holding Cassandra and they won’t let you see her? Why would they do this to one of their own people?”

Carmichael looked down at the floor for a moment. “I know what people think of Ascension. I can tell you from personal experience that most of the stories you hear are false, nothing but urban legends. The company helped build this colony. This? This isn’t corporate politics. This is Xavier Taranis. He came back when he learned of the discovery at Site 471. He just . . . he just showed up and took charge as if he hadn’t been retired for decades. He has no official position at the company but somehow he’s running it again, just like that. Him and his damned COFfer flunkies.”

I don’t think he realized how tone-deaf he seemed, talking about all the great and noble things Ascension did to a guy he had kidnapped and tied up, but I decided to leave that alone for the moment. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Why do this to you?”

The company man was quiet for a few moments. “Three reasons. One, she’s valuable to the project.” He didn’t elaborate on what that meant. “Two, she’s out of my reach there. Had they left her at Site 471, I’d be able to see her, maybe even get her out, and they know that.”

“And three?”

“Three? Three is leverage. They don’t have to worry about me so long as they have her.”

“Do they need to worry about you?”

“You don’t get to this rung of the corporate ladder without learning a few things,” he said. “People at this level always have their contingency plans, their escape paths, if you will. I’m no different.”

Despite the fact that I was in pain and being held against my will, the things he was telling me were damned interesting. I wanted to keep him talking. “I guess that begs the question, why not just get rid of you like they did Dr. Ivery?”

“They’re afraid of what those contingency plans might be. They’re afraid of what I might be able to do, even posthumously. They’re right to be afraid, too,” he said, starting to pace around. “If anything happens to me, a lot of company secrets are going to become public knowledge. Ocean? She was not the sort of person to think like that. She was . . . she was brilliant, but she was a bookish scientist, hired for her expertise. She didn’t have to fight her way up the ladder or play the political games.”

“Let me make sure I have this straight, then. They’re holding Cassandra to keep you from exposing the whole operation, and you’re being blackmailed into cooperation? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Carmichael fidgeted some more. “Yes. I lost her mother to cancer. I lost Dagny to political radicals. Cassandra is all I have left, and those bastards know it.”

“Why did they bring you in in the first place if you’re such a security risk?”

“I wasn’t a security risk, at first, and I’m very good at what I do. The site security manager, Blanche Delacroix, specifically requested that I be brought in as her number two. I had no idea what I was getting into until I had been read into the project. Once I realized the scope of it, I grew concerned. I thought about blowing the whistle. Then Cassandra got wind of it. She started digging. I pleaded with her to leave it alone, told her that we had it under control, but she just wouldn’t listen. She was putting herself in danger.”

“You brought her in to protect her.”

He nodded. “Yes. If I could keep her close, I could keep her safe, that was my reasoning. It worked, too. It worked too well. She wanted to help me. She . . . she’s brave. Very brave.” He was quiet for a moment, then looked up at me again. “That’s where you come in, Mr. Novak. We can help each other. You help me get my daughter back, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know about Project Isaiah. Once she’s safe, I don’t care what happens to me.”

“This sounds like a rescue mission. I’m just a snoop. Surely you can find someone better suited for this than me?”

“Maybe I could, but maybe you’re also downplaying your own talents. I looked at your service record.”

“Is that right?”

“Don’t look so surprised. What, you think I didn’t know about you until you tried to contact me? I’ve been watching you since Dagny hired you. I thought it was only a matter of time before you abandoned the investigation, especially after the run-in with those hired guns, but you’ve proven more capable and more resilient than I guessed. You’re clearly resourceful. Not too surprising for a man who ran black-ops with the SIS.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” I said. He didn’t seem to know about the information that Cassandra had left Dagny, nor did he seem to know about her network of contacts. She had managed to keep that secret from him, even after she went to work at Site 471. “Even still, I’ve never done a hostage rescue before. Why me?”

“Because, Mr. Novak, there’s nobody able to do the job who I can trust. Everyone capable I know has ties to Ascension or has worked for them before. If I try to bring any of them in, Blanche will find out, and that’ll be the end of it. You? You’re an outsider, hired by a third party, and you don’t seem like the type to be bribed or intimidated into silence. It gives me plausible deniability.”

“Won’t they suspect you as soon as someone tries to get her out of the hospital?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. They will likely keep the fact that she’s been rescued from me. This may buy us some time.”

“Have you thought about just calling the Security Forces? Kidnapping is illegal.”

“The Security Forces,” he scoffed. “And what will I tell them? That a person I trust told me my missing daughter is being held against her will in a company hospital? Even if I could convince them to investigate, word would get back to Blanche. The company has plenty of informants in the Security Forces Corps. By the time they could get a warrant and gain access to the facility, Cassandra would be gone, as would my only hope of getting her out of this situation.”

“Maybe so, but your other idea still seems like a huge risk to me.”

“It is, but my daughter’s life is at stake and I’m short on good options right now. You coming along may well be just the lucky break I need.”

“And you’re just assuming I’ll go along with this? Do you have any idea how crazy this sounds?”

“I do, yes. It is crazy, but I think you will go along with it. Right now, my people and I are the only ones who know about you, but sooner or later, Blanche and Taranis will find out. When that happens, you, Dagny, and your assistant will all be in danger. Believe me when I say that I am the only thing restraining them.” That could have been a threat but it sounded more like a warning. “I can also make it worth your while.”

“Generous of you. Tell me, what are they doing up there that they’re willing to be so brazen to protect it? This all has to be a huge risk. Even with all their pull, there’s a limit to what Ascension can get away with.”

He didn’t answer that question. “Get my Cassie back and I’ll tell you everything. I can cover our tracks after to protect all of us, but we have to hurry. Do we have a deal?”

“Seems to me I don’t have much choice.”

“Neither do I. What else would you have me do? This is the only way I can think of to protect both Cassie and Dagny.”

“Alright, then. You got yourself a deal. I’d shake on it, but I’m still tied to this chair.”

“Right.” Carmichael looked over at Slick. “James! Release him. Stephen, please get Mr. Novak’s effects and return them to him.” He turned his attention back to me as the straps holding me to the chair were undone. “Thank you for this.”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my sore wrists, “don’t mention it. Now listen, I may need your help to pull this thing off. You said you’d be able to cover our tracks, but you need to be ready. You’re going to be the prime suspect once we try to get Cassandra out of there. Whatever contingency plans you have, whatever threats you’ve made, they might just decide that they’re willing to risk it and have you taken out just like they did with Dr. Ivery.”

“I know,” he said, quietly. “It doesn’t matter, so long as the girls are safe.”

I nodded. “Understood. But first we need to talk about how you’re going to make this worth the risk.”

His eyes narrowed. “I came prepared. What do you want?”

“One hundred thousand dollars, cash. Fifty grand up front, the other fifty if and when I deliver Cassandra safely to you.”

“If? You want fifty thousand dollars up front and you’re telling me if?”

“You’re asking one man to try and pull off a job that would be tough for a team of specialists. If you want guarantees you need to go somewhere else.”

He breathed through his nose a few times, not saying anything. He clearly wasn’t happy with the situation, but I think he was backed into a corner. “If only you knew what was at stake,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“I do know what’s at stake, Mr. Carmichael: my life and my freedom, along with those of my assistant and client. You want me to risk all that, I’m willing, but it won’t come cheap.”

“I will get you your hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “Half will be cash, the other half will be crypto.”

Cryptocurrency is, for some purposes, even better and harder to trace than cash. It’s been banned on some colony worlds but is widely accepted on Nova Columbia. “Deal. I also need to know everything about this research facility, their security, their schedules, everything.”

“You’ll have whatever I can get for you.” Truck came back into the room, carrying belongings in a plastic bin, like the kind you put your stuff into when you go through security screening.

“You have my private contact information,” Carmichael said. “I trust you’ll use it with discretion.”

“Discretion is my specialty,” I assured him, then took the bin. It contained my hat, coat, shoes, and shirt, but not my guns or my handheld. I looked up at the cyborg. “What gives? Where’s the rest of my stuff?”

“You’ll get your weapons and handheld back after we drop you off,” Truck said with a growl.

“Thank you, Stephen,” Carmichael said. He then looked at Slick. “James, go get Mr. Novak his money.”

“Yes, sir,” the bodyguard said, and left the room. Truck stepped back but was watching me like a hawk as I dressed myself. I sat back down in the chair, moving slowly so as not to spook the clanker. He’d already kicked my ass once today and I didn’t want him to think I was going to take a swing at his boss.

Slick came back in a couple minutes later, carrying a bundle of cash. He handed it to Carmichael, who handed it to me.

“That’s fifty thousand dollars in cash,” Carmichael said. “As I said, the second part of the payment will be in cryptocurrency. Believe me when I say that if you don’t uphold your end of the deal, you’ll regret it.”

I didn’t bother to count the money—that’s always perceived as an insult. I shoved the fat stack of five-hundred-dollar bills into my coat pocket. “If I was the type of guy to cut and run, I’d have done it after I almost got killed yesterday. I’ll uphold my end of the bargain.”

“See to it that you do,” he said. “My men will show you out.”

“Put this bag on your head,” Truck said, holding up a black sack.

I looked at Carmichael. “Is this really necessary?”

“We’re not going to drug you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the businessman said. “As for the bag . . . for fifty thousand dollars cash, I think you can indulge me.”

Truck roughly pulled the bag over my head before I could protest any further.


Getting my car fixed when I did proved to be good timing on my part. After my “meeting” with Arthur Carmichael, Slick and Truck couldn’t be bothered to take me back to my apartment tower. They dropped me off in the industrial part of the city, way over at the southeast side of the Crater, with fifty grand in cash weighing down my coat pocket. It was midafternoon now and it was raining again.

My handheld was fully synched with my virtual domestic assistant, so I was able to message Penny and have her send my car to my location. She told me it would take more than an hour for my car to get to me so I hiked a couple blocks over to a lunch counter, one of those fully automated ones with outdoor seating. I sat at a round, metal table under an awning, nursing a cup of coffee, and called Lily.

“Holy shit, Boss!” she said, after I explained everything that went down. “Are you okay?”

“I still got a headache from whatever they injected me with. Aside from that, I’m fine.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I got my revolver back, but I’m going to swing by a vendor and pick up a new handheld, first. Then I’m going to go home and get some sleep.”

“You worried they put a tracker in it?”

“It doesn’t look tampered with, but I don’t know if they accessed it while I was out, or even opened it up and put a chip in it. Better safe than sorry.”

“Smart thinking. What should I do until I hear from you again?”

“Call your friend, the one we spoke to the other night. Tell him we might have something for him.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Check on the client, please, but don’t tell her what happened. I need to figure some things out first.”

“Understood. Be safe, Easy.”

I chuckled. “Hell, kid, I’m trying. I’ll call you later.”


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Framed