Zoë went to the door at the opposite end of the room and opened it, then shoved Harlow through. They stepped out onto a small wooden porch whose railings had rotted away. An empty field spread out in front of them, a square of flat, featureless dirt lit by the burnt-umber glow of the night sky. Beyond, at the edge of the flashlight’s range, were more skeletal tenements. Firecrackers rat-a-tat-tatted in the distance.
She descended the shaky back staircase with him in tow. Harlow swept the flashlight beam in front of her. That was when she saw the comm link, or rather the wrecked remains of a comm link, lying in the dirt.
“Hold the beam still,” she told Harlow.
She walked over to the spot. She couldn’t be certain but the comm link sure as hell looked like the one Mal had been carrying. Someone had stamped on it, leaving it in smithereens.
Well, if he wasn’t incommunicado before, he certainly is now.
Nearby she spied twin furrows in the soft dirt, roughly shoulder width apart. Furrows made by boot toes. Fresh. Other bootprints accompanied them on either side.
She began to walk alongside the furrows, following their route but keeping a weather eye on Harlow all the while. They traced the perimeter of the yard and led towards a rusted back gate. Past the gate was an alley broad enough to accommodate a land speeder. Here the furrows terminated.
Just then Shepherd Book connected on her comm link.
“Yes?” Zoë said in a low voice.
“Zoë, I’m at Guilder’s,” said Book. “The man who signed off on our repairs and paid for the shuttle was Mal Reynolds, but he was not the captain.”
“I don’t understand. Explain.”
“He called himself Malcolm Reynolds but it wasn’t our Mal. Sandy hair. Scarred face.”
Same man Harlow met. Has to be.
This was not looking good. This was looking like a shuttle robbery — and possibly a kidnapping.
The “traitors” graffiti. Referring to Browncoats. Like Mal.
And her.
Zoë aimed her Mare’s Leg at Harlow and said loudly, “Don’t leave,” just to remind him, in case he got it into his head to try sneaking off.
“Sure thing, Hopalong.”
Lowering her voice again, she said to Book, “Did the clerk tell you anything else? Was anyone with this guy?”
“Hold on,” Book said. “Let me put him on.”
“Hello?” It was a young-sounding man, voice quavering with uncertainty. “Um, we don’t know how this happened. We asked for identification and the fella had it. It said ‘Malcolm Reynolds’ and there was a picture of the man who took possession of the shuttle. It’s not the same man as the Shepherd is showing me now.”
A fake ID, doctored especially for this occasion. So this whole thing had been planned. “Were there other people with him?”
“No, ma’am. Least, not as I saw. That ain’t to say they weren’t waiting outside. Of course, Guilder’s can’t be held liable if—”
“Did this Malcolm Reynolds file a flight plan?”
“No, but it ain’t compulsory for spacecraft of a shuttle’s tonnage, only for those that are category five weight-class or above. Now about our loaner—”
“We’re keeping it as collateral until this is straightened out,” Zoë said. “Book, can you handle that?”
“Oh, yes.” The confidence in the Shepherd’s voice gave her a little boost. Everything in her was shouting at her to find the captain immediately. Trouble was, she didn’t know how.
“Let’s talk later.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” Book assured her.
She broke off the connection and turned to Harlow. “What else do you know about the man who hired you?”
He calmly shook his head. “What was his name again?
Covington? I’ve told you everything. I swear I have. Would you like to hire me to see if I can trace your friend?” he asked without missing a beat.
“I want you to contact Covington,” she told him, but he shook his head.
“He got ahold of me, like I said. I don’t know nothing about him. I could put it around that I’m looking for him, see what shakes.”
“Do that,” she said. “But be discreet. I don’t need the entire ’verse hearing about my situation.”
“Agreed.”
“Give me a way to contact you.”
“Such as my wave address? Not a chance. Waves, trails, remember? You need me, try Taggart’s. I’m not there, someone’ll soon get word to me and I’ll come.”
“Okay. There’ll be coin for you if anything comes of this.”
“’Bout gorramn time. I was startin’ to think you were taking the ‘free’ part of freelance much too seriously.” Harlow grinned at her and gestured with his head to the Mare’s Leg. “We finished?”
“We’re finished,” she said. “For now.”
“Then may I have my iron back?”
She returned his six-gun to him.
“Be seeing you, Hopalong, maybe.” He tipped his hat and disappeared off through the back door, back into the house.
Watching him go, Zoë reviewed the situation. It was obvious that the flophouse had been the site of a handover. Covington and accomplices had kidnapped Mal on behalf of a third party and passed him on like so much hundredweight of lumber. A business transaction, only the goods in question were human. This jibed with the possibility of Covington being bondholder to a bondswoman— the kind of guy who regarded people as little more than a commodity to be owned and exchanged.
Given that somebody posing as Malcolm Reynolds had lately retrieved Serenity’s shuttle from Guilder’s, the odds were good that that was where the real Mal had wound up. The odds were good, too, that wherever the shuttle was now, Mal was on it. And, moreover, that whoever had him bore no great fondness for those who’d fought on the Independent side.
Zoë crossed the yard and headed back through the building, still favoring her bad leg.
Out front, she spotted Harlow. His flashlight beam was flickering ahead of him.
She had planned on following him at a distance anyway, simply so that she wouldn’t get lost trying to find her way back to the comparatively more civilized parts of town. But she was curious to know where he was going now. It was possible he had been bluffing about Covington and knew the man more closely than he was letting on.
While Zoë kept to the shadows, guarded and cautious, Harlow ambled along as if he didn’t have a care in world. She kept the Mare’s Leg at the ready. This could be a trap set for her, after all. Maybe they’d taken the captain first, with the plan to lure her into their clutches next.
I want this to be a big misunderstanding. I want Mal to mosey up this very street right now, she thought.
Harlow took a different route from last time but ended up where they’d started, at Taggart’s. As he entered through the double doors, Zoë holstered her gun and took up a position across the street, where she could watch the comings and goings of the bar’s clientele without being seen.
While she waited, she connected with the ship.
“Hey, babe,” Wash said. “How’s it hanging?”
“Crooked,” she replied. “This whole situation stinks, and the more I look into it, the stinkier it’s getting. How are things at your end?”
“Been in touch with Book. He told me about the shuttle and asked me to find out from the port authorities about all recent shuttle takeoffs, but I haven’t gotten anywhere with that. Shuttles aren’t high on their list of priorities, being personnel-only with limited range, and they’ve got much bigger beasts to focus on, and lots of them, too. We could call the police, of course, but I don’t think that’s particularly wise, on account of the whole hate-hate relationship we have with law enforcement.”