The man meeting them at the private roof pad was Foley Mason, a former Dream Park employee who had worked with Scotty’s dad, Alex, before the old man retired, and now took gigs primarily to keep the rust off. He had served with distinction in the Second Canadian war, and was twenty years older than Scotty.
Foley had grown a little soft around the middle, but still had the eyes, the ears, the instinct for the work. He preferred to stay back from the action, coordinating and integrating.
“Everything tight?”
“Airtight,” Foley said. “Pretty much a milk run.”
Adriana seemed a bit distant. Scotty was curious about the little chatterbox’s uncharacteristic silence, but kept his questions to himself. It was none of his business what the girl was thinking. Men? Fashions? Money? Traveling home? He knew little and cared less.
They rode the tube down, and Scotty remained in the hall as Foley swept the suite. When he returned, nodding, Adriana sashayed in, damned near curtsyed to them, and closed the door.
Scotty shrugged. He glanced at his wristwatch. Swiss, of course. It read 1:15 A.M. “That’s it, I guess. She’ll call if there’s anything.”
“Slipped a tracer in her hair,” Foley said casually. “Nape of the neck.”
Scotty raised an eyebrow. Adriana had refused to carry one. When had Foley pulled off this minor miracle?
As if reading Scotty’s mind, Foley said, “In the tube. Listen, youngster: You’re ultimately responsible to your calling. Not to the father. Not even the daughter. You have to do what works, not necessarily what’s popular.”
“No wonder Dad fired you.”
“The Griffin canned me so we could ferret out the son of a bitch selling the Liquid Walls formula, and you damned well know it.”
They chuckled, shook hands, and headed to their own rooms: one on either side of Adriana’s. Silk sheets and gold-plated toilets. The very definition of a good gig.
Scotty stripped down, doffing shirt and pants, examining his naked body in the full-length mirror. He had broad shoulders, a compact waist and thick upper arms, and while “fit” he didn’t feel animal. He’d need to hit the Flow class when he got back to L.A. Nothing like twisting and torquing, tensing and relaxing your body to neural feedback-generated music cues.
Had he changed much since coming back from Luna? Emotionally, perhaps. After his near-fatal accident the once-pleasurable lunar experience had become clammy and claustrophobic. He suffered weeks of night sweats, waking up unable to breathe or move until his eyes focused. Kendra might have been the love of his life, but living like that was no life at all. There was no question of her leaving, no chance of him staying.
It wasn’t until coasting home on that long, long loop to Earth that he fully understood what he had done to himself.
But Mom and Dad had been great. Without missing a beat, Alex Griffin had networked a dozen old security contacts and found Scotty work. As soon as Scotty had rested and rehabbed, gotten his leg and core strength up to snuff and managed to survive a decent judo randori (about four months of sweaty work), he was ready for duty.
He brushed his teeth, trying to focus his mind. Something niggled at him, and he couldn’t find it. And that something still chewed away like a muskrat in a trap as he slipped into bed, and wound his weary way toward dream.
An alphanumeric 1:58 A.M. flickered on the ceiling as Scotty rolled over and opened his eyes. The security alarm had beeped, and within two seconds of opening his eyes, he was sitting up, the fretful dreams evaporating like frost on a spring morning.
The motion detector bleeped plaintively. “What the hell…?” he muttered, and rolled out of bed. Before his feet hit the ground, the beeping stopped.
And that worried him most of all.
Scotty was half dressed and at the connecting door in five seconds. He pressed his ear against the cool wood paneling. Nothing, no sound. If anyone was moving, it was on little cat feet.
Stunner in hand he tapped on the door. Nothing. He clucked, activating the throat link. “Exeter hotel, main switchboard. Suite 1108, please.”
A brief pause, followed by a ringing tone. He heard nothing, but that was hardly surprising: Adriana probably had the com switched to light or vibration. Of course, that was his more optimistic self speaking. The grim truth was that he heard nothing at all.
Heart hammering, he punched the override on the keypad. The biopad read the nine-digit sequence, his fingerprints and capillary patterns. The door opened.
Scotty slid in, stunner at the ready.
The suite was old luxury, fading colors and softly rounded furniture, more her daddy’s style than Adriana’s.
The bedroom and bathroom were empty. No one in the spacious dining or living rooms. The drapes opened onto a panoramic view of nighttime Geneva’s spiraled skyline.
The Cocoa Angel was gone.
He raised his cuff link. “Wakey wakey. We have a shit-storm.”
“Here, Scotty,” Mason said.
“Adriana’s gone.”
“What the hell?”
“My very thought. Get the manager. We have to sweep the hotel…”
He spotted something on the glass table in front of the window: A black speck the size of a pinhead. Had it fallen onto the rug, he might never have seen it at all.
A knock at the door, and then Mason was across the threshold, tucking in his shirt and sealing his pants. “How could she…?” He saw what Scotty was holding up to the light. “Is that…?”
He nodded. “Apparently, she took it off, and crushed it. That implies that she was pissed. Wanted us to know we couldn’t stop her. Probably a nasty little message to Daddy.”
So Adriana had spaced her tracer, and disappeared from her suite. Scotty remembered the blond man in the crowd, and the secretive look he and Adriana had exchanged. An assignation? That fit the little twerp, and god damn him for not being more suspicious of her early-to-bed nonsense.
Security had swept the Exeter hotel door to door, awakening enraged clients, a few of whom were almost as influential as Adriana’s father. Thermal body counts suggested that she was no longer in the building. Suite 1108 was belly-to-butt with managers and bellhops and, just now, arriving police.
Scotty saw the Federal Security men in the corner of his eye, and postponed an inevitable and unpleasant conversation for a few more moments. “She what?” he asked the aging bellhop.
“Sir, the lady asked me not to see her, and tipped well for the blindness. I couldn’t, I mean really couldn’t go against a guest’s direct request, unless, well…”
Scotty steadied his breathing in an attempt to keep himself from ramming the man’s head through the nearest wall. “All right,” he said, and turned toward the approaching Swiss security man.
The short, rounded man extended a broad flat hand, but the shake lacked warmth or enthusiasm. “Inspector Gemmon, Federal Office of Police.”
“We spoke on the issue of concealed weaponry,” Scotty said.
The Inspector ignored the attempted pleasantry. “Ordinarily,” he said, “the FOP is responsible for the safety and security of visiting dignitaries. And, if I might say, if we had been in charge from the beginning, the young lady would in all likelihood still be asleep in her room.”
Scotty ignored the heat building beneath his collar. The Inspector’s carefully worded rebuke would not be the worst thing he heard today. All that mattered now was Adriana’s safe recovery.
A harried-looking Germanic blonde entered the room. The Exeter hotel’s night manager. “Sir!” she said. “We have this!” She held up a slip of paper. For a moment she seemed uncertain whom to hand it to, then decided upon the Inspector.
There it was. Just that swiftly, Scotty and Mason had become nonpersons. Even worse, they were embarrassments.
The Inspector read it to himself. With childish satisfaction, Scotty noted that his lips were moving. “It is a note…,” the Inspector said. “Where did you find it?”