Benny looked up from where he crouched over her. “Broken arm, some cuts and bruises. She’ll be ok. Her pride will hurt worse than anything.”
“I thought you were babysitting Lord Troll. What the hell happened?”
His broad back stiffened. “Excuse me for saving your ass, Mick. Ms. Sinn had Lord Troll taken care of. He’s at Neo Luxe being watched by Oscar Greco’s boys. Oscar’s falling head over heels to get back in my uncle’s good graces. Sinn ran that mathematical bunk and figured I’d be better used over here.”
“Well, I can’t argue with math. Stay with Electra.” I pulled the Broad and ducked in through the cavity in the wall. The room was thankfully empty of any innocent patrons. A clear trail of debris and blood spatters led down the hall.
And out the open door.
“Dammit. She’s dusted out, Benny.”
“What? No way she brushed that hit off.”
“You’re not factoring in a healing system powered by nanoaccelerators.” I put the Broad back in her holster and returned to the other room. “I’ve gotta go after her. You stay here. Sinn will alert the paramedics and get you and Electra taken care of.”
“Me? I’m coming with you, Mick. We almost had her. Sinn’s got access to Lord Troll’s entire surveillance network. Your girl’s got nowhere to go where we can’t find her.”
“You’ve got a knife in your gut, Benny. You’re in no shape to do nothing but rest. I’ll take it from here.”
“I got a knife… in my—” Benny stared disbelievingly at the crimson stain that spread around the protruding handle. “I didn’t even feel—”
“You’ll feel it in a minute. Leave it alone. Let the paramedics handle it.”
His eyes practically swam in his head. “Am I gonna bite it, Mick? Is this how I go out?”
“You’ll be fine, kid. It’ll be all right, I promise.”
He slowly sat on the bed, eyes alternating from the knife handle to anywhere else in the room. His chest heaved. “I’ll be all right. I’ll be all right… ”
“You will. And hey, kid — you did good.” I pointed at him. “Keep an eye on Electra. Help’s on the way.”
He gave me a sickly grin. “Nothing to it.”
I left the room and strode down the hall. “Sinn, you did alert the paramedics, right?”
“I alerted them when the first shot was fired. They’re entering the building now.”
“Fantastic. You got a bead on Natalie?”
“Of course. She’s taken a floater to the skylanes. Not to worry. Lord Troll gave up all of the SS safe houses. I’ve already narrowed it down based on the trajectory of her flight path.”
“Good. Stall her and send the data to my holoband. How’s Poddar doing?”
“He took out the gunman and the backup agent, but took a bullet in the arm. He’s on the way to a hospital to get sewn up.”
“Ok, adding in Lord Troll and Buckshot, that accounts for four of the five-man hit team. Natalie is the only one left. I’m on my way to wrap that up now.”
“You’re going alone? I calculate a sixty-eight percent chance you don’t make it out of there alive. You should call Flask for backup.”
I shook my head with a wry grin. “Believe or not, I’ve been capable of taking care of myself way before you got in the picture, Ms. Sinn. This is something I gotta do alone.”
“The road to hell is paved with machismo, Mick. I’ll be on the line if you need me.”
There weren’t any remaining patrons left in the entertainment hall by the time I strolled through. A few of the entertainers remained, not put off by the sounds of violence that had cleared the floor. I figured the joint got rowdy enough that a few gunshots and some fisticuffs didn’t mean much to them. I nodded to a waiter that looked right around my height and weight.
“Gonna need for you to lose the shirt, Ace.”
He stroked his curled mustached with an arrogant smirk. “I’m afraid I can’t comply with such a demand. Not on the first date, anyway — Ace.”
His conceited demeanor fell pretty quick when I pulled the Mean Ol’ Broad and stared down the sights at his dismayed face. “I’m pretty sure you will. ‘Cause I’m not asking again — Ace.”
Sinn made sure to hit Natalie’s route with every detour, red light, and traffic jam she could engineer. I figure Natalie must have been sweating bullets, imagining the authorities or myself coming after her while she was exposed and vulnerable. It was a tempting notion. But I’d had enough of collateral damage. Natalie was sure to be more deadly when cornered, and wouldn’t hesitate to cause a little civilian carnage in order to escape.
The safe house was an actual home, in one of the older stately neighborhoods that fringed the Transit district. The Queen-Anne styled houses had seen their heyday in the past, but the Transit expansion proved too noisy for the majority of the inhabitants. The locales fled, the property values dropped, and the neighborhood was mostly abandoned after several attempts at image reconstruction. But it was the perfect place to arrange for a pad to lay dormy.
Natalie’s floater hissed as it touched down in front of the entrance. A few seconds later her footsteps tapped up the concrete stairs. The front door squealed as it opened. Her hand drifted to the light switch, where it paused.
She sniffed the air.
I held a gasper between my fingers and exhaled a stream of smoke from where I sat in the shabby-chic styled living room. “Come in, Natalie. Make yourself at home.” I gestured with the Mean Ol’ Broad. “Don’t think about pulling that firearm. Unstrap the holster and drop it to the floor.”
She complied, keeping her eyes fixed on me. Her mouth was a firm line. I could tell she was concentrating. Trying to figure out the angles, the myriad of possible ways the encounter might end.
I gestured again. “Have a seat. Keep your hands on the table where I can see ‘em.”
She slowly approached and sat opposite me at the dining room table. I nodded to the glass in front of her. “Poured you a drink. Don’t worry, I didn’t bother to poison it.”
She hesitantly raised the glass and wet her lips. Her eyes widened slightly. “Silver Tree American vodka. Michael, did you—”
I raised the bottle. “Just used what I found on the shelf.” I poured myself a glass, keeping the Broad leveled at Natalie. “Who’s Maxine?”
A bitter smile touched her lips. “It always comes back to Maxine.”
“Who was she?”
She sipped her vodka, studying me over the rim of the glass. I tensed, my trigger finger quivering. But she didn’t throw the glass my direction as I figured. She set it down, tapping her fingernail against the rim.
“Maxine Dalton was the first informant you were assigned to. Pretty girl. Smart, but young. Naïve enough to fall for the dashing young artist you pretended to be. She was a spy, leaking sensitive information from her Haven to resistance leaders on the outside. You worked her long enough to discover her contacts, then get rid of her. The first part was no problem. The second part was where you failed. You apparently had a soft spot for the opposite sex.”
I tried to keep my voice emotionless. “What happened?”
“I happened.” She folded her hands together and leaned forward. “I was your superior, responsible for your actions. Your failure was my own, and I had to teach you a lesson. So after capturing Maxine, I called you in. You helped me tie her down. You watched what I did to her. How I cut her up while she screamed and begged for mercy while you did nothing. Then you killed her.”
Natalie picked up her glass and downed her drink. She licked her lips and smiled. “Lesson learned. You never had a problem cleaning up behind yourself after that.”