Emily Crane opened the door and checked the corridor to make sure it was clear, then she motioned for them to follow her. Garibaldi stumbled out, sandwiched between the two thugs, one of whom had a PPG in his back. The only reason they were letting him walk, he decided, was to keep from having to carry his dead body. Nevertheless, he couldn’t think of any way to get away from them, and he behaved himself all the way down the elevator and the escalator.
In the street, he told himself, maybe someone would see this obvious kidnapping and call the cops. But there was no one in the street in these dead hours just before dawn, nothing but a silent row of electric-powered vehicles. If he ran, thought Garibaldi, he was trying to decide how many meters he would get before the guy with the PPG drilled him. He figured three.
Suddenly, a strange voice seemed to speak in his head. It told him to duck! Garibaldi had nothing to lose, so he pretended to trip. He stumbled to the pavement a split second before a PPG blast ripped the head off the man behind him. The other goon was drawing his weapon when three blasts from entirely different directions turned his midsection a fiery orange. The two pieces of him fell to the ground.
Emily Crane ran for it, and her short height let her elude the first shots directed at her. Then two black-suited Psi Cops jumped out of the bushes directly in front of her. As she stumbled away from them, begging forgiveness, they executed her.
Strong arms picked Garibaldi off the pavement and guided him to a black shuttlecraft that awaited them in an adjacent parking lot. They tossed him in like a bag of potatoes, the hatch slammed shut, and the thrusters blasted the craft off the ground and into the black night.
“Hold still,” said a familiar voice, and Garibaldi felt hands untying the ropes at his back. Once his hands were free, he ripped off the gag and rolled over to greet his saviors.
The first thing he saw was the relieved and smiling face of Harriman Gray. Behind him, swathed in bandages and holding a cane, sat Mr. Bester. The only other person in the shuttlecraft was the pilot, and she was concentrating on getting them through the skyscrapers of Boston.
“It would be polite to say ‘thank you,’” suggested Bester.
“Yes, thank you,” croaked Garibaldi. “You … you wasted them. Damn it, Emily Crane was the only one who could clear Talia Winters!”
“Rogue telepaths,” said Bester. “All perfectly legal, although I doubt if we’ll claim credit. Actually, you owe your life to Mr. Gray here. He got worried about you last night and contacted my office. When I spoke with him, he told me all about Emily Crane and the Mix. We just managed to get a tail on her before she came over here with her friends. We’ve been hoping you would come out soon.”
Garibaldi touched his partner’s arm. “Thanks, Gray.”
The young telepath looked a bit sheepish. “I wasn’t planning to tell Mr. Bester last night, but I got worried about you.”
The security chief looked out the cockpit window at the vanishing lights of the city. “Did you warn me to duck?” he asked.
Gray nodded, and Garibaldi cleared his throat, thinking about what would have happened to him if he hadn’t ducked. He lifted his hand, and it was still shaking.
“We’ll leave the bodies there,” said Bester contentedly. “I always say, if you can’t talk to the person you want, leave a message.”
Garibaldi rubbed his dry lips and looked back out the window. He shouldn’t be an ingrate, because they had probably saved his life, but he felt rotten about the cold-blooded executions. That could be Talia lying down there in the street, he reminded himself.
“The person you want is Malten,” he said hoarsely.
“It certainly is,” agreed Bester. “I want to thank you two, you’ve done a wonderful job on this case. Beyond my expectations. You led us right to the rattlers’ nest.”
Garibaldi remained single-minded. “Then you’ll let Talia Winters go now, right?”
Mr. Bester frowned. “That is a concern. To let her go would be to admit we made a mistake, and we don’t like to air our dirty linen in public. Plus, we want to keep the Mix healthy and in place, with a few more controls and minus Malten. The Free Phobos group will never be heard from again, so what is the harm in letting them keep the blame?”
“Talia Winters!” barked Garibaldi. “Read my lips. She’s not guilty, and you know it.”
Bester swallowed and looked past him. “I’ve arranged for your passage back to Babylon 5, and Mr. Gray’s passage to Berlin. There will be commendations for both of you in my report.”
“Mr. Bester!” snapped Gray. “That is patently unfair! You know very well she is innocent.”
The Psi Cop shook his head in amazement. “Don’t you know how many agencies are after her now? I couldn’t call them off even if I wanted to! If she turns herself in—to the right people—she might stand a chance.”
“Then I’m going to keep after her,” vowed Garibaldi.
“It is no longer your concern!” Bester seethed. He winced in pain as he shifted in his seat.
“Not true,” said Garibaldi. “I’m bringing back a fugitive who escaped from Babylon 5. I can do that all day long. Put this shuttle down! I’m getting off.”
“Me too,” said Gray, jutting his chin.
“All right,” snapped Bester. “Put them down.”
“Is Miami okay?” asked the pilot. “That’s the closest big city without backtracking.”
“Fine,” responded both Garibaldi and Gray. The security chief gave his partner a nod and glanced out the cockpit window. He saw that they were in space, in reentry, and half the globe was shimmering in the sunlight of a new day.
“One more thing,” said Bester through clenched teeth.
“Yeah?”
“Stay away from Mars.”
Garibaldi chuckled and looked at the Psi Cop. “You’re talking about my old stomping grounds. Is that where Malten really is? On Mars. Why don’t you get him?”
“We know he’s on Mars, but we don’t know where. If you find out where he is, call us. Let us handle him.”
“Sure,” said Garibaldi, “and if you find Talia, call me. Let me handle her.”
They felt the thrusters of the shuttlecraft kick on, and the noise level increased. They strapped themselves into seats and braced for the descent into Miami.
Talia lay in the swaybacked bed, just watching the sun stream through the dirty lace curtains of the old hotel. It was not the kind of place she would have stayed a week earlier, but it felt so warm and friendly that she never wanted to leave. She knew she had to get up, keep moving, but her body told her to rest. It creaked with protest when she forced it out of the bed.
She strolled past the viewer and wondered if she should put the news on. She couldn’t bear to see herself in that wig again, either in a computer mock-up or in real life, so she had decided to trim her regular hair a bit and stuff it all into the beret. Even though she dreaded seeing her face on the screen again, she couldn’t resist the masochistic impulse to turn on the viewer. She dialed the news, hoping against hope that something good might have happened while she slept.
Thankfully, she caught the tail end of the report on her, which summed up that she was still at large. This came as some relief, she thought ruefully, just in case the hotel room was really an ingenious prison. At large, thought Talia. What a strange phrase—it sounded as if she were everywhere and nowhere at once, which was sort of true.
She was about to turn the viewer off when she heard the announcer mention a name, Emily Crane. Talia jumped back as if she had been shocked, and she stared at the image on the screen. It was Emily Crane, the one who had turned her into a hunted fugitive. Only she was dead, and her PR photo was replaced by a more grisly shot of a limp body on a sidewalk. Talia concentrated on the announcer’s words:
“There are no suspects, and police are asking that anyone with information on the murder of Emily Crane, Michael Graham, and Barry Strump please come forward. Once again, three commercial telepaths from the Mix were brutally murdered about five o’clock this morning. There was no apparent robbery or motive. In sports, we have a new champion in field hockey …”
Talia punched it off and slumped back into the bed. Now, what the hell was she going to do? The one person who might be able to clear her was dead! She felt like curling up in the droopy bed and just staying there until her money ran out, or the Psi Cops found her, whichever came first.