Page 3 of Throwing Fire

I glance around, assessing the scene. I’ve worn ThinSkin on my hands to avoid leaving my new fingerprints anywhere, and I don’t have any hair to shed, but I pocket the chopsticks, just in case, and unwind the spidersilk from Reg’s body. Covering my tracks comes natural after so many years of doing it in SAWL.

Maybe I should be resentful about having to play assassin again, but I’m not. I’m doing what I do best, and killing in defense of my kitten is the best cause I’ve ever had.

When I’m sure the scene is clean, I dust my boot prints off the table, then tap the panel on my harness to reel myself back up into the airvent. From there, it’s an easy climb to the warehouse roof, an easier rappel down, and then two blocks through the quiet streets of Nock to where my trike waits.

CHAPTER 2

With the Bale brothers out of the way, I can finally book a vacation.

In my two-week tenure as Chief of Security for Tyng Enterprises, I’ve thwarted two attempts on Chiara’s life and now one on Kez’s, so I figure I’ve earned a vacation. But more importantly, I promised Kez, and I never break my promises to my kitten.

She’s kneeling between my feet at the moment, her head in my lap, toying with the closure on my pants in a way that’s making it difficult for me to concentrate. She’s concealed by the pseudowood monstrosity of my desk. When I took this office, there was a sleek glaz and metal desk that matched the rest of Tyng Tower’s sleek glaz and metal decor. But it disappeared on the second day and this beast replaced it. When Myhre forced a weekly calendar on me, I discovered that Kez had booked a repeating appointment with me every day at thirteen hundred labeled: ‘Sex on Desk.’

I’ve kept my aesthetic objections about the desk to myself.

Whether the woman sitting on the other side of the desk knows about Kez’s presence is hard to say. She’s not giving it away if she does, but Myhre’s extremely hard to read. There’s nothing on hersmooth oval face. Nothing in her dark brown eyes. But she knows my calendar better than I do.

Which means she’s making me late on purpose. And that’s beginning to piss me off.

She taps the holodisplay that surrounds her special chair and a column of figures hanging in the air between us rotates so I can read them.

“Blue Fox Clan doesn’t have a hundred hard credits to spare, much less a hundred thousand,” she tells me.

I scan down the column. Shake my head. “How the fuck d’you find out how much they spend on holopaint?” I ask, pointing at one line-item in the column.

“Their supplier’s data is not as secure as it should be,” Myhre answers. But even in her response, there’s that element of inscrutability. She doesn’t tell me whether she hacked the data or got it from some other source. Myhre’s fucking hard to read, which makes me distrust her. But I have to respect her methods.

“Could they get it?” I ask.

“Doubtful.”

“So that leaves the crew out of Shyl. Nelly Simone’s boys.”

“And the threat from Eastern Colony.”

“Which we don’t know anything about.”

“All I have is a name,” she says. “Drogan.”

I grunt with irritation. There’s too much we don’t know. “That name didn’t crop up last night.”

“You said Reginald Bale didn’t know who hired them.”

“I only got the one name. Jaxon. He set up the meet.” Between my feet, Kez stiffens and her fingers, which have slipped down to stroke my balls, press hard enough that I shift in my chair. I reach under the lip of my desk and flick her on the ear. She muffles her chuckle against my knee.

“It’s a place to start,” Myhre says.

“You get workin’ on that while I meet with the rats.”

Myhre’s soft, full mouth tightens. Not wholly inscrutable. Shedoesn’t want me meeting with the rats. Whether because she’s figured out the real purpose of the meeting or because she just disapproves of Acker’s genetically modified crew, I don’t know.

“Is that meeting necessary?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“May I ask the agenda of the meeting?”

“Dinner.”