Page 43

K ez is waiting for me at Tyng Tower.

She’s sitting on the wide marble lip of the central fountain, which still sports its sundial and artificial sun, although the rest of the party trappings have been swept away.

She’s trying not to look anxious, as she scans the crowd, watching for me.

But the nervous jittering of the knee she’s got crossed over the other gives her away.

“I didn’t kill him,” I tell her without preamble.

She launches herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing every exposed bit of face and neck she can reach.

“Public,” I remind her, but I don’t try to stop her. I hug her close so I can whisper into her ear, “You’ve made me into such a simp.”

“I love you,” she whispers back. “I love you.” She keeps kissing me until I catch her face in my hands. “I love you so much.”

“See how much you love me when somethin’ Dunk’s fed Jaxon bites us in the ass.”

“I don’t care. I’ll still love you.” She wriggles free of my hands and goes back to kissing my neck and chin. “Can we go back to your place? Please? ”

“Thought we were goin’ out to lunch?” I don’t really care all that much, although I had picked out a nice place for us to eat and I don’t think there’s any food at mine, since we’ve been eating at Kez’s most nights of late.

We can always get take-out.

“Please?” She kisses me more determinedly. “I want to be alone with you.”

Well, that’s tempting. But I’m supposed to be letting the little monster heal. “Kitten.”

“Please?”

I love it when she begs. “Okay, yeah.”

That’s why Doc Gray gave me the goo, after all.

After leaving a message for Myhre about Duncan’s mother, I lead Kez out to my trike.

We make a quick stop for noodles from a shop a minute from my place.

Another quick stop in my ‘fresher for lube, because it can’t hurt to give the goo a helping hand.

Kez tries to drag me out to the hammock on my deck, but fucking in view of Security Xec Zatlan’s corpse is not a turn-on, so we end up in my bed, with her riding me. The sex is sweet and sweaty and messy.

She cries against my neck while I finish, which doesn’t surprise me, given everything that’s happened.

It’s just a release of tension. I hold her for a while afterwards, until the little monster reminds me that it’s supposed to be in recovery.

I withdraw, clean us both up, put on more of the goo and some skivvies, and retrieve the noodles from the kitchen.

I’ve learned not to have sex with Kez on a full stomach. Gives me gas.

She’s straightened the bed and pulled on one of the soft, silky shifts she keeps at my place by the time I return.

We prop ourselves up against the headboard and eat our noodles directly out of the tray.

Kez leans against my side and I put my arm around her as we eat.

Good thing I can use chopsticks left-handed.

“Why didn’t you kill Dunk?” she asks around a mouthful of noodles.

“He ever mention his mother to you? ”

“Mmm-hum.” Kez chews for a moment. “He lives with her. She’s sick, I think.”

“Yeah, radiation sickness. Jaxon got leverage on Dunk by threatening her. Same as the Old Man before him.”

Kez sighs. Taps her chopsticks against side of the tray. “I should have seen that coming, shouldn’t I?”

“Whether or not Old Man Tyng was thinkin’ of her as his heir before Sokun’s death, she’s still his daughter. Makes sense he’d keep an eye on her.”

“Yeah, but a spy in my house?”

“Gig’s too good for anything else.” I just added defenses to the Warren.

Gig had it in an anti-surveillance wrapper long before I came along.

“Without eyes or ears, they’d need a man on the inside.

We gotta figure they know everything about where you’re gonna be and when.

You can’t keep to your routine. Sorry, kitten. ”

She rubs her temple against my shoulder. “It’s okay. I knew this was coming.”

“You didn’t seem very happy about it out in the Clouds.”

“I’m not.” She rolls her head against my shoulder. Smiles up at me. “But there’ve been compensations. Spending nearly every minute with you doesn’t suck.”

I chuckle. Give her a squeeze. “Speakin’ of which, I think this was the last shoppin’ trip for you and Baby Tyng. I know that’s gonna be hard for you to take.”

Kez sniggers. “I’m destroyed. You’re going to have to break it to her, though. We’re supposed to be doing nails and hair tomorrow. I feel like a threedy star.”

“We gotta focus on business now.” The serious business of destroying our enemies. And keeping Kez safe. “I need you with me for that. I’ve got a hard lead on Jaxon. Means going to Tonlye, though.”

“We could hit that on our way back from Kuus.”

It’s a little out of the way, but Tonlye’s down the Hemos Valley from Kuus, so we’d be going in the right direction, at any rate. “How long you think the meet-n-greet with your friend Java’s going to take?”

Kez shrugs. “An hour? If he’s really bad off, we shouldn’t stay long.”

Plenty of time to pay a visit to the Vark boys on the way home from Kuus. “Sounds good. What about meetin’ with your mentor?” I’m not sure what use that meeting is now, since I’ve got a way to track Jaxon down. But Kez wants me to meet Liv. If it’s important to Kez, it’s important to me.

“My what?”

“Liv.”

Kez snorts. “I wouldn’t have called her my mentor.”

I would. Kez owes Liv a lot. Liv may not be the most compassionate person.

It certainly doesn’t sound like it from Kez’s little story about her time in the tank.

But Kez came out of her childhood with her soul intact, after being abandoned by everyone who should have cared for her.

She has Liv to thank for that, even if she can’t see it right now.

“Uh-huh,” I say.

“She doesn’t want to meet.” Kez pushes the few remaining noodles around in the tray.

She doesn’t want to meet me . “That’s not a reflection on you, kitten. And I say we pay her a visit anyway. You know when she’ll be around?”

Kez nods. Looks up at me again. “Whatever she says, that’s not the way I feel, okay?”

“Okay.” I kiss her on the nose. Flick away the drop of dark sauce my lips leave behind. “I told you before, only person I’m ever listenin’ to about you is you. You got somethin’ you want to tell me, tell me. Everything else is just noise.”

Kez grins. “I want to tell you that you’re amazing. Even when you have noodle-breath.”

She can talk. “I want to tell you somethin’.

I know who shot our skimmer down. It was your buddy, Dom Fox.

” Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t argue.

“I got the vid to prove it. I’m gonna have Myhre turn it over to the C.P.

Let them take care of it, nice and legal.

That should shut the Foxes down for a while.

But first I need to know if Dom bein’ in the Deeps was just a coincidence, or whether someone sold us out. ”

Kez’s grin has faded while I’ve been talking. Now her soft mouth twists into a grimace. “You think it was a set-up.”

“Maybe. The Whites are at war, whether they admit it or not. Hundred CeeBees would come in handy.”

“I can’t believe Acker would do that.”

I don’t want to believe it. But I can. I’ve never known anyone who wouldn’t put their own interests ahead of mine. No one but Kez.

Flying with Kez is one of my favorite things.

Well, one of my favorite things that ain’t sex.

Since I’ve trained her, she flies the way I would.

I leave her to do the things she does best and get on with the things I do best. My best thing is course plotting, something that was drilled into me so hard in SAWL that I can do it in my sleep.

Kez enjoys the actual flying more. I occasionally check her course, which is perfect.

While she flies, I tell her my plan for running Jaxon to ground.

“How well do you know the Varks?” she asks.

“Well enough to know that if I offer them more than Jaxon, they’ll give him up.”

“Then what?”

Then I hunt him down and kill him. “Whaddo you think?”

Kez sighs. “I don’t think you should kill him.”

Since when? Yesterday she was ready to help me. “Why not?”

“Because of the tag. I keep going back to what he said at the Gold Ball-Ball. He sounded like he didn’t even know about it.”

I thought so, too. But he’s the most obvious hitter. “Alb said Jaxon offered him big money for intel on you.”

Kez nods. “Big money is a grand. Maybe two. You’ve seen how these guys live.

I used to think ten thousand hard was huge.

I had no idea what real money was. Those two runs I did for Mister Tyng?

That’s as much as I made the whole previous year .

A hundred thousand is unimaginable for these guys.

Payton was feeding Jaxon enough to throw around a thousand or two, but it was never big money.

You’ve seen the numbers. And you know as well as I do that he hasn’t been saving what she’s been giving him.

He’s been spending it. Hell, going back and forth between Eastern Colony and the Clouds a couple of times in style would make a big dent in what he’s been paid.

Jaxon’s not the money, and Payton isn’t either.

So there’s someone else out there who is willing to pay a hundred thousand to see me dead.

I don’t think you should kill Jaxon until we figure out who that is. ”

That makes a lot of sense, but it goes against my fucking grain.

I want Snaggletooth dead. Anyone who tries to take my kitten away from me dies.

That simple. “You got any other ideas?” I’ve told her about the mag-gun coming from the Tyng armory, but other than making her frown, the intel hasn’t gotten us anywhere new.

“This Drogan guy, although I can’t think of what I’ve done to piss him off.”

“Might not be personal to you?—”

Kez snorts. “It’s feeling pretty damn personal.”

I chuckle. At least she’s still got her sense of humor. “Maybe it’s because he’s figured out you’re the power behind the throne.”