Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

"How long have you been there?" Skater asked.

A wintry smile flickered at her lips. "Long enough to see the difference."

"And the others? When are they coming?"

'They're already here."

"Oh." Skater slipped the Predator into the waistband of his jeans, then walked back into the living room.

Duran was still in the easy chair. Elvis was sharing the sofa with Cullen Trey, who was deftly using a pair of chopsticks to work his way through a carton of Chinese take-out from Lee Chee Garden. The mage nodded a hello, as elegantly dressed as ever. His cloak was spread out beneath him so his clothing wouldn't touch the sofa.

Wheeler Iron-Nerve was carrying two chairs in from the kitchen. He placed one for Archangel, then looked at Skater. "Chair?"

Skater shook his head. He liked to move around while he talked, and he had a lot to say. He started with Larisa, then let them have it all.

"She tipped you to the Sapphire Seahawk," Elvis said, "and you thought you could trust her, but who gave her the scan?" "She never realty told me, just kept the whole thing kind

"Then why trust her?"

"I did some legwork of my own before taking the run to Archangel. It looked good." Skater let his eyes travel over all their faces. "We all agreed on that."

"She was a dancer," Trey said. "She could have gotten the scan from anywhere."

"That freighter was from Tir Tairngire," Duran said. "They're pretty fragging tight-lipped about anything they do. Hard to believe somebody connected with that ship would have been in SybreSpace bragging to some joygirl."

A spark of anger ignited in Skater, bringing him around to face the ork.

"Jack," Archangel interrupted softly. "Duran didn't mean anything. He's just saying how someone else might see it."

Taking in a tight, deep breath, Skater held it for just a moment, not meeting anyone's eyes, then releasing. "The information Larisa gave me was about as much as we ever get from any corporate Mr. Johnson. If you take out the bald faced lies, the layers of bulldrek they shovel at us, and the info they think is on the level, we had about as much on the freighter as for any other run we've ever pulled. The manifests weren't on the level. Archangel found that out. Not much else, granted."

"But even the way those files were protected in the freighter's system told us it was a prize worth going after," Archangel said.

"Okay," Duran said, "we agreed we had a target. What about Larisa's info? Where did it come from?"

"She was looking for frag-you money," Skater said with a conviction he suddenly felt. "She got hold of some information she knew I could use-she knew what I did even if she didn't know who I did it with-and she thought she could cut herself in for a percentage."

"You gave it to her," Trey said.

Skater nodded. "Until this, I never had a reason not to trust her."

"She was holding out on you, though," Duran said.

Skater turned the possibility around in his mind. He didn't like it, but it felt right. Larisa had been scared at the end; he knew that as well as he knew his own heart was still beating. "She was frightened," he said softly. Then repeated the conjecture with more conviction.

"But she was obviously doing okay," Elvis said. "That Bellevue doss didn't come cheap."

Skater glanced at Archangel. "Have you checked out her numbers?" He was sure Duran would have asked Archangel to chip whatever she could about Larisa when he'd called the team in.

Archangel nodded. "Prelim's done. Some things I'm still chasing. Considering her income from four months ago, she was living well past her means."

"Can you trace the rent transfers?"

"I can try."

"Do it." Skater put his cup on the low table in front of the sofa and returned to the kitchen long enough to pick up packets of salt, pepper, ketchup, and sugar. Archibald had evidently frequented McHugh's. because they all bore the fast-food restaurant's logo. "Any luck with the files we boosted from the Sapphire Seakawk?'

"No. I've run some home-grown edit utilities with a decrypt cocktail to crash any scramble IC, and an evaluate program as an after-dinner mint. If I can crack any of the files, I may be able to find some bits that will give us more to work with. But I'm certain it's not all there."

Skater placed the salt packet on the low table. "Makes you wonder if it was all there to begin with."

Duran leaned forward. "What are you saying?"

Skater pointed to the red and white salt packet. "O.K., just to simplify things. Let's say we're the salt." He placed the black and gray pepper packet a few centimeters above the salt. "This represents the elves-Tir Taimgire-and their interest in recovering the files we stole."

"Damage control?" Elvis asked.

"On the surface, I think so. The people who broke out of Lone Star seemed to be more interested in getting those files back than anything else."

''Means they're worth something to someone," Trey said. "Which, incidentally, could work in our favor."

"If we live to collect," Wheeler put in-

"True, chummer, but let's look at this optimistically." Trey shifted, then leaned forward' and tapped the pepper packet. "What if we tried selling the files back to the elves? Cut out the middle man?"

"If it comes to that," Skater said, "maybe we will. The downside is they'll find out fragging quick that we don't have all the files. In which case they're going think we're either trying to stiff them, or that we didn't have them to begin with, or that we're just trying to get them off our backs to make another deal."

"Either way," Elvis said, "we stand a good chance of getting our hoops flushed down the tubes so they can bury this."

"It also keeps us from tracking down whoever set us up to begin with." Skater looked around the table as he placed the ketchup packet below the salt. "Personally, I want a shot at whoever it was. They killed Larisa and. by proxy, they killed Shiva. Someone's got to pay."

"I agree," Duran stated. "The elf and troll who tried to scrag Skater outside SybreSpace, they're connected somewhere. Probably to whoever was pulling your girl's strings."

"Dion and Shayx," Skater said. 'They might be working for a guy named Synclair Tone. He and Dion came up out of the Barrens together. A chummer's trying to find out more for me right now." If Kestrel would only return his call.

"I can make some discreet inquiries into Tone's affiliations." Trey said. "Some of my own contacts wouldn't mind trading info for some handy little trinkets I could whip up for them."

"Do that." Skater put the pink sugar envelope down, equidistant from the pepper and ketchup. "This here's the yakuza. I'm not sure where they fit in yet, but we can't ignore them."

"Not with them hunting us," Wheeler said.

"Even if we were able to cut a deal with the Tir Taimgire folks," Skater said, "the yaks just might think we kept a copy of the files as a bargaining chip for some later opportunity. There's a good possibility they'll keep coming at us unless we get certain closure on this."

"I'll look into the yak angle," Elvis said.

Skater nodded. "Outside of those three groups, we're also up against the best Lone Star has to offer, as well as every street hustler who figures on chiseling a piece of our butts." He stood and let his eyes travel over the faces of the others. "Could be our best bet is to do a quick fade and forget we ever heard of Seattle."

"Me," Duran said, "I never liked running from a fight, and I absolutely hate being set up."

"As for myself," Trey said, "I've become accustomed to a certain lifestyle in this town, and that lifestyle has been augmented by our various forays. To venture from here would mean losing that."

Wheeler and Elvis echoed the sentiments with reasons of their own.

"I'm in," Archangel stated simply.