Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

"So what do you want?" Perri Twyst asked. "A son or a daughter?"

"Whatever it is, boy or girl, we will love the child. Our physician didn't want Ariadne traveling at this time…"

"…but I didn't want to be away from my husband's side," the woman added. "If the baby should be born here…"

"…we'll take that as a good omen for our recent efforts in Seattle." Sitverstaff said.

"That sounds great," Twyst said. "And you'll have to come back on the show and let us introduce him-or her-to the world. Please."

The canned applause was interrupted by the switch from televised show to a street scene. Chelsea Sable, KTXX Action Eye reporter, was dressed in a white low-cut blouse that left her shoulders exposed, and tight purple jeans that left little to the imagination.

The reporter was crossing the street against the traffic with her cameraman following closely behind. Cars had slopped and a few honked in mild irritation. In the background, the warehouse where the elves had brought Skater that morning had been roped off in yellow tape. Lone Star uniforms held the perimeters with automatic weapons.

Sable spoke in her normal tone, a sub-dermal microphone making her voice clear and resonant, "-you're joining us here live, at the site of what I've been told was a major gun battle today at noon." The reporter kept moving toward the police line. Three Lone Star uniforms broke from their posts and moved in an interception path. "However, investigating authorities declined to mention that in their reports earlier

The cameraman panned around the street, picking up the crowd that was starting to form. The KTXX mobile van was parked with two wheels up on the curb in front of Esoteric's Lore Store amp; More across the street. Going Out Of Business banners covered the tops of the two plate-glass windows.

"Come on," Skater said as he looked at the sea of faces the camera was picking up. He led the way into the trideo store.

The sales clerk behind the glass display counter was thin and angular His hair had been cut to leave three stripes that ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck. All the stripes were done in black and white.

"Something I can do for you, chummer?" the clerk asked.

"Can you record that?" Skater asked, pointing to the trideo showing Sable's telecast.

"I can sell you a recorder, or I can sell you a trideo set," the clerk said.

"If you've got something set up and ready to roll," Skater said, "I'm sure I can make it worth your while." He showed a credstick he'd recovered from one of his small stashes. "What do you think?"

The clerk reached up to a shelf behind him and popped a chip into the recorder sitting there. "KTXX, huh?"

"Yeah." Skater watched the screen, barely registering the security camera that locked onto him from the upper corner of the ceiling. He knew Duran had noticed it, too, because the ork stood with his back to the camera.

Sable was having no luck at all in crossing the police barrier. She talked to a plainclothes detective in the end. though, right before she got the boot. The warehouse was the scene of an ongoing investigation, the groundhound yelled at her, and there was no way the media was going to be allowed access. Sable and her production team retreated to the other side of the street. During all of that, the camera had been busy moving, scanning the crowd that had gath¬ered, partly out of interest and partly because the street was blocked.

In the middle of the reporter's explanation to the camera that she'd been tipped off about the shooting and mat it was possibly related to the jailbreak from Lone Star Security Services that morning, Sable's transmission was cut short. The channel went to a popular game show, already in progress.

"That's it," Skater said. "I'll take the chip."

The clerk nodded, popping his gum in careless abandon, and retrieved the optical chip from the recorder. "Pleasure doing business with you."

Skater nodded and pocketed the chip as he headed for the door. Outside, he made straight for the telcoms again. He connected to the illegal line Wheeler had arranged at Archibald's apartment.

Wheeler answered on the first ring. "Yeah."

"I need to talk to Archangel."

"Done."

"You want to tell me what's going on?" the ork said in a low voice that wouldn't carry.

"Faces," Skater replied.

"Faces?" Duran echoed.

"That newscast went out live and got pulled," Skater said. "If the fix is really in, there won't be any copies of that transmission to be had."

"So?"

"I'm here," Archangel said, sounding distant, like she'd just jacked out of the Matrix.

"We're at the Renton Mall." Skater told her "I just got a celebrity spot on a security camera in a shop called Malt amp; Matt's Trideo Concepts. I need to know if you can access it and bone the security system's memory."

"Shouldn't take more than a simple sleaze utility to get in and a chaotic crash and edit program to scramble their sec-cam files," Archangel said. "Does this have to be subtle?"

"No. Duran and I are clear. And if the security memory goes missing, there's nothing to tie us to the place."

"Jack." The decker seemed hesitant, then just pushed the words out. "I checked Larisa's med records. She had the baby three weeks ago at Harborview Hospital. It was stillborn. I'm sorry."

Skater felt the cold chill of an unexplained loss drift through him. "Thanks," he made himself say. He punched the Disconnect.

"What's this about faces?" Duran asked.

"Let's make ourselves scarce." Skater headed for the southern exit. Bright bars of sunlight slashed through the glass doors and lay in straight lines against the tiled floor. "There's an outside chance that some of the elves we braced today might have been nosing around the warehouse area during the investigation. If we can identify them for Archangel, she might be able to find out who they were."

"We stand still long enough, they're going to make a run at us. We could idee them then."

"If we could be sure wed live long enough to get it done," Skater said. "When the time comes to go up against these people, I want some aces in my pocket. I like moving."

Duran nodded. "Something to keep in mind, though: a moving target only has the illusion of being safe. Kind of fades away when you hear somebody yell, pull! And you figure out you're just another skeet"

Brynna Rose lived in the same three-story walk-up apartment overlooking Seattle University that she'd had when Skater had first met her over a year ago. The neighborhood was run-down in places, victimized by the students who haunted the area for cheap housing.

They left the car a block away and walked through a maze of dumpsters, broken and discarded furniture, and makeshift clothes lines that held sheets and other articles. From his two previous visits, Skater knew that, one way or another, the clothing would be gone by the time it was fully dark.

'Tell me who we're going to see," Duran said, walking around a vinyl-covered sofa with one end missing and a drunk passed out on it. A scrawny beagle perched on the drunk's chest watched them with baleful eyes.

"Her name's Brynna Rose." Skater paused at the bottom of the outside stairway and peered up. The landings were all small, peeling white paint over abused wood. '"She was a friend of Larisa's."

"And yours?"

"We weren't exactly big on sharing friends. The only time I ever came here was a couple of times when Larisa had to pick up some things. They roomed together for a while too. There was a guy who came into the picture."

"Still around?"

"No." Skater stopped on the third floor landing. Angry voices barely penetrated the door. One was male, and the other sounded like Brynna's.

"She's not alone tonight," Duran observed, stepping into position on the other side of the door. He held his Roomsweeper in both hands.