Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

"I can't take this," Brynna protested.

Skater rolled it up in her fist. "Yes you can. You can't go back to your doss. And you can't access your own credstick for a few days. You're going to need something to live on. I wish I had more to give you, but I'm pretty tapped out myself at the moment,"

Her eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. "I can't go off and leave everything I own."

"You will," Duran said gruffly, "if you want to go on breathing."

"Just give me a few days," Skater said. "Everything should be back to zero-sweat by then." He spoke with more confidence than he felt.

"How will I know?"

"Call this number and let me know where you're staying." Skater wrote the number of a message drop he used under another name on a cocktail napkin and gave it to her. The message drop, set up like the one he was using with Kestrel, went through an answering service. Once a call was made and another password entered, the message dropped through a trapdoor in the system, where it waited to be retrieved by another passcode. For all intents and purposes, he couldn't be made. Even the SIN he had on file with the answering service was false. Since he could call in and pick up whatever messages were recorded, it had a built-in layer of security. "If you don't hear from me, you might want to stay lost awhile longer."

Brynna nodded, looking more scared than ever.

"One other thing," Skater said. 'Tell me where I can find Ridge Maddock."

"It's me," Skater said when Archangel answered the telecom at the safe house. "I've got a name I want to run by you. Ridge Maddock. Small-time fixer. He was connected with Larisa, and maybe to the accounts at the Montgomery doss."

"Maybe you should stop pushing for a little while," Archangel said. "Get some distance on things."

The comment confused Skater. He figured she was concerned he'd blow their cover arid somehow lead the people who were hunting them back to the team. Bui for a moment, it sounded like she was concerned about him, too. "I'm okay. Duran's here to make sure I don't hose up too bad."

She didn't say anything.

"Have you found out anything about the diplomatic plates?" he asked. He didn't really expect anything, but asking was a way of ending the tense silence. Skater had noticed the official vehicles when viewing the newscast around the warehouse, and it seemed worth looking into.

"No." Her voice was cool, distant, like all this had nothing to do with her. "There's a lot of IC around those Files, and cracking anything political runs the risk of getting my brain fried to a crisp."

"Be careful in there."

"Unlike you, I know when to stop, no matier how responsible I feel." The connection broke.

Puzzled and more than a little irritated over the conversation even though he didn't know why. Skater broke the connection and walked back to the Eurowind. "She's running Maddock."

Duran nodded, glanced quickly in the rearview mirrors, and screeched into traffic. "Something wrong?"

"Nothing I know of," Skater replied as he watched the street around them. A Lone Star cruiser passed them, going the other way fast enough that he knew the blue crew had a definite destination in mind. "We're not any deeper in drek than we were before, but Archangel sounded bent about something."

Duran handled the car easily, sweeping around the comer of Vine Street and heading north. "What'd she say?"

Skater told him.

"It's hard for her," Duran said when he finished.

"What?"

“Ties."

"Between us?"

"Between her and anybody," the ork answered. "I don't know much about Archangel, including her real name, even though I've known her longer than you. What I do know, though, is that I've never seen her with a friend, or ever mention having one."

It had been Archangel who'd brought Duran in after working with Skater off and off for three or four months. Elvis was already working with Skater, and he'd brought in Wheeler. Skater had recruited Cullen Trey from a number of possibilities when it became obvious they needed a mage with combat skills. Duran had suggested Shiva to round out the team with chromed muscle.

"Whatever happened to her along the way to getting here," Duran continued, "she doesn't let anyone next to her."

"I've noticed," Skater said.

"Right now," die ork said, "she's scared. She's let herself get closer to us than she planned." He paused. "I think maybe all of us have. Otherwise, we'd have split when we said we were going to. It was the best course of action at first glance."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I was checking you out," Duran said. "We discussed that. Elvis had already said he wasn't turning his back on you."

"I didn't know that."

"Wheeler stuck by you last night, too, when we were talking about divvying up the files. And Trey isn't the kind of guy to leave a chummer in the lurch if there's something he can do. And Archangel, well, she stuck for her own reasons."

Skater let the ork's words spin in his head, trying to get used to them. He remembered how alone he'd felt the previous night when the team had left him in the back room of the Bloody Rosebud of Phelia.

Duran stopped at a red light. "You put together a good team," he said, studying the rearview mirrors. "That's an achievement all by itself. If this had been some private action on your part and you'd gotten your hoop in the wringer all on your own, maybe none of us would have wanted to get mixed up in it. But it wasn't. You went into this thinking it was going to be a big score for all of us, and you got hosed for it."

"We all did," Skater pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's beginning to shape up like some of this was personal. Someone used you, and us along with you." The ork made a lane change, running a sedate ten kilometers over the posted speed limit. His fangs were edged ivory against his scarred cheeks. "A fragging lot of weight is hanging out there, waiting to come down on somebody. Even if we ran we'd probably get chased down and geeked one by one. Since we don't know, there's a safety in numbers. Could be whoever set this up figured the team would split up and be easier to get to. Most would have."

"I know."

"We run the shadows together," Duran said. "Doesn't make us bosom chummers, but we do have a responsibility to each other. A leader sets the standard on that, lack, and you've set a high one these past three years."

Skater started to disagree, feeling uncomfortable, but Duran cut him off.

"It's no bulldrek. When Archangel got me into that first piece of biz with you, I saw a punk kid standing where a man ought to have been. I'd worked with Archangel and couldn't believe she'd have the time of day for someone like you, much less consider following your lead on a run. I never intended to stay on, but in the end your smarts and your nerve sold me."

"I was surprised you stayed," Skater said, remembering the tension that had existed then.

"So was I. But the run came off just like you thought it would. And four runs later, it was still the same. Then, when Trey got zapped by that drone during the raid on the simporn blackmailing scam and you went back for him, I knew you were a guy who'd stick even when things got tough."

"No way I could have left him there."

"Sure you could have." Duran made the corner, beating out the yellow light at the intersection. "A lot of people would have. I've seen some do it. I respect how you handled it, and so do the others."

"That hasn't been the only close call," Skater pointed out. "Everyone on this team has covered somebody else's hoop when the chips were down."

Duran nodded. "Ain't none of us all good or all bad, but not everyone can do the biz together without rubbing each other raw. You kept some of us from each other's throats at different times and made the team work. Me and Shiva, we didn't exactly see eye to eye, but you kept us operational."