Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

That was putting it mildly, Skater knew, but he didn't offer a comment.

"I couldn't ever see us getting social together," the ork said. "But the working relationship was good. Better than most I've been involved with. We live in the shadows, and life is just a run through the shadows, too. That's easy to forget sometimes. And when you're running through those shadows, it's good to know you've got someone you can trust watching your back door."

"You didn't sound so trusting last night," Skater said, looking at Duran.

The ork smiled, and the effect looked positively serrated. "You get pushy, kid."

"Yeah."

"That's what I meant about being a good leader. Why'd you say that?"

"So I'd know," Skater answered.

"And in order for you to know how I think?"

"You're going to have to know how you think," Skater said.

"Right. Squares me up with myself first. Takes the focus off whether I should trust you and puts it back where it belongs-on whether I should trust myself."

"Something like that."

"So where did you learn to think like that?"

"Inside my own skin. Lot of drek I had to sort out for myself. Best way I figured to do that was know for sure what was on my mind, how I felt about a person or a situation."

Duran shook his head. "You'd have made a hell of a first sergeant, kid. In answer to your questions, though, last night I was questioning your loyalty more than I was questioning whether I could trust you. Today, I decided."

Skater nodded. It was fair.

"Another thing"

"What?"

"That elf dancer you were involved with. How do you feel about her now?"

Skater was silent for a moment, trying to skull it through but coming up cross-slotted every time. "I don't know. Too much I found out that I didn't know, and too many questions left about things I thought I did know."

"How about I give you something to kick around in your head?"

Skater was hesitant. He'd always liked to do his own thinking, then he realized that Duran had probably been leading up to this the whole time. The ork was no slouch, either. "Yeah."

"You trusted this woman, maybe even loved her. On the surface, it looks like she fragged you over, looking for some kind of score to keep her own hoop from getting jammed."

Skater remained silent, distancing himself from the emotions that suddenly twisted up through him.

"I'm going to walk through it for you, and you can make of it what you want. I don't know much about your track record with the ladies, but I've seen you with Archangel, and you don't cross any lines. I see this woman, she loves you enough to try to save you when this Maddock comes along. She gets herself in deeper, becomes a surrogate mother because Maddock tells her that's what she's got to do. So she does, and loses everything: you, her job, her independence. That's why she was living in Bellevue. Right?"

Skater nodded. He remembered the doss in the Montgomery, painted by the flames. Not much had existed of the Larisa he'd known. Suddenly he realized it wasn't because she'd changed. It was because she hadn't lived there. A prisoner had.

"Maddock obviously had a lot invested in this piece of biz, whatever it was," Duran went on. "Larisa takes a good look around. Maddock has her by the short hairs, hosed any which way she goes. Maybe she gets mad at you during this time, but not enough to simply frag you over. Some slitches would. But you're good at reading people, right, so she didn't come across like that?"

"No," Skater said, and felt the certainty of that conviction sink into him. There'd been other women before Larisa, and their various betrayals hadn't surprised him.

"She's trapped, not knowing what to do. By this time she's been able to take a good look around. You haven't been breaking down the door trying to see her at the old doss, so she knows she can trust you to keep your word about staying away. Probably she knew that anyway. Only this time, it's working against her."

The image of Larisa's caramelized face filled Skater's mind and brought a pain that hurt deep and sharp.

"She takes a good look," the ork said. "She sees you, a shadowrunner. Can she save you? Can she get you to stay away from the action?"

Skater recalled the few arguments he'd had with Larisa. She'd wanted him to leave the shadows, even threatened to end it if he didn't. But she'd never been able to. Not until five months ago. "No," he said in a tight voice.

"No," Duran repeated with emphasis. "Because you're not moving from it. Hooked by the nuyen, the lifestyle, or the pump of the jazz running brings."

Thinking of all the Caribbean accounts that had been seized, Skater knew it wasn't any of those. He'd been hooked by the lure of security, of having enough to simply vanish one day. Larisa had always said that would never happen, because he'd never know when he had enough.

"Could be for awhile she ignored that," Duran said. "Then Maddock comes along with his blackmail scheme. She took the deal hoping to buy some time. Brynna told us that. Only time is all she's buying, and suddenly she realizes that's running out. But during this last five months, she gets to thinking maybe there is someone she can save."

"The baby."

Duran nodded. "That's what I think. So when she got her hands on the info about the Sapphire Seahawk, she calls you. If the biz goes down right, she has a way out for the baby, and possibly she's even thinking about herself now."

"Why not just call me?" Skater asked. "I could have gotten her away from there."

"And lose everything in doing it?" Duran shook his head. "There was no reason to believe you'd do it. She'd asked you before and you'd always said no. I think she probably had her own plans together, and was just waiting for financing. She could disappear. And if it came off right, you'd still be free to do whatever the hell you wanted to and she'd have earned her own way clear."

Examining the scenario. Skater tested it for any flaws. It fit with what he knew of Larisa. She'd been fiercely independent in her own right.

Duran was quiet for a time. "I think you had a hell of a woman on your hands for a time, and she loved you down deep where it counts. I think, too, that you knew it and it scared the drek out of you. So when you look at this thing, look past the surface."

"I have been. I just haven't been able to find anything else there."

"We'll talk to Maddock," the ork replied, "and see where that takes us. Once we get this Sapphire Seahawk biz squared away, you can find out who killed her and why." Duran glanced over at him. "Out of respect for the lady, I'd like to give you a hand with that." He stuck out a fist.

After only a moment's hesitation. Skater closed his fist and dropped it on the ork's, knowing that the offer wasn't meant lightly. He also knew neither the offer nor the acceptance came without a price. He was stepping way beyond the limits he'd imposed on his relationships with the team and it scared the hell out of him. "I'd appreciate it," he said, because the price was worth paying.

"Got him," Duran said.

Without moving too fast. Skater turned from the long bar and scanned the throbbing crowd that filled one of the huge glass dance floors of Dante's inferno. The pulsating lights and crisscrossing lasers were fragging up his low-light vision, and the thump of the shag metal blasting out of dozens of speakers made subdermals out of the question. The band's theme was the afterlife, but only a gruesome afterlife achieved through arcane means. Dressed as rotting corpses and writhing maggots, they occupied the third level stage.

Skater and Duran had been scoping out the lowest three of the nine dance floors-not including Hell. They'd paid six waitresses, two on each floor, to let them know when Ridge Maddock put in his appearance. Sophie, one of the cocktail servers working the second floor, came over to them. She was tall and shapely, her left cheek covered with a tattoo of a flaming angel.