Chris Moriarty - Spin State

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Friends in Helena. It’s my day off, remember?”

“Oh.” She did remember now. “Yeah.”

“You?”

“Just going down for the day.” She hoped.

“Want to join us?” he asked, folding his long frame into the seat next to her. “We can show you around.”

“I have an appointment,” she said evasively, hoping she could get rid of McCuen before Korchow’s man showed up. This was one wrinkle she didn’t need.

“Oh, by the way,” McCuen said. “I figured out where that storage chit in Sharifi’s journal came from.”

Sharifi and the investigation had been so far from Li’s mind for the last thirty-six hours that it took her a moment to remember what McCuen was talking about. “Oh?” she asked. “Where?”

“Remember how all her researchers got so conveniently shipped out on that survey mission? Well, one of them didn’t. He shipped out the day after Sharifi died. On the Medusa , bound for Freetown. And it looks like he checked a package through for her.”

“Let me guess when the Medusa makes Freetown.”

McCuen nodded. “Thirteen days, sixteen hours, and fourteen minutes from now. Or, to answer your real question, about twenty minutes after Gould’s ship is supposed to drop into orbit.”

Li frowned, thinking. “Remember what Sharifi wrote on that page, McCuen? Next to Gould’s address? Life insurance. I looked at it and thought it had to be some kind of protective measure, something to save her life. But what if it wasn’t like that at all? What if it was really like an actual life insurance policy, something that would go into effect only if she died?”

“Well, that’s when it did go into effect, right? I mean the student shipped out the day after Sharifi died. And, whatever she may have suspected, Gould didn’t actually leave for Freetown until your call gave her solid confirmation that Sharifi was dead.”

If McCuen was right, then Nguyen had thirteen days to go fishing for Korchow with Li as bait. And Li had thirteen days to get that chop-shop receipt back from Korchow—while he still needed her enough to keep his promise. Because once Gould and the mysterious package reached Freetown all bets were off.

She looked up at McCuen and found him frowning at her.

“What?” she said.

“Call logs.” He looked worried, hesitant. “Remember you told me to check for calls to Freetown?”

How the hell had she forgotten about that?

“Well, someone called a Freetown-based Consortium front company the night before Sharifi died. From Haas’s private terminal. With Haas’s password.”

A chill spread through the pit of Li’s stomach at the thought that Nguyen had been right all along, that ALEF and the Consortium lay at the bottom of Sharifi’s betrayal, and not the Syndicates.

McCuen’s eyes flicked to the aisle. Li followed his gaze and saw Bella standing a few rows up, waiting for a seat. Bella glanced at her and immediately glanced away, her lips set in a pale furious line. She passed by without speaking and found a seat four or five rows back from them.

“Oops,” McCuen said, and the look he shot at Li was full of questions she didn’t want to answer.

She tapped into the in-flight computer and watched the inevitable safety disclaimers scroll up her seat-back screen. “If you feel unable to sit in an exit row,” she told McCuen brightly, “please ask the crew for a change of seating assignment.”

“I have to piss,” Li said, as they stepped out of the boarding gate. Weak, but the ladies’ room was the one place in the airport she could think of that McCuen couldn’t follow her.

“Sure you don’t want to hit the town with us?” he asked, hovering.

“No. I need to check up on a few things. Talk to that nun again, maybe. You go on.”

They were cleaning the bathroom when she stepped in, two skinny, undergrown girls swabbing listlessly at the floor with mops so filthy that Li figured the net exchange of disinfectant and bacteria had reversed itself years ago. As she skirted the wet floor the flash of a gemstone at the older girl’s neck caught her eye.

It was a necklace. A stupid, tacky little charm that you could buy anywhere. But that wasn’t synthetic diamond glittering at the end of the chain. It was condensate. And she’d seen something like it before. Somewhere or someplace that she ought to remember if her hacked and kinked and decohering memory wasn’t playing tricks on her.

“Pretty,” she said, pointing. “Where’d you get it?”

The girl giggled and put a protective, embarrassed hand to her throat. “My boyfriend?” she half-said half-asked, giggling again.

“What’s it made of?”

“Crystal? It’s entangled?” Another giggle. “With his?”

“Oh. Right,” Li said. “It’s pretty,” she added, since some comment along those lines was obviously required at this point. After all, someone must think the gimmicky little things looked good; she’d been seeing them everywhere lately.

Then her oracle shook loose the right file, and she remembered who she’d last seen one on.

Gillian Gould.

Li turned back to stare at the pendant. The girl flinched and stepped backward under the intensity of her gaze. “Are you all right?” she asked, looking frightened.

“Yeah,” Li said. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.”

She stepped into a stall and squatted to relieve herself, trying not to touch anything she didn’t have to. When she opened the door and stepped out again she ran head-on into Bella.

“Christ!” she gasped, heart pounding. “You scared me. Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

Bella didn’t answer. The cleaning girls had vanished, though the smell of standing water lingered.

“What are you doing here, Bella?”

The construct turned without acknowledging the question and walked toward the door. “Follow me,” she said, the words barely a murmur. “Not close. They’ll be watching.”

Li trailed her down the main axis of the spaceport, through the baggage claim, out past the taxi lines, into the yawning cement-smelling darkness of the underground parking. She must have let her guard down, because though she knew that she was gradually losing satellite access she didn’t see the trap until it had already closed on her.

“How ya doing?” said a voice high overhead, just as she heard the soft click of a safety being eased back.

She was crossing a ramp with no cover in sight—and even if there had been cover it was far, far too late to take advantage of it. She looked up and saw McCuen’s friend Louie sitting one level above her, legs swinging lazily, sighting down the snub-nosed barrel of a rebuilt Sten.

“Too bad about those Yankees,” Louie said.

“It’s not over yet. McCuen know what you’re up to down here?”

Louie grinned. “Let’s just say Brian doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does.”

A flick of his eyes drew Li’s own gaze to the shadows below the ramp, and she found herself staring down the black barrel of a Colt Peacemaker, close enough to see just how long it had been since the gun had had a proper cleaning.

“Take it easy,” Ramirez said from the driver’s end of the Colt. “Both of you.”

Li glanced toward Bella and saw her standing halfway down the garage’s central aisle, looking poleaxed.

“Let Bella go, Ramirez. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Not an option.” He gestured to Bella. “Go on. Over by Li. Now!”

Bella scurried to Li’s side and stood there shivering while Ramirez frisked both of them with depressing thoroughness.

“I’d better get that back,” Li said when he took the Beretta, but it was pure bravado and they both knew it. She’d seen enough of Ramirez underground to know he wouldn’t hesitate or lose his nerve. And even if he did, Louie was up on the exit ramp training the Sten on them.