Audacious (22 page)

“But Abby told me to stay clear of you,” the kid said. But he was grinning.

“Don’t look to me like you can,” Kris said. She stood. “Gentlemen, it seems to me that our interests are flowing, if only temporarily, in the same gutter. I want to know who your girls were working with. I suspect you do, too. I remind you that Bronc and Cara are now under my protection. You don’t want to have anything happen to them or the next visit from me and mine will leave nobody standing. You understand me.”

The two guys eyed each other, like scorpions… under the foot of a very big camel.

“Hey, if your enemy is our enemy, don’t that make you our friends,” Bone Man said.

“That’s the usual way of looking at it,” Kris agreed.

So all was ending well, Kris thought, as she turned to the captain.

But he was standing stiff, only his hand moved to tap his earbud. Kris caught the last half of a sentence spoken in Gunny’s familiar drawl. “… alert message. Repeat, Red alert message. Two Marines down and dead. General Trouble’s wife is gone.”

29

A
white-hot rage the likes of which Kris had never felt in her life swept over her.

Kris whirled back to face the gang leaders. Had all this been just a ploy to lure her and half the Marines away from the embassy? If they had…

The same thought was passing through a lot of Marines’ heads, too. Safeties clicked off weapons. Slaughter was but a word away.

Before Kris’s glare, the two gang bosses melted into boneless puddles.

One held up his hand, as if he might ward off her wrath with mere flesh. “I swear to God, Blessed Madonna, and Child, I don’t know nothing about this other lift.”

“Me, neither,” the other said. “Two of my boys, they brought the kid in. They thought it would be fun. I swear. You want them, they’re yours. Gordo, get them out here.”

There was movement along the wall as two fellows were half pushed, half thrown out to fall to their knees between the gangers and the Marines.

But Kris had lost her interest in the gangs… for now.

Captain DeVar had said the words that held her. “Sarge, repeat your comments and expand.”

“Four minutes ago, the two Marines escorting Mrs. Ruth Tordon went off net. When I got no reply to my call, I dispatched the backup squad, as per the order book. When the reaction squad arrived, they found the two Marines down. We are awaiting arrival of local EMTs to verify initial reading of no vitals for either Marine. Captain, they were put down awfully hard.” It was a personal aside, one Marine to another.

“Continue, Gunny” was ice. Cold. Sharp. Full of death.

“A search of the area turned up no Mrs. Trouble, sir. She often kills her squawker, and had done so most of the day. We’d been tracking her by the Marines. We’re getting nothing at all now, and we’ve done our best to activate her communicator and interrogate it. No joy, sir.”

The pause was brittle. Pregnant. Explosive. Kris stepped into it.

“Gramma Ruth hired some local protection people. Have you found their bodies?”

“No evidence of them, their bodies or their presence, Your Highness. Like her, they’re just gone.”

“When we find them, they’ll either be dead or lead us straight to her,” Kris snapped. The captain nodded agreement.

Kris turned back to the gang leaders. Their eyes locked.

“Let’s assume for the moment that this is as big a surprise to you as it is to me.”

Heads nodded vigorously.

“Let’s assume that we can keep on being friends. Business partners, maybe.”

Heads nodded faster.

“You want some money? Money that you will live long enough to take to the bank. Not like that pot of gold on my head?”

Heads stopped nodding. Kris suspected they saw it as a trick question. Didn’t know how to respond.

“Help me find my grandmother. Any little bit. Anything that leads me to my grandmother alive will be paid for very well. You’ll like me as a friend. You don’t want me as your enemy. Do we understand each other?”

They eyed each other, the gangers and the princess. Maybe her need was more understandable to them than her power. That was fine by Kris. She
wanted
her Gramma Ruth back.
Alive
.

Kris turned and marched out of the restaurant. Behind her, Marines did their retrograde movement with professional efficiency. The punks seemed to shrink as the chance that they would live to see the sunset increased.

There was talk in a low hum behind Kris as she went down the steps two at a time. The gangers had gotten too close to one of those damn Longknifes. They’d dealt themselves into the situation. They had no one to blame but themselves. As so often happened around Longknifes, it was time to take sides.

The middle was washing away.

Only the Longknife side and the losing side would soon be left.

But there was always the chance that this time might be different. For the first time, the Longknifes and the losing side might be the same.

Among themselves, the gangs would decide where to place their bet. Who they thought would win.

Kris had already placed her bet. Damn the odds. Everything on Longknife to win.

30

The
Marines lay where they fell.

Verifying their death had not required moving them.

10-mm grenades in the face don’t leave much chance that even a Marine can survive the initial attack.

The Marine techs and Chief Beni joined the local cops trying to scrape some evidence from a scene that offered little.

The other Marines joined the cops patrolling the perimeter, keeping out the gawkers. Officially, that was the job of the local police. But the police lieutenant detailed to tell the Marines to stand down took one look at Gunny Brown’s face and quickly offered to share the patrol duty with the Marines.

Smart cop.

Kris found Inspector Johnson at her elbow within a minute of her arrival. No surprise there. Nelly was taking the raw feed from the Marines and anything else they could capture from the police and passing it along to Kris. It wasn’t much.

Rather than wait for the local cop to say something inane, Kris said, “What do you think?”

Johnson rubbed his chin. “Hard to say. Could be related to those two attempts on your life. Then again, it could be some local campus issue. Heavens knows, General Trouble has made enemies in his long life of terrorizing whoever he was paid to. His evil past could be catching up with his wife.”

Terrorizing whoever he was paid to. Did the inspector actually think that was a soldier’s job? Did he suppose it was because it was his job? Kris filed that away and asked the easy question, “That what you’re going to put in your report?”

“It would certainly make it easier for me.”

“You know she is my great-grandmother?”

“I think I read that somewhere.”

“I want her back.”

“No doubt.”

Kris did not like the attitude she was hearing from the local cop in charge of her handling. She turned to face him and chose her words with a club.

“I want my gramma back. I will have my gramma back. I will not face my great-grandfather when next I see him and try explaining why I was not able to get his wife back to him.”

“We’ll do everything we can” might have sounded good. But the vagueness around Johnson’s eyes gave Kris no comfort.

“You
will
do more. You
will
get Ruth back. Alive.”

The cop scowled at Kris’s demand. “May I remind you that Eden operates under the rule of law?”

Kris snorted. Her father made the laws of Wardhaven… and occasionally ignored them. “Make sure this is one time that the rule of law works for the victim.”

“We shall see,” Johnson said.

Kris didn’t have time to waste repeating demands that should be clear to a concrete block… and that blockhead’s boss. She turned her back on the inspector and strode away.

“Captain,” she said, coming up beside DeVar.

“Your Highness.”

“Are you busy?”

He looked around as if hunting for some killer to throttle. He scowled at the nothingness. “Not at the moment.”

“Captain, if you could afford me the help of a few good Marines, Jack and I are about to pay a visit to the dean of graduate studies at this place.”

“Isn’t he the one that helped Mrs. Tordon hire some protection?” Jack asked.

“The selfsame.”

“I was hoping to have a quiet discussion with him,” Captain DeVar said. He signaled half a dozen marines in full dress blues and reds… and long rifles at the ready.

The small group moved purposefully across the campus, staying as inconspicuous as possible. That is to say that anyone who saw them took one look and quickly scurried off to find something important to do elsewhere.

A glance over Kris’s shoulder showed that several had added themselves to her visitation team. Abby she understood. Chief Beni and the kid, and his girl were there, too. Kris made a note to see about cutting down on the menagerie following her. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up with a full zoo.

No, make that
worst
zoo.

The dean of graduate studies had a top floor corner office in an old brick building. Kris took the stairs two at a time. Only Chief Beni ended up huffing and puffing.

“You better take up jogging, Chief,” Abby upbraided him, “or one of these day Kris will take off and you’re going to get left behind.”

“You really think so?” He sounded more hopeful than repentant.

Kris led the charge into the dean’s front office.

“Do you have an appointment,” a middle-aged secretary said, trying to interpose herself between Kris and the door marked Dean of Graduate Studies in gold leaf.

Kris got to the doorknob first. “The Dean has an appointment with
me
,” Kris said as she let herself in. A very tight-lipped light brigade charged right behind her.

“I’m sorry, Professor Rosemon, I tried to stop her.”

Kris quickly crossed the distance to a wide wooden desk. She used the name so kindly provided and offered her hand.

“Good afternoon, Professor Rosemon. I am Princess Kristine of Wardhaven, and a major stockholder in Nuu Enterprises. You know the company. I think we fund several research projects your university is working on.” Battle armor might not melt in Kris’s mouth, but butter definitely would. It seemed like a good way to start with a man who spent his days in a wood-paneled office, lined with rows of leather-bound books.

She could switch to lasers and tongs later.

“Ah, yes, yes,” said a man with graying hair, bow tie and suit coat on even at his desk, alone in his office. He stood and took Kris’s offered hand across a pristine desk. No clutter here.

Kris clamped on to his hand and stepped around the desk. The man seemed surprised, but his eyes were on two Marine sergeants. They were cleaning under their fingernails with very large knifes. Professor Rosemon looked shaken. Maybe even afraid.

Then he looked at Kris and knew terror.

Kris used his hand to back him into his chair. Now Kris towered over him, putting every inch of her six feet to good use. The Marine captain and the two sergeants, knives still out, moved to completely surround him.

Mouth hanging open, the professor looked like he had finally grasped that he was mortal and might die some day.

Like today.

“Professor, we need some answers from you,” Kris said, trying to warm the cold in her words with a smile. But the smile was mostly teeth.

The professor blanched and tried to make himself smaller in his seat. Eyes locked to Kris’s, he muttered, “Yes, yes. What can I do for you?”

“Mrs. Ruth Tordon is on your staff, a visiting professor,” Kris said.

“Maybe. I don’t know. There are so many visiting professors.”

“Yes, I imagine there are,” Kris agreed. “But few are the wife of General Tordon, known to most as Trouble. She’s also my great-grandmother. Remember her now?”

Faced with that, the professor’s memory improved. “Yes, yes, now that you remind me, I do remember her. Fine old woman.”

“You suggested that she might want to improve her security situation when she told you I was coming to Eden.”

“Did I?”

“She told me that you did.” Mentally, Kris dared him to call Gramma a liar.

“Then I guess I did,” he agreed. And seemed proud of himself for it.

“Fifteen minutes ago, Gramma Ruth was kidnapped,” Kris bit out. “Right here on
your
campus.”

“Oh dear. We haven’t had a kidnapping on campus in, oh, years,” he answered.

Kris ignored him, but filed the data away for later examination. “Two Marine embassy guards are dead. She is gone. And the two security rentals that you suggested to her are nowhere to be seen.” Kris paused to let that sink in to the professor’s balding dome.

For the second that the man of learning took to absorb that, there was silence. Followed by a quiet “Oh.”

“Yes. Oh,” Kris snapped. “You suggested she hire those guards and they did nothing to guard her. Or worse, they threw in with the thugs that kidnapped her.”

“Oh, they couldn’t have” didn’t have much assurance in it.

“Why don’t you tell me where they came from and let me go find out.”

“Oh yes.” The idea of getting these invaders of his quiet corner of the world gone to somewhere else lit up his eyes. But only for a moment. “Oh, but I can’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because I don’t know who she did business with. I called a provider of temporary security. They passed her needs along to several bidders who offered services and she chose from them. That’s the way it’s done here. You are new, aren’t you.”

“Hardly been here a week,” Kris said while her brain whirled. “So, who’s the provider?”

“I don’t know. I have his number here.” He pulled a Rolodex from a drawer. A Rolodex! Kris had only seen such things in ancient movies.

He held up the number. “Here it is. Security. That’s all I know about it. That and the number. I’ll call them.”

Kris let go of his hand so he could happily bumble about with an ancient phone, one with numbers on its face. Kris glanced at Chief Beni and the techs with him. They had their black boxes out.