Necrotech (18 page)

Nanjali Koupra.

Sold to a chopshop in the Vid Zone.

The Vid Zone, exactly one ward north of the Third Junction – where the cops had picked me up.

How could you not remember?
Jim's incredulity slammed into me like a bullet. If I was the principal, then it meant I was working for Indigo. Period. I wasn't stupid enough to work for anyone else when I had a good gravy train right here, and that meant Indigo knew.

He knew, and he'd fucking sold me out.

What relative calm I'd managed spiked into a red slash of rage.

The common denominator here was clear. I secured the tablet into the waistband of my pants and shoved everything else aside. Indigo had wanted info?

I'd jam proof of his greed so far down his throat, he'd die with the copper taste of revenge in his mouth.

T
racking
down Indigo was as simple as putting in a call to the Mecca. They knew me enough to know if I was looking for Digo, it was important.

It was. Just not the way they thought.

He'd gone home with the redhead waitress. Laila.

She lived in an apartment complex within walking distance of the rack.

The place was a shithole, like most of the districts nearby, and as I pushed my way inside the boarded, shattered glass door of the complex, a huddled knot of filthy homeless grumbled profanities at me like I was the intruder.

Covered in dried blood and dirt as I was, they probably thought I was trying to horn in on their marginally cooler squat. I shot them a filthy gesture as I passed, ignoring the elevator – a deathtrap, was my guess – in favor of the creaking stairs somebody had tried to shore up with stolen street signs.

Classy.

Seven flights of stairs didn't take the wind out of my sails. Instead, it pushed my blood into a simmering, steady beat.

Laila's door was the third on the right.

I didn't knock. I drew back and leveled a kick near the seam that tore the tumblers right through the doorjamb, twisting the metal into uselessness. It slammed into the far wall, and all hell broke loose inside.

Laila was sultry in a sari, but she was cuter naked, her light tats turned off and her hair snarled from a night of some serious fucking. Her eyes were huge in her pillow-imprinted face as she screamed, rolling off the single narrow bed in the one-room apartment.

Indigo was definitely leaner than I remembered, but he was still more of a thinker than a front-liner. As a linker, he'd processed the intrusion before Laila hit the floor, and I'd give him credit for the fact that he leapt out of bed and came at me, but he lost massive points for the free-wheeling slap of his balls against his hairy thighs.

This? This is why a man shouldn't sleep naked. Especially when dabbling in shit that'd get his door kicked in.

Recognition filled his hungover features an instant before I hooked his swing with my flesh arm, sidestepped, and used his own momentum to toss him out into the hall. He stumbled over the threshold, slammed into the opposite wall and reeled.

A girl's voice shrieked behind me.

On instinct, I sidestepped a second time, stuck out one hand to catch her, and tangled Laila's bare ankles with a foot. She stubbed her toe on my boot, yelped, and instead of leaping on my back –
why
do people think that helps? – she found herself guided in a full circle and thrown onto the bed in the same stunt I'd worked on Digo. Her round ass rippled as she bounced across the surface.

The girl had a mattress that
bounced
. Serious jealousy.

“Riko, what the fuck!”

I turned, my teeth bared in a snarl ripped out on a harsh breath. “She leaves or she dies.”

Indigo had grabbed a picture frame from the skewed table beside the door I'd ruined, holding it in front of his junk like it'd somehow stop me from throwing myself on all his manly glory.

Please.

Angry color filled his cheeks; I'd never seen his blue eyes so enraged. “You wouldn't dare.”

I pointed my metal finger at her without looking away from him, aware that she had scooted back on the bed, clutching the sheets over her nakedness. Her eyes were so wide, they were nearly all white. “Laila, right?”

She didn't answer me with anything more than a low, strained whimper.

Blood-covered merc kicks your door in, I guess it'd be a shock. Good. “Get some pants on,” I told her, my voice pitched for menace. “Go away. I'm going to do some seriously bad shit to your fuckbuddy, and you? You don't want to see this.”

“Fucking twat,” Indigo began, but Laila was already moving like the hounds of hell were on her pretty tail. Within thirty seconds, she'd grabbed whatever clothes came to hand and sprinted out of the apartment, trailing her sheet and sidling around Indigo like she'd catch on fire if she touched him.

He watched her go with helpless fury. When her footsteps vanished, he rounded on me. “You need get your shit checked out,” he seethed, fingers white around the picture edge. “What the fuck is wrong with you this time?”

“Lucky says I'm fine,” I replied. “You? You got more to explain than I do.”

I could have just jumped on his ass and been done with it; Indigo's strength wasn't hand-to-hand. But as pissed as I was, as fucking
furious
, I hesitated.

I knew myself well enough to know that some part of me was seriously hoping Indigo would have a good explanation for the evidence I'd brought him. Some little, fragile corner of that girl come down from middle-class safety, who still thought things like friendship meant more than cred.

Yeah. I hadn't managed to brutalize her into silence yet. I was working on it.

“Get your smegging clothes on,” I said, every word a ragged edge. “I don't want to be talking to your junk.”

The color in his face pinched almost white around his mouth. “You…” His voice trembled with it, he was so pissed. The muscles in his arms, his abs, even the muscled thighs framing the picture centered between them shook. “What... I don't even know what the fuck to say to you right now.”

“Then let me help you,” I shot back. I stalked to the bed, sex-rumpled and pillows astray, found the black pants he'd worn to the club the night before, threw them at him. He caught them easily with one hand. “Let's start with Fuck It Jim.”

I watched contempt undercut the fury etching his sharp features. “Turn around.”

I rolled my eyes at him, but presented at least my profile. It allowed him to half-turn, using his body to hide the dick I wasn't even remotely interested in, without forcing me to lose sight of him in general. “What about Jim?” he demanded, setting the picture frame down.

Smooth. Not so much as a flicker of guilt.

Was that how he'd done it? Did he seriously not care?

“First,” I said, as evenly as I could manage, “he's dead.”

I had excellent peripheral vision. Still not even a hitch as he drew the pants over his swarthy hips. “So what?” He turned back to face me again as he zipped up. “He's worthless.”

My fists clenched. “Then why were you selling him mercs?”

Blue eyes narrowed.

“I know, Indigo,” I snarled, reaching into my waistband to withdraw the tablet. I tossed this one gently, unwilling to lose evidence to his thick skull. “I know you've been selling information on
your
contacts to seven chopshops. Most recently, one in the Vid Zone. You've been making
bank
, and you've been using
me
to do it, you son of a bitch!”

Indigo processed information like I processed oxygen. He only needed to glance at the featured data, scroll through it once.

I watched the contours of his already sharp features settle into rock-hard planes.

Good. Now he was as pissed as I was, for the same reasons.
Explain that, asshole.

“I didn't do this,” he said, but he didn't toss the tablet back. I didn't expect him to. His grip turned his fingers sallow around the scuffed edge. “January dropped on a Mantis run, Deck was blown up in a raid on his swish shack. Nobody's heard from Lingo in months, but that's usual for him.”

“Yeah?” I thrust my chin at the tablet. “That says they were handed over to a chopshop. Paid, Digo. Paid in full, with a cut to Jim. You know who else is on that list?” I didn't let him answer. “Your sister. You fucking sold out your own sister.”

Indigo's mouth curled in a soundless snarl as he dropped his gaze to the information he clutched.

We stood there in Laila's cluttered apartment, silent and staring for what seemed like forever. I watched Indigo battle to work through the facts, and the first seeds of doubt unfurled in the middle of all my fury.

This was not the reaction of a man who'd been caught redhanded.

With my heartbeat pounding against the confines of my skull, my hands clenched at my sides. “Cut the act, Digo. There's your proof. Now tell me what the fuck you did to me. Memory crack? Did you have a 'jector
hack
me just so I'd be your goddamn errand boy?”

His gaze wrenched to mine. The corners of his mouth pinched. “I did not do this,” he repeated, the intensity of it edged like a razor and tight enough to turn his voice into something brittle. Barely contained anger. “First, I
wouldn't
sell my sister, chunk your proof. Second, less importantly, the payouts listed here aren't nearly enough to cover the losses.”

Well, that was just factual enough to confuse me. “What?”

“The
losses
, Riko. I run a goddamned business. Each one of them was worth more than the payout listed,” he pointed out impatiently. “Given their skillsets and reliability, we would have made six times as much in a year just
working
with them.”

“You're serious.”

“Fuck you, what do you think I am? A charity?”

Not even a little.

Well... shit. That was a point I hadn't considered, and that bit of logic put a spike in my emotional rollercoaster. I opened my mouth, but caught myself before I asked the question that formed inside my head.

He glanced up at me, eyes flat. “What?”

If Indigo wasn't the principal, then that left one other candidate: me. Jim had suggested as much. If Indigo was telling the truth, then that evidence now pointed to me. I couldn't say it wasn't with any certainty, not while my memories were on the fritz.

And if he was lying, then how could I prove it when I couldn't even state my innocence with any real certainty?

Fuck me.

Fuck him.

Fuck this whole scumsucking business.

“Looks like Jim's playing a lot of angles,” Indigo continued. He rotated the tablet between his hands. “But I swear, I didn't get a single payout for any of them. If this is true, if someone has been selling out my roster, then I damn well intend to find who.”

I couldn't fault his instinct, but I don't think he got the whole picture. “We need more than that.”

He raised the scuffed tablet. “This started six months ago. Do you know how many names are on this list?”

I frowned. “Hold up – when?”

“Six months, give or take.” His teeth bared. “Six fucking months, and I didn't know what the hell was happening to my people.”

Hallelujah, a ray of smegging sunshine. I
remembered
six months ago. There was no way I was involved with this.

But that didn't explain the end of April and early May, when Digo said I'd been walking around.

I fisted my hands beside my forehead. “We need to check that chopshop, Digo. The one in the Vid Zone. That's where
all
the information will be.”

“How do you know?”

I couldn't very well admit to getting picked up by the cops. My cred was already in the shitter – suspected dealings with the police would only make it worse. So I lied. Flat out. “When I escaped the place, I was beyond lost. None of my shit was working. But when I hitched out, I was in the Third Junction. That's walking distance from the Zone.”

“Coincidence.”

“Like hell.”

I could practically hear his teeth click together from across the room.

“Malik Reed said to get him evidence,” I pressed, dropping my hands to grip my thighs and pin him with a stare. “That tablet is evidence.”

He waved the unit at me. “This is enough to turn just about anyone on
me
, Riko. Look at what
you
did after a cursory examination.” A none-too-subtle nod to Laila's ruined door.

“Eat my dick,” I shot back. “You sent me into a trap at Plato's.”

His nostrils flared; that look he got when I'd just said something he found offensive. “The hell I did.”

Oh, for fuck's sake. I didn't have the time or the patience to play the blame game anymore. He said, she said, they
all
had something to say, and right now, I was way too confused to sort it all out. “Look,” I said sharply, once more surging to my feet with way more energy than I would have figured I'd had stored.

Digo took a barefoot step back.

My heart slammed again. I forced myself to stay still, hands fisted at my side.

Christ on a pipe, I wanted to hurt something.

His expression told me I wasn't hiding it.

“Look,” I repeated, deliberately going for calm. “Taylor Jax sent me to Jim.”

Digo wasn't enough of an actor to mask his surprise.

“Yeah,” I said to his silent question. “It surprised me, too. You know what else surprised me?” When he only looked at me, that same wariness warning me I was sprouting another head right in front of his eyes, I bared my teeth. “That you hired him to go looking for me.”

The black fan of his lashes narrowed. I expected him to deny it. He didn't bother. “I used what I could.”

“Yeah, well.” I rolled my shoulder uncomfortably. Not because it hurt – the ache had mellowed, finally – but because I didn't know what else to do. “Thanks, at least, for trying.” His mouth tightened, and I shot him a faint, bitter smile. “Even if you only wanted to find me to kill me.”

He didn't deny that, either. “Jax failed.”

“And he knows it.” A shaft of amusement split my anger into something mildly more tolerable. I took a deep breath. “Thanks for that, too. Humility burns Jax like holy water.”

Indigo held my gaze for a quiet moment, his face unreadable. The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. “Yeah, well.” A repeat of my own discomfort. “You're welcome.”

We stood awkwardly for a moment, caught in a tangled web of our uncertainties. Old friendships, new hatreds. So much doubt.

I didn't know how to address it – any of it. All I could do was try to find the information that would explain all of this – my memory gap, Nanji's conversion. I had to make this better the only way I knew how.