Thrill-Kinky (13 page)

Or that people were dead.

Chapter Thirteen

Drax struggled against Toor Ashbahal’s ominously firm grip. “Not leaving yet,” he insisted.

“We’re taking in Nitari Belesku. Thought you’d want to be part of that, even given your notorious dislike of procedure and debriefing.”

The snide tone was no more than he expected from Toor. Calling him a burrow-dwelling nashbet hadn’t been affectionate teasing; the senior officer was a stickler for regulation and protocol and a large part of the reason Drax was disaffected with his work. An even larger part, frankly, than assassins on his wingtips, the bizarre monotony of constant danger, or the way he’d found his moral code degenerating to the consistency of Saamian stretch-gum.

But the way Toor was manhandling him was something new, as was the gun earlier. He’d always stuck to verbal abuse in the past.

He and Toor didn’t get along, sure. Toor wasn’t keen on working with a reformed thief who maybe wasn’t all that reformed, and Drax wasn’t keen on burrow-dwelling nashbets or bureaucratic pricks. But he would never have thought Toor wanted him dead, if only because he’d have to handle the death paperwork and train a new operative for the shadier undercover work in which Drax specialized.

Drax hadn’t believed Belesku’s claim that someone in his own agency had a bounty on his head. Not until Toor showed up so unexpectedly. He wasn’t even supposed to be on San’bal. And the way he was so eager to get Drax moving seemed more like a ruse to get him alone than one more “I know this is a lousy time but you have to be debriefed
now
(asshole)” moment in their rocky work relationship.

Paranoid? Maybe, but he’d rather be paranoid than dead. Think fast. “I’ve still got a few loose ends to tie up here.”

“We’ve got Nitari Belesku, after all these years. I’d think even you would want to do
that
paperwork.” This might have sounded like a convincing argument if Toor’s hand on his wrist wasn’t as immoveable as handcuffs.

“For all I care, you can take credit for the capture. It would be about as accurate as me doing so. All I did was keep her talking until Rita literally dropped on her head from the ceiling and knocked her down.”

“Honest at the worst possible time. That seems about right for you.” Ashbahal’s smile looked slimy, but then again, it always did so that didn’t prove anything was amiss other than in his personality. “Come on.”

“I’m not leaving her.” He glanced toward the busy group of medicos tending Xia. One of them was taking the time to patch up Rita.

“The felinoid’s on her way to the hospital. The others are probably on their way to jail, where they belong. Your little feline friend will catch up once she’s well enough. But they’ll treat her. San’bal’s civilized.”

Drax shook free, though he suspected Ashbahal’s hands had left bruises. “They are
not
going to jail.” He wanted to shout, but kept his voice to an intense, angry whisper. No use scaring anyone. Not yet.

But Rita wasn’t going to jail.

“This is a monumental and very obvious clusterfuck at the National Museum, during the biggest and holiest festival of the San’balese calendar. Someone has to be seen being arrested.” Ashbahal shrugged. “Unless you want to volunteer to be the one.”

The nashbet might involuntarily be on to something. It wouldn’t be impossible to get an assassin after him in a San’balese prison, but it would be harder. And if the locals had the person who’d masterminded the “break-in” in custody and had killed the Blemondian thug, they might be convinced that Rita and the rest of her crew were aliens who’d been tricked into taking a job they didn’t understand. No one would ever believe, after all, that a young felinoid had done significant damage to Nitari Belesku, or that a human had climbed the National Museum when there was a Banjali operative, a suspected thief with outstanding warrants on several worlds, even, to blame.

This time, Drax raised his voice. “Sky knows I’ve broken enough laws. Mostly working for the BIC.” Several of the local cops who were packaging up Belesku for transport cocked their ears in his direction. (Literally. The Earther expression had worked its way into Standard, but most species couldn’t do it. The San’balese could.) Belesku might be injured, but they were making sure to restrain her in every way they could think of. Good. Local cops weren’t always briefed well, but apparently they’d gotten the memo on Belesku.

“Hey, officer,” he said, tapping on the shoulder of the nearest one. “You should arrest me too. I started this mess, and I think I killed—”

That was when Toor stuck the needle into him.

As the room went blurry, he kept his gaze focused on Rita. Bruised, bloodied, battered, beautiful Rita, who was so intent on Xia that she didn’t even see him looking her way. There was a fairly good chance he’d never open his eyes again, so he might as well make his last sight worthwhile.

Drax roused slowly, unwilling to open his eyes and replace his last sight of Rita with wherever Toor had stashed him until it was time for him to die. He doubted very much it was the honeymoon suite at the local Ritz-Xenaci.

He cautiously tested the space around him, and was astonished to realize he wasn’t restrained in any way. Wherever he was, the gravity was Banjal normal, so while he still hurt in places he couldn’t even name, his body didn’t hate him quite as much as it had.

And for a holding pen where you dumped your enemy while you figured out the best way to kill him, it was surprisingly comfortable. Smooth, silky sheets. Proper mattress contoured for a winged sleeper. The scent of Vicarian lilies, soft, spicy and musky…

Vicarian lilies? He was definitely smelling Vicarian lilies, and he’d swear real ones, not an air-scent, which never quite captured all the nuances of a fragrance that epitomized this time of year on Banjal.

Who’d waste Vicarian lilies—they couldn’t possibly grow in San’bal’s dry climate, so they’d have been imported from home—on someone they planned to murder?

Tentatively, Drax opened his eyes.

Definitely not the Ritz-Xenaci.

Looked like a stateroom on a space cruiser, but with the high ceilings and feeling of spaciousness you found only on a Banjal-built craft. The colors were, tastefully, those of the Banjali flag.

There were Vicarian lilies on the dresser. And Toor Ashbahal was sitting by the bed.

Oh, shit and marl.

Drax drew back as far as he could, which wasn’t very far. It would be way too easy to murder him in space and dump the body out the airlock, then say he’d never boarded. This was probably an official government craft, so they wouldn’t need to declare a full passenger manifest. Since it would be entirely believable for Drax to make his own arrangements to come home from a mission, no one would question the story.

Shrinking away wouldn’t do any good, though. He forced himself to face his boss and potential killer and pretend he was perfectly calm.

Ashbahal leaned forward as if talking to an old friend. His voice was genial, more so than usual. “Sorry about the dust-up and the drugging. You don’t listen to me at the best of times and that wasn’t the best of times. We had to get you out of there.”

“Before I leaked information to the wrong people?”

“Before the next assassin, the one we
haven’t
identified, turned up to get a piece of you!” Toor chuckled. It sounded borderline hysterical, but it was closer to a laugh than Toor usually produced in Drax’s vicinity. “Jalricki, you must have outdone yourself this time. I can think of a dozen reasons someone might dislike you, from your irregular past to your reckless disregard for procedure, to the fact you barely survived the past two days and you still look better than I did twenty years ago on my best day. The Blemondians hired Nitari Belesku and she decided to take care of you to settle that old score. But we have intel someone in our government, probably within BIC, leaked your identity to the Blemondians and may have hired another assassin to take you during this job, an assassin who’d be able to get inside your guard.”

Drax racked his brain again and came up empty. “Belesku told me that one of our people had a hit out on me, but you know how she likes drama. I know a few people in the Corps don’t care for me, including you, but I’ve kept my hands off other people’s partners, other people’s credits, and other people’s cases, and I don’t play politics.” He did play politics enough not to admit he’d suspected his boss for a few horrible moments. But he’d been around Toor Ashbahal enough to know when the older man was lying. Oh, Ashbahal was one of the best, but he had a few tells if you knew him well enough, and Drax did.

“If anyone around here is going to kill you, it’s going to be me, not a hired assassin. But I won’t because then I’d have to find and train someone insane enough
and
skilled enough to take your place.”

“Thanks, I think.” Again, Drax thought he was telling the truth, though it was a truth Toor grudged.

“Don’t thank me. Purely enlightened self-interest. When I saw two attractive off-world females, a well-known weakness of yours, one able to climb a four-story building and get in through the roof, the other able to do a creditable amount of damage to Nitari Belesku without using weapons, and they’d obviously won your trust…wind and stars, man, I had to get you away from them to give us time to investigate.”

“They’re harmless. More than harmless. Good people.” Drax forced himself not to clench his fists, not to give in to the urge to punch Toor. And for the moment, forced himself not to wonder who was gunning for him, if it wasn’t Toor.

The list of people who disliked him was long. The one of people who’d go to this much trouble to kill him had no names on it yet.

Toor flashed a dry smile. “
Good
might not be everyone’s word for them, but as far as we can determine, they’re no worse than most independent spacers and better than many. There was no time for a thorough investigation, and of course indy spacers always have gaps in their records, jobs they do off-book, but nothing stands out as suspicious. The human woman has a clean record. She’s been brought in a few times with her friends, but never charged with anything prior to tonight. The felinoid has a string of arrests and open warrants but it’s all the kind of minor offenses you’d expect from a young felinoid: mayhem, drunk and disorderly, petty theft, public lewdness. One of the male humans has a couple of violent offenses, but they were all ‘punch first, think later’ incidents, nothing premeditated. The captain and his partner probably dabble in smuggling, but I’m not a customs agent so it’s not my issue. And there’s absolutely no correlation between their ship’s recorded stops and any unsolved murder that looked to be the work of a professional killer.”

Drax relaxed a bit. Only a bit. Someone was trying to kill him, after all.

Make that someone
else
was trying to kill him.

And he had no idea where Rita was or how Xia was doing.

He sighed. Figuring out what to do about someone trying to kill him could wait. He had promises to uphold, and although people from more conventional backgrounds (Toor, for example) assumed a semi-reformed thief to be dishonorable at the core, he took his word seriously when he gave it. “I promised them payment for their help. Certainly not jail. We need to fix this.”

Toor looked pained but nodded tightly. Despite their disagreements about just about everything, he’d understand, though his reasoning would be more along the lines of
if you don’t pay your informants and mercenaries, someone else will
. “You’re right, of course, but it’s been hard enough so far to make sure they didn’t take the fall for the death of the Blemondian.” He paused significantly. “The one you said you killed.”

“The one I killed.”

“Did you really, or are you covering for someone who wasn’t an agent acting in the line of duty? He died from a laserpistol wound, not knifework, not some improvised weapon. Not your usual style.”

Drax rolled out of bed and began to pace. “I can use a gun. I just prefer not to. He’d hurt Rita, badly, for no reason other than his own anger-management issues. I disapproved.” The room was open and high for a spacecraft cabin, but not actually big enough to fly. Barely big enough, with someone else in there, to stretch his wings, but he did anyway. If it made Ashbahal feel crowded, that was a bonus.

“That’s another reason I took some liberties getting you away. You seem far too attached to these off-worlders. I’m grateful they came to your aid, and I certainly don’t want to see them come to harm because they did. But they’re not Banjali. It’s not our mandate to take—”

Ashbahal’s com buzzed. He glanced down at it, rose to his feet and, gesturing at Drax to wait, stepped out of the room.

It took a long time for him to come back, and when he did, his face was grim.

“That was San’balese planetary intelligence,” Toor said, his voice unnaturally calm despite the ire in his eyes. “Nitari Belesku escaped. And she tried to get to the two females from the
Malcolm
’s crew before she fled.”

Drax felt himself blanching. “Are they…”

“Your friends are no worse off than they were, for the moment. The felinoid’s recovering nicely. The human would have been released back to her ship, but they figure she may be safer at the hospital for now. But three San’balese nurses and a local cop were injured in the attempt, and a police officer and two planetary security agents are dead.”

“Ms. Gentria?”

“That depends on which one you mean. The Agent Gentria who was on duty tonight is fine…and on the lam with Nitari Belesku. The real Agent Gentria, the one who’d been assigned to work with you, was found in a dry wash outside the city this morning. Dead, probably not coincidentally, about the same amount of time Nitari Belesku was on San’bal.”

“The Gentria we met was…”

“The second assassin. If I hadn’t been at the museum, you and the off-worlders would be dead too, caught in the crossfire or whatever excuse they’d use. A few of the senior LEOs were paid off and the rest thought she was legit and would follow her lead. As deputy director of the BIC, I’m a little too well known to take in front of that many witnesses, and they weren’t going to shoot the rest of you in front of me.”