‘Fuck you,’ the man said, and drew the blade across her throat. A caterpillar of blood formed beneath the track of the incision, but he had been careful not to draw too deeply. Good with his knife, I thought. How many ways had he practised to cut with such precision?
Gitta, to her credit, hardly flinched.
‘I’ve got a message for you,’ he said, lifting the blade slightly from her skin, so that the scarlet bloom on its edge was clearly visible. ‘It’s from Argent Reivich. Does that surprise you in any way? It shouldn’t, because I understand you were expecting him. Only just not so soon.’
‘The Ultras lied to us,’ Cahuella said.
The man smiled now, but only briefly. The pleasure was all in his eyes, narrowed to ecstatic slits. I realised we were dealing with a psychopath and that his actions were essentially random.
There was not going to be a negotiated settlement.
‘There are factions amongst them,’ the man said. ‘Especially between crews. Orcagna lied to you. You needn’t take it personally. ’ His fist tensed on the knife again. ‘Now, would you be so good as to put down that gun, Cahuella?’
‘Do it,’ I whispered, still standing behind him. ‘No matter how good your vision is, there’s only a tiny area of him not covered by Gitta, and I doubt you’re that confident of your aiming just yet.’
‘Don’t you know it’s rude to whisper?’ the man said.
‘Do it,’ I hissed. ‘I can still save her.’
Cahuella dropped the gun.
‘Good,’ I said, still whispering. ‘Now listen carefully. I can hit him from here, without harming Gitta. But you’re in the way.’
‘Talk to me, you fuck.’ The man pushed the knife against her skin so that the blade depressed a valley of flesh without actually breaking it. It would only take a flick now and he would sever her carotid artery.
‘I’m going to shoot through you,’ I said to Cahuella. ‘It’s a beam weapon, so it’s only the line of sight that matters. From the angle where I’m going to fire, I won’t hit any vital organs. But be ready for it.’
The man’s hand brought the knife deeper, so that the valley was suddenly rivened, and blood welled from its depths. Time slowed down, and I watched him begin to drag the knife across her throat.
Cahuella started to speak.
I fired.
The pencil-thin particle beam chewed through him, entering his back an inch or so to the left of his spine, in the upper lumbar region, around the twentieth or twenty-first vertebra. I hoped I missed the right common iliac vein, and that the beam angle would direct its energies between the left lung and the stomach. But it was not precision surgery, and I knew that Cahuella would have to count himself lucky if this did not actually kill him. I also knew that, if it were a question of dying to save Gitta, he would accept that wholeheartedly, and would even order me to make it so. I paid very little attention to Cahuella anyway, since Gitta’s position effectively limited the range of angles I could select. It was simply a matter of saving her, no matter what it did to her husband.
The particle beam fired for less than a tenth of a second, although the ion trail lingered long after, in addition to the track it had seared on my vision. Cahuella fell to the ground in front of me, like a sack of corn dropped from the ceiling.
And so did Gitta, with a hole bored neatly in her forehead, her eyes still open and seemingly alert, and the blood still oozing from the partial throat-wound.
I had missed.
There was no avoiding that; no softening or sweetening of that one acidic message. I had meant to save her, but intention meant nothing. What mattered was the red weal above her eyes where I had hit her, meaning to hit the man holding a knife to her throat.
The beam had missed him completely.
I had failed. In the one moment where failure mattered most; in the one moment of my life where I actually thought I could win — I had failed. Failed myself, and Cahuella, by betraying the terrible burden of trust he had implicitly placed in me, without saying a word. His wound was serious, but with the proper attention, I had had little doubt that he would live.
But there was no saving Gitta. I wondered who was the luckier.
‘What’s wrong?’ Zebra asked. ‘Tanner, what’s wrong? Don’t look at me like that, please. I’m beginning to think you might actually do it.’
‘Can you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t?’
‘Only the truth.’
I shook my head minutely. ‘Sorry, but you’ve just given it to me, and it wasn’t anywhere near enough.’
‘It wasn’t everything.’ Her voice was quiet and somehow relieved. ‘I’m not working for him any more, Tanner. He thinks I am, but I’ve betrayed him.’
‘Reivich?’
She nodded, face down, so that I could barely see her eyes. ‘Once you stole from me, I knew you were the man Reivich was running from. I knew you were the assassin.’
‘It didn’t take a great deal of deduction, did it?’
‘No, but it was important to be sure. Reivich wanted the man isolated and removed from the picture. Killed, not to put too fine a point on it.’
I nodded. ‘That would make sense.’
‘I was meant to do it as soon as I had definite evidence you were the killer. That way Reivich would be able to put the matter out of his mind for good — he wouldn’t have to worry that the wrong man had been killed and that the real assassin was still out there somewhere.’
‘You had more than a few opportunities to kill me.’ My hand softened on the gun now. ‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I almost did.’ Zebra was talking quicker now, voice hushed even though no one was remotely within earshot. ‘I could have done it in the apartment, but I hesitated. You can’t blame me. So then I let you take the gun and the car, knowing I could trace either.’
‘I should have realised. It seemed easy at the time.’
‘Credit me with more sense than to let that happen by accident. Of course, there was another way to trace you if that failed. You still had the Game implant.’ She paused. ‘But then you crashed the car, had the implant taken out. That only left the gun, and I wasn’t getting a very clear trace from it. Maybe you damaged it in the car crash.’
‘Than I called you from the station, after I’d visited Dominika.’
‘And told me where you’d be later on. I hired Pransky to help me. He’s good, don’t you think? Admittedly his socials skills could use a little work, but you don’t pay people like that for their charm and diplomacy.’ Zebra took a breath and wiped a film of accumulated rain from her brows, exposing a strip of clean flesh beneath the caul of sooty water. ‘Not as good as you, though. I saw you attack the Gamers — the way you injured three of them and then kidnapped the fourth, the woman. I had you targeted the whole time that was happening. I could have opened your cranium from a kilometre away, and you wouldn’t have felt an itch before your brains hit the street. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just kill you like that. And that’s when I betrayed Reivich.’
‘I felt someone watching me. I never guessed it was you.’
‘And even if you had, would you have guessed I was a twitch of an eyelid away from killing you?’
‘Eyelid-triggered sniper’s rifle? Now what would a nice girl like you be doing with something like that?’
‘What now, Tanner?’
I withdrew my empty hand from my pocket, like a conjuror whose trick had gone spectacularly wrong.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But it’s wet out here and I need a drink.’
THIRTY-ONE
