The Third Lynx

clutched at his broken hand. I lifted the wrench high, aiming for the muscle ridge where his neck and shoulder joined.

The blow never landed. Abruptly, the Halka dropped straight down like he'd fallen through a trapdoor as his legs were swept out from under him. As his head dropped out of my line of sight I saw Morse standing behind him, a thunderous look on his face. He jabbed a single blow into the back of the Halka's neck, and the fight was over.

The physical fight, anyway. 'What in bloody hell do you think you're doing?' Morse snarled at me.

'Protecting my life,' I told him, massaging my arm where the claws had perforated it.

'From these?' Morse countered, gesturing at the unconscious bodies around us. 'What were they going to do, foreclose your house? Force you to buy some insurance?'

'Maybe protecting Daniel Stafford's life, too,' I said. 'He came in here right before I did.'

Morse looked around. 'Stafford?' he called. 'Stafford, this is Agent Ackerley Morse of the EuroUnion Security Service. We need to talk to you.'

'It's all right,' I called. 'You're safe now.'

There was no answer. 'Maybe he went out the other end,' Morse suggested.

I shook my head. 'I would have heard the sound of the door.'

Morse hissed softly between his teeth. 'Right,' he said, his voice quiet and deadly. 'Let's go find him.'

Five minutes later, we found him lying behind a diagnostic cabinet that had been pulled a meter away from the wall. He was dead, of course, his neck broken.

Only it wasn't Daniel Stafford. In fact, aside from the hair color, age, and body type, he wasn't even close.

'Check the bag,' Morse murmured over my shoulder. 'See if they got the Lynx.'

The backpack was still slung over the boy's shoulder. Carefully, I reached over and unzipped it.

No one had gotten the Lynx, because the Lynx had never been there. Snugged up inside the padded case was a beautifully decorated, high-priced lugeboard.

Morse and I stared at the board, and at the body, for what seemed a long time. Then, Morse got an unpleasantly firm grip on my shoulder. 'Come on,' he said. 'We need to talk.'

NINE :

'I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt,' Morse said as we faced each other in the privacy of one of the stationmaster's storage rooms. 'I really am. But you're not making it easy.'

'You saw the boy running,' I said. 'You also saw me in the repair shop fighting off those four attackers—'

'You mean those four respectable industrialists and bankers, none of whom had any reason to bother you?' he interrupted. 'Those four upstanding citizens who are all dead?'

Even in death, I reflected, Modhran walkers were a pain in the neck. 'You took out the last one,' I pointed out.

'After you'd already had a crack at him.'

'You're welcome to ask for an autopsy,' I said. 'The point is there wasn't nearly enough time for me to have gotten all the way around the building, killed the kid, and then gotten back to where you found me.'

'No one said you had to have done everything yourself,' Morse said. 'There were several Spiders in the vicinity, and you and your friend Bayta seem to have an amazingly cozy relationship with them.'

'You ever hear of a Spider attacking anyone?' I countered. On that one, at least, I was on very safe ground. 'Or even getting agitated?'

Morse's lips puckered. 'The point is, seemingly at every stop, the reason for your presence here becomes ever murkier.'

'I have Deputy Director Losutu's endorsement.' I reminded him.

'Which I already told you doesn't impress me,' he retorted. 'What's your game, Compton?'

'There's no game,' I told him. 'A man who died at my feet a few days ago seemed concerned about his missing sculpture. I'd like to help recover it, for his sake. I was trying to do that when this fiasco happened. End of story.'

Morse snorted. 'Hardly,' he growled. 'What about the Juriani and Halkas you just killed?'

'You find medical proof that anything I did killed them, and I'll be happy to discuss it further,' I said. 'Until then, this conversation is a waste of time. What we need to do is talk to Ms. Auslander and find out what she knew about the boy who was killed.'

'Correction: I need to talk to Ms. Auslander,' he said. 'You need to stay put until I figure out what to do with you.'

I thought about reminding him once again that he had no authority inside a Tube station, especially one surrounded by Jurian space. But it didn't seem worth the breath. 'Just make it fast,' I said. 'Wherever Stafford is, he's getting a light-year farther away every minute we sit here.'

'Thank you for the reminder,' Morse said acidly. 'You can be in charge of keeping track of those light-years.' With that witty exit line, he strode out, closing the door behind him.

I made a couple of circuits of the storeroom, just to keep my complaining leg muscles from seizing up completely. I was starting my third circle when the door opened again and Bayta slipped inside. 'Any word from the governor?' I asked her.

'What?' she asked, frowning.

'Skip it,' I said, making a mental note to add some prison stories to the list of dit rec dramas I intended to show her someday. 'What's Morse doing?'

'He's interviewing Ms. Auslander,' Bayta said. 'She's very upset.'

'Sudden death does that to people,' I said. 'So she did know the kid?'

Bayta nodded. 'Pyotr Gerashchenko, one of the group going to Ian-apof for that ski trip. He stayed behind with Ms. Auslander when her ticket was canceled.'

Which the Spiders had done under my orders. Which meant that ultimately I was the one responsible for getting the kid killed.

I shook away the thought. It was the Modhri who'd killed him, not me. 'So why did he run?'

'I don't know.' Bayta paused, cocking her head as if listening to something faint. 'She's telling Mr. Morse …Mr. Gerashchenko was accustomed to using certain illegal drugs. She thinks he must have thought he was going to be arrested.'

'I wonder how he came to that conclusion,' I said sourly, thinking back to the Shorshian who'd been talking earnestly to Gerashchenko just before he spotted me and took off.

'She doesn't know,' Bayta said.

'I do,' I said. 'The Modhri engineered the whole thing, from spooking the kid into running, to helping us herd him someplace nice and private, to sending someone in to kill him.'

'The fifth walker?'

'Or someone else who slipped over there ahead of us and waited for Gerashchenko to show up,' I said. 'Interesting that the lack of a fifth walker body implies the Modhri didn't want to waste that particular one.'

'But why kill Mr. Gerashchenko at all?'

'That is the question, isn't it?' I agreed, looking at my watch. Morse had had five minutes alone with Penny. That was plenty. 'Let's go find out.'

We left the room, walking past the two server Spiders Morse had apparently shanghaied into guarding me. Bayta led the way down a corridor to one of the private conference rooms adjoining the stationmaster's office. Again we brushed past a couple of Spiders and went inside.

Penny was seated in one of the chairs, her head bowed, her eyes on the floor in front of her. Morse was half sitting, half leaning against the table beside her, a standard posture for giving the interrogator intimidating height