Odd Girl Out

'How long do we wait?' Karim asked. 'In case—' His lips compressed briefly.

'In case I get myself killed? Half an hour,' I said, picking a number out of the air. I actually had no idea how long it would take for McMicking and me to deal with the four walkers converging on Veldrick's house. 'If you haven't heard from me by then, I suggest you head out of town and find somewhere to go to ground until you do hear from me.'

'I know some places,' Karim said, his face grim in the glow of the streetlights. 'Good luck.'

'You too.'

He drove off, leaving me standing in the silence of the street. 'You want me to get us a car?' McMicking asked through the window.

'No need,' I said, feeling my throat tightening as I watched Karim's taillights disappear around a corner. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong. But I couldn't put my finger on it.

'You want us to walk?'

I shook the vague apprehension away. 'Of course not,' I said, heading back into the bar. 'You figure out which of the Fillies' cars is the closest. I'll get the keys to both of them.'

A minute later we were striding along the deserted walkway toward one of the encirclement cars the Fillies had left behind a couple of blocks from the bar. 'How do you want to work this?' McMicking asked as we walked.

'As quickly and cleanly as possible,' I told him, feeling the back of my neck tingling as I threw a careful look into each alley and doorway that we passed. This still wasn't adding up. 'We can't afford to let the situation settle into a stalemate.'

'Agreed,' McMicking said. 'So you'll drop me about three blocks from Veldrick's house and go the rest of the way in alone. Hopefully, you can draw the Modhri's attention while I come in from behind.'

'His attention and his fire?' I suggested dryly.

McMicking shrugged. 'Would you rather I go in and you play backup?'

'I appreciate the offer,' I said. Backup …'But since he already knows what I look like—'

And suddenly, it clicked. 'Oh, damn,' I muttered, coming to an abrupt halt.

'What?' McMicking demanded sharply, his gun coming up to ready position, his eyes darting around.

'We've been played,' I said, my mind spinning with possibilities and implications. 'Remember Rebekah saying that the Modhri needs Veldrick's coral for whatever he needs to do vis-a-vis the Abomination?'

'Yes, of course,' McMicking said. 'That's presumably why the Fillies took off so quickly when you told Veldrick to be ready to hammer it to powder.'

'Presumably, yes; actually, no,' I said. 'If that was the whole story, he should have gone equally frantic when you and I broke into Veldrick's home earlier this evening.'

'Good point,' McMicking said darkly. 'So why didn't he?'

'Because he doesn't need Veldrick's coral,' I said. 'The Fillies have an outpost of their own tucked away.'

McMicking swore under his breath. 'Aboard their torchyacht.'

'Bingo,' I confirmed grimly. 'Obvious, in retrospect. The Modhri couldn't have expected to find a ready-to-use outpost waiting for his walkers on a Human world.'

'Unless he found out from the other walkers who've been snooping around,' McMicking pointed out.

'Right, but by then the Fillies were probably already on their way with their own coral in tow,' I said. 'It's not like there are a hundred places between the Filiaelian Assembly and New Tigris where you can safely stash a Modhran outpost.'

'So why are we breaking our necks to get to Veldrick before he destroys his coral?' McMicking asked.

'It's worse than that,' I said, pulling out my comm. 'If he's got coral at the spaceport, you can bet he's moving a couple of the Fillies there, too.'

'All four cars are headed to Veldrick's.'

'All four cars' trackers are headed to Veldrick's,' I said sourly, punching in Bayta's number. 'That doesn't necessarily mean the cars themselves are. How hard would it be to pull the trackers out of the cars and load them aboard a couple of autocabs?'

McMicking's hand closed around my comm, canceling the call. 'Don't call her,' he said. 'One of the walkers might be watching them, and a sudden change of direction would tip him off that we were on to this new wrinkle.'

'We have to warn them,' I insisted.

'We will,' he assured me. 'I'll go now.'

My first thought was to remind him that Bayta and Rebekah were my responsibility, not his. My second thought was to remember that he knew that. 'All right,' I said. 'You probably shouldn't take the other Filly car.'

'I wasn't planning to,' he assured me. 'Watch yourself.' He angled across the street, heading toward a pair of parked cars.

I started walking again toward the Filly car that had been our original goal, resisting the urge to also find an alternative mode of transport. The most important thing I could do right now was keep the Modhri thinking I'd fallen for his trick.

The second most important thing was to get Veldrick out of his mess so that I could get back to the spaceport and get Bayta out of her mess. The mess I'd put her into.

I picked up my pace. As I did so, I flipped the Beretta's selector switch to the right-hand half of the clip, the one with killrounds in it.

The Modhri was playing this game for keeps. It was about time I started doing the same.

TWELVE :

Under normal circumstances I would have approached Veldrick's house cautiously, parking a couple of blocks away and moving in on foot. But the circumstances here weren't normal. Veldrick's life was in danger, with Bayta's and Rebekah's about to be. There was no time for skulking around in the shadows.

Besides, since there was probably still a chunk of coral in my borrowed car's trunk, it wasn't like the Modhri didn't already know I was on my way.

I braked to a stop by Veldrick's yard, to find the front door of his house standing wide open. Leaving the engine running, I popped the door and dived out.

I barely made it. From behind a wide, multitrunked tree at the edge of Veldrick's lot line came a muted flash and a thudwumper slammed into the door a dozen centimeters from my hip.

My momentum was already taking me toward the rear of the car, so that was where I went, grabbing the end of the bumper as I reached it and pulling myself around behind the trunk. Even as I dropped into a crouch a second shot blew through the driver's window.

I pressed my back against the rear bumper, looking quickly around the rest of the neighborhood as I drew my Beretta and thumbed off the safety. The logical way for the Modhri to have split up his remaining forces, I knew, would have been to send two of the Fillies to the spaceport to intercept Bayta and Rebekah, and the other two here to ambush me.

Unfortunately, that was my logic, which wasn't necessarily the Modhri's. I might be facing a single shooter here, or two, or maybe even three, depending on how much trouble he was expecting from me and how badly he wanted to permanently remove me from the game.

The shooter behind the tree fired again, this shot taking out the front left tire. I rose from behind the car high enough to squeeze off a round at him, stayed there just long enough to persuade any second or third shooters that I was presenting a good target, then ducked down again.

But if there were any others, they didn't avail themselves of the golden opportunity. The Filly behind the tree was the only one who fired as I dropped back into cover. This time his shot hit the pavement two meters to the left