CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The trio of men who popped out of the cross corridor had 'newsie' written all over them, and their leader was keying his shoulder-mounted HD camera before Honor even saw him.
'Lady Harrington, would you care to comment on—'
The newsies voice broke off on an odd note as Major Andrew LaFollet stepped in front of his steadholder. The major wasn't a large man by Manticoran standards, but neither was the newsie. LaFollet probably out-massed him by a well-muscled thirty percent; more to the point, the major's expression was not amused. Everything about him, from his close-cropped hair to the cut of his uniform, proclaimed that he was a foreigner, and the look in his eyes suggested he might not give much of a damn for the traditions of the Manticoran media.
He stood there, regarding the newsman with cold dispassion. He didn't say anything, and he made absolutely no threatening gesture, but the newsie reached up with one hand, moving very carefully, and deactivated his camera. LaFollet's nostrils flared with bitter amusement, and the covey of reporters parted magically to clear the passage.
Honor gave them a courteous nod, as if nothing at all had happened, and stepped past them, followed by Corporal Mattingly. LaFollet waited a moment longer, then fell in behind. He overtook his charge and took his proper place at her right elbow, and she turned her head to look down at him.
'That's not quite how things are done in the Star Kingdom, Andrew,' she murmured. He snorted and shook his head.
'I know it isn't, My Lady. I spent some time viewing the garbage the Manties—beg pardon, My Lady. I meant I've viewed the Manticoran coverage of the Young court-martial.' His tone made his opinion of that coverage clear, and Honor's lips quirked.
'I didn't say I didn't appreciate your efforts. I only meant that you can't go around threatening newsies.'
'Threaten, My Lady?' LaFollet's voice was innocence itself. 'I never threatened anyone.'
Honor started to reply, then closed her mouth. She'd already discovered that arguing with the major was a losing proposition. He listened with infinite, unfailing courtesy, but he had his own ideas about what was due her, and he was even stubborner than she was. No doubt he would have obeyed her if she'd ordered him out of the newsies way, but only a direct order would have moved him.
She sighed mentally, torn between wry amusement and resignation. She hadn't realized until this morning that her Grayson armsmen had become a permanent fixture in her life. Which, given her recent mental state, probably wasn't surprising but still bothered her. She ought to have been paying more attention, and, if she had been, she might have been able to nip it in the bud.
Now it was too late, and she suspected adjusting to their presence wasn't going to be the easiest thing she'd ever done. Not that she seemed to have a vote. It was clear LaFollet had been briefed on her, because he'd been ready not only to cite chapter and verse from the relevant Grayson law codes but to trade shamelessly on her own sense of duty. She'd detected Howard Clinkscales' hand behind the major's shrewd choice of tactics, and the discovery that LaFollet was ex-Palace Security only reinforced her suspicions.
Be that as it may, her chief armsman had politely demolished—or ignored as unworthy of demolition—every argument she'd advanced against his presence, and she hadn't even been able to fall back on Manticoran law. A special writ from the Queen's Bench had arrived in the morning mail, granting a Foreign Office request that Steadholder Harrington (who just happened to live in the same body as Captain Harrington) be authorized a permanent armed security detachment—with diplomatic immunity, no less! The fact that Tomas Ramirez had obviously signed on to the conspiracy, coupled with MacGuiness' patent approval, had given LaFollet an unfair advantage, and her last resistance had crumpled when Nimitz insisted on tapping into the major's emotions and relaying his deep concern for and devotion to her.
LaFollet had allowed no trace of triumph to color his expression or voice, but Nimitz's link had still been open and she'd sensed his intense satisfaction. She was thirteen T-years older than he, but there was something uncannily familiar about his emotions where she was concerned. Somehow, without realizing it was happening, she'd acquired a MacGuiness with a gun, and she suspected her life would never be quite the same again.
She and her bodyguards stepped into one of
The slender, fair-haired man helped himself to another pretzel and nursed his half-empty stein while the early lunch crowd filtered in. He sat with his back to the doors, paying the bustle about him no obvious attention, but his opaque eyes watched everything in the mirrored wall behind the bar, and it was just as well his expression gave no sign of his thoughts.
Denver Summervale was a passionate man. He'd trained himself, over the years, to hide that passion behind a facade of icy control, and he did it so well that even he often forgot the fires that drove him. He was well aware of how dangerous personal fury could be in his line of work, but this time his control had frayed, and he knew it. This assignment was no longer a mere transaction, for he wasn't accustomed to being mauled. It had been too many years since anyone had dared lay hands on him, given the aura of fear his reputation provided. That aura had always been a pleasant thing, yet he hadn't quite realized how much he truly relished and relied upon it... or how infuriated he would be when enemies refused to cower before it.
He chewed on his pretzel, face expressionless, and felt the hatred washing about his mind. His path had crossed Honor Harrington's before, though she didn't know it. Her activities at the time had cost him a lucrative if highly illegal income, but he'd been able to accept that—more or less—as the breaks of the game. This time was different. He hadn't hated anyone this much since the Duke of Cromarty had refused to lift a finger to stop the Royal Marines from cashiering his distant cousin.
He snarled mentally as he remembered what Harrington's allies had done to him. His beating at Tankersley's hands had been degrading and humiliating but tolerable, since it had helped him get on with the job at hand, and he'd settled that account with interest. The single round the captain had gotten off had come frighteningly close to being more than a flesh wound, yet that, too, was acceptable. Like his sense of personal vengeance, it had actually lent an added, sensual edge to the adrenaline rush when he saw his target fall.
But what happened after that, on Gryphon... there'd been no adrenaline rush in that, no sense of power, no awareness that he was the very angel of death. There'd been only fear and pain—fear that had become instant terror when the pain blossomed into agony—and shame that was worse than any pain. Tomas Ramirez was a dead man. No one would have to pay for the colonel; this one would be a freebie, almost an act of love. He'd have to wait for the right moment, when no one, especially any of his previous sponsors, would have any reason to suspect his reasons, but that was fine. The wait would only make the final kill sweeter, and, in the meantime, he would hurt Ramirez.
The first hint of an expression, an ugly little smile, touched his face. He banished it the moment he saw it in the mirror, but inside he gloated. He knew how to punish Ramirez. The stupid fucker had told him how to do it himself... and he'd already been paid for the job.
He checked the date/time display and settled himself more comfortably on the bar stool. He'd hoped and expected to see newsies in Harrington's face from the moment of her arrival, for the way she handled them would have given him more insight into her state of mind, but there'd been a strange dearth of coverage on her since her return from Yeltsin's Star. Everyone knew she was back, yet she'd managed to elude the media with remarkable success.
It was disappointing, but he knew all he really needed to know, for he'd studied her record carefully. Given what he knew about her, it was inevitable that she would come looking for him, burning for revenge, and when she did, he would kill her.
He smiled again, almost dreamily. She was a naval officer, and a good one, with a skill and competence in her chosen field which he would never have challenged, but this was his area of competence. He was willing to concede that she had guts. And, unlike many naval officers, who thought in terms of the sanitary mayhem of deep space warfare, she'd proven she was willing to meet her enemies and kill them face-to-face when she had to. But
