Salvi laughed. “You’re not supposed to tell the customer that, though, right? I’m supposed to believe that you’re treating me like a queen purely because I deserve it, right?”
The barman gave her a caught look.
Salvi smiled. She’d just found his flaw. He was handsome, had a great body, but maybe he could do with a little more brain power. “It’s okay. Your secret is safe with me.”
The door at the end of the bar opened and a well-dressed woman walked though, blonde hair slicked back, dark business suit fitted to her figure, sky-high heels. However, it was the man following her that caught Salvi’s attention. It was none other than Lance Chaney himself. She recognized him from the photo Kara had shown her after the initial Taskforce Trident briefing. Salvi casually turned her eyes back to the beautiful barman.
“Speak of the devil,” he said to her.
“She’s your boss?” she said quietly, playing dumb.
“No. Well, yeah, she’s the manager, but he owns the place,” the barman said, then smiled at the two approaching bodies.
“Jennifer. Lance,” the barman nodded.
The woman nodded back and continued walking with a fixed focus, but Chaney slowed to a stop. He looked just like the image Kara had shown her; tall, lean, tanned, handsome, rich. Salvi pegged him at around 6’1 and weighing maybe 175lbs.
“Dante,” he greeted the barman. “You having a good night?” Salvi wondered whether he was enquiring about the barman’s mood or the sales.
“Absolutely!” he grinned, showing his straight white teeth. “Just keeping this lovely lady company.”
Salvi looked at Chaney and smiled. “Who cares if you get stood up with company like this for a fallback, huh?”
Chaney smiled. “You were stood up? Well, now that will never do. I’m glad Dante is keeping you from getting lonely.” He gave Dante a friendly slap on the back. “Drinks on the house for this one.”
“On the house?” Salvi’s eyebrows popped.
Chaney gave her a suave smile. “At The Dream Bar we like everyone’s dreams to come true. This cad stood you up, but we shall fix things. Enjoy your night.”
He walked off, entering another room at the opposite end of the bar, where the woman, Jennifer, had disappeared. Salvi looked back to Dante’s big dumb smile.
“He’s cool like that,” he said.
“He is indeed.”
And though Salvi rarely drank these days, she deeply regretted being on duty and unable to drink the bar dry.
“It gives me an in,” Salvi told Ford and the Trident members gathered in the empty office tenancy. “I go back to the bar to thank him. If he doesn’t show, I’ll contact him by other means and do a little flirting.”
“Good work,” Ford said, then turned to Kara. “Shadid? How’d you go last night?”
“I got introduced to a woman who claims she’s good friends with Chaney. Says she used to work with him at Cachoos. I think I’m close to getting the keys to the Ceiling.”
“Okay,” Ford nodded, then looked to Bronte. “Go back to the club tonight. On your own. Let’s see if you can make any new friends. The more connections you all make, the faster we might be able to join the dots.”
They nodded.
“How was last night’s body count?” Salvi asked her.
“Three,” she responded. She looked tired and Salvi wondered whether she’d worked some herself. “One female, battered by her ex-boyfriend, who was apparently dismayed by her death once he came down, stating he didn’t mean to hit her so hard. We’re running toxicology as we speak. We also got two males, both in their early twenties. Same story, really. Fights that weren’t meant to end in death. We don’t think these are connected to the other cases. We think they’re just the fallout from the drugs hitting the streets.”
“I take it none will point the finger at where they got the drug from?” Bronte asked.
“One did, but I think he was lying. He described your average street corner dealer but was very vague on specifics. The others won’t talk. They’re all ready to accept prison time rather than tell us where they got it.”
“So we’re looking at someone powerful,” Salvi said.
Kara nodded. “Someone with reach who they’re all scared of.”
“Or at least who their dealers are scared of,” Sorensen said.
“This shit is spiraling out of control,” Noble said. “We gotta push back into the Ceiling and get close to Chaney.”
“Have any other cities reported the drugs?” Salvi asked.
Ford shook her head. “Not yet. It appears this is currently a Bay Area special, but as you can imagine, we’re getting pressure to shut it down before it spreads anywhere else.”
“Farrugia and Burke managed to score a hit of Fyte at Bounce,” Sorensen said, scratching his three-day growth. “We’re still analyzing the various compounds of the drug, but we’ll have a full report soon. Hopefully that’ll give us some further avenues to trace.”
“Has there been any sightings of black market tech involved in any of the recent crimes?” Salvi asked.
“Yeah,” Noble said. “The gang fight the other night was caught on security cameras and one side of that battle were wearing the tech. They were trying to hide it under hoodies, caps and bandanas, but naturally in the fight some were exposed. And Grenville was right about his case where he believed that his vic was killed and neural tech stolen from him,” he said. “Autopsy confirmed indentations and markings around the ears and temples that align with the markings of a neural device.”
“The question is,” Salvi nodded, “was the guy killed because someone wanted the tech, or because someone was getting rid of the evidence of the tech?”
“Interesting questions,” Ford said. “More interesting is that the markings on Myki Natashi’s temples that you photographed and uploaded to the case file matched those on the other vic.”
“They did?” Salvi asked.
Ford nodded.
“We’re working to match the indentations to known neural devices and hope to have an answer soon,” Noble said.
“Was Myki’s torn off?” Salvi asked. “Did someone steal hers or want to remove evidence
