“Hey, what’s wrong?” Peterson asked.
“I just feel bad for all the great kids like Ashton that’ll come later,” Carter admitted. “Because you know they’re gonna put a hardcore stooge in this job, once I’m gone.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Peterson said with a shrug. “Meanwhile, I–”
“Hold on a sec,” Carter said, glancing to one side. “I just got a notification.”
“Standing by.”
Peterson waited while Carter’s avatar assumed a blank look, as he checked the reason for the notification in a different channel. When he came back, he smiled.
“That’s that,” he told her. “My application for early retirement has been accepted, with my accrued leave to commence at the end of my shift today and run through until the official termination date. I’m done with this damn place. When we’re finished here, I’ll pack my personal things in a box and leave this office behind for good.”
“Congratulations!” Peterson said with a wide smile. “Do you have any celebratory plans?”
“No, not really…”
“Good. Come over to my place about two hours after you get off shift. That’ll give me time to finish my own shift, then get home, feed Elvis, and prep a nice dinner. We’ll celebrate together.” She shrugged, then added, “I was gonna see about swinging by the pub; all the guys are getting to know Ashton before they headed out to finish his move, and I was invited. But I think I like this idea better.”
Carter grinned.
“It’s a date.”
“It better be.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Gorski said, as the group headed out.
“I knew I smelled something burning,” Demetrius said with a smirk. “Let’s hear it.”
“Well, my gut is saying we need to go get Nick, here, moved out of his place before we go off to the pub, just in case. If they suspect anything, it’ll be the first place they look for him, so we need to get it clear, now.”
“Mm,” Demetrius hummed, considering. “Now that you mention it, my gut agrees. Yeah, Stefan, I think you have a really good idea there. Guys?” he addressed the rest of their party, “are you up for this? Anybody who doesn’t want to help can just head for the pub and get us the back room...”
“Which we need somebody to do, anyway,” Gorski decided.
“I’ll go take care of the back room,” Rassmussen offered. “You want the one near the back entrance, right? The ‘backmost back room’?”
“That’s the one,” Demetrius confirmed. “How about the rest of you? Going with us, or to the pub?”
It turned out they were game to go to Ashton’s apartment and help move him.
So the rest, led by Gorski, followed Ashton to his old apartment, where they helped him load and grab the last few boxes, and transfer them to his new place; with all of them working, it took only about forty-five minutes.
As Carter had instructed him, he didn’t leave a forwarding address with the old apartment superintendent.
And he applied for, and was approved, to change his VR contact channels.
Once they left the boxes in Ashton’s new den, they headed for the pub…covertly. Demetrius led the way through a series of back alleys, private arcades, maintenance tunnels, and mews, to the back door of the Laughing Cat Pub. Slipping inside, they found that Rassmussen awaited the group, and he promptly led them into the pub’s “backmost back room,” as he termed it; Ashton found from the conversation that this sort of thing was not necessarily unusual, when the detectives wanted to gather during an active undercover investigation or the like. In short order, a waiter – their usual, it appeared, named George – came in and took orders for food and drink.
The gathering at the local pub was fun, full of jokes and laughter, and Ashton was glad to get to know the people with whom he’d be working in the immediate future. When it was over, Gorski and Demetrius personally escorted Ashton back to his new apartment.
“Stay put tonight,” Gorski told him at the door of his flat. “Crash early, if you can. We want to make sure everyone thinks you’re not on Sintar any longer.”
“Right,” Ashton agreed.
More than an hour after the two experienced detectives left Ashton at his new apartment, a figure dressed in head-to-toe black, gloves on hands, face hidden under a balaclava, small kit tucked under one arm, slipped from the shadows on the street and into a particular apartment building. It headed up the fire escape to the correct floor for his apartment, then headed for the apartment door, rapidly hacking the lock and entering the darkened apartment.
There, it headed straight for the kitchen. The kit came out, and a device was pulled from it, the timer on it set, then it was fastened into the interior of the oven.
The mysterious stranger left the way it had come.
Late that night, a maintenance man let himself into the now-empty apartment that Ashton and Stone had once occupied, to check out the flat for any needed updates or repairs, as well as strip certain amenities that needed replacing before a new tenant could be installed.
He planned to be there all night, working on the apartment.
In the end, he never went home.
In the wee small hours the next morning, in Imperial Park West a few blocks south of the Imperial University, an explosion rocked the building that had been Ashton’s old home, an explosion within the very apartment in which he had lived.
Maia Peterson’s apartment was only a couple of blocks away, and the concussion was loud enough to rattle windows and loose items in her bedroom.
“SHIT!” Lee Carter exclaimed, lunging into a sitting position and dislodging a startled little Siamese who
