“No idea. I guess it depends on how cocky they are, and how good they think their hit man is. But if Ashton goes out with your people, they’ll find out, sooner or later.”
“I know. But better later, when we can get a bit more experience under his belt, and some buddies watching his back, than sooner, without all that.”
“No argument there.” Lee drew a deep breath, and let it out in a shaky sigh.
“Aw. You’re really fond of the kid.”
“Well...yeah. He’s...he’s smart, and he’s good, and he has a good heart, Maia.” He shrugged. “He…sorta reminds me of me, when I started. I...”
“You’ve been keeping an eye on him since he arrived.”
“Yeah.”
“And you thought you’d failed.”
Lee dropped his gaze to the bedclothes in his lap. Elvis was already settling back down, across his ankles. “...Yeah.”
“C’mere, baby,” she said, pulling him close. “He’s safe. Everything’s okay now. Just relax.”
And she kissed him thoroughly.
Hitting the Ground One Way or Another
The next morning, Ashton arrived at ICPD headquarters in a hooded jacket and casual wear, his uniform in a garment bag which he carefully rolled and placed in a small duffel to disguise it as much as possible. He changed in the locker room, then headed for his superior’s office, where he gave his new address to Colonel Peterson.
“And if you wouldn’t mind, could you pass it on to Captain Carter when it’s appropriate, since I’m…well, I guess I’m officially offworld, but unofficially on loan to you guys?”
“I can, when I see him tonight,” Maia agreed, “but he’s not ‘Captain’ anybody now, you know. He retired as soon as you got your ass outta that place, Nick.”
“He did?!”
“He did. Like, within an hour. And glad of it, to judge by what he told me last night.” She studied the young officer for a long moment. “You know what? I’m gonna just hang on to this. Oh, I’ll enter it into the formal records for Imp City, but I’ll ensure it’s buried deep, and has a restriction on it so nobody can see it that I don’t want seeing. Lee won’t have a replacement yet, and when they do replace him, it’ll be somebody who kowtows to Stanier or Kershaw, you can be sure of that. And by the time they do, or by the time you’ve ‘come back from training,’ whichever comes first…well, I’ll have conveniently ‘lost’ it.”
“Oh,” Ashton said, trying not to grin.
“Oh, go ahead and laugh,” Peterson said, grinning herself. “You’re going to find out, Nick, that this department runs a lot differently – and a lot less formally – than the one you were just in. And I’ll bet you wind up liking it, when all’s said and done.”
“I’m sure liking it so far, ma’am. I’d never have thought of somebody over at IPD headquarters calling me in the middle of the night ‘cause they were worried about me. Well, maybe Captain Carter…”
“Definitely Captain Carter. He was waiting on tenterhooks for me to let him know if you were okay.”
“Why didn’t he call me himself?”
“He couldn’t. As soon as he was out of the building – probably before – they cut his comms to all you guys, and he’d deliberately not gotten your personal contact info to prevent either of you being accused of collusion or something.”
“Oh. Aw. Well, yeah, then. I definitely am liking this department better.”
“Good.”
Starting that very morning, Peterson kept Ashton at his desk for more than three weeks, waiting for the hullaballoo over the bombing to die down – it had to have been a bomb, given nobody was living in the apartment, and per ICPD’s official unofficial assessment by their explosives experts, it was too big to have been a gas explosion, anyway. This was all done with the help of Stefan Gorski and his team, during which time they accepted Ashton as one of their own. They were, one and all, concerned for his safety, especially after the blast; as a general rule, someone walked home with him at the end of shift, and pretty soon, at least one and often more were meeting him near his new flat to come in with him in the mornings, as well.
“What’s the word, George?” Chief Stanier asked General Kershaw. “Did we get ‘im?”
“Not according to the forensics guys, George,” Kershaw responded. “Apparently it was just a maintenance guy.”
“But that was Ashton’s apartment, right, Bill?”
“It was. It was a furnished apartment, so all the furniture and décor was there, but there were no personal items there. After the fact, we went in and found out that he’d given up the lease on it, packed up, and headed out. Evidently Ashton really did leave Sintar. And some of my people actually saw him departing from an interstellar gate, on a flight to Pritani, like Carter said.”
“Really? That’s good, then. Maybe he’ll come back with some street smarts to add to the book smarts.”
“Hopefully. We might even want to consider moving him from the beat cop line org into the investigation line, if his training pans out.”
“It’s an idea. We’ll wait and see what happens when he gets back.” Stanier paused, then delicately changed the subject. “How’s your niece doing with her assignments?”
“She’s doing great, George,” Kershaw replied with a chuckle. “Coming right along. Already got her first promotion.”
“Great! Oh, and have you heard about that new boyfriend? Some actor from a VR drama. She caught a looker, from the scuttlebutt I heard.”
“Yeah,” Kershaw laughed. “That one’s going hot and heavy. He’s even slept over a few times already.”
“Do tell…”
When the news became public that the deceased had been a maintenance man prepping the apartment for a new renter, Carter, Peterson, and Gorski realized that their “laying low” subterfuge might have run its
