Koch glared at Carter and the others as she stood and stalked out.
“Nick, send Roberts and Keenes with her,” Carter said then.
“On it, Lee,” Ashton said, opening a message in VR.
Division
A furious Tabitha Koch watched as the police escorts left her apartment with her uniforms, her equipment to include duty belt and accessories, and her IPD-issued weapons. She was not a happy camper.
You can’t tell me this damn department is ‘all cleaned up,’ like Carter declared, she thought. There’s no way in hell an organization that big can even function without some looking out for oneself… by pretty much everybody. He was a captain the last I heard, and a retired one, at that. Since Peabody survived that damnable hell the new emperor brought down on Uncle Bill and the others, he should have been this ‘Director,’ not Carter! And how the hell did Nick wind up over Peabody too? Carter and Ashton never should have wound up in the positions they got. They have something going, those two, that’s all.
And, she decided, if anything were to happen to Carter, I expect Nick would step into the pilot’s seat. And then he could appoint me to anything he damn well likes! Especially if we’re lovers again by that time. Except he managed to get himself shackled to that preggers bitch, and she apparently has eyes like a hawk, and spies in the department, watching him. I wonder if the baby is even his, or if she saw him climbing the ladder and just knocked herself up to catch him.
This won’t do. She looked around at the rather run-down, bedraggled apartment in which she now lived. That damn emperor not only killed him, but confiscated pretty much all of Uncle Bill’s assets as ‘ill-gotten gains,’ and I didn’t get hardly anything out of the inheritance! I should be sitting pretty in a top of the line condo, instead of living in this rodent-infested old rattletrap. And now I’ve lost the job I was counting on to pay for this shabby shit. I need to think.
So she went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, disclosing precious little – a stick of butter, a hunk of moldy cheddar, half a bottle of flat beer – before huffing and closing it again. Then she started banging through the cabinets, revealing not much more except some inexpensive dishes and glasses. Finally she opened a full cabinet, revealing several rows of liquor – whiskey, bourbon, and tequila principal among them. She got out a bottle of bourbon and a cheap old-fashioned glass, put ice in it, and poured it full of bourbon.
She took the glass and the bottle into the den, plopped herself in a threadbare recliner, and knocked back a substantial portion of the liquor at one go.
Then she refilled her glass.
When she was on the last glass of bourbon left in the bottle – which, admittedly, had not been more than two-thirds full, if that, when she pulled it from the cabinet – and well lubricated, Koch started talking to herself, planning and plotting what she would do.
“Nicky baby is gettin’ at least lieutenant-colonel level pay, and that ain’t shabby. I still dunno how he busted Peabody down below him, but the fact that he did says a lot for his ability to negotiate the organizational ladder. Maybe Nick had something on ol’ Win and blackmailed him. Damn, Uncle Bill handled that one all wrong. He shoulda re-hired the guy, instead of trying to kill him! No wonder he didn’t come back to IPD Headquarters! No, Nicky knows what he’s doing. He just maybe stuck it in crazy where the preggers bitch is concerned, and got caught out. She probably sleeps around, so who knows who the father really is? He oughta know better, what with nanites an’ shit. She prob’ly wanted that salary of his, too! But there’s appearances to be maintained in a position like his, so he hadda man up and marry the damn bitch, I guess.
“No, what I need to do now is to slide back into his good graces, and then into his bed. And I need to figure out how to cut the bitch and her brat outta his life, and more importantly, outta his finances…”
She silenced for a while, and knocked back another big slug of bourbon.
“Huh. Maybe ‘cut out’ is the operative term,” she considered. “Just because those toadies Carter sent with me walked outta here with my IPD-issued weapons doesn’t mean I don’t have some of my own. So maybe if I get rid of the bitch, I can ‘comfort’ Nicky-baby when she’s gone, and slide right on back into his bed. Mm, I remember him in bed. Damn, was he good… or was that Ned? No, I think it was Nicky. Eh, they all look alike once you get their clothes off. A buncha muscles an’ a big stick in the middle. It’s all about whether they know how t’ use that stick!” Her head wobbled as she laughed to herself, then she struggled to get her thoughts back on track.
“And so if I can do that, if I can get the bitch an’ the baby outta the picture an’ me back in it, then I can play the bitch’s game, and either get pregnant or claim to be pregnant, and suddenly I’m Ms. Koch-Ashton. And then we can see about taking care of Carter, Nicky an’ me. Then I can be Ms. Director Ashton. Or something. The Jive, Uncle Bill called it. Damn, I’ve had too much again. Eh, it isn’t like I gotta go to work tomorrow.” Another slug went down her throat. “Mmm, I love this shit.”
Half an hour later, she was passed out in the recliner.
The next morning, Koch came to, still in the recliner, with a splitting headache and decidedly hung over.
“Ugh,” she groaned, smacking
