“I don’t think he’s lying,” Emiko added. Emiko knew Jan wasn’t lying, of course, but had no reason to admit that. Apparently, Emiko had kept her former association with Fatima a secret, which seemed wise, given Ryke was a fucking psychopath.
“This all smells wrong,” Ryke said, though more terrifying clicking assured Jan she had stepped back. “First Tarack’s random delay, and now this, a solution to that delay offered by a man whose freedom was purchased by the same woman who was going to sell us that disc. For no reason, this thief—”
“Smuggler,” Jan managed.
“—blunders into the most obvious trap in the world, then gives us everything we need to screw over his employer after a basic kid-gloves interrogation.”
Emiko huffed. “We used to shag, like, all the time.” Emiko sounded a bit offended. “That made kissing him a good trap.”
“This is too perfect. Too clean.” Ryke clicked closer, and Jan braced his balls for another kick. “It’s safer to just kill him. Do you have the stomach, or shall I?”
“Or,” Jan shouted, “you could roll the dice one last time!”
Another pause. Then, more words.
“Why would you offer to work for me?” Ryke asked. “Why risk the wrath of your current employer?”
“My current employer is not in a position to immediately murder me,” Jan pointed out. “Also, you are extremely frightening. My offer to turn coat is entirely self-interest.”
“Hmm,” Ryke said. “Craven honesty is a good start to any relationship, yet you could fuck off to the middle of nowhere the moment I set you free. How do I know you’ll deliver, given you’ve already offered to betray your current employer?”
Jan thought less than a moment. “You don’t.”
“That ... doesn’t help your case.”
“You can’t know I’m telling the truth,” Jan said, “but you can run the numbers and decide if the possibility of obtaining Tarack’s disc, for free, financially outweighs the risk of not killing me in this chair. It’s your call, Miss Ryke. I trust my life to your financial intuition.”
After a very long, very dangerous moment, Ryke didn’t shoot him in the head. “You’ve intrigued me, Sabato. Not many manage that, at least not before they’ve shed a great deal more blood.” One heel tapped thoughtfully. “I do love gambling.”
Jan said nothing. Ryke didn’t actually expect him to say anything, and she expected him to know that.
“Deliver me Tarack’s disc,” Ryke said, “and I won’t kill you today. I will kill you at the end of the week, if you don’t deliver, but let’s just call that incentive, shall we?”
“You have a deal,” Jan said. “And may I say, Miss Ryke, it was a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Oh, Jan.” Ryke tapped the underside of his chin with one sharp nail. “Don’t tempt me.”
05: Kinsley
Jan walked out the front door of Emiko’s mini-mall with everything he’d walked in with, including his balls, which was better than most who encountered the Ryke crime family. The sun was down, and dusk had settled in, but the recessed light fixtures tucked throughout the Luxury District made it even more gorgeous at nighttime. Or maybe it was gorgeous because he wasn’t dead.
Emiko had saved him. Emiko had led him to say exactly what he needed to say to not get murdered by Elena Ryke, but she had also knocked him out and put him in Ryke’s interrogation chair in the first place. So the question was ... why?
Surveillance. It had to be. Emiko now worked for Ryke — whatever else was going on, that was obvious — and Ryke would not allow Emiko to surveil her business without surveilling that business herself. That meant Elena Ryke had spotted Jan the moment he entered the mall, and had Emiko done anything less than immediately knock Jan out and call Ryke about the wanted fugitive, Ryke would have tortured and killed them both.
Betrayal under duress was not betrayal, so far as Jan was concerned. It was simply a lack of planning, on his part and Emiko’s, but she, like him, was good at improvisation. That was what made sex with her so exciting. Also, she was smoking hot.
So, now, Jan simply had to complete the job he had promised two separate murderous women he would do for them alone, so he could murder a third woman, and not get murdered by any of them in return. He would find Tarack’s disc. He would find Fatima and learn why she’d betrayed him, and the first step in doing all that was linking back up with Rafe and Bharat.
Who weren’t here or anywhere in sight.
Which made it real hard to do those other things.
Jan glanced at his wrist chrono. Twenty-one hours and thirty-two minutes remained. He’d been with Emiko and her homicidal employer less than four hours, so Bharat and Rafe must be wondering where he was right now.
If they’d returned to find him missing, where would they have gone? The library? That Rafe would spend four hours poring over local real estate records was unlikely, given the man’s attention span was, generously, thirty seconds. Had Rafe talked Bharat into shopping for explosives? Had Bharat gotten himself beaten to death by racist locals?
Jan made a mental note to immediately have Bharat purchase comm-links for all three of them. He had thought that could wait until they’d acquired a safe house, but he had obviously been wrong. For now, Jan thought better while walking, so he set off in the general direction of the library.
Unlike the Sledge, whose chief decorations were craters and walls of blasphemous graffiti, the Luxury District of Star’s Landing was an entirely different world. Clear
