In the middle of the night, he was able to answer one of his numerous questions. When the bomb went off, blasting through the ceiling of his bedroom and incinerating his bed, he immediately understood that Rassinger had not expected to find him on Kassa
The district leader was destined to be disappointed yet again. Kyle had developed the habit of sleeping anywhere but his bedroom. Usually it was the couch, but he also had a polyfoam mattress in the study.
This was not as irrationally paranoid as it might seem. Kyle had his reasons, gleaned from a murder investigation several years ago. An assassin had rented the room below the victim’s apartment, set a directed charge on a timer, and departed for parts unknown. By the time the bomb went off, the trail was already three months cold. The chances of catching a man in his bed at 3:00 A.M. were reasonably good. Not good enough for any normal assassin, who got paid only on a successful job, but good enough for an organization that had a very long-term view, plenty of money to spend, and a powerful need to be completely insulated from any taint of illegality.
An organization like the League, for instance.
Of course, they could have just blown out his whole apartment. But the chance of collateral damage was high, and that meant a bigger investigation. They could flood his rooms with a neurotoxin with a short half-life. But that level of sophistication pointed fingers of its own. A simple shaped charge, within the skill set of any amateur chemist, a dozen credits’ worth of electronics, and a forged identity on a rental agreement were too generic to point anywhere.
Sometimes the most sophisticated method was the simplest. The League had precious few virtues, but a crude appreciation for effectiveness was one of them. This trick had been used enough times that the city government had considered imposing real-time identity checks for apartment rentals. Naturally, the legislation never made it past the “under consideration” stage.
Lying on his couch, watching the flames in his bedroom, he wondered what he should do. The internal fire control system was spritzing the blaze, and would eventually win its battle of chemistry. But police units had to be already en route.
Hopefully they would be loyal to the force, and not Rassinger’s faction. Otherwise they might decide to finish the job before starting their investigation.
His comm unit started ringing. Struck by the sheer incongruity of it, he answered.
“Kyle? Are you okay?”
A friendly voice. Or rather, the voice of a friend. Sergeant Baumer was far too bald, thick, and beady-eyed to be friendly. But he was honest, clean, and still tolerated Kyle from the patrols they had shared before the League had taken over Kyle’s career.
Flicking on the unit, Kyle answered. “Help me, Baumer. I’m badly burned … passing out. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” He tossed his comm unit into the bedroom, where the flames quickly devoured it.
It was a long shot. Baumer might or might not get the reference, and he might or might not be in a position to act on it. One of Kyle’s first days on the job, Baumer had been tasked by the others to vet the new kid. A med comm call had come in, and Baumer had let his face sink into the most wretched seriousness. He’d driven like a maniac to the apartment building, a seedy retirement den, and sprinted out of the car with Kyle close behind. At the building’s entrance he pulled Kyle away from the elevators.
After the first three flights of stairs, Baumer had collapsed, holding his ankle and cursing like a vid star. Kyle bounded up the next eight flights, his heart pounding, the fire in his lungs fueled by the desire to be a hero, the good cop, the man his father had expected. The locator led him to the apartment door, opened it for him, and he rushed inside.
Dolores McNabtree was ninety-seven years old, a little senile and a lot crabby. Lying on her kitchen floor, she hissed at him like a wounded cat.
“What took you so long? I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Don’t just stand there, you young fool! Bring me my walker!”
He carried the aluminum walker the three feet from the wall to the old lady. Then he picked her up with one hand. It took him another fifteen minutes to escape her constant nattering. He finally had to fake another emergency call. By the time he got out of her apartment, the musty smell had rubbed off on his new uniform.
Baumer was sitting at the foot of the stairs, laughing his ass off. Dolores called in at least once a day. Sometimes three times a day, if her equally geriatric daughter failed to visit her.
“How do you know it’s not a real emergency?” Kyle appreciated a good joke as much as the next man, but he wanted to learn.
The answer was simple. Whenever Dolores got bored and lonely, she would hold her breath until her medical monitor freaked out. Despite her age, she could hold her breath like a champion—the current record was three minutes and fifteen seconds. The way you knew it wasn’t a real emergency was because of the unique combination of elements: a “not breathing” call, after two in the afternoon, from Dolores’s med unit.
The lesson was that you had to learn your beat. You couldn’t let a machine do it for you.
Kyle started packing a pillowcase with the things he might need. Papers, credit sticks, a change of underwear, that sort of thing. Not his service pistol. It had a GPS tracker in it. The police liked to know where all their people were. That was why he was using a pillowcase, too. All of his luggage had GPS trackers in them. So many ways to foil thieves; so many inconveniences when a man wanted to disappear.
The police were taking an unusually long time to appear. Kyle tossed his pistol into the smoking room—the fire was out now—and retreated to the study. Hiding in the shadows of his own apartment. If they came in with IR goggles, it wouldn’t matter.
Finally the door swung open, unlocked by a police override. As he had hoped, Baumer stepped through it first.
“Kyle?” he called, softly.
Kyle made a softer sound, tapping the door he was half-hidden behind. Baumer flicked his eyes that direction, and then let in two more men.
Firefighters, not medics, which was odd. But they weren’t wearing League armbands, which was a relief.
They closed the door behind them. The firefighters went straight for the ruined bedroom. Baumer let them go and then slipped over to Kyle.
“What on Earth is up, Kyle?” He kept his voice at a whisper.
That was a good question. But Kyle had one of his own. “Can you trust them?”
“Yeah. I told the ambulance team it was a potentially dangerous situation, and made them wait for the fire squad. Heck, it’s even a fire. So I got my nephew in here. He’ll play along, and so will his partner. But any second now those boys are gonna figure out there isn’t a body in there.”
“Sergeant Baumer,” a voice called from the bedroom. “Could you give us a hand?”
Smooth kids. Aware that they might be being recorded, they chose their words with care.
Baumer looked at Kyle expectantly.
“I think the League is trying to kill me.” “Think” wasn’t really the right word, but it didn’t matter. Baumer had never liked the League. He’d made plain his unhappiness over Kyle’s involvement with it. That Kyle couldn’t afford to tell him the truth was another crime for the ledger. “Cover for me, and I’ll slip out behind you.”
Baumer shook his head. “No way. What if they’ve got backup waiting out there? A rifle across the street. Or a car full of gunmen. You need an escort.” He tugged Kyle’s arm and led him into the bedroom.
“Looks like he’s burned bad, boys.” The kids were staring oogly-eyed, but keeping quiet. “Put him on the stretcher and let’s get him to the transporter.”
The short one must be Baumer’s nephew. He had the thick bullfrog look already developing.
“Gotta foam him, Sergeant. Or he won’t survive the trip.” They had the stretcher out by the time the kid finished talking. Kyle lay down on it, and the two young men started spraying him with medical foam.
Wonderful stuff. It came out like shaving cream, but quickly hardened to plastic. Porous enough to breathe through, it was waterproof and antibiotic. Within seconds Kyle was a white, lumpy mummy, covered from head to toe.
“Is it bad?” Baumer was saying. His nephew took the hint.
“Real bad, Sergeant. Hope he was having sweet dreams, ’cause he’s never gonna wake up. A few days in the
