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  “You said external stimulus didn’t used to help. What changed?”

  He froze in mid-step as a strong flash of intuition provided the answer. He turned to look at her.

  “You.”

  He sensed she was shocked, though she hid it well.

  He settled back into his chair, facing her. “Twice now, you disrupted the visions, helped me keep my talent iced. Believe me, the mind-shop therapists and my coworkers tried everything they could think of before, and nothing worked. I tried everything.” Including focusing on a co-worker when his talent ran amuck. It had never worked before meeting Mairwen, with her preternatural calm. “If you hadn’t been there to bring me back, I’d still be in that apartment, and catatonic by now.”

  “How am I different?” she asked. Was she alarmed? Skeptical? Her body and face were too still to read.

  His intuition twitched. “Maybe it’s because you have exceptional control.”

  A succession of emotions flitted across her face, too fast for him to sort out, before her expression went flat. “I can’t be what you need.”

  He hadn’t realized until she said that how much he’d been hoping for her to accept him and want to stay.

  It was unrealistic to expect someone he’d only known for a week, admittedly an intense week, to... He didn’t even know what he wanted, except she intrigued him. Teased him. Attracted him. Offered salvation.

  Despair weighed on him, and his head felt too heavy to hold it up.

  “Foxe,” she said, compelling him to look up at her. She was leaning toward him, a soft, serious expression on her face. “You can’t become dependent on me to control your talent. It’s not safe.” She touched her fingertips to his knee. “I won’t always be with you.”

  She wasn’t leaving. Relief flooded him, and suddenly he was touch-starved for her. He took her hand and wrapped it in both of his. It took all he had not to pull her closer, but he didn’t know how long she’d let him live after that. He consoled himself by memorizing the shape and grace of her hand as he held it. Her fingers were slender with short, unpolished nails.

  He wanted to keep her there, but knew he couldn’t. “I didn’t look at the schedule. Will I see you tomorrow?” He twitched a smile at her. “No more spaceport trips, I promise.”

  She frowned and gently pulled her hand free.

  “There’s something you should know.” Her tone said she wasn’t sure how he would react. “It’s about your case.”

  She briefly rubbed her upper chest, as if it pained her.

  “My case?” He was reeling, which happened a lot around her.

  “In the spaceport, the lead mercenary who talked with Green. His orders concerned you, and he was expecting payment from Loyduk Pharma.”

  He searched her expression, but she was back to her usual sphynxlike self. “When did... oh. Your errand.” What she said certainly fit with his theory that whole deal had been twisted, and confirmed that Loyduk was a linchpin. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where you got your information?”

  She shook her head. It irritated him that she hadn’t trusted him, but he couldn’t fault her for keeping secrets. He had plenty of those, though one less after tonight.

  He might have pressed her, but a wave of exhaustion rolled through him, and another shiver.

  “I’m wrecked,” he said ruefully. He rolled his shoulders to ease the soreness of his neck muscles. He felt like he’d been run over by a cross-town metro.

  “It’s after midnight. We can talk tomorrow,” she told him. “Go to bed, Foxe.”

  He took her words to mean she was on shift.

  “Call me Luka.” At her raised eyebrow, he amended, “In private, at least.”

  She sighed. “Fine. Go to bed, Luka.” Her demeanor reminded him of caregivers everywhere.

  Luka nodded and forced himself to his feet, then remembered something. “Ah, helvítis, I have to check in with Zheer to let her know we’re free. She’s still got the lawyer on standby.”

  Mairwen was already neatly putting her chair back. “I already did, in the vehicle, as soon as we left the station. She was still at the office.” She gave him a real smile. It was small, but it was the first he’d ever seen from her. “What language do you keep swearing in? It’s not Russian or Swedish.”

  “Icelandic. My mother’s family. Sorry. I still think in it sometimes when I'm tired or stressed.” He would have asked what other languages she knew, but a yawn overtook him.

  “Go.” She pointed toward his bedroom.

  He smiled again, more grateful than he could say that she was there. He trudged toward the hallway as she retrieved her overcoat from the hook near the front door. Just as he got there, she said, “Thank you.”

  He turned and looked at her, confused. “For what?”

  “Your trust.” Her expression was soft as she finished buttoning her coat, dimmed the lights, and walked out the front door, pulling it quietly closed.

  Her simple words threatened to break him. He warned himself that he knew precious little about her. He didn’t know if she was in a relationship, or why she’d buried herself in a dead-end job on the night shift, or how many knives she wore to bed. She was far too comfortable with death, and probably had enough secrets to drag a ship down from orbit.

  But if he was honest, he knew he wouldn’t remember a single one of those objections if he got the chance to kiss her.

  On that dreadfully cheerful note, he left his clothes in a heap and collapsed into bed.

  CHAPTER 7

  * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.034 *

  Hildree Fannar had to admit that, if she was going to be personally supervising jobs in the field, the penthouse of the best hotel in Rekoria’s first city of Etonver was a comfortable base of operations. Rekoria was old enough to be a well-established and civilized world, but not so old it had become insular and hidebound like most of the First Thirty. Etonver was large and sprawling with a rich and varied culture.

  She sipped an exquisitely brewed cup of real coffee as she looked out over the skyline that rose out of the morning fog like an impressionist painting. She was naked and knew she looked good that way. She was a regular customer of an exclusive body shop on Mabingion. The room service cart still had some delightful treats she could share with her sleepy bed partners, a talented male and female exciter pair she’d selected from the hotel’s companionship menu. Their minder ability to stimulate her and each other with a mere touch was phenomenal.

  The full-service penthouse and the companions were some of the bribes she had let Loyduk Pharma use to entice her back on the project, after Harado’s spectacular incompetence had nearly blown everything sky high.

  In her carefully worded termination notice, she’d reported Harado’s interference and blunders in exact, high-res detail, making sure that he took ownership for every one of them. Even if he’d been the insatiable sex toy of the entire executive suite, her report ensured they couldn’t have justified his continued involvement to their board and stockholders. Especially when his incompetence had come perilously close to connecting Loyduk Pharma to multiple murders.

  While Hildree had been in transit to Rekoria, Harado had intercepted information from her source at La Plata, uncovering an address for what he was sure was the missing researcher. The frecking halfwit then sent the theft crew, not a professional wetwork crew, to end the woman. The same theft crew he’d used before, who knew the Loyduk Pharma name. The same crew that had made a mess of the kills in the warehouse and were already being hunted by the police. And if that wasn’t bad enough, because Harado couldn’t be bothered with details while fantasizing about his soon-to-be crowning success, the crew had killed the woman in such a sensationally grisly way that the details were still topping the news trendlines, and it was the wrong frecking woman. Frecking freaks and amateurs.

  The miserly pharma company had come to heel nicely by offering her double her already high fee, sidelining Harado, and giving her a generous budget and
free rein to take care of business quietly and professionally. Not that she wouldn’t be earning her fee and benefits. Harado’s actions had left a jumble of burned sources and dead ends. Her instincts told her that competitor pharma companies were sniffing around for unprotected Loyduk assets. She was still buying her way into police investigation records, and she was days behind in knowing what La Plata was doing. The Etonver police were as underfunded and overworked as everywhere else, so she wasn’t worried about them, but La Plata continued to be a problem.

  However, from problems arose opportunities. The only good thing about Harado’s ineptitude was that it lulled La Plata into thinking they were in control of their investigation. La Plata was likely a lot closer to finding the missing researcher than she now was, so if she played her cards right, they’d lead her to the target. Since her La Plata conduit had dried up, she was arranging for a civilized, painless conversation with a key player as to their progress and plans.

  A soft gasp and a sensuous moan told her that her bed companions were waking and re-engaging in pleasures from last night. Hildree had only a couple more pings to take care of before she could rejoin them.

  CHAPTER 8

  * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.035 *

  Shizukesa Yorokobi, an upscale Japanese-themed joyhouse, prided itself on multi-talented and versatile employees, satisfied customers, and fulfilling special requests and custom orders. For an extra fee, they promised anonymity within their walls and had an impressive track record in keeping that promise. It made for an ideal location to hold a discreet business meeting with a woman by the name of Dr. Tansa Onndrae, who until six standard weeks ago, had been a research chemist for Loyduk Pharma on Gasprélodid Prime.

  The day before, Foxe—Mairwen couldn’t let herself think of him as “Luka” while she was on duty—had made good use of her information about Loyduk and had combed through Balkovsky’s hidden files to come up with what they needed to find the real informant. Although it had officially been Mairwen’s day off, she’d gone to the office anyway to qualify with a standard-issue handgun and a beamer on the company’s weapons range, as required by the contract for her new position. She’d been careful to end up with unremarkable scores.

  She hadn’t been able to stop herself from slipping by the third floor to check on Foxe, then ghosting away before anyone saw her. Seeing that he was all right had relaxed a tension she hadn’t known she’d been feeling. She ran twice the usual distance that afternoon to try to neutralize the almost magnetic pull he had on her. It had been instantly negated when he’d pinged her later that evening to tell her he’d initiated contact with Onndrae and wanted her to go with him to the meeting. All it had taken was the sound of his voice and the low-res holo for her memory to fill in the rest—his scent, his warmth, the feel of his face against her palm, his thumb stroking her hand.

  He was thinking she could somehow help him control his talent, and she couldn’t even control her need to touch him and want more. The universe apparently loved irony.

  Mairwen stood now in the tastefully decorated joyhouse client room, playing the role of the recording equipment operator for the meeting. The resulting holo wouldn’t be admissible in court, but it would point any criminal investigation in the right direction. Onndrae was a tiny, almost painfully thin woman with long, deep black hair and light olive skin. She could have passed for thirty or been mistaken for sixty, though the bio La Plata had put together pegged her at thirty-six. Her voice was thin and reedy, and she was nervous.

  According to Foxe, it had taken a lot of persuasion, precautions, and assurances to get her to meet in person. Mairwen couldn’t blame her. Onndrae had known the woman who’d been tortured and killed in the apartment. Mairwen still wasn’t clear why Onndrae hadn’t already fled off-planet, but that was part of what Foxe planned to ask her.

  Mairwen had positioned herself so that she was mostly out of Onndrae’s sight, but easily visible by Foxe, in case his talent ran wild. She assumed that was the real reason he’d wanted her there. She was becoming accustomed to her constant low-level awareness of him, which she’d given up trying to suppress or pretend wasn’t there. She settled into a neutral stance and expression, which she hoped would help Onndrae forget about her.

  The joyhouse’s soundproofing was good, though she could still hear well enough to keep from worrying. The scents were sharp and plentiful, and it took her a while to identify and categorize them. She’d been in joyhouses before, but only as a hunter after a target, never as a client. With no interest in sex, it would have been a waste of time.

  Even now, her interest stirred only for one man. He was attractive and personable, so he doubtless had a lot more ordinary experiences in joyhouses. Would he want that level of skill in a bed partner? She had none to offer, and her sexual experiences during her tracker days had been less than pleasant. She had never regretted her lack of normality until now.

  Pondering her personal inadequacies was not productive. She made herself pay attention as Foxe patiently drew Onndrae into talking.

  “Vadra died… horribly because of me.” Her voice was shaky. “I knew her in school. I dragged her into it.” Her English was softened by a Spanish accent.

  “You couldn’t have known.” Foxe’s voice was quiet and warm. It was a marked contrast to how he’d sounded when he’d talked to the imposter informant in the spaceport.

  “I should have.” Onndrae was close to tears. “All Loyduk Pharma cares about is profit, and their vaccine is killing people. What’s one more life to them?”

  Foxe handed her a tissue, then asked her to explain how the vaccine was produced.

  “We all thought NVP 70 was just another novel virus-phage that someone could create a quick vaccine for and it’d be over before it started.”

  Mairwen guessed Onndrae’s “we” meant the pharma industry as a whole. Loyduk didn’t have other vaccines in their catalog.

  “No one anticipated the pathogen would be so easily transmitted, or have such a long incubation period that it was spreading before quarantines could contain it. We’d already agreed to produce and distribute the drug that Thang Panjutamai Research was working on, as usual. But once NVP 70 went pandemic, it had higher than usual casualties. Now we were racing against every pharma in the Concordance to be the first to market and skim the profits.”

  Foxe had been smart to get Onndrae to give them a recitation of the facts, because it seemed to help her settle into her personal story.

  “I work… worked in the lab that produced the vaccine. Like they always do, the research company provided us early prototypes, and we did test runs to work out any issues that might be encountered with mass production. Higher than normal quantities would be needed in this case, since NVP 70 had already hit twenty or thirty systems, and projections said it was spreading fast. Management was anticipating windfall profits. We all thought we’d get bonuses.”

  She started to take a sip of coffee, but her cup was empty. Foxe poured more for her from the carafe.

  “We were working killer overtime. Every day brought news that the pandemic had arrived somewhere new. One of my co-workers lost both her great-grandparents when it hit her home city. The latest prototype from Thang Panjutamai was stable, and the preliminary production run looked smooth as ice. They told us the final trials were only one month from completion and to get ready for a full production run. They made it sound like the trials were a mere formality.”

  “That was the usual practice, wasn’t it?”

  Onndrae nodded. “Then the pandemic hit Shinnowar. That’s where my whole family lives. I’m the only one who ever left. Local girl makes good.” Her last sentence was laced with irony.

  Foxe’s expression sharpened and Mairwen recognized the signs that his intuition was sparking. “You helped Loyduk release the vaccine early.”

  Onndrae nodded, her voice barely a whisper. “I panicked.”

  “What did you do?” Foxe’s tone was soft, inviting.

  Her finge
rs tightened on her cup. “I had access because of my position, and I knew how everything worked. I changed the records to show the prototype had been approved as is, and to start the production run. It’s an automated process, and Loyduk doesn’t encourage employee initiative, so no one questioned the production orders. Everyone did their jobs, and the vaccine started shipping.”

  Foxe was looking distracted, and he glanced at Mairwen more often. She realized his talent was now flaring. If Onndrae had been more observant, she might have registered the changes, but she was too wrapped up in her own troubles.

  “At first, I thought I’d done the right thing, because the vaccine was slowing and stopping the pandemic. I made sure it got to Shinnowar in the first shipments. Then we started hearing rumors of side effects. Bad ones. Fatal ones.”

  “What were they?” asked Foxe.

  “I never found out. By then, Loyduk was in full-blown siege mentality. They were thinking it was a communication mixup with Thang Panjutamai, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they’d discover what I’d done. I used the pandemic as an excuse to take emergency time off. Once I got to Shinnowar, I kept expecting to see formal recall announcements, but all I saw were stories about vaccine thefts. I was sure Loyduk was behind them.”

  “Why do you say that?” Foxe’s expression was encouraging.

  Mairwen was impressed that he was able to maintain his empathetic interaction with Onndrae while his talent was operating, and seemed to have it under control. Of course, it probably helped that Onndrae wasn’t dead and bleeding on the floor.

  “I don’t have any proof. I worked for them for fifteen years. I just… know their mindset. Saving money was always more important to them than people’s lives.”

  “So you read about the thefts. What did you do then?”

  “If those bastards were willing let people die from taking a bad vaccine, I knew my life wouldn’t mean much to them, either. I didn’t want my family in danger, so I contacted Vadra. I hadn’t talked to her in years. I figured it’d be hard to guess I’d go to Etonver to see her. I told her I was coming to town for a job interview, and asked if I could stay with her for a few days.”