Elite: A Hunter novel (32 page)

I got up and walked out, calling a pod from my Perscom before I’d gotten as far as the shop door. I didn’t look back. And I could tell you that I’d done it that way so if anyone was watching, he’d look appropriately devastated, or I would, or both of us would. But the real reason was because—since there was going to be breaking up, I wanted to be the one to do it. I didn’t want to be the one sitting there and trying to figure out ways to make it work after all, even though I knew all my frantic planning was utterly futile. I wanted to be the one walking out, not the one left behind.

Maybe I
am
mean. And maybe I’m a coward. I don’t know. I just knew I didn’t want to prolong the pain, pretending that there was some way to salvage this when we both knew there wasn’t.

YOU KNOW HOW WHEN the universe decides to crap on you, it never just craps on
one
thing?

I didn’t even get as far as the sidewalk before I got a call from Uncle’s office. I stopped just outside the outer door and took it.

Maybe it was just a secretary with a message. Did Uncle work this late?

The face on my Perscom was Uncle, but—

The background was the prefect’s seal. Every button was fastened. “Hunter Elite Joyeaux, I know it’s late, but I require your presence here in my office. There are some matters we need to clear up.” He couldn’t have been more formal and official if he’d been making a public announcement.

Uh-oh.

“On my way, sir,” I replied just as formally, and got in the pod and gave it my destination. He’d already closed the connection a nanosecond after I said “sir,” so I put a quick call in to Kent.

“Senior Elite Armorer,” I said as soon as he answered it, signaling him this was serious business. “I’ve been ordered to report to the prefect’s office. I don’t know how long this will take.”

He looked startled. So that meant
he
hadn’t been alerted to this, which meant I wasn’t being called on the carpet for anything on the record.
So what am I being called in for that would make Uncle go official?
“There’s nothing on your schedule from this end, Elite Joyeaux. I’ll make a note of it. Check in as soon as you go officially back on duty.” It was a given that Elite were
always
on duty, so unless I was going to be arrested for something, I could get called right out of this meeting. And if we
were
in a “surge”…well, the last attack had happened at oh-dark-thirty, right?

“Will do, sir,” I replied, and shut the connection down. The lighted buildings of Apex glided soundlessly past my window, and I pushed all my brokenhearted feelings down in a box in my head, slammed the lid down, and sat on it. Metaphorically speaking. I could sort through them later and maybe come to some kind of terms with them. Maybe. When the pod dropped me off at Uncle’s building, at least I wasn’t ready to burst into tears right that second.

Rather than talking, though, because I wasn’t sure I could yet, I presented my Perscom to the guards, who checked theirs and waved me through. There was one elevator in the lobby with the door standing invitingly—or threateningly—open. I took it, the scanner read my Perscom, and up I went.

A secretary/receptionist was on duty at the front desk; a new one, so I guess Uncle
did
work late enough to require more than one secretary. “Please go in, Hunter,” she said as soon as I opened the office door. “They’re waiting for you.”

They?
I just knew this couldn’t be good.

It wasn’t.

When I walked in the door, the very first thing I saw, even before Uncle Charmand, was the rigid back of someone in a Psimon uniform. A very, very, very high-ranking Psimon, judging from the epaulets and the shoulder jewelry. She had swept-back white-blond hair, and that was all I could see of her. She was standing, facing Uncle, who was sitting behind his desk.

I stopped in the middle of the room and saluted. “Elite Hunter Joyeaux Charmand reporting as ordered, sir,” I said, staying in the salute.

The Psimon whirled, and I caught a momentary look of shock and surprise on her face. Well, of course, she wasn’t used to people “sneaking up on her”; she hadn’t sensed me arriving, since Hunters walk very softly, and I had my Psi-shield on. The look of utter hatred she had on her face before her expression smoothed out into a cold mask felt like a slap. I don’t often take an instant dislike to anyone, but this Psimon had a face like a ferret, and she carried herself as if she was trying to project with body language just how superior to everything and everyone around her she considered herself to be.

“You—” she said. “You’re the one that allegedly found four PsiCorps members dead.”

Allegedly? That’s an odd choice of words. I certainly found them. Unless she thinks I did something more than just find them…

Since that wasn’t a question, I didn’t say anything. In fact, I made up my mind that anything she got out of me, she’d have to pull out. I wasn’t going to volunteer a word.

She waited for me to say something. I let my salute down, but I continued to say nothing.

It was Uncle who broke the silence. “This is Senior Psimon Abigail Drift, Hunter Charmand. The chief officer and head of PsiCorps.”

Oh, great.
I was pretty sure I knew exactly what she wanted. One Psimon dead was awkward. Two dead, and it was going to get hard to keep the word about it secret. Three dead, and the secret had certainly gotten out. Four, and you needed someone to blame. A scapegoat, someone to accuse of murdering Psimons. I had “history” with Ace Sturgis. She could concoct some wild story about me wanting revenge on PsiCorps because they’d let him escape. I’d do, for someone to point a finger at anyway.

“She’s here to ask you some questions,” Uncle continued.

No, she’s here to conduct an inquisition.

The Psimon prowled around me with her hands behind her back, while I stayed where I was and attempted to be as stone-faced as she was. She didn’t order me to remove my Psi-shield, which probably meant—what?

She knows Uncle is recording all this.
That was a possible explanation for why she didn’t demand the shield come off, but I sensed it was a partial one.
She knows that if she demands I take off the shield, it will be on record she did so, and then anything I say would be invalid because she could make me say
whatever she wanted. That was the most likely. There were plenty of people who didn’t trust Psimons and PsiCorps because no one really likes the idea of mind-readers. Compared to Hunters, they were distinctly unglamorous, and there was a substantial percentage of the population who suspected they went waltzing through any unprotected Cit’s head whenever they pleased, laws or no laws.

“Just how is it that
you
came to be on the scene every time one of my Psimons turns up dead?” she snapped at me, trying to catch me by surprise.

“I am the only Hunter, Elite or otherwise, patrolling that part of the storm-sewer system, ma’am,” I said with stiff politeness. “I am the only one who
could
have found them. If I had not, they’d simply have lain there until the next storm washed them into the reservoir.”

Chew on that for a while.

“That was at my request,” Uncle put in, as if it was an afterthought. “There had been attacks on maintenance crews that the conventional police squads could no longer handle without arms that would do considerable damage to the sewers themselves. Since Elite Joyeaux has a pack of eleven, I deemed it possible for her to patrol solo there. She is also my relative, and I knew I could absolutely count on her being discrete and not spreading rumors about what she found there.”

“Yes, yes, we know all about your
special
niece,” Drift replied. Her expression didn’t vary, nor did her tone, but the hatred behind her eyes drove every other thought out of my mind but this: she wanted blood. And mine would do. She spat another question at me. “Did you kill them?”

That was so unexpected, I was shocked, almost into a panic. I hadn’t expected an actual accusation; I’d been prepared for an elaborate dance of innuendo but not this. “No, ma’am,” I said, and stopped myself quickly before I said anything more. The first rule of being interrogated is to never volunteer anything. The second is, never elaborate a simple answer.

“According to the readings we got from the recordings made at the time of the discoveries,” Uncle said as if he were speaking to a child, “the other Psimons all died six to twelve hours before they were found. I’m sure if you were to check the
many, many
records available, you will discover that Elite Joyeaux was elsewhere during those times, often with multiple witnesses.”

Of course I was. I should have thought of that.

“There are ways of falsifying those records,” the Psimon snapped.

“Really? There are?” Uncle replied, in tones of deep interest. “I would be fascinated to hear about them. I would also be fascinated to know how you came to hear about them. Security holes
are
my department, after all. Are you withholding information from my office? That’s a very serious breach of protocol, if not the law itself.”

The Psimon just stared a hole in him, or tried, anyway.

“We could also come to the question of motive, although as any good detective will tell you, you need to find the
means
first, then the opportunity, all bolstered by evidence, and then you will have the motive without needing to look for it. You don’t immediately go about accusing every random person who has motive to kill someone.” He chuckled. “If you did that, you’d be arresting a great many innocent people. Still! Where’s the Hunter’s motive? She didn’t know these Psimons. She has no grudge against PsiCorps. She certainly isn’t inclined to slip away from Hunter HQ and slaughter random strangers for fun. If she wants to kill something, there are plenty of Othersiders out there.” He spread his hands wide. “Drift, you’re grasping at straws. If you are really looking for a murderer, and not something else, you’d be better off to hand over the bodies and what evidence you collected to me and let my detectives do the job they’re paid to do. So far the only cause of death we were able to determine before you confiscated everything was that your Psimons died of simple old age and multiple system failures.”

The Psimon’s attention was completely off me now. If I had wanted to know who might be playing deadly political games with my uncle, well…I had one answer now, anyway. The only question in my mind was this: Just how far was Psimon Abigail Drift willing to take this game?

“She might have no motive,” Drift growled. “But
you
certainly do!”

I half expected a spirited rebuttal. But Uncle just snorted with contempt. “Drift, first of all, if you know of a way to murder someone with old age, it will come as news to me. Secondly, if I wanted to undermine PsiCorps, there are a great many things I
might
do, but randomly murdering Psimons is not one of them. I’m the last person you need to worry about in this case. If you want to know who’s behind this, look to your
own
ranks. Your position in PsiCorps is just as vulnerable to ruthless ladder-climbers as any other CO’s is.”

Uncle was outwardly calm, but I could read him. He was
too deliberately
relaxed. He’d lived on the Mountain; he must have learned relaxation techniques so his body language didn’t give him away. I knew at that moment he was balancing on the edge of a sword, and if Drift called his bluff…

The Psimon glared at Uncle, then abruptly turned on her heel and left. But not before shooting
me
one last, venomous look. She bought it. At least for now.

When the door had shut behind him, Uncle motioned me to a chair. I took it, because my knees felt shaky. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Do I look that bad?” I replied.

He shook his head and shut down the electronics in his desk, then sat down himself. And he let down
his
mask. He looked very shaken. So…like I thought, at least half of what he’d said was bluff. “You look very unhappy, Joy.” He grimaced. “Josh called me and told me you’d broken up, so I would be warned that PsiCorps might make an immediate move. It seems he was right. That must be what just precipitated this little visit. The timing is too exact to be a coincidence.”

“It is?” I said. I was too tired and stressed to be clever.

“Drift will use anything and anyone she can get leverage on.” Uncle shrugged. “I take chances having Josh here in the office, and I trust him—to a point, but not beyond that. I need him, or to be more exact, I do need a Psimon—and better the devil you know. Your breakup was in public. And Josh’s call to me was probably monitored. Any chance they could pressure him to get inside your head was gone, so Drift gambled she could rattle one or both of us.” He changed the subject quickly. “I have the feeling Drift is not going to release any more than I already have, and certainly not the IDs of the previous victims before I put you down in the sewers.”

“Wait, you had remains of other victims?” I replied. “How many other dead Psimons have there been before this?”