Hammered (37 page)

I stuff my left hand into my pocket just to see what I can pass for, and my fingers brush something my new senses tell me is smooth and round. It rattles, and I know what it is before I pull it out.

A vial of pills.

“Hah.” The plastic shape prickles my senses. I glance at the clock. Gabe and Elspeth won’t be here for another fifteen minutes. I think about laser-clarity. About calmness, and certainty, and the fact that I’m going to have to sit at a table with the two of them and eat and talk like we’re normal human beings.
Richard?

No answer.

I stand there for a long moment, looking from the vial to the mirror and back again. And then I put the pills back in my pocket, hang the blazer back in the closet—carefully, so it will be unwrinkled for work on Wednesday—and dig around in the back of the closet for my scarred and terrible old black leather jacket. With the buckles replacing the worn-out zipper, and the third or fourth lining. I put the holster back on the hanger when it falls off. My sidearm is still in the hotel safe. I can’t carry it here, in Canada.

I shrug stiffly into the elderly jacket and let it hang open over my expensive, breath-soft sweater—a color the queen I was named for might have worn. I rake my fingers through my hair, and it feathers back across my forehead almost like it was meant to. “Well, huh.”

I look—normal. Hell. In fact, except for the tough-girl jacket—

I look like Maman.

There will be time for the pills tomorrow, if I need them. By Wednesday, I expect I will. In the meantime, I pour a glass of bourbon and sit down by the window to wait for my friends.

Razorface set the cat carrier down on the passenger seat of the rusted blue Bradford and swore, still leaning half in and half out of the cab. “Fuck, Boris, I don’t know what the hell else to do. Where to go. You got any ideas, man?”

The cat purred and bumped his scarred orange face against the grille of the carrier, pushing his lip up over the chipped tip of a tooth. That chipped tooth reminded Razor of
Derek, which made him frown, but Derek had things more or less under control in Hartford even if he’d made it pretty plain that Razorface’s presence was no longer required.

There had been a lot of blood already. Razor wasn’t ready to make any more of it, just so he could set himself up as some kind of petty warlord again. Even if some of his boys were still loyal. Derek—
Whiny
, and he chuckled silently at Maker’s name for the boy—was a hell of a lot younger. And this kind of shit was a young man’s game. ‘Cause it turned out that you could do your level best, and there was always a bigger dog one block over, and you hadda be a young dog to take the pounding and come back, and come back, and come back.

Besides, if Derek was taking care of the city, Razor could retire. And start seeing to the serious business of getting to whoever was behind Maker’s sister, and list of deaths too long to scratch on the inside of his arm.

He grabbed his crutch from where it leaned against the door of the Bradford, snarling at the ignominy of it. He’d spent longer than he wanted to spend, grounded in Hartford like a fox and then sneaking across the border. The big gangster, moving with a shuffling limp still, right foot in an inflatable cast, shook his head. “Good idea, cat, but nah. She got released from the hospital last week. She ain’t answered her HCD since she went in. I swear something is blocking her messages, cat.”

Boris flicked scarred ears, and Razorface kept talking. “And the hotel she gave me say she’s gone since last night. Which is good, means she didn’t die in the hospital, but damned if I know where she be.”

The cat blinked pumpkin-colored, silken eyes through the bars and pursed his whiskers forward. Razorface held a finger out and was rewarded with a brush of wet nose. “Fuck. We can’t go back to Hartford, man. Not unless we
goin’ back with an army, and it ain’t worth that shit. Yeah. And here I am losing it, standing on a street corner in Toronto talking to a motherfucking cat.”

He stopped, rolled his shoulders back, and grimaced. “Goddamn it to Hell,” he said, turning to get his left hand on the door handle.

The cat purred louder as Razorface closed the door, walked around the front of the truck, and slid into the driver’s seat, first stowing his crutch behind it. He gave the cat one last glance before he keyed the ignition on. “I really miss my dog. You know about that, Boris?”

Silence answered him. He looked over. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you do. Where you wanna go, kitty cat?”

What about you, Razor?
He rubbed his jaw hard before he glanced in the mirror and pulled away from the curb.
Where you wanna go?

A corporate jet is a more pleasant way to travel than a military transport plane, but I still hate the fact that somebody else is flying this thing. Gabe, Valens, and I are the only passengers … along with my little secret, Richard, riding in the back of my skull. We disembark in Brazil, which has the distinction of being one of several countries I’ve been shot at in. Shot down over, even.

I don’t know how to describe a space elevator to you unless you’ve seen one.

They’re called beanstalks, or sometimes skyhooks. To oversimplify, a magnetically propelled car rides a carbon nanotube cable from planetside to an orbiting platform, which is anchored on the other end to a captured asteroid.
It reminds me of playing “crack the whip” on ice skates with Barbara and Nell. Barb always won; go figure.

The idea is, your beanstalk lowers the cost of lifting things into orbit from the farcical to the merely expensive. The journey from earth to orbit takes almost eighteen hours, no more than four times the duration of the flight that brought us here. I didn’t know that. I looked it up on my hip while we were on the flight from Toronto. There’s still been no answer from Mitch, and I’m getting increasingly worried. Scared for Mitch, for Razorface—whom I also haven’t gotten ahold of—and for Leah and Genie and Elspeth, who are still back in Toronto. Hostage, I know perfectly well, for Gabe’s and my good behavior.

The skyscraper that serves as the
base
of the thing is lost in the clouds.

After an extensive search of ourselves and our baggage, a Unitek hostess greets us at the airlock of the corporation’s capsule, which is basically a glorified elevator car. The Executive Elevator, in this case. I’m stiff and uncomfortable in a dapper new plum-colored pantsuit that looks like Barb picked it out.

The urge to explore before I sit down might be childish, but I do it anyway, wishing I could get a look at the control room. I’ve heard about old railways, private cars. This is like that—inside, there’s a common room, and four separate little private spaces I might call bunk rooms, but they’re a bit Persian-carpeted for that. Which is funny, I think, because we’ll be in free fall soon enough.

Then I notice the hammocks retracted neatly into the walls of those private alcoves, and the restraints on the ostentatiously comfortable leather chairs in the lounge. I skip lunch when it’s offered, picturing the disgrace of barfing all over the knotty walnut paneling. I’ve never been in free fall.

After the hostess gives us our safety instructions and
shows us the galley and the jakes, she retreats to the control room. I realize she’s also the car operator. Valens sits down in the lounge area, straps himself into a couch, and promptly falls asleep, leaving Gabe and me sitting across from one another, staring out the windows in silence while acceleration shoves us back into the couches like a hand against the breastbone.

Some time later, the pressure drops away. They could accelerate us for longer and get us to Clarke that much faster, but it’s annoying to spend the entire trip under multiple g’s, accelerating and then decelerating again. Some time in the middle of the ride, the car will reach maximum acceleration and we’ll have free fall.

Gabe reaches out, curiously, and takes my hand. “May I?”

“Sure.”

He turns it over, laying it palm-up on his thigh. The heat of his body radiates through his trousers, warming the back of my hand, but I cannot feel his fingers lightly encircling my wrist. “This is very different from the other one,” he says, fingertips stroking the hollow of the palm. “It doesn’t feel like metal.”

I’m shivering almost too hard to speak. It isn’t at all like having my right hand stroked: instead, there’s a prickling sort of pressure awareness, fleeting warmth and a tingle that seems to run the length of my spine. I master myself with effort, force the words out evenly. “There’s a polymer ‘skin’ over the steel. Improves my grip and it gives me tactile sensitivity. It’s supposed to be pretty tough, but it will have to be replaced a lot.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Strange. Prickly. Not bad,” I amend, as he moves to release his grip.

He lays his hand on my upper arm. “And nothing there?”

Valens releases a soft, kittenish snore. I glance over at
him. Asleep, hair tousled, he looks
old
, although I know he must only be in his sixties. Gabe follows the line of my gaze and then looks back at me, as if studying my profile.

I’m out of excuses
, I realize.
I’m not necessarily dying any faster than he is. I can’t kid myself anymore that he’s not interested, or that I’d be hurting somebody who loves him, or that I’m so horrible to look at he could never want me. He’s not trying to tie me down or turn me into somebody I’m not. After all this time and pain and grief, he just wants to be as close to me as I’ll let him get.

He kissed me even when I still had those scars. The armor. The mask I could hide behind. Who ever would have thought they meant so much to me? After Chrétien—after Peacock—I think I needed them.

But Chrétien is dead. And Bernard is, too. And he wouldn’t want me to suffer in his memory.

No, Jenny, he wouldn’t.
I know what Peacock would want from me. He’d want me to change the world for him.

“Gabe,” I say, looking out the window instead of at his face, “I’m scared.”

His voice is rich with amusement. “Getting old, Jenny? You talk like a woman who’s never jumped out of an airplane. Would it help if I told you to
stand
in the
door
, Private?”

I turn to catch Gabe’s eye, thinking:
Richard?

No comment, no sense of presence. If he’s paying attention, he’s got enough sense not to let me know that he is.

“You telling me to get a helmet, Captain?”

“I’m telling you to keep your head down and don’t stop thinking.”

Silence like space hangs between us. I’m not sure what I’m going to say until the words come out. “If we’re going to talk while he’s sleeping, we should probably go into the other room.”

He nods, stands silently—ducking under the overhead
—and turns around to give me a hand up. When I stand, he bends down and presses his mouth to the side and then the nape of my neck, right at the hairline, where the healing scars are still pink and tender and the lumpy outline of my nanoprocessors used to sit. I stiffen, pinned between fight-or-flight and melting into the pleasure of a kiss I feel tingling down every limb, all the way down to the pit of my belly, warm and dizzying as liquor.

The hammocks and grab bars, it turns out, come in handy when gravity fails.

Gabe closes and locks the door behind us but remains standing—back toward me, head bowed, his broad hand still resting on the latch. I watch his shoulders rise and fall with the slow rhythm of his breath. My own heart blurs in my chest as I look at him, waiting for him to turn.

This is real. This is now.

He stands as if paralyzed, and at last I come back to him, sliding my right arm around his waist. He’s warm and solid, present as an oak tree as he sighs and leans into me. “Gabe.” All the words I can find are stupid words, pointless ones. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

He turns in my embrace and raises his right hand, palming the side of my face where the scars used to be. It feels … yes. The skin there is tender, unaccustomed to touch. It’s as sensual and foreign as if he ran that hand along my thigh. “I thought I’d made my intentions plain, mon amie.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything before?” I bend into the caress. I can’t help myself.

“I …” and he takes a slow, thoughtful breath. “First there was the problem of ranks. And then I figured that if you hadn’t said anything, it was because you didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship.”

“And then there was Geniveve.”

“And then there was Geniveve.” He shifts forward, not closing his eyes, so I don’t close mine. He smells of aftershave, of wintergreen. His thumb strokes the angle of my cheekbone and he holds my gaze with his own as his lips brush mine.
This is really …

feedback: slow susurrus of his heart, blood moving under my fingertips when my right hand drifts up his spine, the nap of his shirt rough and then the blond curls, softer than I would have imagined.

… happening.

soft as his mouth on mine, and I savor the look of concentration on his face as his mouth opens, teasing, flicker of a wet rough tongue and the quick, sharp nip of teeth

“Ah. That feels …”

“Je t’aime.”

with the little indrawn breath, his hand is suddenly knotted in my hair, pulling enough to hurt, lips still gentle, teasing until I close my own hand hard and yank his mouth down

“Oui.
Oui.
Gabe …”

“Ne parle pas.”

his lips moving on my lips, his left hand coming up now, my suit crumpled against his chest, right hand bending my head back, mouth against the tendons of my neck

“Gabriel. I—”

“I said. Don’t talk.”

silence and a little whine at the back of my throat, whimper of pleasure made the sharper by a touch of pain, my left hand splayed against his chest as my body starts to shiver, my breath comes deeper, hips rock against his as of their own accord