His nostrils flared. “So, you just happened to be there? Out for a midnight drive.”

“Yeah, insomnia is a horrible thing.” I shook my head. “Look, there is no way you can prove I was there for any reason other than circumstance. You investigate, you find out I had lunch in the area, supper, too, but nothing sinister. I was definitely at the wrong place at the wrong time—’cept I was able to help you out. I don’t regret that at all.”

His hands tightened on the edge of the treatment table. “So, you’re telling me that the ends should justify your means?”

“Nope, just that actions speak louder than words.”

Niemeyer snorted. “I’d rather believe you hit the accelerator by accident.”

“And I’d rather believe this is all a bad dream, but we both know it isn’t.” I shrugged. “You can haul me down to headquarters, or break into my hotel room, and grill me. You’ll get nothing.”

His brows furrowed. “You truly think that second barrage was not an accident?”

“I think of it as a weather forecast: seventy-five-percent chance of treachery, with mixed stupidity. We both know how it will be spun, and how it is being spun now. By noon you’ll have him here, visiting survivors, talking to the media, building up a frenzy of activity. We both know it. You’ll be lauded as a hero, as will he, and circumstance will toss you together. He’ll be legit and your hands will be tied.”

“Not as much as you think.”

“But more than you’d like.” I almost added, “And more than I’d like,” but I held back. Sam never would have said that.

“There’s a lot of things I don’t like, but I have to abide them.” The big man shrugged, then exhaled loudly and seemed to shrink a little. He turned his head slightly and regarded me carefully. “You are a material witness. I’ll want you to give a statement on what you saw.”

“Sure, I’ll head down there later today. After the crowds have cleared from the media conferences.”

He nodded wearily, then slid off the examining table and stood. “I’ve got people to check, reports to make.”

“I have a question for you. You’ll have to trust me with the answer.”

His head came back up as wariness tightened his eyes. “And the question is?”

“Insider or anonymous tip?”

“Just like before.”

Just like when I had tipped them about the Palace raid. This brought a new player into the mix, someone who wanted Ff W to fail. It had to be someone inside the organization, but who? Catford, Gypsy and Elle all had to be candidates. Tactical commanders would have been, too, but they wouldn’t have called Public Safety in on themselves. I included Siwek just for the fun of it.

Niemeyer watched me, then nodded. “You going to cause trouble?”

“Probably, but not for you.”

“Why? Why not just leave?”

“Did you have someone following me last night?”

“No, but I know where you were. At one of the Basalt Foundations kitchens. You helped out.”

“So maybe I’ll be helping out. It’s a nice world you have here.” I gave him a Sam-nonchalant shrug. “I would like to see it remain that way.”

Niemeyer hesitated for a moment, then nodded, but said nothing. He shuffled from the trauma room.

An intern slapped a light anesthetic patch on my legs, then gave me a pair of scrub pants since mine had been cut clean off me. I retained the rags in a plastic bag because they held my identification, squawker, noteputer and some money. Wandering out of the hospital, I took one look at the smoking wreck of the Cabochon and hailed a hovercab. A Drac brought his cab over and picked me up.

The trip back to the Grand Germayne did not take that long, but I managed to use my noteputer to do a bit of work before we arrived. True to my word, I was going to stir up some trouble, and I wanted to have a safety net in place to make sure I could clean up after myself.

About a block and a half from the hotel, an unmarked Public Safety unit hit its lights and siren and the taxi pulled over. I gave a moment’s consideration to bolting from the taxi and running, but my legs just weren’t going to go along with that plan. Two plainclothes officers—the two on Bernard’s payroll—approached with needle pistols drawn and ordered me out of the vehicle. While one of them conducted me back to their hovercar, the other told the taxi driver to get going and that unless he wanted to be associated with “all the other Drac terrorists,” he’d just forget the fare.

I snarled back over my shoulder, “Don’t be cheap. You’re bought and paid for. He works for a living. Pay hi…”

The man behind me brought the butt of his gun down on the back of my neck, dropping me to my knees. A shove to the back bounced my face off the vehicle’s door, and I slumped to the pavement. My nose hadn’t broken, but it was leaking. I could feel the detective winding up for a kick that would drive a kidney up through my throat, but the rear door on the unit opened and two big boots hit the pavement.

“No need for that, Oates. Mr. Donelly is our guest.”

I rolled onto my back and looked up at Teyte Germayne. While his voice had been pleasant, his expression was anything but. “Make sure he tips the driver. I’m a big tipper.”

Teyte leaned down and smiled coldly. “No, Donelly, you’re not a big anything. You’re nothing, should have remembered you were nothing, and should not have tried to defy Bernard. If you’re lucky, it’s a lesson you’ll learn from. If not,” the man shrugged, “hope that reincarnation is true.”

36

Manville, Capital District

Basalt

Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

25 February 3133

Teyte’s exposing himself in public as my captor would really seem, on the surface, to be one of those stupid things done by Tri-Vid villains. They capture the hero, place him in a death trap and, before he dies, they tell him everything he needs to know to thwart them when he escapes, as he always does. How much better evil would function if the boss or his chief minion just put a gun to the hero’s head and stroked the trigger.

Not only do dead men tell no tales, they really don’t often thwart plans.

Teyte clearly saw it all differently. First, from his point of view, he was the hero and I was just a pawn being removed from play. As things developed over the next several days, there never was any question of Teyte’s killing me; the questions were when to do it and who would have the privilege. Bernard, I gathered, really wanted to do the job himself but events, as they unfolded, kept him far too busy.

Teyte’s presence on the scene was only a minor risk, since he was in the company of legitimate Public Safety officers. While he had no official standing with the department, it mattered not at all. He was a Germayne, and that was really all that counted. While most citizens would have disagreed with the idea that the Germayne cousins could do anything they wanted and get away with it, the Germaynes themselves swam counter to the conventional wisdom. In short, no one had told them they had to abide by the law. While their transgressions in the past might have been forgiven as minor and “youthful indiscretions,” treason and the stakes being played for here elevated and intensified things.

My captors allowed me to sit in the hovercar’s backseat instead of the trunk this time, though Teyte moved to the front so I’d not bleed on him. En route to the little apartment where they decided to stash me they stopped only once, to smash both my squawker and noteputer and dump them into garbage bins. Destroying those devices was a tactical error, since they could have learned a few things from them, but they wanted to get rid of evidence. They did keep my identification, which, I assumed, they would leave with my body at some point.