Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(15)
There was a slight pause before Zeke replied, this time through her in-ear com rather than mech-Daniel’s mouth. “No need, kiddo. I’m monitoring all my feeds right now. I’ll tell you if anything important scrolls by.”
Okay. Fine. “Who’s taking responsibility for the hit?”
“Uh, nobody yet.”
“That’s so weird,” she said, pressing knuckles of one hand into her eye socket, as if she could push the headache away. “If the building looks this busted-up inside, it must be a wreck on the outside. Even if no one interesting was staying here, those images would fetch solid prices on the disaster-porn market. Bonus if the gossips can confirm the presence of a squashed and bloody senator corpse in here.”
Satellites and infra-capable drones would be gathering footage already. She half expected a ping from Rafa or his ilk, to confirm her safety. Or otherwise.
But…nothing.
Did that mean the killer wasn’t done yet? Her head throbbed. Her shoulder felt like somebody had wedged a broken tree branch into the joint and then lit it on fire.
“You don’t need to be giving interviews right now anyway,” said Zeke. “Just sit tight, and we’ll get you out of there.”
Yeah, but he wasn’t the one under threat. In her mind’s eye, she imagined somebody out there, watching drone footage, maybe catching bits of this very conversation on a hacked com relay. Figuring out she was alive. Coming back to finish the job.
Who, though?
Get it together. Think. She would have shaken her head, dislodged her thoughts, but those elves were still going with their heavy machinery behind her eyeballs. There wasn’t a part of her body that didn’t hurt.
Zeke had taught her to be watchful, careful. Paranoid. He’d taught her to use the maximum number of words to say absolutely nothing, to do everything she swore she wouldn’t, and to clean up the truth afterward. He of all people ought to understand she couldn’t just sit here. Just like he’d understand why she couldn’t tell him her plans for getting out.
Angela assured her mentor she’d stay put and wait for his medevac. Then she cut the transmission, blocked it. And broke her promise.
“Dan-Dan,” she said, using the pet name to log on to their private channel, no intrusions. A whole different user interface, keyed to accept only her verbal instructions, shoved its way into the mech-clone’s neural. This was her back door.
“Yes?” he said, still calmly holding up the ceiling.
“Can you get me out of here?”
He paused, probably scanning the structure or pulling feeds from the media drones she was certain hovered just outside the wreckage. After a moment, he said, “Yes.”
“Before the president’s evac team arrives?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. That’s our plan.”
“As you wish.”
Mech-Daniel could do this next part for her—he was capable of following multiple instruction threads at once—but there were still some tasks that Angela preferred to do for herself. Using the mobile com built into her forearm and the heads-up on the backs of her eyelids, she located a transit station three city blocks away and bought two landjet tickets under one of her many aliases.
She’d need to get cleaned up, have mech-Daniel pop her shoulder back into place, and repair the damage to his cheek, though the scratch was slight enough that a squeeze of wound gel should work. There was an all-night pharma inside the transit station, and she reserved a refrescando closet for two.
Finally, she sifted back through her communications over the last week and found the one for Heron Farad, the rendezvous server she’d used to set up the holoconference the night Daniel had died. When her message came in like this, not secret or flirty or Wordsworth-themed—or filtered through mech-Daniel—he would know it was serious. She was calling in her favor.
I request immediate haven, she messaged, and set it up to repeat. Transmit coordinates to physical rendezvous.
Hours later, Angela and mech-Daniel were flying over northern Sonora when two pieces of data came in. The first was a matériel database alert, bounced off a civilian space station of all things, informing her that Heron Farad had appropriated a piece of UNAN military equipment in Texas.
The second, in super cryptic style, was a text telling her to deplane in Kingman. A car will meet you at transit, it said. Behold the fire.
Chapter 3
The fire she was supposed to behold, apparently, wasn’t a literal thing.
Angela figured out what it meant as soon as she saw the only car—an actual human-operated old-timey car—parked outside the transit terminal at Kingman. It was a vintage Tesla that clearly had been driven to hell and back. The paint was matte blackout with a narrow orange racing stripe down the middle and bitchin’ flame decals on either side.
Fire. Behold. Okay.
A whipcord-thin woman leaned against the hood, one booted ankle crossed in front of the other. Both her canvas duster and her long white hair rustled in the morning wind. She wore two bandoliers crammed with ammo and slung low over her abdomen, and the gleaming butts of twin dueling pistols peeked out of the holsters at either hip. From the arrangement of straps, it was possible she had a sword on her person as well, or maybe just a very big knife.
She was also by far the oldest human being Angela had ever seen.