Honey Moon (9 page)

It cost ten grand for the name and address. Twenty more purchased the informant’s silence if that name happened to appear in the obituary column. It didn’t seem right a man’s life could be worth so little. He’d expected triple—thirty thou, at the very least.

Sam shook his head, tossed the vodka back in the fridge and grabbed the champagne. He’d intended it for Laree. Had plans of making sure she was pleasantly drunk so she’d sleep soundly on this night that should have been the last he shared her bed. Now it’d make a decent weapon to bash a guy over the head.

Once the deed was done, the licensed gun and wrist phone of a pilot in hand, should he destroy the computer here? Is that what an honest criminal did to protect the source? Most likely it’d be pointless. No matter how beaten and broken the computer, a good tech could salvage data unless Sam torched the com-desk using a highly combustible accelerant, and no way would he risk harm to the hundreds in this building who’d stampede for elevators and stairs when smoke alarms blared and sprinklers burst on.

His mouth gritty with alcohol, he spit into the bathroom sink and stalked to the single mattress pushed in the corner. He grabbed the duffel bag sitting on it and exited the apartment.

Two thirty-five a.m. on what should have been his last night with his fiancée as a single man, although a con artist. His brain hissed in protest, heartbeat slowed, dick shrank and toes curled inside his heavy boots. It seemed all parts of him agreed. He didn’t ever want to see a blonde twirling in a white gown, diamond sparkling on her finger, yammering her friends will be so jealous, again. He’d rot in hell for using Laree so callously, but damn. If the woman hadn’t been that self-absorbed, it stood to reason she’d have outed him for the manipulative prick he was.

On the ground floor, Sam pushed open the door and left the building. The full moon competed with compressed buildings to blot out the skyline glowing with neon lights. High in the sky, the lunar satellite cast silvery shadows and beckoned lovers to their fate.

The bullet train took him to 1000th street, and a somewhat crowded bus on a planet that never slept carried him deeper, past the heart of the city. Street lights became spaced farther and farther apart, and the scruffs of grass spiking up between cracks of concrete harder to see.

He darted his gaze, checking out but not lingering on the two dozen or so faces surrounding him. Only a few women were sitting close to their guy, no children, but any of these men on their way home after work or a night out celebrating could have a tiny black box tucked in their pocket. The man would either be gathering courage to propose, or he’d have said yes to the guy or girl who’d popped the question to him and had high hopes of getting in on next month’s full moon action. He’d be preparing to ride a rocket to a happy life that, in a promised six months, would include functional and free Net to all the planets, including Earth. Then he could earn a living connected beyond the stars, his territory marked by that white picket fence round a five-bedroom abode and desert landscaped lawn on Mars.

Far, far away from that reality, on a lonely and overcrowded blue planet, no one returned Sam’s furtive glances and he huddled into himself.

He got off five blocks before his destination and ran. The cool air felt wonderful on his face and he pushed himself, but as the address grew closer, he understood he could have skipped the exertion. No worries about someone eyeballing him, taking in his features and reporting his presence to authorities after his picture sprawled all over the Net. The few other joggers he passed kept their gaze averted. So much for Neighborhood Watches and concerned citizen laws.

He slowed and hunched his shoulders as he strode on the glittering sidewalk to the entrance. Beneath the bright moon, the trapped energy of the sun resonated in every laminated seam of inch-by-inch solar-gridding. He wished the energized walkways had the ability to do more than repel cold and snow and light. Sending a high voltage charge up his leg would help cattle-prod a progressive guy from devolving to a caveman.

What other choice do I have?
He sighed. Time to psych himself up to bust open another stereotype—all men are capable of unjust violence—he hadn’t thought pertained to him. If love at first sight was real, then certainly someone with his size and strength could easily beat another into submission if he got the jump on…him—a pilot about to be world-renowned? If the man wasn’t already famous?

Oh God. He was a pathetic supervillain. He should have thought the breaking-entering-assaulting thing out thoroughly. The guy would be a handsome aerospace engineer chosen to pilot a frickin’ shuttle to the moon, meaning he wouldn’t be alone. He’d be in bed, getting the rest he needed to make history, come dawn. His glamorous wife would be using his perfect six-pack abs for a pillow, while the allotted child, a cooing baby girl, cuddled her teddy in a crib in the same room. Or a bachelor, the pilot would have twins either side as he sprawled in his satin-sheeted bed, custom-made to be the size of an apartment, a queue of beauties waiting in his luxurious suite that took up an entire floor.

But then why’d this hotshot pilot live in the crappy side of the city, in the seediest ‘scraper that didn’t have more than three security cams on the rear entrance? There wasn’t a phone-swipe key box in sight to enter the building. Not even a lame-ass cheap one.

Sam mentally shrugged, ducked his head and yanked open the building’s door to slither in. He stared at the dull red carpet and hurried for the elevator. Once inside, he ignored the cams above his head in each of four corners and tapped the dull gold 76.

The elevator, which reeked of what he feared was semen and piss, slowly worked its cables to go higher and higher. With an unpleasant lurch, it finally halted and the doors opened to an empty corridor.

He eased the duffel bag off his shoulder as he crept toward number eighteen and unzipped it. He stopped beside number seventeen. Stomach in knots, his presence being recorded on at least one cam, he yanked off his sweat-soaked shirt and pulled out what would have been the seamless, white uniform top of a delivery service employee if he hadn’t wadded it up in the bag.

A moment later, the bag sat on the floor beside the door labeled eighteen, the bottle of Cristal was in his hand, and instead of throwing up, Sam pushed the buzzer.

Nothing.

He tapped the buzzer again. Waited five minutes and hit it once more, this time keeping his finger pressed down. The time clicked away on his wrist phone for another half a minute before the com opened.

“Whaaat?” The rough voice, thankfully male, sounded slurred and furious.

“Sir, I am so sorry. Please. I have a gift from the Love Center.”

“The L…C? Why the fuck are you bringing it now?” The guy snorted. “Leave it by the door.”

“I can’t. It’s too expensive. I was supposed to deliver hours ago, but I ran into some complications. Come sign for it and accept a Nixon from me for your trouble.” The picture of the disgraced thirty-seventh president of the United States was on the two thousand dollar bill—a bit of a collector’s item.

“Fuck. Hang on,” the man muttered.

Sweat beaded on Sam’s forehead, his hands shook and hard swallows kept the two gulps of vodka from coming back out.

The door flung open and the stench of cheap beer whacked him in the face. A ripped guy—wearing a spotted wife-beater style T-shirt and tighty-whities glared out of thin-slitted eyes. He raked his gaze from the bottle in Sam’s hand, his other hand empty, to burn into his face.

“Two thousand, you said?” he snapped.

“Please keep your voice down so the cams don’t trigger an alert. Are you Roger Moore? May I see some ID?”

“You can bite my ass, buddy. That Nixon?” the guy growled, but he’d kept his voice low.

“Er…I’ll give you everything in my wallet—two of those bills—if you tell me if you’re the pilot for the moon shuttle leaving in a few hours.”

“Yes. Moore, that’s me.”

As if he’d trained for it all his life, Sam shoved his foot in the door and sucker punched the guy. The man grunted, fury filled his eyes, but he didn’t get his arm out before the Cristal kissed him in the side of the skull and the big bad pilot went down.

The cam was recording away, but yippee, not a single yelp to trigger attention. Sam set the bottle inside and bent to hit the guy on the back of his head with his fist. The rough moan stopped. Moore collapsed and went still.

Took him a few seconds to yank Moore farther into the apartment and close the door. His heart in his throat, Sam felt for a pulse—strong and steady. His heart out of his throat and trying to strangle him with aortas clamped on either side of his neck, he let the guy down and hurried past the couch, floor littered with takeout and empty plastic bottles of beer, into the next room.

Relief hit him like a ton of lunar rock as he absorbed the fact there was no wife, husband, a child or even a playmate. The bed was messy and to his disgust, the black market and obsolete-in-this-era magazine had wadded tissues beside it, was open and exposing compromising pictures of a nude girl, eyes deadened, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

He held back, but still allowed his boot to kick the unconscious pilot in the gut before he dragged him to the bedroom and hefted him onto the mattress.

His antique Boy Scout pocket knife,
Be Prepared
written in gold ink down the side, encouraged the sheet to tear easily. He bound Moore’s hands and feet so tightly, he’d have welts. He made the gag loose enough the man could breathe, removed the wrist phone and pocketed it.

A thin, small, metal case lay on the floor in the corner and his trusty knife was useless. Damn thing wasn’t at all prepared for the complexity of a measly lock. As expected, the blade broke as he tried to jimmy the carrier open. Sam shrugged and picked it up. He grabbed the uniform thrown over a chair, the cap on the floor beside it, and set the items down beside the door.

Outside, in front of the cam—
Christ, what’s it matter at this point
—he retrieved the duffel bag then went back inside and tossed the delivery service jacket into the corner, a time bomb holding more of his DNA, but
c’est la vie
. He shoved the pilot’s uniform and cap into the bag and grabbed the champagne and briefcase then exited. He waved the bottle at the cam as he slunk for the elevator.

The first person to make eye contact with him on the bus was an elderly man with a shrunken chest and work-worn hands clasped in his lap. At 1000
th
street, he silently handed the guy the champagne and hopped off.

Back at his apartment, Sam tossed the duffel bag on the table and set the metal case on the floor. He spread a towel on the four-by-four table, retrieved the pilot’s uniform and laid the shirt out. A scan of his wrist phone over an app on the com-desk and a pre-heated ironing device popped up. He had ten minutes before it went cold and he’d have to pay another fifty dollars for five more minutes of heat.

He failed. Cost two hundred dollars before the jacket, shirt and pants were to his liking and hanging in the closet. That was the easy part.

Shaking exhaustion from his face, he headed out with the determination of a man about to cry wolf. He now had a less-shaky platform to stand on, thanks to the ominous metal case he’d found, as well as the guy who supposedly could fly a shuttle living in a seedy dump. It added up to justification he was onto something that’d definitely get him killed. Thank Christ he’d made sure the woman, whose hot and sweet and beautiful image had damn well better flash in front of his eyes before the bullets hit, was safely out of the game.

Chapter Six

Jenna had tumbled not head but heart first into the game of whistleblower. Like playing Russian roulette with a full clip, the cost of failure was clear. Arranging for a misfire was the only chance. Without a single error, they had to get onboard, figure it out and alert the world as to what was happening before the LC pulled the trigger.

It’d been rather easy but quite costly to find someone with Net skills to far surpass hers. She now sat at her com-desk and hesitated, worried and facing the wide, green purchase button staring back at her.

Because of Sam, she had the funds to empty twenty thousand into this site that ‘worked diligently to save whales from illegal poaching. These so-called environmentalists didn’t offer specifics on how the rescue would happen within hours of receiving payment, nor did they claim satisfaction guaranteed.

There’d be no refund, and it was on her if she screwed-up when entering the encrypted coding to spell out what she really wanted. The info would be attached to the monies she sent, and her message—hopefully after being read and understood by some criminal—would be irreversibly transposed into the name and stats on which whale owed a continued peaceful existence to her donation. Something she’d never have, not after she tapped that green button.

Come on, get on with it.
It, the rescue, must be a hoax to cover up the illegal activity she really was paying for. Only the sickest of sociopaths hunted sea creatures with superior intellect and active social lives, most often even authorities didn’t react if said hunter was found floating face down in the northern Pacific.

She’d read between the lines to understand her request to look for any unusual activity during the building of the shuttles—such as supplies purchased that didn’t make sense for manned flights and to provide her with schematics of the pods that’d hold the honeymooners—would be processed by some genius who’d activate a program to overwrite her words so nothing remained visible to Big Brother other than the solicitation and her agreement to donate
. Just do it. Think green and move onward.