Continuance (14 page)

Lindsay furrowed his brows, blood
boiling. He bolted from the bench, taking a step toward Darren before stopping
himself. “You arrogant son of bitch! You’re the reason our budget’s on life
support?”

Darren glanced at his watch – an
antique number with a gold and platinum band and moving hands. “I’m late for a
meeting. I hope you’ll consider the offer.” As he closed the limo door, the
seams disappeared, leaving unbroken curves in gleaming black. Darren leaned
toward the open window. “By the way, your boss’s little cartoon story was
actually a good one. Maybe even more relevant than he realizes. It’s too bad he
doesn’t understand where I fit in.”

“Really? How’s that?”

“I’m the dog. And you’ll never
get a chain around my neck.”

Jason slouched in the driver seat
of the BMW, staring at the entrance to the windowless building on the other
side of the dark parking lot. He could just make out the front door, also
windowless, through the windshield of a dented green pickup parked in an
intervening space. Every few seconds, the door opened as men, usually alone, came
and went through the pool of blue neon light emanating from the building’s only
distinctive feature – a sign that read:
The Library
.

Dust still coated his windshield.
He’d come straight from the track, exceeding the speed limits by a calculated
margin until he’d hit the autonav network coming back into the city. He glanced
down at the pair of square buttons recessed inside a compartment in the center
console. The one on the left was activated, backlit with a cool blue light. The
red one on the right sat dim and untouched, waiting for use some other day. As Jason
slid the cover closed, it snapped into place, making the panel
indistinguishable from the rest of the center console.

The compartment was a black
market mod he’d invested in right after he got the car. When active, the blue
button spoofed his autonav ID, broadcasting the identity of some other car,
while masking his own. He’d used it on his way out of the city that morning.
The red one disabled the autonav transponder altogether, letting him navigate
manually inside the network. Until today, he’d seldom used the blue button. The
red one, not once.

For the dozenth time in the last
ten minutes, he checked the time inside his smartglasses.
10:48 P.M
.
He’d been waiting almost two hours.

Come on. Show
up.

Despite Alex’s admonition to stay
away and lay low, Jason needed to find a way to make contact. Frowning, he
thought about the guilt he’d felt just hours ago for putting Alex at risk. He
felt even more now, knowing he’d already shoved that concern aside and let his
selfish motivations take over again.

All I need is
the SLIDe location. That’s it. After that, Alex is out of it.
The thought
made him feel a only a little better, but his decision was made. Over and over,
his mind kept running through the rationale for being here, like some
subconscious lawyer pleading his case even though the verdict had already been
reached.

Time was precious, and he
couldn’t afford to wait around while the SLIDe hit on Michelle grew cold. He
needed the location from Alex. Tracking him down at this old haunt would serve
several purposes. First, if he actually showed, Jason would know Alex was really
free, that the message he’d gotten was legit, not a trap. Second, it offered
the best chance to safely contact Alex, shielded from watching eyes. And it was
the only place other than Alex’s house Jason knew where to find him.

Movement caught his attention,
another man approaching the building from the lot perimeter. The ambling gait
was familiar. As he drew closer, Jason made out dark glasses and a ponytail
before Alex opened the door and disappeared inside. Rather than follow, Jason
continued to watch the parking lot, scanning the rows of parked cars. A few
seconds later, he found what he was looking for – a dark sedan several rows
over with two figures inside. A non-descript man with short blond hair and a
brown leather jacket got out of the car and approached the building. The driver,
too immersed in the shadows for a good look, stayed behind the wheel, sitting
back in his seat as though settling in for a long wait.

I guess the
driver must have lost the flip.

Still, Jason waited.

Alex had already been inside
about five minutes when a late model Honda glided silently through the lot to
park a few spaces down from Jason.

He slipped out of the BMW,
staying low, and made his way in a crouch down the backside of the row until he
came to the Honda. Three young men had just left the car, no more than twenty
feet away, laughing as they walked. Jason stood up and fell in behind them. As
they filed into the building, Jason closed the gap and smiled politely as one
of them held the door for him. The bass pulse of loud music poured through the
open door, beating out a steady, primal rhythm.

Shadows and neon light filled a
small entry inside. It took a second for Jason’s eyes to adjust well enough to
make out the burly doorman in a skin-tight black shirt and dark glasses seated
behind a counter. His skin was tan, and the left side of his face was tattooed
with a hooded cobra, fangs bared, body trailing down to coil around his neck.
As the guy that had held the door paid the cover and disappeared around a dark
partition, Jason did his best to look indifferent, holding out a hand,
palm-down. The doorman waived a handheld SLIDe over it and frowned at the
results displayed inside his smartglasses.

“Sorry, bro,” he said, raising
his voice to be heard above the music. “Come back in January. They’ll still be
here.”

By then, Jason had his AP’s cash
exchange app pulled up, locked onto the exchange tag the doorman wore
somewhere. Jason placed the AP face-up on the counter, making sure the guy
could see the denomination of the bill on the screen.

“I don’t know how, but they keep
getting my birthday screwed up on my ID file,” Jason half-yelled, rolling his
eyes as if he’d had to explain this a hundred times before. “It’s supposed to
be 206
7,
not 2068.” He placed an index finger on the image of the money,
flicked it toward the doorman, and it slid off the screen, initiating a
transfer.

Snake-guy’s eyebrows lifted above
his glasses. “Sure. Morons are always screwing up my address. I keep telling
‘em,
Beverly
Hills, not Pine Hills.” He snickered at his own joke,
motioning Jason inside. He relaxed a little, rounding the black partition into
The Library’s main room.

As soon as the partition was
behind him, his pulse quickened again for an entirely different reason, his
eyes ambushed by the spectacle within. Since he’d been continued, Jason had
prided himself on catching up with all the advances that had come along in his
absence. But he still wasn’t ready for what he saw in front of him.

A menagerie of every type of
light imaginable punctuated a dim interior filled with dimly lit cocktail
tables and photoscreens. Neon lights, strobe lights, black lights, holo-LEDs,
more. Several small stages with mirrored floors clung to the edges of the room.
A more elaborate stage, in the shape of a heart, dominated the center, directly
across from Jason. Patrons – many male, but not all – filled the seats at the cocktail
tables and lined the curved sides of the main stage.

As he watched, a red-headed
dancer sashayed her way to the edge of the stage, right up to the pointed tip
of the heart, playing to the crowd at her feet with a sultry smile. She wore
black stiletto heels, thigh-length black stockings with a garter belt, with
black, opera-style gloves that ended above her elbows. And not a stitch more.

Spinning in time with the music,
she turned around, arching backwards. Holding her arms straight out with one long
leg extended in front of her, she arched further. Further still. Jason thought
she would fall off the stage, but instead she…levitated…into the air, drifting
out over the floor. The appreciative patrons beneath watched as she floated a
couple of feet above, her long red hair tantalizingly close to brushing the
occasional head. Her dance turned into a type of seductive, slow-motion aerial
ballet – all twists, summersaults and splits. Images and light, ephemeral and
suggestive, winked into existence and disappeared around her. A hand here. Glimpses
of curvy flesh there. A tongue running over pearl-white teeth framed by red,
red lips. As Jason had with the doorman, her audience made flicking motions on
their APs, the digital tips morphing into animated images of paper money that
fluttered upward, zeroing in on the red-head, dissolving when they touched her
skin.

Jason remembered something Alex
had said.
It’s the content that matters. No doubt about that.
He blinked,
tearing his eyes away from the girl in the air.
Focus.

Seeing a bar on his right, Jason
made his way over and ordered a beer – one of the Chinese brands he’d never
seen until two years ago. With his back to the bar, he panned the crowd,
searching. On his second time through, he found what he was looking for – a
glimpse of brown leather tucked away in the shadows at a table in the back.
While Jason watched, one of the girls on the floor approached the guy in the
brown jacket, but he waved her away with a forced smile, keeping his gaze on a
spot near the center of the room.

Jason followed the man’s eyes,
straight to the stool where Alex sat perched against one side of the
heart-shaped stage. He wore as big a smile as Jason had ever seen, occasionally
calling out encouragement to a raven-haired dancer who’d replaced the red-head
on stage.

“Hey, cutie. Looking for some
company?”

A leggy blond stood beside Jason,
smiling, one hand on a hip. Her straight hair was cut short, and she wore the
same gloves and stockings he’d seen on the other dancers, with the addition of
a lacey white top and bikini bottoms. Over it all, she wore a diaphanous white
coat with no sleeves, form fitting to the waist, flaring out at the bottom.
Racy as it was, the ensemble had an oddly formal flair.

“That’s why I’m here.” Jason returned
her smile. It
was
the truth, after all. In a manner of speaking. “How
about a private dance?”

She gave a small laugh, as if she
found his enthusiasm amusing. “I’d love to dance for you, baby, but what’s your
hurry? Buy me a drink. We can get to know each other a little first.”

Jason made a show of letting his
eyes drift downward. It wasn’t difficult – like taking his finger off of a
compass needle, leaving it free to point the direction nature intended. “I know
all I need to know about you.” He brandished his AP, showing her the money it
depicted. “And now you know all you need to know about me. So. How about that
dance?”

She shrugged. “Whatever you say,
sweetie. I’m Isis.” She extended a gloved hand, palm down.

“Patrick,” Jason said, taking her
hand and following her toward a bank of reflective doors off to one side of the
bar. Whenever he didn’t want to give his “real” name, he sometimes found it
amusing to use his old one as a familiar alias.

As they walked, the feel of Isis’
glove in his hand struck something in his memory, and he lifted her hand to
examine it more closely. The shiny, stretchy material seemed familiar.

Isis eyed him looking at the
glove. “These things can come off,” she murmured in his ear. The warmth of her
breath made his skin tingle. “If you like. I only need them when I’m on stage.”

Of course.
Retroweave.
That explained the aerial acrobatics. The room must have an interaction field, like
the one in the Chariot imaging chamber.

When they reached the doors, Isis
didn’t pause. She walked right
through
one, pulling him along with her.
Startled, he found himself in a small room lined with padded leather couches
surrounding a cocktail table. The ambient noise changed, suddenly muted. Jason
turned around, surprised to see nothing but empty air between him and the main
room.

Isis laughed. “I didn’t take you
for the jumpy type. From the way you acted at the bar, I figured you’d done
this before. Don’t worry, baby. No one can see us in here. I got you all to
myself.” She draped her arms around his neck, drawing close.

First,
levitating dancers and now see-through walls.
Jason hoped that would be the
end of the surprises tonight, though he had to admit, the one-way photoscreen
would make his task a lot easier now.

“Listen, Isis.” Jason gently took
her arms from around his neck. “I have a favor to ask. I’ll make it worth your
while.”

The seductive look in her eyes
melted into caution, mixed with little annoyance. “I’m not breaking any rules
for you. I already got busted for…”

“I’m not asking you to break any
rules.” She furrowed her brows, waiting. “See that guy over there? The one with
the ponytail?” Alex was still seated next to the stage, by all appearances,
enjoying himself. “I need you to invite him to join us.” Further away, the man
in the brown leather coat still watched from the far side of the room.

Isis giggled like he’d told a
joke. “That guy’s a regular here. I happen to know he doesn’t mind three, but
you’d be one guy too many.”