Honor of the Clan (28 page)

Operatives had a largish rate of loss, relative to their whole career. Being juved was great, but a much longer working life upped the odds greatly that anyone who worked in the field eventually had bad luck catch up with them, or made a fatal mistake. The losses were front-loaded, though. Acquiring experience was a Darwinian process. They'd repeated it in school so often she heard it in her dreams: "Learn fast; you'll live longer."

She ran her tongue over her teeth quickly, hoping she didn't have chocolate smudges from the brownies. "I need field experience; you need for me to have it. The only thing a guy likes better than getting the attention of a hot chick is getting the attention of a hot chick and her hot friend," she began.

They looked skeptical, even dismissive, and she knew she'd better convince them in a hurry.

"Hear me out: say Cally and I both go in and
I
do the guy. She comes along to play, too. I know, he could smell a rat; it's too much good luck. Your instincts are trained from hell." She looked at Cally, who had her head cocked a tiny bit to the side. Sands took that as encouragement. "If he gets edgy, you back off and come up to his apartment after I drug him up. I know, we might have to hit him with several interrogation drugs to find something he's not immune to, but I don't have to use an interrogation drug. I Hiberzine the bastard and we have him nice and trussed by the time Cally wakes him up."

George Schmidt had a poker face. She didn't know if he could sway the whole team, but better if she won them all over. She turned her attention to him specifically.

"We all know that professionals of either sex sometimes have to screw people to get the job done. Personally, I have to speak up, because I'm not going to have a better chance to get blooded in the field that way. I've got backup practically right on top of me," she said, then blushed to the roots of her hair. "That didn't come out right," she mumbled.

Schmidt burst out laughing, and there were grins all around the table. Amy picked at her brownie and wished the ground would swallow her up.

"Okay, I understand if you want to say no, but hell, we all know you're a professional." She nodded to Cally. "Okay, so if it needs doing you'll do it. I'm not married; it's my job as much as yours. I know I'm just a temporary fill-in on your team, but bench strength is important. At least, I've always been told there are a shortage of people who can do this job." Sands looked straight at the other woman. "There's no point in being a martyr when you can make an alternate strategy do double-duty for a primary organizational need," she said. There. That was her best case. Once of Amy's talents was an exquisite sense of when to shut the hell up.

Harrison Schmidt looked across the table at his brother. "She's got a point. You guys know I suck at undercover work. What if one of you bites it? You've got a chance to develop one more person you have experience with. You also—excuse me, Sands." He shrugged. "You've got the chance to evaluate Sands' undercover work eyes on. There's a world of difference between real life and school. If you suck, it's better to find out now than later."

"Fine, I'm convinced." George sighed. "But if you start having trouble managing him, Cally becomes the primary, leaves with him, and you're the friend he doesn't leave with. Or if you can't get his attention away from Cally."

"Point," Tommy said. "Sorry, Sands."

"Yeah, I get it. If he's a tit man, I might as well not be there." She shrugged. "I still get some field time; you still get a chance to evaluate me. It works." Amy knew she had them, but it was good to solidify that nice, fuzzy feeling of consensus. Fitting into the team was a high priority for a new operative—another of the nuns' oft-repeated lessons. A new assignment disturbed unit integrity, which needed to be restored as quickly as possible for optimum performance.

Friday, January 15, 2055

The bar was the smokiest place Cally had ever been in, and that was saying a lot. Gas blue and sodium-yellow lights played up from the floor of the stage, green from the top, throwing eerie shadows off the curls of gray in the air. The room smelled of good whiskey, fine cigars, black market cigarettes, and cheap beer. The signs in the plate glass on either side of the door had made a fetish of the bar's famous selection of the worst of Milwaukee.

At fifty-eight, Cally had at one time or another sampled most living music genres. The sounds coming from the tiny stage were pure Mississippi delta. Her enhanced eyes spotted their quarry almost at once, even in the low light and haze that buried him at the back of the crowded room. He sat alone, and had a pitcher of something on the table in front of him. Yup, perfect music for a man mooning over the state of his life.

She let her eyes skate across him. He didn't appear to have even noticed them coming in. There was no reason he should in the press of people, except that they were both dressed to be eye-catching. Too many people, too much visual noise, too focused on the pint mug in front of him. On stage, a guitar wailed piercingly.

They caught plenty of other eyes, for certain, as she and Sands approached the bar. As Cally insinuated her hip between two men to squeeze a spot in view of the bartender, the guy behind her leaned down and spoke in her ear, "Can I buy you a drink?"

Her butt was up against him and it was pretty obvious he was interested. She half-glanced backwards over her shoulder.
Working, and married. Down, girl,
she told herself with regret. Chocolate eyes, a lock of dark hair dropping down just over one eyebrow, great smile. Not a juv, she made him as just mid-forties from the faint dusting of silver. Old enough to be a grown-up. And he smelled good. She caught all this in a bare instant, but she also had her brain in mission mode.

"No thanks. My . . . friend and I are fine," she said disinterestedly, her mouth curving in a polite half-smile. She had found this was generally more effective than a stronger brush off. Even a touch of hostility amounted to interest to men who knew enough to follow up right. Better to give them the impression of not registering on one's radar at all.

"You want your usual, babe?" she asked Sands.

Amy was quick on the uptake, turning to brush a breast against Cally's arm. "Sure, hon," she said, giving her a lazy smile and letting her eyelids droop half closed.

Of course the man behind her, being red-blooded and human, twitched a bit more. But he'd gotten the message and didn't follow through as Cally ordered and paid for a couple of Manhattans. She handed one of them to her partner and backed out into more open space. Mr. Sexy Eyes was entirely too well-built and tempting. Busy. Married. Damn whoever was responsible for the damn juv hormones, anyway.

"All the way to the back, three tables from the far right," she whispered to Sands, curling her arm around the other girl's waist and drawing her in, incidentally turning her far enough to see and look past Cally's shoulder.

"I'll have to take your word for it, can't see over heads," Sands whispered back.

Oh. Yeah, it figured. They were both wearing five-inch stilettos just for this reason, but since Cally was already five ten, she got a much better edge out of it than the shorter woman.

"It's near the path to the restroom. He's smoking; when we go back, make your play."

"Sure, if he looks past your chest." Amy was talking very softly in her ear, clearly knowing Cally would pick the words out of the background noise, but her giggle was open. Good tradecraft, but lord was she ever tired of catching crap about her tits. Of all the slab-altered bodies she had worn in her career, she supposed there were worse ones she could have gotten stuck in. At least Sinda Makepeace had been, was, beautiful—wherever the hell she'd ended up. Cally had worn enough cover personas who weren't to appreciate that. It was far better to be able to attract men at need than not. It was just that sometimes the wisecracks were worse than the backaches. She couldn't even get the things surgically reduced. With a slab job, deviations from the program tended to grow back. She mentally slapped herself for whining and dialed back in on the mission.

They drank the red liquid, which might as well have been cranberry Kool-Aid, as quickly as socially possible before ditching the empties on the bar and making a beeline for the ladies'. Cally had to admit that Amy was smooth, catching the man's eyes with a direct smile, but declining to stop on the first pass by.

It was on the way back that she bent down, dropping a casual hand on Leibowitz's shoulder. "Hey, got a light?"

Cally kept herself half-shielded behind her partner, offering a friendly but not quite interested smile when his eyes flickered to her, noting that Sands had chosen a good opening. Lighting her cigarette focused the target's attention on her and gave her the opportunity to turn up the charisma and pull him in.

Bart was not a stupid man. Trusting, but not stupid. "Would you ladies like to join me?" he asked hopefully, willing to try his luck. Of course. Cally's smile was genuine as she snagged an empty chair from another table and sat, a second behind Sands. It was nice when the mark cooperated. No reason to relax, but still nice.

It wasn't hard at all to manipulate him into taking them back to his apartment with the old excuse of coffee. Present a fictitious roommate who had her boyfriend over and he was all theirs.

When he started trying to come up with an excuse to ditch her, Cally decided she didn't really want to be ditched, and the vibes coming off him were right. He was not particularly interesting, but in a purely professional call, Sands was doing okay, but Cally wasn't about to leave her alone in the field yet with the stakes this high. Sure, this was a milk run—but how many times did a milk run turn into anything but?

"We do
everything
together," Cally smiled at him, catlike, putting a hand over Amy's possessively. Her eyes focused into his with unmistakable meaning, which her partner supported by leaning into her arm, not taking her own eyes off Leibowitz. Was he biting? Oh, hell yeah was he ever.

At Sands' suggestion, they made another restroom stop before taking off. "Was I screwing something up?" she asked blandly while reapplying her lipstick.

"Not until now," Cally answered. "Talk later." Oh, geez, yeah, break character on a mission. Um, how about "no"?

"It's a set-up," a voice chimed from Cally's hip pocket as she bent to adjust a tight spot in the ankle strap of one shoe.

"Not you, too." She rolled her eyes.

"I'm just saying he was too easy, believing he had a chance with
two
hot chicks. I mean
I
would have taken you home, sure.
Her
 shoes just scream 'screw me,' but I really like you better in the red ones with the cute lit—" it began.

"Shut up, buckley."

"Right," it paused. "And bobby socks. You're adorable in—"

"Shut
up
, buckley. And turn down your emulation a notch . . . uh . . . make that two."

"Spoilsport."

"Buckley . . ." she threatened.

"Right."

"Doesn't that get a bit annoying?" the other woman asked.

"Later. Let's go."

Chapter Eighteen

Bart's apartment was a little thing, high up in a building with good lines and large windows, covered by heavy drapes. The first thing he did when they got in the door was lead Sands over to one of them and draw the curtains back, revealing a view of the city lights that was impressive as hell.

The living room was done all in grays and browns. Cally would have expected boring colors from a bean counter, anyway. What she had not expected was the pictures on the wall—brilliantly colorful acrylics with track lighting focused to really make them pop. She could see from here that the pics were actual paint layered on real canvas. Originals, and done right here, judging by the faint paint and solvent smells. Her inner sense of direction put the pieces together as she realized that, although the man could obviously afford a bigger apartment in a better neighborhood, this one was oriented to get excellent natural light through those large windows. The drapes obviously protected his finished pieces from the sun when he wasn't working. Wow.

She began to uneasily credit buckley's warning. What if he was gay after all? They hadn't thought so, but . . . Her already alert senses kicked up another notch.

"Okay, ladies. The act is up," he said.

Cally could sense Sands focusing in on the target to terminate and extract. She just hoped the girl would have the sense to stay out of her way.

"How much is it going to cost me for the two of you? I'd rather pay you than have you knock me over the head or drug me and try to take it. I'm not carrying much, so it's in your best interests. What's the price?"

She and her partner looked at each other, tension levels dropping ever so slightly.

"Seven hundred," Amy said sweetly. "And if you're not carrying it, how do we know you've got it?"

Good. Good job of sounding mercenary. Hookers. That explained why he believed their offer.

"Hell, make it eight," he said genially. "I'll even give you half in advance. But here's the deal. I'm buying one screw from you." He pointed at Amy. "Period. If you go for anything more, it's freebie or not at all. Got it?"

The two women looked at each other. What the fuck? Was this guy a weird asshole, or what? There he stood, though. Hair spiked with too much hair gel and showing the reason why, as it still tried to go every which way. Freckled, short. Nice green eyes, but his ears stuck out just slightly, and his adam's apple protruded prominently. He wasn't exactly homely, but he wasn't ever going to star in holodramas.

"Okay," Cally shrugged. It wasn't like he was going to get all the way through that fuck, anyway. In a way, the half he was giving in advance was fair for what he was getting. She held out her hand as he put four crisp ones in it and tucked them into the front zip pocket of her jeans.

"But if you do want to play, too, I might tip," he said.

Cally met his eyes and shrugged again. Strange. He made no protest as she stripped off, but wanted to take Sands' clothes off himself, and get the same. Whatever. What to do now? Rub his back and nibble on his neck, she guessed. She had a needle tip built into one of her rings, but the other woman had the same loaded with Hiberzine. Let the rookie take him down.