The Administration Series (246 page)

Then it was back to waiting.

How long should he keep this up? Despite his front of confidence to Toreth, Warrick knew damn well that the longer he kept at it, the lower the probability that he would succeed in any given hour and the greater the chance of being caught. Eventually, detection would become inevitable. He needed to set himself a limit and then have the discipline to stick to it.

On Monday morning, the removal firm would arrive. That made a good end point. The remainder of Saturday evening and the whole of Sunday was long enough to either break through or be sure that he couldn't.

This morning, the hospital had reported Tarin as stabilising. Even so, he'd discussed with Dillian whether to cancel next weekend's house-warming party in case Tarin's condition worsened. In case, really, that he died. In the end, Warrick had decided not to; it simply wasn't practical to arrange the next few weeks around the possibility that Tarin might die at any time.

And if that death wasn't natural . . .

He'd stick to his time limit, but if the systems search failed, he'd have to think of something else.

Shopping had been Sara's idea of something to do on a Saturday, but Toreth had put up only the token resistance required to preserve his reputation. He needed more clothes — all he had were the things Warrick had bought for him during the revolt, plus the handful of survivors from his flat, and the new I&I uniforms.

His suspicions should have been aroused when Sara had been so vague about where they were going. She'd kept him occupied in conversation during the whole taxi trip, so Toreth hadn't paid too much attention to their route. When the car pulled up, he realised why she'd been so keen to distract him.

The shopping complex, in a residential zone where the flats were astronomically far out of SimTech's price range, was filled with shops that didn't display prices. If you shopped there, whether it was for clothes, food, furniture or private cars, you shouldn't need to know 'how much'.

"I thought I said I needed clothes?" he asked.

She nodded earnestly. "Right. And in there are clothes shops. I thought your compensation finally came through? From the flat?"

"Half of what I put in for, and no explanation why they cut it."

"Are you going to appeal?" Sara pushed the door open and stepped out.

"Maybe. Probably not." He followed her out. "It'll be just as tedious as fucking with accounts at I&I, except with I&I accounts they know that I work in the same building and I can find out where they live."

She laughed. "It wouldn't matter, anyway. You can't scare Central Housing Division staff — they aren't even human."

The taxi system requested additional confirmation of payment, and he leaned back in through the door. Satisfied with his I&I ID, the taxi finally pulled away. At least that perk hadn't yet been cancelled by the new Administration.

The shopping complex guard — armed, Toreth noted — also accepted their IDs, although with less grace than the taxi. Toreth didn't bother to say anything, simply resting his arm over Sara's shoulders as he watched the guard silently weigh up the conflict between their no-doubt inadequate credit ratings and his senior para status.

Inside the complex, the floor was so spotless even Warrick would have eaten his dinner off it. Cunning as ever, Sara broke him in gently with a detour into a toiletries shop called, originally enough, 'Skin Deep'. The assistants looked icily perfect and aloof, but they thawed out after a few minutes of Sara's determined enthusiasm. While she searched for the perfect shades of this lipstick, that foundation and the other eyeliner, Toreth taste-tested hand creams. His skin was getting rough from too much time wearing gloves down in interrogation.

As they left the shop, he eyed her improbably large carrier bag. "How much of that are you ever going to wear?"

"Most of it. I got a lot of free bits and bobs. Buy one of these and get one of those." She peered into the bag and smiled with satisfaction. "Anyway, it's all still coming out of
my
comp money."

"Still?"

"Down to the dregs, but I did save on the furniture." She stopped outside a menswear shop. "Here we are."

This place didn't actually
have
a name, as far as he'd ever discovered, just a screen above the shop front where swirls of tasteful shades slowly chased each other around. Not a single artfully-displayed item in the window carried a hint of a price label.

"I can't — "

"Just for underwear," Sara said innocently. "You know you have to."

He sighed and opened the door.

She was right about the underwear. The nameless shop sold the only make of briefs that was absolutely, perfectly comfortable. That he knew that in the first place was entirely Sara's fault, because she'd once bought him the original pack for one New Year. Since then he'd tried buying underwear from elsewhere and it had just annoyed him by not being quite right. His bank account survived on his coming here alone and making a quick dash in and out.

On that basis, he made a brief, futile attempt to head straight for the underwear section, then gave up. Sara sidetracked him onto a trail of other items, ending up, twenty minutes later, in the middle of a display of sweaters that Toreth was fairly confident the customers weren't encouraged to handle.

"It's blue," Toreth said doubtfully.

"Yes, it is." Sara unfolded the sweater and held it up, turning it around for a thorough critical inspection. "Duck-egg. It's a good colour this year."

"But what about next year?"

"You'll still be able to wear it," she said with absolute confidence, "because it goes perfectly with your eyes. Which makes people think you get your cashmere sweaters dyed to order and you must be incredibly rich."

"I certainly won't be if we don't get out of here soon."

"No, really. You know people notice that kind of thing. I do. You could pick me up if you were wearing it." She offered the sweater and grinned. "If I didn't know you already, that is. Go on."

In theory, he reminded himself, clothes were one thing over which he didn't mind making an effort or spending money. A good wardrobe was essential for good hunting.

Toreth stripped off his own sweater and pulled on the blue one. It felt silky against his recently-moisturised fingertips, almost waxy. He stroked it smooth, then found a mirror nearby. His hair was mussed, so he straightened it, checking out the look of the soft wool sleeves as he did so.

The thick knit managed to hang and cling at the same time. He imagined putting it on Warrick — just the jumper, nothing else — then rubbing his face against it, against Warrick's hard, muscled shoulders while he fucked him slowly and Warrick swore and pushed back against him and begged for it harder and faster. Smelling sweat and sex over the warm new-wool scent of the . . .

Sara coughed. With a start, he focused back on the image in the mirror. He looked distracted and slightly flushed.

Sex. He definitely needed more sex, very soon.

A pinch-faced assistant in a tight black dress lurked nearby, looking disapproving. Toreth took the jumper off and handed it back to Sara.

"Yeah. It fits okay. Add it to the pile." He was about to suggest moving on somewhere more sanely priced when he changed his mind. What the fuck. If he was going to pretend to be a corporate in Warrick's — their — new flat, he might as well look the part. "I need some shirts. Let's see what they've got."

"How's Warrick's brother?" Sara asked as they browsed, with a determinedly casual edge to her voice that made him pay closer attention.

"Still very, very fucked."

"Does anyone know what happened yet?"

"No."

"Are you . . . " She fingered a plastic-wrapped pink shirt that there was no way in hell she could seriously be suggesting he buy. "Toreth, is there something going on?"

"It's nothing," Toreth said. "Absolutely nothing that you need to worry about."

Sara looked at him closely, then nodded and turned away, dropping the shirt back onto the display. "Okay."

The quiet voice again, and something he couldn't immediately identify that set his teeth on edge. Resignation, he realised after a moment, or at least an unhappy acceptance that she had no right to expect him to tell her anything, not any more.

If he ever met Carnac again, Toreth was going to add a whole new chapter to the P&P especially for him.

More immediately, he decided he had a goal with Sara, just as with I&I, to put things back to normal. That meant finding some way to reprogram the reaction. Telling her to knock it off wouldn't drive the message deep enough to matter. If he said he didn't care that she'd told Carnac things that no other living person knew, then he'd be lying and she'd know it. Until he hit on a better plan, he could do nothing except ignore the sting of anger and carry on.

"Come on. Let's pay and get out of here before I bankrupt myself," he said. "I'll buy you a coffee."

On Monday, Toreth worked hard all day and spent two hours in the gym, and he didn't think about Warrick at all. After work he went back to Sara's flat, ate curry, and watched a truly appalling romantic comedy that she claimed Kel had recommended. It involved a mistaken identity setup that could have been sorted out fifteen minutes into the plot by any moron with a DNA scanner. He pointed this out a few times, until Sara threatened to throw him out of the flat if he didn't shut up.

It was only as he went to bed that he realised the house move was tomorrow. After that, if he wanted to collect any more clothes he would have to go to the new flat. Not a big deal, but Toreth hoped his own clothes would manage the trip safely, especially since they were all new.

On Tuesday, he almost caused a permanent and irreparable rift with Sara by waking up at six and going in to work. She seemed to feel obliged to go with him, which was fine by him except that she also felt obliged to whinge about it the whole way. At lunchtime, their corporate kidnapping victim turned up — partially — as four separate pieces scattered across marshland on the edge of the river estuary. By the end of the day, the rising tally of body parts left him short of several bits, but however he phrased it in the IIP the woman was still dead. That knocked the priority of the investigation down and, as Toreth had expected, Tillotson promptly reassigned all their pool investigators.

By the time he and Sara left for the night, Toreth still hadn't heard anything from Warrick. He wondered whether he should check in, just to make sure Warrick had put him on the security system of the new flat. A couple of times Toreth started to call, then cancelled the connection.

He wouldn't be able to resist asking how other things were going, and it was probably better not to know.

On Wednesday morning, as they were eating breakfast in Sara's flat, she suddenly dropped her spoon and said, "Shit. You hadn't forgotten that it's Warrick's birthday tomorrow, had you?"

Of course he had.

At work, he fucked sixteen things up before lunch, yelled at Sara, B-C and Mistry over the lack of progress in the corporate kidnapping, then went to the gym. He ended up swimming lengths fast enough to leave a significant wake. His shoulders ached, his legs ached — because he hadn't been spending enough time exercising lately — but now he couldn't
stop
thinking about Warrick.

Warrick wouldn't give up, that was the problem. And that left the possibility that either he'd find Leo Warrick — or whoever the Citizen Surveillance agent had been — or he'd get caught, and neither of those options were good for Toreth's life expectancy.

Toreth turned at the shallow end of the pool, took a breath, and kicked off, diving down underwater. He kept swimming, lungs burning, feeling the rising panic and the water flowing over his face. His body screamed breathe and his brain screamed drowning, until finally he touched smooth tiles at the far end of the pool with his fingertips and broke up for air, gasping, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the pool

He hung on to the side, treading water as his heart slowed.

There was, realistically, only one way to prevent disaster, and that was to find the man who'd been at Valeria's school before Warrick did.

In the afternoon he abandoned official work to call Officer Lee at the Justice Department. As he waited for the call to connect, he felt the now-familiar twinge of doubt. Did she still work there? Had she died in the revolt? Admittedly, at Justice the odds of her survival were good but, as always, the few seconds' wait brought back the disorienting uncertainty. Not to mention a desire to hunt down every resister in the Administration and nail them to a wall as punishment for fucking up Toreth's life like this.

"Para-investigator?" Lee smiled on the screen, looking rather more pleased to hear from him than she ever had in the past. "You're alive and well, then."

"Never better. I need a favour, Officer. Can I call in and see you after I finish here?"

"Sure. Call me again before you arrive and I'll meet you at the main entrance."

Paranoia twinged. "Can we make it a side door?"