The Courier (San Angeles) (18 page)

Looking through the scope of her rifle, Abby could see the entire lobby of the Hotel Chevrier. It was pretty much deserted this early in the evening. The coffee shop was open, as was the bar at the other end of the lobby. Those didn’t interest her though. The formal dining
room beside the coffee shop, with the pretty hostess trying to lure customers in, did.

From Abby’s vantage point across the street, she could look through the big plate glass windows covering the front of the hotel and into the restaurant. There was a bit of glare from the Ambients, but not enough to stop her from looking in. A group of old ladies quietly sipping their tea blocked her view all the way inside. She wouldn’t have been able to see to the back of the room anyway. Her angle didn’t allow it.

She had been here for about two hours already, peering through the scope normally attached to her rifle. In fact, she had been almost ready to pack it in when her target showed up. Four others showed up with him; two walked into the hotel lobby about a minute ahead to check things out. The other two followed him into the restaurant like shadows. A few minutes later one came out, and three stood in the lobby.

Her target was, of course, Nigel Wood. Meridian Black Ops knew he was high in the ACE echelon, high enough to need a shadow team. Unfortunately for him, he was a creature of habit, and this was his favorite restaurant. It made her job easier; she didn’t even need to verify against the profile picture in the dossier. Her target had arrived. Now she would wait until he came out, unless she was called off to chase a child on Level 1 again.

Abby looked back through the scope. It would take two shots: one to break the glass and one to make the kill.

Just under an hour later, she caught movement in the relative quiet of the hotel lobby. A young girl emerged from the elevator and was led to the restaurant by a face Abby knew all too well. Miller. Her job had just become more difficult, but then, she knew that was going to happen when she ran her star charts this morning.

The goons supporting the suit would have been easy, but Miller had a strange way of knowing when something was going on. Last
time she’d dealt with him, she’d barely made it out alive. Too bad he wasn’t her target today. Maybe she’d get lucky and get a chance at him as well.

When they paused at the entrance to the restaurant, Abby took a closer look through her scope at the girl. It was the courier from her failed Level 1 hit, looking worse for her troubles. Miller went inside, hiding the courier behind a potted plant just inside the entryway. Bastard probably did it without even realizing it.

Abby could have shot through the plant and taken out the courier, but that was too risky, and would give her primary target a chance to get out. If she wanted a chance to fix her previous error and still get her primary, she would need to move in closer.

She packed the scope back into her padded briefcase with the rest of the disassembled weapon, and a few minutes later walked into the lobby of the hotel like she owned the place. Every movement, down to the selection of her posture, proved she knew what she was doing, that she belonged. Abby moved back toward the elevators the courier had come from and pressed the down button. The Chevrier had its service areas in the basement, where she knew she would be able to find hotel uniforms.

Fifteen minutes later, Abby walked out of the women’s changing rooms. Her shoulders had taken on a stooped look, and her feet dragged a bit when she walked in the low-heeled shoes. The damn things hurt like a demon, but it was the best match she could find in the staff room.

Her outfit, stained and smelling of stale coffee, matched what the coffee shop waitress was wearing, which was exactly what she wanted. It was loose enough to cover the rifle parts hidden under it. She relaxed the muscles on her face, letting them droop, making her look ten years older.

She knew staff wouldn’t be allowed in the front lobby, so there
must be a back entrance to the restaurant kitchens. Abby turned away from the elevators and followed the hallway to a set of stairs leading up. She opened the door and, placing a hand on the rail to help her up, walked to the top like she hated being at work.

One of Nigel’s goons stood at the top of the stairs. He didn’t even give her a second glance. If anyone found out he’d held the door open for Meridian’s best assassin . . . Abby let a ghost of a smile touch her lips once she stepped past.

The kitchen itself was almost divided in two. The portion facing the front of the building—the coffee shop—contained a few flat tops and deep fryers. The other section contained a much more modern and complex kitchen, including gas stoves and charcoal barbecues. Abby moved to the restaurant side of the kitchen and began to assemble her weapon.

I took the last gulp of my milkshake and put the glass on my empty plate, smearing the ketchup around, and leaned back. Now that the hunger had passed—I’d eaten way too much—the exhaustion set in again. I had a hard time keeping my eyes open.

“Listen, Kris. I know you’re tired, but I have a few more things I need to talk about before we can go. The next few days are going be pretty busy for me, and I need an answer from you quickly so we can move forward.”

Using my elbows, I pushed myself off the back of the seat, sitting up straighter. Here it was. The bullshit price I had to pay for the help they had given me. Fuck that. All I wanted was a place to sleep and hide out for a while until things blew over, and for Nigel to tell me more about my mom and dad.

“You showed some quick thinking in the last couple of days, Kris . . . thinking that we could use in our organization. I believe we could use each other, and both come out the better for it.”

Nigel was starting to sound like a used car salesman, and I didn’t want anything to do with it. “I just want out. I’ll find a place to hide for a while, and when this blows over . . . we’ll see.” I picked one of the extra forks off the table and started spinning it in my hand, trying to look bored with the whole thing. Spinning a fork was harder than spinning a pen.

“I’m not sure that’s going to work for you this time.” He leaned over the table and dropped his voice. “Meridian is plenty mad. The information we’re picking up off their lines says they got a couple of teams looking for you. I don’t think they care if you still have the package or not. It sounds like you’ve caused them a whole lot of grief, and they want to get rid of you.”

“So? I can go back to IBC. They were willing to help me.” And Nigel didn’t think IBC was behind the attack on my parents.

“And did they? Who was there to look after you at Innotek? If Miller hadn’t shown up, you’d be dead right now.”

I knew he was right, and the spinning fork faltered for a second. I had seen Quincy move out from behind the security desk when Miller drove me out of there. If I had walked in, the second the door to the building locked behind me, my life would have been over. I don’t think Quincy would have made it quick.

“We need an intelligent courier. One who can think on her feet and get the damn job done.” He waved his hand indicating something bigger than the room around them. “And not just here. The world is bigger than this city. Did you know that there are still areas of Earth open to the sky? It’s not all shrouded in layers of concrete and humanity.

“Have you ever seen a sunrise, Kris? A real sunrise. This . . . this
ball of flame just seems to pop up from the horizon, throwing its light and heat everywhere it can.”

Christ, this guy was laying it on thick. True, the only sunrise I had seen was on the vids, but I hadn’t missed it. You can’t miss something you’ve never had.

“How about the Sat Cities? You can look out your view port and the whole world will be out there. It’s like you can just reach out through the glass and hold it in your hand. And if you’re not facing the Earth . . . my god. The stars. So many of them shining from distances your mind can’t even grasp.

“We can give you those things, Kris.”

He made it sound like I was winning the lottery. As if I was ever going to be on a Sat City. They wouldn’t even let me onto Level 6. How the fuck did he think they were going to let me off-planet?

“What do you say, Kris?”

“What would I deliver?” What the hell, I figured I would play him along for a while, see how serious he was.

Nigel leaned back in his seat again, looking comfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. “It would pretty much be the same stuff you do here. Electronic communications between the Sat Cities and Earth, and between each other, is as bad as it is down here.” He gave a small grin. “Communications to the mining colonies are even worse. Anything secure goes through couriers, with enough fake messages that no one knows which courier is carrying real information.”

“I’m not sure if it’s what I want to do, Nigel.” Two could play at this game. I’d been in situations before, usually with guys that wanted to get into my pants, where they would say my name more often than necessary. It supposedly made the conversation more personal and immediate. Though it never worked on me, it seemed to
have an effect on Nigel. The bastard slouched a bit more in his seat and he looked on the verge of a smile.

“We would train you, Kris. Not the kind of training you get for city runs. It’s a bit tougher out there, and you need different skills.”

“Like you trained my dad?” The twirling fork slipped from my fingers and its spin carried it to the floor. I bent down to retrieve it and started spinning it again. By the look on Nigel’s face, it bugged the hell out of him. It was either that, or the question I’d asked.

“Your parents were environmentalists and pacifists. They didn’t need or want training. We’d give you weapons experience. Teach you how to properly shoot that gun you have in your pocket. Pistols aren’t just aim and pull the trigger. Well, they are—” He gave a small chuckle, finding humor in his own mind. “—it’s just that the aiming part is really tough to get right. I’ve heard stories of security guards emptying an entire clip at a guy that wasn’t moving, and missing every single shot.

“We’d also get you hand-to-hand lessons. By the time we were done, people like Quincy wouldn’t be able to get close enough to you to use that knife of his.”

“I could just leave the city.”

“I don’t think you understand how big these corporations are. SoCal pretty much owns this city, and this is only one of dozens. Meridian has access to all the trackers. If you make it to another city, and that’s a pretty big if, you’d be in the same mess as you are now. Meridian has a Quincy in every city, probably more than one.”

“What, and they don’t in the Sat Cities?”

“Of course they do. But if you’re up there, that means you’re working for us, and you would be trained and prepared to deal with it.”

Despite my doubts, I was beginning to fall for the spiel. If it was good enough for Mom and Dad . . . It must be the lack of sleep. My
thought process felt bogged down, unable to latch onto a single item for any length of time. Maybe they had put something into the food? I didn’t think so though. I felt pretty much the same now as I did when I walked in. The food just compounded the exhaustion. Besides, the drugs I knew about tended to do a bit more of a number on you. Once, a guy I was seeing bought some Sweat off a street punk. Sweat made you do exactly that: if you were on it your whole body would be drenched in sweat. But the ride was supposed to be awesome. He had tried to get me take a hit, but there was no way I was getting into any of that shit. I stopped seeing him after that.

“When would this happen?” I asked.

“We could start the second we walk out of here. We’ll move you to a safe house and get your ID tag neutralized. Then we’d move you up to one of our training facilities outside San Angeles. You’d be up and running in about a year.”

Damn. It was starting to sound good. Especially the part about getting out of the city right away. I watched the fork spin in my hand, trying to buy some time to think.

The rifle barrel slid into the stock and locked in place with a soft click. Abby held it close to her side, hiding it from anyone who might approach. She was surprised at how empty this side of the kitchen actually was. She figured at least there should have been a cook waiting in case an order came in. Maybe on the slow nights they crossed between the kitchens, working wherever they were needed.

The weapon itself reached from her waist almost down to the floor. The barrel came in two pieces and screwed together, then clipped into the stock. Its long, rifled barrel made it highly accurate
over distances, and accuracy was what she was looking for. Meridian wanted Nigel Wood, and Jeremy wanted the courier out of the way, with no mistakes.

Abby approached the front counter of the kitchen, moving around the barbecue grill. Beside the swinging door leading to the restaurant was a long pass-through window the chefs used to slide the orders to the servers. She moved to the corner and peered over the countertop. Nigel and the girl were both sitting at the far corner table. She could use the counter to help balance the weapon’s barrel. Nigel’s face was just to the left of the courier.

Nigel leaned forward in his chair, hiding his face behind the courier’s head. At this range she might be able to kill two birds with one stone, one shot through both heads. She’d actually seen a bird once. Jeremy had something called a “bald eagle” stuffed and mounted in his office. He said they used to fly free. Big deal. Abby lined up her shot and slowed her breathing, praying for a straight trajectory.