Chapter Eight
Four days later
Ruyn emerged from his office. “I’m going to see my brother.”
Michaela closed out the holovid and stood up.
“No, stay here.”
“I should come with you.”
Despite her agreement she wasn’t a bodyguard, she’d insisted on shadowing him.
“I’m perfectly safe inside this building. We have security guards. People are screened before entering. Continue with what you’re doing.”
She looked uncertain but sat down again. “All right. Quick question—how much time passed after you entered the alley before the first guy appeared?”
He shrugged. “Less than a minute.”
“Hm. Okay. When you get back, I’ll have something to show you. I finally got all the vid footage I requested.”
“You see something helpful?”
“It’s what I didn’t see.”
“I shouldn’t be too long.” He left.
Although she accompanied him everywhere—office, gym, home—he didn’t find her as intrusive as he’d feared he would.
At home, they retreated to their respective apartments, and at work, he holed up in his private office, while she remained in the outer one.
At the gym, she’d taken to working out so she’d have an excuse to remain close, but it was really only when he was on the move that he was forced to interact with her.
Not exactly forced. He never thought he’d admit it, but he enjoyed her company. Her conversation was pleasant, perceptive.
At first, he’d felt self-conscious at the gym to have her witness his painful physical therapy and workout sessions but then got accustomed to her presence, and her encouragement and celebration of his incremental progress made him realize he had improved.
He still doubted she could fight off a serious attacker, but having observed her powers of observation, he felt confident she’d spot one coming. Although he maintained his vigilance, it reassured him that she kept watch, too. In truth, the attack had left him a little jumpy.
Nor did it hurt that she was easy on the eyes, far more attractive than he’d originally thought.
She had a work face and a private face. When engaged as his bodyguard, her expressions were closed, concealing all emotion.
But in rare, brief private moments, she became much more expressive.
Quicker to smile, to laugh, to frown. She got embarrassed over the cutest things, and her cheeks would turn a charming pink.
Not that he spent a lot of time watching her or anything.
What would be the point? He couldn’t allow himself to develop a personal interest; she’d leave after this job, and what woman desired a man whose face would frighten their children? She was finding out all his flaws and faults, giving her more reason than most to avoid him.
They had become friendly colleagues, but he was a job to her.
He reached his brother’s office, and his assistant waved him on through.
“If you’ve come to complain about Michaela—” Korsan started in.
“She’s not why I’m here. We’ve worked things out.”
“Great! I’m glad to hear that. Then, what’s up?”
“I’m going to Elyxis 4.” Elyxis 4 was a “pleasure world,” a former desolate dwarf planet that had had nothing going for it except water and an atmosphere until a billionaire venture capitalist terraformed it.
Other investors rushed in with shiploads of cash and turned Elyxis 4 into a hot tourist destination.
Hotels and entertainment venues now existed where once there’d only been lichen-covered rock and craters.
“Vacation?”
He shook his head. “I intend to check out the renos at the Starlight.” The Starlight Interplanetary Hotel chain was a Korsan subsidiary. Its flagship hotel on Elyxis 4 had been undergoing extensive renovations. And going. And going.
“The time and cost overruns concern me.” He intended to walk the property and eyeball finished and incomplete construction projects to get a handle on why it was taking so long and costing so phukking much.
“For Luturna, maybe,” Korsan conceded. “But costs are higher in that part of the galaxy and on Elyxis 4 in particular because none of the planet’s vegetation is native, and everything has to be brought in under the asteroid dome.”
“What does vegetation or the asteroid dome have to do with construction costs?” An invisible magnetic dome protected the planet from the asteroid hits that were probably why it had been barren to begin with. Elyxis 4 had had more craters than the Earth’s moon.
“Because ships must navigate through the asteroid belt to get there. Cargo vessels need a special nav system to get through unscathed. And ships still get dinged and require repairs. Insurance costs are astronomical. Those costs get passed on to the buyer. Besides, Starlight is a luxury hotel. Materials must be absolute top-notch. Quality costs.”
Ruyn could understand how the asteroid belt would impact costs, but even taking that into consideration, the costs seemed excessive.
“I reviewed the figures you sent me, and they seem normal for the circumstances,” Korsan said. “I need you here seeking out future investment options. That’s what I’d like you to focus on. Don’t worry about the existing ones; let me handle those.”
“If we lose money on the existing ones, we won’t have the capital to invest in future ones,” he pointed out. He really thought the situation required further investigation.
On the other hand, while he had a good head for numbers, two decades had passed since he’d been employed in the private sector, and then it had only been for several months.
He’d never owned a business. Never renovated a hotel.
Never constructed anything. But Korsan had done all of those things.
So, if his brother wasn’t concerned, maybe he shouldn’t be either.
“If you left, you’d miss physical therapy.”
There it is. That’s the crux of it. “You think a spaceflight and travel would be too much for me.” It always came down to that.
His injury. His disability. Korsan didn’t usually default to that, but sometimes he slipped and said what he believed.
Ruyn was a cripple. A broken token of what he used to be.
Michaela never treated him like he’d become less than.
Maybe because she hadn’t met him when he’d been more than, but she didn’t question or doubt his abilities.
Didn’t cut him any slack, tiptoe around him, or treat him with special care.
She treated him like she would anyone else, and her behavior came as a vote of confidence. She made him feel normal.
“I have complete confidence you could do it—you’d do anything you set your mind to or die trying—but should you right now?
That’s another issue,” Korsan said. “Finish your physical therapy. Don’t do anything to undermine your progress.
Regain more of your strength, and then if you want to go to Elyxis 4—which I still think is unnecessary—go. ”
“Fine.” He stalked out, doing his best not to limp.
If his brother didn’t care about the high cost of the renos, why should he? The company belonged to Korsan and the investors, not him. He didn’t plan to work here forever—in fact, it was time to consider what he planned to do with the rest of his life.
* * * *
“Everything go okay?” she asked when he returned to his office.
“Yeah,” he fibbed. “Why shouldn’t it?”
“You look a little disgruntled. You weren’t trying to get me fired again, were you?” Her cheeks dimpled.
“Not this time.” He smiled. “I’d flagged some expenses that seemed out of whack, and Korsan let me know I’m too decrepit to travel.”
“Okay. You’re leaving out a lot in the middle, but I don’t think you’re decrepit at all.”
“You don’t, do you?”
“No.” Her open, honest, gaze met his, and he felt an electric sizzle.
“What did you want to show me?” he said.
“Pull up a chair.” She scooted over, and he rolled a chair to the desk and sat.
Her flowery scent wafted over him, and this close, he could see the smooth perfection of her skin.
An electrified heat spread to his groin.
That often happened in her presence. Getting hard had become an occupational hazard of working with her.
“I have three holograms to show you. The first is from the bank across from the alley entrance. The second is a compilation of several vids. I acquired all the footage I could of the route you took from the convention center to the alley and edited them together with the appropriate time sequence. The third one is a fortuitous find I got this morning.”
“What is it of?”
“Wait and see.” She smiled cryptically. “Okay. Vid one.” The 3D image of the alley entrance appeared atop her desk. “I tried to guess the time frame in which your attackers might have slipped into the alley ahead of you, so the vid begins twenty minutes before you left the convention center.
“I’ll fast forward through it because nothing much happens, but keep an eye on the pedestrians.”
“Watch for the attackers?”
“Yes.”
The hologram progressed. Fairly late in the evening, pedestrian traffic was light, but every few minutes, somebody strolled past the alley. It was pretty quiet. Pretty boring. “Nobody’s entering the alley,” he noted.
“No.” She kept her eyes on the time counter. Nineteen minutes into the holo-vid, she slowed it to normal speed. “Okay, now, here you are.”
His gut knotted as he watched himself approach the alley and enter.
“I’ll speed it up a little.” She zipped through several minutes and then slowed the vid. “Now, this.”
A drone careened into the alley. According to the counter, four minutes had passed since he’d entered. This is when I was being attacked.
Five minutes and thirty-nine seconds later, police charged into the alley.
It had only taken a little more than nine minutes to alter his life. “Nobody followed me in, and it doesn’t look like they arrived ahead of me.”
“Not unless they got there really, really early,” she agreed.
So, where did they come from?
“Let me show you the next one. It’s only five minutes.”
In the second holo-vid, he left the convention center and strode down the street, his gait brisk and purposeful.
He could see he kept an eye on his surroundings.
He passed a few people headed in the opposite direction.
They nodded at each other, but nobody paid him undue attention.
No one followed him or paced him on the other side of the street.
So, he definitely wasn’t followed. “The attackers had to have been in the alley already, or maybe they came out of one of the businesses backing up against the alley?” He didn’t know how he could have missed four men approaching him.
“That’s what one would think until you see the third hologram,” she said. “The alley isn’t straight. It’s winding. Around the bend from where you were attacked is the back entrance to a bar.”
“The men came from there?”
“No, but the bar caught them on camera.” The vacant section of the alley appeared. No people. “Wait for it,” she said.
Seconds later, three men, faces covered, came racing around the corner—and vanished into thin air. There one second, gone the next.
“What happened? Did the camera cut out?”
“No. I checked with the bar. The camera is operating fine. The men just vanished. I believe they did follow you into the alley, but they were cloaked. That’s why they seemed to appear out of nowhere.”
“Why didn’t they wink out when the police arrived?” he wondered aloud and then answered his own question. “Because the authorities would know they had cloaking devices, which are banned on Luturna.” And that could launch a much bigger investigation.
“Let me show you something else. You never saw their faces, right?”
“No. They had their faces covered, and it was dark.”
“It’s a little lighter outside the bar. One of the men looked straight into the camera before he vanished.” She rewound the vid, stopping it two seconds before the men disappeared. “Now, magnify.” She tapped a button on the controller to enlarge the image and focus on the assailant’s face.
His wraparound facial covering had fallen back a little, still obscuring his nose and jaw, but revealing his eyes and forehead. Riveting on the five nodules arcing across the assailant’s hairline, Ruyn swore. “He’s Prellim. A member of the galactic cartel.”