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So I got the tickets. I watched him, I watched Badger, I watched the door. The
man who sold me the tickets asked, "What's wrong with your friend?"
"Sleeping off too much fun," I said.
"Oh. Well, you seem awfully nervous."
"I had to take care of him while he was having too much fun. I'm tired and in
a bad mood." My voice was sharp and cold. I was sick of people looking at me
and seeing inside. Where was the Cadence Drake who never showed emotion, never
lost her composure, never gave in to nerves? Wherever she was, I
wanted her back.
I rejoined deGuerres.
"Any problem?"
"He was nosy. That seems to be my biggest problem today. Everyone is so damned
nosy."
"I'm not going to break your streak. Who did you see while you were here?"
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
I told him. He took handwritten notes on paper. I thought the process looked
slow and impractical, but I
also know that some of the things I do aren't entirely efficient. And I found
a certain pleasure in watching the even flow of bold black lines from his pen.
When I finished, he repeated the names back to me. "Mike, last name unknown,
the assistant day manager of the Espulin Hotel. Lucy Zabada, the assistant
director and, because of bizarre circumstances, director pro term of the
Freeport Department of Spaceship Registry. We found her manager's body
yesterday, incidentally. A particularly brutal murder that someone went to a
great deal of trouble to hide.
We're investigating that now, but haven't made our discovery public yet.
Kenjon Deel, the Offworld
Acquisitions manager for the Farm Bureau. Anyone else you can think of?"
I shook my head.
"How did you choose the Espulin Hotel?"
"The man in Customs recommended it and one other when we asked him what was
cheap and clean. It was the one within walking distance."
"Customs man," he said, writing that down. "We shouldn't have any trouble
finding him. Any chance you remember the name of the other hotel?"
I thought hard, but came up empty. "No."
"Could it have been the Daydreamer Inn?"
It had been. I nodded.
DeGuerres pursed his lips. "That's the other one where we've been losing
people. And you say every single one of these people passed you on to the
next?"
"I didn't think of it that way at the time. They all seemed very helpful.
But& " I nodded again, then told him about Lucy and the phone number, and
Badger's response, and everything else I could think of, right up to the phone
call from Lucy and the fact that she had been on her way to the hotel. I left
out only my reason for being in Freeport.
When I was finished, deGuerres smiled slightly and shook his head. "Shot him
to keep him from going."
"I just stunned him."
"Still a ballsy thing to do. Effective, too."
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
"But it leaves me without my backup, and with a hundred-plus kilos of dead
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weight to haul around. And
I don't imagine Lucy is going to be fooled by the hospital story for very
long."
"I don't suppose she'll be fooled for a minute. The question is, what is she
going to do when she figures out you're on to her and you ran. As for your
friend being backup, if he couldn't keep himself from running to her, he would
be worse than dead weight. He'd be a liability."
DeGuerres looked at his chrono and said, "If she's fast and smart and lucky,
she could be here at any time. You have another fifteen minutes before your
shuttle boards." He frowned. "Let's get both of you out of sight."
I nodded.
DeGuerres commandeered another of those rickety wheelchairs and we strapped
Badger into it. Then he led me out of the lobby, down a short corridor, and
into a small, roped-off waiting room. "This is reserved for VIPs and private
flights. We qualify as VIPs because I say so." He grinned at me.
Nerves and all, I managed to grin back.
I put Badgers and my bags down and dug through them. From mine, I pulled out a
detachable watersilk hood. It was navy blue, and if I tucked the ends of my
hair inside the back of my jumpsuit, pulled up the collar, and attached the
hood, my hair would be impossible to see. Then I wouldn't be a dark-skinned,
golden-haired woman, of which there seemed to be none in Freeport. I would
simply be a dark-skinned woman, and there were plenty of those.
I found Badger's hood in his bag, attached it, and pulled it down so that it
covered most of his face. I
leaned him slightly forward so that no one would be able to see that he was
vivid green, put his bag in his lap and tucked his hands beneath it, and hoped
that the little wheelchair belt wouldn't break.
DeGuerres gave me an approving smile. "Good idea. You aren't so obviously
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