Текст книги "Tripoint "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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"When he was offloading."

"Damn right when he was offloading. The market's just so smooth right now. Can you imagine a ship arriving and the market not showing a single change on the boards?"

He couldn't. The market always reacted. "I don't think so."

"Bravo. You don't think so."

"So what do you think?"

"Oh, just coincidence. Corinthianjust carries such a mix of average goods you just don't get a tick at all. Goods Miller warehoused the instant that ship hit system. And you still don't get a tick."

"Why doesn't station spot it?"

"Station may have spotted it. But it's not illegal for Miller to hold a shipment off the boards, either. They'rea transshipper. They don't have to declare in a free or a dutied port, not since the War. Transshipped goods are technically still in transit until they deliver them elsewhere."

"With the cargo broken up and dribbled out in patterns that don't make patterns."

"Brilliant. You must have gotten deviousness from his side."

"The hell I did. What are you going to do about it?"

"Just take a few pictures. " Marie lifted the camera that probably, he thought, had a close-up function that meant business.

And a couple of Corinthiancrewmen were looking their direction, maybe out of frame from what Marie saw.

"Marie. Marie, they're looking at us. Let's just walk."

"Nerves. All right. " Marie put the camera back in her pocket and they started away, but the men started across the dock, four of them.

"Damn," Tom said. "Marie,—"

"Just keep walking."

"We could go into a bar. It's safer."

"I don't like to be inplaces."

God. Marie was sane ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. And then you got the schitzy tenth percent.

"I don't care, we should get off the dock… get where we've got protection…"

Marie threw a look over her shoulder. Started running. He did, casting a fast look back, and they had, and he caught up to Marie, grabbed her arm as they were running and tried to drag her into the nearest bar, but Marie started fighting him and he let go and put on double speed as the Corinthiancrewmen came pounding up the deck behind them.

They knocked into a woman coming out of a bar, knocked her flat, and kept going. People were shouting.

Then he saw people start to run toward them from down the dock in the other direction, and realized it was Saja in the lead.

Marie started to change direction. "It's Saja!" he yelled at her, and grabbed her and ran for oncoming reinforcements.

But Corinthianpersonnel weren't giving up the chase. They reached Saja and three of the cousins, and Saja had pulled a length of light chain from his pocket, the cousins had come up with other contraband, and there wasn't time to think about anything but getting Marie out of there.

Except Marie wouldn't go, Marie had a piece of chain, too, and it whipped about and caught a Corinthiancrewman across the neck. There was a pile-up of bodies as the man went down, Marie went down, and the nearest bar emptied out more Corinthians.

"Security!" somebody yelled, on their side or Corinthian'sor the bystanders, he wasn't sure, only a number of people had mixed into it that weren't Corinthianor Sprite, people yelling that the cops were coming, about the time a fist came out of nowhere and hit him in the temple.

He couldn't see. He stumbled over somebody's leg or arm and went down, trying to fend off the attack with his uplifted arm, hearing chains flying and people yelling—he heard somebody yell cops, and look out, and he couldn't find Marie, couldn't find anything but the deck-plates. He scrambled for what he thought was a clear zone, and met what might be the frontage wall, he wasn't sure. Hands helped him up, held onto him as the dark gave way to hazy sight and an orbiting couple of red spots.

Flashing blue, then. The cops were coming in, breaking it up with stun-sticks and bare hands. He didn't see Marie. He didn't know what to do. They were hauling people out of the tangle on the deck and arresting them and he found space to retreat at his back, people just pushing past him to shout information, who'd swung, who'd done what, the cops were shouting to calm down, they wanted officers, and they wanted them now.

He heard Saja saying he was an officer, dammit, and Corinthians started it, and somebody else shouting it was Spriteand there was a crazy woman trying to kill their captain, but Marie wasn't anywhere in sight, Marie was loose somewhere and she was liable to do anything… or some Corinthiancould have dragged her off, he didn't know and he didn't take station police as going to listen to a spacer quarrel.

He had the chance. He just backed away, just turned and kept walking, dizzy, his head hurting. He wasn't aware of where he was walking, only it turned out to be toward Corinthian, and where they'd come from, and then he knew where Marie would go if she was loose. If she wasn't crazy, she'd want the evidence to prove to the universe Corinthianwas guilty and they'd had the motive to attack her, she'd fry Austin Bowe if it was the last and only thing she could do, and the evidence, if she couldn't get at Corinthian'sown data, was at an address.

His head hurt. He couldn't think of it. It was in the twenties on the same dock, and that was a long hike down from Corinthian'sberth at 10, but nobody was offering to stop him, he was just any spacer walking on the dock, staggering a little, but spacers did, on the Strip, that was why safe, moral stationers didn't come walking here, it was spacer territory, spacer logic, even with the cops… couldn't say they'd actually arrest anybody if nobody landed in hospital, just fine hell out of both ships, you didn't know, you couldn't predict…

Support column came up in his face. He grabbed it, leaned against it, head hurting, vision doing tricks again.

Couldn't blame Marie for running. She'd conned him. She'd used him. Made Mischa think everything was under control. She'd probably scammed Saja, too, with that trick of stepping back onto the transport, Saja'd had to wait for the next one.

But what did you expect of Marie? She was what she was. She didn't deserve to be in any psych ward, please God.

She'd pulled the same thing on Mischa twenty years ago. He wasn't any brighter.

She'd said she had trade information, she said she was working on Corinthiandoing something illegal, at least something borderline—she said if she could get some information out of the trade office,—and she had an appointment… everything looked good… but that wasn't where she'd gone. She'd come here…

Wandering the ever-night of the docks, the clash and crash of loaders, the echoing of distant voices. He was walking again. He didn't remember since when.

Abundant places to hide. Abundant places to lose oneself in, if one were determined, and Marie was that. Spacers passed him. He saw patches on sleeves but he didn't know the ships. Strange to him. And he'd never been a place in his life where that was true.

Past the frontage of a sleepover. He felt his hands sweating despite the cold, his heart pumping and not keeping up with the oxygen demand. Opposite berth 18, it was. Looking for the twenties, he said to himself, and saw a transport go past.

Saw a sign, not a big one. Hercules Shipping. Commercial district. And warehouses. The character of the zone changed that quickly. Suddenly it was all warehouses, some with open doors, cans standing inside in the light, most with doors shut.

Transshippers, Marie had said. Couldn't remember the name or the number, until he saw the sign.

Miller.

Miller Transshipping.

The doors weren't open. Looked closed, except shippers didn't ever close. No neon about the sign, easy to miss, on the frontage like that, with no lights. But Miller was the name, he was sure of it.

He tried the personnel entry, heavy door with no window. It was supposed to work on hydraulics, but it didn't, you had to shove it after the electric motor took it halfway, and it wasn't illegal to walk into an office and ask directions to some place: he could pretend he didn't know where Hercules Shipping was, he had his story all ready.

But nobody was in the office. The side door wasn't locked, either, and that led into the lighted warehouse.

Going there was a little chancier, but he could still say he was lost and looking for somebody… please God the vacancy in the office wasn't because Marie had done something, like killing somebody.

He was lost, he'd tell them, if he ran into workers inside. He'd gotten separated from his crewmates in the transport crush, he didn't know where he was.

He walked among tall shipping canisters, cold-hauler stuff, up in racks, like a ship's hold, only more brightly lit. The cans drank up heat from the air, made the whole warehouse bitter cold. They were covered in frost.

The rack-loader had stopped with a can aboard. It was frosted as the rest. He undipped his ID, used the edge to scrape the plate to find out what was listed in it… Marie wanted to know, and he wanted to be able to tell her. Prove he was on her side.

It said the origin was Pell. It said… he couldn't make out the contents, the label was faint and the plate kept frosting over again while he scraped thick greyed peels of ice off it, but it said it was cold-hold stuff, it said it was biologic, that was a check-box. It said food-stuffs. He was freezing where he stood, hadn't realized it was cold-hold goods filling the warehouse. He needed more than the insulated coveralls you used on the docks. Needed gloves, because his fingers were burning just peeling the frost off, and the can drank the heat out of his exposed skin, out of his eyes, so he didn't dare go on looking at it. Deep cold was treacherous: if you felt it do that and you didn't have a face-mask, you needed to get out.

A door opened behind him. His heart thumped. He heard voices, decided he'd better go ahead with his charade. So he clipped his ID back to his pocket and walked out to see who'd come in, to give his story about being lost.

Personnel came in wearing heavy coats, in gloves; then a handful of spacers in no more protection than he stood in—in the same green he'd seen on Corinthiancrew.

He decided to bluff it through, giddy and shivering as he was. "There you are," he declared. "I was wondering if there was someone in charge."

"What in hell are you doing in here?"

"Door was open," he said, walking toward them, scared as hell and trying not to show it. "Sorry. I thought there'd be somebody in the warehouse, if nothing else. " He didn't want Corinthiancrew to see the patch on his sleeve, please God, he just wanted to deal with the warehouse owners. "Lost my mates, got off at the wrong stop… I was supposed to go down to Hercules Shipping, I forgot the damn number…"

"He was with her," one of the spacers said.

Shit, he thought, desperate, and made a throwaway gesture, measuring the distance to the door. "I was with my crew, except I got off too soon. Sorry if I've inconvenienced anybody, I was just looking for a number…"

His legs were stiff from the cold. He wasn't sure he could run with any speed. The spacers came closer, the warehouse workers saying things about the dangers of cold cans, about not wanting any trouble on their premises.

Fine, he thought, he'd go through them, not the spacers. And he bolted for the door.

But the warehousers grabbed him, all the same, and swung him around to face the spacers. Six of them.

" Spritecrew," one of them said, and the young man who looked like an officer of some sort said, "Looking for an address, are you?" The young man walked up and undipped the ID from his pocket. Looked at it.

Clean-cut young officer. Stripes on his sleeve. Didn't look like as much trouble as the crew might be. Looked at the ID. Looked at him.

"Thomas Bowe-Hawkins."

Bowe, the pocket tab on the officer said. C. Bowe. Cousin of his, he thought, and didn't welcome the acquaintance.

"Well, well, well," the young man said. "Marie Hawkins' darling offspring. Search the place."

"She's not here."

The Corinthianclipped the tab back to his pocket, one-handed. Straightened his collar, a familiarity he didn't like.

"Thomas. Or Tom?"

"Suit yourself," he muttered. He was scared. He'd been in cousin-traps a hundred times. But there were a dozen ways to get killed in this one.

"Tommy Hawkins. I'm ChristianBowe. Papa's other son."

Otherson.

More than possible. He hadn't known, he hadn't guessed, and he looked at this Christian Bowe, wondering whether kinship was going to get him out of this or see him dead.

"Where's your mama?" Christian Bowe asked him. "Hmmn?"

"I don't know. She's not here."

"So you just went walking in the warehouses, did you? Looking for something in particular?"

"I know Miller's handling your stuff. I thought she might have come here. But she didn't."

"Come here for what?"

He didn't answer. One of the men came back from a circuit of the area. "He was scraping at the labels, " that man said. "Or somebody was."

"Marie Hawkins?" Christian shouted at the empty air. The voice echoed around the vast, cold warehouse, up among the racks. "You want your kid back?"

Marie didn't, Tom thought. Not that much.

Or maybe not at all. Echoes died into silence. He stood there, with two men holding on to his arms, and hands and face numb with the cold. Eyes were frosting around the edges, the stiffness of ice.

"He knows too much," somebody said, at his back.

"Don't know a thing," he said.

"The hell," Christian said, and turned his shoulder, hand rubbing the back of his neck, while he thought over what to do, Tom supposed, while all of them froze, but he was getting there faster.

"Put him out," Christian said then. He thought he meant out of the warehouse, and hoped, when the man holding his right arm quit twisting it.

But that man's hand came around and under his jaw, then. He knew the hold, tried to break it before it cut the blood to his brain, but he didn't have the leverage, they did, and the white suns in the overhead dimmed and faded out, quite painlessly.

—v—

DIDN'T KNOW WHERE HE WAS, then, except face down on the icy deck with a knee in his back, pressing his forehead against the burning cold of the decking. They taped his hands and ankles together. He yelled for help, and somebody ripped off some more tape and taped his mouth with it—after which, they threw some kind of cold blanket over him and rolled him in it, until he was a cocoon. He tried to kick and tried to yell out, figuring their beating him unconscious was no worse than smothering to death or freezing to death in the warehouse, if there was anybody to know.

But they picked him up, then, head and feet, and earned him a distance, through a doorway, he thought, before they dumped him on the deck. It was the office, he gradually decided, because he could feel the warmth in the air that got through the blanket, which was a source of cold, now, instead of warmth.

He heard them walking around him, talking about the transport rolling, how it had been down; he heard them cursing somebody named Jeff and wishing he'd hurry, but he hoped for maybe one of the company owners or a customer to come in, who'd be willing to call the cops and canny enough to get out the door. Now and again he gathered his forces to try to make noise in case somebody was in earshot, and they'd kick him half-heartedly, not with any force through the blanket, and once they told him they'd beat hell out of him if he didn't lie still.

Somebody did come in, just after that; he heard the door open and close; but it was the guy named Jeff, who said he'd got the stuff, that was all. He didn't know what they were talking about; but abruptly they grabbed him, unwrapped the blanket, unfastened his collar and shot him with a hypo in the back of the shoulder.

Damn you all, he wanted to say. He didn't know where he'd wake up—or if he'd wake.

He'd met a brother he didn't know he had. That wasn't a dream.

He'd lost Marie. He hoped they hadn't caught her. He didn't know if she could survive if they took her aboard Corinthian, if Bowe wanted a personal revenge.

He didn't know but what they were going to dump him in a can and put the lid on and ship him to Fargone or somewhere, where they'd find an unexplained frozen corpse. He stared up at the circle of interested faces. He was very, very scared, but he was losing it again…

The room dimmed. He could hear his own pulse, proving he was alive.

That was all.

Chapter Three

—i—

A BROTHER HE'D RATHER NOT HAVE met lying like a heap of laundry on the bunk in the brig, and, Christian said to himself, Austin was very possibly going to kill him, when Austin finished sorting out the fines and the penalties… none of which was his fault; but that didn't mean whoever approached Austin with a minor problem wasn't going to catch hell.

"I wouldn't go in there," Beatrice said, in the vicinity of Austin's office. As a mother, Beatrice wasn't the historic model… she'd dropped her kid between jumps, left him to cousin Saby's ten-year-old mercy, and nowadays abdicated him to Capella's, God help him. Right now Beatrice showed the ravages of a night on the docks, red eyes, hair trailing out of its usual tight twist—the glitz-paint was worn on one bare shoulder, saying Beatrice had been in bed when the search team found her or the beeper on the pocket-corn finally blasted her out of whatever lair she'd intended for the next several days.

So they'd all had cancelled plans. Capella was in a funk. Beatrice looked mildly sedated, just a little strange about the edges when she grabbed him and hugged him in the corridor, not Beatrice's maternal habit. Then she got a fistful of his hair and looked him closely in the eyes with,

"You've given us a problem. You've given Austin one."

"What was I to do? He'd been looking at the cans. And pardonnez-moi, maman, I didn't pick this particular problem. He's Austin's."

"He won't thank you."

"Pity."

He started to leave. Beatrice didn't let go her fistful of hair. "Christian. Keep your mouth shut. It will die down. We can leave this fool at Pell… send him to Earth, for that matter, and he won'tfind his way back."

"It won't die down. There's too broad a trail, and there's that woman…"

"Shit on that woman!"

"Shit on the whole situation, I—"

The door of Austin's office whisked aside. Austin loomed in the doorway. "Get in here!"

"Who, me?" He honestly wasn't sure, and mimed it. Austin grabbed him by the arm, jerked him through the door, and backhanded him hard into the wall, which left him nursing a sore ear and a personal indignation.

"It's not my damn fault!"

"Why could somebody just walk into the warehouse? Where in hell was the guard?"

"Millers' had people on duty, but they had to have somebody sign the damn repair order, I didn't know they were going to leave the office unlocked…"

Austin took a glancing swipe at him, total disgust. "All you had to do was have a guard on that door."

"I know that."

"You know that, sir, damn your impudence! You look to inherit Corinthian? You're a long way from it, at the rate you're going! We'll be lucky not to lose this port, andMiller, and all they do for us, you understand that? Does that remotely affect your social interests?"

"I was busting my ass, sir, getting Miller moving. I got us turned around, we just can't use any damn deckhand that comes along. We're loading, we're going as fast as the loader can roll, I've sent out the board-call. The only thing I didn't predict was Miller's man deciding to take a walk and leave the damn door unlocked—"

"Try predicting what we're going to do when the cops show up wanting Thomas Hawkins! Does that fit in your crystal ball? Spritecrew is all over the damn dock out there!"

"Looking for Marie, by my sources. Not interested in calling the cops, no more than we are. They're asking up and down the row, every bar, showing her picture. They probably think he's with her."

"Damn lucky they didn't arrest half the crew."

"I hear luck had nothing to do with it."

"Expensive luck. I'm not in a damned good mood, boy. Nobody's coming through those access doors or near our lock. Damned elusive woman. Damned persistent—and you snatch her kid? Thanks. Thanks a whole lot. It's just the luck we needed."

"Dump him in space. It's no different than leaving him lie in a warehouse full of cold cans. He was taking a tour of Miller's premises, for God's sake, it wasn't my doing, I don't know what more I could do than I did… if I'd left a body behind, you wouldn't be happy with me either, especially seeing he's your own offspring,—sir. I wouldn't want you to get the idea I wanted him dead."

"You're real close to annoying me, Christian."

"I did what seemed to me to be less liability."

"After you finally deigned to return a com call. After you gave that ship that much extra time to let Marie Hawkins loose on the dock."

"It's not my fault the transport broke down. It's not my fault everything on this God-forsaken station depends on some separate labor union—I could have fixed that damn transport with a screwdriver, Millercould have fixed the transport, we didn't know we had an emergency, and I wasn't that hard to track down, sir, I'd told Miller where I was and what general direction I was going. You could have called Miller."

"Miller isn't an officer on this ship. Damned right I called Miller, once Bianco saw fit to tell me the offloading was stalled."

"You tell Bianco what you thought about it?"

"Bianco'd told you. Youwere the officer of the watch, boy, and if you have any desire to stay an officer on this ship, I suggest you establish clear understandings with the duty officer of each watch, that you take threats against this ship damned seriously, that you don't screw with the guard I've put on our accesses, because I don't take for granted that woman won't try to slip us a bomb in one of the cans or walk onto this ship armed, do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir, but—"

"As long as they're searching for her… she hasn't gone to the cops or reported in. Just keep those cans moving. And let me tell you something—" Austin went to the door and opened it again. "Beatrice? Beatrice, I want you to hear this, too."

Beatrice came in… subdued, for Beatrice. She folded her arms and stood there glumly.

"I don't know how seriously you take the threat Marie Hawkins poses," Austin said. "But twenty years of threats and her skulking around out there don't add up empty in my book. She's got this kid—by her own letters, she's primed this kid of hers to get us, meaning the crew, andparticularly anybody attached to me. That kid stays in the brig. Nobody takes chances with him. I'm damned serious, Beatrice."

"What do you intend to do with him?"

"Take him as far away from Spriteschedules as we can."

"No paternal interest."

"Filed right behind your maternal instincts, Beatrice, don't push me. Tell your offspring use his head. I am tired. I am hung over… Beatrice, this wasn't the best wake-up I've had in a year."

Beatrice moved in for aid and comfort. It seemed a good moment to excuse oneself out the door. Christian slid in that direction, opened the door—Austin had it set on fast, and auto-dose—and walked—

"Boy. Don't screw up."

–out. The door whisked shut in his face, leaving him blank surface instead of the pair that were ultimately responsible—leaving words in his mouth, and nowhere to spit them.

He didn't hit the door. Or open it. He dropped the fist and walked the curving deck, headed for the lift.

He'd ordered the dockside crew to keep an eye out, see if they could spot this Hawkins woman—keep her off Austin's neck. No damn thanks from Austin, Austin never asked, Austin never looked to see who did what, it was just your fault if something went wrong.

Never Austin's fault. Never Austin's damned fault. Austin never made mistakes.

—ii—

CANS WERE OFFLOADING. You could hear the hydraulics working, distant, a comfortable, all's-well sort of sound.

Couldn't figure. What station? When had he gotten back to the ship? One spectacular blow-out in a bar, maybe, drunk till he couldn't figure…

Except he was face down on a bed that didn't feel like his own, and it didn't have sheets, and his mouth felt like fuzz inside while the outside felt skinned.

A moment of fright came back to him, shadows around him while he lay on a freezing deck trying to fight them off. He grabbed the edge of the bed and sat up in a hurry, legs off the edge, and a cold plastic line dragging from his wrist.

Hell, he thought, scared. Blurred eyes made out an unfamiliar room, green, not white, an unfamiliar blur of metal grid in front of him, and a spinning of his head and a queasiness in his stomach said it hadn't been a good experience that put him in this unfamiliar place. The station brig, maybe. Maybe the cops had come and arrested everybody, and Marie…

Marie was still out there. Maybe she'd gotten away, but he hadn't, and he couldn't remember everything about how he'd come here, just the warehouse and the cold, and people around him.

People. Corinthiancrew.

And there was a cold metal bracelet around his right wrist, and a plastic-sheeted cable going up to where the wall met the ceiling, which he couldn't make out the sense of, except the metal grid where the front wall ought to be, and the rest was any crewman's ordinary accommodation, without sheets, without personal items, without anything on the walls, or any internal com unit—just a patch on the wall where one might have been taken out, and nobody'd cared to paint it, or anything else people had scratched up… skuzzy walls, skuzzy panels, where previous occupants had scratched initials and obscenities.

He didn't remember any station cops.

It wasn't Viking's brig. It wasn't the legal system that ran this graffiti-scarred cell. It was Corinthian. He'd become a hostage for something, or a prisoner Corinthianhad some reason to keep, or God knew what else.

He staggered up, shaky in the knees and immediately aware the cell wasn't precisely on the main axis of the ship. He grabbed the cable that trailed from his wrist and gave it a jerk that burned his palms—but it didn't give. It went out a little aperture at the join of wall and ceiling, and it was securely anchored somewhere the other side of the wall.

His breath came short. It might be the anesthetic they'd shot him with. It might be the exertion. It might be the beginnings of panic, but he couldn't get enough air to keep the room from going around as he stumbled to the metal grid and tried to slide it one way and the other.

It didn't give, either, not even so much as to show what way it couldmove when it opened.

There was, at the other end of the narrow space, the ribbed panel that, aboard Sprite, rolled back to give access to the bathroom, and there was a trigger-plate. He leaned against the wall there and pressed it, and the panel rolled back, making itself the side wall of the bath.

There was a sink, a toilet, a vapor closet for a shower, same facilities his own cabin had. He punched the cold water. It gave a meager amount and shut itself off. He punched the hot, and it wasn't, but it shut itself off.

Not the ritz, he thought distractedly. He felt better that the bath worked. At least it wasn't deliberately badtreatment—they hadn't left him to freeze, they hadn't beaten him unconscious: they must have sent to the ship for what they'd dosed him with; and, aside from a slight nausea and a frost-burn on his fingers and the side of his face, he wasn't exactly hurt… but the cable crossed his legs every time he took a step or reached for anything, telling him he wasn't free, he wasn't all right, they didn't intend him to get loose, and they weren't doing what they'd done for his convenience.

More… he didn't know what might be going on outside, or whether they'd also caught Marie, or what his crew might be doing.

Not much, he thought, trying to be pragmatic. A, Mischa didn't give the proverbial damn, B, if Mischa did give a damn, Marie would still be Sprite'sfirst worry for very practical reasons, and, C, if Mischa did decide to do something about it, Spritedidn't hold an outstandingly high hand.

Unless Marie had come up with the evidence Marie had said she was looking for.

Marie lied without a conscience.

But Marie had brought a camera, Marie had committed every subterfuge she'd committed with the simple, predictable notion of getting to Corinthian'sdock—but whether the camera was an excuse to do it or the reason for doing it, he didn't know. She'd said there were things she wanted to ask the station trade office, and maybe she'd wanted to gather evidence enough to be allowed to get at station records, or to make someone else take a look…

He didn't know. He couldn't know from here. But if Marie was in fact on to something, he knew what motive Corinthiancould have for taking him and holding on to him, at least until they were ready to leave port, or until it was clear Marie couldn't prove anything.

Only hope they hadn't caught Marie. Only hope Marie hadn't done something to lose whatever leverage she had with Mischa or with Viking station authorities, or whoever could get him out of here.

He found himself walking the length and width of the cell, staggering as he was, telling himself he was all right, Marie wouldn't let him stay here, Marie would move whatever she had to move to get him out—telling himself they couldn't have caught her, Marie was slippery as hell, that was how he'd gotten into this in the first place, and something was going to get him out, Corinthiancouldn't just kidnap somebody and get away with it, and they couldn't have the motives with him they'd had with Marie. Surely not. Please God, that wasn't even a reasonable thought.

He heard someone walking in the corridor, heard someone come near the cell. He went to the bars of the grid, leaned against them to try to see.

A young man. Blond hair, sullen expression, a face and a body language that jolted into recognition… the warehouse.

Corinthian.

Christian.

Brother.

"Alive, after all," Christian said. "So happy to be here. I can tell."

"Happier to be out of here. What're my chances?"