Hidden

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Someone ought to kill him.

Tatiana turned to face the bleak silhouette of the dilapidated shack that housed Abbott's General Store. The entire rickety building listed to one side, shored up by a pile of refuse and scrap nearly as tall as the shack itself. To the back was a yard cordoned off with barbed wire, illuminated by the pallid glow of a single lumilight. The small area was dotted with a half-dozen snowscooters-in diverse stages of disrepair-which Abbott would be happy to sell to the unwary purchaser.

The bitter wind swirled around her, whipping her hair against her cheeks as her gaze cut to her own scooter, a Morgat, sleek, black and brand spanking new, faster than a plascannon shot. Handy in her current line of work. The retrieval business favored those who were proficient at a quick getaway; survival depended on it.

She turned back to the sprawling conglomeration of architectural misfortune that housed the store, and beside that, Abbott's Inn and Pub. Two stories high on one side, not quite one story on the other, the whole building looked like a house of cards patched together from a bunch of mismatched decks. The owner, Boyd Abbott, sold everything from clothing to food to snowscooters. Those who made a special request could purchase women or young girls ... even young boys. Willing. Unwilling.

Abbott stocked it all. He was a sick, greedy bastard, through and through.

So, yeah, someone ought to kill him.

Tatiana weighed the benefits and detriments, considered whether that someone should be her. Flip a plastitech vid-credit? Heads-just break something. Tails-kill him.

Logic decided against either option. She had a job to complete, and killing Abbott wasn't in the three-step plan. Besides, she couldn't save everyone, and she couldn't simply go around breaking bones every time she ran up against shoddy morals and obsidian black ethics. Two lessons she'd been quick to learn since her bizarre change of circumstance six months past.

For an instant, the thin boundary between present and past blurred. Memories spewed from their dank pit like spittle from a rabid dog. She remembered the acrid stink of human death, the horrific sensation of life sifting through her fingers.

She had killed.

Never again. A vow she knew she would break, over and over.

Some things just ... were.

But killing Abbott senior would only open the door for Abbott junior-a sadistic creature with a distinct aversion to personal hygiene-to step up and take his father's place, a far more vicious master to those in his keeping than ever his father had been.

It had taken her all of a single day's freedom to understand that there were no reliable laws to protect the weak, the innocent. There was no real justice here in the Northern Waste. The New Government Order postured and pretended, but since Bane's death, the veneer of respectability had worn thin. Worn clean through, in places.

Bane had been a despot, the puppeteer yanking the strings of the president of the New Government Order, and his death had opened the door for every type of slime to crawl out from under every rock, anxious to take his place.

Gavin Ward had simply been able to slither faster than everyone else.

She sighed. If it hadn't been Ward who stepped up, it would have been someone else equally evil. In truth, the Order was just a corrupt serpent holding an entire hemisphere in its venomous jaws. If she yanked out one jagged fang, ten more would just grow in its place.

When she'd first gotten free, she'd done her share of yanking. And that had been just plain dumb, because it had drawn a deadly sort of attention.

Leaving a trail of bodies wasn't a great way to hide from Gavin Ward, the guy who wanted to chain her in a lab and slice her into little, usable genetic bits.

That was another thing she'd learned. Stay at least a step ahead of Dr. Ward. Wasn't she just the quick study?

She crossed the poorly lit lot, noting the snowscooter tucked in the narrow spot by the front door of the general store. Clean, well-maintained, but old technology, at least a decade out of date. Probably belonged to a Northern Waste settler in for supplies.

She pushed open the door and stepped inside, scanning the interior, mentally listing the alternate exits-a boarded up window behind the sales counter, a darkened hallway leading to the back door at the rear of the building, a second window to her left, barred and wired for security. The narrow aisles wending between the stacked shelves were empty, save for one guy about halfway across the store. She figured him for the settler who belonged with the outdated scooter she'd seen on the way in.

Still, she made certain to stay aware of his position as she checked out the remainder of the store. A girl could never be too careful.

Boyd Abbott stood behind the counter, long wisps of sandy hair scraped over his shiny scalp from one side to the other, glistening with the grease he'd used to anchor them in place. She thought he might not have bathed since she'd seen him last, some six weeks past.

He had a leer on his face and a Bolinger plasgun nestled in his shoulder, the barrel pointed at her head.

She spread her hands, palms forward.

"Just looking for information," she said, and couldn't help smiling as he studied her for less time than it took to draw breath before lowering the Bolinger. He stored it on the shelf beneath the counter, an action that was neither cautious nor wise. She could have her knife free and flying, could let it find a nice home smack- dab in the middle of his shriveled heart, before he could manage to pull that gun up again.

The prospect held definite appeal, but she really was here for information. He wasn't much use to her dead.

"Nothing's free," Abbott said, his gaze flicking over her. She knew what he saw: beauty, innocence, female vulnerability. The perfect symmetry of her face, the sculpted cheeks, the lush and sexy mouth. But appearances could lie. In the past six months she had learned that it was always her eyes-translucent gray, pale and eerie, startling against dark lashes-that gave her away, made people call her spooky.

So she rarely looked them in the eye. No reason to offer a warning.

Abbott's gaze paused to linger at her breasts and thighs. She almost laughed. As if he could actually see anything through the puff of her parka.

"Cash or ... trade?" he asked, widening his leer to show off ground-down stubs of brown teeth.

"Cash." Stalking forward, she carefully set down a short stack of interdollars and used her index finger to push them across the counter.

Abbott reached for them, avaricious bastard, but she slapped her palm down hard, trapping both his hand and the money against the pitted and yellowed Formica countertop. She would have preferred not to touch him, but she wasn't about to let him snag the cash without offering the information she needed first.

His gaze jerked to hers, startled and a little wary.

"You're stronger than you look." He grunted as he tried to pull free.

"So I'm told." She eased the pressure enough that he could pull his hand from beneath hers. But he left the interdollars where she'd put them.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement, and she turned just enough to keep an eye on Abbott as well as the guy meandering along the aisles doing a little shopping. He was tall, draped in layers of tattered thermal gear that obscured both face and form.

It was a typical outfit for a settler or a rebel. They reused what ever they could, slicing up worn garments and patching them together to form draping robes that insulated them against the cold. Strategically placed slits allowed freedom of movement-and amazing opportunities for concealed weaponry.

She did a quick scan from top to toe. No obvious weapons-with obvious being the key concept-but if he was packing a plasgun, it was a small one. No knife hilt at the top of either boot, so he wasn't carrying there. Maybe a sheath at the small of his back. He had to have a weapon somewhere. In the Waste, you carried or you died.

He didn't appear to be particularly interested in her, which made her only slightly less interested in him. She viewed anyone and everyone as a threat. A half step to the left, and she shifted her position so she could keep both Abbott and the ragged settler in sight.

Sliding the top interdollar off the pile, she eased it across the counter, pulled her hand away, and let it lie there.

Abbott snatched it up and tucked it away.

"Gun truckers. Yasha and Viktor Zhuk," Tatiana said, her voice low. "I heard tell that they usually come by on Tuesdays for a little special entertainment. You expecting them to night?"

Crawling his fingers forward until they rested against the edge of the stack, Abbott narrowed his eyes. "Who wants to know?"

She pushed the money a little closer to him and forced a smile. "Their baby sister. Can't you see the family resemblance?"

A short huff of laughter carried from her left, and her head jerked up to find the settler studying her from about ten feet away. There wasn't much of him to see. Only his eyes were visible beneath the wrapped layers of his thermal gear. But something about him drew her.

His laugh. She liked the sound of his laughter.

Her gaze locked on his. Blue. His eyes were blue, beautiful, night dark, layered with variegated shades, colder than the depths of the ocean that went on forever beneath the ice.

They were crinkled a little at the corners, so she figured he was smiling. Guess he liked her sense of humor.

An odd combination, the hint of that smile with those cold, cold eyes.

Tatiana drew a breath, tried to read him, opening her senses to the ghosting of electric current that was the basis of thought. She kept her attention divided between him and Abbott, her fingertips resting on the stack of interdollars, but her focus was on the rag- draped stranger.

Opening herself a little wider, she dredged for a whisper of the electrochemical spark that was responsible for neuronal action. But there was nothing, nothing but endless darkness. She couldn't read a damned thing from this guy, and the effort made her skull feel like it would split in two.

Slagging nosy settler.

"This isn't a three-way conversation, asshole," she muttered. "Don't you have something else to occupy your attention?"

It was rare for her to slam up against a wall like that when she tried to grab another's thoughts. It happened. But it was rare. And she didn't like it.

She took a step closer to the counter, aware that the settler tracked her as she moved, that he studied her with more than a little curiosity.

Look away. Dismiss him. There was no reason for her to feel even a whisper of interest in who he was. Some settler come to Abbott's for supplies or-since he was wandering the aisles picking up absolutely nothing-maybe he was here to get laid. Either way, she shouldn't waste a thought on him.

So why was she?

"You expecting them or not?" she asked, turning back to face Abbott. She could just grab the answer from his thoughts. He was as easy to read as a holo-book. Problem was, his thoughts were as filthy as the smog over Port Uranium, and she just did not want to crawl around in all that ooze.

The settler ambled off toward the front of the store, and she was glad of that. Something about him made her nervous. Not a feeling she particularly liked. She shifted slightly to keep him in her sights.

"Yeah, I'm expecting Viktor and Yasha." Abbott snaked another interdollar off the pile, and she let him. "I got in some nice fresh meat, young, just the way they like it." He jerked his chin toward the narrow hallway that led from the store to the inn. "They should be here any minute."

She let him snatch the remaining interdollars and squirrel them away beneath the counter, taking care not to touch him again. It would take an ocean's worth of water to remove the feeling that he'd covered her in slime.

"See? That was an easy way to earn some extra cash." Undoing the zip-seam on her pocket, she reached in and withdrew a large vial of fine white crystals. "Sugar," she said. "The real stuff. Not sim-tose or neo-fructose. Genuine sucrose. A full five hundred milliliters."

Abbott eyes widened and he tracked her every move as she popped the seal, carefully poured a couple of grains into her palm and offered them to him. He shivered with excitement as she transferred them, brushing the sugar off her palm into his, again careful not to contact his skin.

He closed his eyes in ecstasy as he licked the sugar from his palm and the taste melted on his tongue.

"Answer one more question and you can have this." She tipped the vial to catch the light, masking her disgust of him. "Shiny, isn't it?"

A woman's desperate cry echoed from the back hallway, and then the sound of a sharp slap and another, followed by hysterical sobs.

Abbott spun. "Gag her!" he yelled. "I don't wanna hear this shit. Save it for the customers." He turned back toward Tatiana and muttered sullenly, "Fresh meat. They always scream. Then they break, and once they do, there's no more screaming. But guys like Yasha and Viktor don't like 'em broken." He shrugged. "Gotta please the customer, ya know?"

Tatiana strangled the urge to reach across the counter and break his face. Kill him, and his son would only take his place, she reminded herself.

"So what do you want to know? I don't know nothing else about Yasha and Viktor."

"What I want to know about them, I can ask them myself when they get here," Tatiana said, keeping her tone level and her hands low, though what she really wanted to do was wrap them around Abbott's scrawny neck and twist, nice and hard and sharp. Hear the satisfying crack. Now that would be a fine way to end her day. "This little treasure"-she lifted the hand that held the sugar-"is a reward for an entirely different set of right answers." Her tone hardened. "I'm looking for Tolliver. Tell me what you know."

Abbott frowned, the greedy glow in his eyes dimming, and Tatiana's hopes sank.

"Tolliver? A place? A person? A new lock-mech device?" Abbott demanded. "What are you asking?"

"Obviously nothing you know the answer to."

"Maybe I do. Maybe I do. This Tolliver ... person, place or thing? Give me a hint."

Tatiana blew out a huffing breath. He manifested no physiological changes to suggest he was anything but genuinely stymied.

Clearly, he had no idea, and he was getting testy because she'd phrased her question in a way that didn't let him offer bullshit as the answer.

She tamped down her disappointment. She'd thought for certain that if anyone would know who Tolliver was, where he was, it would be Boyd Abbott. Very little went on in this barren corner of the Waste that he didn't know about. Unfortunately, he apparently had no clue who Tolliver was, no clue about his link to the stolen equipment that the news had been reporting for the past three days over the broadband, and no clue that Ward's top dog had a hidden facility nearby where he vivisected people for jollies.

Tolliver. She didn't even know the bastard's first name. All she knew was that he was a scientist, some sort of gene tic and infectious-disease specialist. And he worked for Ward.

She'd already tried Bob's Truck Stop, and Jenny's Whore house at Gladow Station. Like them, Abbott knew nothing.

His gaze tracked the vial of sugar, and she took a second to enjoy the sadistic plea sure of letting him think it was beyond his grasp.

But the truth was, she didn't need it, and didn't want to carry it with her. What she did need were supplies.

"Since you can't answer my question"-she gently placed the vial on the counter, but kept her fingers resting lightly on the seal-"I'll take the value of the sugar in supplies."

Abbott rubbed his hands together, his demeanor perking up, and he stated a ridiculously low figure as an opening sally. Her heart wasn't in the exchange, but on principle she haggled the sum up to a more acceptable level.

With the deal done, she quickly gathered what she needed, settled her account, and left the store, shouldering past the rag-swathed settler on her way out. He didn't exactly block her path, but he didn't step out of her way, either. And as she passed him, she was close enough to get a close view of those incredible dark blue eyes.

With a shake of her head, she stepped into the frigid air, barely noticing the slap of it.

What was she doing mooning over the color of some guy's eyes?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Hidden by Eve Kenin Copyright © 2008 by Eve Kenin. Excerpted by permission.
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