SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (10 page)

Pickles remind her of normality.

Luka’s touch jolts her out of the daydream, taken by surprise when he kneels down beside her and gently squeezes her knee.

“El, we’ve known each other since we were kids, and I’ve never done anything to hurt you. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Silver wants to be mad, but she’s finding it increasingly difficult to keep hold of her anger. She’s never been any good at accepting help, and this whole awful situation is no exception.

Luka’s warm hand slips around her cold, slender fingers and he takes her hand in his, pressing her skin against his lips.

A kiss. Brief, and not in the least bit sexual.

It erases some of her tension, at least.

There was a time when Maydevine had encouraged her to seriously accept Luka romantically, though she’d never been completely on board with the idea. Much to Maydevine’s chagrin, she and Alex had quickly become inseparable; a love that no earthly forces could ever tear asunder.

Until now.

Until her banishment.

Silver tries to ignore those thoughts, for the sake of her own sanity.

“What kind of job?” she says at last, directing her question to Maydevine.

Maydevine finishes his cigarette and tosses it over the side of the building.

“My predecessor meant well, but his Division management skills left something to be desired. The most wanted list is out of control—it looks like a census record. Every Agent in the Division is out trawling for Dodgers from dawn till dusk, but their efforts are barely making a dent.”

Dodgers.

Fringers with three strikes on their record and a warrant out for their enforcement.

Silver doesn’t care. “What do you want me to do? Start an amnesty rally?”

Maydevine ignores her sarcasm.

“My first call of duty is to generate a reliable network of affiliates within the Fringe District. A group of people who know the lay of the land and understand the nuances of the indigenous population.”

Silver pitches a tent with her eyebrow. “Snitches?”

Maydevine sighs. “I was going to call them fact checkers, but your reductive, vernacular interpretation is accurate enough.”

Silver shakes her head, not interested in the semantics of it.

“Either way, I won’t be of much use to you. I know my way around the District well enough, but these people are crazy off their meds—they’ll never talk to me.”

“Perhaps not, but you have muscle. You’re combat trained; you could find a needle in a haystack. I’ve seen you hunt Chimera, don’t forget, and human behavior can be just as predictable.”

“You want me to hunt humans?”

“For a bounty.”

Silver sits on that for a moment. Being a bounty hunter does carry an odd sort of appeal that suits her venatically oriented mind.

“You have skills,” Maydevine continues. “I’d like you to use them.”

“Besides, we want to keep you all lubed up,” Luka adds, with a smile. “Otherwise you’ll be all rusty by the time you get repatriated.”

Lacking the energy to argue with Luka’s optimism, she pulls her hands away from him and deflects to another topic.

“If I’m not under arrest, why the jewelry?” She pulls the handcuffs taut against the arm of the chair. “I don’t deserve this bullshit.”

Luka does the honors and releases her. “We didn’t want you to bolt again.”

“You’re assholes, the pair of you. Did you clear any of this with the Governor?”

Maydevine shrugs. “My responsibilities as Commissioner include the management of the annual Police Division budget, so, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve just made you a legitimate Division expense.”

Tricky loophole, Silver thinks, as Maydevine checks his watch and determines he’s late for a meeting.

“I have to be in the Governor’s office in twenty minutes.” He turns to Luka. “Buy her lunch and talk specifics.” Back to Silver. “We’ll get dinner later in the week. Celebrating your first bounty, I hope.”

“I haven’t technically agreed yet, you know.”

“No? Then why are you still here?”

Her silence is answer enough. He gets up and stretches his back, giving no warning before grabbing her by the shirt and hauling her onto her feet. Pulling her into an embrace, the somewhat public display of uncharacteristic affection makes her self-conscious and she fails to reciprocate.

“Suit yourself.” He plants a kiss on the top of her head and pushes her away, gently. “Still too stubborn for your own good.”

“I wonder who I got that from?” she smiles.

At last, something genuine. Underneath the anger and the bitterness, something real seeps through into her expression and Maydevine is comforted by it.

It means he hasn’t lost his daughter.

Not yet.

About to turn and walk away, he hesitates. There’s one more question he knows he has to ask.

“What’ll I tell him?”

Silver knows he’s not talking about the Governor.

Her stomach flips.

Alex.

If he’s given even an ounce of hope, Silver knows he’ll wait for her. The most faithful and true person she has ever met, Alex is unquestionably loyal. He’d never give up on her, not in a million years—and that’s just not fair. The wait could be eternal, and what kind of life would that be?

She doesn’t share Luka’s hope for her repatriation. She doesn’t dare to put her hopes into such a fragile basket, so she puts her big girl pants on and summons the last of her quickly depleting sense of reason.

Preparing to speak, she swallows, the lump in her throat so large she feels she might choke.

“Tell him I’m dead.”

Reciprocity

At the bar of a Fringe District den of inequity, the hold-all slung over her shoulder, Silver flips open the Police Division file given to her by Luka over a lunch of steak and fries. Not in the mood to roust trouble here, she’s careful to keep the Police Division logo and Omega emblems concealed.

The face staring back at her from the details is an average looking man in his mid-thirties. A polymath extraordinaire, this man who calls himself Trip has his hands in some of the biggest perversion and exploitation markets in the Fringe District.

Drug dealer.

Ripper.

Arsonist.

Murderer.       

His enforcement will be no big loss to the world—if Silver can catch him.

Now, though, she’s finding it hard to know precisely where to begin. If it were as simple as scouring the Fringer community for information, the Police Division would have locked this dick down a long time ago. Trouble is, Fringers don’t talk. Not to Police Division, not to anybody.

Silver massages her temple. From a private, back room stripper lounge a deep bass pumps out dirty, industrial beats, obscuring the sounds of sex and violence. With every quaking thump, the sawdust covered floor shakes. Little flakes of wood leap up from the boards in unison, except for the patches where they’ve turned into paste, soaking up piles of vomit, blood or urine.

She needs painkillers. Since she woke up, a pain has been gradually building in her over-worked and under-rested mind. Unfortunately, there are no pharmacies in the Fringe District.

No legal ones, anyway.

Eventually, the bartender makes his way to her and takes her order. Without looking up from the file, and without even attempting to raise her voice over the hardcore din, Silver points at a bottle of New World vodka on the shelf behind him.

Obliging, the bartender sets a glass—or, rather more precisely, an old, rusty tin—down in front of her, but she pushes it away. Again, she points to the bottle. Eager to cut out the inevitable back and forth of glass after glass, Silver rests her wrist down upon the bar, her scar exposed for him to debit her tag for the cost of the entire bottle.

Payment approved, he passes her the bottle and she snatches it up, looking around the room for a quiet table. A suitable target acquired, she scoops the file into her hand and weaves her way through the room to an empty booth in a relatively secluded corner. Pouring over the file’s details, she tries to block out the ‘music’ and the roar of a pit fight in the basement below.

So many distractions.

Not enough liquor.

First thing’s first. Trip deals primarily in methamphetamine, and that requires a warehouse—somewhere for his Chemist to work uninterrupted. Not only that, but since he’s also in the rip trade, he needs a space to carry out minor medical procedures and a way to easily dispose of the corpses should anything go wrong.

Halfway into the vodka, someone bumps against Silver’s table. She looks up to find a Jade resting on the table’s edge, her legs spread wide apart and a client in between them.

A Hunter, no less.

Silver would glare at him, but his eyes are squeezed tight shut and he’s not paying any attention to his surroundings—or to his audience.

The Jade, on the other hand, turns to Silver with a big, wide smile. “Hi.”

Silver smiles politely back. “How’s your day going?”

Leaning back, looking at Silver upside down, the Jade shrugs. “Same old, same old; you know how it is.”

Silver shakes her head. “Not really.”

More vodka.

More thrusting.

Still ignored by the Hunter.

Silver tries to steady the gently rocking table against her foot, but it does little to help.

“Upstairs is full,” the Jade sort of apologizes for their interruption.

Her client pushes her legs wider apart, causing one stiletto heel to strike Silver in the shoulder before the Jade manages to reposition herself, draping her ankle over Silver’s shoulder instead.

Silver clenches her jaw and takes a deep breath.

Thank fuck for the vodka.

As Silver reaches for the bottle, the Jade catches sight of her recently stitched wrist.