Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [30]
Dan riffled the wad and vented a long, amazed whistle.
Michiko said, "Drug ring, do you think? Feelie-dream smugglers?"
"It could be-gods, it could be anything. Congratulations, Michiko. Shouldn't wonder if there's a promotion in this." Staring at the envelope with more respect, Dan belatedly pulled a pair of thin plastic gloves from his pocket and donned them before he picked up the note. It seemed to be printed on half a flimsy.
Dan read aloud, "We must trust that you know what you are doing. Please contact us in person as soon as possible." He turned the note in the light. "No address, no date, no names, no signature. Nothing. Veery suspicious."
Michiko bent to look Jin sternly in the eyes. "Where did you meet these bad men, child?"
"They weren't bad men. They were just . . . men. Friends of a friend."
"Where were you taking all this money?"
"I didn't know it was money!"
Michiko's eyebrows rose. "Do you believe that?" she asked her partner.
"Yah," said Dan, "or he might have taken off with it."
"Good point."
"I wouldn't have! Even if I had known!"
"No one can threaten you now, Jin," Michiko said more gently. "You're safe."
"No one did threaten me!" Jin had never felt less safe in his life. And if he blabbed, Suze and Ako and Tenbury and everyone who had befriended him wouldn't be safe, either. And Lucky and the ratties and the chickens, and big, beautiful Gyre . . . Lips tight as he could press them, Jin stared back at the officers.
"Call Youth Services to pick up the boy," said Michiko. "The rest of the evidence had better go to Vice, at a guess."
"Yah," said Dan, his gloved hands sliding Jin's precious envelope, the wad of cash, and the note into a transparent plastic bag.
"My animals," Jin whispered. Such a simple task Miles-san had entrusted him with, and he'd screwed it all up. He'd screwed everything up. Between his scrunched eyelids, tears began to leak.
With a grating noise and a puff of powder, the bolt popped out of the concrete.
"Finally," breathed Roic.
Chapter Five
Roic waited for dusk to deepen, and for the occasional echo of footsteps along the gallery to fall silent for a good long time, before venturing a cautious reconnoiter. The door lock yielded to force, or rather, the flimsy doorframe splintered and gave up the mechanism whole, more loudly than he would have liked, but no one called out or came to investigate. Crouching to slip beneath any view from the windows, bare feet silent on the boards but for an occasional tiny clink from the chain swathing his ankle, he discovered that the gallery wrapped the rectangular building on three sides, with stairs down on either end. About a dozen rooms like his lined this level. There was no third storey.
Another building, with faint yellow gleams leaking from its windows, lay down the slope to the right. Obscured in the trees behind it seemed to be a parking area, but a marked lack of security lighting made the details invisible-both to Roic and to anyone passing overhead in a lightflyer, he guessed. Right now he was grateful for the shadows. He slipped around to the far end. A third building, vaguely shedlike, sat low and black in the gloom down at the border of the level scrubland. Roic wondered if there'd been a fire, to so clear out the crowded conifers.
Roic's heart nearly failed him when a voice above his head hissed, "Roic! Up here!"
He jerked his head back to see a pale smudge of a face peering over the edge of the roof. A long black braid swung forward over the figure's shoulder, triggering recognition and relief. "Dr. Durona? Raven? So they got you, too!"
"Sh! Not so loud. We were in the same lift van. You were out cold. Come up, before someone comes back." A pair of lean arms extended downward; Raven was apparently lying prone. "Careful of my hands . . ."
With no more noise than a grunt and a scrape, Roic scrambled up to the flat rooftop. Their careful foot-slides making no thumps that could be heard through a ceiling below, they took shelter of sorts in the lee of a vent housing.
Raven Durona