So far, the firm had been able to keep such deals secret.

But that wouldn"t last.

One story could exist out there and over time, it would become little more than a rumor. But another story, then another, with other reporters chasing the information or just repeating it, would make the damage substantial.

WSX would survive, but it would be reduced to a standard law firm, not one of the most powerful ent.i.ties in the Earth Alliance.

Justinian Wagner didn"t want to head a standard law firm. He liked the power he wielded. Six months ago, when his parents died and his brother Disappeared, he had guaranteed that he would be the most powerful man in Armstrong.

He"d never thought he could lose his power base by losing the influence his law firm had. He"d never thought of that. Until last night. When he first watched Ki Bowles.

9.

Before he could find and watch the report Ki Bowles made before her death, Nyquist had to report to the First Rank Detective Unit. His boss, Andrea Gumiela, had sent him several urgent messages through his links, which he got the moment he stepped outside the Hunting Club"s protective grounds.

She wanted to know how the investigation was proceeding. Then, when Nyquist hadn"t answered any of her urgent messages, she demanded to see him the moment he left the grounds.

Normally, he would have sent a message across his own links, explaining the problem with the Hunting Club and asking her to wait. But this wasn"t a normal case.

He needed Gumiela, not just because he was freshly back to work, but because she liked handling the media. And the media would be all over this case.

The unit was on the fifth floor of the First Detective Division, not far from the City Complex. The law enforcement buildings surrounded the City Complex like a protective ring, with all of the divisions having their own buildings.

Gumiela"s office was in the center of the First Rank Detective Unit. Many of the newer detectives had offices-or, more properly, cubicles on this floor, and she had learned that to control them, she had to be in the center of them.

So she moved her office from a lush suite on the top floor to several large central offices in the middle of the First Rank Unit. She no longer had a spectacular view, but she controlled her troops better.

Nyquist stepped inside the unit, wincing at the smell of burnt coffee. During his rehabilitation, DeRicci had given him a taste for real Earth-grown coffee. Her job paid ten times his, and because of that-and because she had been a detective herself once-she indulged herself in all kinds of luxuries.

Nyquist couldn"t care about most of them, but he could do with some real coffee now.

He stopped at the common table, put some money in a nearby jar, and helped himself to the c.r.a.p that pa.s.sed for real in the detective unit. Then he grabbed a large handful of crackers, knowing they would probably be all he"d get to eat for hours.

He was chewing on them as he rounded the corner into Gumiela"s office.

Because the office had subsumed three smaller offices, it had an odd octagonal shape. Initially, there had been no windows, but Gumiela had had a few installed. They overlooked the main detective unit, where the newbies sat at their barely private desks, trying to overcome the caseloads that would destroy a more experienced detective.

Gumiela watched her entire squad closely. DeRicci had hated her when she worked for her-and still held a grudge. Nyquist didn"t like the way Gumiela micromanaged, but he realized somewhere along the way that Gumiela was the best chief of detectives the city had ever had.

The case closure rate since she had been promoted had gone up, the crime rate down, and the number of career criminals removed from Armstrong"s street staggering.

Whether or not Nyquist agreed with Gumiela"s methods, they certainly got results.

But that didn"t mean he had to like the woman. She was thin and tall and constantly nervous. She moved more than she sat, and she stared at people when she should have put them at ease. One on one, she had few social skills, but she could handle the media very well.

She had probably known Ki Bowles better than anyone else.

When he entered the office, he found Gumiela standing near one of the windows. She was wearing one of her trademark short skirts, which revealed her only good characteristic-a fantastic pair of legs.

"It"s about time," Gumiela said as she turned toward him. Her eyes had deep circles under them. She had pulled back her shoulder-length hair into a bun, which only accented the exhaustion on her thin face. "Close the door."

As he did, he forced himself to take a deep breath. He promised himself he wouldn"t get defensive, but her first words had provoked a defensive reaction in him. He just wouldn"t act on it. Not yet. "We need to stay ahead of this," Gumiela said. "Someone is going to leak this story, and then we"re going to have more media than we know what to do with."

He turned around slowly, making each movement deliberate. "We can"t afford media involvement yet. We"re having trouble with the case."

"We can"t avoid media involvement," she said. "One of their own has died."

He shoved his hands in his pockets. "They don"t know that yet."

"But it"ll only take a few hours for someone to leak it." Gumiela walked back to her desk and sat on the corner of it, crossing her long legs, and tugging her skirt over her thighs as she did so. "The Hunting Club swears no leak will come from them," Nyquist said, "and I believe them. They exist because of their discretion."

"That won"t stop someone from our offices from releasing it," Gumiela said.

He looked at her sharply. Had she already done so? And how did he ask that question without offending her?

"And no, I haven"t done it yet," she said as if she heard his thoughts. "I needed to talk to you first. But I also need to stay ahead of this story. If the media get to it first, then we"re all in trouble. We"ll be chasing after their leads instead of them chasing after ours."

"We don"t have any leads," he said.

"Excuse me?" She slid off the desk and stood up as if she was going to threaten him.

"It takes an act of G.o.d to get the Hunting Club to shut down its security system, and apparently two murders on its highly secure property is not enough to be considered an act of G.o.d. The system shuts down links, as you well know, including emergency links, which violates half a dozen city ordinances as well as probably some United Dome of the Moon laws, and to make matters worse-"

"It shuts off emergency links?" she asked. He nodded. "That"s why I couldn"t raise you?"

"And why I think our victims couldn"t get the help they needed even though it was only a few meters away."

Gumiela"s lips moved in a calculated smile. "So there will be some civil lawsuits against the Hunting Club."

"Probably," Nyquist said, "but that"s for the families to decide. The lack of emergency links-" "Might be one of the reasons the killer or killers chose those grounds as his killing field. What did the witnesses say? Anything about someone leaving that forest?"

"I never saw a witness," Nyquist said. "This is the first I"ve heard of one. Which is indicative of the case, and not the worst thing I"ve encountered today. The Hunting Club-"

"The information should be on the police links," Gumiela said. "I thought you had the street cops working for you. One of them tried to contact me from inside the Hunting Club-"

"And I wish he"d reached you," Nyquist said. "The Hunting Club"s security system rakes its grounds every thirty seconds. We lost all our trace."

"Lost it?" Gumiela crossed her arms.

He nodded. "The Hunting Club wouldn"t shut down the system. By the time I got there, at least half the evidence was lost. By the time the techs got there, most of it was gone. I finally gave up trying to shut anything down. It was a waste of time, since the evidence was already destroyed."

"So you believe the Hunting Club had something to do with Bowles"s death?" He hadn"t thought of that. He hadn"t thought of many possibles, not yet. He"d been too frustrated by everything that faced him.

"I don"t know," he said. "I lost a lot of valuable information and a lot of valuable time. I may never know who killed Bowles or why because of that d.a.m.n security system."

Gumiela looked toward the windows. He recognized the movement. She did that when she was pretending to come up with a new thought. When she actually came up with one, her eyes lit up and she leaned forward. When she pretended, she looked away.

"Maybe we should put someone else on the case, then," she said.

"And what?" he snapped, not caring whether he offended her or not. "Give them less to work with? I at least saw the bodies. I was able to examine them along with the techs and take some conclusions from positions and the order of the wounds. Someone new would miss what little we have."

Gumiela shrugged one shoulder. "I"m not sure you"re up for this, Bartholomew. You just got back." "I know." He made himself take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "I think I bring more than just my years of expertise, my judgment, and my observation of the crime scene to this case."

"Oh?" She slid back onto the corner of the desk, crossing her legs again. This time she didn"t tug on the skirt and it rode slightly up her thighs. He tried not to look. He hated it when she tried to distract the male detectives with those fantastic legs.

"I"ve met Bowles," he said, "and I"ve seen her in her home. In fact, I saw her when she was the most vulnerable, right after she had been fired. I have a sense of the woman, not just the media star." Gumiela finally tugged at the skirt. She wasn"t looking at him, which was a bad sign.

"And then, just before I left, one of the techs told me that Bowles had just run her comeback story last night. That story-and the series it was supposed to start-is about corruption at Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor."

"I know," Gumiela said. "That"s one of the reasons I"m thinking about taking you off this case." He shook his head, biting back hasty words. He didn"t want her to think he was desperate-although he was beginning to believe that he was.

He hadn"t realized he wanted the case this much until he started into this conversation.

"It"s precisely why you shouldn"t take me off the case," he said. "I"ve met Justinian Wagner several times. I got injured trying to save his father"s life. That should open several doors that other detectives would find closed."

Gumiela smiled. "Justinian Wagner? The man everyone believes hired the Bixian a.s.sa.s.sins to kill his father? Why would he want to talk with the man who nearly thwarted him?"

"Unlike some of the other senior detectives in this department," Nyquist said, "I never spoke to Wagner after his father died. I never let him know that I thought he"d try to have his father killed." "Yet you"re the one who saw him just before the a.s.sa.s.sins took out his father and figured out where they were going to go," Gumiela said.

"I already knew where they"d go. I just let Wagner tell me where his father lived. The man thinks he"s smarter than I am. That"s an advantage for me."

"Have you ever thought that perhaps he is smarter?" she asked. "After all, he"s never been charged with the murders of his father or his mother."

"That"s not a failing of our department," Nyquist said. "That"s a failing of the Earth Alliance. We have no way to find out who hired the Bixian a.s.sa.s.sins. We can only guess. They operate outside the law, and any records we could find, we"re not ent.i.tled to because of the various Earth Alliance agreements."

"I still don"t see your presence as an advantage," she said. "I think your emotions will be too involved." "Because Wagner hired the a.s.sa.s.sins?" Nyquist asked. "You think I"ll go after him?" "Won"t you? Isn"t he a prime suspect, given what Bowles did yesterday?"

"First, I don"t know what she did yesterday. I came to see you before I watched her pieces on WSX. Second, I never make up my mind about the case until I"ve studied the evidence."

"But now you say there"s no evidence to study."

"There"s very little to study, at least at the scene," Nyquist said. "Which makes my reason for talking to you all the more important."

"I thought I"m the one who called this meeting," Gumiela said with a slight smile.

"You are." And he didn"t want to add that he might have stalled the meeting if he hadn"t thought he could get something out of it. "But I had an agenda when I walked through that door."

"Staying on the case," Gumiela said.

"Honestly, I never thought you"d take me off it," he said. "I"m surprised you"re considering it." She brushed that off as if he hadn"t spoken. "What, then?"

"I don"t want you to make an announcement to the press for twenty-four hours."

"I can"t hold them off that long."

"The longer you hold them off, the more evidence I can gather," he said. "They won"t be watching my every move. They won"t be speculating on all those Gossip shows why I"d driven down Street A versus Street B or why I spent three hours inside Bowles"s apartment or talked to an old college professor. I"ll have the benefit of surprise with the interviews and the ability to collect some evidence that might disappear if the press tramples it or gets to it first."

Gumiela frowned. "I don"t know how to forestall this. It"s going to leak."

"So send the press in the wrong direction," he said. "Say that the two victims are impossible to identify with any certainty. Blame the Hunting Club and talk about the fact that no links or cameras or any equipment can be used on their grounds. Believe me, that"ll get the press busy. They hate the Hunting Club restrictions because those things are aimed at the press, not at the rest of us. And now they"ve backfired. Two people are dead."

"Two hard-to-identify people," she said slowly.

He nodded. "The evidence at the scene gave us one name, but we have no way to confirm. Because the Hunting Club security system destroyed evidence, and the bodies were too marked up for precise on-scene identification."

"We never release names without a coroner"s okay," Gumiela said. "We don"t do official on-scene identifications."

"We know that," Nyquist said. "They don"t. Give them some things to run after, give them some stuff to chew on, and that"ll send them away from me."

"You"re not going to go after the Hunting Club?" Gumiela asked.

"Later maybe," he said. "Right now the techs are getting all they can from the grounds and, I hope, from the security system"s filters. But that"s half-a.s.sed at best. I want just twenty-four hours to get ahead of them." "I can give you twelve," Gumiela said. "That"s how long I can fake not knowing for certain who our victims are."

Nyquist smiled for the first time. "Twelve is good enough."

10.

The two clones Talia found had Flint"s curly blond hair. He should have expected that. Talia had his hair, after all, and his blue eyes. But he wasn"t quite prepared for the reality of them, which was probably why he"d been thinking of them as "clones" instead of "girls."

They were girls. He"d put up images of both of them on the screens that rose out of his desk. He hadn"t made those images into holoimages-he couldn"t quite handle a 3-D representation of two more of his children.

Two more matching children.

Talia sat beside him behind the desk. She"d had to wait until he"d opened several systems, and then she had walked him through the steps she"d taken to find these girls.

They didn"t quite look like twins. One wore her curly hair short. It exploded around her face, which was narrower than Talia"s. Apparently in the next twenty-nine months, his daughter would lose the last baby fat and would look more like a woman.

This daughter-her name was Gita Havos-had sparkling blue eyes and a pleasant expression as if she were sharing a joke with someone just off camera. Those eyes had a sharp intelligence, and the mouth had a wry turn, which suggested just a trace of self-awareness.

Or maybe he was reading too much into it.

She wore a black coat and a silver necklace with matching earrings. They looked expensive to him, as did that wayward hairstyle. He got a sense of a self-confident, happy girl who was ready to face her future.

All that from one image. He knew if he asked Talia, he would find more. He wasn"t sure he was ready for them.

The second girl, Kahlila El Alamen, had somehow straightened those blond curls. She had tamed her hair and grown it long. She had pulled it away from her face with some kind of clips, and the clips managed to hold the waves that she hadn"t quite been able to get rid of.

The hairstyle accented the leanness of her face. She was thinner than the other two-her cheekbones and her chin stood out in sharp relief against her generous mouth. He glanced at Gita, because he didn"t want to check against Talia. The mouth would look bigger when there was less flesh on the face. He hadn"t realized that his daughter had her mother"s mouth-wide and angular, like a slash across her face.

This girl, Kahlila, wore a shirt with a ripped collar and no sleeves. The collar"s ripping was too even to be anything but an affectation, and the lack of sleeves showed off beautifully drawn tattoos on her biceps. Those biceps were well formed. Kahlila, unlike her-what was Talia"s term? Sisters?-was some kind of athlete.