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  Absolute trouble.

  “Both of you,” Captain said in a voice tinged with an even mix of vitriol and bile, like the world’s meanest martini.

  Rachel slid her reader into the outside pocket of her jacket and followed Greyson into the office. He didn’t give two shits about much of anything, but Leigh was like that. He’d been ousted from the Bureau a year and a half ago when his investigations into smuggling and corruption got a little too close to the former incumbent of this office, that asshole Zielinski.

  Detective/Captain Rutherford Parsons. Weird name to hang on a daughter, but the woman was most definitely woman. Political operative of the kind who swam with big sharks. Tall, but every woman felt tall compared to Rachel’s five foot two. Bustier, or maybe just not strapping them down to fit under body armor, like folks in the field did.

  Folks other than Greyson. He never wore armor of any kind. Again, no shits to give. Plus, Rachel was pretty sure shooting the man would just piss him off.

  Parsons was an outsider in the Boston office. Lots of folks had suddenly taken a quiet retirement and fled to places like Florida and Buenos Aires when Zielinski got tossed out on his ass last fall. One Detective/Sergeant had stayed and made it to Detective/Lieutenant. All the rest of the brass, and anybody with stripes, were new.

  This woman had been transferred over from the Los Angeles office of the Bureau when she got promoted to Captain.

  Like Leigh, she didn’t give two shits about the folks left behind when a third of them were at least suspected of being dirty.

  Rachel hadn’t been around long enough to develop any really bad habits from men like Dominguez or Kovalchuk. They were both dead now, or else they would probably also be learning a new language on the fly themselves.

  Wherever was far enough to hide from jurisdiction and extradition. Parsons had eventually concluded that out of sight would be enough not to warrant further investigations.

  This office had been dirty. Rachel knew that now. Too many corrupt little gigs on the side, bringing in enough cash that Dominguez had had a couple of years’ worth of salary tied up just in the bespoke suits in his closet.

  Rachel was really glad some of the incorruptibleness of Greyson Leigh was rubbing off on her. That would look good on her next job application.

  London.

  Couple more years to her degree. Then she’d see.

  Assuming she made it out of this office alive and employed in the next thirty minutes.

  Parsons had suddenly changed into someone else when the door clicked shut. Friendly, but Rachel couldn’t actually imagine what unfriendlier might look like. Less likely—maybe—to rip one of their heads off, literally.

  Rachel slipped into the far chair and let the Captain face Leigh.

  Match made in hell, as long as she didn’t have to oust the Devil when she got there.

  “You shot the man with a nerve scrambler,” Parsons said in a tired, ragged voice that sounded like she’d been screaming at a stupid reporter on the phone.

  Walls were soundproof. Might have happened while Rachel was reading English Jurisprudence.

  “He was reloading an illegal firearm, having already shot and killed three innocent victims who randomly happened to be in his way,” Leigh growled back.

  Like maybe the two of them already had this discussion once when she wasn’t around.

  What had she missed in the last two days?

  They’d handed off to Metro PD, been interviewed, thanked by the Detectives on the scene for controlling things quickly, then sent on their way. Right?

  “You carry a palmstunner for a reason, Leigh,” Parsons replied in an exhausted, grumpy voice.

  “Sure,” he said. “When there’s a chance that the person I’m shooting is innocent and this is all just a terrible misunderstanding that can be worked out.”

  Rachel wondered if she’d be without a partner again in about five minutes, given the look on Parsons’s face.

  Parsons flexed her neck and shoulders in such a way that suggested someone was holding it in a big, invisible mitt right now, then she reached out a hand tipped with delicate, red-tipped nails. Like she’d dipped them in the blood of her most recent victim. The woman pulled a file and flipped it open.

  “So you didn’t know that a palmstunner would have no effect on the target?” she asked, suddenly innocent and bright in a whipsawing kind of way.

  Rachel blinked. Leigh didn’t even twitch.

  “Sure, we’ll go with that,” he said in a whatever kind of voice.

  “Or didn’t care?” Parsons asked.

  Leigh smiled grimly. He was like that at least half the time.

  But weren’t they all, at some level?

  “Metro PD has asked for you to be assigned to the case, Leigh,” Parsons said in a voice without an opinion on the topic.

  That got Greyson leaning forward. Rachel found herself mirroring her partner’s body language.

  What the hell?

  She’d have said something instead of thinking it really loudly, but the Captain was having a conversation with Leigh right now. The shut-up-and-learn-something-rookie kind of conversation.

  Rachel watched instead.

  “Hunter Bureau deals with alien issues, Captain Parsons,” Leigh said unequivocally.

  “Lucky for me, then, that I have an expert on the topic at hand, isn’t it?” the Captain smiled and closed the trap around the man’s leg as Rachel marveled at the setup. “The Synch Chip was an alien design. Alien manufacture. Alien issue.”

  “The guy was human,” Leigh countered, a little less sure now, like he could feel those steel jaws poised to draw blood.

  Rachel sure felt them, but she was only chained to the victim, as near as she could tell. There was still a chance she might escape intact without having to gnaw her leg off first. Because Parsons—and whoever was pulling her chain—was looking like they were trying to get on Leigh’s nerves. That would be bad.

  While there were more dangerous things in the galaxy than having Greyson Leigh hunting you, those weren’t survivable, either.

  “He was,” Parsons smiled now with those Slavic cheekbones and glacial blue eyes. “Someone designed that chip for a human, with an override in place that didn’t cut out all his muscles when he was in that fantasy projection as is legally required. Your victim slotted it in and thought he was running a sim that let him act out the role of a serial killer from the safety of his own flat. Palmstunner might have tickled him. Might not. Would have set up the first cop coming along to get his fool head blown off. But someone took him down with a nerve scrambler instead.”

  Rachel felt her eyes want to go big but concentrated on looking as gruff and jaded as Leigh habitually did. She doubted that Parsons was fooled. Greyson certainly wasn’t, but it would be good practice on civilians when she needed it.

  Leigh shrugged.

  “So why does Metro PD want me on the case?” he asked finally. “Not my specialty. Not even remotely my jurisdiction, unless someone’s pulling strings to get me involved.”

  “Oh, you’re already involved, Leigh,” Parsons smiled and the jaws closed that last little bit. “I just got off the phone with the Metropolitan. The Honorable Denise Upkins herself. She’s the one requesting and pulling strings.”

  “Why?” he countered in a hard tone Rachel identified as cop-voice.

  “The victim/perp had a picture of you in his pocket when you took him down, Leigh,” Parsons smile turned deadly serious. “Your face. Your name. Your bullseye.”

  Rachel couldn’t help the profanity that slipped out of her mouth.

  Somebody—maybe several somebodies—was going to die for this. She knew Greyson Leigh well enough to understand that much.

  Things were about to get ugly in this town.

  3

  Coffee With a Side of Conspiracy

  Greyson stretched his back and neck as he walked into the sunlight outside the headquarters building, automatically checking the sky and confirmin
g that it was a little past mid-morning.

  There’d been a splash of rain while he was inside getting the shit dumped on him by Captain Parsons. Almost made the streets smell nice, until the breeze shifted and he was downwind of a dumpster somewhere. The kind that hadn’t been emptied in a while.

  Rachel tagged along, looking bright and intelligent and serious and whatever else.

  He stopped walking and turned towards her. One hand went out and grabbed her jacket enough to hold her in place as the back of his other knuckles rapped on the armor plate she was wearing under her dress shirt, right over her breasts.

  Thunk, thunk.

  Good.

  “Yeah?” she asked him in a sarcastic tone, grinning.

  Sounded like a woman wondering if he was about to rip all her clothes off right in public and have his way with her. She could be a goof when she wanted to.

  The rumors around the office suggested that they had been more than job partners. Greyson hadn’t done anything to dissuade those fools.

  Anybody wanting to underestimate me, or her, go right ahead.

  “Upgrade to a class four,” Greyson said as he turned and started walking again. “Add the titanium plate that goes over your heart.”

  “You expecting the whole Bolivian Army, Butch?” she snarked.

  “The whole Bolivian Army better be expecting me, Sundance,” he fired back.

  They were both single adults. She came over to his place every once in a while to talk cop shop and maybe watch old movies. They’d have a little synth whiskey. Occasionally she’d bring takeout.

  With the lights out so they could watch vids on a tablet, it would look remarkably like they’d gone to bed and were busy humping their brains out to any asshole cop parked down the block watching Greyson’s curtains.

  He’d fooled more than one of them that way. She was learning professional paranoia as well.

  Greyson found the coffee shop back across an alley and around a corner. The kind that cops mentally knew about but rarely went to, because it didn’t have a drive through and there were two others around here that did.

  The place wasn’t dead, but the only other person in here besides the tattooed kid behind the counter was a young woman sitting in the back corner with two tablets in front of her, highlighting and reading.

  Another student like Rachel, from the looks of things. Never even glanced up.

  He ordered and paid. Rachel did the same.

  He’d broken her of the habit of flashing a badge and expecting free service. If this were a megacorp chain, he might think about it, but they were in a small shop that might be owned by the kid making espresso right now.

  Greyson tossed an extra tip in the jar.

  “Ready to talk?” she asked after they got their cups and settled kitty-corner from the other customer.

  Away from eavesdroppers, at least the kind not relying on electronic gear.

  Greyson reached into his inside pocket and pulled his comm. They reminded him of the old digital smart phones from when he was a kid. A little longer than his hand. Not quite as wide.

  Physics was physics and humans had an expectation when it came to pockets. Rachel’s reader was the next size up. Greyson’s folding tablet, back in his apartment, was the size above that.

  He had a bigger model on his desk in the office, when he needed to do paperwork.

  Right now, he called up the file that had been assigned to him and Rachel while Parsons was busy ruining his day and overriding every dodge or trick he’d thrown at her trying to not get assigned this case. That woman at least had a much wider and more inventive vocabulary than Zielinski ever had, so some of the turns of phrase were new.

  The end result was still the same.

  He toggled into the evidence section and flipped through pictures until he found the one he had in mind. Rachel had learned patience, so she sat and sipped as he worked.

  Greyson found the image he wanted. Opened it and zoomed a little. Laid the device on the table between them and spun it around for her to look at.

  “Yup, that’s you,” she said with a quick nod and a sarcastic tone. “You ever considered a trimmed beard? Would make you look like a professor or something.”

  “Don’t start,” he warned her without any fire.

  She grinned. It was a fun game they played. Doubly so because it looked like flirting to an outsider across the room.

  She knew his secrets. Maybe she was just watching until she needed to kill him, but maybe she was learning to be the best Hunter the Bureau had ever seen. Any Bureau, whatever they called it in other countries.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” he agreed after a silent beat. “But there’s a problem here.”

  She just glanced up at him with those expressive brown eyes.

  Always let the suspect tell you more than he intended, just because you’re happy to listen to him incriminate himself. Another lesson he’d taught her.

  “That’s the current picture from my personnel file,” Greyson continued. “They took a new one for my ID when I came back because the previous one they had was from five or six years ago.”

  Those eyes got big for a moment before they settled back into calm.

  “That’s stupid,” she muttered. “Triple cross?”

  “How so?” he asked, just to see where cop logic and intuition had taken her.

  “So let’s assume they’re aiming that perp at you personally,” Rachel said quietly, tapping the tabletop with her off hand to count things. “And maybe he gets you with that stupid gun. Eventually someone takes him down and they find that picture. Someone recognizes where it comes from and knows we’ve got a leak inside the Bureau. A rogue. Now Internal Affairs comes into play rough and starts climbing up everyone’s butts with a microscope, looking for whoever set you up. Makes no sense.”

  “Good at the first layer, Rachel,” he agreed with a smile. “But you’re assuming they’re only after me.”

  “Who else?” she asked.

  “So what happens when IA gets a little lusty in their investigations?” he asked.

  “Shit comes apart and we get nothing done,” Rachel growled. She stopped and blinked hard. “Crap. They’re setting Parsons up, too?”

  “That would be my read, kid,” he said. “She let a few folks escape justice rather than subjecting the entire Eastern North America Division, Earth Police Special Missions, Hunter Bureau to a rigorous purging like maybe she should have. The woman’s an outsider in Boston, so everything is already a little roiled. She’s been trying to calm things instead. What if someone wants her to fail?”

  “Who?” Rachel asked.

  Greyson shrugged.

  “That’s the edge of where logic takes me with what’s on the table,” he said grimly. “She’s got enemies. I’ve got enemies. Hell, by being my partner you’ve probably got enemies and just don’t know it yet.”

  “So how do we flush them?” Rachel’s eyes got hard.

  “Dunno,” he admitted. “We’re investigating several crimes and conspiracies here, if I’m right. Need to dance carefully, rather than just charging in with a nerve scrambler and shooting some stupid bastard in the face.”

  She grinned.

  “It’s a useful reputation to have, when you need to be subtle, Rachel,” he continued in a quieter tone.

  “So we’re back to your army days?” she pivoted on him.

  Greyson felt a cloak of death close lightly around his shoulders.

  At her age, he was working as an assassin for the US Army. Back when the US was a thing and had an army they liked to sic on weaker nations. Not every problem could be solved with an invasion. Sometimes they needed a knife in the dark.

  So they sent in men and women like Greyson Leigh.

  Find your target and out-think him. Figure out what his escape route would be when trouble comes, so you can treat it like a game trail and build yourself a blind to hunt from. Flush him with some fake attack and let him come running to you.

 
Onto your blade with a minimum of fuss.

  Rachel knew more than her security clearance allowed, but she needed to know those things about him. And how to take advantage of his experience in a field she’d never pursued.

  “Yeah,” Greyson agreed. “Back to the assassin days. We’re going to play fast, loose, and mean with the rules on this one. About the only person I trust in this situation is Metropolitan Upkins and a few people on her staff.”

  “Folks like Edgar Redhawk?” Rachel asked quietly, referring to the man who had once been Chief of Staff of the local bureau, before everything went to hell. Now, he was a hatchetman for the Metropolitan herself.

  And about as dangerous as Greyson.

  “Him and a few others who’ve been with Denise for a long time,” Greyson agreed.

  “Do I need to know your backstory with the Metropolitan?” Rachel asked. “Is she a target someone’s going after through you, and Parsons is just collateral damage along the way?”

  Greyson blinked in surprise, reconsidering.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “Again, if they can burn me and then Parsons, it’s possible that all that shit can be made to stick to her.”

  “So everyone on the damned planet might be after you on this one, Leigh?” Rachel growled.

  “Worse,” Greyson replied. “Remember, that chip was from off-planet. The whole galaxy might be out to get me.”

  4

  Deals

  Greyson considered his parking karma as he and Rachel walked away from the car and he chirped the locks. Someone had been signaling to pull out into traffic just as he was needing a place. Maybe the gods liked him today.

  Or they were setting him up and wanted him looking the wrong way. Never take the gods of karma or good parking for granted.

  They were across the street from Boston Common. The grass was finally green after the dry winter and the trees were starting bloom. Weather wasn’t nice enough for many tourists or locals to be enjoying the open space, but there were a few around.