No, I tell myself with a feeble inner voice, don’t be stupid. The problems here cut too deep. One day things may change, but not because of the efforts of a single Collections Agent. Every minute I spend worrying about someone I could have saved is a minute wasted. And minutes are money.
My thoughts are interrupted by the vibration of my phone against my shoulder. I left it on, even though someone might use it to track me. My gun has a tracker in it, too, and I need that on me. I pull the phone out of my shoulder pocket and extend the screen, revealing that it’s Brady calling.
“Brady,” I answer, “what is it?”
“You’re alive,” he says, sounding surprised but slightly pleased. “I’m calling because I pulled the finances on those names.”
I rise to my feet, the anguish and angst falling back down below the surface of my consciousness. “And?”
“Couple interesting things,” he muses. “All five of them are Commerce Board employees. All five have accounts with SCAPE Bank.”
That second part is not a surprise. SCAPE Finance and Credit has a near-monopoly on this world. “Anything interesting in the deposits or withdrawals?”
“Uhh,” he says as though he didn’t think to check that far and is just now looking. “Large direct deposits. Large withdrawals. Cash. All from the main branch.”
This is getting interesting. “Cash withdrawals?”
“All cash. Every one of them.”
Concerned that someone might be listening to this call, I tell him, “Meet me at your place in an hour. I want to see that data.”
Jessi Rodgers is gone, but this case won’t seem to die.
I slip my goggles on, hop on my ride, and drive away from the hydro strawberry farm, through the dismal utilitarian gray of the warehouse district. A few freight vehicles crawl through the streets and alleys, loading and unloading, and the industrial noise of the factories drones low, but otherwise the roads are desolate. Traffic thickens as I cross into a busier part of a town called the Brass and Glass, a commercial district filled with tall business complexes, office structures arranged among tiered outdoor platforms for air shipping and transit. The streets are stacked here, in the way that’s supposedly common on Earth and Ryland. Onramps and offramps lead up and down, maximizing the use of space with four levels of road. As I take a ramp onto an over-route two levels above ground, I notice a vehicle following me.
It’s a black two-seater, a Vict Model X, discreet but quick, sticking suspiciously close as I climb up to the third level and veer off. The car’s got a more powerful engine than my ride by far, and it’s almost as maneuverable. The window is heavily UV-tinted, like most are on Brink, so I can’t make out the face of the driver.
I switch lanes, testing him. He waits a bit, trailing further behind, then follows. Traffic is probably too thick here for him to take a shot at me, so maybe he’s waiting for me to get home, or to Brady’s. I gun my engine, revving my ride forward. Switching lanes, then back again, I weave around a couple of cars, putting some space between us. The Model X doesn’t seem to respond, maybe because there’s not enough room for it to get around the truck in front of it, or maybe because the driver doesn’t want to be too obvious. Trying to take advantage, I speed ahead, weaving between a city bus and a quickbike, smelling the ozone-dry exhaust as I slip behind the bus. My pursuer cruises into a gap in the traffic, shoots closer, and changes lanes, forcing the quickbike to brake as it cuts in right behind me. It’s clear that he’s following me now; he’s made that obvious.
“Phone,” I say loudly, for the sake of the little mic in my goggles, “license grab. Behind me.” My goggles don’t have speakers in them to verify, so I can only hope that the command registered successfully.
Traffic thins, and I fly at a dangerous speed along the third-level road. I flip the control that manually adjusts the axle width, bringing the wheels in close. Wobbling a bit as I adjust to the narrower size of my M 130, I feint taking the ramp down to the second level but swerve back. The Model X matches my maneuvers, staying with me. Brakes screech as the cars behind avoid hitting it. It’s the tail end of rush hour, but traffic is not thick enough for me to slip free. Switching back to the far-left lane, I put the accelerator all the way to the floor, swerving on and then off of the left shoulder, slipping by a slow-moving sedan. My pursuer fails to get around it, and I decide it’s time to take a chance.
Coming up on the ramp to the top level, a narrow window opens diagonally in the traffic to my right. Do or die time. Holding my breath, terrified, I swerve hard and brake, slicing through it. Horns sound and brakes screech, but I barely slip through to open pavement, just in time to careen onto the ramp and up. At the top, I veer hard into the turn-off for the midlevel parking floor of a big business complex and screech to a stop.
Where is the Model X? I can’t see it. Adrenaline rushing, I roll off my ride, take cover behind it, and draw my sidearm. Traffic rushes by, ignorant of the dangerous game I’m playing, its rhythmless drone out of sync with my pounding heart.
But nothing happens. Either my follower missed the ramp, or he gave up, or he decided that I won this round.
I let out my breath, deflating. “Get a grip, Taryn,” I whisper to myself as I holster my sidearm, rising slowly and hesitantly to my feet. I get back on my ride, pull into traffic, and speed up quickly, heading toward Brady’s. The axles readjust themselves, expanding the wheel base. Even as I constantly glance in every direction around me, paranoid and searching for another pursuer, my thoughts drift back to Jessi Rodgers. I learned a long time ago that Collections Agents don’t—and can’t—right wrongs. But for the first time I can remember, I wish that I could.
12
Emerging from Brady’s shower refreshed, I dry off, put my uniform back on, then go back out through the hallway into the living room. He’s there, reclining on the couch, scrolling through data on the big monitor. My hair still wet enough that drops fall from it every now and then, I sit down on the easy chair, trying to make sense of the numbers on the screen.
“Large cash withdrawals. No account transfers?”
“Nope.”
“No debits?”
“Not among these five.”
“What about the deposits? Where are they coming from?”
He looks at me, as though it’s obvious. “The Commerce Board.”
“Well yeah, they’re Commerce Board employees. You telling me there aren’t any other deposits, other than pay stubs?”
Brady clicks around on his keyboard, running a search. The monitor issues a quiet little chime, with a pop-up indicating no results. “Hmm,” Brady says, “nope.”
“That could be a red flag.”
“You think?” he asks, skeptical. “All my deposits come from the Commerce Board, you know?”
“You’re one person,” I retort. “Five people, not a single one of ’em got a cash gift, or collected on a debt, or took an inheritance, or sold a vehicle, in a period of, what, five years?”
“When you put it that way… ”
“Yeah. And why are they taking all their withdrawals from the main branch? Why not ATMs?”
“Hmm,” he says.
I stare at the numbers on the screen, stuck. I don’t always make wise choices, but I’m a woman of action, and for once, I don’t know what my next action should be. These are dummy identities. They have to be. Real people are not so regular, not so limited in their habits. On Brink there are plenty of people trying to elude the reach of the government and creditors, so people without addresses or phones are common, but those people usually do not have bank accounts, let alone jobs at the Commerce Board. But if these are false IDs, why were they created in the first place? Why are they on Commerce Board payroll? Did Dr. Chan discover some money laundering scheme involving a Board insider and use that to get weevil cultures? The Commerce Board’s negotiations with foreign governments are generally done behind closed doors, maybe the money was cleaned this way to cover something up. I still don’t know enough to go on, though, and that makes me want to smash something that doesn’t belong to me.