“What do you think?” Farley was drinking beer, not iced tea. The can scraped unprettily across the tile as he shoved it away.
Indigo wondered if his chest hurt where Razorface had flattened him. She tucked another pinch of bread and curry into her mouth and kept her face smooth around it. It might do Farley some good to be taken down a peg. Not too far, though. His arrogance was useful, and he was her link to weapons suppliers and financiers. She preferred not to know where the money came from, as long as their backers' agendas matched her own.
“I think you're planning to take the place out.”
Indigo washed down curry before she spoke again. Unitek was high on her list of Agencies That Should Be Dealt With; one she'd been sneaking up on slowly, testing her mettle against other, lesser targets when Farley had recruited her — a few months before — with promises of flexibility and protection. “Maybe not the whole complex.” She rimmed the plate with a greasy finger, feeling the cracks and flakes in what had been expensive china. The narrow studio was a squat, electricity tapped off a trunk line and water stolen, too. Better to leave no tracks. They'd move on in a day or three.
She didn't trust the big, bruised American, but she'd been intrigued by his presence in Toronto from the moment she had heard such an important underworld stranger was in town and lying oh so very low. She knew what the American was: a criminal. And an odd sort of criminal at that. Her connections — she hated the term handlers—had told Farley about his history as the top dog in the Hartford underworld. His downfall in a recent coup. And his links to a piece of Indigo's family legendry, and one she'd had Farley's sources working to trace.
And he hadn't seemed suspicious when she'd arranged the second meeting, the one at Unitek — after the tracer she'd planted on his jacket had shown him waiting there.
He was associated with Master Warrant Officer Genevieve Casey: one of the reasons why Indigo was so deeply convinced that something needed to be done about Unitek sooner rather than later. It hadn't been too hard to present him with an opportunity to “meet cute,” and Indigo justified it by telling herself that they might have some of the same goals. He might present a chance to meet a woman she'd grown up curious about.
Maybe do a little more than meet her. Which wasn't, Indigo reminded herself, the point of interfering in Unitek's warmongering. But it was a nice little bonus, nonetheless.
Razorface cleared his throat, interrupting her plotting. “Why wouldn't you want to take the whole office down?”
“They do some kind of testing on kids there.” She kicked her feet free of the stool and rose, dropping the plate on the counter. It thudded rather than rang, cracking halfway through. She stood looking down at it for a moment. In the corner of the kitchen, Farley leaned against the wall and ate as if deaf. “It's important to me that the bystanders don't get hurt.”
Razorface touched his forehead again. Significantly, this time. Indigo put the wall at her back.
“Nothing's perfect,” she said. “What's your interest in Unitek?”
“There's a lady there got some friends of mine hurt.”
Indigo studied his eyes as he spoke, trying to see past her prejudices. There was something about him. The charisma, the detailed attention, the way he owned a room — like he was bulletproof and nine feet tall. The glitter of steel behind thick, sensual lips. She knew not to let herself trust him.
But it was hard. “What do you want with her?”
“Not sure yet.” He rolled his shoulders in a long, fluid shrug. “I'd like to know why. But I maybe could get that from another source. And what about you folks? You an organization or just a couple kids having fun?”
Farley coughed, interrupted. “Your lady. What's her name?”
“Holmes.”
The name went through Indigo like a ripple of electricity, although Farley shot her a warning look. “Funny,” Indigo said, smiling her warmest smile. She wanted this big criminal on her side. She could see uses for him already that Farley just didn't have. Let's give him an inch and see what he takes, shall we? “That's the name I was given, too.”
She expected he'd startle a little and say Given? She watched from the corner of her eye, and he didn't. But she did catch the way his eyes narrowed. The way a conscious moment passed before the knotty muscles along his jaw relaxed. “Who you work for, girl?”
I work for freedom, she almost said. I do it for my dad. For Uncle Bernie. “Not a damn soul,” Indigo lied, and flicked the edge of the cracked plate with a hardened nail so the china shattered and split. Farley jumped at the sound, hand edging toward his gun. Stupid thing to carry in Toronto, but then he was often stupid.
Razorface was still staring at her when she looked up. “So. I know a little about you now. You don't like to kill kids. You blow up army offices. What's your beef with Holmes?”
“You know what Unitek is?”
“Big corporation.”
“Yeah. A fucking big corporation.” She wiped her hand on her jeans, fingers arched like she was smearing diesel grease down her leg. How do I play this? He's supposed to be Casey's friend. I think I'll just leave her name out of it. She gathered her thoughts to find the right twist, the manipulative game, and the words that came out were not the ones she had planned. “They just about run the Canadian military. They own the Marsbase outright. Never mind Prime Minister Rieclass="underline" they're into her to the elbow. And they've been recruiting kids — young kids, thirteen, fifteen — through a massively multiplayer virtual reality game. They pressure the parents in giving consent, use the Military Powers Act to conceal what they're doing, and perform all kinds of fucked-up modifications. And the government rolls over nice because Daddy brings his paycheck home. We've still got troops all the hell over Southeast Asia and God knows where else. They don't call it a war, but we're out there fighting the Chinese every day, and for what? Crippling Canada to defend a bunch of nations that never did a thing for us? My dad died in one of these stupid wars—” Indigo ran her tongue over her teeth, surprised at the taste of her own patriotism. Farley raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to one side, silently amused.
“What's that mean to me?” But the big thug of an American's eyes were sparkling, his eyebrows arched. An emerald stud glittered in his nostril.
“It means we can help each other, I think,” she said.
He laughed a round, slow, rolling laugh and shook his shaved head. “I don't do revolutions, baby. I got better ways to get killed. ‘Preciate the offer of help, though.” He slid his plate onto the breakfast bar, ducked his head, and turned away.
Indigo pressed her shoulders back. The wallboard was even worse on the outside wall, and the stud bit into her arm. She was careful not to lean back hard. “If you don't do revolutions, what good are you?”
Razorface stopped with his hand on the doorknob. Shadows caught in the hollows of his face as he looked over his shoulder. “That's a real excellent question.” He turned completely and regarded her, ignoring Farley much as she usually did. His face shut like a door. “I don't know.”
Indigo opened her mouth, closed it. A sense of something weighed on the air, taste of a storm.
“I don't know, girl,” Razorface said, while Indigo wondered what button she'd pushed, what lever she'd thrown to turn him so cold so fast. “What am I good for? Why don't you tell me.”