“What does he do, your cousin?” Lev had asked.
“He’s religious,” the polt had said. Netherton had thought he’d heard a laugh, just then, and the polt had quickly taken one of his hands off the wheel.
The polt had said that he was on his way home now, from visiting his injured cousin, and hadn’t spoken with his sister. Lev had advised him not to, until he could speak with her in person. And then he’d told the polt about the ad.
At which point Netherton had decided that Lev, whatever small degree of klepty cultural essence he might possess, was out of his depth here. The polt hadn’t needed to know that. It would have been less wise to tell the polt that they were phoning from a future that wasn’t his, one in which he was part of a wealthy obsessive’s hobby set, but hardly more unnecessary. Netherton had been about to type Lev a note, his phone’s keyboard appearing unevenly on the table’s carved top, but then he’d considered the dynamics of his own relationship with Lev. Better to sit and listen, watching as the polt carved himself a new and potentially more lucrative position. The polt had tactical skills, Netherton saw, ones that Lev, bright as he was and in spite of familial predisposition, had never had cause to fully develop.
The polt had told Lev that he was not, as it happened, a particularly easy target for a hired assassin. That he had resources to draw on, in a situation of that sort, but that his sister being potentially a target was “unacceptable.” The word had fallen on the air in Ash’s narrow tent with a surprising weight. And what, the polt had asked, did Lev intend to do about that?
“We’ll give you money,” Lev had said. “You’ll be able to hire protection.”
Netherton had been aware of Ash trying to catch his eye. He’d known that she got it, that the polt was on top now, Lev outmaneuvered. He’d met her eye, but neutrally, without giving her what she wanted.
Lev had told the polt that he needed to speak with the polt’s sister, but the polt had wanted to hear a figure, a specific sum of money. Lev had offered ten million, a bit more than the fee for the supposed murder contract. The polt had said that that was too much for his cousin to receive by something called Hefty Pal.
Lev had explained that they could arrange for the cousin to win that amount in their state’s next lottery. The payment would be entirely legitimate. At that, Netherton had been unable to resist looking at Ash again.
“You don’t think that that lottery business casts the whole thing as a Faustian bargain?” Netherton had asked, when the call was done.
“Faustian?” Lev looked blank.
“As if you have powers one would associate with Lucifer,” said Ash.
“Oh. Well, yes, I see what you mean. But it’s something a friend stumbled across, in his stub. I have detailed instructions for it. I’d been meaning to bring it up with you.”
“It’s close in here,” Netherton had said, standing, distressed velour heavy against his shoulder. “If we’re going to chat, let’s do it in the Mercedes. It’s more comfortable.”
And that had been that, really, except that now he was sitting here, waiting for the polt’s sister to call.
21
They never caught up with Leon. Maybe he actually did some pedaling, or more likely did some and used the hub at the same time. Her bike was propped against the oak in the front yard, Leon nowhere in sight, but a buddy of Burton’s, Reece, was sitting in the wooden lawn chair there, with a mandolin across his lap. As she and Burton got closer, after they left the car by the gate, she saw it wasn’t a mandolin but an Army rifle that looked like it had been telescoped back into itself, squashed front to back. A bullpup, they called that. Reece had a ball cap pulled down level with his eyebrows, the kind that continually altered its pattern. Reece had been something in the Army, special something but less special than HaptRec, and admired Burton in a way that she found unhealthy, though whether for Reece or Burton she wasn’t sure.
“Hey, Reece,” Burton said.
“Burton,” Reece said, touching the bill of his ball cap, close to a salute, but staying put in the chair. He had a Viz in his left socket, and now she was close enough to see moving light from it, reflected in his eye.
“Who else is here?” Burton asked, looking up at the dark house, white clapboard starting to lighten with the dawn.
“Duval’s up the hill,” Reece said, as Flynne watched a pixelated blob of tan migrate a little closer to where the button would have been on a regular ball cap. They didn’t have a button, Marine caps, because if someone hit you on top of your head, they could drive the button into your skull. “Carter’s around the back, Carlos down by the trailer. Got a net up, twenty units, twenty in reserve.” Twenty drones over the property, she understood, flying synchronously in repeating pattern, each of the three men monitoring a third of it. That was a lot of drones.
“We’re going to the trailer,” Burton said. “Tell Carlos.”
The bill of the ball cap bobbed. “Luke after you? Duval said he heard.”
“Luke’s not the problem,” Burton said. “Need to be expecting scarier company than that.” He put his hand on Reece’s shoulder for a second, then started down the hill.
“Night, Flynne,” said Reece.
“Morning,” she said, then caught up with Burton. “What did they look like,” she asked him, “the people who phoned you?”
“Remember the Sacrificial Anodes?”
She barely did. From Omaha or something. “Before my time.”
“She looked like the singer in the Anodes, Cat Blackstock, but with Halloween contact lenses. Other one was maybe my age, big boy, sloppy, some beard, antique eyeglasses. Used to people agreeing with him.”
“Were they Colombian? Latino?”
“English. From England.”
Remembering the city, the curve in the river. “Why did you believe them?”
He stopped, and she almost bumped into him. “I never said I believed them. Believe in the money they’ve been paying me, I can spend that. They put ten million in Leon’s Hefty Pal, I’ll believe in that too.”
“You believe somebody’s been hired to kill you?”
“I think Coldiron might believe it.”
“Enough to get Reece and them over here, with guns?”
“Can’t hurt. They like an excuse. Leon wins the lottery, he can spread a little around.”
“The lottery’s rigged?”
“Surprise you if it was?”
“You think they’re the government, Coldiron?”
“It’s money. Anybody offer you any, lately, aside from me?” He turned, starting down the path again. Birds were beginning to sing.
“What if it’s some kind of Homeland sting?”
Over his shoulder: “Told them you’d talk to them. Need you to do that, Flynne.”
“But you don’t know who they are. Why don’t they have video of everything? They were paying us to fly cameras.”
He stopped again, turned back. “There’s a reason there’s a website to sign up to kill people you never heard of. Same reason nobody in this county’s making a decent living, unless they’re building drugs.” He looked at her.
“Okay,” she said. “Not like I said I wouldn’t. It just feels crazy.”
“Homeland Security officer was telling me I should apply to get on with them. Guys working under him were rolling their eyes, behind his back. Hard times.”
They were almost to the unlit trailer now, its soft-looking paleness starting to show in the dark between the trees. It felt like she hadn’t been there for a long time.