She smiled politely while he leaned back in his chair and studied her face. The corners of his lips moved slightly. "You interest me, Goldie Morran. I like your style. Gutsy, polished, sincere. I'll be in touch later, perhaps."
He tossed some coins onto the table to pay for his own drink, gathered up his copy of the Gazette, and left her sitting there, seething. She knocked back the remaining whiskey and followed him out, but he'd vanished into the mob milling around the Commons.
People gawking at the stores, the ramps, the chronometers, the gates, the waiting areas, the prehistoric beasts picked up from that absurd, unstable gate into the age of the dinosaurs-that was all she could see every direction she turned. She compressed her lips, furious that he'd turned her down and then simply vanished.
Just what the devil was Farley after, anyway?
Disgruntled in the extreme, Goldie set out for her shop. She'd gone only a few strides when she noticed Skeeter Jackson deep in conversation with a tourist. Drat the man! She was seriously of a mind to march over and tell that luckless tourist what a cheating fake he was, to spoil whatever profit he expected to pick up. Why she had ever agreed to this idiotic bet-
Goldie blinked. Someone was stalking Skeeter. A reddish-haired man in Western-style clothing that somehow didn't match the way he moved... Her eyes widened as recognition hit home: the downtimer who'd chased Skeeter before. Then she noticed the truly wicked blade he was silently drawing from beneath a set of leather chaps. Goldie drew in her breath sharply.
For an instant, spite and malice held her silent. Spite, malice, and greed. If Skeeter were dead, all bets were off and she could stay in La-La land with no one to fault her. The man crept closer. Goldie's stomach churned at the look of hatred in the stranger's eyes, etched into his attentive, absorbed face. Skeeter was Goldie's rival and a scoundrel and probably deserved what he was about to get more than anyone she knew. But in that instant, she realized she didn't want to watch him die.
Not particularly because she cared what happened to Skeeter, but murder was messy. And bad-very bad-for business. And for a fleeting instant, she also realized victory by default over a dead man would be about as sweet as vinegar on her tongue. So she found herself moving across the Commons faster than she'd moved in years.
Skeeter and his target were deeply engrossed in conversation near the waiting area for the Wild West Gate. The man creeping up on him sidestepped around an ornamental horse trough filled with colorful fish and tensed, ready for the final lunge. Goldie glanced around, wondering if she could find a weapon, or someone from Security, even something to use as a diversion.
Overhead, ten leathery, crow-sized pterodactyls perched in the girders, eyeing the fish in the horse trough. Skeeter talked on, oblivious to the closeness of impending death. Ah-ha! Goldie darted over to a vending cart which sold hats, T-shirts, and other trinkets, and said, "Sorry, gotta borrow this," to the startled cart owner.
She snatched up a toy bow and arrow set and nocked the arrow, pulled back expertly, then let fly. The arrow whizzed true to its mark: the rubber tip smacked right into the flock of startled pterodactyls. The whole lot of them took wing with ear-bending screeches and dove straight down. Goldie ducked under the cart. Skeeter jerked his gaze up and around, and saw the man with the long knife. His eyes widened.
Then he took off faster than Goldie had ever seen him run.
The man with the knife swore in what had to be Latin and bolted after him. Angry pterodactyls swarmed in his way, screaming like maddened crows mobbing a jaybird. Leathery wings buffeted the man's face. Claws raked his hair. He yelled something furious and tried to cut at them with his long knife. Skeeter's tourist, a pretty redhead, screamed and took refuge behind the horse trough. Other tourists scattered while those at a safer distance started to point.
Someone shouted for Security. Someone else yelled for Pest Control. The man fighting off the pterodactyls abruptly realized he was attracting attention to himself. He swore again and took off in the opposite direction Skeeter had taken-none too soon, as Security arrived hard on his heels.
"What's going on?"
The shaken tourist Skeeter had been trying to swindle crawled out from behind the trough. "A man with a huge knife! He tried to attack the guy I was talking to-then those things-"she pointed at the pterodactyls still flitting angrily above their heads "-started diving everywhere and-and I don't know where he went. I just hid behind this."
Security officers took the man's description from the shaken tourist while Goldie slipped quietly away in the confusion. The vendor she'd borrowed the bow and arrow from just gaped after her. Goldie returned cautiously to her shop, making sure no one from Security had followed, then locked the door and sat down to do some very serious thinking. Skeeter Jackson had picked up a lethal enemy somewhere. Or somewhen. He had changed an enormous sum of money after that last trip of his through the Porta Romae. Goldie would've bet the very gold in her teeth that Skeeter's attacker had been swindled downtime and had somehow come through the gate looking for revenge.
She shivered slightly behind her glass cases filled with coins, gems, and other precious items brought uptime by various gullible tourists. Wager or not, she was glad she'd acted. But there was one thing she intended to find out, or her name was not Goldie Morran, and that was the identity of the man who'd come so close to killing Skeeter.
Yes, finding out who he was and why he was after that wretched little con artist might just come in very handy. She might not want to see Skeeter murdered, but she had no qualms at all about seeing him arrested. Tapping her fingers thoughtfully against the cool glass countertop, Goldie wondered who to contact about the mystery man's identity. She had all sorts of agents spotted about the station, willing to do a little spying for her as well as the odd downtime courier job. Goldie sniffed autocratically and picked up the phone.
Time was running, but she would find out.
There were, after all, only so many places in La-La Land a man could hide. Someone would know. And once she knew, the man chasing him would know. And when he knew, Skeeter Jackson's days on Shangri-La would be over for good. She started calling her paid agents all over the station.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Marcus made his way home and entered the cramped apartment. It was echoingly empty. Ianira had packed in haste, leaving most of her own things in favor of taking the children's necessities. He touched one of her Greek gowns, breathing in its scent, almost smiled at the sight of prosaic jeans hung neatly on hangers in her half of their closet. He crushed the heavy fabric beneath his hands.
Marcus had known this day would eventually come.
He just hadn't known it would tear his vitals so mercilessly.
Marcus swore savagely in a language no other man, woman, or child on TT-86 ever used-with the rare exception of his beloved Ianira, to whom he had taught a little of it-then found the aspirin in the medicine cabinet. He downed five tablets to relieve the fierce throbbing in his head and wished bitterly he could afford strong alcoholic beverages like Kit's special bourbon, brought to TT-86 from some secret, downtime escapade. But he didn't have the money for such luxuries.
He didn't have money for anything.
Marcus swore again, hating himself for the tremors he couldn't quite suppress. He'd come to believe in himself as a free man. But the man who had purchased and brought him here would-sooner or later demand an accounting. Marcus brought out the notes he had laboriously compiled over years of bartending and listening to the talk of men and women far gone in their boasting. He brought out the money he had so carefully stockpiled from the little metal box at the top of the bedroom closet. He changed out of his working clothes into a clean pair of blue jeans and a respectable shirt, one Ianira had surprised him with from a shop in Frontier Town on his last birthday. He smoothed down the fringe with unsteady fingers and swallowed down a throat gone dry. His face in the mirror was ashen despite the stubble of beard along his chin.