“I can,” Sisko said. “I’ll speak for all of us. For Luke’s sake. Just don’t ask us to kill or hurt anyone innocent. Barring that, we’ll do favors for you.”
“Watch it,” Noah said swiftly. “Shut up, Sisko. That’s way too general.”
“Take a few hours,” Asa soothed. “Talk to your people. Work out the details.” He slid out of the booth and rose to his full height. “I’ll see you tomorrow at midnight in the Kirkland house, and we can nail down the deal. Then we work out how to make contact with this scumbag and get this thing rolling.”
“What the hell?” Sisko said. “How do you know where we’re staying?”
“You mutant types underestimate the obsessive-compulsive paranoia of the one percent,” Asa said. “Will Hannah be there tomorrow?”
“No,” Noah said. “She won’t be involved in this.”
The brothers’ eyes met. Tension throbbed in the air like a huge bass note. A complex mix of intense emotions. Anger, fear, pride, guilt. And under it all, the magnetic pull of each man’s own gravitational force fighting for ascendance.
“You were right,” Noah said. “About Midlands. If that’s any satisfaction to you.”
Asa’s eyes slitted as he gazed down at his older brother. “Satisfied,” he repeated. “That’s how you think I’d feel. To see you and Hannah get hurt.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Noah said. “I just know that you like to be right.”
“It’s not that I like it,” Asa said slowly. “It’s just that I am. ”
Caro stared at the two men in wary fascination as they locked horns. It was plain that neither one of them had ever succeeded in dominating the other, but they were compelled by their essential nature to keep on trying, no matter what.
Noah finally let out a short bark of laughter. “So you’re infallible?”
“I never said that,” Asa said. “If I were, I would have found a way to stop you from going to Midlands. Or at least taken Hannah and run like hell.”
“I would never have let you do that,” Noah said.
“I know.” Asa’s voice was bleak. “So you see? Not infallible.”
Noah scowled. “The Midlands fuck-up was on me. I take full responsibility.”
“It’s a family trait,” Asa said. “When we fuck up, we go all out.”
He turned and walked out without looking back.
Chapter 28
One of two things was certain, Mark had determined. One: that incompetent shithead Carrerra was already dead. Two: he was about to die, for not answering Mark’s calls. It had been over twenty-four hours since Carrerra’s triumphant phone call announcing that he’d picked up Bishop and was heading to the meet-up.
Nothing since then. Carrerra knew better than to be incommunicado.
It was not quite dawn, but for him and the five prototypes, equipped with visual implants and new, improved AVP, light levels were no issue. Mark drove through the canyon of dark pines, noting the glaring lack of guards.
Sloppy. Or ominous. He was betting on the latter. His tension mounted.
New kill plans generated on his inner eye screen every time he happened to look at one of the prototypes. He was accustomed to the constantly changing display. Multiple kill plans were useful when he needed to kill large numbers of people in a short amount of time, but at the moment, they only served to remind him how much he would enjoy annihilating the slave soldiers.
Who continued to annoy the living shit out of him.
Besides the palpable hostility they displayed, there were serious glitches. Brenner kept blurting out the name of his kid at random intervals, and Raquel was a river of tears, which swelled her eyes and dripped from her her nose. In addition to making him want to smack her puffy, reddened face, the snot and the gurgling and the constant sniffling obliterated her sexual appeal.
He’d been keeping Brenner and Raquel in the freight container, just to prevent himself from acting on the temptation to hurt them. Life had been simpler when he was alone. The other three in the cab up front had the sense to keep their mouths shut.
When he saw the building, he knew instantly that Carrerra’s entire team was dead. There were no live thermals within a hundred meters of the place, aside from some small forest animals. An unmistakable stench wafted through the window. Not terribly strong yet, but his sense of smell was acute, and he had extensive experience with that particular odor.
He stopped the truck, ordered the protos out, and let the other two out of the freight container before starting the damage assessment. The smell indicated that he was going to need the whole crew for the cleanup.
One corpse lay in the gravel driveway, throat crushed. Dead of asphyxiation, judging by the bulging, sightless eyes.