“Good morning.”
Surprised, Phil Rice looked up to see Tobi Roenick standing just outside the door to his office. He smoothed his hair without thinking, then mentally cursed at himself for doing it. What was it about her that made him feel like a high-school boy? “Come on in,” he said hastily. “Have a seat.”
She cocked one eyebrow but accepted the invitation, dropping gracefully onto the upholstered chair at the side of his desk. Behind her the door drifted closed, effectively cutting off the sounds and traffic from the hallway. The white MedTech lab uniform that Tobi wore did little to camouflage her spectacular figure, and when she crossed her legs at the knee, Rice caught a shimmer of silver given off by the material of her stockings. He had to force his gaze to stay on the red folder in her hands. “I found something on the data system,” she announced. “A match that I thought would catch your interest. It has to do with the missing egg.”
Now it was Rice’s turn to lift an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
Tobi placed the folder on the corner of Rice’s desk and opened it; while it wasn’t exactly thick, Rice could see a definite increase in the number of papers inside. “Do you remember that theft from the Bronx Zoo not so long ago?” she asked.
“Yes,” Rice answered immediately. “One of the big cats—a panther, wasn’t it?—disappeared without a trace. They’re still looking for it.”
“Well, wherever it is,” Tobi said, “I’ll bet it’s with our egg.”
Rice leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “What did you find?”
Tobi tapped a line of data with a long, carefully manicured fingernail. “A fabric match,” she said with a satisfied smile. “NYPD’s evidence department apparently just got around to uploading the information. Seems they found a swatch of material hanging from the fence around the cat enclosure. They had no clue what to do with it, of course, but the information went into the network. Same material, weave and content—which, by the way, is a highly specialized Japanese product not commercially available in this country.” She gave him a suddenly girlish grin, pleased with herself. “I caught it on a follow-up sweep. I don’t give up very easily.”
“So our ninjas struck again,” Rice said softly, drumming his fingers on the edge of his desk. “But what on earth would they want a jungle cat for?”
“Sounds to me like they’ve got some kind of collection going,” Tobi commented.
“Maybe. In any case, that’s really great work,” Rice said. “You find anything else?”
Tobi shook her head. “Afraid not, Chief—”
“Phil.”
She looked at him keenly, then let a small smile play across her lips. “Okay, Phil. I didn’t find anything else. But I run follow-up reports on a daily basis.” Tobi shut the folder with a muted snap and stood with that same vague shimmer of silver around her legs. “After all, having an unhatched egg unaccounted for in the city is a pretty serious health hazard.”
Rice ignored the tinge of sarcasm in her voice. Why, he wondered, did Tobi feel it was necessary to always go on the offensive? “Will you keep me advised of the results?” he shoved his hands into his pockets, afraid that what he was about to do would make them visibly shake. He was still singed from her crack about how his lines had sounded like something from an old dating game show. If she didn’t like innuendo, fine; he could go for the straight-on approach. But it was now or never, what better place to give in to a wild impulse than in his office with the door closed, where no one could see him get knocked down to size?
“Of course.” She turned to go.
“Would you like to go out to dinner sometime?” he blurted.
If she was startled, Tobi didn’t show it for more than an instant. “I think that might be fun,” she said. Without missing a beat, she brought her wrist up and glanced at her watch, then looked back at him. Not for the first time, Rice was struck by the impression that every move she made was as graceful as a ballerina’s. “Right now I have to get back to work. Call me and we’ll pick a day.”
After she was gone. Rice sank onto his chair and tried to decide if he’d just snagged the biggest prize this side of Central Park or was just plain out of his mind.
* * *
“Tonight.”
Rice said the word so softly that Eddie McGarrity almost didn’t hear him. “What’d you say, Chief?”
The two men were in the room in the far rear of Sublevel Three that Rice had claimed as his and ol’ Blue’s back when he first took the job, an area he jokingly called “Detention.” Standing at the far back wall, Rice smiled widely and looked ol’ Blue up and down. Unable to move, the alien was fastened securely within his harness, itself hitched snugly to six alloy anchors in the floor braces. “I said, tonight. It’s time we take him out again to hunt.”
McGarrity rubbed his chin thoughtfully. A rugged guy in his mid-thirties, without his MedTech security uniform and helmet McGarrity’s blue eyes and blond crew cut made him look more like a teenaged line-backer than a seasoned defense veteran. “I don’t know, Phil. It’s been weeks since the egg was lifted—will the scent still be there? That’s a helluva long time.”
“Oh, it’ll be there all right.” Rice went back to the chair by his worktable and sat, then stretched until he could hear the joints popping in his neck and back. Too much tension, caused by some seriously unfinished business; tonight he was going to rectify that. “Even if the damned thing somehow got hatched—hell, especially if it hatched. That baby’s got to be around Manhattan somewhere. I’ve had sniffer dogs at all the checkpoints off the island—bridges, tunnels, ferries—everywhere, and the animals would’ve picked up the scent if someone tried to smuggle the egg or a hatchling through. So far the patrols have gotten zip, which means it’s still in Manhattan. Somewhere on this overcrowded piece of rock is the smell of ol’ Blue’s hive, and no air filter I’ve heard of can eradicate every molecule of the pheromones from these creatures. One whiff, a trace of his own hive, and Blue’ll be off like a rabbit headed for a family reunion.”
“And what if he smells something he doesn’t appreciate, like last time?” The third member of Rice’s elite team had come into the alien’s detention space in time to catch the gist of the conversation. “Are you up to a repeat of the last trip’s action?” Despite his question, Ricky Morez followed McGarrity’s example and began suiting up for the coming excursion, carefully checking his gear and ammunition.
Rice chuckled. “Not this time, boys. You think all I’ve been doing is waiting for ol’ Blue to catch up on his beauty sleep?” He got up and went over to the alien’s side, then plucked a small metal control box from where it hung on the mesh that pinned the alien’s arms against his ribs. “Check this out,” he said as he held it out.
Both his men leaned forward to peer at the object. Sized to fit comfortably in the palm of a hand, the gray box Rice held had a single, thumb-sized red control button; from the bottom of the square piece of metal, a generous length of thin steel tubing wound its way up to ol’ Blue’s bottom jaw, where it ended in a surgical implant several inches behind the alien’s final incisor.
“What does it do?” asked McGarrity. “Shock therapy?”
This time Rice laughed outright. “Get real. It’d take a helluva lot more juice than we could get out of a lightweight box like this to slow up this creature. Huh-uh, this baby’s filled with Surgealyn.”
“I’ve heard about that stuff,” Morez said as he fed the straps of his holster through his belt loops and buckled it in place. “Heavy-duty shit. Who made up the box?”
“My latest project,” Rice said smugly. His thumb skimmed teasingly along the surface of the brightly colored plastic button and he gave ol’ Blue an appraising scan. “A slight touch and our little baby gets sleepy. Another one, and… wham. The miracle of air-powered intravenous injection.”
“I thought Surgealyn was an anesthetic for humans.” McGarrity slipped his helmet on and fastened the chin strap. Gone was the boyish blond haircut; now only his eyes showed in his chiseled face, blue and hard beneath the shining white headgear with a blazing red MT across the left front. “Has it been tested?”
“It was originally developed for humans, but Medical Engineering did some custom redesigning specifically for our purposes. At my request they came up with a chemical modification to keep it from breaking down in an acid-based bloodstream, a supercondensor to triple the dosage strength, and an accelerator to jump-start the process, all in a handy box the size of a vidscreen remote control. When we’re ready to go, I’ll attach it to my guidepole just above the handgrip.” Rice glanced up at the alien’s eyeless head. “You might have a different biological makeup, but we could still knock your ass out cold, couldn’t we, Blue? Let’s hope we don’t have to go that route.” He hung the box carefully back on the mesh and ol’ Blue quivered, as if he could sense the drug and what it might do. Rice grinned. “Don’t get nervous, old boy. We plan on keeping your ugly self awake… at least until we find the bastards who stole our egg.”
“I’m ready,” Morez announced. “By the way, did you see the inter-office memo about Sumner?”
“Yeah, I read it.”
“Who’s Sumner?” McGarrity asked. “Someone I should know?”
Rice snickered as Morez rolled his eyes. “Only the guy who signs your pay slips, you ignorant jackass. He’s missing—no one’s seen him for two weeks.”
McGarrity shrugged. “Maybe he decided to take a vacation. A couple of weeks is nothing. I knew this one guy who—”
“Sure,” Morez scoffed, “and since when does someone go on their vacation and leave their metallic amber Lexus Air Coupe at a stoplight in front of the World Trade Center with the engine running and blood on the steering wheel?”
“Ah. Well, maybe he didn’t go on vacation.” McGarrity looked over at Rice. “Is this something we’re going to be involved in, Chief? Hell, I never paid attention to the fact that the guy existed here at MedTech. If we’re going to tackle a missing person on him, I’m going to need more information, a scanned photo, the data files—”
The black man shook his head. “That’s a situation for the cops, and from what I understand, the city’s brought the feds into the investigation. I guess it’s too much for the metro guys to figure out. Hell, we’ve got all kinds here, including our share of jelly addicts and dealers— especially those. I’m out of the murder business, and to be honest, most of the missing people or homicide victims in Manhattan are never found anyway. If the perp can get the body into the water, the pollution’ll liquefy most of it inside of twenty-four hours. Half of the shit in the rivers is probably melted human remains.”
“We’d just be stepping on the cops’ toes anyway,” Morez pointed out. “Trust me—you don’t even want to try talking to feds on a case. They’ve never heard of the word teamwork.”
“God knows that’s the truth.” Following the example of his men, Rice was fully suited, and now he shrugged into the straps of an oversize white backpack and hefted it until it was comfortably in place against his back. “Right now our job is recovery of stolen property. Okay, men. Let’s go hunting.”