Emil wanted to scream.
He’d had a team in place. They’d watched an old woman enter the building. Even taken pictures of her. Then filed them and gone back to whatever they’d been doing before.
He snarled at the two men.
“Find her, or I will abandon you on this planet when I leave, and strike you from the records as employees when I get home,” Emil said carefully, standing next to their vehicle.
There were extra police forces around, which just hindered things, because the cops were a blunt instrument in a delicate situation. Worse, they were backing up traffic every which way. No vehicles could get anywhere.
He needed options.
Emil pulled his comm from his pocket as the two bumbling fools got into motion.
“Rittendorf Imports,” Katherine said brightly as she answered.
“It is Yankov,” he said glumly. “I need a repulsor equipped vehicle as a personal transport at my location. Do we have any handy or do we need to rent or steal one?”
“I already have a rental vectored in on your location, Agent Yankov,” she replied. “ETA ninety seconds. The driver will either remain with the vehicle, or turn it over to you, depending on your immediate needs.”
Emil felt his mouth fall open. She’d already seen the need. Understood it. Addressed it. Found a solution. Implemented it before he’d gotten to the need.
What else had he fucked up? Was he too old for this game?
It happened. One day, the skills had atrophied to a level where the mind wasn’t capable of reacting fast enough.
Should he just retire when this was all done? Kill Rojas and then go home and call it a career?
“Excellent,” he managed to rasp. “Thank you, Katherine.”
Emil cut the line and watched others run around, interrogating random citizens and local workers. Some of them he could see were his. Some Salonnian. At least two belonged to somebody else, but didn’t get close enough to be clearly identified.
This whole intersection was a shitshow unfolding.
A low beeping overhead announced the arrival of a flying car of some sort. There were already two police vehicles grounded, but this was not one. Smaller, for one thing. Two seats at most.
For a moment, Emil considered just taking it and leaving the driver behind, but he was feeling more mortal today, so he approached as it landed in an open parking spot nearby. Emil flashed his own badge to the driver as the man opened the door to exit.
“No, you drive,” he instructed the young man.
Young. Emil had been young once. Now, he was feeling those intervening forty years. He settled into the passenger seat.
Two seats. Boot for cargo. Lifters. Not much else. Hopefully fast.
“Lift off and get me above the city,” Emil instructed the man, not even bothering to learn his driver’s name.
Emil had a badge and enough authority to use it offensively today. And it felt like he would need it.
After the months of chasing Rojas, had she suddenly woken up this morning tired as well? This much done with the whole thing?
Time to go out in a blaze of glory, because tomorrow sounded like too much work?
Emil had grandchildren to spoil and landscapes to paint, but that badge in his pocket suddenly weighed more than the pistol on his hip, both of them anchors threatening to drag him to the bottom of the sea.
Yes. Kill Rojas and go home.
The car lifted off smoothly and was able to climb slowly out until the towers were all below him. The kicked-over anthill didn’t look so bad from up here. Distance would do that.
Emil’s comm rang. He checked the ID.
Katherine.
“Yankov,” he said on answering.
“Maybe nothing, sir,” she replied. “But I have a report of a police officer that was attacked with a stunner not that far away. Shot by a woman, though her description didn’t match Rojas. Dark haired, rather than the gray our agent at Constanz reported. However, the officer thinks he recognized the van as matching a description from your location.”
Emil leaned far enough out to see the streets below. The chaos as yet another police vehicle rolled up and two detectives got out. Or politicians. Plainclothes whatever.
“Where?” he asked her. “And the man was not hurt?”
“Stunner, short range,” Katherine confirmed. “Then a male accomplice driver helped move the man out of the street before fleeing. Unconfirmed witness report. About a mile and a half southeast of Constanz Books.”
He was clutching at straws, but this was the only straw that hadn’t been fool’s gold so far.
“Southeast?” he confirmed, gesturing to the driver to head that direction. “Isn’t there a small starport southeast?”
“Stand by,” Katherine said.
He heard her moving papers around, so she must be in the conference room again. Or still. With all the maps. Smart choice on her part.
Smart woman, and he’d had her answering phones and getting coffee instead of running her in the field like an agent.
More the fool him?
“Affirmative, Agent Yankov,” Katherine was back. “Wyland Field. Mostly commercial rather than passenger transport. Also a large number of small JumpSail-equipped starships.”
Emil felt his bowels turn cold. They’d been driving away, her and her accomplice. Headed that direction, and stumbled into an officer, who got suspicious. She’d shot him, but only a stunner, because he was just a man doing a job, rather than a deadly threat.
Dark hair? Probably she’d worn a wig to see Constanz, then pulled it off when she got into the van. That would fit. Accomplice explained how she’d been able to elude everyone for so long. Rojas had hired someone to do things for her. Or found an old friend.
Emil had missed him because everyone had been concentrating on Rojas. And he’d not bothered to ask the only woman on his team how she would have done it, were she in Rojas’s shoes.
More the fool him.
“Thank you, Katherine,” Emil said firmly, understanding how badly he had messed up, but not until Rojas had rubbed his nose in it. He hung up and turned to the driver. “Wyland Field. Now.”
The man nodded and concentrated on his flying.
He would see Rojas dead.