Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“What’s the problem with fourteen percent of the Fall?” I snapped.
He grinned and popped some blobs in his mouth.
“Do you do this kind of thing often?” I asked.
“All the fucking time.”
Ugh.
“What’s Timothee’s rating?” I queried.
“Twenty-two.”
That made sense, and actually, I thought it was on the high side.
Aleksei continued sharing. “Errol is at twenty-nine. Mom is seventy-nine. Dad is seventy-one. Aleece is eighty-three.”
I smirked. “Seems the people of the Fall don’t have a problem with me throwing myself in front of a beam for you.”
It was Aleksei’s turn to frown.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I murmured. “That will never happen again.”
At least, I hoped not.
“My meeting was with the task force,” he announced.
Now I was interested in our conversation.
“Oh my gods, are they making headway?”
He did more staring at me, then he pushed up so he was reclining beside me, crossed his ankles and stole my tub of blobs.
“How much of this do you want to know?” he asked carefully.
“All of it,” I answered firmly.
He tossed some blobs in his mouth.
“Aleksei,” I warned.
“They found Farlay. He’s dead.”
My stomach dropped.
“Shot in the face with a PR60, full beast stun,” Aleksei continued.
“This is…not good,” I replied.
“They already disposed of the female they used for gallery access, so it’s their MO. When no longer of use, destroy. They put time into recruiting her. Inspection of her comms say she met the assailant three months ago, just after your attack, which did not have the end they wanted. They wasted no time putting a new plan into action. It was a full-frontal love bombardment, except obviously, he didn’t love her. Flowers. Gifts. Attention. Talk of marriage. Pushing to move in together. He was well funded, those gifts he gave her were all high cost. Jewelry. A new vid screen for her flat. A long weekend at the Elysium Hotel at Black Beach. She has no history of any run-ins with law enforcement, save some docking tickets. Friends and family are stunned she was part of this, at the same time stunned he was too. They called it true love. As close to mates as you can get without being mates. The team is theorizing she had no idea what she was doing when she let them in, outside getting them into the hottest ticket in town to see Terrinton’s work and hobnob with the rich, posh and trendy.”
“Who faked her résumé?”
He shook his head. “No clue. It was faked so deep, they haven’t gotten to the bottom of that yet. But it was uncovered he was the one who pushed her to go for it. Before, she worked as a dress minder at a boutique and lived in a flat with three roommates, and only two bedrooms.”
I didn’t know their rate, but my guess was, dress minders, who restocked the automated rods after customers tried on clothes, didn’t make a whole lot.
I could see being dazzled by jewelry and the Elysium Hotel.
But I couldn’t think on her very long, especially now that I knew she was an innocent victim in all this.
Her family and friends must be out of their minds.
I reached for more blobs. “Anything on Buildlore and Fitzgerald?”
“Not yet, but they’re not thinking good things.”
I was not the kind of person to wish ill on others, even if they had done me wrong.
But I way didn’t wish either of those two to turn up with a blast in the face, even if they were horrid to me.
“Weapons are illegal, Aleksei,” I told him something he definitely knew. “Unless you’re law enforcement, or military, or you jump through a lot of hoops to get a permit for one. But those are normally collectors or hunters. How are they getting their hands on prison issue firearms?”
“They’re tenaciously pursuing this line of inquiry and attempting to lock down who might be able to modify them in the hopes that, if they do, whoever that is can lead them to whoever is behind all of this.”
I had a big question to ask, even if I didn’t want the answer.
But it had to be asked.
“Could it actually have stopped your creature’s heart?”
“We can’t know unless someone tests it, which we won’t be doing,” he answered. “But the stream is at an intensity that they speculate it would easily drop wolves, bears, big cats, the hardest beasts to kill. And by drop I mean drop dead. Dragons are a different sort, but they’re concerned.”
“I am too,” I admitted.
“I can’t say I’m not, darling. But they have the weapon the male we captured was carrying. I incinerated one, but there’s enough of it left, they can tell both weapons had the same modifications. The units are at the Royal Armory where they’re studying them, and they’re already at work on a defense weapon.”
“A what?”
“A unit that can throw out an electronic shield that will absorb the stream. At the same time, it’ll blast through and disable the PR60 so it can’t fire, or if it already fired, it can’t refire.”