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  I needed to slow her down, for she threatened to explode in raw, ripped out emotions, and once that happened, I wouldn’t be able to talk to her logically for she’d be flooded with feelings.

  She paced around the small section between my visitor chair and the shelves that lined the back section of my private office. Her arms folded defensively across her chest as if protecting herself from my words…my answer…my explanation.

  I decided to give it a go anyway.

  “You know I hate cases where regs have messed it up.”

  I knew she'd be angry about me not taking her aunt’s case, but I had rules and procedures to which she was aware. The storm had been brewing since Christensen left and now the downpour of blame and accusations were about to commence. I’m sure she’d been thinking about all day. The anger had been stirring and now was the time for it to overflow.

  Her lips trembled. "Cyb, this is my family!"

  "I know that," I replied, much too quickly.

  "Stop! Think about this!" she shouted, her fury at my rejection rising to the surface like boiling water. "Damn it! It is my cousin!"

  "Family or not, you know the rule!" I said, firmly back, my own temper mounting. I hated it, but anger reared its red-hot face. "Besides, it gave you no right to ambush me! You work with me, not against!"

  Jane's eyes grew wide and she punched her thigh in a huff. I rose from behind my desk, and with concentration, placed them both on its cool surface. Jane’s hands were moving in time to her speaking, visual aids for her angst.

  "I didn't ambush you. I didn't know she'd be here today."

  I stared at her, studying her face. Her hazel eyes shined brightly and her lips were white with irritation.

  We sat in the quiet heat-blown hush of my office for a few seconds glaring at each other. Neither of us was willing to look away, to blink first.

  After several tense moments, Jane blinked and her gaze dropped to the floor.

  "I can't believe you think I'd do that," she added, her voice small and hurt.

  "You know the rules," I said softly, my fury disappearing like the smoke on an extinguished fire.

  Jane perched down in the visitor's chair and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Her hands twisted together. "You were the one who said we needed a case. Aunt Belle is willing to pay twice the retainer."

  When trying to woo me, money is almost always an option.

  "Look at you, Jane. You're way too close to this. It’s too personal," I said, lowering myself back into my chair, closing my eyes to the shattered and emotionally fragile woman in front of me.

  Personal cases had a way of ruining an inspector's objectivity. Not to mention, during the course of an investigation, all kinds of nasty things come out like pus from a sore, painful and gross. Family cases were the worse for learning long hidden secrets, stirring up dramas, and ripping the scabs off of old wounds.

  "You've taken personal cases before," Jane said, her voice quieter, farther out of reach.

  "Yeah, but I don't like them." I opened my eyes and they fell directly on her.

  Her eyes filled with tears, but none fell. She was way too tough for that.

  “Cyb. I’m askin’. Me. Jane.”

  I thought about it.

  She'd never really asked me for anything.

  And I did need the funds.

  On the other hand, four weeks had passed, trails were not just cold, but frigid. If we solved this case, it could take years, if ever. Was I prepared to devote that kind of time to it?

  My eyes met Jane's and her need reached out to me. It claw at my clothes, desperate and sharp, urgent with need.

  I thought then of my niece, Nina, whose birthday was only a few weeks away.

  If she were Amanda Christensen, would I feel as Jane did now: Powerless to stop her abduction but devoted to finding her?

  Yes, I would. She was my family.

  This was personal.

  I knew Jane well enough to know that if I said no, she'd leave my office and investigate on her own. I suspected she'd been doing that for several days already. She'd leave the office early and on some days spend a lot of time at her computer, surfing for clues. Not that she had told me. I just knew.

  Without me, she may be killed inspecting on her own.

  "Cybil," she said, her voice strained eyes wide with raging pain. "She's my cousin, but she's more like a little sister…you know?"

  "All right!" I snapped, knowing in my gut that regret was stamped all over this thing. "I'll take the case."

  What else was I going to do on weekends?

  Defeated and weary, I wiped my face in aggravation. Once I got home, a beer was definitely on tap. Heck, I may even have two.

  Jane released another sigh…this one as if our argument had exhausted her too.

  "I'll tell Aunt Belle."

  "Tell her that I want to meet with her tomorrow at one," I said. "I'm sure she's still in the area."

  Jane caught my tone, and blushed. “I swear I didn’t ambush you, Cyb. I ain’t like that.”

  “Save it, Jane,” I said, not looking at her and trying to cool my irritation at the idea. “I’m going to do what she wants, so the rest is immaterial.”

  She nodded before leaving.

  My door slid closed with a hushed click.

  My stomach growled in protest to the already stress-filled day.

  I glanced at the door Jane had just disappeared through.

  "You're welcome."

  On most days, I tried to leave the office before the sun sinks into nightfall. Too many people wanted yours truly permanently out of business for me to be hanging out at night. The evening’s velvety darkness hid most of them or so they thought. It’s easier to hurt someone in the darkness. The dark shadows cushioned the intense effects of blood and goriness, making it less real. Unlike daylight which revealed the true horror of violence, shadows shielded it from view.

  Tonight, however, Captain Hanson's rushed email files of Amanda Christensen's case kept me glued to my seat until well after five.

  Not that it was riveting reading.

  It was more necessary reading, like an English assignment given by a professor. In order to progress or pass the course, you had to read the text. Notes I'd made from Amanda's regulator file lay sprawled in my handheld. The midnight-bluish tint of twilight brushed the lower section of the horizon when the files arrived into my email box.

  Now the entire sky was cloaked in deep blue.

  I started reading, feeling like I was back in high school with an assignment to write about later. Grudgingly, I read through each attachment, looking for something the Memphis Regulators would’ve missed, or had in fact screwed up.

  My experience with regulators was one of mutual loathing. They considered private inspectors second–class citizens, below even an average civilian. No one liked people stepping on their toes, and the regulators were no different. So, p.i.s and regs, well, couldn’t all get the glory. I was certain the Memphis Regs disliked my meddling into their case.

  When I looked up, it was around six-thirty.

  My eye caught the message left hours earlier that I hadn't had time to play. I desperately needed a receptionist, not that our telemonitors were lit up with incoming calls from potential clients, but I just wasn’t good at this secretary stuff. Give me something to shoot or kill from several hundred yards away, I could do that. Locate missing people, items, and such, I did as a job and normally without complaint, but this office manager routine was simply too much.

  I clicked the message box and it played in audio only. The caller elected not to leave a complete message with a video feed, just audio.

  Wautos horns could be heard and the caller’s raspy breathing. There were faint voices in the distance, of conversations and huge guffaws, but other than that there were no words.

  I listened, straining my ears to hear the background noise or something distinctive that could id the caller. My telemonitor i.p. was non-public. A caller didn�
��t get my number by mistake too often. My trusty caller id only read the number as payline. That meant it came from a public telemonitor somewhere in D.C. The caller could have truly been anyone.

  Intently listening, seconds passed before my private office was engulfed with horrifying memories and a chilling message.

  “Sweet Cinnamon, this is…well, you know who it is now don’t you my favorite inspector? I’ve got information on your perfect boyfriend,” he said, his voice a warm, awful sound. “I will be in touch, and I know you miss my looooooving touch. It’s a killer, isn’t it Cinnamon? Later...”

  The message ended and not too soon. As I listened, I already had my pug pointed at the screen, ready to blow the voice…to bits. He had no right to contact me. The restraining order demanded he stay away from me. Not to mention the fact that he should still be locked in a cradle cell at prison entertaining his dreamlike fantasies until he died…or was paroled.

  “Cybil!” Jane screamed as she bustled into the office. A look of confusion wrinkled her face. "What are you doing?"

  Her scream brought me back to the room and from that terrible time—place where Jarold Montano had reached out, touched me, and dragged my ass close to death.

  I blinked rapidly. “Did you hear it? It’s him!”

  I didn’t have to say whom, she knew. Remember what I said about being partners?

  “It can’t be. He’s dreaming away thirty years,” Jane said as she struggled to take the pug from my hand. “He’s not even due for a parole hearing for twenty years.”

  I kept the pug and slapped at her hand. Just to appease her, I tried to calm down and put the weapon up for the second time today. “It’s his voice. I'd know it anywhere.”

  With the click of the mouse I had the computer run a trace on the voice message to match it to a list of known violators in the D.C. area. The screen whirled until it located the match.

  Just as I knew it would.

  The mug shot appeared and Jane gasped.

  “It’s him. Jarold!”

  His cold, black eyes stared back at me from his cradle photo. Beneath the picture in artful comic sans white font was the word “match.”

  “Damn,” Jane spat angrily and leaned back against my private office doors. “Do you want to call up to Frazier's Cradle House to see if he's still asleep?”

  “What do you think?” I said, bitterly, touching the screen and closing windows. "They'd cart me right off to the nut house."

  Since the war, the territories pretty much did whatever they wanted with regard to regulations, sanctions, trade, etc. During the war that separated the once United States, jewels and other fine goods like paintings had been stolen and sold on the black market or added to private collections. Rioting and looting occurred on a universal scale. That’s how I met the infamous Jarold Montano or Phish. His pet name for me had always been Cinnamon. He said that my skin reminded him of it and he wanted to eat my flesh.

  I shuddered at the memory.

  Jarold Montano stole a bunch of jewels belonging to a family that hired me to recover them. I successfully did, but not before he’d put me in the hospital with a concussion and a blast hole two inches away from killing me. I had a mound of scar tissue that adorned the area just under my left breast.

  Sentenced to sleep thirty years in status, Jarold occupied a cell up at Frazier's. Cradles are what were once called jails and prisons. Jarold went for attempted murder and theft. His hatred for me was so great that he requested his dream sequences all include images of me so he could kill me over and over again for his thirty-year sentence.

  The judge declined.

  I had to admit, he wasn't my favorite violator either. He had a snowball’s chance in the ghetto of getting out clean from the cradle on parole or otherwise. He liked being mean, evil, and moreover, he enjoyed hurting people the way some people enjoyed making blankets or fixing aerocycles.

  Tonight he had called and he said he had information about Trey. My precious perfect boyfriend, he said. How did he get communication privileges? How was he awake?

  Nevertheless, he knew something. The very usage of the word perfect told me he knew Trey was a hatchling. Societal punching bag, hatchlings were often tortured, mutilated and killed by various extreme groups scattered throughout the territories. Hatred on a grand scale, just because of the way hatchlings arrived on the planet. They weren’t born; they were created in laboratories.

  Thus they couldn’t truly be human, could they?

  Jane subscribed to this theory as well. Another area to which we did not agree.

  “Look, I’ve got something to do, so I gotta go early,” Jane said, breaking my concentration. "See you tomorrow. Aunt Belle said she’d be here at one o’clock."

  "Sure, take off. I'll see you back here," I said, my thoughts straddled between her and Jarold. "I can't worry about Jarold right now. We've got to find Amanda."

  With a thumbs-up gesture, she disappeared through my private office doors.

  The doors hissed softly at her exit.

  Fleeing the office shortly after Jane, I hurried to my wauto only to sit in traffic a few minutes later. Grayish clouds had turned the sky a smoke gray against the heavens. Threatening snow. The network of highways weaved through the quadrants slick metallic skyscrapers. The former law forbid buildings to be taller than the capitol had been vanquished. The traffic lanes were jammed with wautos, aerocycles and cargo crafts and I spent most of the journey home listening to the news on the in-flight radio.

  On the West Side of D.C. a serial rapist preyed on elderly women. The news rambled on about other violent, vile, and vagrant acts humans committed against each other. I lowered it to a low drone in the background.

  My internal dialogue was much more entertaining.

  Jane's actions this afternoon nagged at me. Up to this point, I had always trusted her with a faith reserved for religious figures. Now, I wondered. Did she or did she not know her aunt was coming and when her aunt did appear? If she did, why then hadn't she contacted me at home to warn me?

  Could it be she cared more about finding her cousin than her duties to inspecting?

  Now that I've taken the case, I'd have to watch for similar actions like this from her. Personal cases drove me nuts. Emotions blurred perceptions and caused errors. One error could get one if not both of us killed.

  According to the Memphis regs, Amanda was last seen leaving the mansion in Germantown, headed for her boyfriend's, Nathan, house in Memphis proper. She didn't return home that night and she didn't answer her personal telemonitor. Mayor Christensen grew nervous when Amanda didn't show up before she left to go to work the next day and contacted the Memphis regs.

  A teenager not coming home wasn’t the norm where I came from, but the Memphis regs didn’t seem to take it too seriously that the girl was gone.

  Mentally, I reviewed the case file over and over again, making sure I understood the facts, or what was presented as facts. Committing them to memory helped me separate the truth from lies when I started questioning people and digging around for information.

  I finally arrived home around ten minutes after eight.

  My apartment smelled dry and musty from being locked up all day. I crawled onto the sofa, reached across the sofa's right pillow, picked up my satchel and carefully pulled out my portable, handheld computer. Tiny, compared to most home computers, it was a third the size of laptops—my own little PDA. Ideas and questions popped up as I pondered the files Hanson sent. I wanted to get those down before I forgot them.

  Sighing, I pressed my thumbprint into the space in the structure for thumbs and said, "Cybil Lewis". It booted up and a white, electronic blank sheet appeared. Using the attached pen, I dated the top of the electronic page, March 10, 2147.

  As I did with every new case, I started taking notes almost immediately. I wrote about the client, my first impressions and the assignment chosen.

  Well in this case, forced assignment.

  Information dumping hel
ped me when trying to piece together clues and impressions. It also served to keep me on track and made great material for client progress reports whenever I got around to actually writing them. It also showed the client that I didn’t spend my time at my desk eating sandwiches. Fieldwork being what it was, the progress reports weren’t always regularly scheduled or timely.

  Not only that, but when I retell the story to you, I’d have accurate information. My memory isn’t all it used to be, and surely you didn’t think I was making this up?

  My telemonitor buzzed, pulling me back from my thoughts into the icy splash of reality.

  I didn't bother to check the call identifier.

  "Yeah," I said as I hastily put the handheld away.

  I pressed the receive button, a big red R and the screen brightened. Malcolm Moore's beautiful brown eyes loomed out from a pile of arrow-straight raven hair. Somewhere in his family genetic-tree was a fine, handsome Scot. A smile graced his face and that usually meant trouble (or work) for me.

  "Cybil. My, my, my," he said in a voice that was so damn soothing. "It's been what? Two years?"

  Malcolm worked for the e-news crime section for the D.C. Mirror "How come you don't call me, anymore?"

  He wore a cobalt blue button down shirt, a black tie and a black blazer. A silver-earring dangled from his left ear and his clean-shaven face made him look younger than his thirty-six years. The earring contradicted his polished shirt and tie, but I knew that beneath the monitor's camera, he wore jeans and cowboy boots.

  "Busy with work, you know," I said, but I knew Malcolm wanted something. No point in wasting time. "What do you want?"

  He laughed, forcing his hair to shimmer under the fluorescent lights of his office. Behind him the sounds of typing, data drives saving and conversations provided background noise. The D.C. Mirror was one of the city's best newspapers.

  They were still called newspapers although paper itself was rare thanks to pollution. Mutated trees made very poor stock indeed; so all newspapers were files. You could get them as attachments in email or as virtual newspapers sent to your handheld or personal telemonitors.