"The name Synclair Tone mean anything to you?"

"One was called Tone. The other one was Bobby. It was Tone who done the hitting. He liked it; you could see it in his eyes."

"What's on the chip?" Skater asked.

The thin shoulders rose and fell. "Don't know. It's password protected." She smiled at him, showing gapped teeth. "I'll admit, I ain't no saint." She licked her lips. "Think you want to spend five thousand nuyen to find out what's on it?"

Skater dug his hand into his pocket and took out one of the credsticks he had there. A brief glance showed him it was one with five thousand nuyen keyed on it. Lofwyr's coffers ran deep. "It's open-coded. Put your passcode and SIN in and you're wiz."

She took the credstick hesitantly. "I don't suppose I could ask for more?"

"No."

Her gaze was belligerent. "And if I did?"

"I'd book," Skater replied. "Maybe you could find the two guys who showed up here before. Maybe I'd even call them and tell them you lied. It doesn't sound like you'd get more than I'm offering."

Without another word, Kalika Chilson reached into an inner pocket of her jacket and retrieved the message chip. "Don't suppose you'd want to see the things she left here."

"She hasn't been here recently?"

"No."

Skater shook his head. "I don't think so." He inserted the chip into the portacom he'd brought and powered up. Larisa formed on the display immediately.

"Jack," the message said, "if you get this, I guess it

Skater shut it off. Whatever Larisa had left for him was private. He meant for it to stay that way. "I thought you said it was password protected."

"It is," the woman insisted. "You let it play a little longer, she'll tell you that."

Skater nodded and said thanks. He held the portacom as he went down the steps, wondering if the message held all the secrets. Some, he felt certain, he'd already guessed.

"Jack, if you get this, I guess it means I'm not around to talk to anymore." On the portacom screen, Larisa looked drawn and tired. She was wearing some kind of black outfit that looked good on her, and behind her was the living room of the Bellevue doss. Her figure hadn't quite bounced back from the pregnancy, but Jack thought she looked better than anytime he'd known her. And she'd changed her hair, wearing it shorter and more daring than before. The corpse Skater had viewed in the Lone Star morgue hadn't revealed that.

The time/date stamp in the lower-right corner showed that the message had been recorded only three days before she'd died. "First off, I want to tell you I'm sorry about what happened with us. There were a lot of things I never got to say to you that I wanted to. We fought, and I wish I'd had the chance to set that straight, too."

Seated in the back of the van as Elvis drove it back to their hideout, Skater felt a stab of pain at seeing her face and hearing her voice. Duran sat in the passenger seat with the Scorpion canted across his knees.

"I love you, Jack," Larisa said. "I just wish there was more time to explain. Everything got so twisted up so fragging fast." Tears glimmered in her eyes.

Skater's throat felt thick and tight, and he was uncomfortable knowing that Kalika Chilson had heard even this much of the recording. He rubbed his fingers lightly over ihe flat screen.

"It's hard to talk," she went on. "I promised myself I wasn't going to get emotional, I'm going to passcode the rest of this. One word. If you don't know about it, then you don't need to. Just remember that I love you."

The picture on the display faded out, leaving a password prompt blinking. Without besitation. Skater hit the keypad control and converted the entry into letters instead of numerals. He punched in five letters. C-H-I-I-D.

The prompt showed a reject flag.

He tried again, this time thinking that Larisa would have ragged on him for being so impersonal. Four letters, this time. B-A-B-Y. A word with more promise, more joy.

The prompt flashed an accept.

The screen cleared again. When it did, Larisa was visible once more, this time with another room of her apartment in the background. "Her name is Emma, Jack. It means 'one who heals.' I hope you like it." Then she held up a baby in her arms.

The round face and wispy dark hair and pointed ears reminded Skater of Larisa. It was like he'd seen the baby before, like he knew exactly what she would look like. Pan of it, he knew, was because of the resemblance between mother and daughter. Then, his heart seemed to thud to a stop inside his chest. The tiny face he'd seen on the trid the night before flashed in his mind. Ariadne Silverstaff's new baby. He peered closely at Emma and knew with cold certainty that the pictures had been of the same baby.

"She's your daughter," Larisa said, and there were tears that went along with the smile on her face. She kissed the baby, then gently laid her in the crib. "And if you're watching this, it means they've killed me and taken her." The flat screen grayed out.

"Oh frag," Skater said, feeling like a hole had suddenly materialized in the center of his chest.

“This all started about a year ago," Larisa went on, taking up the narrative after a brief pause. She no longer had the baby in her arms.

Skater paced the floor of the suite of apartments while the others watched. He'd already seen it all in the van, but he wanted them to see it too.

"A man named Ridge Maddock came to me," Larisa said. "He said he had information about some shadow work you'd done. He told me if I didn't cooperate, he'd give you up to the people still looking for you and that they'd kill you the minute they laid eyes on you." Her voice broke, "I didn't want that to happen. Jack."

Skater worked hard to keep his face devoid of emotion. A lot of anger was moving in him, as well as confusion. He had a daughter. That was something that was going to take a lot of getting used to. Until now he'd always been alone, responsible for no one other than himself. That had been one of his laws. No extensions of self to render him more vulnerable. Larisa was as close as he'd ever come.

"He wanted me to have a child," Larisa said. "They were going to artificially inseminate me. You know how I feel about that. Machines poking inside my body. I'm a dancer, and a good one without being chipped. I couldn't handle that. So I went to a street mage I know, and he gave me a mojo that would prevent the embryo from taking. Sometimes they don't take anyway, and the procedure has to be done again, Maybe more man once."

Unable to face the hurt in her eyes anymore. Skater turned away from the screen and looked out the window. Night was coming to the sprawl, and the lurkers were starting to come to life.

"I used the mojo, but they agreed to wait another month and see if I'd gotten pregnant," Larisa said. "I was going out of my mind trying to figure out what to do-I still had to come up with a baby. Maddock is connected to someone named Synciair Tone. The whole deal came from him. If he'd found out what I'd done, he'd have killed me for sure."

Slowly, Skater sipped his soykaf, hoping it would wash the bitter taste from his mouth. It wouldn't cut the guilt. Larisa had been trapped and alone, and he hadn't even noticed.

"I could think of only one thing I could do," she said. 'They were practically mainlining fertility drugs into me by then, and so I just let nature take its course when you and I were together. When I went back a month later, I was pregnant and they were satisfied. They never questioned whether it was the embryo they'd tried to plant in me. I thought maybe it would give us some time to work things out. Only you were never there to work things out with." She paused. "Part of it is my fault, because I didn't tell you. Spirits, with everything that had happened, I wouldn't have known where to begin."