"Sure," Skater said. "Problem is, I don't know for sure what we were after. Some kind of bioresearch supposed to be worth millions."

"A fragging pig in the poke?”

"I had an inside line."

"And the inside person? You trust him?"

Her, Skater silently corrected. "I did."

"Happens," Kestrel said. "You live life to figure out the people you can trust. If you're lucky, you survive the ones you're wrong about."

"You discover anything about this mess, you get a finder's fee."

Kestrel nodded.

"Where's my credsiick?" Skater asked. The fixer also ran some of the best money-laundering schemes in the business.

"Under your new name down in the Cayman Islands. Some of it's still on the way, but it'll all be there by morning, long before you get there." Kestrel placed a small leather pouch into the vault pass-through mounted in the seat. With a wicked hiss, the vault shunted back toward Skater and opened with an electric pop.

Skater took out the ebony credstick and looked al it. Kestrel told him the SIN was in the name of Walter Dent.

Skater hit the doorlock and opened it as the light turned green, stepping out onto the curb. "Thanks, Kestrel." He kept moving, closing the door before the fixer could say anything else. He let the shadows take him, wishing they could drown the memories, too, because now those memories wouldn't turn loose, suddenly sharper and more insistent than ever. He couldn't quit the city without knowing why Larisa had betrayed him. It couldn't be love he felt for her, he knew. It was the attraction of the moth for the flame. And maybe a way of evening the score between them. She'd left him without reason, leaving him to feel like he just didn't make the grade. But he’d never sold someone out. He was better than that.

Skater got a once-over from one of the two bouncers working the main door to SybreSpace. He slotted his new credstick for the cover charge.

"You have a nice time while you're with us," the bouncer ordered in a gravelly voice as he popped the Wilkerson razors back into hiding. "And be nice to the working girts."

SybreSpace was still one of the trendiest bars in the sprawl, with a long history as a notorious hangout for deckers and wannabes. Others came for the music, which changed abruptly from style to style, depending on which dancer held the main stage.

Skater made his way to the bar, pushing through the packed bodies and haze of cigarette smoke that only partially blunted the scorching neon veins that made various Matrix-like designs pulse on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

Shielding his eyes, Skater spotted a bartender he knew and headed for the decorated bar lit up with glaring neon cubes and polyhedrons that whirled and spun, then exploded in myriad colors, only to be replaced by others. After a brief wait, he reached the head of the line, book-ended between two frazzled waitresses yelling drink orders.

"Can I get you something?" the bartender asked. He was slim and innocuous, but Skater knew for a fact that the guy's left arm held a Fichetti light pistol cybergun.

"A draw," Skater said. He didn't drink, a holdover from his upbringing on the Council lands, and from a personal belief that a shadowrunner had to stay sharp. Except for Shiva and Duran, who did indulge but never on the job, and Trey, who relished the occasional glass of vintage port when he could get it, no one else on the team drank either.

The bartender drew the soybeer into a thick glass, expertly moving the foaming head to the top in a smooth flood of amber.

Skater slotted his credstick, adding a twenty percent tip. This wasn't the Barrens, after all. "Something else."

The bartender went on filling orders for the waitresses, but he glanced back at Skater without missing a beat. His eyes narrowed only slightly, though the broad smile never faltered. "And that is?"

"Is Aggie working tonight?"

"Yes." The bartender sat a trio of drinks on one of the waitress's trays while she complained to the other one about the troll at a back table who was pinching her ass hard enough to leave bruises. "So are a half-dozen bouncers, omae."

"No problem." Skater took his drink and headed back to the shadows that extended just beyond the multicolored lights spilling from the main dance stage onto the floor. The crowd was already lathered up, shouting and hooting their encouragement to the stripper working her way out of her G-string with teasing abandon. She used the mirrors behind her and the gray fog from the stage filters to prolong visual frustration.

Memories came unbidden and started tumbling into Skater's mind. He'd first seen Larisa in the bar while discussing a possible run with a guy Archangel knew. From the very first Larisa Hartsinger had captivated him with her beauty and her dancing, then with her personality. He pushed the memories away with effort and some repressed pain, focusing on the task at hand.

Skater hugged the wall and stepped into the short hallway running to the back rooms. The overhead track lighting was intentionally dim so the dancers could come and go among the crowd without being seen.

He stopped at the second door on the left and let his knuckles find a rhythm on the reinforced wooden surface.

"Who is it?" a husky contralto demanded.

Skater hesitated only for a minute. "Aggie, it's Jack. I need to talk."

"Don't waste your time, chummer. She ain't here."

"I figured that. I need to know where she is."

There was a pause. "Why come to me?"

"Got no one else to ask, and I need to find her."

"Slot it. Jack, people are looking for you. The kind of people where you end up dead and turned to lawn mulch before you can blink your eyes."

The old-fashioned peephole in the door darkened briefly.

"Larisa may be part of it. I need to know."

The door opened and Aggie ushered him in. She was tall and slender, with an overall bodymod that threw every luscious curve into the danger zone. A turquoise negligee overlaid a foundation of black lace undergarments that were shadows under the gauzy material. Her dark hair was hacked off at shoulder length but remained full, accentuating the Amerindian cheekbones and jawline.

Despite the pressing urgency, Skater found making small talk difficult. Before he'd taken up with Larisa, there'd been nights with Aggie. They'd had fun and the sex had been good, but never the magic that had fired him with Larisa.

The dressing room was small and spartan. Besides the vanity and the stool before it, there was only a loveseat and a coat rack.

Aggie smoothed her makeup on with practiced strokes, easily enhancing all her best features. "I don't have time for a lot of jaw." She made a moue of her lips and applied fiery red lipstick that held a neon glazed afterglow.

"Larisa," Skater prompted. The sounds coming from the main room had quieted.

"If she wanted contact with you, she'd have called."

"Aggie, this is serious."

She ignored him, quickly slashing on a pair of very arched brows. "Have you tried calling her?"

"I need to see her."

"Oh?" Aggie raised one of her new eyebrows. "You mean Larisa didn't give you her new number?" She closed her make-up case and dropped it into the slim purse silting on the vanity. "What a surprise."

"You know they're looking for me," Skater said. "Maybe for Larisa, too."

Aggie's eyes trapped Skater's in the vanity mirror. "You mean somebody other than you?"

Skater let irritation sound in his voice. There'd been a little residual animosity between them after he'd started seeing Larisa, but no big drama. "I don't have time for games," he growled.

Spinning to face him, face darkened by anger. Aggie snapped, "Don't you? Everything's a game to you. Jack. You play hard, and you're one of the best, but it's all a game. Including Larisa. Get the hint, chummer: she doesn't want to see you. You didn't lose. Exactly. She's just not going to play anymore." Her voice softened. "Can't say I blame her. There's no use in hanging onto something that's not yours to have. She learned, just not soon enough."