"She set me up," Skater said in a low voice.

Aggie gave him a hard, doubtful look.

'Tonight," he went on. forcing her to hear. "A piece of action turned dirty and got one of my people killed." It was as much as he'd ever admitted to someone outside his own circle that he was involved in any kind of shadow biz. With one exception. "Larisa fed me the scan, cut herself in for a piece. I agreed because it sounded doable. Somewhere in there, the yakuza got double-crossed, either by Larisa or someone she knows. I want to know the score."

"And you think Larisa sold you out?"

Asked bare-faced and bluntly. Skater couldn't answer right away. "I don't know. I need to find out. If she didn't, she could be in danger."

Aggie's laugh was harsh and brittle. "You don't believe in anybody, do you?"

Skater didn't reply.

'Tell me." the dancer said, "when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror, do you ever believe the guy you see standing there?"

"Sometimes," Skater replied honestly.

"You don't even know yourself. How the hell can you expect to know anyone else?"

Skater was confused by the logic. "I need to see Larisa."

"Maybe she doesn't need to see you." Aggie tumed and shook a long, gold tipped black cigarette out of a pack and lit it. Smoke curled around her head. "She loved you. Jack. More than anything or anyone. I didn't think she'd ever leave you, no matter what kind of life you lead or the way you walled yourself off from her. Whatever you did to hurt her, it must have been bad."

"I didn't do anything to her," Skater said. He'd asked himself for months what it could have been, replayed every conversation he could remember. None of it seemed enough to drive her away. "What did she tell you?”

"Nothing. But we noticed you didn't come around anymore and Larisa didn't smile as much. A month later she couldn't hide it any longer, and we figured you'd left because of the baby."

Skater felt like he'd been juiced with a double string from a Super Shock taser. "Baby?"

"Yeah, a baby-" Aggie heid out her hands to measure dimensions angrily. "You know, about this big, pink and round. Cries a lot." She stared hard at him.

Skater flipped the possibility around inside his head, but it wouldn't stick to anything, like the inside of his skull was gel-coated.

"Spirits," Aggie said softly. "You didn't know."

"No." Skater felt battered and empty, all the anger he'd been holding onto to keep him moving suddenly blown out

"We all figured you'd found out she was pregnant and decided to make tracks."

"I wouldn't have done that."

"You sure?"

Skater made himself answer honestly, more for himself than Aggie. He needed truth now. "No."

"Yeah. That's what I thought. Maybe that's what Larisa thought, too." She stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray curled up inside a ceramic rock lizard. "You get to know them, guys are pretty much the same once you scratch that thin veneer. We tried to get her to see a street doc about eliminating the problem. But she refused. She had a nice nest egg set aside, and she was picking up more from new customers after you stopped coming around."

"Like who?"

"A connected guy named Synclair Tone." Aggie's voice and expression intimated scorn. "He's a Mafia guy who came up out of the Barrens. Still got the gutter written all over him, if you know where to look. He's cheap flash in a Vashon Island suit, but he's got mucho dinero backing any play he makes. And he liked Larisa a lot."

The knowledge soured inside Skater. From Aggie's expression he knew she'd intended it to. He forced himself to get around it. "Who's Tone with?"

She shrugged. "You know how these guys are, Jack. Keep the mystery intact and they figure a girl will throw herself at his feet."

Had Larisa? He told himself he didn't want to know, but that was a lie. "Is it possible Tone's tied in with the yaks somehow?" Skater knew the Seattle Mafia and the yakuza were virtually at war, but he also knew the yaks were deep as drek in all this. No matter how unlikely, this Tone slag just might be stupid enough to try playing both ends against the middle.

"Not that I ever knew."

"Was Larisa?"

"No. The yakuza have a positively medieval outlook on women. She knew that. She stayed away."

Skater struggled to make sense of everything, but it wasn't happening. There was only one course of action he could pursue. "I need to see Larisa."

Someone knocked on the door. "Five minutes, Aggie."

"Coming," she yelled back.

"Don't be late or you'll get docked. Chloris got those suckers drooling and they ain't gonna wait long." Footsteps moved away from the door.

"I need to see Larisa," Skater repeated.

"Can't help you." Aggie gathered up her purse, something Skater knew she'd never take out on the stage.

"Maybe she's in trouble."

"And maybe she's not. Did you think about that?" Aggie challenged. "Maybe she sold your fragging ass down the river for a credstick so she could get you out of her system. Just so you'd be gone."

"I need to know how it was. For a lot of reasons. If I'd known about the baby, maybe things could have been different. But I didn't."

"Oh, hell. Jack, who knows if it was even your baby? There were other guys before you, maybe even during you. There can't help but be in this line of work. Frag it, they're in your face all the drekking time."

"It's not about the baby," Skater replied softly. "Not all of it. I didn't leave Larisa. She left me. No warning, and no reason why. She stayed in touch occasionally, even put me onto this piece of action tonight. I want to know why."

"What if she did?" Aggie demanded. The room's dim lights made her pinched features more severe. "Are you going to hurt her?"

"No." Skater knew it was the truth as soon as he spoke out loud. "When I know, one way or the other, I'll chill it and move on. Revenge is no piece of biz to buy into, unless it's not your own emotions burning you up. It's for my own mind." He hesitated just a beat. "Like I told you, Larisa could be in danger, too."

For just a moment, indecision warred in Aggie's eyes. Then she shrugged, apparently making up her mind. "I'll call her. She can decide."

It wasn't what Skater wanted, and he searched for more words to offer.

Aggie read more into his reluctance to move. "Unless you're going to try to stop me." He fingers had drifted into her purse.

"No," Skater said, stepping aside. If Larisa ran from her doss, or didn't want to see him, that was an answer as well.

"Public telecoms are outside."

Skater opened the door and followed Aggie out. She walked down to the end of the hall where there were a couple of telecom cubes.

The music had changed to thunder out in the main lobby. It took Skater a few moments to recognize it as a popular biker thrash tune the Seattle Timber Wolves used as their theme song in combat matches.

Aggie tapped in a number on the keypad, then the two of them stood waiting for the face of Larisa Hartsinger to appear on the visual pickup. 'That's strange." Aggie pushed the Disconnect key. "No answer. No message. Nothing."

But Skater's attention was already elsewhere, drawn by movement he caught oul the corner of his eye. He'd sensed the two men stalking him even before he spotted them down at the other end of the hall. For a moment he wondered if they'd somehow recognized him.

Something told him the men were neither yakuza nor Lone Star or any other kind of blue crew. But his senses stuttered over the hard edge they broadcasted with their presence.

"Friends?" Aggie asked.

"No," Skater answered.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and kept her eyes on Skater, but he knew she was checking out the two figures down at the end of the hall. They were clearly visible as an elf and a troll, "Damn you, Jack Skater. This was a good place to work."