“Pretty much,” he said with a faltering grin. It felt like a ghastly bore that despite four months away from her he was as stale and predictable as ever. The mystery that came with novelty had long since worn off their relationship. He resented that he was an utterly known quantity to her, hated that she simply knew the minutiae of his life without having to ask. Then he remembered Oriana and savored a bittersweet taste of smug revenge.

He hadn’t meant to lose himself to his dark mood so deeply. Lora’s tone became concerned. “What’s wrong? Are you upset?”

“Yes, actually,” he said. Even knowing what she would ask next, he didn’t elaborate, preferring to make her draw him out.

“About what, sweetheart?”

“The Bombay,” he said. “I just finished a memorial piece, full of stories from people who lost friends or family. I’ve been working on it ever since the news first came in…. I guess it just got under my skin, is all.”

“Objectivity was never your strong suit, was it?” She moved close to him and stroked her fingertips through his hair. “You always get too close to your stories and get all wrapped up.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice barely more than a quiet hush of breath. “You know me.” His eyes closed as if magnetically sealed. Something inside him just didn’t want to look into Lora’s eyes right now. He swallowed hard. “I always get too close. And that’s how people get hurt.”

Sequestered in the unlit cargo hold of the Rocinante, T’Prynn handed Quinn a palm-sized data card. “Take this to residential compartment 2842,” she said. “Hide it somewhere easily described, then send an anonymous message to Tim Pennington with instructions on how to find it.”

Quinn held the data card between his thumb and forefinger. He regarded it with quiet suspicion. “Why?”

A decades-old memory of the blunt end of a lirpa rattling her jaw colored her words with aggression. “Excuse me?”

“This ain’t what I signed on for,” he said. “You said you needed me to get around on planets you can’t go to. You didn’t say anything about me being your delivery boy.”

“I said I would contact you when I had use for you.”

“What is this? A joke? Drop a data card? Make an anonymous tip? You could do all this yourself.”

“Yes, I could.” She suppressed Sten’s katra memory of her elbow shattering the bridge of his nose, while waiting for Quinn to reason out the subtext of her statement.

“You’re making me do this just to prove that you can.”

“Correct.”

“Just showing me who’s boss.”

She arched one eyebrow at him. “Indeed.”

He thrust the data card back at her. “What if I say no?”

“Then next time I will let the bounty hunter shoot you.”

He stuffed the data card in his coat pocket. “Right. Where’d you say this thing’s goin’?”

Sleep eluded Pennington.

Beside him, Lora was deep into a REM phase and sprawled over more than two-thirds of his bed. Inspired by their prolonged separation, she had been unwilling to take “no” for an answer when she had pounced on him. The mood had felt awkward and empty to Pennington; he’d felt like a person whose between-meal snackings had left him with no appetite when dinner came. All the same, he had gone through the motions, indulging her with the pleasures he knew she preferred. Emotion might have betrayed him, but muscle memory had remained true.

That was two hours ago.

The ceiling was painted with dappled light filtered through the boughs of trees outside the bedroom window. He had always been fond of the old-fashioned–looking sodium lamps that ringed Fontana Meadow. Tonight, their dusky orange glow mingled with organically shaped shadows to resemble golden camouflage.

He rolled to his left, away from Lora.

With slow, cautious motions he rotated his pillow in search of a spot of refreshing coolness.

A slow, deep breath felt good, but he was no less awake at the end of it than he had been at the start.

It was 0338, a time that his father had always described as seeming “less real” than other parts of the day. A dark Limbo betwixt the late night and the dawn, it was like a No Man’s Land for the ordinary soul. More and more lately, however, Pennington had found himself stalking leads and drafting stories here in the wee hours.

Soundless and discreet, his pager blinked with a soft green light that indicated he had a new message. Grateful for any excuse to slip out of bed, he scooped up the small device, pushed aside the sheets, and stole away to the living room, where he sank heavily onto the sofa with a huff of breath and checked the message on his pager.

No source ID, he noticed. Odd. Anonymous messages were not difficult to send via the service he used, but few reliable sources ever took that precaution. Information was all well and good, but it was generally not safe to take anonymous sources “at their word.” His editor almost always insisted on either two credible corroborating sources, or lots of rock-solid evidence.

He opened the message and at first didn’t know what it was.

It read, simply:

Compartment 2842. Behind the bedroom ventilation grate.

Without exception, it was the vaguest lead he had ever been offered. What are they trying to lead me to? A body? A safety violation? He was ashamed to admit that the sheer mystery of it actually intrigued him. Running off in the middle of the night to pursue something this flimsy was absurd.

From the bedroom, Lora began to make a bizarre wheezing-warbling sound. Pennington asked himself whether he would prefer to go back inside and lie down next to his wife until the faux sunrise, or slip out of the apartment to see what this idiotic tip was all about.

He got up and started looking for his shoes.

Zett walked three steps behind Qoheela, a beefy Tarascan hit man. Morikmol had found Qoheela lying facedown in a narrow alley near Quinn’s favorite drinking establishment. On Ganz’s orders, Qoheela had been escorted onto the Omari-Ekon. Qoheela’s plodding footfalls trembled the staircase as he crested its top steps. Moving quickly, Zett passed the bulbous-eyed amphibian and guided him toward the spot between the twin black obelisks.

Standing and clearly in a foul mood, Ganz glared at Qoheela from beneath a furrowed brow. “You’re one of Broon’s men.”

“That’s right,” the Tarascan said, his voice translated by a device beneath his tapirlike snout, which waggled as he spoke.

“Who said you have Vanguard privileges?”

“It’s a public facility,” Qoheela said snidely.

Stepping lightly, Zett positioned himself just behind Qoheela’s left flank.

Ganz’s indignant expression never wavered. “I don’t like complications on my turf,” he said.

“Your deal went bad,” Qoheela said. “Broon put a contract on Quinn. End of story.”

“I’ll tell you when the story ends,” Ganz said. As he lifted his hand to give the signal to disintegrate the Tarascan, Qoheela struck out to either side with his richly muscled arms and hit each obelisk hard enough to crack both bases and tilt them apart. Sparks fountained from the breaks in the stone.

Qoheela lifted his foot to step forward toward Ganz.

Zett’s fist struck the Tarascan on his spine, just above the pelvic assembly. A sharp, wet snap of shattered bone was heard by everyone in the room. Qoheela stopped in midstep, then slumped. Zett drew his short, curved yosa blade. Before Qoheela’s knees touched the deck, Zett circled him in a dancelike motion and executed a perfect slash across the creature’s jugular. Black blood jetted out in a fan-shaped spray, just missing Zett, who twirled away. By the time the slender, well-dressed Nalori had finished his well-rehearsed chom pattern, Qoheela had pitched forward. He was now exactly as Morikmol had found him, only dead. A pool of Qoheela’s jet ichor spread swiftly around him on the pristine deck.