Mumbai Manhunt Page 9

  The gun snapped back into position, barrels staring at the center of her chest. Netta froze in mid-step.

  "I already said I'm not your guinea pig. If it works, after all, you can create a second treatment. Assuming you haven't already done so, which I doubt."

  She’d made two more series, actually. A normal dose for Yashilla and one with the bare minimum of sedatives for Joshi. As compromised as his system was, too much could kill him.

  "Fortunately, I've restrained your patient for you." Bao indicated Joshi's chair.

  Panic thumped in her chest. Joshi had adrenal implants, she knew. That would help push down some of the sedative, keep his heart beating while the drugs worked through his system, but it might not be enough. She’d put enough in the dose to overcome Bao’s system. She doubted Joshi’s would be able to handle it. "You're being foolish. Just let me—"

  The safeties clicked off on both barrels, and Bao brought them up to her face. "It wasn't a request. Besides, you were so willing to use him as a subject earlier, why so hesitant now?"

  She didn’t look at Joshi, didn’t want him to see the fear on her face, but his eyes bored into her. Netta knew he'd be willing her to make a different choice, but this was the road they'd been given. The only thing she had left to do was follow it. "If it works, you'll let us go? Both of us?"

  "After you've treated me, then of course." Bao set the neoprene pack down on Joshi's lap and stepped back, pistol to one side. "Your patient awaits.

  Netta picked up the first vial and used her fingers to trace the side of Joshi's face. "I said some terrible things. Things I can't take back if…" If my calculations are wrong. If I've screwed this up and killed us both.

  "Hush. We both did. It doesn't mean I don't trust you." The fear in his features belied his words, but she understood. Trust wasn't about never being afraid. Trust was about going through with something despite being terrified.

  The panic in her belly withdrew a little. She leaned in and touched her forehead to his. "I love you. Just in case." Saying the words out loud felt right. Even if he wanted nothing to do with her once all this was over, he needed to know her reasons for all this.

  He responded by slashing his mouth over hers, hunger and fear and desperation as his lips pushed past her defenses and seared the memories of him on her heart. While the heat of his mouth soaked into hers, she pressed the hypo against the skin above his liver and triggered it.

  He stiffened, arching back and breaking the kiss by reflex. She dropped the empty hypo to the floor, and it shattered on the concrete. She grabbed his head on either side and held him still long enough to make certain he saw her. "You are strong enough to survive this. Don't fight it."

  The convulsions strengthened, and Joshi bucked against the restraints. Before he could spill the chair over, she lowered it to the floor as carefully as she could. The last thing she wanted was for him to crack his skull in a fall. In the corner of her vision, she counted the seconds down, waiting for the sedatives to take effect. Hoping that they wouldn't be too much.

  Joshi's struggles slowed then stilled. She peeled open one eyelid to check his pupil, but it was unresponsive.

  Another moment and Joshi exhaled in a long, painful rattle and went slack.

  "No!" Netta dropped to one knee and checked his pulse, but there was nothing. “It works! There must be interference with the implants that affect his autonomic system.” A pit opened up in her stomach; she teetered on the edge of plummeting.

  Bao walked over and checked Joshi’s pulse as well, then shook his head. "Just to be certain you weren’t deceiving me, you understand. It looks like you’re back to the drawing board." His featureless, mirrored eyes stayed focused on her as he pulled a long knife from a sheath on his calf.

  She started to close her eyes, hoping he'd make it quick, but Bao only cut the restraints that held Joshi to the chair. He righted the chair and perched upon it with a sigh. "I can’t decide if you thought it would work, or if you actually just poisoned him to save yourself.” He stroked his chin. “Regardless of which is true, living with the pain of knowing you'd killed someone you cared about not once, but twice? Killing you would be a mercy. You're already dead where it counts." He tapped the gun to his chest before holstering it. "Inside."

  He hopped off the chair and whistled to the dog, which trotted along after him. "You may take the body and go, Doctor."

  The tears wouldn't stop coming, and Netta could barely see as she hefted his body onto her shoulder and dragged him out of the factory to the rendezvous spot where Yashilla would be waiting. Hopefully the epinephrine they’d brought would be enough.

  Nine

  The sun beat down onto Joshi's face, and he debated never opening his eyes again. Except if I did that, I couldn't enjoy the view. He shoved himself into a sitting position, back tingling where the dock boards had pressed into his skin. He rotated his shoulder, and while the joint still ached, the pain had lessened almost daily. After six weeks, he'd learned that the pain got worse before the daily thunderstorms that rolled through, providing an effective early warning to get back under the coir roof of his residence.

  Until the rain started, though, he could enjoy the view. Water the color of sapphires extended out from beneath him in a half moon, before turning into the rich indigo of deep ocean. Directly below him he could see the sand beneath the surface, and knew from experience that it only came to mid-calf.

  Of course, twenty years earlier it had been a beach. In the Maldives, even a small rise in sea level had consequences. Never let it be said they weren't entrepreneurial though—the newly flooded area was quickly covered with an open, expansive community of platform homes. He'd heard rumors that they'd be in trouble if a tsunami hit, but he was game to risk it.

  After all, he'd survived worse.

  The wood shifted under another person's weight, and he turned to see Netta coming out of the house with a drink in each hand. Her skin had tanned in the sun, darkening to burnt sienna, and the constant humidity had turned the waves of her hair into an untamable curl that his fingers twitched to thread into. She handed him a drink and sat next to him on the dock. "You ever going to stop watching for him?"

  Joshi chuckled. Trust her to know the real reason for his vigil. "I doubt it." Bao might never show up to finish the job; he might show up tomorrow. At the end of the day, Joshi decided watching the beautiful scenery served as ample reward for his paranoia. He took a sip of the drink, stunned by the amount of alcohol she'd managed to pack into the small glass. He coughed reflexively. "You know this isn't the Caribbean, right? Alcohol's a controlled substance here."

  She smiled and clinked her glass against his. "Fortunately we're both licensed to have it. Or did you convert while I was inside?"

  His hand slid over hers, fingers interlacing. Two months and touching her still gave him an illicit thrill, pleasure he knew he didn't deserve but wanted anyway. "I just won't believe he's abandoned the hunt. It's not like one of us to give up."

  "You did."

  "That's different. I died, after all."

  She unhooked her hand from his and leaned her face into his shoulder. “Your heart stopped. The sedative dose was enough to take out Bao, you didn’t have a chance.” She exhaled, breath stirring the hair on his arm. “I had to hope that your hemoglobin booster would keep enough oxygen in your blood to stave off brain death until we could restart your heart. It’s a miracle it worked.”

  He put his arm around her, keeping her close. “Miracle or not, it did.” He’d gotten the boost system so he could hold his breath against a gas attack. He’d expected it to buy him time, not save his life. “I’m here. We’re here, together.”

  She nodded and lifted her face. Unshed tears sparkled in her eyelashes, evidence of how afraid she’d been. “Whether Bao gives up or not, BlueGene can't risk anything happening to me." The ‘net had exploded after she'd released her formula. People had started to hail it as the end of Implant Rejection Syndrome, and Netta as a new savi
or.

  Joshi smiled into his glass. Certainly she'd saved him, but that may have been more than just her formula.

  Netta took a long sip of her drink, which he noticed didn't cause her nearly the distress it had him. "Honestly, I'm stunned they haven't posted a bodyguard outside. After the story 'leaked', if I so much as have a bad fall, they'll get blamed for it."

  He looked at his hand, still finding it hard to believe how much strength had returned. It had been more than a month since his last tremor, and he tried to shove down the fear that it could return at any moment. He'd lived with a time clock on his life for so long; not being able to predict the end left him feeling more than a little unmoored.

  She followed his gaze, set her drink down, and grabbed his other hand. "Any word from Yashilla?"

  It still surprised him that Netta had become friends with the hacker; the two were as different as flesh and steel. "Nothing. She'll show, or she won't." That was her way, after all. He'd left messages in their arranged locations, but she'd disappeared in the chaos since the events in Mumbai. Her last act he knew of had been to set up identities for them in the Maldives.

  She turned and looked out at the water. "The corporations scrubbed the formula from a dozen sites today." Not that it mattered; for every one they managed to stop, five more sprang up to replace it. "I like to think she's helping keep it alive out there."

  He chuckled and pulled her tight against him. "I’m certain she is." Yashilla had never stuck her neck out for others before, but Netta transformed everyone she touched. Myself included. "I have to confess, I'm not entirely certain what to do next."

  "You're retired. You don't have to do anything." She slid her hand up his leg and squeezed his thigh, sending lightning straight to the root of his cock. "Except me, of course."

  For not the first time, he appreciated the privacy fence that surrounded their house. He spun, using his heightened reflexes to nab her before she could scurry out of reach. He tugged her close, appreciating the feel of her against him, warm and alive. Real in his hands as she curled her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

  He broke away after a moment, smiling down at her. "I think I could get used to this retired thing."

  "You've got the rest of your life to do so. Trust me."

  Joshi smiled, the warmth in his chest a joy that threatened to consume him. "Implicitly." He thought the better of setting her down, and lifted her the rest of the way into his arms. She squealed, and he laughed. "Trust me?"

  She answered with another hungry kiss that didn't break even as he carried her into the house. Outside, low thunder rumbled, and the first fat drops of the daily rain began to fall.

  Before You Go

  Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed Mumbai Manhunt as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. I just want to mention a few things before you go

  Reviews are one of the best ways for readers to find new books, so if you enjoyed Mumbai Manhunt, please leave a review on Goodreads.

  If you want to be the first to know about new releases, see exclusive content, and get behind the scenes on the Corporate Services books, be sure to sign up for my mailing list at:

  http://jchay.com/mailing-list-sign-up

  If you’re looking for more Corporate Services stories, turn turn the page for a taste of the first chapter of book three, South Seas Salvation.

  One

  He’d been on the ground fewer than three hours, and Zar Marks had already decided that Mumbai overwhelmed him. Every part of the city seemed to be turned up to maximum. Or further. The traffic, the press of people, the constant stream of augmented reality advertising—everything seemed custom designed to disorient, disrupt, and dismay him. God help whomever he’d been hired to protect; he couldn’t predict where a street would suddenly turn into an alley, let alone which directions might house an active threat.

  Something they had to have known when they brought me in.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d considered the possibility that he’d been set up to fail. His fingers twitched to scratch at the phantom itch creeping along his right arm. The cyberlimb felt nothing, of course, but he’d come to trust the sensation as a sign of bad things on the horizon. It seldom steered him wrong. The smart move would be to get right back onto a plane and leave Maharashtra far behind. There were too many stories about vengeful or ambitious secondaries deliberately hiring the wrong person for a job. Then, when the inevitable happened, the bodyguard got forgotten. Or disposed of. Like any other no-longer-useful tool.

  Zar stood on the sidewalk, the titanium and composite housings on his hand creaking as his fist tightened. He looked good for the patsy role too. Strong contract history, plenty of successes along the way.

  And one notable failure, if anyone bothered to dig deep enough.

  Despite the itch in his arm, he didn’t flag a taxi. Didn’t head back to the airport and book the next flight out. The money they’d offered for him to come out and negotiate in person kept him on the hook. They wanted him to do the job. He had to tell himself it meant there were people who needed it done right. No one fronted that kind of cash just to screw people over.

  It beat reminding himself that the dead didn’t have to be paid.

  He used the interface in his cyberarm to call up his bodycomp settings. Lowering the AR filters again didn’t make much difference. A riot of motion and color, from leaping fish, to swirling neon peacocks, to giant flaming inscriptions, dominated every street’s augmented landscape. He’d been in cities that used AR extensively—Tokyo and Seattle were both notorious for it—but Mumbai made them all look like amateurs. He tapped his destination into the GPS interface and waited as his cybereyes painted a faint green line down the sidewalk in front of him. He’d had the autono-cab drop him off a mile from the location, partly because he couldn’t ride in the tiny vehicle anymore, and partly because he wanted to walk to get a sense of the city. Any data that might help him do his job better. Some kind of baseline he could judge against while guarding his charge.

  His stomach growled as he passed a street vendor selling biryani, and he ordered in the quick-paced Creole of the region, only occasionally glancing at the translation his bodycomp provided. The flight over had been long, but he’d put it to good use. After the cashless transaction, the vendor handed him a folded paper envelope mounded with the spicy rice dish, and Zar continued on his way.

  At the next intersection, his path blinked and turned red, while the green line extended off into a nearby alley. He turned and followed it automatically, eating as he walked. He’d only made it halfway along the path when he realized he was no longer alone.

  The two lead toughs stepped in from the left-side wall, blocking off the narrow space between the buildings. Past them, seated cross-legged on the ground, sat a third, his head lolled back, mouth slack in the classic look of someone active on the ’Net and checked out from reality.

  Fucking hackers. “I should have known,” he muttered.

  “Should have known what?” the first asked, his English crisp, as though he expected Zar not to understand. His suit was cut loose, and he moved like someone who knew how to fight. He rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign of payment. “Should have known you’d need to pay to cut through our alley? And cash, not digital.” Despite being a full foot taller, the other man remained silent, watching uncertainly as loose-suit took the lead.

  Zar finished the last of the biryani and set the paper atop a pile of waterlogged boxes before he held his hands up. “C’mon, fellas. We don’t want to do this.”

  “I agree,” said loose-suit. “It’s much easier if you hand over the wallet now. Then we don’t have to break a sweat taking it from you.” He took another step closer, confident in the presence of his associate.

  Zar marked all the angles and available cover, not that there was much of either. Loose-suit had a knife in his belt, and a bulge in the big guy’s pocket looked the right size and shape to be a collapsing baton. That o
r he enjoyed mugging people way more than his expression indicated. No one seemed to have any sign of a firearm.

  Bad luck for them, really. “Alternately,” Zar said. “You could let me pass, and I won’t have to take whatever measly scraps you’ve been able to steal so far.” It wasn’t how he wanted to start his trip, but any exercise would be better than none.

  Loose-suit laughed and elbowed his partner. “Nice try, wiseass.” He stepped forward again, and this time big-guy followed to close the gap. The larger thug still didn’t look sure about this, almost as though he would consider Zar’s offer.

  Too bad he’s got poor taste in allies. Loose-suit waded in, using a quick foot-shuffle to draw attention before he jabbed a punch aimed at Zar’s head.

  Zar saw it coming from a mile away. He counter-punched to meet him fist to fist.

  The thug’s look of glee turned to horror as his fist shattered against the titanium reinforcement of Zar’s cyberarm. Before the thug could begin what Zar knew would be a barely human sound of agony, Zar drove his left hand into his solar plexus. He planted his feet, and as the thug doubled over, Zar threw a finishing uppercut into the point of loose-suit’s jaw.

  Loose-suit changed direction immediately, arcing back and over until he lay in a limp pile on the ground. He lay so still Zar actually checked to make sure the third punch had been with his left hand as well. Not the cyberarm on his right, and thus less likely to have killed the tough outright.

  Big-guy stood there a moment, mouth working in soundless slow motion. While he watched, Zar dragged his unconscious partner out of the main path and leaned him against the wall.

  “He’s going to need someone to look at his hand. Got that?” Zar snapped his fingers twice as he talked, and big-guy focused in on him. “He’s also probably going to be in a foul mood when he comes around.”