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  A few moments later, a man’s voice answered. “Draper.”

  “Steve? Hey, it’s Natalie,” Emu said, giving the name on her fake SIN, and trying to sound like she hadn’t been shot at an hour ago.

  There was a pause before the man responded. “Hey, Nat. What’s up?”

  “I was just thinking it’s been a while since we’ve caught up, and was wondering if you’d like to have breakfast after work. My shout.” Emu might not have been a slick talker like Yu, but she knew how to stay on a contact’s good side, and everyone likes free food.

  “Uh, sure. Meet you at Grounds around seven?”

  “Perfect. See you then.” That would give Emu the chance to sleep before the meeting—except that instead of passing out, she spent hours staring at the ceiling, jumping at every noise. The close call at the warehouse had left her too wound up to rest, no matter how many times she told herself that she was safe among Yu’s fellow Triad members, and the tension robbed what little sleep she did get of any restorative value. At least Draper’s suggestion to meet at a coffee shop meant she wouldn’t have to stop for caffeine on the way.

  Of Seattle’s many, many coffee shops, Grounds for Appeal was easily Emu’s favorite. The cafe was owned by a retired lawyer, whose taste in soykaf—and real coffee, for those who could afford to pay ten times as much for the luxury—was thankfully better than his taste in puns. The morning rush hadn’t quite started yet when Emu shuffled through the door. “Morning, Jamie.”

  “Morning, Natalie!” Emu would never cease to be amazed at how coffee shop employees could be so chipper at such ungodly hours of the day. “Extra-large black and a cheesymite?”

  “Please.” Another fantastic benefit to Grounds for Appeal was that it was catered by the much-beloved Pink Door bakery and bar, which made it one of the few places in the Metroplex to stock the quintessentially Australian cheesymite scrolls, or “buns,” as they called them in Seattle.

  Emu sent a mental command to her commlink, transferring enough nuyen to cover the bill and a generous tip. A moment later, the crinkle of wax paper and the scent of wake-up juice brought Emu back from the edge of dozing off. “And here you go.” Jamie set the coffee and pastry on the counter in front of her.

  “You’re a lady and a gentleman, mate.” Which of those Jamie was tended to vary by the week, if not the day, so Emu figured it was better to cover all the bases.

  With caffeine and sustenance in hand, the rigger set off in search of a table that offered some degree of privacy. Draper showed up around quarter after seven, which was early by his standards; like most megacorps, Knight Errant considered their employees’ regular work schedules to be minimums, not standards. Emu joined the dispatcher at the counter so she could make good on her offer to pay, then led him to the table she’d chosen once he’d collected his order.

  “Well, well,” Draper said, after his first gulp of soykaf. “How can I risk my job for you today?”

  Emu raised an eyebrow. “Risk your job? You should’ve said something sooner, mate. What happened?”

  The Knight Errant officer shook his head. “It’s fine. I’m not in trouble or anything, it’s just the usual office politics bulldrek.”

  “Ah.” Emu paused for a beat to give him the chance to continue. When he didn’t, she did. “I’m trying to find out who called in for an HTR team at a warehouse on Harbor Island last night.”

  “What’s your interest?” The dispatcher had clearly been keeping up with his corporate-security training about challenging people who ask suspicious questions.

  “I was supposed to meet someone there. They never showed, but HTR did, and I’d love to know who tipped them off.”

  “Oh, no. No way.” Draper shook his head emphatically. “I can’t just give up the name of a 911 caller or patrol officer. If you pay them a visit, someone’s gonna ask how you knew to find them, and my name will be all over the audit trail. I could go to jail for that. Hell, if they’re looking for you, I shouldn’t even be here.” He stood from the table and turned to leave.

  Emu half-jumped out of her chair and grabbed Draper’s wrist to stop him. “Steve, please—just hear me out. I’m only asking because my life is in danger.”

  When he looked back, Emu let last night’s leftover stress and worry show on her face. Draper was silent for a moment, and the rigger heard her heart pounding in her ears as he studied her expression to gauge whether the emotion she displayed was real.

  Finally, he nodded and sat down, and Emu started breathing again. She took a gulp of soykaf to try and calm her nerves, wishing the coffee shop allowed smoking inside. “Someone who claimed to work for Renraku hired me to do a job for them,” she said. “I won’t get into the details, but I did it, then arranged to meet with the Renraku bloke and collect my pay. Instead, five minutes after I show up, Knight Errant swarms the place and starts shooting everything in sight.”

  Draper sighed. “And what do you expect me to do, file an excessive force complaint?”

  “No, of course not. All I’m saying is that the person who called you guys in isn’t innocent, either. That’s why I came to you,” Emu said. “Your bosses aren’t going to care if criminals go after each other, and I promise I’m not trying to settle a score with Knight Errant. I just want to find out who wants me dead so I can make them back off before their hitmen catch up with me.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll pull the report at work tonight, but if anyone asks me about it, I’m not covering for you. I’ve gotta look after myself, too,” Draper warned.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. Thank you, Steve. You might’ve just saved my life.” Emu withdrew a certified credstick from her pocket and slid it across the table. “The rest when you’ve got the name. Just let me know where you’d like to meet.”

  “Yeah.” Draper slid the credstick into his pocket and stood. “I’d better go. Wife’ll be wondering why I’m not home already.”

  Emu winced. “Ooh. Maybe don’t tell her you were with another woman.”

  “Nah, I’ll just say I was meeting someone who wanted to bribe me for confidential info from work.” Draper rolled his eyes, then waved over his shoulder as he left.

  Seattle’s housing market had never been friendly, but for a shadowrunner trying to find a safehouse on a moment’s notice, it was downright brutal. Emu talked to four different fixers before she found a place that would house all five members of the team—she was still holding out hope that Frostburn and Rude would show up—and after seeing what Lenny was charging, she wondered if it wouldn’t be cheaper to just pay Renraku off instead.

  Still, the converted farmhouse near the Snohomish River was remote enough that even her own finely-tuned sense of direction had trouble finding it, which made security a lot easier; there was so little traffic in the area that the team could assume that everyone who showed up had done so on purpose, and that anyone who did so and wasn’t them was hostile. It also had enough sleeping pods—morbidly nicknamed “coffins,” the kind used in “coffin hotels”—to house the entire team.

  With the safehouse squared away, Emu’s next task was to replace the drones that she’d lost during the debacle at the warehouse, and to repair the damage that Knight Errant’s helicopter had inflicted on the Commodore, preferably without anyone asking how it had ended up with bullet holes in the roof. That meant a trip up to Gio’s Garage, a fine establishment in Everett that had a lucrative second life as a chop shop for the Ciarniello Mafia. When Emu wasn’t running the shadows, she helped out around the shop, partly in exchange for them letting her use the space and tools to work on her own vehicles, and partly to work off a rather large debt she’d incurred with the Ciarniello Family shortly after arriving in Seattle.

  That debt, Emu realized, added yet another complication to the situation with Renraku. If the megacorp had been able to locate one of the team’s safehouses, it wouldn’t be much trouble for them to figure out that Emu spent time at Gio’s—and if her dealings with Renraku caused any trouble for the M
afia, she would take the blame, not the corp. Emu really couldn’t afford any more headaches at the moment, so she resolved to try to stop the trouble before it started.

  Every war has its demilitarized zones, and in the long-running syndicate war between the Mafia and the Yakuza, Casino Corner filled that role. Until recently, the entire area had been controlled by the Ciarniello Family, and the Golden Roll and White Pine were still the heart of their power in Everett. The Mafiosi were happy to display that power, too, when it wouldn’t risk an open conflict that would drive customers away. Emu had barely gotten ten steps inside the White Pine when she saw a pair of no-neck thugs in ill-fitting suits shaking down a gambler who was pleading for more time to pay—an unwelcome reminder of what would happen to her if she didn’t make some kind of deal.

  Two more ambulatory walls stood to either side of the door that led to the casino’s back rooms. One of them held a hand up when Emu approached. “This area’s off-limits.”

  “Is Tommy here? Tell him Emu needs to talk to him about her loan payment.”

  The doorman didn’t quite conceal his sigh as he let his eyes un-focus over Emu’s shoulder, a sure sign he was using a commlink through direct neural interface. After a moment, his attention re-focused on Emu, and he waved for her to follow him.

  A few minutes later, she found herself in an office in the bowels of the casino. The man behind the desk was young, probably not much older than Emu herself, and the image of the “young mobster” stereotype: one too many shirt buttons undone to show off the gold chains, grin shining as bright as the reflection of the overhead lights off his slicked-back jet-black hair.

  “Heya, sweetheart.” Tomaso di Stefano—or as most people called him, Tommy D—was one of the Ciarniello family’s made men. To Emu, he was also a bizarre cross between a gossipy relative and a collection agent.

  “Hi, Tommy. Looks like you’re moving up in the world.” Emu looked around the office. Last time she’d been here, he was still hanging out in the staff room.

  The mobster’s grin flashed as bright as his gold chains and gleaming hair. “Didn’t you hear? It’s Capo Tommy now. The Yaks whacked my old boss a few weeks ago, and the Don said he liked my ‘entrepreneurial spirit.’ No more runnin’ around breakin’ kneecaps for ol’ Tommy, only friendly conversations.”

  Which just meant he had guys who’d break kneecaps for him, Emu knew. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart. Now, what can I do for you? The boys out front said somethin’ about your loan.” The mobster gestured to the chair across from him.

  Emu sat down, taking a deep yet inconspicuous breath. “I probably won’t be around Gio’s much for the next little while. There’s some fallout happening from a job that I did, and I need to lie low for a while.”

  Tommy whistled and shook his head. “Tough break, but a deal’s a deal. We agreed that you’d help out at the chop shop instead of making your entire loan payment in cash. If I went around changing deals every time they were a pain in the ass to keep, I’d be out of business.”

  “Come on, Tommy. It’s not like I knew this was going to happen. Hell, I’m trying to help you out by making sure my personal stuff doesn’t interfere with your business.” Which was technically true.

  The mobster ran a hand over his face. “Alright, look. If I cut you a break, the Don’ll hear about it and I’ll be in deep drek—unless I can say it’s payment for some work you did for me. I got some goods down in a warehouse in Redmond. Bring ’em back here, and I’ll call us even for this month. Deal?”

  Emu’s brow furrowed. “What’s the catch? If it was just a courier job, you could send your own people.” Tommy wasn’t a bad guy as Mafiosi went, but he was cut from the same cloth as his boss—a man with financial instincts so sharp, the Seattle Mafia had nicknamed him “Numbers.” She knew full well that if Tommy was willing to make a deal, it was because it benefited him somehow, which meant the run he was offering might be way over her head.

  “The warehouse belongs to the…” Tommy frowned. “What the frag are they called, again? Shigedas? Kanagas? The Yaks. They stole some goods from us, and Don Ciarniello wants ’em reclaimed.”

  “What kind of ‘goods’, exactly?”

  Tommy shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “I do about some things. Like how big a vehicle I’ll need, and whether your mysterious goods will break or explode if I hit a pothole.” Emu folded her arms across her chest.

  “Steel case with a blue stripe on it, small enough to fit in the trunk of a car, and it won’t break or blow up. The RFID tags say SpinGlobal. Good enough?” The mobster gave her a pointed look, eyebrows raised, like he was starting to lose his patience.

  “Fine. Send me the address. How soon would you like this done?”

  “Is today an option?” Tommy grinned.

  Emu shook her head. “I won’t know that until I’ve seen the place, but I’ll assume you mean ‘as fast as possible’.”

  “Good guess. Here’s the address.” Chuckling at his little rhyme, the mobster tapped the surface of his desk, and a GPS tag popped up in Emu’s AR field.

  “I’ll let you know when I have it.” Emu stood to leave, wincing as Tommy bellowed for the doorman—who’d been left out in the hall—to show her out.

  Back at the team’s brand-new, unreasonably expensive safehouse, Emu grumbled to herself as she started planning her newest assignment. The Yakuza warehouse was located in a part of Redmond called the Bargain Basement, the largest open-air black market in the Seattle Metroplex. The good news was that it was a relatively nice part of Redmond—not that that meant much when the worst part was literally a melted-down nuclear plant. The bad news was that the warehouse was still far enough outside Redmond’s “business district” to fall squarely within gang territory. Groups like the Crimson Crush and First Nations liked to raid warehouses for supplies, both to use and sell for profit, so the Yakuza would be expecting an attack.

  What they weren’t expecting, Emu hoped, was the Lockheed Optic-X was circling overhead. She’d sent the drone off to surveil the site, taking advantage of its stealth systems to study the Yakuza’s security arrangements without being spotted. Even hundreds of meters above its target, the Optic-X’s sensors were good enough to make out the guards’ facial features. Emu didn’t have a facial-recognition database she could use to ID them, but she did confirm there were eight different people guarding the warehouse. Every guard had a katana strapped to their hip—because of course they did—and most of them carried the Shin Chou Kyogo submachine gun favored by Japanacorp security forces. The Yaks had also put concrete barricades up around the front and sides of the building, to give themselves cover when the shooting started and prevent any raiders from breaking in by ramming through the loading bay doors.

  Emu sighed and took a drag from her cigarette. Rude was the tactically-minded one, not her. She’d learned bits and pieces by osmosis while the team planned their runs, but right now, she mainly remembered enough to know that she was in over her head. Her drones could pack plenty of punch when they had to, but assaulting a syndicate warehouse was a little much for her to handle alone. Rude’s guns and Frostburn’s magic might’ve turned the odds in her favor, but the tuskers still weren’t answering the team’s calls. At the rate things were going, Emu figured, she and the others might have to delay the heist to form a search party.

  She had just gone back to planning the raid on the Yakuza when a bright red warning ARO flashed across her vision: something had set off the perimeter sensors she’d set up outside the safehouse. When Emu went to check the camera feeds, though, nothing was there—which did absolutely nothing to put her mind at ease. Had Renraku’s assassins already found her? Emu swore and sent a stream of commands through her rigger control console, ordering her small swarm of Hornet surveillance drones to circle the house as she drew her Ares Crusader from its holster at her waist.

  “Uh, everything okay?” Emu nearly had a heart a
ttack when she heard the person speak, and thanks to the reaction enhancers implanted in her spinal column, had a bead on Yu before the elf got his hands up. “Whoa, easy, it’s just me!”

  “Fragsake, make more noise next time!” The rigger holstered her gun before she accidentally shot her teammate—though if she’d had gel rounds loaded, she might’ve done so out of spite.

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.” Yu gave Emu a lopsided grin as he lowered his hands and looked around. “So, does this mean we literally bought the farm? For what Lenny’s charging, we might as well have made a down payment.”

  Emu groaned at Yu’s quips and flopped back down on the couch. “Have you heard from Rude or Frostburn yet?”

  “Not yet. I asked Myth to see if Coydog would help track them down magically, but at this rate…well, if Coydog’s as good as Myth says she is, we’ll know soon enough.”

  “I guess. Oh, hey, would you mind helping me with something? The Ciarniellos want me to break into a Yakuza warehouse and steal some goods for them.” Emu sent the warehouse’s GPS coordinates to Yu’s commlink.

  He frowned. “You’re working for the Mob now?”

  “Not like, working for them. I just couldn’t pay them this month because of how much this cost.” Emu gestured to the space around them. “One of their guys offered to let me do this job instead of coming up with the cred.”

  “Aha.” Yu furrowed his brow. “I’ll have to talk to my bosses at the Octagon. The Hung Gwan might not want me involved in something like this.”

  “Why would your Triad bosses say no? Wouldn’t they be happy with you hitting a rival syndicate?”