God's Bounty Hunter (Biddy Mackay Space Detective Book 1) by T Olivant (reading in the dark .txt) 📕

Now the Augment simply sat back and shook his head.  Well, two could play that game.  She stood up.

“Take him back to his cell,” she said to Phil.  Then she turned back to the Augment. “If you don’t tell me everything in the next hour then I’m going to hand you over to Campbell.  And he’s the one that sent me the Observer who shot your friend.  So there’s a good chance you won’t get off his ship alive.  Just think about that for the next fifty-nine minutes.”

The Augment glared at her as he was led out of the room, but that was just fine.  It meant she might actually be getting under his skin.

Biddy called the Geek her datapad as she walked out of the interview room.

“Any luck?” she asked before he had a chance to speak.

“I’ve only had a couple of hours.”

“But you’ve got something, right?”

“I’ve checked his datapad,” the Geek said. Biddy grinned, she had taken it out of the life-raft just in case there was something on it. “Looks like he had a meeting with someone just a few hours ago.”

“Good work.  Do you know who the meet was with?”

“I traced him easy enough.  Minor criminal by the look of it, working for one of the gangs based in Moscov.  Might have ties to some relatively big players if his recent spending is anything to go by.  Want me to track him down?”

Biddy rubbed her eyes.  She shouldn’t really be spending any more time on this.  They had the prey after all.  Soon enough he would confess and she would hand him over to Campbell.  And yet… she wanted to know what the Augment was up to.

“Do you have a number there for him?”

“Let me check… yes, I’ve got the number the Augment was using for him.”

“Call it then and patch me through.”

The Geek went silent for a moment. “Don’t you want to… I don’t know, track him down at home and ambush him or something?  Just calling a bad guy seems a little obvious.”

“I’m on the clock.  Either he’ll talk to me or he won’t.  Both will tell me something about him.  Go on, make the call.”

The Geek’s worried face disappeared, to be replaced by a holding screen.  Then an unfamiliar face popped up.  It was handsome but a bit too manicured in a way that suggested someone who spent too long in front of the mirror.  His hair was just ridiculous.

“This is Biddy Mackay and I am speaking to you as a member of Scotclan.  Please don’t end the call.”

“Why would I do that?”

The young guy’s teeth were whiter than nature had ever intended.  Biddy knew that Detectives should reserve judgement, but she’d already decided she hated the guy.

“All right girly, what can I do for you,” he said, looking her up and down with a smirk.  Yep, definitely true hatred.

“You had a meeting with a man a few hours ago.  This person is now in our custody.  I would like to know what the meeting was about.”

“Ah, I know who you are now.  You’re the girl who saw off the head of the Council on the surface.  You’ve really made an enemy there, by the way.”

“I’ve made a few today.”

The man laughed an annoying hissing little laugh. “So I’ve heard.  I’d bet folding on it that you don’t last the week.”

Biddy glared at the datapad. “Listen, I’m not here for a chat.  Either you speak to me, or you get hauled into a cell by a Scotclan Chief.”

“Scotclan.  That makes you a ‘tec, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, Detective girly, you better know this.  You are in way over your head.  If you think your little band of tartan cops can do anything about what’s going down in this system.”

“You’ve been watching too many old Earthen movies.”

The man’s grin turned into a sneer. “And you’ve not seen enough.  You know those ones where plucky young cop gets killed before the end of the first act, that’s what we’re in right now.”

Biddy clicked to end the call.  Clearly the asshole wasn’t going to tell her anything more.

“You recorded that call, right Geek?”

“Of course,” a disembodied voice answered.

“Good.  Think you can trace where his signal came from?”

“Give me an hour.”

Chapter 26

Lu Tang had been back in his cell for forty-five minutes and he still hadn’t decided what to do.  This kind of indecision was unusual for him, and he was not finding it a particularly pleasant experience.  He had been forced to admit that the child-Detective was not entirely without intelligence.  The interview had been frustrating for both of them, but the ultimatum was a neat strategy.  Of course, there were ways around it, but here again the girl had been careful.  Mackay had made sure that he had been thoroughly searched then securely locked in a cell without any convenient escape routes.  Perhaps he had underestimated her.

Still, he would figure his way out of this newest form of capture soon enough.  It was a question of timing rather than method.  Would it be better to escape now before this Scotclan organization took custody of him?  Or would it be better to wait until there was someone more important that he would be able to bribe.

He laid back on the bench that was the cell’s sole piece of furniture and stretched out his legs.  He might even be comfortable here, as long as no one tried to feed him any of the terrible stuff that came out of the canteen.  Yes, there were worse places to spend an hour.

There was a slight vibration on the bed.  He looked down and saw that one of his calves was twitching.  Strange that he couldn’t feel it.  He did a mental biology check: hormones were normal if a little elevated for