Read Online Endgame by Kristine Smith - Free Book Online

listens to you.”
    â€œAbout as well as he listens to anyone.” Jani paused to rub her eyes. Her head ached from the brightness of the sun off the water, yet the last thing she wanted to do was leave the balcony.
    Dieter bent and picked up one of the crystal shards. “I ran into Captain Pascal on the walkway, and immediately directed him to a bathroom.” He examined the fragment, then looked around at the other pieces scattered across the balcony floor. “It didn’t sound as though lunch agreed with him.”
    â€œHeat and brandy.”
    Dieter winced. “He’s on his way to Fort Karistos. Got a com from Pierce to report immediately. ‘Scarface blinked,’ was how he put it.” He gave the shard a last look, then tossed it aside. “Is everything all right?”
    â€œJohn and Val.” Jani beat a cadence on the railing with her fists. “Where are they?”
    â€œThe clinic.” Dieter planted his feet and folded his arms. He wore a wrapshirt and loose trousers in patterned orange and white. Hybridization had claimed him late and done little to lengthen his bones or slim his stocky frame, leaving him resembling a fitter than average Buddha with cat-yellow eyes. “Doctor Shroud took Doctor Parini on a tour.” He cocked his head. Concerned Buddha. “Is something wrong?”
    â€œCaptain Pascal gave me some news before he went to lose his lunch. I don’t know whether to believe it or not.”
    â€œWould the fact that the good doctors have been holed up in Doctor Shroud’s office for the whole of their tour help you decide?”
    Jani shot the male a hard look. “Does anything happen around here that you don’t know about?” She fielded his blank stare and shook her head. “Val’s been sent here to cut John’s heart out.” She stopped, as though speaking the words would give them a reality they didn’t otherwise possess. But they are real, dammit. When it came to digging out the nasty, Lucien gave Dieter a run for anyone’s money. “He’s to buy out John’s share of Neoclona. At two cents on the Common dollar.”
    Dieter’s brows twitched skyward. “That’s…a kick in the teeth.” He stroked his chin. “But is it a surprise?”
    â€œMaybe not. Cut off the money, and the Thalassan beast will sicken and die.” Jani turned her back to the water and studied the stark white facade of the Main House. “Maybe the surprise is that they waited this long to do it.” She pushed off the railing and started for the dining room. “I’m going to stop off at John’s office before I go to the meeting house.”
    â€œJani?” Dieter hurried after her, soles crunching on bits of scattered glass. “There are solutions, surely?”
    â€œThey should’ve been put in place already. Assets transfers take time. So do setups of dummy corporations.” Jani stepped out onto the walkway that ringed the third floor of the office-laboratory-apartment complex that was the administrative, social, and medical focus of the Thalassan enclave. “That’s why Val didn’t let John know he was coming. Whoever sent him didn’t want to give John the time to adjust.” She looked over the railing and down to the ground level central courtyard, where the kitchen crew were setting up for mid-afternoon sacrament, jamming and angling mess tables as best they could amid the planters and fountains. “First rule of auditing. Never call ahead.”
    â€œI wouldn’t have.” A little of the old Colonel Brondt, Elyas Station Service liaison and spotter of smugglers and other illicit life-forms, flashed in Dieter’s eyes. “Neither would you.”
    â€œMaybe.” Jani caught a whiff of curry from the dining area below. She’d have savored the aroma normally, but nerves had claimed her gut as their own and she felt the acid