Read Online The Wind After Time: Book One of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy by Chris Bunch - Free Book Online Page B

Wolfe said. “Have you ever heard of a man named Sutro?”
    “Never.”
    Joshua searched for his next question.
    “I didn’t expect this when I allowed you to come here,” Penruddock said. “To be grilled like I was some kind of criminal.”
    “So the Lumina’s gone, and you have no idea who might have taken it,” Wolfe went on, paying no mind to the judge’s words. “Do you want it back?”
    “Yes … no.”
    “Make up your mind.”
    “I don’t want that stone back. I don’t think you could recover it,” Penruddock said. “Especially if what you said is true and another collector sent that son of a bitch Khodyan to steal it from me. But I want another one.”
    “That doesn’t make sense.”
    “I don’t have to make sense, Wolfe,” the judge said, trying to regain control of the situation. “Perhaps I just realized it myself. You said you came here looking for warrant work. Very well. You’ve got it. I’ll cover your expenses and pay you a finder’s fee when you secure me a second Lumina. I’ll pay the same price as I did for the first.”
    Joshua walked across the room and stared down at the mansion’s front entrance and driveway. He heard a slight noise, and a small metallic green lifter came into view, hovering down the drive and out the gate. Joshua turned back.
    “If I take the warrant,” he said, “I’ll want the rest of what you’re not telling me.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’ll need to know who the man was you bought it from, how he got in contact with you, where he came from, and why you trusted him enough to go to a spaceport with that much cold cash. Just for a beginning.”
    “I told you everything!”
    Joshua Wolfe took one of the hotel’s cards from a pocket and laid it on a table.
    “You can reach me here.”
    • • •
    The gate closed behind Joshua, and he started back toward the city. He heard a turbine whine, turned, and saw the metallic green lifter. Ariadne Penruddock was at the controls. She stopped the craft, and the window hissed down.
    “It’s a long walk, even if it’s downhill. Need a ride?”
    “I never walk unless I have to.”
    Joshua went around the back of the vehicle and opened the door. He looked back up the drive at the house. In an upper-story window he saw a white blur that might have been a face.
    He got in and slid the door closed.
    “I’m at the Acropolis,” he said.
    “Mister Wolfe, would you mind if we had a talk?”
    “Not at all. What about?”
    “My husband. Lumina stones.”
    “I
felt
someone else’s presence while we were talking,” Joshua said. “Were you eavesdropping … or are you more sophisticated?”
    Without taking her eyes from the road, Lady Penruddock opened her purse and showed him a small com. “Sometimes a woman needs to know what’s being said about her even if she’s away from the house. I had the pickup put in his study just after we were married.”
    “Maybe,” Wolfe suggested, “you’d better pick a place for our talk where you’re not known.”
    “The Acropolis is fine. Nobody in our circle goes there.”
    • • •
    The bar was automated, which meant one less witness. It was empty except for two salesmen nursing beers and glowering at their notebook screens as if they were the supervisors who’d given them this awful territory. Ariadne studied the menu set into the tabletop.
    “Deneb sherry,” she decided, and touched the correct sensor.
    There were no Armagnacs, but there was a local pomace brandy. The delivery slot opened, and Lady Penruddock’s drink and Wolfe’s water and brandy appeared. He fingered the tab sensor, touched the snifter to his lips and drank ice water.
    “Let me tell you about my husband and myself,” Ariadne said without preamble. “We married for our own separate reasons, and for me at least, nothing has altered my intent.
    “Malcolm and I largely lead our own lives. What he does is his business. If he wishes me to accompany him, I am delighted. If not