“So you’re figuring either way, you’ve got to know who besides Tanic knew you were alive then.” He chewed on his upper lip, staring out into the forest beyond the Court’s gardens and roads. “Makes sense. I guess I keep… forgetting there was someone who hired Dempsey to pull you out of there.”
“Pull me out or kill me. They didn’t care which.” I shrugged. “So I’m going to find Kenny, dig that out of him, and then decide what to do with him. No matter what, I need to find him before anyone else does, no matter why he’s down here.”
“Just try to keep an eye out.” He grimaced when his link beeped again. “Tag me if you need help. I might not be able to get loose from the wives and husband, but I might be able to find you someone to help in a pinch.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Going to be hard to tag anyone for help down that deep. Signal repeaters are still screwed to hell,” I reminded him. “City didn’t want to fix the routing system. Took a lot of arm-twisting just to keep the transit running. You think they care if there’s free links up? I’ll be lucky if my satlink can punch through the streets down there. It’s far in.”
“That is not what I want to hear,” Ryder said, strolling out of the walkway, a plastic grocery bag folded up and tucked under his arm. “Hello, Jonas.”
“Goodbye, Jonas,” Cari shot back, closing the Scout’s tailgate. “Let me help you up into the truck and you can head home so Najiri can skin you. Hey, Ryder. Nice shirt. Stole it from Kai?”
“Seemed prudent. It’s one of his favorites. If I keep it and his cat, I figured it would give him incentive to come home.” He mocked my frown, getting out of Cari’s way as she steered a still-grumbling Jonas toward the truck. Peering into the back of the Scout, he held the grocery bag out for me to take. “Here. Because you’ll forget to eat.”
“I’ll be with Cari. We’ll be eating on the hour every hour. She’s like a pika. Have you forgotten that?” I peeked into the bag anyway, delighted to see packages of my beloved coconut-marshmallow-covered cupcakes. “Okay, these are awesome. Thanks.”
He stepped toward me, pinning me to the Scout’s side. His fingers were warm on my belly, tucking up under the hem of my T-shirt—my second-favorite T-shirt, since apparently he’d taken a liking to the one I’d gotten from a San Francisco ink shop. His mouth sang against mine, sending a fire through my blood, and I nibbled on his lower lip, reminding Ryder he couldn’t always just take what he wanted, even if it was me.
“Hey, lordling,” I cautioned. “Getting kinda ballsy here. I mean, I just let you sleep in my bed. Haven’t done anything to bring on a big dramatic goodbye kiss in front of the kids. It’s not one of those old black-and-white movies you like. I’m not a soldier going off to war, and you’re not my husband wishing I were already home before I’ve even left.”
“I do want you to come home. I wish I were going with you. And yes, damn it, I wish I’d done more with you than simply sleeping in your bed, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for you to come home safe. Just….” Ryder leaned his forehead against mine, inhaling my breath when I exhaled. “And it’s not because I don’t think you’re capable. Gods know, you are fierce and feral and so much more of a survivor than I can ever be, but I just… don’t want to let you go. Even as I know I have to.”
“I’ll be back.” I groaned when his fingers dipped down against the button of my jeans. “Stop that. Seriously, you’re going to lose your napping-with-me-and-the-cat privileges. I’m literally not leaving the city. I’ve been on worse. This is a simple bounty hunt… with the slight complication of other Stalkers who might or might not want to take me down too. Not much different than a Pendle Run. Just with less dragons.”
“Just be careful, and don’t get shot.” He gave my waistband another tug, his gaze firm on my face. “Besides, you definitely have to come back, because I might love you, but I am not going to taste your cat’s food for him. There’s only so much you can ask a man to do, and that’s too far, even for me.”
SAN DIEGO’S tiered structure was a common one, folds and pockets of neighborhoods tucked into crevices opened up by the Merge. San Francisco did it the best, using the long stretches beneath old districts as a mirror to what one could find aboveground. But New York suffered from the expansion, its skyscrapers unable to withstand the shifting ground. Tokyo didn’t even blink, and Singapore celebrated the increased space, quickly filling in the vacant areas with housing and gardens, thankful for any extra square inch they got. San Diego ended up as it always did, creating a mishmash of neighborhoods where a bit of extra income meant a larger footprint to live in, and the closer to the ocean someplace was, the more expensive it was to live.
Kenny was nowhere near the coastline.
Instead he was buried as deep into the understreets as he could go without actually ending up in the series of catacombs and caverns leading in stringers out to the California desert far outside of San Diego proper. I had a decent mapping system of those caves and corridors, but the last thing I wanted was to chase Kenny Dempsey through what would be another circle of Hell Dante thought up in his spare time.
“How well do you know this guy?” Cari slouched against the passenger-side window, working at a gris-gris bag she’d promised Alexa. “I mean, he’s your uncle. Kind of.”
We weren’t that far into the understreets, close enough to one of the level’s entrances that there was still sunlight flashing on the buildings behind us, but in a few minutes, we’d be over a ridge and dropping down into the murky almost-twilight beyond. There wasn’t ever a direct route to where you needed to go below. The streets were in a grid pattern, but only enough to frustrate when a building sprouted up in the middle of a thoroughfare and traffic was forced to go around to get to the other side.
It was midafternoon, but traffic was already skimming at a high pace. All around us bright blue tik-tiks dipped down to nab fares, then skipped back up the line to do battle with the trolleys overhead. A few rogue tik-tiks dove into the fray, their harried drivers skimming into the crowds of office workers disembarking from the escalators connecting the undercity to the bustling metropolis overhead. Spotting a black bubble of an illegal tik-tik careening down to slide into a space behind a licensed blue cab, I swerved to the left, gladly avoiding the ensuing snarl. Like clockwork, the blue-cab driver was out of his vehicle, abandoning his place in line and stomping over to the black skipper behind him. Horns bellowed, and a stream of profanity ladled hard with anger erupted. Then it was in our rearview mirror, swallowed up by more traffic and a few right turns.
“I don’t really know him. He’s an asshole. More than Dempsey ever was. I actually never knew anyone who liked him.” I shrugged, recalling very little about the man who Dempsey called the most miserable bastard he’d ever known. Considering how many miserable bastards Dempsey had in his life, I took that as a fair warning. “He was always hitting Dempsey up for money for one thing or another. Worked hard not to work, that’s what Dempsey would say. There was always this scheme that would hit it big, pay out millions, and Dempsey would tell him to fuck off.”