“Didn’t expect to be here.”
“Which menu are you ordering off tonight?” She smiles at me, and we both know there’s a wrong answer.
I ask her for a drink and tip the dancer without watching her.
“So.” Margot leans on the bar, watching me a little too closely. “How is your mate doing?”
“She’s healing.”
Her teeth are bright white beneath her black lipstick. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“After you’ve made that official, bring her in for the full tour. Blackout notwithstanding, I like the way she dances. Everyone else would too.”
She’s called away by someone else, and I watch her go for a brief moment before I look at the door and the irritated CSS officer walking my way.
But he doesn’t come to me, he goes to a table tucked away to one side. I follow.
“Margot’s is the one place where you can be certain no oneelseis listening, and I don’t think our conversation is going to draw her interest.”
I don’t correct him.Everythingdraws her interest.
He sits in the chair, looking at the woman dancing there without actually watching her.
“Here’s what I can tell you, but that they wouldn’twantme to. The reason I can’t tell you about that article or anything related to the contents therein, is the same reason I couldn’t tell Jessica who the man was that… interacted with her at the zurgle cafe.”
“Is he your boss?”
“No.”
He’s not anyone in the CSS, not technically.
“We work for him, he doesn’t work for us.” He glares at a man who walks past. “Officially, he works with us.”
“Does this have something to do with the ship crashing?”
He nods. When he looks back at me I feel an ill-ease. “There’s a thread that connects all of this to you.”
He means to the brotherhood and the Zone.
His jaw tenses. “So little of what has happened since Laurel went home with Richter has been a mistake.”
“Someone manufactured the mix up?” Ididn’tknow that.
“Yes. The Agency handoff files were temporarily altered.”
“The Agency was hacked?”
He grimaces, and I don’t like the irritation on his face. “No. It was a person with permissions and clearances. They were told to change the file and then told to change it back again.”
“That sounds like a mistake.” But it isn’t. “Has anyone told you that the third Ardem sister is here?”
He looks at me but has to hold his tongue when a waitress swings by to drop off a drink for him with a wink.
“That is not public knowledge at the moment,” I continue. “The Agency knows, because she works for them and… well, we’re keeping that quiet until we can figure out who brought her here and why.”
“She was the sole survivor from the crash.” Riann doesn’t wait for my confirmation. He just looks confused and asks, “What does that have to do with the filloum?”
“Probably nothing. But we won’t know if we don’t explore all the options. I figure if we dig into every question, we might get lucky.”
