“Yes.”
“How did you know we were here, Kivisha?” Hal’s tone was hard and uncompromising.
“Someone I know told me they saw you checking in,” Kivisha said. “I came right over.”
“And how did you know this was our room?” Fee was feeling very skeptical of her answer.
She pressed her lips together and then her shoulders drooped. “All right, my father had your hover tagged just before you left the hospital. The signal repeats off receptors on the main roads and tracks your journey. We lost you for a while this morning, but picked you up when you came back into the city. Someone who works on the reception desk knows who I am and told me which room you’re in.”
Fiona wondered if that was true.
Baruke hadn’t seemed up to ordering someone to tag their hover at the hospital, although Kivisha had gone off on her own. As for the hotel revealing their room—she wasn’t staying here another minute after this conversation was concluded. “They just handed it over to you?”
“I asked nicely, and said it was urgent.” Kivisha narrowed her eyes. “But they only noticed you, Captain Vakeri. They said you were with a Grihan woman, not Fiona Russell.”
“I’m often mistaken for a Grih,” Fiona said. She had taken off her disguise as soon as they’d entered the room.
Kivisha looked uncertain, but eventually gave a nod.
“So what’s so urgent?” Hal still sounded pissed off.
Kivisha obviously wasn’t used to hostility and sent him a hurt look. “My father left to meet up with someone today and I haven’t been able to get hold of him since.”
“Did he tell you where he was going for the meeting?” Fiona asked.
“I thought they were meeting at my father’s office, but I’m not sure. He took his new guards with him, but no one’s heard from any of them.” Kivisha ran a shaking hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face.
“Why are you coming to us?” Hal asked, bluntly. “He’s the leader of the whole planet. Surely there are people you can contact?”
“I don’t know who to trust.” Kivisha wove her fingers together and then began twisting them. “I know for sure you weren’t behind the attack on him at the dinner, you were a victim, same as he was. And the Grih are the senior partners in the alliance with Balco, and have the power that comes with that. I want my father found, and I don’t want to leave it in the hands of someone who might be involved in his disappearance in the first place.”
“Give us your comms link so we can get hold of you, and we’ll look into it.” Fiona wanted to shove Kivisha and her problems out of the room, given Eazi was out of communication.
His safety felt like the bigger issue, but she was aware the two could be linked.
Kivisha blinked at her bluntness, but Hal opened the door and she stepped out into the passage.
“You’ll be in touch?”
“As soon as we know something. We want to get to the bottom of it as much as you do,” Fiona assured her.
She gave a nod. “Thank you. I’m sorry for ambushing you like this, I just didn’t know where else to go.”
Fiona murmured a platitude she didn’t mean and Hal closed the door on her. Fiona immediately tried to contact Eazi again. When there was silence, she tried Paxe.
She almost never had to try to contact them, the link between her and them was almost always already open.
“Paxe?” Again, nothing.
She tried to let that fact calm her. “It’s most likely a comms issue. I can’t see how they could both be unavailable at the same time, when neither of them haveeverbeen unavailable. Either the link has gone down by accident, or someone has damaged or destroyed it.”
“I’ll contact the general, see if she knows anything.” Hal had to work his way up through the chain to Olna, unlike he’d been able to do before with Eazi helping him contact her directly.
“Vakeri?” Olna’s tone was surprised.
“There’s a problem,” Hal said. “Neither thinking system on Larga Ways is contactable. Are the comms to the way station down?”
“Let me check.”
