cut the overeager PUPI off midsentence. “Because I said no and how many times will it take for me to say that until at least one of you listens?”
“Seven.” Sharon was positive.
“Four,” Nifty contradicted her.
“Eleven?” That was Nick, looking thoughtful.
Venec shook his head, feeling the exasperation simmer just under his skin. He really should know better by now, he really should. He’d scouted each of them, chosen them, trained them. The talkback came with the other traits he’d selected them for, no way around it. Mouthy and Talented, the pack of them.
On that thought, he paused and looked around for Pietr, who was the only one who hadn’t ventured a guess. “Where the hell is Pietr? Did we leave him in the bathroom or something?”
“I’m here.”
Sharon jumped, as the voice seemed to come from just at her left shoulder.
“I swear, I’m going to bell you,” she muttered. “Can’t you cough on a regular basis, or something?”
“I would, but you wouldn’t hear me.”
Venec frowned, listening in, this time intentionally. That had to be getting to be a sore point—Pietr swore he didn’t intentionally disappear when he got stressed, it just happened. God knew, there was enough stress in the office right now, after the day they’d had.
The usual reaction to having a stressful problem was to chew at it until it was solved. That was good, if they were on a hot trail. But they didn’t have enough information yet to solve it, so they’d start chewing on each other, instead. Part of his job was to prevent that. Bonnie’s need to get the hell out had been one he supported, even though he wished she’d said something to him beforehand. Now he needed to get the rest of them to go home as well, before he had to put a boot under their tails.
“Children, enough.” He put extra exasperation into his tone, not difficult to do right then. “Everyone go home. Or go to a bar, or a strip club or whatever it is that you do to blow off steam. You just can’t stay here.”
That was the rule he had invoked to get them to leave: nobody stayed late, not when neither of the Big Dogs—and yes, he knew what the team called them—were around. He had made that rule after their first investigation. His partner believed that, with his sister scolded and publicly shamed for her part in the death of the Null boy, her posse of anti-PUPI protesters wouldn’t do anything more against them. Ben was less certain of that, and not willing to trust any of his team on that chance. Besides, it gave him a good excuse to make sure they got a decent night’s sleep. His pups thought they were tough and tougher, and they were, but it wasn’t a much-older couple this time, or disembodied bits packed neatly in a cooler. It was a young girl, their own age. He might only be ten years older, but he had seen more than all of them put together. The case was shaking them, even if they didn’t realize it. Better they take a step away now, get a breath, do something normal.
“We go to Bonnie’s,” Nick said in response. “But she’s not home. I called and got her answering service, and she’s not responding to a ping.”
“Oh, god, she’s not still dating what’s-his-name, is she?” Nifty asked, distracted. “The doink with the goofy smile?”
Nick threw up his hands in a dramatic gesture of disgust. “What, you think she tells me everything?”
“Yeah.” Sharon, Pietr and Nifty all responded in the same instant. Venec just closed the door quietly behind him while they were all preoccupied. He had no interest in their personal lives beyond how it affected their professional behavior, not even their sharp young technician, had no interest in her at all beyond her skills in the office.
“Right. No, she’s not,” Nick said. “I think we scared him off.”
“We did no such thing.”
“Of course we did,” Sharon said. “He took one look at us and ran for the hills. No great loss, he wasn’t right for her anyway. Too …”
“Stable? Sturdy? Much a productive member of society?” Nifty asked.
“Boring. Bonnie should not be with someone boring.”
“Right.” Nick rolled his eyes, still being dramatic. “And we’re all having such good luck on the dating front, we can give her advice.”
It seemed that nobody wanted to touch that comment, from the brief silence that fell.
“So if she’s not home where are we going to go?” Nifty asked.
“We might try our own homes?” Sharon suggested caustically. “Since Big Bad Dad here won’t let us work any longer, ‘cause he’s got a hot date or something….”
There was a flyer stuck to the nameplate on the door. Annoyed, Venec plucked it off, telling himself that his annoyance had to do with the solicitation, and not the way Bonnie’s love life was being batted around. Too young, too much an employee. Too much trouble, damn it.
“We’ve done everything we can right now,” he said to them. “Ian will be back in the morning with the girl’s testimony and the ki-rin’s deposition—” he hoped; his partner hadn’t pinged to say he’d be late, but Ian was not what you’d call a steady-goer “—and then we’ll be able to start putting the pieces together for our report. Right now, you’re just chewing on your tails, and that’s starting to chafe mine. So. Go. Home.”
He shooed them down the hall, noting with concern that they didn’t even stop at the elevator, but headed for the stairs at the end of the hallway. He understood their aversion—none of them were going to forget the boy who had died anytime soon—but it wasn’t good that they were now so conditioned to avoid it. He was going to have to do something about that, as well as the situation with Pietr.
He stopped to push the button for the elevator, meaning to set an example, and realized that he still had the flyer in his hand. Curious, he unfolded the salmon-colored paper and scanned the text, and then stopped and read it again, more carefully. On the surface it was an advertisement for a fumigation service. On the surface …
He had seen the wording before, on a different flyer, on his own door.
Do you have problems with unwanted creatures in your space? Looking for a way to evict them forever without chemicals or fuss? Call us.
He hadn’t thought anything about it then, piled with the other flyers and junk mail that seemed to accumulate every week; current use was one of the best natural cockroach repellents, and his building didn’t have a rat problem that he was aware of. Now, on its own, the wording seemed somehow more … something. He didn’t know what, but it made him uncomfortable.
He was a cautious, suspicious sort by training as well as natural inclination, and he didn’t believe in ignoring his instincts when they said something was wrong.
It was probably nothing; he might simply be overreacting. Or it could be important. That was his job, too; to scout things that might be important, and keep Ian informed. More, he didn’t like something about the wording of these flyers—or the fact that there was no company name on it, no website or email, only a phone number. That sort of thing raised a definite red flag—it meant someone was trying not to leave a trace. Pay-as-you-go cell phones were easier to dump than websites these days.
It wasn’t all current, this gig. Sometimes you had to use Null methods, too.
“Sharon,” he called, stopping her before she went into the stairwell. “Hang on a minute. You still in contact with the legal types you used to work with?”
She had come to them via a Talent-heavy law firm, specializing in discrimination cases and medical malpractice.
The blonde stepped back into the hallway, letting the others go on down the stairs without her, and looked at him inquiringly, switching easily from off-duty grousing to