A broken contract fractu.., p.27
A Broken Contract: Fractured Conclave - Book 2, page 27
“You mean the hochlen you left in his vehicle outside? I had it moved. Don’t worry, he’s still breathing. For now. But if he wakes up, he’ll be searching in the wrong place,” Findo said.
Hallie silently went through her entire repertoire of curses, guilt stabbing at her. She shouldn’t have left Girard alone. She’d known how vulnerable he was with the head injury. But then she hadn’t planned on getting caught. A quick look around, to see if this was indeed where the blue van had gone. Then she’d planned to go back out to report her findings. And now she was trapped.
Hallie pressed her shoulders against the wall. She was outnumbered, and not just in this corridor. There was an arena full of restless men behind her, all here to watch hochlen fight. She was sure they’d be equally happy to watch something awful happen to her.
“It was you behind this thing all the time, wasn’t it?” Hallie asked, not really expecting an answer. She’d been shocked to find Tam and Ulf involved in the enterprise, but neither of them had seemed to be the one at the top of everything. At first glance, the veondken in front of her seemed an unlikely criminal mastermind, but it fit him better than the two human mechanics.
“Clever girl,” Findo said, smug smile still in place.
“Tam is very proud of his organising, but it was you who put the final touches to it, wasn’t it? The electronic collar? The drugs?”
Findo’s smile widened, confirming her guess without him needing to say anything. But he dipped his chin, attempting to look humble. It didn’t work. Now she’d caught a glimpse of the cunning mind behind the young face, she didn’t believe that false modesty for one moment. “I like to please my audience,” Findo said. “People pay more for a better show.”
Hallie couldn’t suppress a shudder of revulsion at that. He’d deliberately fuelled the aggression and strength of the veondken, making them even more formidable fighters. All to please a crowd. And she’d seen the gleam in his eyes when he’d mentioned payment. He liked money. A lot.
“How did you get the drugs?” Hallie asked, almost against her will. She’d told the director that something that potent on the streets of low city would have been noticed, but she wanted to be sure. She wanted to know where it had come from, in the vague and probably foolish idea she might be able to stop it somehow.
“A little cocktail of my own making. I’ve always loved chemistry,” Findo said, smiling again.
Hallie wanted to ask how he’d perfected the recipe but the words wouldn’t come out of her throat. She actually didn’t want to know the answer. She was disgusted enough. But an image of Devin’s face, sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling, came to her mind and she forced herself to speak. “It provokes aggression, doesn’t it?”
“In high enough doses, it provides limitless capacity for violence,” Findo said, his lips curved in a cruel and delighted smile. “My little pets. Nothing stops them short of death. They just want to fight everything.”
“Then why use collars?” Hallie asked, mouth dry.
“Because they want to fight everything,” Findo said, speaking as if she was a very stupid child. “The collars give me some control, let me direct them.”
“And when the drug wears off, or they don’t have enough in their system, it drops them into sleep, doesn’t it?” Hallie asked, a jolt running through her as she remembered the peculiar encounters with the drugged veondken. And Findo himself, the first time she’d encountered him. A little bit of his own drug would have given him the extra stamina to run for the two solid hours she’d chased him, when she’d had to use all of her own strength to barely stay in sight of him. Then, when he’d fallen into the rotting vegetables, his stamina had run out. And again at the police station, he’d worked himself up into a frenzy before falling unconscious again. She’d been right not to trust his reactions. “That’s an unfortunate side effect,” she added without thinking.
“It hardly matters,” he said, the edge to his voice letting Hallie know that she’d hit a nerve.
“And I’m guessing they build up a tolerance,” she said slowly, putting the clues together as she spoke. The nameless veondken who she’d fought with a chair and length of pipe had been slower than Winner and Loser, his skin more faded. “And then it doesn’t work as well on them.”
Findo’s eyes narrowed, making him look almost as dangerous as one of the drugged veondken, letting Hallie know her guess was accurate. Despite her circumstances, she had a moment’s sympathy remembering Winner, who had been proud of his accomplishments in the fighting ring.
“When that happens, you leave the veondken behind, I guess. They aren’t useful any longer,” she said.
“Well, aren’t you the clever one?” Findo still had that edge in his voice. But it confirmed her guess. Winner, Loser and the unnamed veondken had been left behind. Discarded like rubbish.
“Well, even with the drug, it didn’t all go your way, though, did it?” Hallie asked. It wasn’t a clever or wise thing to provoke him, but her mouth and her mind seemed to be working on different tracks, a certain recklessness taking hold. “I mean, you ended up kidnapping hochlen.”
“A little bump in the road,” Findo said. He tried to smile, but there was no real humour or even smugness in it. “They paid their way in. Wanted to test their strength against the fighters,” he said, a savage edge creeping into his voice. “They didn’t believe that one of my beasts could best them. And then when they were beaten, they wanted an edge.”
Hallie’s breath caught in her throat. She could easily imagine young hochlen men thinking that they could fight and defeat anything in an illegal bout. And she could also easily imagine their fury if they didn’t win. Findo would have been smart enough to stop the fight before any of the hochlen died. Unlike the other men - karlen and veondken - whose bodies she and Girard had found. The elite would have wanted another change, though. None of the young men was used to being denied anything. They might all be second-born sons, but that just meant they had all the power and influence of hochlen with none of the responsibility that went with being their fathers’ heirs. The young men would have been prepared to take risks to prove themselves, perhaps goaded on by their friends. And, from what she knew about Findo’s fighting operation, it was easy to guess what might have happened. “You gave them the drugs?” Hallie asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Just one,” Findo said, and the smug smile was back. “It seems that there are some things even a hochlen can’t handle.”
“He died of heart failure,” Hallie said, remembering Erbin Romero’s autopsy report. The medical examiner would still be running his tests, and she wondered if it would occur to him to compare the blood samples from Erbin Romero to any of the veondken bodies that had been taken to high city.
Findo’s smile vanished, anger taking its place. “He did. And then of course they all wanted out. Threatened me with lawsuits and their security forces.” The bitter, dark fury behind those words made Hallie want to take a step back. She was seeing the real Findo Trask. A veondken as arrogant as any hochlen. “But this is my city.”
She tried to think of a way of distracting him, pulling him out of the violence she could sense behind his words. “So, you organised the fighting for the money and power. But I don’t understand why you set yourself up to get caught in, to have a skip tracer sent after you?” The warrant that had been put out on him, and which had led to her catching him, had been a result of an impressive and chaotic crime spree that, with hindsight, seemed to have been designed to draw attention to him. “I mean, you were completely invisible until then.”
“Ah, but that was the problem,” Findo said, the fury in his voice fading, although there was still an edge to his tone. “No one ever knew who I was. No one ever appreciated what I was capable of. And I knew if I made a big enough of a mess they would send you. Low city’s most successful skip tracer.” The venom in his words made Hallie press herself back against the wall again, in a futile attempt to get away from him. “I needed to see what you were made of.”
“I do my job,” Hallie said, her face and lips feeling numb. She remembered the hatred she’d seen in Findo when she’d brought him into custody. She’d thought he had hated skip tracers in general, but it seemed she’d only been partly right. The emotion in his face and voice was personal, directed at her.
“Precisely. And you always get your target, don’t you? Cunning little witch.” There was no trace of his earlier self-satisfaction. His whole body was almost shaking with the strength of the naked fury and loathing she could see in his face. “And you probably don’t even remember the ones you catch, do you? The ones you condemn to a slow death in custody?”
Hallie frowned at him. He was being truthful in what he was saying, but there was a whole world of things he wasn’t saying. “So, you knew someone I caught?” Hallie asked. “And did they die? I’m sorry about that.” She meant it, even though he would most likely not believe her. She hadn’t been aware of any of her fugitives dying in custody after she turned them over to the police. But then, unless they made the news, she very rarely heard anything about the skips she turned over once they were in the hands of law enforcement.
“You’re sorry, are you?” Findo hissed at her, taking a step forward and holding her eyes. “As if that makes it all better?”
“No, I don’t suppose it does help,” Hallie said, “but I am sorry all the same.”
“Tell that to my mother. Oh, wait, you can’t, because she’s dead. She died slowly in prison after you brought her in,” Findo said. His eyes were flat. Hallie couldn’t see any grief in him, only hate. “She evaded a half dozen skip tracers before you. But then you found her and sent her to her death.”
Her pulse picked up and her stomach dropped. He thought she had been involved in his mother’s death. No wonder he hated her. She’d only ever brought in one of his kind before, a woman, several years before. She hadn’t known about the other skip tracers before her on that particular hunt, but it didn’t surprise her. The woman had been clever and cunning in avoiding capture as well as being a proficient fighter. She’d been a challenge to get hold of. Even with Hallie’s rapid healing abilities it had taken her a week or so to fully recover.
Hallie hadn’t known that the fugitive had had children. And it wouldn’t have made a difference, Hallie knew. She had been given a job to do. She did her work to the best of her abilities and had to trust the system beyond that. She had to. She did come across innocent people from time to time, but the majority of people she brought in were guilty of whatever they had been charged with, and Findo Trask’s mother had been no exception. The system had worked and his mother had been sent to prison. But something had gone badly wrong. The prison was supposed to contain inmates, not see them die. And as sorry as Hallie was about the woman’s death, the fugitive had been healthy when Hallie had turned her over. In fact, Hallie had been the one injured from the struggle to bring her in. So, however Findo’s mother had died, it wasn’t Hallie’s fault. She was quite sure about that. The facts weren’t going to help her with Findo, though.
Hallie couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t fuel Findo’s hate and fury. She wanted to express sympathy for the loss of his mother, but thought that would most likely lead to him completely losing control. Instead, she turned back to something she still found difficult to believe. “You really did allow yourself to get caught so you could meet me?” she asked, brow furrowed.
“I wanted to find out how good you were,” Findo said, his fury dampening down, a hint of that irritating smugness returning. Hallie wasn’t sure which mood was more dangerous. “To see if we really needed to be worried about you. And punish you a little,” he added, a hint of violence in his face. She remembered his expression as he’d launched an attack at her in the police cell. He would have happily killed her then.
“I had no idea that you existed until the warrant came out for you,” Hallie told him, voice clipped. It probably wasn’t the best idea to antagonise a criminal mastermind, but she had an unreasonable spike of temper of her own burning in her. Findo blamed her for something she hadn’t done. She’d been set up by this man to catch him, and hadn’t managed to keep hold of him. It didn’t matter to her that he’d technically been in police custody when he made his break for freedom. She had been present. “Did you always plan to try and kill someone in your escape?”
“No. I planned to kill you. But it will be far more entertaining to watch someone else do it for me,” Findo said, another one of those unpleasant smiles on his face. He flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Take her to the ring.”
The ring. A jolt of fear ran through Hallie. She was quite sure that was the last place she wanted to go. She ducked and ran, as fast as she could, trying to avoid the pair of veondken bodyguards. But they moved with more speed and agility than seemed possible, given their muscular bulk, and had a hold of her before she’d gone half a step away. Still, she struggled against their hold, kicking out and trying to scratch them with her short fingernails. Nothing worked. She was lifted off the ground like troublesome baggage and carried around the corner of the corridor, out into the open space.
A raucous chorus of cheers rose up as Hallie was carried across the floor, through the crowd of people on their packing crates, and then dumped in the sawdust-strewn centre of the arena. She hit the ground and immediately got to her feet, looking around. She was surrounded by men - human and veondken - all staring at her. In the sea of unfamiliar faces, she caught sight of Tam and Ulf, standing together near the back of the crowd. Tam was grinning, clearly enjoying her predicament. Ulf was scowling. Perhaps he’d figured out that she had followed them. Hallie couldn’t imagine that Findo would be a kind and forgiving boss. Tam and Ulf had led her right to this building, to this arena. And although the veondken might be making the best of it, throwing her into the circle, she had interrupted whatever he’d had planned. She remembered Ulf’s reference to going into the ring, and wondered if he was worried he might be the next piece of entertainment for the baying crowd.
As she watched, Findo stopped next to Tam and Ulf and spoke to them briefly. Ulf’s expression changed from frowning to smiling. Hallie tensed even further. She had a feeling that Ulf’s happiness would not be good for her. He moved away from Findo and Tam, heading back into the arena. He was careful to stop several paces away from Hallie. He lifted his arms, spreading his hands wide, calling for silence. The crowd quieted at once.
“We have an unexpected visitor, as you can see. And not just any visitor. She’s a skip tracer,” Ulf said, a savage bite to his words.
The cheers from moments before were replaced by an ugly grumbling, a few jeers and a shout of Give her to me - I’ll sort her out. That was followed by a few grim chuckles and murmurs of agreement. She remembered Tam saying that skip tracers were scum. It seemed the crowd agreed. Hallie suspected that a lot of the people in the room had either faced a skip tracer themselves or knew someone who had. Despite the long history of the police using skip tracers to hunt down fugitives, there still seemed to be a common myth that the private contractors were easier to evade than the police, followed by absolute outrage when the individual was in fact caught. She might not know the people who were here, but she knew the type.
“So let’s see how she fares against our resident warriors and the hochlen,” Ulf finished, and waved a hand to someone outside the crowd.
The gathered men parted ways and three men shuffled through the crowd, forced forward by the veondken bodyguards who’d dropped Hallie in the arena. The three men were huddled close together, all wearing what had once been pale-toned dress shirts and dark, formal trousers, their clothes now ripped and stained. From what Hallie could see, they were all missing their ID bracelets. More concerning was that they all seemed injured. One had heavy bruising and swelling on the side of his face. The second was slightly hunched over, as if his midsection hurt. Possible internal injuries, Hallie realised, with another chill across her skin. External cuts and bruises were much easier to assess. But anything hidden could be lethal. The last man was holding one arm close to his body. Despite the dirt on their clothes and injuries, Hallie recognised them from the photographs she’d seen. The missing men. Oswain Dorsey, Llew Kennedy and Carrado Galloway. They were all of similar heights, and she knew they were of similar ages from the information she’d seen about them. Beyond that, they were quite different. Oswain had pale, almost translucent skin, deep-set dark blue eyes, the red-brown hair and close-cropped beard she’d seen in photos now tangled and matted. Llew had sallow skin and what had been silky black hair, his eyes downcast, while Carrado had warm-toned, deep brown skin and black hair that looked as matted as Oswain’s, tied back from his head in a rough knot. They were a far cry from the confident, smiling men Hallie had seen in the photographs Girard had provided. But then they had been missing for several days. And while hochlen were notoriously difficult to injure, Findo had said that they had been in the ring with the drug-enhanced veondken fighters, he just hadn’t said how often. From the state of the three men, Hallie suspected they’d been through several fights. Having faced some of the veondken, Hallie was surprised the three elite men weren’t more badly hurt.
Movement behind her made her turn, putting her back to the hochlen, in time to see the crowd part again, allowing a trio of veondken through. As the veondken walked towards the ring, they each paused by Tam, who pressed an injector into their upper arms, pushing the plunger home. Findo’s drugs. Each of the fighters coming towards her, all twitching after they had been injected, had the same mottled skin as Winner, Loser and the veondken Hallie had found near Nafiens Marsh, with one clear difference. The grey and blue patches on their skin were clear, sharply defined and vivid, and as Hallie watched, the patches rippled, colours deepening. She shuddered. She was seeing the full effects of Findo’s drugs, not the lingering after-effects that had still been in Winner, Loser or the other veondken.
