Companion 3000 - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,48

anywhere! Why the hell didn’t you call me sooner?”

“I tried to—I’ve been spending the last two days and nights tracking you down,” the Tarbian snapped. “You’re not exactly in the galaxy’s Who’s Who, you know.”

“Well, send me what you have, anyway,” Pierce said tightly. It was true that he’d been making himself scarce since he left Leita’s life pod. He still had Dal’s enormous bounty hanging over his head and Shie-lu and others like him were no doubt looking to collect.

“Sending.” Schneider’s furry face disappeared to show a waist-high view of a storefront filled with gold and silver boxes wrapped in bright red bows. Leita must have been wearing the watch-me in a bracelet, then. Pierce watched as she walked in to the shop, catching the name on the holo-loop above it as she moved her arm. Xander’s Gourmet Chocolates. Uh-oh, he already had a bad feeling about this. The store seemed too flashy—too tempting, especially for women living on the rough outer frontiers of the system and longing for little-seen luxuries. It was like a honeypot, drawing them in.

Pierce knew that Leita loved sweets, especially chocolates, though she almost never got them. In fact, he had a two-pound box somewhere in the supplies he was bringing her. Now he might not ever get the chance to give it to her. A surge of protectiveness rolled over him and he watched with helpless rage as Leita was first drugged, then dragged to the back of the store by the oily-looking clerk with shifty black eyes. He couldn’t be sure because the stream was shaky and he only caught glimpses of his face, but he thought the weaselly little bastard looked familiar.

The kidnapper said something about no help coming for her and then the transmission ended in a blur of static as the watch-me was destroyed. Pierce clenched his hands into fists. Damn it, Leita, why did you go in there by yourself? Don’t you know the Galleria is full of slavers and organ snatchers just waiting to catch their next vic? He felt a rush of guilt. If he had told her who he was instead of keeping up the ridiculous charade until she found out on her own, he might have been there with her. Everyone knew the slavers looked for lone, unattached women who no one would miss. Leita had been a perfect target, despite her watch-me.

Schneider reappeared on the monitor, looking as grim as a furry-faced Tarbian could. “Do you think you can find her?”

“I don’t know.” Pierce sighed and slumped in the Jaunter’s pilot’s chair. “I need to do some checking and see what this Xander’s Chocolates outfit is a front for. Probably a slave ring of some kind.” He didn’t like to tell Schneider or admit to himself that if it was organ snatchers that had gotten her, she was probably already dead. In the back of his head, a memory tickled. The man who had kidnapped Leita—where had he seen him before?

“I told her I didn’t like her going on her own.” Schneider’s high piping voice sounded truly anguished. “I usually go with her just in case. But this time she left me here to baby-sit that idiot Companion until the drone ship comes to pick it up.”

“She’s sending it back?” Pierce asked, somewhat surprised. Despite the thing’s irrational behavior, he’d assumed it was what Leita wanted—it was after all what she had ordered in the first place.

“It’s insane,” Schneider said, laying his ears flat against his head again. “It’s ruined most of the furniture and broken our vacuum as well. I think Leita scrambled its brain when she shot it with the tazer.”

“Good thing she didn’t scramble mine,” Pierce muttered. “Listen, Schneider, I have to make some calls before I go superlight. I’ll be in touch, though.”

“Just bring her back, Pierce.” Schneider’s wide golden eyes looked suspiciously wet but that might just be a coincidence. Pierce didn’t know if Tarbians could cry or not.

“I’ll do my damnedest,” he promised and clicked the call off. He sat musing for a moment, then reran the vidstream frame by frame until he got to the shot where Leita had reached for the first chocolate. Her wrist had been up, almost at eye level to take the sweet from the tray and it offered the best view of her abductor. Pierce stared hard at the monitor, eyebrows pulled down in a frown of concentration.

Suddenly he sat up straight in his chair. Yes! That was it—it had to