enough to have a fair amount of dirt on him as well. He’ll help.”
“He’s a cockroach,” Marit argued. “He can wriggle out of anything we throw at him.”
“Maybe.”
“And he’ll lowball us,” she added.
“A lowball offer’s better than what we have now,” Denver countered. “We have to try, anyway.” He turned to his brother. “What do you think?”
Laramie shrugged. “I hate it, but I don’t see any other options. We’ve already wasted too much time.”
“No. You need to rest.” He expected an argument, but all he felt from Laramie was relief, which only proved how exhausted he was.
“Fine,” Marit sighed, looking defeated. “We’ll see you when you’re done. Keep us posted,” she requested.
“I will. Be careful.”
“Be safe.”
Despite the hell that their day had been so far, Denver cracked a smile. “Too late.”
He was as casual as he knew how to be leaving the Jiminy’s bay, but the security officers stationed there still stared at him like they wanted to slam him up against a wall and start interrogating him. Denver couldn’t blame them; guard duty was boring as hell, and OPAL’s no-holds-barred logic, they were stuck here in a boring docking bay.
Denver smirked and waved, then headed down the street toward Doc’s office. It didn’t matter if he was followed, he reasoned, because he had legitimate business to do there. They could tail him all they wanted and not find a thing out of place. Still, he meandered a little bit on the way, just to give himself a chance to check out of the corner of his eye whether or not anybody was behind him.
Nothing. Not even a bot that he could see. Cleanup at Gru’s must have really been an all-hands endeavor. Denver wasn’t going to push his luck, though. No more fire-starting maniacs, he promised silently.
Denver grinned and walked on.
Doc did business in a more affluent section of Titan X than most of Denver’s contacts. He got stares as he walked by here, people in colorful synthetics looking at his hard-wearing clothes with such disgust that he might as well have been naked. It was even worse when Laramie was with him, people’s suspicion of twins working against them. Denver ignored them, just like always. Station folk put on airs, but in the grand scheme of things, they were just as far down the ladder of importance as any old space trash. Mars didn’t give a damn whether they lived on the fifth floor or the fiftieth, they just cared that they got their cut of whatever profit folks like him brought in.
Doc’s door was open. Denver knocked once anyway. The material was nearly vibration-proof, but he could pound hard enough to get someone’s attention.
“Denver.” Doc looked up at him from over his spectacles. “Come in. I was expecting you.”
Denver shut the door before sitting down. “Yeah, it’s that time again.”
“It is, but that wasn’t the reason I was expecting you.”
“No?”
“No.” Jesus, getting information from Doc was like squeezing blood from a star. Lucky for Denver, this time he didn’t have to pry. “I heard about a firebombing in Eyrie Tower this morning.”
“We had nothing to do with that—”
“Of course not,” Doc said soothingly. “But it was big news in certain circles. Word is that Gru Whittemore’s entire stock has been destroyed. He was a big player in biologicals on this station this morning, and then after a visit from you, suddenly he’s wiped out.”
“You’re trying to draw a line between two points when only one exists.” Denver resisted the urge to shift his weight. “Eyrie Tower was raided. That’s a station security issue, the kind that takes a lot of planning. We just got back yesterday.”
“And you’ve raised a lot of eyebrows since then.”
“What’s your point?”
“You have something you want to get rid of.” Finally, they were getting to the point. In usual Doc style, they were doing it without naming names, which was fine with Denver. “I might be interested in acquiring it.”
“How interested?”
“Enough to pay up to half a million credits if what you’re offering is genuine.”
Denver tried not to let the figure boggle him. He’d never had more than a thousand credits on hand at any one time, not even after the biggest haul. The kind of money Doc was talking about…
He couldn’t even fathom it.
“How do I know you have that much?” Denver asked.
“I can send you an account verification through the bank. Only for the genuine article,