Page 27 of Stalker
He would be back… And he was… Thirty-six hours later.
“How did it go?” Neely asked as they carried their dinner plates to the breakfast nook and sat down to eat.
“We killed or captured all the gangers and put them in the holding where they kept all the abductees. Shadow and—” Stalker stopped talking midsentence and stared off into the distance.
Neely sighed, recognizing that look. He often got that look when accessing data from his internal computer or receiving messages through the cyborg net. Sometimes, it was only for seconds. It took longer than that, so Neely started eating the meat and vegetable casserole she had chosen.
When Stalker blinked and shook his head, Neely knew the message had finished. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Darken said they found Devlin White dead in his mansion.”
“I thought killing overlords was tabu.”
“It is. Darken and Captain Savage recorded him alive when they left.”
“So, who killed him?
“You should finish eating before I show you what they found. It’s not pretty.”
“Okay, so… Where were you while this was going on?”
“Outside securing the compound and freeing the abductees so we could lock up the gangers we didn’t have to kill. Once we finished that, Protectors from the eastside of Enclave territory came to finish up, and we left. I spent as much time traveling as I spent onsite.”
“Was it as chaotic as it sounds?”
“Only among the gangers. We had it under control,” said Stalker, pausing to take a bite of food.
“I know you weren’t gone that long, but I missed you.”
Stalker reached across the small table and cupped her cheek with his hand. “I sure didn’t want to be away from you any more than necessary.” He smiled, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
Chapter Fifteen
Stalker had already transferred the video from White’s mansion to his tablet. They took their tea into the living room and sat together on the couch to view it together.
“Remember, I warned you,” he said, starting the replay:
Devlin White’s body hung from a set of manacles against a wall and his head sagged from apparent exhaustion. But he was alive and breathing.
Finally, he stood and held his head up. Someone walked into the room, but the recording only showed him from behind. White clearly recognized him; his next words confirmed it.
“Price, where the hell have you been? The place was overrun with cyborgs last night; you should have been here!”
“You sent me to kill Darken Wolf,” said Colton Price. “I went looking for him.”
“You’re a cyborg, for Chrissakes! Don’t you have a network you tap into? Darken Wolf was right here with the rest of them? Where the fuck were you?”
Colton stopped in the middle of the room and stood looking at Devlin. “Only manufactured cyborgs are on that network. I’m a convert, remember.”
“Yeah, okay. Never mind. Just get me out of this.”
“I don’t know; it looks like karma to me.”
“Fuck you!”
“Now you know how those females felt when you left them right where you are now.” Colton walked up to Devlin and reached for the manacles with one hand.
He pulled the combat knife from his weapons belt and thrust it into Devlin just under his breast bone, slanting it upward and twisting it. Devlin grunted, and Colton pulled out the knife and stabbed it into the overlord three more times.
