Page 26 of Mongrels United
Nash followed the driver of the pod through the gate and into the Bridge complex. It had been a long time since he had been a guest of the Civil Division Station, and hehadbeen arrested, that time. As far as he could recall, the Bridge area hadn’t changed at all.
The interior of the Guard station itself did seem different, but he hadn’t been given a chance to examine it carefully, the last time.
A woman sat on one of the long, narrow benches along the walls by the holding cells. The cells, he remembered. The woman looked both bored and worried. Her gaze slid over Nash and away.
“This way,” Jackalyn murmured, waving Nash forward.
He followed her through a short corridor, past a pair of doors. She turned right into the third and last door along the corridor.
Nash stepped through and came to a halt just inside the door, as Grady Read rose to her feet. She had been sitting on one of four chairs around a circular table. A pad sat in front of her.
“You’ve been waiting for me, Chief Read?” Nash said. “I’m flattered.”
She didn’t smile.
Today, she wore the same sort of sensible and modest pants and shirt she had been wearing at his party. Her hair was up, which he thought was a damned shame. “You look tired, Grady,” Nash added. “And it’s still early by anyone’s estimation.”
“You’re to blame for that,” she shot back, then pressed her lips into thinness, pulling all the color out of them. That told him she hadn’t meant to respond that way. Interesting.
She pointed to one of the other chairs at the table. “Sit. We need to talk. And this time, I’m speaking to you as the Chief of Staff to the Captain of theEndurance.”
Lieutenant Westcott hesitated in the middle of sitting, her gaze swinging from Grady to Nash. Her expression didn’t change, though. She settled herself in the chair, then pushed it back so there was nearly a meter between her and the edge of the table.
She was giving herself room to move fast, if she needed to.
It would have given Nash a measure of the footing this meeting was based on, if he hadn’t already known. He turned his gaze back to Grady Read and waited.
She didn’t clear her throat or give any of the usual nervous tics that most people did. She put one hand flat on the table by the pad. “Is it true you gave Djuro Rim a bag of tablets for testing, that later turned out to be Bellish?”
“And I thought you were a politician, Read,” Nash replied.
“Administrator,” she corrected.
“Still, you’re a leader of men. That’s very direct.”
“You have no idea how direct I can be,” she assured him. “If there is Bellish on this ship, I will tear apart every bulkhead on it with my bare fingers in order to find every last milligram of it, if that’s what it takes.”
“And screw personal rights?” He kept his tone light, even though a tiny frisson of…somethingran down the back of his neck. He believed her. This wasn’t hyperbole.
She hesitated. “There won’t be anyone on the ship to care about personal rights, if this thing gets away from us.”
Even more interesting!
Then the secondary meaning of her statement registered, chilling him. Someone as ethics-bound as Grady Read was willing to dispense with her personal moral code, which implied that Bellish was every bit as dangerous, as deadly and evil, as Rim had said. The nervous little chemist hadn’t been lying at all.
Nash grew still, centering himself. He reset his understanding of the situation.
Grady said, her voice low; “I have to believe that you don’t know what Bellish is. That you came across it through happenstance.”
“I’m starting to understand your concern,” he assured her.
“Good. I need to know where you found it.”
Nash breathed slowly. In and out. “It’s my understanding that I don’t have to answer your questions, unless I’m under arrest. Is my understanding accurate?”
Lieutenant Westcott sat forward, looking interested, instead of bored. The potential for violence in her posture was intriguing. Nash made himself stay still, and not give off any signal that might tell her that violence was needed.
Grady spoke calmly, though. “You are correct. You’re not obliged to answer. But I would urge you to be open and honest in this matter, Hyson. I cannot overstate how dangerous Bellish is. I don’t know your age exactly, but you must surely be old enough to remember what it was like on theEndurancebefore the Leroux Raid—”
