Page 39 of Mongrels United
He glanced at her still-red-rimmed eyes as the pod got moving. “We can skip this for today, if you’d rather go back.”
“I’m not doing any good sitting by my father’s bed,” Grady said. She added softly, “It wasn’t helping me, either,”
He drummed the arm of the bench. “Grady…”
She didn’t answer, but when he looked at her, she lifted a brow.Ask your question, that brow said.
“I know you have to have everything about my life and my father. It’s the only lead we have—if there’s any leads there at all. So I have to cough up stuff I haven’t talked about in…ever. But can it just be you? No psychologist. Not Westcott. Just you.”
Her nod was infinitesimal. “What they did to my father made this my only focus, for however long it takes. People shouldn’t be able to beat up other people for a few credits. A whole sub-level of Bellish transactions is driving it, I’m almost sure of it. So I’m going to stop the Bellish trade. Jack and the others will have to take care of everything else for a while.” She paused. “You’ll get sick of me, Nash.”
“Never.”
Her gaze shifted away. Then it came back to him, and he felt a tiny spurt of victory.
When they reached the Bridge, Grady didn’t turn left and head down the corridor toward the Civil Guard station. Instead, she led him to the administration section directly across from the gates.
“Here?” he murmured as the doors slid open for her.
“Uh-huh.” She glanced at him. Her expression was cool. The Chief of Staff was back. “Trust me,” she said shortly. She moved around the big table which everyone in the office seemed to work at. No luxury offices or individual desk stations with walls. No cubicles.
The people sitting at the big table all got to their feet when they saw Grady, all of them clamoring for news.
Grady stopped by the table. “He’s still unconscious,” she told them. “The hospice will contact me the minute that changes. In the meantime, I’ve got some work to do with Hyson. Glennis, I need you to clear off my calendar—”
“Already done,” the short, curly-haired woman on the other side of the table said. Her gaze flickered toward Nash and away. The others were also sizing him up. Nash was used to it and ignored it.
“Luus,” Grady said to a very slender man on this side of the table. “Delegate everything that comes in, as much as you can. Use Lieutenant Westcott for security matters. And if you have to, check with the Captain. Put everything else on the back burner—I’ll get to it in a few days.”
“Is this about your father?” Luus asked, his pointed face forming a sober expression. He had a high forehead that wrinkled as he talked.
“Very indirectly, yes. I can’t say more right now.” She reached around him and snagged a wrapped bar from a basket of them sitting on the table. “Thanks, Luus.” She moved around him to the station between him and the curly-headed woman, Glennis, and opened a drawer.
That was her desk, Nash realized with a sensation that felt like a kick to his chest. She didn’t have an office, either. She worked here with everyone else.
Grady withdrew several items from the drawers she opened and closed swiftly, including a thin faux-wood box. Then she beckoned Nash to come around the big oval table.
She spun on her heel and headed toward a small round table at the back of the room, tucked into an alcove between the walls and a fully enclosed office that Nash realized had to be Captain Carpenter’s. It was the only enclosed office in the suite.
“Here?” Nash found himself repeating as Grady put the pile of objects on the little table and pulled out two of the four chairs around it. Four was all the table could fit, and there was barely room for that many.
Grady patted one of the chairs. “Sit.” She sorted through the objects she’d put on the table, flipped one of them over. It was a hemispherical shape and the surface glinted.
She tapped it as Nash gripped the back of the chair. His ears seemed to pop as the muffled silence of a privacy shield dropped around them.
“You don’t have a room with a door, somewhere?” he asked, as he sat down.
“A room that would require monitors, with people at the other end able to tap into the feed whenever they wanted?” Grady shook her head as she sat, too. “No one can hear us, now. We have our backs to the main room, so no one can read our lips. Nor can anyone monitoring the security feed lenses that cover this table. Everyone in the room can see we’re working onsomething, but they will have no idea what.”
“They won’t?” Nash gave a soft laugh. “A couple hundred credits would get me a coder who could hack your network inside an hour. Then I’d know everything you do.”
She gave him a small smile, and picked up the flat box. “This,” she told him, “is a writing box.” She put the box back on the table and opened it. The lid flipped back, revealing a soft fabric-lined interior. The inside of the box was divided into sections holding objects which Nash did not instantly recognize.
Grady reached into one of the narrower rectangles and picked up what looked to be a pointed stylus, which people used on their pads when they were too refined to use their fingertips. Only the narrowed end wasn’t rounded.
She picked up another object from a bigger rectangle.
“I give up. Whatisthat?” he demanded.
