Page 8 of Skinwalker's Bane
“If you did, would you ask that?” Adam replied.
“You wanted to speak to me about something?”
The question neatly dodged his. Adam let it go. “I do,” he said. “Inside your sound shield, though.”
Her lips parted. He’d surprised her. She hesitated and he thought he knew why. He was wearing his usual shirt and pants and his one-and-only jacket. In the Esquiline he looked pretty much the same as everyone else. This was the Aventine, though. Patrician territory.
“I don’t think so,” she replied coolly.
“It’s about Lincoln Amos,” he added, despite Nichola sitting and listening to everything they said.
Devin Bronson’s eyes widened the tiniest fraction and again, he wondered what color they really were. Then the brows came together. “Who?” she asked.
“Lincoln Amos. Skinwalker. He died last week. Surely you heard that, even up here?”
Her jaw tightened. “I heard about another skinwalker dying,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t know his name. Why would you want to speak to me about him?”
Adam stared at her, puzzled. Shedidknow Lincoln. She had been startled, although she had hidden it quickly. Now she was lying.
He looked at Nichola again.
She shrugged. “She doesn’t know him.”
Irritation flared. “Look, I don’t care why you’re lying now,” he told Devin Bronson. “I can tell youdidknow him, though. Let me behind the sound shield and I’ll explain why.”
Devin Bronson closed down. He couldseeit in the way she squared her shoulders and dropped her hands to her sides. “I think you should leave.”
His irritation shifted to anger. “Fine,” he said shortly, straightening up his own spine. “I guess I don’t get to deliver Lincoln’s last message to you then. Have a nice life, Devin Bronson.”
He didn’t wait to see her reaction. He spun away and strode to the door. It opened as he reached it and he paced through it, steaming.
Stubborn, snotty Patricians! How anyone got anything done, working with their incomprehensible attitudes and behaviors, was unfathomable. Yet he’d done his best. If the woman herself refused delivery, that wasn’t his problem.
What in the stars had Lincoln been doing, mixing with the likes of her?
* * * * *
Devin reactivated the silence shield and ignored Nichola’s messages. Instead, she stared at the curtains over the windows. Curtains were the new trend, adding color and insulation against light, sound and heat, all at once. Not that polarized windows needed any more insulation. However, the splash of unexpected color and texture in a room was nice.
The pleasure she normally got from the simple treatment was missing, now.
Lincoln had left her a message.
She returned to that simple fact, spinning it in her mind. Why would he have gone out of his way to leave her a message? It didn’t make sense.
Devin had no illusions about Lincoln Amos. He had been a typical skinwalker. Tall, with the extra muscle all of them worked hard to develop and maintain to offset the atrophy from zero-gee work. He had drunk to excess, bedded anyone who was amenable, laughed a lot and lived as hard as he could.
And now, a message to her that he must have arranged while he was still alive. It didn’t fit the pattern. It didn’t fit with what she knew of Lincoln Amos—especially sending the message via that shaggy, soiled man.
She recalled Adam Wary once more. He had not said so, yet his clothes and demeanor all screamed skinwalker and Plebian. He had been a friend of Lincoln’s, clearly. Like Lincoln, Adam Wary seemed to be the epitome of skinwalkers—tall, extremely well-muscled, fit and strong, with an attitude that silently said he knew he was a savior of the ship and deserved every accolade he got. He probably drank heavily, too. The thick thatch of over-long dirty blond hair, the unshaved chin and bleary eyes seemed to support that.
Nichola had been preening, impressed by his physicality and missing entirely his seedy state and his belligerent attitude. Clearly, Nichola was of the common opinion that skinwalkers were special, glorious people who lived utterly different lives from the ordinaryEndurancecitizen. The risks they took made people like Nichola overlook their excesses.
Devin wasn’t fooled, though. Skinwalkers were all too human.
She sat up and pulled up the terminal, then clicked over to the Forum. Clearly, she couldn’t leave this matter where it lay. Skinwalkers knew everyone and Adam Wary was under the impression she had lied. She had to address that before he spread it around. His current apartment location would be on the Forum.
Not that she cared a whit about Lincoln Amos’s last message. That had nothing to do with it.
