Molehunt by Paul Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

her.
    Anneke glanced out at the street beyond the café window. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but then she didn’t expect there to be. She flashed her cash card over the table reader. She was about to say goodbye to Esprin when she stopped and stared down at him.
    Why was he here? Why now? And why did he follow her?
    Was she being paranoid? Could he be the mole? A sudden chill sleeted through her. For the first time she realised she could no longer trust anyone. Only Uncle Viktus, whom she had known since she was a child.
    Was this the first fallout of betrayal? Paranoia, then isolation?
    In that moment she decided to go to Lykis Integer and see Uncle Viktus herself. In person. She almost slapped herself. How could she have been so stupid as to send that priority message? Now the mole would know somebody was on to him; knew, in fact, that
she
was on to him. Of course, she had been about to tackle the Quesadans, and there was never a guarantee that she was going to survive the encounter. Still … it had been a rash and desperate gambit.
    â€˜Anneke?’ Esprin’s voice jerked her back to the here and now. She eyed him again. Some of the worst monsters in history were charming on the outside, seemingly harmless, even goofy. It didn’t pay to judge a book by its cover, even though books didn’t have covers any more.
    â€˜What is it?’ Anneke’s mouth hardly moved.
    â€˜You know they’re all talking about you back at HQ?’
    She frowned. Well, of course they were.She had stirred up a hornet’s nest. ‘What are they saying?’
    He shrugged. ‘Nobody knows what it’s all about. It’s all high level need-to-know stuff. I was hoping you could tell me.’
    Was he pumping her for information? Anneke suddenly had to be free of the place; she had to get some fresh air.
    â€˜I’ll see you around, Esprin.’
    She headed for the door, not looking where she was going. She bumped into a waiter, staggered back. A bottle on the waiter’s tray exploded in a glittering cloud of shrapnel. She ducked, pulling the waiter down with her. Another projectile whined into the room, turning a corner, tracking, and then thudded into the back wall as she let off an electro-magnetic pulse grenade.
    â€˜Everybody get down!’ she shouted.
    But the danger was already past, for now. Obin appeared. The café owner was big, at least 200 centimetres tall and about fifty wide. He was of mutated Terra stock, but had the pointy tufted ears common to all Kaspiris.
    â€˜What’s goin’ on?’ he thundered. His holoscreens were sputtering from the disruption of the grenade. Then he saw Anneke and his expression softened a little. ‘You tell me what’s goin’ on, girl.’
    â€˜Call the hunkies,’ she said. ‘Somebody just shot up your café.’
    Obin looked at her in shock, then scowled in disgust. ‘It be that Tadis Clan. Bastards, ev’ry one of ‘em! I get me an assassin. I get me a gang of mercs. I fix ‘em. You see …’
    Anneke had no doubt he could fix anything he wanted, but she wasn’t hanging around to watch. She nodded briskly at Esprin who was crouched on the floor, and hurried out the back entrance. When she had put a couple of blocks between her and the café, she circled around, climbing Hector’s Hill, which stood at one end of the harbour. From there she could see the entire dockland and esplanade.
    She systematically scanned the streets below her for two hours with quantum-enhanced binocs. And found what she expected to find. Nothing.
    Even gone wrong, it was a professional hit. ‘Exporters’ as they were known in the trade, did not hang around. Someone had hired a member of the extremely expensive Assassins’ Clan to retire her.
    And she thought she knew exactly who that someone was.
    The mole.
    She hurried back to her high security apartment, not bothering