Page 1 (1/2)

BOOK

One

She did not know that the as a wicked sort of animal, and she was not afraid of hi toward the alley behind the Rieux Tavern when her portscreen chier seat, followed by an automated voice: "Comm received for Mademoiselle Scarlet Benoit fro Persons"

Heart ju, she swerved just in tiainst the stone wall, and thren the brakes before reaching a co for the discarded portscreen Its pale blue light glinted off the cockpit’s controls

They’d found so

"Accept!" she yelled, practically choking the port in her fingers

She expected a vidlink frorandot was a stream of unembellished text

28 AUG 126 TE

RE: CASE ID AIG00155819, FILED ON 11 AUG 126 TE

THIS COMMUNICATION IS TO INFORM SCARLET BENOIT OF RIEUX, FRANCE, EF, THAT AS OF 15:42 ON 28 AUG 126 THE CASE OF MISSING PERSON(S) MICHELLE BENOIT OF RIEUX, FRANCE, EF, HAS BEEN DISMISSED DUE TO LACK OF SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE OF VIOLENCE OR NONSPECIFIC FOUL PLAY CONJECTURE: PERSON(S) LEFT OF OWN FREE WILL AND/OR SUICIDE

CASE CLOSED

WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE OF OUR DETECTIVE SERVICES

The co all delivery ship pilots to be safe and wear their harnesses while engines were running

Scarlet stared at the s blur of white and black and the ground seemed to drop out from beneath the ship The plastic panel on the back of the screen crunched in her tightening grip

"Idiots," she hissed to the ehed back up at her

She released a guttural scream and sla to shatter it into pieces of plastic and metal and wire After three solid whaps, the screen only flickered in mild irritation "You idiots!" She threw the port at the floorboards in front of the passenger seat and sluers

Her harness cut into her chest, suddenly strangling, and she released the buckle and kicked open her door at the sarease and whiskey scent from the tavern nearly choked her as she sed her breaths, trying to rationalize her way out of the anger

She would go to the police station It was too late to go now--to She would be calical and she would explain to the She would make them reopen the case

Scarlet swiped her wrist over the scanner beside the ship’s hatch and yanked it up harder than the hydraulics wanted to let it go

She would tell the detective that he had to keep searching She would randma hadn’t left of her own free will, and that she most certainly had not killed herself

Half a dozen plastic crates filled with garden vegetables were crammed into the back of the ship, but Scarlet hardly saw the the conversation in her head Calling on every last persuasion, every ounce of reasoning power she had

So and if the police didn’t keep looking, Scarlet was going to take it to court and see that every one of their turnip-head detectives was disbarred and would never work again and--

She snatched a glea red tomato in each fist, spun on her heels, and pummeled the stone ith the across the piles of garbage that aiting to go into the co the detective’s doubt when she’d tried to explain to hirand little--

A door swung open just as a fourth to for another, as the tavern’s owner draped hilistening as he took in the slushy orange