Callie rolled her eyes.“No worries there.I’ll never have an ungrateful lesbian daughter.”
“Oh, please.”Cat gave an exaggerated wave.I knew I wouldn’t get grandkids when you were sixteen.Ididn’t care.Your father was the one who was pissy about it.”
“Really?”Callie eyed her sceptically.
“You’re too old now anyway.And the older I get, the more I think we should just let it all burn to the fucking ground.”
“Mother!”
“What, you think your mother can’t swear?”
Callie laughed.“No, it’s just weird.”
“Fuckpisscunt,” Cat blurted out with an impish smirk on her face.
Callie took her mother’s hand.“That was probably the most wholesome swearing I’ve ever heard.”
Cat placed her other hand on Callie’s cheek and tilted her face to look at her.“Good.Now I need you to promise me you’ll move on.”
DECEMBER 20 2267
“We have him.”
Sesi stood up, the chair scraping across the floor.“You’re sure it’s him?”
Siku disconnected his keyboard from the Hexaline wall.“Very.”
“How?”
“One of his own.”Siku straightened out his jacket.He always did prefer the look of classic business attire compared to his sister’s more tactical dress.“He was suspected of skimming a while back and ran while he could.”
Sesi curled her lip.“If they knew where he was, why didn’ttheykill him first?”
“See, this is whyIdo the negotiations.”Siku kept his face a perfect neutral.Sesi failed to appreciate her brother’s diplomatic finesse.He would have to elaborate to get the praise he deserved.“If I’d gone to Tethys and told the Styx that I wanted him, they would have made us pay for the information.However, he was hiding out in Hyperion.Not their turf.”
“Not ours either.”
“No, but it means they hesitated.The Styx don’t want to start shit with the Harpies, they’d have to cross our turf to get there and risk pissing off two districts.”
“So, you offered to take care of the problem for them?”Sesi smiled, connecting the dots.
Siku nodded.“They even paid us for it.”
“Damn.What about the Harpies?Are we going to have to deal with them now?”
“No word so far.I sent in some of the guys we brought in last week.”
“What the hell, Siku?You sent in recruits?We’ve been after this fuckstain for months!”
“First,you’vebeen after him for months.”Siku retorted.“Second, they’re complete unknowns.Nothing to tie them to us.And third…”
“Undetectable by the biosig sensors, I know.”Sesi ran her fingers along her lip.
A silence fell over them.Siku stared, unblinking.Waiting, but Sesi didn’t break.
“What is it.”It was a statement, not a question.
Sesi sighed.“Why haven’tyoubeen after him.Why has it only beenme?”
