Page 106 of Born for Starlight

"I won't."

Or a comm. The search that found phones would find the bud in my ear. I'd be deaf and mute in a sealed room, off my own net, and the strike would run on the clock instead of my voice. An hour ago I wouldn't hand my comm over for two minutes to save the woman I loved. Now I was going to pull it out myself and hand it over to Vargas.

Costa was still looking at me. His eyes went to the wall, toward the office where she was, and came back.

"And the Senhorita?" he asked. "She is... part of this?"

"She knows nothing."

"But—"

"She's a door, Frederico. A famous, beloved woman with cameras following her everywhere she goes. You think I could have gotten inside these walls any other way? Why do you think I took this job?"

He believed me instantly. I watched it settle him, watched his world snap back into an order he could understand. The saint was still a saint. Only the bodyguard was a monster. Of course. Men like Costa needed the story simple.

It had come out of me smoothly, without hesitation. And there was a reason it came out so easy. It was because she was an angel, and I was the devil.

Everyone on the net was silent.

Her silence was the loudest thing in my ear.

Ferraz's radio spat static on the desk, and a voice came through it, sounding bored. It was a check-in, the dogs wondering where their handler went.

I cut the ties off Costa's wrists and put the radio in his hands and the photos back on his knees.

"Ferraz stepped away," I whispered. "Everything is quiet. Say it like you're annoyed he made you answer."

Costa looked down at the photographs of his daughters.

Then he keyed the radio and said it. His voice only shook once, at the start, and the bored voice on the other end signed off without a flicker. The man could sell. I'd known that since the front steps.

I took the radio back and stood him up. He straightened his jacket with both hands, found his handkerchief, and put himself back together one piece at a time. It was almost impressive. By the time he faced me, the front-steps man was mostly reassembled, just wet around the eyes.

"The traffic accident," I said. "Tell it to me."

"Ferraz was in a traffic accident this evening. I am taking over security for the evening. I expect nothing out of the ordinary. Anything suspicious comes directly to me." He swallowed. "And I have a late buyer. Personally vetted. Deep pockets."

"Good. Go talk to Layla first."

He nodded. At the door he stopped, and for a second I thought he'd try something stupid. He didn't. He looked back at the photos on the chair.

"They walk to the bus at seven fifteen," I said. "Whether they do that tomorrow is up to you. This is the most important thing you'll ever sell, Frederico. Go sell it."

He went.

"Vargas, shadow him to the walkway. Pinto, the corridor." I unclipped my holster and handed it over, gun and all. My phone went next. My knife. I stood there a second, lighter in all the wrong ways.

"You're going in deaf, blind, and unarmed," Jase said. "Alone. Into a locked room full of them."

"Yes."

"I hate this shit."

"I know."

I reached up and took the bud out of my ear and handed it to Vargas. The net went away, Simon, Jase, Beto, Billy, all of it, gone. I'd worn a live comm through every op for sixteen years. The silence was total. I'd chosen it, and I hated it exactly as much as I'd known I would.

Seven fifty-five. Across the covered walkway, behind sealed doors, thirteen little girls were waiting on their curtain, and a chair was waiting for me.