Out of sight of the scanning cameras, too—but that had to be a chance malfunction.
Heavy shoes clattered behind Lacey. As he turned, a savage voice cried, “Freeze!” His scar again beginning to flame but a quizzical smirk on his face, the investigator rotated only his head toward the newcomers. Two of them were big men capped with Sepo blue and crouching over automatic powerguns. The third, stepping daintily across a flattened wall-panel, was slim and glittered in a suit like cloth of gold. His hair was white or blond, a determination which the smooth pallor of his skin did nothing to aid. Skin like that meant wealth as often as it did youth, and the slim man radiated wealth.
There was another aura as well: he was unarmed, but he was deadly in a way neither of the gunmen flanking him could equal.
“Good morning, Field Agent Lacey,” he said with a smile. His delicate fingers—the nails perfectly matched the sheen and color of his wrist-to-ankle suit—raised the needle gun far enough from Lacey’s holster to be sure it was no more than it seemed, then slid it back disdainfully. “I am Sig Hanse, Agent Lacey. I am of the Security Police.”
Hanse’s tone, his smile, both implied a great deal more than the words alone said.
“You’re in the presence of a major Security offense” Lacey said. At Hanse’s quick blink he added, “Lethal weapons in non-military hands.”
The Sepo’s fingers trembled. “Get out of here, Lacey,” he said softly. “You’ve been recalled. This isn’t a wife-stabbing, a drunk with a chair-leg bludgeon. It’s a Security matter; and if you aren’t too stupid to grasp this concept, try to realize that you aren’t cleared at a high enough level to be told exactly why. I might add that there is now a Security block over all the records of this crime. No data will be released without my code—just to remind you of your duty to the State.”
“I can be expected to do my duty under the Constitution and the Code, Citizen Hanse,” Lacey said. He took an easy, unconcerned step between the two gunmen and then glanced back at their leader. “And you? The powerguns?”
“A needle can bounce from a stud, can fail to discharge when it hits—can just not stun a man instantly unless it gets a ganglion,” Hanse snapped. “Our targets are too dangerous—to the State!—to allow that.”
“Good hunting,” Lacey murmured as he walked out of the room. His shoes whispering on the stair treads were the only other sound his exit made. His eyes were as empty as those of the Sepo now lying among the blast casualties as the technicians and their computer worked to repair the skull fractured by Lacey’s foot.
Two new vehicles squatted on the roof: an open car like Lacey’s with a blue-capped Sepo on the driver’s saddle, and an older but luxurious closed car of a quality equal to that of the private ones already parked there. Lacey jerked a thumb at the Sepo. “Hanse says take your car down and block the front entrance, friend.”
The Sepo blinked. “Hey, but how about the roof?” he demanded.
Lacey climbed into his own car. “Well, what about it?” he mimicked. “He’s your bleeding boss—you go grill him about it.”
The Sepo grunted as though punched in the stomach. He booted his fans to life and sailed over the parapet as soon as their double whine had begun to lift the car. “Hold it,” Lacey said to his own driver. He jumped back out and crossed to the superb car beside it. Hanse’s vehicle seated three, but he had taken his bodyguards down with him to confront Lacey. There were no loose objects within the cabin. Its design was unusual for a police vehicle in that the scanner helmet was pivoted for use only by the front seat passenger, not for the one on the soft leather bench on which Hanse himself surely rode. That was ostentation of a sort which Lacey, who viewed the helmet as a tool and not a symbol of punishing drudgery, honestly could not understand.
There was a code panel, too, built flush with the seat back. Lacey’s hand scanner recorded the banks of letters from several angles. Then he swung quickly back aboard his own assigned craft.