“Okay,” Dean said carefully, starting to get a little weary of the situation. “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. We’re not supposed to be here, and you’re not supposed to be here, and we’re all in the shit if we get found. Am I right?”
Ayesha nodded agreement.
“Right,” Dean continued, “so I reckon it’d be better for all of us if you put that blaster down and we started from there. It’s not going to do any of us any good if we get snuck up on by the sec because we’re so busy eyeballing each other. Am I right again?”
Reluctantly, the girl lowered the Thompson. “Guess so,” she said simply.
There was an almost palpable lowering of tension in the room.
Dean returned his attention to the cables, linking them and tapping a few commands into the keyboard of the comp he was manning as he said, “So I guess you know why we’re here. You were listening, right?” he added to her quizzical expression as he looked up. “So you know about Correll, the Hellbenders and everything?”
“Kinda,” she answered. “I didn’t know that they existed. I figured—like everyone else here, I guess—that once all you guys disappeared into the desert, then that was it. Time to buy the farm.”
“Should have been,” Danny agreed, “but I guess we got lucky.” Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep the slightest tinge of cynicism from invading the latter statement.
Ayesha seized on it. “I heard what you were saying about Correll being obsessed…mebbe he is, but mebbe that’s a good thing.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I’ve got reasons.”
Dean moved over to the other comp and tapped in a few commands on that keyboard. “Check it out,” he said, trying to bring the conversation back onto some kind of track. “They’re networking, Danny.”
“Shit!” The teenager’s attention was immediately taken by the old tech. He looked at the monitor. “Sweet fuckin’ murder, you’ve actually done it. How the hell did you do that?” he added, glancing at Dean.
“If you were paying more attention to this than to her, then you’d know,” Dean said in an acid tone. “Now look, I can show you how to do this when we get back to the redoubt, as long as we have these,” he continued, detaching the cables and putting them in his backpack along with a sheaf of papers from those Danny had taken from the filing cabinet. “That isn’t a problem. Getting out of here and back to the rendezvous in one piece is—especially now that we have this little problem.” He indicated Ayesha.
“She’s not a problem,” Danny said softly. “Shit, I can remember when I used to sneak about in here and I’d see her sometimes with Baron Al, if she was tagging along with him. And then I’d see her in his palace, when I was with my dad. She’s only a kid, Dean.”
“With a big blaster,” the young Cawdor pointed out.
“Mebbe, but—”
“But nothing, you stupe,” Ayesha butted in. “Listen, you think I never saw you when you were hiding here? I always wondered how you got in, what you wanted. I used to follow you. Why the fuck do you think I come here now? Because I got interested in trying to use this shit, that’s why.”
“But you never gave me away,” Danny said, incredulously.
“Of course not, you fuckwit. I was fascinated by you, and then by this. I wanted to learn, I wanted to come out and tell you I was watching. And now you’re here with this story about these guys called Hellbenders—”
“No story—it’s truth,” Danny said quickly.
“Whatever, it’s come at just the right time.”
At first, neither Dean nor Danny caught her meaning. Then it dawned on the young Cawdor, who said slowly, “You mean your own father would sell you?”
She nodded. “Hell yeah. I’m a big prize to those coldheart bastards. Daughter of a baron and not yet been screwed? Prize meat and big jack…the full shit. That’s why I haven’t chilled you or called sec. I could always make some excuse about seeing someone come in here and following them in, if it came to it. No, I’ve got other ideas. What do you say we make a bargain?”