Chapter Two

1

A touch of scotch is the best medicine, his father had once told him.

The name and face on the monitor was his own: Dylan Cole. The bounty was a heavy one for a street punk, two and a half million wulongs. At the same time, he was being considered as the lone surviving gunman who had helped to butcher eleven innocent bystanders in a gun battle within a Ganymede quick shop. Maybe two point five mil was a little bit on the light side. With his world spinning beyond the point of control, his father's prescription seemed a fitting release from reality. The sequence of events, beginning two months before with the murder of some beat cop in the gang-laden outskirts of the Ganymede colony and concluding with the massacre at the quick shop, only gave body to the desire churning through his battle-scarred heart. For a man who had never touched the bottle in his life, now seemed as good a time as any to start. He poured himself a drink and toasted to the empty starfield before him.

"Be at peace, brother," Dylan Cole said quietly, and sipped his scotch.

Dark memories weighed heavily on the soul. His brother was dead, the latest in a long line of victims hunted by the Red Dragon syndicate, a target of the assassin known on the streets of Ganymede as the Reaper. Dylan had been there, witness to horrible massacre that was no more for the assassin than a diversion from the real operation. According to ISSP, the Reaper was no more than a street legend, born in the darkest minds of the underworld to frighten the people of Ganymede into submission so the gangs could overrun the streets of the colony. Dylan knew better.

The final words he had shared with his brother had begun with an exchange of apologies: Dylan, for not being there to help when the decisive bullet was fired, and Jason, for leaving before he could fulfill his duties to his family, his duty to his brother. Before his death, Dylan's older brother had forced him into a promise. Find her brother…please…find my Darby. Tell her…I love her. It was a request Dylan could never say no to. Darby Jones would have been a Cole herself, Jason's beloved wife, if not for the violent spin that had befallen the Red Dragon, when Vicious had begun his little coup d'état.

So much blood spilt over a little money. Was this really what the world had come to? The young man shook his head. Dumb question, Dyl, he told himself, and drained his glass. You think too much. Focus on the task at hand and get it done. He lay the glass down and poured another shot. He downed it quickly and lay his hands on the controls of the Hotaru. He had turned the bow of the ship toward a dim, red speck on the starfield, and there he sat. He knew he'd have to go to Mars on his own. He didn't know exactly what he was planning to do once he arrived, but he was sure he could think of something. The Ganymede police had chased him throughout Jupiter air-space until he'd managed to loose them in the dark side of one of Jupiter's many smaller moons. The stunt likely meant he'd severed any potential ties with justice for a long time to come, though he suspected the massacre at the quick shop had done that all on its own.

He wasn't one of the bad guys, but they didn't know that.

Obviously, once he got there, he couldn't get to Darby. At least, not yet, not with the bounty placed on him. That was just another obstacle he'd have to work around. He couldn't just go through the front door; that would be suicide. He couldn't avenge Jason's death if he himself was dead. There would have to be another way, and he felt deep inside Darby knew someone with the answer.

He had a name. If he found Darby, he'd find her. Annie. She could help him get to Spike Spiegel, the only one who help him nab the Reaper and clear his name.

Dylan Cole lifted the .357 Magnum in both hands, peering down the site of the firearm as if taking aim. After a moment's inspection, he lowered the weapon and slipped it into its holster. He grabbed a box of bullets from the compartment next to the emergency hatch airlock and deposited those into his pocket. Anger bubbled over. He hated the Red Dragon syndicate, hated it with a passion. What the hell had his father been thinking, joining that merciless horde? The idiot had gotten himself and his wife killed, leaving Dylan and his brother to fend for themselves. Lambs to the slaughter indeed, with the syndicate chasing them. Jason had met that same, terrible fate back on Ganymede. Dylan was lucky—or perhaps cursed—to have escaped intact.

He wouldn't be able to get travel by normal means through the Jupiter jumpgate but that didn't matter. He had all the time in the world to figure out the best route to Mars, and then he had to get to Darby and fulfill his brother's dying wish.

2

Benedict lay a manilla envelope out on the table in the middle of the empty bar and opened it. Within were images of four young men, seemingly hoodlums in their late teens and early twenties, along with biographical data on each of the men. Picking out one of the four, Alex Kane slid it over to Jet. He had a long, serious look on his face, and Jet knew this wouldn't be a good night to run into the young man in a dark alley.

"Who's this?" the Black Dog asked, gazing to the image.

Benedict snorted. "Cole, Dylan Bryant. Street punk, originally from Mars. His father was a drug pusher for the Red Dragon syndicate for a number of years, but he eventually bought out and moved his family to Ganymede six years ago. The syndicate didn't have much of a problem as far as that goes. Then again, it's pretty common knowledge that once a syndicate…"

"Always a syndicate," Jet muttered, shaking his head. "So, you think because this guy's old man was a member of the syndicate, they tapped him to carry out a shooting spree in a downtown Ganymede quick shop?"

"He was there." Benedict glowered at the image. He shook his head, furious, as he slammed the photo back onto the tabletop. "Security cameras show his presence and the fact he was armed. They don't prove that he actually fired any rounds, but eye witnesses all indicate there were four gunmen. Three of them are in body bags. This bastard's the survivor."

"Any idea where the kid might be hiding?" Jet asked.

"Hard to say for sure." Sylvia's brow scrunched a little as she let her fingers slowly trail the oak tabletop and watched the four men with a curious eye. "Ganymede officials locked down Jupiter air traffic for a reason. He's not leaving the planet, that's for sure."

Jet caught a glimpse of his old friend out of the corner of his eye. Sylvia seemed a worn and ragged old broad, something he wasn't used to seeing in his former commissioner. Her suit was wrinkled, the scarf a jumbled mess at her throat, as if she had chosen her attire hastily before rushing out the door. She'd never been a smoker either, but now she was busy fidgeting with an old lighter, trying to ignite a tiny flame. She was having a hell of a time of it. He pulled his own from one of the many pockets in his trench coat and lit it, holding it out to her.

A puff or two later, the old woman heaved a thick cloud of smoke from her lungs. "I doubt he'd leave the dome."

"Air traffic isn't foolproof," Jet commented, lighting his own smoke. "What if he got outside the transit rings and made a run for it?"

"I don't think so." Benedict slipped the pictures back into the envelope and stuffed it into his coat. "Wouldn't hurt to check, though. I'll notify ATC and have them run a check on any ships that might have strayed from the transit groupings." He glanced to Sylvia. "There's always at least one. The police might chase them some distance, but they'll never chase anyone outside maximum orbit."

"That'd be a good idea," Sylvia grumbled. She flicked the edge of her cigarette onto the rim of the ashtray. "You do that. If anyone got out, it'd be a good idea to run a full background check on the vehicle and any passengers, whether they match Cole's description or not."

Alex cleared his throat. "I've got the ballistics team working on the crime scene. They'll be checking the bullets with the guns. When we figure out what bullets didn't match a gun, will be a step closer to Cole."

Jet leaned back and scratched his stubbled chin. Something about what they were telling him didn't quite make sense. Here was a kid, a street punk with an attitude. His father had been a member of the Red Dragon six years ago, but he'd given up on that life and moved his family to Ganymede. Now he was supposed to believe that this kid had been called upon by the syndicate to wreak havoc on the good people of Ganymede.

Somebody had shot back.

"Who killed the other three?" he asked, looking up. The others watched him blankly. "Oh come on. You're telling me these three guys walked into the quick shop and opened fire on hapless civilians, and on top of that took each other out? Think about it. When the smoke had cleared, three of his buddies were dead and he was long gone. The syndicate aren't exactly the type to blast away at their own in the middle of a massacre. There's something missing guys."

Bull grumbled something under his breath. Jet shot him a look, but he didn't seem likely to respond. The Black Dog frowned when he realized why.

"You guys didn't think about that, did ya?"

The big man slammed his fist on the bar. "Hell yeah, we thought about that! We…" He paused, fists clenched. Jet saw that his old friend wasn't angry with him. He was furious at himself. They knew someone had fought back; they simply hadn't figured out who. Sipping from his bottle, Jet considered the possibility that they had their back to the wall. "Damn it, Jet, we're doin' our best. It's just, it's not always good enough. People die everyday at someone else's hand. We can't catch 'em all, seldom do…"

Jet narrowed his eyes. "That why you called me?" he asked.

Bull blinked. "Whaddaya mean?"

"When's the last time you actually called me?" Jet pressed. "We've hardly talked in four years, and when we do, it's typically passing out information."

Sylvia held up a hand. "Now that's not fair," she said. "We called you because we're talking about the death of a friend."

"Sandy. Yeah, I know." He shook his head. "Never got so much as a call when that happened. Now you call me when you might have a suspect."

The silence told him that they could see the mistake they had made. The look Alex gave his partner was biting. Bull turned his eyes to something off in the shadows. Jet shook his head and waved away the misunderstanding. "Water under the bridge. Forget it." Things had been pretty hectic over the last few months, across the solar system, so he supposed he could even understand the faux pas. He leaned forward and gave them each a slow, deliberate look. "But what exactly makes this guy a suspect?"

Bull drew a slow breath, collecting himself. "We've been to the little bastard's apartment. He had a stolen electronics there. We matched several serial numbers to items stolen from Sandy's car the day she was murdered."

Jet saw the look on Alex's face, the pent-up fury that he held inside. The young man's fingers wrapped about the handle of his beer stein, his knuckles white. He stared at a bowl of beernuts, though it was obvious food was the last thing on the poor guy's mind at the moment. The bounty hunter swallowed and peered about to his two former comrades. "I don't know what kind of dirt I can dig up, but if this little shit left a trail, I'll damn well get a whiff."

When the Black Dog sinks his teeth in you, he doesn't let go.

Sylvia slid a small, black devise toward him, a radio. He gave her a questioning look. She fixed him with a meaningful stare. "Harvey doesn't know you're in on the case. This will let you get hold of me without alerting him to you." Jet understood. In fact, he would prefer Harvey Lambert didn't know he was even on Ganymede. The two never really cared much for one another. He slipped the radio into his breast pocket and looked up to his former commissioner.

"What is it exactly you want me to do?"

3

"You weren't in there very long."

Jet shot Faye a look as climbed into the rented vehicle next to her and signaled for her to get a move on. She grumbled something under her breath and shifted gears. The two started off through the streets of the Ganymede colony.

Jet was having a difficult time adjusting to the knowledge that another of his longtime comrades had been died, murdered at the hands of…what was his name? Dylan Bryant Cole? Some punk kid off the streets with a lust for stolen goods? This was the young man they thought had killed an old friend? Jet wasn't so sure. It seemed like something the syndicate would do, take a kid whose father had skipped out on them and bend him to their desire. Wipe out the dead-beat dad and seize the one purity that he had possessed.

Yeah, he could imagine they'd do something like that. But to run an operation so ruthlessly messy that the cops could trace it back to them in a matter of a few hours? Foolhardy. Jet didn't think the syndicate was exactly the type of operation run by fools. Vicious or no Vicious.

It seemed no less than ironic that after all the trouble he and Faye had gone through to avoid the Red Dragon syndicate that he was about to throw the both of them headlong into the fray.

The old man leaned forward, crossing his arms against the dashboard, and peered out to the streets as they raced on by. His head was spinning with questions lingering on both suspicion and doubt, neither he could justify one way or the other. He knew only what his former comrades had told him, and it seemed, for the time being, that he would just have to go by what he knew. Which wasn't much.

"Where are we going?" Faye asked. Jet blinked over to her. "Oh, come on. You have to have a plan. You didn't just leave a bunch of old farts hanging to catch up on old times."

He frowned and put his chin on his palm, staring out to the buildings as they rushed passed. "There's a series of old apartment buildings on the north end of town. The slums. They call it Salem's Haunt."

"Yeah, I've heard of it," Faye replied.

"The bounty we're after used to live there."

A small smirk spread across her scarlet lips. "Well why didn't you say so?" She peeled off to the right, guiding the vehicle expertly between two parked cars, and pressed her toe against the accelerator. She spun through a busy sidewalk, barreled just past a newspaper stand, and cut north through a vacant alley, screaming victoriously as she left a trail of dust in their wake.

Jet's fingers dug unforgivingly into the vinyl dashboard.

"What's the name?" Faye yelled over the roaring engine.

"Cole!" Jet called back. "Two point five mil."

"Seems kinda small," she grunted, her face twisting in consideration. "What'd he do?"

Jet shrugged. "Murder." No sense in telling her the whole truth. Especially considering he wasn't sure it was entirely the truth.

Faye nodded. "Murder. Got it. And you think this guy's in Salem's Haunt?"

"Don't know." In fact, he rather doubted it. "But it's a start."

"Yeah, I guess so."

Several long minutes later, Faye turned onto Highway Nine, slid into the fast lane, and accelerated north along one of the city's busier streets. Towering skyscrapers cut the purple sky to their right, the downtown section of the colony. Dead ahead, in about five minutes, Jet knew, was Salem's Haunt. He popped open the glove compartment and pulled out his sidearm. Quickly, he slid in a magazine until it clicked. He checked to see the safety was set before slipping the weapon into its holster, which he strapped to his belt, and grabbed for the grey trench coat in the seat behind him. Faye shot him a look from the corner of her eye.

She said nothing, only continued to drive. The sun waned on the horizon as twilight approached. The deep purple sky grew steadily darker with each passing minute. They didn't speak during the five minutes. Jet had his mind set on the mission, and Faye didn't press him. He was relieved that she gave him his space.

Besides, there'd be plenty of time for a game of twenty questions later.

4

He'd been to Salem's Haunt many times in his past, but not since he lost his arm in the line of duty, and that was a long time ago. Jet wasn't pleased—nor at all surprised, for that matter—to learn that nothing had changed since his last visit. A dark and dirty haven for the devil, Salem's Haunt was a slum that dwelt in a corrupt underworld controlled by a ruthless gang known as the Black Dagger. Fear was a way of life for the people here, and Jet had seen enough of the terror these streets had lived in his time on the service than he cared to see for the rest of his life. Some of the crimes he'd investigated made armed robbery look like jaywalking in a quiet country town.

Nearly twelve years ago, he had worked alongside Sandy Monroe—Sandy Kane, now, he reminded himself—in the hunt for a serial killer called Dogma by the local news agencies. Back then, crime had been business as usual, same as always. Jet had seen many hectic things since coming up onto the force, choosing the side of criminal investigation. Sandy, an officer in the homicide division, thought the stubborn yet resourceful detective with a reputation as a ruthless law enforcement officer who always got his man.

As far as Sandy was concerned, if Jet Black ever got a whiff of the killer called Dogma, he'd not only crack the case, he'd shatter it with groundbreaking efficiency. The Black Dog did not disappoint. Frances Augustine O'Massey, a.k.a. Dogma, had been locked away within a month of Jet Black being called onto the case.

His friendship with Sandy blossomed after the Dogma case. He'd learned during the hunt that she had suffered a particularly nasty divorce on Mars several years before. In the end, she had received the only thing she had ever wanted that had come of the failed marriage: the son, her pride and joy, Alexander Monroe. While Jet was sympathetic to her lot in life, their mutual comradery had never quiet reached the pinnacle that was love—though there had been nights he would have given all of his world for that dear woman. For years they had been the best of friends, and they had often conferred over various cases that they were involved in, though they never again had been paired on the field. That had been a shame, because Jet thought they'd always worked so well together.

They hadn't talked since the Guild of Shadows debacle, the first case Jet had ever worked with Spike. Now, they'd never talk again.

"This the place?" Faye asked as she emerged from the driver's side and peered above the rim of her sunglasses to the top of a run down tenement. About five stories tall, the place had the feel of a 1950's tenement before the Urban Renewal program allowed for better construction. The bricks had lost whatever color they had once been to the grey of age and wear. Of all the windows, only a few were intact. Many had obvious cracks and some had shattered so that no glass was visible. Jet remembered being here before, investigating a gruesome scene of one of Dogma's final dealings. The murder that Jet had used to crack the case.

"This is it," Jet confirmed as he pushed himself out of the passenger's seat. He lifted his eye to the sky, watching the swirling wisps of clouds as they flowed steadily to the east. Jupiter seemed to swell in his vision as the late-afternoon sun waned in the distance.

"God, it needs to be condemned."

The Black Dog grunted. "This place? It already is."

Faye frowned. "Why don't they just tear it down already?"

"Who knows." Jet drew a breath before he stepped up onto the curb and started for the door. Faye swallowed, touching the side of her hip to be sure that her sidearm was still in place in its holster before she slipped her sunglasses into place above her forehead, and followed after him.

5

"That it?" Faye asked.

The annoyance in her voice was pretty apparent. Jet bit his lower lip and stared ahead to the remnants of the splintered door, marked by yellow police tape. A single young officer stood out in the hall, and he could see another pair of cops just inside. The small, white sign with black block numbers above the doorway indicated apartment 418, the same room as indicated by the Dylan Cole profile Ben had shared. They'd found the right apartment.

Problem was, the place was crawling with cops. It was never a good sign if cops were surrounding the assumed residence of the present bounty-head. Benedict had said they'd found Sandy's personal belongings inside, missing since the day she'd vanished.

Under his breath, Jet cursed his luck. He should have known the place would still be a point of interest for ISSP. What would Harvey Lambert say if he caught Jet snooping around in his jurisdiction? A few colorful responses raced though Jet's mind. The memory of why he was here, of Sandy's brutal murder, immediately squashed any humor he'd initially found in the situation.

"Looks pretty obvious to me," he grumbled. He plucked a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "The kid was at the massacre at the quick shop yesterday."

"What!" Faye snatched his cybernetic arm. Her emerald eyes sparkled wildly. She jabbed an angry finger against his chest. "I thought we didn't want anything to do with that fiasco!"

"Calm down. I told you, Sylvia Borden is a friend of mine. If she needs help, I'm going to be there for her."

"God dammit, Jet," she grumbled; then she fell silent.

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his trench coat, he started forward. He watched the hallway around him under the brim of his hat. Faye fell into line behind him, and he could swear that he felt the heat of her glare burning into him. He didn't look back.

He passed the officer standing outside the bounty-head's apartment, tipping his cap in greeting as an excuse to inspect him. The name on his badge was Peྃa. Hispanic, early twenties, with a dark complexion—a goatee, neatly cropped hair, and intense eyes. The kind of eyes that made you take a step back. He was a big kid—six foot, six inches, lanky, with toned muscles—but still just a kid. He didn't seem to be in a very talkative mood, offering nothing more than an empty stare and a small nod as the two passed him. Jet decided he knew why the kid was in such a bad mood.

"Where are we going?" Faye demanded.

Jet cast her a sidelong glance. "The neighbors. Somebody's bound to have some information on this kid. Right now it's the only way to get an idea of where he might have gone."

Faye nodded. "Right," she grumbled. "And what is it you want me to do?"

"Just sit there and be yourself. Without bitching, that is."

The young woman folded her arms over her chest and flashed him a tiny smirk. "Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

Jet grinned. "Yeah, but they won't know that, will they?"