Ruthless (Debt Collector 8) Read online

  Text copyright © 2013 by Susan Kaye Quinn

  May 2013 Edition

  Smashwords Edition

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. For information visit

  www.DebtCollectorSeries.com

  Cover by Steven Novak

  www.novakillustration.com

  The Debt Collector Serial

  EPISODE 8 – Ruthless

  Contains mature content and themes.

  For YA-appropriate thrills, see Susan’s Mindjack series.

  Ruthless is approximately 14,000 words or 56 pages, and is the eighth of nine episodes in the first season of The Debt Collector serial. This dark and gritty future-noir is about a world where your life-worth is tabulated on the open market and going into debt risks a lot more than your credit rating.

  Summary

  What’s your life worth on the open market?

  A debt collector can tell you precisely.

  With Elena’s help, Lirium attempts to slash into Candy’s files to get evidence about the conspiracy to transfer out kids.

  Recommend read first:

  EPISODES 1-3

  And

  EPISODES 4-6

  And

  EPISODE 7

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  My mom’s eyes are closed, her body lying still on the bed. She’s not dead—her chest rises and falls, rapidly, like she’s perpetually short on breath. Even in sleep her body has to fight to stay alive. I want to reach out, lay my hand on hers, and give her another hit of life energy, but I don’t. She can only take so much, and she needs her rest. I keep my hands on my knees and lean forward in my chair to peek, for the hundredth time, at the monitor by her bed. Morning sun glares off the screen, but I can still see the pulsing electronic signature that says her heart is beating: too fast, irregular, but pumping life through her, nonetheless.

  The nurse set her up in a private room—Madam A didn’t want my mom out with the sick kids and neither did I. It would be too stressful, too much to explain. It's private, but there’s not much more décor in my mom’s room than the bed and the chair I’m sitting in. I think it’s actually Grace’s apartment, but it’s devoid of personal effects, so I can’t be sure.

  I lean back, rub my face, close my eyes, and wrestle with the debate that’s been raging through my head since we arrived at Madam A’s church-turned-hospice yesterday. Do I stay by my mom’s side and continue to feed her as many small life hits as her heart can tolerate? Or do I finish spying on my psych officer so I can stop her from transferring out more terminal kids? The interruption at her office yesterday might have destroyed any chance of digging through Candy’s files. Now that she’s expecting me, she’ll be more likely to shoot me than let me get close to her Agency records.

  Yesterday there was no question where I had to be: my mom needed me. But now the nurse says she’s stabilized. Of course, there’s no guarantee that her heart will keep beating from one moment to the next. And the idea of not being here, for even an hour of the few she has left, has kept me in my seat ever since we arrived.

  The apartment door creaks open, and feet shuffle across the polished wood floor behind me. I don’t move, keeping my eyes closed, hoping whoever it is will take the hint and leave.

  “’Morning, sugar!” With that perky Southern accent, it has to be Annabelle, the girl Madam A sent while I was still trapped in Kolek’s mob. “Thought you could use a jolt. You’re moving slower than a Sunday afternoon.”

  I give in and open my eyes. She stands next to me, holding a steaming cup of something. I pray that it’s coffee.

  “You’re not actually human, are you?” I ask with a grin. “You’re some kind of Southern guardian angel.” Then my smile dims. I called Ophelia that, and I only managed to get her killed.

  “The angels are busy looking out for your mama.” She hands me the cup. “I’m just looking after the collectors who help them.”

  “Collectors and angels aren’t exactly on the same side.” But I give her a smile and breathe in the rich coffee bean smell, cradling the cup in my hands. The mercy hits I’ve been doling out to my mom have left a low-burning golden feeling inside me, but my body is running on too little sleep. Exhaustion crowds my mind. The coffee is hot on my throat, but it jump-starts my brain almost immediately.

  “How is your mama?” Annabelle asks.

  I look at my mom’s wrinkled brow, the torment showing on her face even in sleep.

  “I’m afraid to leave her. I don’t know how much time she has.”

  Annabelle eases onto a corner of my mom’s bed, her small frame hardly weighing down the mattress at all. “Everyone feels that way, sugar. We practically have to throw the parents out of here every night. But she needs to rest, and you lingering here all the time isn’t going to make her get any better.”

  “The hits I can give her might,” I say, even though I know it’s not true. The hits might postpone her death, but they can’t give her a new heart.

  Annabelle leans over to pat my hand. “There are others who need those transfers, too.”

  I nod slowly and take another sip of the coffee. “I can do those while she rests. Are the kids ready now? I know Madam A wanted their parents present.”

  “There are a few who are waiting in the main room.” She tips her head to the door. So, she’s not just bringing me coffee; she’s wrangling me to fulfill my promise. Not that I need much prompting. I want to pay out, or transfer, or whatever it is they need. And staying near my mom, just in the next room over, eases the wrestling in my mind for the moment.

  I rise up from the chair, careful with my coffee. “Lead the way, Miss Angel.”

  “Oh, don’t get all flirty with me, mister,” she says, batting her eyes as she rises from the bed. “I know you’re sweet on someone else.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, and I sincerely hope she doesn’t either. Annabelle’s far too perceptive—and talkative. I’m sure my special… relationship… with Elena and her sister Tilly is the talk of Madam A’s brothel, especially now that Elena literally saved my mom’s life by helping me get her out of the hospital. No one knows it was part of our deal, in exchange for me helping with Madam A’s kids, but either way: I owe Elena a debt I can probably never repay. The least I can do is not feed any rumors about her. Or us.

  Not that there is an “us.”

  Annabelle shoots me a knowing look as she sways toward the door. I roll my eyes with dramatic effect, hopefully quashing any rumors before they get started, then follow her out of the room.

  I’ve transferred three small hits to three even smaller children, all without losing control. I consider it a major win. Or it could be the roiling inferno of goodness burning inside me, the after-effect of the mercy hits lasting well past the time I lift my hand from the kids’ tiny foreheads. Each of the transfers was donated by a different one of Madam A’s girls, and each time I doubled the payout. I’m not sure if anyone has noticed yet—I hope not. I don’t want to explain where that extra life energy is coming from.

  But everyone—parents, nurses, sex worker donors—are all focused on the flushed faces and happy smiles of the children. I take a couple steps back from the little girl I just paid out to and hold onto the foot railing of the bed next to hers. The nausea is still working its way through my system, and I’m afraid the coffee will come back up. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to fight through it. I should probably take a break. Go check
on my mom. Maybe rest a little before attempting any more.

  I don’t want to push my luck.

  Better to pace myself than have an uncontrolled payout, like with Tilly. I don’t know why that one was so hard to pull back from. Maybe it’s the remembered connection to that first time, when paying out to Tilly was mixed up in my mind with Apple Girl pressed against me in that bathroom.

  “Joe?” A soft voice, close to me, startles me out of my thoughts and pops my eyes open. It’s Elena, which makes me panic for moment, as if somehow my thoughts were written plain on my face.

  She frowns. “Are you all right? Maybe you should sit down.”

  I sigh with relief. She only thinks I’m sick from the payout. Which my seized-up stomach reminds me is actually true.

  “I’m fine,” I say, and swallow down the sourness at the back of my throat, just to be sure. I glance at the parents still huddled around the girl and gesture Elena to follow me a few more steps away. “Hey, I wanted to thank you. For helping me get my mom out of the hospital. I can’t really repay you for that, but,” I incline my head to the girl in the bed, “I’m going to give it a try.”

  She studies my face. “You didn’t need my help this time with the mercy hits. You must be getting better at it.”

  My gaze drops to my feet. “Yeah.” Embarrassment makes my throat thick. “With a little more practice, maybe I can even pay out to Tilly without passing out.”

  She doesn’t say anything, so I look up. She’s holding something back.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Before, you said you were going to visit your psych officer. To find out more about who’s ordering the kids to be transferred out. Did you get a chance to do that? I mean, before I called you away to the hospital.”

  “I started to, but…” I don’t want to go into the details about my visit with Candy.

  “You were with your psych officer when I called, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I say, my head spinning back over that brief time on the phone. Did Elena hear anything? “My plan was to have Candy give me access to her files without suspecting that I know about the kids. If I can find some evidence of what she’s doing, and who’s involved, then I can take it to my bean counter, Flitstrom. He’s a pretty straight arrow. I think he can help.”

  “You thought your psych officer would give you access to her files? Just like that?” Elena’s skeptical look makes me squirm.

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly going to be voluntary,” I say, hoping she won’t think I’m a monster again.

  But instead she nods, bites her lip, and looks like she wants to say something, but isn’t quite sure how to spit it out.

  “These aren’t nice people, Elena,” I say, a little too defensively. “I’m not going to get the information I need just by asking nicely.”

  “I know.” She nods her head more vigorously. “That’s why I want to help.” She peers up at me, her dark brown eyes catching bits of the morning sun. “If that’s okay with you, I mean.”

  Okay with me? My heart does a small lurch, and I’m a bit lost for words. Then my better sense gets hold of me. “This is dangerous stuff. The people involved—they’re more than willing to kill children. They’re not going to hesitate to kill anyone else. I don’t think—”

  “You can use my help,” she cuts me off in that earnest way of hers. “Can you still get Candy to give you access to her files?”

  “I don’t know. It’s going to be more tricky now.” I swallow. I didn’t plan on Elena ever knowing this part. “Look, I had to threaten her. Convince her that I would kill her.” I don’t say that actually killing Candy was more tempting than I want to admit. “But now that I’ve made the threat, she’s going to be ready for me. I can’t just stroll back into her office and pick up where we left off.”

  “What if she’s not expecting you?”

  “She’ll definitely be expecting me. She’s probably already called Kolek to get one of his mob henchmen to guard her office. They would both rather see me dead. Even if she hasn’t called in reinforcements, I’m pretty sure Candy will shoot me before I have a chance to get a hand on her.” I wince after the words are out of my mouth. I'm basically saying I would attack her.

  But Elena just nods thoughtfully again. The poisoned darts of disapproval have been sheathed, at least for the moment. “Maybe I can help you with that, too.”

  “What do you mean, too?”

  “What if you had your psych officer’s home address? She wouldn’t expect you there, right?”

  “Maybe not, but—”

  “And once you’re there, you can get access to her files. But you’re not going to have much time to search if you’ve got her looking over your shoulder, right?”

  “Well… she might be unconscious.” More squirming.

  “Even so, what are you going to look for?”

  She has a point.

  “Okay, Miss I-falsify-my-own-birthdate. What should I do?”

  She digs into her pocket and pulls out a flexible film with a tiny black dot in the center. “You plant this on her computer. Once she’s logged into the secure server at the Department, it will give me ghost access to everything. I can datadump her files to a secure grid, then mine them for patterns and maybe even augur some events. Pinpoint a vector that can help us.”

  “Um… okay.” I only understand half of what she’s saying. A very small half. I point to the film she’s holding between her fingertips. “So, you’re saying if I plant this on Candy’s computer while she’s logged in, you can get access to her Department files?”

  “Yes,” she says, like that was completely obvious.

  “And then you’ll…” I trail off hoping she’ll put it into English for me.

  “Then I’ll find the evidence we need to put an end to this insanity.” She gestures around us to the beds filled with kids. Some work on their screens, while others stare at the ceiling because that’s all they have strength for.

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  “So?” she asks.

  “So what?”

  “So, will you do it? Let me help?”

  I don’t like the idea of Elena coming within a mile of Candy. But I’m really way out of my depth here. “Okay. I mean, as long as you’re just doing stuff remotely, it shouldn’t be dangerous. And it would be a tremendous help.”

  She looks relieved.

  I frown. “You thought I would say no, didn’t you?”

  Her lips purse. She hesitates, then says, “I would be accessing your files as well as everyone else’s and… I guess, you’d have to trust me.”

  I’m too stunned to say anything at first. Then I say quietly, “I’m the untrustworthy one, remember?”

  She gives a small smile. “And I’m the one who’s really good at lying.”

  I grin.

  She holds the film up for me to take.

  It’s so thin I’m not sure how to grab hold of it. “Um, how do I make this thing work, exactly?”

  “You snap it to activate the adhesive.” She demonstrates by taking the two ends between her delicate fingers and pulling them quickly apart. The film makes a small pop sound and turns purple. “Snap it again and it deactivates.” She does so, and it clears. “Once it’s active, put it on your finger or your palm. It will automatically stick and become virtually invisible. Just don’t touch anything metal with it until you’re ready to transfer it to her screen. The bio-glue will preferentially lift off your finger and transfer through the film to the other side and adhere to the metal surface. After that, it will be practically undetectable.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” I ask, carefully taking the film from her.

  “I read a lot.”

  I lift an eyebrow.

  “And I have a lot of time on my hands.”

  That reaches inside me and stirs things around. An aching curiosity wells up and wants to know what she does with her time, besides spending endless nights in the chair next to Tilly.
But the more I know about Elena, the less I think she’ll want anything to do with me, outside of rescuing kids. Maybe my efforts in that regard offset the fact that I’m planning to beat up my psych officer to do it. Maybe, in her mind, that makes me not as much of a monster. But she’s smart and beautiful and good and brave… the extreme opposite of everything debt collector. Still, I’m thinking of excuses to just talk to her, learn something more personal, when Grace scurries up to our side.

  “Lirium,” she says, slightly breathless. “There’s a man at the front door. He’s asking for you.”

  “What?” Alarm trips through my body. I shove Elena’s tiny spy film into my pocket. “What does he want?”

  “He says he knows you,” she says quickly. “His name is Dr. Brodsky.”

  My shoulders drop. “It’s all right—I do know him. Let me talk to him.” I leave Elena with a smile that says we’re not done talking yet and follow Grace to the front. I gave Madam A’s address to Dr. Brodsky, just in case, but I didn’t expect him to show up so soon.

  That doesn’t bode well for his granddaughter.

  Dr. Brodsky’s granddaughter isn’t as young as I expected. I guess I pictured Tilly when he talked about her, but she seems closer to twenty than ten. Madam A has them stopped cold at the entranceway, like she’s planning on pulling her gun on the seventy-year-old inventor and his granddaughter. Tatiana appears half-dead already, slumped in the wheelchair that Dr. Brodsky is leaning on.

  Madam A gives me a look like she’d rather to pull the gun on me. She’s already fingered me for bringing more people to her cloistered hospice. And she’s not exactly wrong.

  “Dr. Brodsky meet Madam Anastazja,” I say, eyeing her. She stands ramrod straight, but the gun stays tucked in her silk holster behind her back.

  “Please forgive me, madam, for intruding on your home,” Dr. Brodsky says. “But you were right, young debt collector,” he says to me. “They had stopped giving Tatiana her life hits.”