Tease the Dragon Ch. 01

"Don't sound so down about it, Lee," Grey told him. "I saw her the minute she stepped through the ballroom door. You always keep an eye out for the competition on a big job like this."

The mariner looked down at me and his voice sounded as though his throat were parched, "Did you get the film, child?"

I didn't argue the nickname with the mariner. He was probably centuries older than me and it was a fight I would lose. "Of course I did," I scoffed. "All five of them."

"Five?" Grey looked at me. "We were only sent after one."

"Well, he left a few red herrings. I would have had to use his system to see what was on each one, and that would have more than likely set off alarms. I took them all."

Lee whistled, "You had to put us up against a Copper, boss. Always with the challenges."

"I didn't put you up against anything. She showed up on her own. Gersha, you know what's on the film. Fill her in while me and Lee go have a chat."

Gersha, the mariner, looked at me while Grey and Lee walked out the door and listened until their footsteps faded. "The film you were sent to steal holds a fifth of the financial information for the inhabitants of this quadrant. There have been discrepancies in the governmental spending logs, and our mutual employer works for a faction that wishes to expose some or all of the dirty officials to 'clean house,' so to speak."

"So I'm holding the credits of trillions of beings?"

"Not trillions, but hundreds. The film you were contracted to steal holds the financial history of a few hundred government officials at various levels of office."

"Then what are the other four films holding?"

"I do not know. I'm not even sure how you found the films in the first place." He looked at me expectantly before sitting down on the floor and pointing to the bed.

"They were in the books. The safe didn't hold anything but jewelry, and I wasn't going to risk setting off alarms just for some gold. I took the films and I left, that's when Grey stepped in and here we are."

He nodded and leaned against the wall. It was the most relaxed pose I had ever seen on a mariner, and it was odd. "The man who employed you – who I believe employed all of us – was killed about an hour before you made it to the ball. Grey is of the mind that that film is worth a lot of money to the right people."

"Is he going to sell it back to the admiral? Or sell it to the faction that wants to clean house?"

"He'd sell it to the highest bidder. Grey's never been the altruistic type. It will probably depend on exactly what's on that film." I looked at the door and Gersha seemed to follow my train of thought. "Yes, we should see what's on it before they get back. If you can stop him from doing anything too rash or just plain stupid, that would be great."

I glanced at him as I reached into the body suit and retrieved the films from the pocket on my hip. I sat on the floor next to the mariner. Gersha took them and slid them into the slot of a small pocket viewer, bringing up gallery after gallery of intimate photos of several high-placed government officials and women who were most definitely not their wives.

The first three films were the same, but the fourth was different. It seemed to be some sort of hit list with known criminals and their last known whereabouts. I took the viewer from Gersha and scrolled down until I found my name, highlighted in red which probably meant something important. My last known location was from nearly six months ago, on a job that had gone so wrong that it left me wondering if anything could be right again. If they were looking for me there, then they would never catch me.

Gersha finally took the viewer back and slid the fifth and final film through the slot. The screen filled with numbers, and it took me a moment to realize they were account numbers and balances with an occasional name along the side. I recognized some of the names as the men in the pictures from the first three films. I leaned back against the wall next to Gersha and sighed.

"What do we do with this now? There's more than enough blackmail on all of those films for us to use to clear our names," I had seen Lee and Gersha on the list, but may not have scrolled far enough or been paying enough attention to see Grey's. "I don't know what to do with the account numbers or anything."

"You were carrying around enough credit on this one film to buy your way out of every situation you get into for the rest of your life," Gersha held the films out to me and I put them back in the hidden pocket.

"You two got cozy while we were gone," Grey's voice made me jump as I only then realized he was standing in the doorway. "He's not your type, Anya." Looking at Gersha, he asked, "What's on them?"

"Some revealing photos, a list of criminals, their known associates, and their last known confirmable locations, and somewhere around fifty trillion credits strewn across more accounts than I care to try to count," Gersha ticked the list off on his fingers.

I got to my feet and pulled the sleeves of the body suit down while the men talked about what a massive fortune they had at their disposal. Bending, I pulled the legs down and closed them over my feet and slipped into my boots. From the slim case that was still on the bed, I pulled a set of coveralls and stuffed my booted feet into the legs. Grey watched as I tied the arms of the coveralls around my hips, leaving the top of the body suit as my shirt.

"Gersha tells me our employer was killed," I let my voice rise at the end, but there was no question. Gersha handed me the viewer with the list of criminals on it and then tapped a name. The face of the man who had paid me came up with a long dossier of more activity than I would have given the man credit for. "That's him, but it's not the same name." Gersha grunted at that as though I should have known the man would use an alias. "What do we do with the information?" I ran a finger over the bottom of the viewer and Grey grimaced at me as the screen went completely blank.

"Damn you, woman!" Gersha took the viewer from me. "I'll have to reload all the running programs. That was completely unnecessary."

"You gave her the films back didn't you, old man?" Lee said from the corner he had taken over, smiling when Gersha growled at him. "You're too nice."