“It’s been bad, hasn’t it? I hope you’re safe,” he said kindly.
The CEO of the Pleasure House of Tarma allowed her composure to slip a little. “It’s been bad,” she admitted. “There have been some incidents of sabotage, and I’ve had two attempts on my life. Nothing too overt, of course. Even the hostiles within the company don’t want to damage the brand.” Madeline smiled wryly. “There have been some dirty games played, brother mine. More suited to your line of work.”
“I can believe it. I’m glad that I’ll be there soon.” He hesitated.
Madeline’s striking features formed a frown. “What is it?”
“I’ll be bringing the money—even more than we had thought. I’ve had a couple of lucky breaks along the way. But I’ll also be bringing a potential problem.”
“That’s good news about the money—more resources mean more allies, and I need them. Tell me about the problem.”
“It involves a woman,” Jack began.
Madeline snorted. “There’s a shocker.”
“Don’t break my balls just yet, sister mine.” Other things might change, but their basic sibling dynamic had not. “I played her as part of the scheme to steal the mandalum from the Palamari master merchant, but as I was doing so, I fell in love with her. We’re together now.”
“You really are a romantic, aren’t you?” Madeline marveled. “Are you sure she’s not playing you?”
“I am,” said Jack simply, “and let’s leave it at that. The problem is, we ended up discovering that she’s had some sort of tracking device implanted. High end.Veryhigh end; we found out about it by sheer chance.”
He briefly explained the circumstances of the device’s discovery.
“So, we built a Faraday cage to contain the signal,” he continued, “but the device’s sophistication is way beyond our medical equipment. We don’t know if the thing’s booby-trapped, let alone if we can remove it.”
“Okay, I get it,” said Madeline, tapping a pencil. “You need our med facilities here at the House. You’re right, if anyone’s going to be able to deal with the thing, it will be us. But what about moving her from your Faraday cage to our facilities? Won’t the signal break through?”
“That’s what I need your help with,” admitted Jack. “I can’t figure out how to do it.”
“Okay. Understood.” Madeline pursed her lips. “I’ll get our tech people on it. How long until you arrive?”
“A little over eleven hours,” said Jack. “Thanks, Maddie.”
The slim redhead put her hands up. “No promises on genius breakthroughs! But I won’t leave you hanging. And, Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep calling me Maddie, and see what happens.” She glared at her brother meaningfully and ended the call.
***
Jack went to Giles’ quarters, and found the big man perched on a chair, stroking his beard as he scrolled through articles on his computer.
“Any luck, Chauncey?” Jack slapped his friend on the back.
Giles shook his head, continuing to scroll. “Never gonna live that down, I know that.”
“Not a chance,” agreed Jack, pulling up a stool to sit next to him.
“So I did a preliminary sweep of the public records, and everything seemed in order,” said Giles. “Then I dug a little more. Nothing obvious came up, but there were some interesting coincidences.”
“Go on.”
“So the family isnouveau riche, right? New money, not an old aristocratic family. So where did that money come from?” Giles asked rhetorically. “Mining concessions. Enough mandalum for several fortunes. Comber Gryffin finds rich mandalum deposits where no one else had thought of looking, strikes it rich, and the family fortune begins.”
“Lucky strike,” observed Jack. “It happens, although not often.”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” insisted Giles. “Comber wasn’t a prospector, or anything close. Before his mandalum strike, he was a broker—a buyer and a seller, but never an actual digger. But then, all of a sudden, he buys an obscure claim, and, for the first time in his life, he goes and works it himself.”
