Red Noise by John P. Murphy

Author:John P. Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857668523
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

FEENEY PUTS ON HIS THINKING CAP

“Then why did you let her quit?”

Feeney just made a frustrated noise at his granddaughter. “I didn’t think she’d go work for that traitor! I thought she’d be sensible and lay low for a while, then come back to work for me. How was I to know she meant it?”

Mary leaned over the old man’s desk and almost growled at him. “All our people heard you letting her take the fall for that fight.”

“Well, you said yourself that it was her fault.”

“I did. It was.”

“So?” Feeney turned to Screwball with an appealing look, but he just shrugged. He felt weird and out of place hanging out with the boss, and he didn’t want to fuck it up by getting between family. He’d just sort of tagged along, and the old man had just sort of accepted that. So he shrugged, and that seemed to be the right answer.

“So,” Mary said, giving Screwball a momentary odd look, then back to her grandfather, “you didn’t have to accept it. You could have–”

“Could have!” Feeney slammed his veiny fist on the desktop. “I could have done this or I could have done that. I could have done a million things, but I always did what made sense to me, I always followed my instincts, and by God those instincts put me on top. If I second-guessed myself, I wouldn’t be here today.”

“Well,” Mary said, straightening up and standing back from the desk with her arms crossed. “Where you are today is in control of half a station, with a morale problem.”

“Are we? Corbell, do we have a morale problem?”

Both pairs of eyes were on Screwball, and he didn’t flee in terror.

“Well...” They did, that was the thing. Everyone came back from the fight pissed off that they’d have won it if Jane had been in it, and then there she was getting fired for it – nobody believed she “fell on her sword for the good of the side” for one minute – and now word was getting around that she’d gone to work for Angelica, and some people were bitching that they were all gonna die. “...kinda? Yeah?”

Feeney threw up his hands, but Screwball had a sudden maybe-not-stupid idea, and before he knew it his mouth was open again. “But I think that’s OK, right? They just need to win a little bit and they’ll feel pretty good that they’re still badasses even without her. And the security guy–”

“McMasters,” Mary supplied automatically, with a thoughtful look.

“McMasters, right, he’s not looking at us right now. He hates her for some reason and he thinks she’s a troublemaker, so maybe if we start something right now he’ll, um.” His brain caught up to his adrenaline and stumbled.

“He’ll assume it’s Jane,” Feeney said, and a big grin spread across his face. “That’s exactly what he’ll do.” He clapped his hands in delight. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, um,” he said. He cast about the corners of his brain, which had suddenly gone stubbornly blank.

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