BEGINNING OF STORY
PREVIOUS (PART 25)

When I first met her, she was just some bimbo red-head barely fit into a slinky green dress at a formal party. She succeeded in grabbing my attention for a moment, but I was focused on the man she was talking to, my target. Completely distracted by the woman, he wouldn’t even see me coming.
Then the slut flowered into a thing of beauty. In one motion she kicked the man to the floor as she ripped open the side of her dress to pull out a large blaster strapped to her leg. And, in one shot, their now was a headless corpse lying on the ground.
It was so inelegant, yet so dazzling. Everyone was shocked; I was even taken back for a second. She had the drop on the man’s bodyguard (or former bodyguards at that point) and ripped them to pieces with her blaster. With the speed and power she knocked others out of the way as she made her escape, it was obvious she had implants (and I don’t mean her chest… though those were obvious too). Soon, everyone had guns drawn and were chasing her, including me (why should I be left out?). Any that got close were killed, but then I got a clear shot of her as she turned down a hallway.
She looked at me, knowing she couldn’t turn and fire back at me in time – you should have seen the frustration in her face. She must have planned this massacre, but there was no way she would have thought someone of my caliber was there.
But I only chased her down for sport, and killing her for killing my target before I could seemed spiteful… and I am not a spiteful man. Still, I couldn’t not shoot at her, and I couldn’t purposely miss. So I winged her on her left arm (she was right-handed), burning her a nice scar before she leapt out a window.
The rest of her escape must have been a breeze, because apparently everyone outside guarding the vehicles were already dead.
I don’t know who hired her; the target was some idiot who managed to gain about everyone’s ire. She could have been Randatti or another group, or she could have been another Corloni hire for the same job (it’s a big criminal syndicate; sometimes there are mix ups like that). I never found out. I reported what happened, and got paid at least for the effort.
I wonder if she knew she was only alive because I let her live? I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer that.
Well, Diane, Morrigan, Verg (who seemed to have no idea he was among hitpersons), and I spent the day trying to profile me, figure out what I would do to try and escape (got some good ideas from that part), and also figured where I might go to scope out my hit and thus would be good places to look for a suspicious person like me.
When we were done for the day, Morrigan and I set a meeting point in downtown where there would be lots of people (which I already knew would not stop her from opening fire on me – same as it wouldn’t stop me from opening fire on her). Then I headed back to police HQ with Diane to wrap up and waited for the inevitable question.
“So what’s it with you and Morrigan?” she asked while pretending to be looking over a file on screen.
She was jealous! This was fun! “The feds came by our planet to scope it out a while back. She was one of them, and as stuck up and patronizing as you would expect. Couldn’t wait to be rid of them, though I’m sure they thought we were enamored by the presence of civilization.” I then smiled a little. “We didn’t do anything Jesus would disapprove of, if that was what you were wondering.”
“No, I just…”
“I’m still free if you and me want to go back to Rikar and have a bunch of kids.”
“I’ll pass.” She was irritated. The big bad detective didn’t like kidding, I guess.
When I got back to my hotel room, I made a quick check if Dip had heard from Vito (nope), and prepared for meeting Morrigan – both mentally and weapon-wise. In other situations, I’d be interested to talk to her and learn all about her, but now I just hoped to find a way to deal with her quickly – whomever she worked for.
Then again, I was starting to wonder if she had some answers to some questions I didn’t even know to ask. If history was an indicator, this was only going to get more complicated.
Well, I haven’t met a problem yet I couldn’t just shoot my way out.
NEXT