Pleasure Model: Hunter Bureau, #3

By Blaze Ward

Murder. On the Moon.

 

The aliens in charge need the best to solve this case, so they call in Greyson and Rachel.

 

The victim? Utterly perfect in every way, but there's a hitch.

 

Is she even human?

 

The Hunter Bureau, a series about a cop working in a world fifteen years after aliens make first contact, and bring all their troubles to a world that already had plenty of its own. Be sure to read the other novels in the series, available at all reputable outlets, and a few disreputable ones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781644702505

Blaze Ward

Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

Book preview

ONE

MONDAYS

Mondays. Greyson hated them. Nothing good ever came of such a thing. If they ever made him Pope or something, with the power to change the calendar around, he’d make it specifically that everyone had different weekends and time off. That way, the bad juju of everybody having a Monday together wouldn’t all pile up at once.

Too much psychic karma or something from everybody having to stagger back into the office after a couple of days off. Weighed him down.

What are you grumbling about over there? Rachel asked.

Rachel Asher. His partner. Still. In spite of everything he’d done to try to convince her that he was too curmudgeonly to deal with. Didn’t help that the woman might be more stubborn than him.

Pretty damned high bar to clear, that.

Disliking the entire concept of Mondays, Greyson replied with his usual surliness.

Good to know that nobody snuck in and replaced you with a doppelgänger over the weekend then, she sassed him right back.

Greyson had to do a double-take at that, but she’d gone back to her typing and reports and was ignoring him. At least he hoped so.

Somebody already had. Snuck in and replaced him when nobody was looking. Back when he’d been living the semi-retired cop life of cheap udon and synth whiskey. Someone had come right in the window while he’d been asleep. Killed him. Stolen his life, his mind, and his soul.

The species was called Phrenic, but most of the other cops around here still called them Freaks. Shapeshifters. They had tentacles around their mouth in the base form. Strong as hell. Held you down and stuck tentacles in your eye sockets so they could paralyze you, then read your memories in the process of killing you and copying your DNA to use later.

That let them mimic you good enough to fool almost anybody.

Ethen had killed Greyson that way, when he and Zaborra had been trying to hide on Earth from the Illymus Merchant Guild, the aliens that had bootstrapped Humanity into the galactic age. Zaborra had shot them later, killing the joint body, except that Greyson Leigh was too mean to die.

Should have turned him into a Deathwalker when the Phrenic part died, leaving the Human in charge of a body they couldn’t control, but Ethen had handed him the keys and gone to hide in a closet in their mind.

As long as Greyson was careful and punctual about showers and laundry, the ammonia smell of the Phrenic body wouldn’t be obvious. If you already knew enough to suspect him, there were other things you could do. Other tests.

Greyson had never run them to know if this new form would register. It was his DNA, after all. Ethen wasn’t really there to show up on a scanner.

And Rachel had just metaphorically slammed a shiv all the way through his body and soul with that off-hand comment.

Except it couldn’t have been off-hand. Six months ago, when he’d taken down his old Captain, Olek Zielinski, and gotten the man put in prison forever, Rachel had cornered Greyson into as much of a confession as you could get without actually talking.

Then nothing. He’d been expecting her or someone else to quietly shoot him in the back ever since, but nobody had. They’d have a dead Phrenic body in Greyson’s suit, and he’d have no more problems.

But nobody had.

He started to say something in response to Rachel, but the intercom overhead beeped loudly.

Leigh, Asher, sixth floor, the woman’s voice growled. Now!

Greyson bit back whatever he might have offered to Rachel and rose, picking up what was left of the coffee in his travel mug. The voice was Detective/Captain Rutherford Parsons, the woman who ran the Boston Office of the Hunter Bureau. Commander, Eastern North America Division, Earth Police Special Missions.

Their boss.

Didn’t sound all that happy, but winter was coming and that usually made any transplants from warm climates surly. Parsons had come from Los Angeles when Zielinski originally retired. Stayed in place when that shitbird got sent away for forever and six days.

Greyson had told anybody who would listen that he’d retire his ass right back out the door if they offered to make him a Detective/Lieutenant or—God forbid—Detective/Captain. Screw that.

What did you do to her now? Rachel grumbled, also rising and sliding her homework reader into the pocket on her pants specifically tailored to hold it.

Nothing, Greyson snarked. Mondays. Bad idea all the way across the board.

She grumbled a profanity under her breath and followed.

He liked having the paired desks clear in the back corner. A little colder in the winter and hotter in the summer, but he didn’t ever spend that much time in the office anyway. Hunters like them never did.

And it kept him away from conversations with the other Hunters about whatever sportsball season was going on. Bread and Circuses, when he had so many better things to do than calculate how fantasy-whatever teams were going and how to compete in leagues with people.

Ugh.

He did stop and pour the remaining bit of coffee into the sink as he went by. The important people on Six had a much better budget for beans than the crap they gave the little people on Four. He’d stop and consult one of the coffee robots when he got upstairs, like a Siberian shaman talking to gods.

They took the stairs. Greyson always took the stairs, except when coming into this building from the garage, and only then because the only way in from the parking level involved an elevator with a built-in sensor bank that the Illymus Merchant Guild had sold them.

Good for keeping aliens and infiltrators out. At least on paper. Before he’d been a cop, Greyson had spent twenty years with the defunct US Army, assigned to a job adequately covered in the old manuals under the word assassin. Wasn’t like there was anybody in the building with a high enough security clearance to know the whole truth, even twelve years after he’d been retired when the aliens explained to everybody that standing armies WERE NOT GOING TO BE ALLOWED.

He’d become a cop instead. Those folks had created the Hunter Bureau and slotted Greyson Leigh and his unique skills right in.

And stairs kept him in shape. The actor Kirk Douglas had always taken the stairs, and lived to be over one hundred when he died, in an era when his life expectancy at birth had been about sixty. Greyson liked the idea of another five decades as a troublemaker.

Now, he just needed to see what trouble the Captain had for him on yet another ugly Monday.

TWO

CAPTAIN

Rachel trailed Leigh up the stairs just enough to be about eyeball level with his butt. She hadn’t meant to throw him completely sideways like that. On any Human she knew, it wouldn’t mean a damned thing.

If Greyson had still been Human, it would have just flown right by the guy.

But he wasn’t. Human, that is.

There’d been two that night. Phrenic. They’d only been hunting one, but apparently another had taken over Leigh, before he knew that Dominguez was dead and the Bureau was likely to ask the greatest killer in its history to come back.

And then something had happened. The Phrenic had lost control of the situation, and Greyson Leigh had taken over. Wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but he’d been in this body for close to a year now.

It was absolutely Greyson Leigh. She knew more about hunting, and hunting Phrenic in particular, than anybody in the galaxy, Rachel was pretty sure. With exactly one exception. And he’d spent all his time training her to be even better than he was, knowing that one of these days she’d be a boss somewhere, responsible for training others.

Maybe even his boss. She was planning on London and Scotland Yard. Just had to finish her degree, then inquire about a lateral that a few people had quietly let her know would come open when she was ready.

Leigh had even suggested he might transfer to London as well, and work for her, instead of the other way around.

Assuming nobody figured out what he was these days. They’d kill him and turn her into a laughingstock for not knowing that her partner was an infiltrator.

Best nobody ever learn, then. Worse worst, she’d shoot him and dump the body somewhere quietly. There were times Rachel wasn’t sure Greyson wouldn’t welcome it.

He wasn’t as clinically depressed as he’d been when she met him. Taking Zielinski down had cured something in the boy. But he still rarely had two fucks to give.

Even today, she was wearing Class IV armor on her torso that would stop just about anything, including illegal, chemically-powered slugthrowers, like that one jackass last spring with the Ruger .44 revolver. Greyson had nothing but his shirt. Not even a tie, because he’d burned them and refused to replace them. He owned exactly one nice tie now. It went with his nice suit when he was taking Emmy somewhere on a date as her Plus One.

Nothing else.

No fucks.

But he was also the best there was.

She followed him up to Six and went ahead and got some coffee when he did. They had five robots here in the bullpen, compared to two downstairs. All programmed off a central server, but he was right about the good beans being reserved for the politicals on Six.

They took their time and got better coffee. At least an improvement on a Monday.

Rachel wondered if Parsons had a camera set up somewhere, or was just that good at timing things to know how long it would take, coffee included, having worked with Leigh for nearly a year now. She opened the door to her office just as they approached the little waiting area out front.

In, she said immediately, stepping back and vanishing inside.

When the Captain had come here, she’d originally been an LA kind of girl. Well-dressed in civilian attire not the least bit appropriate for cops or hunters. Too expensive, for one thing. Heels, for another. Costly, when most of them dressed like cheap accountants.

Summer in Boston must have cured the woman of something, because she was in dark gray slacks, light blue button-up shirt, and a maroon blazer as fall was getting serious.

Tall, but every woman felt tall compared to Rachel’s five-foot-two. Bustier, or maybe just not strapping them down under body armor like folks in the field did. Parsons was maybe five-eight. Bottle blond who took the time to touch up her roots but not her brunette eyebrows. Blue eyes in that Slavic way from so many who had come to North America over the last three generations. Cheek bones a girl could shave her legs with in a pinch.

The woman was absolute trouble.

The Captain gestured them to sit. At least Greyson didn’t lean back and cross his ankles at the woman. Probably too superstitious today.

Rutherford Parsons had a hard glower going, so now Rachel began to wonder if Leigh had the second sight her grandmother had always warned her about.

It would explain a lot. Except for how it went about crossing species lines to stay with him in the new form.

The Captain eyed the two of them like maybe the woman was worried they’d brought those bad Mondays into her office with them. Rachel wondered if there was a way to do it. Maybe she needed to go to Long Island at some point to ask Gram about that.

Be one hell of a useful weapon, if she could.

Do you have any cases right now that can’t go dormant? Parsons asked out of the blue.

Rachel turned to Leigh. Technically, he was in charge, as she still had to take her test to move from Patrolman/Hunter up to Detective/Hunter like Leigh. Maybe her timing would work to the point that the exams for Detective/Sergeant were held about the time she was finishing her degree. Everyone here knew she’d be leaving in two years, but having the extra stripes on her uniform before she left would shim open a few more doors over there, at no cost to the Boston office for promoting her.

Define dormant, Leigh requested saltily, but he was like that.

Always answer a question with a question, if he could. Volley shit back into your lap like a grenade, just to see you react.

Something that I will need to have transferred to one of the other teams because you won’t be available to handle it for the next several weeks, Parsons smiled.

Shit, Rachel hated that smile. Nothing good ever came of it, when the boss was happy like that.

Because it absolutely rolled downhill around here.

Leigh grimaced, but that might be gas. Hopefully he wasn’t going to cropdust Parsons in her own office.

Probably not, Leigh replied finally. Got a few that might need to be handed off, just because we’re supposed to be on call coming up soon, but nothing going to court at present.

Rachel appreciated how he didn’t ask what she was up to. Didn’t volunteer anything. Old Army trick, in one of his previous lives.

Asher? the Captain turned this way.

Not even dating, Rachel smiled back, maybe reminding the ogre on the other side of the desk that her people tended to have lives outside the uniform.

They weren’t all hiding behind a badge.

Rutherford Parsons dated big shots, not cops. Rachel was still looking for a man or woman who could deal with what she did. They all liked her ass and muscles and brains. Then they found out the badge parts and ran like hell.

She’d considered hiring pros a time or two, but the itch hadn’t gotten out of hand.

Yet.

Good, Parsons preened now, leaning back to smile expansively at the two of them.

Double-shit.

Fine, Greyson huffed. I’ll ask. What case has come up and where are you sending us?

Armstrong Base, Parsons said, exactly summing up why Rachel and Greyson both hated Mondays. There’s been a murder.

We have no jurisdiction off-planet, Greyson reminded her now. Certainly not on the moon.

The Guild asked for you specifically, Parsons replied. You, Leigh. I don’t know why, but you have the morning to clear your own docket. There will be files assigned after lunch. Shuttles launch every six hours after that, as soon as you’re ready to go. Dismissed.

Rachel sprang to her feet immediately, before Leigh said or did anything stupid. Anything coming out of his mouth right now would qualify, and she knew it.

She even stepped in front of him, turned enough away from Parsons that the Captain couldn’t see the look on her face.

Leigh had gone white. Total, freaking, panic white. Oh-shit-I’m-dead-meat white.

Sounds like maybe we should do an early lunch, partner, Rachel said to her much-more-senior sidekick. You know, sort everything out now before it gets busy around here.

He looked up at her blankly, like a man uncertain if she was about to toss him a life preserver or an anvil. He blinked three times in rapid succession and staggered to his feet, almost like a man walking to the gallows after every single appeal has been rejected out of hand.

She needed to get Greyson out of the building right now.

Every contingency she’d considered over the last twelve months had suddenly become necessary.

THREE

LUNCH

Greyson wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten here. Rachel had driven. He’d sat in the passenger seat in a fuzzy time fugue.

They weren’t regulars in this joint. Not family, like some of these old places in the South End could be. At the same time, the locals knew what kind of badges he and Rachel carried, so nobody would start any trouble.

Not against a man legally required to carry a nerve scrambler under his left arm while on duty. Palmstunner just put you on your ass for a few minutes. Useful, if there were any questions about who was in the wrong. You could always apologize later.

Nerve scrambler didn’t have that option. You were dead meat slowly cooling on the sidewalk.

That was what Hunters did, after all.

Cops just found aliens gone rogue, but they were rarely equipped to take them down, mentally or physically. You could teach someone how to be a cop. How to be a detective. Forensics and all the technical stuff.

You couldn’t teach Killer. Folks were either born with it or they weren’t. Trying to make someone a killer when they didn’t have it in them ended up just breaking them after a while.

It had taken years for the Army brass to grasp that, but they’d finally given up on the psychological manipulation crap in training and started looking for people willing and able to put a beam weapon to an intelligent person’s head—or more specifically an alien’s—and pull the trigger.

Tommy’s Burgers was full of Humans with an acute understanding that even the toughest of them only came in fourth around here, behind him, Rachel, and a retired kickboxer-turned-restaurateur in Tommy.

The burgers were fantastic. The fries almost heavenly.

Greyson was still trying to calculate the best way to vanish off the face of the earth in a way that didn’t fuck his partner completely sideways. The doomsday clock around his life had just run out.

Hey, Rachel snapped as they sat down with drinks and the little number placard telling someone where to bring their trays in a bit. Stay with me here.

Greyson forced himself back into the present tense. Tommy’s Burgers. Southside. Beautiful Puerto Rican woman cop seated across from him. Almost as deadly. Almost as mean.

He blinked. Blinked again.