Audacious by Mike Shepherd Page B

Turkish community on the Euro side. He suggested The Turkish Truth. Triple T . A usually reliable source.”
    “I’ve had the El Camino Real suggested to me.”
    “Good rag,” Ruth said. “I often see them exchanging bylines with the Triple T . Them and the Banzai , a source my Japanese students swear by.”
    Kris fidgeted, wanting to talk more, but unwilling to share it with the rest of human space. There were so many things she wanted to ask someone who’d married into this zoo that was the Longknife legend. Gramma Ruth and Trouble weren’t Longknifes… exactly. But Grampa Trouble had been Ray’s right hand through so much of the Iteeche War. And they’d married into the family; their daughter, Sarah, had been Grampa Al’s first wife until a truck driver took off her side of the car. Accident or bungled assassination attempt? It was now too late to determine.
    Yes, Gramma Ruth knew the sorrow of being too close to one of those damn Longknifes. Yet here she was, saying hi to a great-granddaughter that she could have walked past.
    Hold it? How did Gramma Ruth get into this soiree?
    Kris realized she was not holding up her end of the conversation. “Who gave you an invite?” she asked softly.
    Again the old campaigner laughed. “Us college professors have our ways. We may be poor, but we’re genteel poverty. Don’t think my name was ever mentioned.” She glanced around. “Some old fart here is without his wife, I suspect. Ah yes, he’s in line to dance with the confetti girl. I’ll have to tell his wife. Or not.”
    Kris figured there was one item she wouldn’t mind having the whole universe know. “You know anyplace where a girl can get decent shoes to wear that aren’t combat boots?”
    The two of them studied Kris’s feet.
    “In your size, I’d suggest the company that made my old milking shoes, back in the days when I was just a poor farm girl looking for a nice boy to settle down with me on Hurtford.”
    “Boy did you miss. Gramma, I’m thinking you’re not the one I should talk to about finding a man.”
    “Oh, I’m the one, gal. Boy’s are easy to find. Men, now, that’s a whole lot harder to do. Hey, you, Marine. Yeah, you, Lieutenant.”
    Jack turned from where he’d been facing out, giving Kris as much privacy as anyone in a social goldfish bowl could have. “Yes, ma’am.”
    “When you going to make an honest girl of this woman?”
    Kris yelped, but Jack held his ground manfully. “Commander Tordon, there is no way I could make an honest woman of a Longknife. They are born into iniquity and it only gets worse as they pass the age of reason. Assuming they ever do. Sorry, ma’am. I’ll take a bullet for her, but there is no way to make her honest.”
    Which, Kris had to admit, was a very neat sidestep of the question Kris would have loved to have a straight answer to. And a warning of what lay ahead if she ever did figure out a way to pop that question to the main man in her life. Oh, pooh!
    The night dragged on in mindless chatter. By the grace of some bored god, Victoria Peterwald folded her tent and slipped away before the first yawn attacked Kris. So she got home at a decent hour and actually enjoyed a good night’s sleep.
    Officially, Kris counted that as a good day.

Interlude 1
    Grant von Schrader drummed his fingers on the door of his limo. He drummed them while Miss Victoria Smythe-Peterwald posed for one last photo shot… five times.
    The young woman was vain. Very vain.
    The door finally closed and the driver immediately put the multiton behemoth in motion. Grant continued drumming his fingers until his personal computer, directly plugged into his brain, announced, T HE CAR IS SECURE .
    “Remind me again why your father sent you to Eden?” Grant said as softly… and as deceptively as his temper would allow.
    “I believe he said something vague, like you are to show me the ropes,” the young heiress said, arranging her dress so that it fell tightly across her