Edge of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

was sick got across the roads before they croaked.
    Morton nodded and swallowed, eyeing me warily. “It’s an ugly drug.”
    “You’re preaching to the choir. Got any idea why someone would go down to the Bottoms to make a buy?”
    She straightened thoughtfully. “What makes you ask that?”
    “I was working a trace on a guy who turned out to be an SD wraith. I found him down there in a flophouse. I assume he was looking for more drugs, but that’s not exactly where I’d expect him to find any. There’s no money down there.”
    “Maybe he was down there for something else,” Lauren suggested.
    “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. SD addicts had one-track minds: get more drugs and get them now.
    “I can check it out,” she said.
    I could tell she was curious. That was probably a basic requirement on the detective test. That and nosiness and the enjoyment of confrontation and the willingness to get shot at. I’ve got the first two covered, but the second two—I’m more of a hide-in-the-shadows sort of girl. Not that I can’t hold my own in a confrontation. I just don’t get off on it.
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It doesn’t make any difference to my trace. The guy was probably so fried he didn’t know the Bottoms from Uptown.”
    “Sure. You’re probably right.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin and pushed her dish away. “I suppose we should talk about payment for your services before we go any further.”
    “You don’t need to worry about it,” I said. “This one’s on me.”
    Her chin lifted haughtily. “I can’t do that.”
    “Sure you can. It’s easy. I don’t charge you anything and you don’t pay.” I liked that she didn’t want a handout, but finding kids was something I’d been doing anonymously for a long time. I hadn’t had a chance in more than six weeks to even breathe, much less help save a child. I wasn’t going to pass up this chance, and anyhow, Lauren seemed to be a decent cop. That was a rare thing in Diamond City.
    “Is that supposed to be funny? I’m serious. I pay my own way and I don’t take bribes.”
    “I get that. I’m still not going to accept any money from you. But you could do something for me.”
    She braced herself against the table, her hands fisting. She scowled at me. “What’s that?”
    “You can let me know if a kid’s in trouble and if I can help. Anonymously. I don’t want anybody else knowing.”
    “Why not?”
    “I just don’t.” Because sometimes I couldn’t get there soon enough. Sometimes the best I could do was help find the body. If I had to face the family after that, it would put a hole right through me.
    Lauren was still scowling as she considered what I was asking. “It’s illegal to reveal details about an ongoing case.”
    I shrugged and didn’t say anything.
    “And this is what you want in exchange for finding my nephew?”
    “Nope. I’ll find him anyway.” I grinned because there wasn’t anything she could do about it, and it clearly pissed her off. Okay, maybe I do sometimes like confrontation. I still would never have made a good cop. I don’t follow rules well at all, and I really don’t like getting shot.
    “Why?”
    “Because I can and because kids don’t deserve to be pawns in Tyet games.” I hated the way the Tyet used kids and families to leverage people to do what they wanted. They left a lot of dead bodies and broken families littering the city. I couldn’t do a lot to stop them, but if I could keep the kids from dying, it helped me sleep at night. Sure, a Tyet faction wasn’t involved in every case, but nine out of ten of the kids I’d looked for had been taken by or because of the Tyet.
    “Even though my nephew is trying to commit a crime?”
    “Sure. Don’t get me wrong—there’s no worse drug than Sparkle Dust. As far as I’m concerned, the dealers and the creators of it should all be dumped into a vat of boiling oil. Trevor is stupid, but then so are most teenagers. He