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to Tranquillity.’
    Terri peered at
her friend, one eyebrow cocked. ‘As my security advisor?’
    ‘Of course.
Stressed executives make poor decisions. Poor decisions result in
security issues. We’re going to the spa.’ To Fox, it did not look
like Terri was going to put up much of a fight, but you could see
her trying to come up with an objection. Fox decided to cut that
off before it had a chance to start. ‘We’ll get naked and sit in a
steam room, maybe take a massage…’
    ‘You had me at
naked.’
    ‘Thought I
might have.’
    ~~~
    It was not that they
had ever slept together and Fox was fairly sure that Terri knew it
was not going to happen at Tranquillity Spa either. If she were
honest, Fox was not even sure that Terri really wanted to go to bed
with her anymore, but there was that undercurrent of desire
floating along whenever there was an opportunity to express it.
Maybe it was just friendly teasing now.
    It had started
when Fox had been the one to pull Terri out of a hostage situation
in Dallas. The terrorists had killed everyone else in the bunker
where MarTech Technologies was developing Yliaster at that time,
but they had kept the daughter of the company’s founder alive as
their bargaining chip. Fox had lost her entire team getting to
Terri and they had spent almost a day getting out of the bunker,
hiding, running, and fighting. Terri had, perhaps naturally,
developed a crush on her saviour. Or Fox thought of it as a crush,
and thought that it would be inappropriate to give in to it.
    The idea that,
maybe, Terri was getting over her ‘crush’ was given a little extra
credence by the fact that she sat in the private sauna Fox had
booked and did not really seem to be too concerned. She looked , but she seemed quite content with that.
    ‘You know,’
Terri said, ‘you weren’t looking particularly happy before we got
here either. Not exactly stressed, but… a bit tense.’
    Fox sighed.
‘I’m not sure how well this is sitting with me. Jackson’s saddled
me with this Chief Investigative Officer title and I’m running
around looking at businesses and organisation charts.’
    ‘And you like
to be doing things, not managing things.’
    ‘She does,’ Kit
said, appearing on the bench between the two of them to join the
conversation. ‘Did she tell you why she left home to join the
Army?’
    ‘UA attack
killed her friend, she wanted to do something about that kind of
thing, and her parents were not best pleased.’
    The virtual
girl gave a sharp nod. ‘They prefer to talk rather than act. Fox
prefers to act rather than–’
    ‘I prefer to do
rather than sitting around talking about doing,’ Fox interrupted.
‘Sometimes the doing can be talking. I’d rather talk someone out of
doing something stupid than shoot them, but you can’t always have
what you want. Point is… Oh… One of Sam’s clients was killed
recently. An old guy, murdered in his home, probably knew his
attacker, but he was gay and the cop assigned to the case is a
homophobe. The case has been put on the inactive list because the
detective doesn’t care about who killed an old gay. When I
was with NAPA, I could have done something about that. I
could have kicked Brownlow and taken the case myself. I could have
got Sam some closure. Now I’m just… pushing papers for a
corporation.’
    Terri’s brow
furrowed and she pressed her lips together. ‘Give it a bit longer.
I haven’t been paying huge attention to the data from
Palladium, but it sounds like things are going to change. I think
we’re going to need you, and more like you, a whole lot in the near
future.’
    ‘This private
policing bill? I’m not sure…’
    ‘Neither am I,
but someone’s putting money and effort into that movement. Besides,
I can’t believe NIX are just going to give up on stealing Yliaster.
Maybe you stopped them once–’
    ‘It was not
just me.’
    ‘–but they’ll
try again. Somehow.’
    Fox frowned,
but she had to agree. The