The Taken by Vicki Pettersson Page A

mud. It looked like it belonged on a rocket ship. Almost immediately the thing began to froth and foam, and Grif’s hands were curled around a hot cup in only a few moments more.
    So there had been some improvements with the onset of the twenty-first century, he thought, sipping his first decent cup of coffee in fifty years. It was smooth and strong, black and warm, and it made him wonder what else he’d been missing. He’d learned a lot after incubation, things a Centurion needed to know when visiting the Surface, including the objects surrounding his Takes. Cars were different, phones were different, and information flowed through the air now. The Internet. That had been the hardest for him to muscle into his mind.
    But many details were considered too small and mundane for the Centurions’ purposes. They tapped the mud too briefly for things like newfangled coffee-makers to matter. Instant coffee that tasted like a wet dream was apparently one of them.
    Craig joined him at the white pedestal table, where he’d positioned himself in the corner, an effort to appear unthreatening. Craig shifted uncomfortably anyway, pulling her robe tight.
    “How do you feel?” It was a question Grif never asked . . . though when you met someone right after a violent death, it wasn’t usually necessary.
    She stared. “Like my best friend was murdered, I was attacked, and there’s a strange man drinking my coffee in my house.”
    Grif sighed. Served him right for asking. And it had him looking again at the woman across from him, vulnerable in her robe and bare face and mortal body. Strong in her gaze, mind, and will to live.
    “How about I ask the questions for now?” she went on, and one slim brow lifted high.
    He inclined his head, and slumped into his corner chair. “You’re the reporter.”
    “And how do you know that?”
    “Toldja.” He pointed to himself. “P.I.”
    She tilted her head. “But you never said who hired you.”
    Yep, she was a strong one. Sharp, too. “Someone interested in the Rockwell case.”
    “She wasn’t a case to me. She was a friend.”
    “Probably why she left you this.” He threw her notebook on the table between them. He’d discovered it in the corner where he’d felled the blond man the night before. Even if Grif hadn’t seen the man stealing the journal on the gas-station security cam, this would have been proof positive that he was both girls’ killer.
    Or would have been, if not for Grif.
    Recognizing it, Craig let her cup clatter to the table, sloshing caffeinated gold across the shiny top. The spill looked like one of those Rorschach tests Grif’d had to take when entering the army. He wondered what it said about him that this one resembled a black angel carrying an enormous scythe.
    “I found it on the floor.” He jerked his chin. “Open it to the last entry.”
    She did, immediately. It was interesting, Grif thought, the way curiosity wiped away her fatigue. Maybe that was the spine holding her up, the wire threading her resolve. Whatever it was, it sparked the moment she spotted it, the name Rockwell had circled when Grif had allowed her to re-dress for the Everlast.
    “This is why they took my notebook!” She looked up, met Grif’s gaze, then back down again. “Oh, Nic! You’re so smart.”
    “So smart she almost got you killed.”
    Not that he could talk.
    Kit shook her head, not listening. “We were working on a story. She was meeting with someone who could provide us information when she was killed.”
    “What kind of information?”
    “Powerful men in compromising positions,” she said cryptically. It reminded him of Frank.
    “You should go to the police.”
    “You said you were going to call the police.”
    Grif shrugged. “You fell asleep before telling me your cop friend’s name.”
    Her eyes narrowed, though the notebook still had her attention. “I gave him this list yesterday. But this narrows it down to one.”
    Grif thought of the plasma