Stefanie sent him a message on Monday but it was Wednesday morning before he replied. It had been one of those weeks where he saw the notification, knew he should reply but always found some excuse to put it off for later or the morning. Each subsequent, more urgent, note from Stefanie reminded him to reply and each one found its own reason to delay.

She wanted to meet up with him again and discuss the job. He wanted to meet, as well. Smells of cinnamon wafted through his mind. A hand grasping at his trousers flashed before his eyes. A tumble of thick, bright red hair crashing down on him rhythmically. Beautiful, pungent, and sweet. God damn it, but he wanted to go see her again. Something held his hand. Business, he told himself. There was a job to do, and Stefanie was a distraction. One goddess of a distraction.

It wasn’t like she didn’t deserve a response, either. She’d hired him to do a job so she was a client, same as any other. But she wasn’t like any other, not by a long shot. She was unique, and intoxicating, like a cool glass of good gin. But then again, so was Josie.

They were like fire and ice, how could you compare something so different? Stefanie was fire and he burned when he was with her. Passionate, crazed thoughts that he knew would burn him alive but he couldn’t help himself any more than he could stop breathing. Josie was ice. She preserved him, and made him contemplative. A crisp winter’s morning invigorated you without you realizing it and ice could burn just as painfully as fire.

Remy left his comm on their coffee table and went to pour himself a mug of brown sludge coffee that he liked. It wasn’t any good, but addictions were addictions. He took it back to the living room and found Josie standing over the coffee table, comm unit in her hand.

Fuck.

“Your comm keeps vibrating. Expecting a call?” Josie tossed him the device from across the couch. Remy glanced at the screen: three more messages from Stefanie.

“Is she the one who gave you the new job?” Josie had clearly glanced at the screen. He didn’t blame her. It lit up with each message. You’d have to try to not notice.

“Yeah.” No sense in keeping the pieces of the puzzle from her. The two of them were something now, at any rate. Whatever that specifically was could be determined later.

“Why did she pick you?”

Remy wasn’t prepared for that question so he frowned and scratched his stubble. She’d been with him on their last big heist and a half-dozen before that. Josie knew he was capable enough to do the job.

“Why what? I do have a reputation for this sort of thing, you know.”

She shook her head, “Not that. I mean, why does she want the prototype? What’s she going to do with it?”

Remy opened his mouth and snapped it shut. She wouldn’t like the real answer. Did he even like the real answer anymore? Of course, he did. Fire and ice.

“Uh, I’m not really sure. I think she had a buyer or something. Trying to get out of town after her husband’s death.” And take me with her. What would happen to Josie? Fire and ice.

“But if you promised it to Franklin, she can’t sell it to someone else. What’s she bringing to this job? Seems to me that its just a liability at this point. If we play this right, we can cut her out without her even realizing what we’ve done.” Josie pressed him on this and Remy didn’t have any answers let alone good ones. He had to admit that Stefanie really didn’t bring that much to their plan outside of his own, selfish, reasons. He felt a headache coming on and rubbed his eyes.

“Look, it’s just important, okay? Trust that I know what I’m doing?” He stood up and found his duster and hat. “I’m going for a walk. Be back.” He left his coffee steaming on the counter and walked out.

She didn’t stop him. Remy stepped onto the icy sidewalk and tapped out a reply.

***

Remy didn’t know where he was going when he stepped out onto the sidewalk, only that he needed some fresh air. Well, fresh as fresh could be at any rate. No sense paying for time in an ecodome or something. Fresh enough. He started walking, head down and shoulders hunched. A lit cigarette dangled from his lip, burning absently.

Snow had fallen the night before, a thin and wispy amount to slick the sidewalks and trip up the older folks. His footfalls brushed the snow away and before he knew it, his feet carried him to the School House. He settled onto his usual stool next to Alvin passed out on the bar. 11 a.m. had come early today. Neither Luis nor anyone else was behind the bar at the moment so he grabbed a paper from the stack Alvin kept near him and read the headlines.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a voice.

“Well, now, if it isn’t young Remy. How’ve you been, my boy?” Happy Jack ambled over to him behind the bar with a wide fucking smile on his smug face. Must be wearing a Shusher to move that fat ass so quietly.

“Morning, Jack. How’s business?” Remy fished out another cigarette from his pocket and flicked it on, trying to focus on the paper. Maybe he’d just go away. It worked with lesser pests.

“You know, I was a hoping I’d see you here today and that you’d ask me that. How is my business doing, Remy? You doing something in the next week or so I ought to know about? Something that is directly related to my business, hmm?” Jack leaned on the bar in front of him close enough for Remy to count his nose hairs. There were more than five apiece and white as the snow in the sky.

Fuck. He set the paper aside and sighed.

“Look, I’m just here for a drink, you know I don’t want any trouble.” His voice was cool, but his mind raced trying to think of what else Jack could be referencing but the auction. He wouldn’t give a damn about that JD business over the weekend. Coming up blank, he just hoped Jack had another job going on over the next few days. There was a lot of happenings every day in New Madison and not everything was an unfortunate coincidence. It couldn’t be every time, at least.

“Yes, well, Remy, my boy. I’m afraid trouble has had a rather good history of finding you regardless of if you wish it or not.”

That was true enough. Since taking Stefanie’s first job, he’d become far closer with the seedier parts of New Madison than he’d care to. That meant a lot coming from a guy like him too. He’d always counted himself as rough and tumble folk, but then there were the true wicked bastards like Jack and JD. Toss in a chance encounter with the Inspector, and whomever else he’d managed to piss off during the Beltrider and it had been a productive two months. He wondered briefly what the Inspector had been doing in that time, before shaking it away. That ticket out of New Madison couldn’t come soon enough.

“I mean it, Jack. I don’t have anything going on with you and I don’t want to. Whatever your business this weekend is, I’m not a part of it. You did me a favor, I did you a favor, we’re square.”

It was becoming apparent that Remy wasn’t going to get that drink he was after. That was fine. There were plenty of bars in New Madison and most of them didn’t have Happy Jack behind the counter. He stood up to leave.

“Hold on now, I won’t keep you long. I appreciate you saying that, Remy, I really do. And I remember fellas that treat me right, you know. You have a nice day, you hear?”

“Yeah, yeah, you too.”

He tossed the paper on Alvin’s stack and left the School House. If Jack was still a player in this too, this would be a lot more difficult. He pulled up his collar and glanced down the street for an “open” sign. Honest-to-God, he needed that drink.

***

Remy’s trouble with Happy Jack was about to get a whole lot more complicated. Josie managed to find them a blank dummy Vasc and had even tracked down the one Remy’d given to Luis a lifetime ago. Unfortunately, that Vasc had made its way into Jack’s personal collection and it was hard for him to get excited over stealing from Jack, especially given their conversation at the School House. In the end though, what was one more gangster with a bone to pick? He hoped to be far from New Madison when Jack realized what they’d done.

She told him the story over a pile of cheap noodles and sticky-sweet meats.

“It wasn’t so hard once I knew where to look. Jack’s got lots of storehouses, see, and Luis bragged about doing Jack a favor at the School a few nights ago. Figured it was a good start.”

“When did you get a chance to go to the School?” Remy and Josie had explored a number of downtown bars in the past few weeks but only once or twice to the School. One of the last ties to who he was before all of this. It wasn’t much, and he didn’t even really like the place that much, but it was his.

“Saturday. You must’ve been late, I didn’t see you come in.” He’d walked Claire home that night. He remembered the perfume and hoped she wasn’t still awake when he got into bed. She continued without saying anything more about it. “Anyways, I hear him talking to a few of what must’ve been Jack’s guys about their boss owing him a favor and they say something about doing the grunt work of hauling a favor. So I just followed them when they left.”

Josie stuffed a fork full of noodles into her mouth and slurped them up. Remy blinked.

“You followed them?”

“Yep. Just followed them. Men aren’t ever that concerned if they see a lone woman behind them.” She talked with half her mouth filled with food. Josie must’ve caught Remy’s look and she shook her head.

“If you got a Shusher on, it’s pretty easy. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

Remy knew he wasn’t going to win an argument over something that had already happened so it was better to just move on. Following a group of Jack’s boys to God-knows-where. He briefly considered pressing that idiot point, but let that go too before she stabbed him with that fork instead of her noodles.

“Okay, where did they go then? Straight to a storehouse?”

“Yep, if you can believe it. It was even a topside facility so I didn’t have to figure out a way down without being seen. I just followed them down a couple ten blocks away to this squat apartment building. They went into this blacked out coffee place on the first floor and I couldn’t see them. So, I just waited thirty minutes or so, then followed them in.”

Remy knew that Jack and JD had some facilities top side. It just made sense for guys who moved that much volume of Vascs, drugs, and other goods of varying legality. Buyers needed money and if you had money, you lived topside. He picked at his meat and noodles and gestured her to continue.

“That’s all there was, really. I thought I was a goner when I saw one sitting in a chair near the back but he must’ve been sleeping. Crept right up and whack! Wrench to the temple brought him down.”

He’d thought he’d done something cool by getting into the speakeasy and flirting with a cocktail waitress for some pass codes. Josie straight up wrenched a guy in the middle of Jack’s facility. He shut his gaping mouth.

“Did his buddy hear anything then?”

She shook her head.

“Nope, Shusher.”

“Oh, right.”

“Anyways, I fiddle with the digital lock and pick the manual one and I was in. No sign of the other guy, thank God. Only took a few minutes of rummaging to find the box of Vascs and the dummy one was pretty apparent if you know what to look for. Jack must not have truly appreciated what it was if it was just sitting in a box like that.”

Remy finished the last meat in his tray and replaced the plastic lid on the rest to toss out. No one wanted a pile of soggy noodles for leftovers anyway.

“So you replaced it with a spare, right?” Jack might not know what it was exactly, but he knew what he had and would make a thief pay the difference in blood.

She nodded. “Yeah, I brought an old Volt that didn’t work anymore so I spent a minute just filing off the serials and the color. It looked passable at least.”

Josie went on to tell him about her trek back, making sure she hadn’t killed the poor guard. She hadn’t, so she took his loaded Vasc - a Volt to replace the one she left in the supply room - and made a mess of the front room to make it look like a simple robbery. Winding her way back to the apartment to avoid any kind of trail took most of the night. Their talk drifted to other things. Cleaning up dinner, watching part of the Gladiator’s game, and getting to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour. He drifted to sleep and was almost there when her frozen toes found his calves for warmth. Her soft snores signaled she’d found sleep but he laid there staring at the ceiling thinking over their plan.

Importantly, they had the last piece of the puzzle for the heist. Franklin had been explicit about needing a dummy prototype to make their plan work. Josie’s impromptu fake might fool some grunt of Jack’s but it wouldn’t last very long against the experts that would be bidding on the auction. Now, with a legitimate dummy prototype, they could make it work.