Read The Domino Pattern for Free Online

sit with his buddies?”
    “I don’t know,” Kennrick said, frowning. “Huh. I hadn’t really thought about that. You think maybe the others didn’t like him?”
    “Or vice versa,” I said, making a mental note to ask Bofiv and Tririn which of the party had come up with the seating arrangements. “So where was Colix sitting?”
    “There.” Kennrick said, pointing to an empty middle seat across the aisle and two rows forward of the sleeping Bofiv.
    I backtracked for a closer look. The late Master Colix’s seat was flanked by a pair of privacy shields. Irreverently, I wondered it one of the shields concealed an attractive female Shorshian. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to ditch his colleagues.
    And then, as if on cue, the aisle shield retracted to reveal a young Human female.
    A really young female, in fact. She couldn’t be more than seventeen, and even that was pushing it. Her face was thin and drawn, with the look of someone who’d just gone two rounds with food that didn’t agree with her.
    Make that three rounds. Even before the privacy shield had retracted completely into the armrest and leg-rest storage lip she was on the move, heading toward the front of the car at the quick-walk of the digestively desperate.
    I eyed the remaining privacy shield in that particular three-seat block. Maybe that was the knockout Shorshic female.
    “Well?” Kennrick prompted.
    “Well, what?” I countered, turning around to watch the girl. She reached the front of the car and disappeared into one of the restrooms.
    “Are we going to ask Master Bofiv about Master Colix’s habits and appetites?” Kennrick elaborated.
    “In a minute,” I said, a sudden unpleasant tingling on the back of my neck as I stared at the closed restroom door. Colix had gotten sick and died… and now one of his seatmates had suddenly made a mad dash tor the facilities?
    Kennrick caught the sudden change in my tone. “What is it?” he asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”
    “Or?”
    “Or maybe something,” I said, glancing at my watch. Five minutes, I decided. If the girl wasn’t back in five minutes I would grab a Spider and send him in to find her.
    It was something of an anticlimax when, three minutes later, the door opened and the girl reappeared. She started a little unsteadily back down the aisle toward her seat, looking even more drawn than she had before.
    “Or nothing. I take it?” Kennrick murmured.
    “So it would seem,” I agreed. The girl’s eyes were fixed on me as she came toward us, a wary and rather baleful expression on her pale face. I waited until she was about five steps from us and then tried my best concerned smile on her. “You all right, miss?” I asked softly.
    “I’m fine,” she said, clipping out each word like she was trimming a thorn hedge. If my concerned smile was having any effect, I sure couldn’t detect it. “You mind?”
    I wasn’t even close to blocking her way, but I gave her a little more room anyway. “I just wondered if you were unwell.”
    “I’m fine,” she said again, brushing past me and flopping down into her seat. She adjusted herself a bit and reached for the privacy shield control.
    “Because your seatmate had a bad attack of something,” I went on, kneeling down beside her. No point including any more eavesdroppers in this conversation than absolutely necessary. “You might have noticed when his friends took him to the dispensary?”
    She slid the control forward, and the shield started to rotate into its closed position. “The dispensary, where he died?” I finished.
    The shield closed. I counted off three seconds; and then, the shield opened again. “What did you just say?” the girl asked, her face suddenly tight.
    “I said Master Colix is dead,” I repeated.
    For a long moment she just stared at me. Her eyes flicked up to Kennrick, then back to me. “How?” she whispered.
    “He was poisoned.” I said. “What’s your name?”
    She