Hunt the Heavens: Book Two of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy Read Free Page A

process, I’ll take all of the aging lines off your neck. Then I’m going to build up your cheekbones a bit, make them a bit more distinct than they already are. I’m going to rebuild that nose, which looks like it’s been broken more than once, am I right?”
    “Three, maybe four times,” Wolfe mumbled.
    “In short, I’m going to be your Ponce de Léon. In case you don’t know — ”
    “I know who he was,” Wolfe said.
    “Oh. Not many of my clients have heard about the Fountain of Youth. Yes, you’ll be the young man you once were, plus I’ll make some improvements the helix didn’t give you when you were born. I’ll also take some of the pouching off your eyelids, cut a bit of cartilage from the back of your ears and pin them back a little just because they’re a bit too batlike for my tastes.
    “You haven’t had significant hair loss, so I won’t need to do implants, but I will do a perma-dark so you won’t be a silver fox anymore.
    “Of course, you’re wondering right now how all this is going to make you unrecognizable to … to whoever you don’t wish to know you.
    “It’s very simple but devilishly clever, if I do say so myself. Imagine this, Mister, uh, Taylor you said your name was, I believe. Imagine you are walking down the street and you see someone who you recognize from your first time in prison, or in school, or whatever, twenty years ago. He looks
exactly
the same as he did then. You are about to hail him and then you stop yourself, barely in time.
    “You’re embarrassed, because you realize that all of us change in ten or fifteen or twenty years, and of course anyone who looked exactly like your friend of years ago cannot, simply cannot, be that man.
    “And so you hurry past, not really looking at this person again, because you’re deeply grateful you didn’t say anything and make an utter ass of yourself and also don’t think on the matter, for none of us wish to remember our momentary near foolishnesses.
    “Simple … yet very clever, isn’t it?”
    Wolfe managed to make a noise that might have been agreement.
    “I feel that you’re experiencing a bit of pain.” Brekmaker went to his control panel, touched sensors. Gas hissed. “There. That should take it away. Now we can begin.”
    His fingers moved over other parts of the panel, and, from the ceiling, tiny projectors appeared and moved toward Joshua’s face.
    • • •
    “Culan in a kennel,” Cormac swore. “You look like ratshit on rye! What’d you look like yesterday when the quack got through? Couldn’t have been worse.”
    “Don’t be so polite,” Wolfe said muffledly. He glanced in the mirror beside his bed, saw the yellow-serum-crusted mask that looked like an inflated balloon, then pointedly turned the mirror facedown. “Just think of me as about to begin my butterfly imitation.”
    “You need anything? You sure that bastard didn’t work you over with a bat or something?”
    “It feels like he did.”
    “You need more painkiller?”
    “No. I’ll handle it.”
    “What can I get you?”
    “Nothing. Just make sure Brekmaker doesn’t get offworld before this whole thing’s over with. I’m not real comfortable with having to pay him up front.”
    “Don’t worry about that. I disabled the drive on his ship, and I’ve got one of my boys watching him pretty close. But I don’t think we’ve got any worries, since we’ve got his pretty little portable OR set up in here and out of his ship. I’m sure he won’t skip without it.
    “He wanted to circulate, but I told him he couldn’t. Not until you said it was okay.
    “So he asked if I could set him up with a woman or two. The bastard likes to brag on himself. Couldn’t wait to tell the girls I sent him how great a surgeon he’d been and still was even if he’d been subjected to some terrible misunderstandings, how he’d done work on Earth itself, sometimes on some of the most famous people, and so on and so forth.”
    “That doesn’t