Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins Read Free

lowered herself into a low
crouch like a cat. There was someone else on this rooftop , she could feel it . The fact that she could not yet
place them meant that it was almost certainly him , but
that was all the more reason not to be taken by surprise.
    She kept in the tight crouch for ten seconds. Twenty. She
almost held her breath, but she knew that he was stubborn and would wait for
the slight gasp she could not help but make if she denied herself air for long
with her heart still racing from her flight. At last she decided to concede the
battle of wills, but only with her characteristic display of poor
sportsmanship.
    “Are you just the most stubborn man in the world,” she
sassed, “or are you undressing me with your eyes again?”
    Suddenly, without a sound, the night seemed to coalesce into
solid form. A tall man in a long grey coat loomed out of the fog and stood
before her, his matching suit immaculate and well-cut .
His hands were sheathed in bright red gauntlets that matched his necktie, and
his grey fedora perched above a domino mask in the same crimson color. The eyes
within the mask were blank whites that revealed nothing of the orbs behind them
yet seemed to glow with a fire of their own, and Kit Baxter still caught herself gasping a little at the sight of them. But tonight,
even through the darkness and the fog, she was certain that she could just see
the flush of color in his cheeks. She had scored a hit.
    “Kit Baxter,” he said, “ behave yourself.”
    “Yes, Boss,” she smiled, and relaxed a little in her crouch.
    “I thought I told you to wait for me,” he said, trying to
sound stern.
    “Am I still here?” the Flying Squirrel grinned, cocking her
head to the side.
    He paused and looked away as if to keep himself from
smiling, a battle he did not entirely win. “From which I might infer that you
did, in fact, wait?” he asked casually.
    “That's my Boss,” she said, rising to stand. “It takes him a
while, but he gets there in the end. You didn't expect me to sit on the rooftop
and knit, did you?”
    “I suppose not,” the Red Panda agreed, “but Bert was even
more apoplectic than usual at the prospect of my paying him a visit. You might
have put him right over the edge.” Bert Molloy was an Assistant Coroner –
one of the most reluctant members of the fraternity of agents and informants
that made up the Red Panda's network. Bert was useful in that he was well-placed , but his nervous disposition meant that dealing
with him was always a dance.
    “Did you get the dope on the plane crash like you wanted?”
she asked.
    The masked man nodded grimly. “Bert was as good as his word.
He pulled a copy of the police file that was submitted for the inquest to go
along with his autopsy reports.”
    “One stop shopping for the busy vigilante.” She grinned up
at him. She flushed slightly at the single eyebrow that raised above his mask at her joke.
    “A number of people did die in that crash, Squirrel,” he
said.
    “Yes,” she said. “Sorry. That is kind of a day at the office
for us, though. And if you're stern all the time, people will start to say that
the Red Panda is no fun.”
    His brows knit. “I am no fun,” he said. “I am rather famously no fun at all.”
    She leaned in closer to him, just close enough for her heart
to skip a beat, which was as close as she ever allowed herself to get. “And I'm
the one that knows different, ain't I?” she almost whispered. He seemed flustered again, which pleased her greatly.
    “You're in a strange mood tonight,” he said with a shake of
his head.
    “Why not? I've been itchin ' for a
good fight,” Kit said, making for the edge of the rooftop. “A self-styled supervillain with a corny animal nickname is just what the
doctor ordered.”
    “Perhaps,” he said simply, following her.
    She stopped in her tracks. “Well, okay,” she asked. “Why ain't it?”
    He seemed startled. “'Why ain't it' what?” he parroted.
    “I love it