“No. I’m coming. I can use a gun as well as you can. I’ll stay out of trouble, but I want to be there. Who could you trust more?"

He accepted defeat gracefully. “It will be family; Aqib, Wasim, and Sachin, maybe Rajiv if he can get away from that wife of his.” That broke the tension, leaving them laughing together at the thought of poor Rajiv and his huge, domineering wife who ruled the home as tyrannically as any corporate CEO.

"All right, then," Imran said finally. "The job is set for tomorrow. We’ll be using a friend of Mohsin’s for wheels, because the place is somewhere sixty miles north of here. All we have to do is take potshots at a suit visiting a laboratory. We don’t even have to hit him to make our money. I suppose they just want to put a good scare in him."

Rani was curious to know more. “Why you? Why not hire some slints from the Squeeze? That would be the obvious thing to do.”

“I guess it’s because the people racking up the nuyen know better than to do the obvious. They’re smart. I think I like working for smart people, judging by the size of the credstick. And we got a slice upfront plus the hardware. Rani, go see Old Chenka tomorrow. Ask for her blessing and a little something, huh?”

His sister smiled ruefully in reply. Chenka, ancient and toothless, always knew whenever the family was involved in a run because they always came to her for a blessing and one of her paper-wrapped herbal tuixtures. As always, they would sit in silence, drinking steaming green tea, the old woman rocking slightly in her chair and gazing fixedly at them with squinting, half-closed eyes. Seeing everything, most likely.

Imran had not told Rani the exact target of the run. He figured she didn’t need to know until they were well beyond the Smoke, safer because they’d be traveling by night. Otherwise, she might ask too many questions, and he wasn’t sure he’d have enough of the answers.