Page 15 of Skinwalker's Bane
“Please,” he added, his voice low. “It’s important.”
It was the “please” that did it. Few people used the word anymore. It was almost a shock to hear it. She blinked. “Very well,” she said stiffly.
He curled his hands into fists by his sides. “Did Lincoln ever talk to you about borrowing money? Did he ever borrow money from you?”
“Borrowmoney?” she repeated, truly startled. “No,” she added. “It wasn’t that sort of relationship. We didn’t have long, meaningful conversations, or deeply personal ones.”
“Money isn’t deeply personal,” Adam shot back. “It’s a form of exchange, that’s all.”
“It’s personal to me.”
He studied her. Then he pulled in a calming breath. “So, no talk of money. Did he ever give any hints he needed more credits? That he was under financial pressure? Not conversation, but behavior. Refusing to spend credits on little things.”
“We never went anywhere where we could have spent money.” Devin stirred. “Perhaps, if you could tell me why you’re asking, I might be able to give you better answers.” She had no intention of telling him that his questions had piqued her curiosity. They had not been the types of questions she had expected him to ask.
Adam sighed again. “Nearly a dozen of Lincoln’s creditors have come forward, asking the Institute to cover his outstanding debts. They’re…well, it’s a lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
Adam hesitated again. Then he named a sum that made her eyes widen.
“That’s outrageous! No one could possibly borrow that much in a lifetime,” Devin replied.
“Exactly. We’re trying to figure out why he needed that sort of money and what he did with it. Did he ever say anything or do anything that would indicate that he was spending large sums? I mean, you two did talk sometimes, didn’t you?”
Devin leaned against the edge of her desk and crossed her arms, thinking it through. “Nothing he ever said or did jarred me or gave me any reason to question his motives. Lincoln was everything I expected of a skinwalker and nothing more.”
Adam’s mouth twitched. “Glad at least one of us lived up to expectations,” he said gruffly.
Devin felt her own mouth tug into a tiny smile, too. She considered the issue all over again. “You said ‘we’ were looking into this?”
“The Institute general director asked me to investigate. Noa doesn’t want to be saddled with Lincoln’s debts.”
“No one would,” Devin said in agreement.
“It may end up being a Bridge matter,” he added.
Devin let out a slow breath. “I’m suddenly glad I’m not yet Captain. That isn’t a problem I would care to deal with. There can be no happy outcome, no matter what Captain Owens decides.”
“Then you really are aiming for the Captain’s chair?”
“There’s a long way to go, yet. Eventually, though, yes.”
Adam Wary frowned, his gaze on the floor at his feet. “There’s an election due in the next year. You’re going to run for that?”
“If I get sponsors who can help me.” She frowned. “That’s not a lock yet and your presence here, if it were known, would complicate things. Someone has already tattled about me visiting your apartment the other day.”
His brows lifted. “You’re kidding! They watch you that closely?”
“I know some interesting people and they watch everything on the ship,” she assured him. She frowned. “That’s not important right now. I keep coming back to Lincoln owing money. People don’t borrow money on theEndurance. I’ve never heard of it before.”
“Promissory notes were used all the time a few hundred years ago,” Adam said, startling her with the unexpected knowledge. Then he shrugged. “I’ve looked into it since I found out about Lincoln’s debts. All the notes they used back then gummed up the economy. So two people invented money and everyone stopped borrowing from each other.”
“I didn’t know that,” Devin admitted.
“There’s a surprise.” Only, his tone wasn’t sarcastic. “I didn’t know either. It’s amazing what you can dig up if you start burrowing into the archives. I have a friend who eats and breathes the history files. He’s got an object lesson for any subject going. Sometimes he makes me think there’s nothing we do on this ship that hasn’t already been done a dozen times over in the past. We’re just re-inventing things.”
Devin nodded. “My campaign manager says something like that a lot. About learning from the past so we don’t make the same mistakes.”
