Julian Vance did not wait for the revenant to resolve its mechanical conflict.
“Mac,” Julian said, glancing back toward the driver’s seat. “How many times did Silas pull that double audit when he was alive?”
“Never on himself,” Mac Cole replied, his voice dark and steady. “Silas was a tyrant on the night line, but he was a legalist down to his boot heels. He never accepted a dime he couldn’t account for in his shift book. If he saw an auditor take unearned cash, he’d have stripped their badge right on the curb.”
“Then he won’t argue with the math,” Julian said.
“He can’t argue,” Lin Mei added, her pencil scratching furiously across her pad. “The 1968 bylaws don’t have an appeal process for an un-balanced fare-box. If the drawer has an overage, the auditor is held in custody until the variance is cleared.”
Harlan Reed leaned forward from Seat 1A, his face pressed against the wire mesh partition. “You don’t understand what you’ve done, Vance. The Syndicate will hunt you to the edge of the world. Corbus Vane is the nephew of Magistrate Silt!”
“Magistrate Silt isn’t on Track 00,” Julian answered without turning around. “And right now, Corbus Vane isn’t a nephew. He’s an unregistered commuter who just handed a bogus note to a hungry ghost.”
