"Not sure anyone would remember Leiber even if they saw him," said Roic, "and this is one of those self-serve places."  Not as cramped as some Roic had encountered on space stations, where sleep cubicles, rented by the hour, seemed a cross between a closet and a coffin, but the building's utilitarian lines didn't invite lingering.  It was a shadowed place even in the midmorning, huddled down below a long concrete road abutment and some sort of manufacturing plant.  "Circle the lot.  We'll look for his float bike."

Around the building's back, an open-faced shed sheltered a float-bike lockdown.  Roic recognized Leiber's bike nestled among half a dozen others.

"Right the first time!' said Johannes, in a tone of admiration.

"I've had some practice, trailing m'lord around," said Roic modestly, leaving out the dumb luck part.  Well, smart luck, perhaps.  Roic would have been surprised not to have turned up something within his first three tries.  They sat in the van for a few minutes while Roic tried to think it through the way m'lord would.  No, scratch that idea.  He'd likely do better trying to think it through like Leiber.  Or better still, like Roic.

Would the enemy send cops or goons to collect their quarry?  If it was a cryocorp, they could likely get all the cops they wanted—charges of employee theft would do the job—they had only to wait at the pinch-point inside the shuttleport and pick the man off as he scurried through.  But that would leave a trail, names, security vid recordings, a whole lot of witnesses not under anyone's direct control.  A private goon squad pickup before Leiber hit the port, that would be the quieter way to go about it.  And if Roic could figure out where to look for the fellow, presumably all those smart men in the fancy trousers could, too.  Roic wasn't the part of his team born with the silver tongue in his mouth—could he persuade Leiber to come to the safety of the consulate, when m'lord had not?  Guess I'll have to try.  He glanced up.  "What's that?"

A pulsing blue light was reflecting off the concrete wall, coming from the front of the building.

"Blue's the color they use around here for emergency vehicles," said Johannes uneasily.

"Pull around front."

They arrived to see a pair of emergency medtechs dressed in blue scrubs yank a float pallet from the back of an unmarked van and hurry inside the sliding glass doors to the lobby.  Both big fellows—one was tall, and the other looked as though he'd had some of those traditional wrestlers in his family tree.  On both sides.  Didn't emergency services usually try to pair a woman in such a team?  Well, not always, belike.  With round the clock scheduling, as Roic knew from grappling with the guardsmen's roster for Vorkosigan House and m'lord's other two official residences, you took whatever combinations you could get.