“When my team go through the evidence from today’s arrests, they’re going to be looking for anything linking back to Nick, or to Jennifer. I don’t have enough of a picture of who these people are yet. There are connections, but we can’t see them. I need intel.”
“If there’s anything we can do, our tech…”
“Honestly, the tech in the average Human household trounces a lot of what we have to work with,” Superintendent Jackson said with a sigh. “But there are rules about what I can and can’t use. It has to hold up in court, you understand? I will not have Nick Gillespie in my cells and then have to release him because our evidence is inadmissible.” She glanced at the door, checking no one else was there. “However, I’m not above taking pointers and hints. I know you do your own monitoring, and it’s probably the sort of monitoring we only wish we could do. If you hear anything, you’ll let me know?”
“Of course,” Tarkken said, without hesitation.
She nodded, satisfaction spreading across her emotional landscape.
“There is one other thing I’d like your input on,” she said. “During the arrests, one of the teams came across two people in the house of one of our suspects. They were arrested, and the officers doing the arresting had every right and reason to.” She fixed him a look as if he might challenge this. “A father and daughter. I’ve since decided to release her without charge, and based on her account, I’m inclined to do the same for him, too.”
“You don’t think they’re involved?”
“I’m almost certain she’s not involved,” Superintendent Jackson said, her expression strangely veiled. “At least, not in the drugs, and not in the EHPL.”
She rose, inclining her head for him to follow her. Tarkken walked a step or two behind her as they made their way through the station, the other officers they passed bobbing their heads and greeting her with a respectful ‘ma’am’.
“It wasn’t me who interviewed her,” she said. “But I saw them bring her in and thought I recognised her. Hard to forget that hair do.”
Tarkken wondered where this was going until they turned a corner and he saw Marta sitting at a table in a room that was otherwise empty, one hand around the small plastic cup someone must have got her out of one of the station vending machines, the other pushing the mop of her curls out of her face. She looked both furious and defeated at the same time, staring into her drink like she could find some answers in the shape of the steam curling out of it.
“She says she’s never been to the address we found her in before and I’m inclined to believe her,” Superintendent Jackson said, keeping her voice low. “As was the interviewing officer who was not aware of her connection to you. Way she tells it, she was only there to drag her father away. He’s fresh out of prison - we checked the details. Released yesterday from a ten year sentence. Hence why I’m inclined to believe that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, too. But I didn’t want to let either of them go until I ran it past you, first. In case there’s anything I don’t know.”
Tarkken glanced through the window at Marta. Superintendent Jackson had deliberately stopped them far enough along the corridor as not to be obvious, and Marta hadn’t noticed them yet. The same unease Tarkken felt whenever she was nearby started curling through his stomach.
Tarkken wondered if Superintendent Jackson remembered it was Marta who had the police radio Cael had used to get back in contact with him after Cael’s comm had been smashed in the riots. Tarkken suspected she did, that letting that slide was as a courtesy to the Prince and that it grated some. Tarkken felt an immense gratitude that she had let it go, because Cael certainly wouldn’t have if Marta had been charged with anything, and thus a PR nightmare for everyone involved had been avoided.
“She’s not involved with the EHPL,” Tarkken said. He knew this with absolute certainty. He had his reservations about Asha’s friend - starting with the stolen police radio and including the fact that she wouldn’t take the Match test - but doubts about the sincerity of her love for Asha were not among them. Marta wouldn’t be involved with an organisation that sought to harm Asha’s Match. “I don’t know anything about her father.”
“In and out of prison all his life,” Superintendent Jackson said. “Burglary, mostly. Shops not homes. Nothing violent. Model prisoner. No one ever has any complaints about him. Talk to her if you want, I can pop back in half an hour.”
Tarkken looked at the size of the room and had to suppress a grimace.
“Please,” he said. Because this was his job and as much as he did not want to be in a very small room with Marta, it was definitely what Asha would want him to do, and if it was what Asha wanted, then it was also what Cael wanted, and therefore fell under the increasingly large umbrella that was Tarkken’s job.
Superintendent Jackson flashed her ID card over the scanner next to the door. Marta looked up at the beep, eyebrows raising a little when Tarkken walked through the door.
“You look really weird in Human clothes,” she said, a slight smirk curling at the edge of her lips.
But while the look on her face was one of carefully constructed amusement, Tarkken immediately met with the barrage of her true feelings.
Discomfort with her surroundings, a cloying, urgent need to go home and get clean, every inch of her itching, like insects crawling over her skin. Wariness of him, flavoured with a little distaste, edging into contempt, their feelings for each other mutual. A burning fury - Tarkken suspected at her father - that she was trying not to think about, festered beneath, a little toxic core to her emotions that tainted everything else. And layered above all of it, embarrassment. Embarrassment that he knew she was here. Embarrassment that this would reflect badly on Asha, the thought of whom drifted through Marta’s emotional landscape the same way it always did - tangled up in a bright knot of love.
Why Marta’s feelings projected so much louder than everyone else’s, Tarkken didn’t know. When he’d first seen her, he thought the volume of her relief was down to the circumstances. Her best friend had been held at knifepoint, and she’d had to listen to the whole thing, while trying to send help she didn’t know would get there on time. An incredibly stressful situation, by anyone’s measure. But the more Marta had been around, visiting Asha on the Station, the more he’d come to realise that it was just how she was. Emotionally noisy.
Tarkken tried to reel in his extra sensory abilities when he was around her, but it was hard enough to do that around people projecting at normal volumes. So he’d taken to avoiding her as much as possible.
“What happened?” he asked, ignoring the way pain pulsed behind his left eye as he tried to draw back from her emotions as much as he could.
“I didn’t suddenly decide to get involved in drug dealing, if that’s what you’re asking,” Marta said, her voice defensive and sharp.
“I’m asking what happened,” Tarkken said, trying not to flinch at the sudden onslaught of her annoyance against his fragile mental barriers. He leaned back in his chair, hoping it looked like he was just getting comfortable, not trying to get further away from her.
“I suppose this will all be going in a report about how I’m an unsuitable associate for the future Queen of Allortasia.”
Tarkken knew that he was just a convenient target for her anger, could see it clear in her emotions. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier not to rise to her anger as it grated over his nerves.
“If I thought she would listen,” he said, forcing the words past gritted teeth, resisting the urge to massage his now pounding temple.
Marta’s anger darkened. “As it happens,” she said, voice low, bristling with the same anger that Tarkken could sense roiling around her. “I have more important problems to deal with than your low opinion of me. So whatever lecture you have planned, get on with it, so we can go back to ignoring each other as usual.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I have more important problems to deal with than you,” Tarkken said. “I’
m not here because you got arrested. Superintendent Jackson called me yesterday to tell me about the operation you’ve got caught up in. The people targeted all have links to the EHPL.”
“Oh,” Marta said. “Of course they bloody do. Just god damned typical.”
Though nothing in her countenance had changed, her anger shifted. It was no longer the vague irritation he induced in her, compounded by her frustration at her situation, but a hardened, sharp edged thing. Tarkken held in a sigh as the pain in his temple eased a fraction. Specific, directed emotions were easier for him to deal with, as long as they weren’t directed at him.
“All I want to know from you, is what happened?” he said, trying to speak calmly, bring the temperature of the room down a little.
Unfortunately, he had this tendency of sounding like a patronising asshole when trying to be calm through a raging headache.
“What, did you pet Superintendent not give you the full update?” Marta said, her anger boiling up again, her focus back on him.
“Marta, I know you’re not involved with the EHPL…”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
“…But is your father? I don’t know whether he knows Asha, but he knows you. Are you at risk here?”
Whatever she’d been about to say died on her lips, her emotions shifting abruptly, surprise replacing the anger.
“You’re worried I’m in danger?” she said.
“Not particularly,” Tarkken said. “I don’t think you’re stupid, and you’re not behaving like someone who’s afraid.”
And there wasn’t any fear, even any concern, among her emotions. Tarkken let go of his restraints just a little, letting himself slip a little deeper into her feelings, just in case the anger and frustration had disguised hidden wells of fear. But nothing. Marta had a lot of feelings, but none of them were fear. He drew back again, the headache a constant pulse now.
“If you were, it would be my job to make sure you’re safe,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m your responsibility,” Marta said, her voice softer now.
“My responsibility is the safety and wellbeing of the people on the Station. You are important to Asha’s wellbeing, therefore you come under that umbrella.”
She pushed her hand through her hair, her emotions quieting as her brow furrowed.
“My father doesn’t know Asha,” she said. “Well, he probably met her a couple of times. But I’d be really surprised if he remembered. He got out of prison last time when I was fourteen and he was back in again before my fifteenth birthday, there wasn’t enough time for him to get to know me properly, never mind my friends.”
Tarkken nodded.
“And I’m making it sound like I think he’d be the sort of person who would want to hurt her,” she said, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her palms. “It’s not that. My Dad… he’s an idiot, but he’s not a violent idiot. He wouldn’t hurt anyone himself. But he’s also got no concept of ‘oversharing’. He’d tell anyone anything, and I think that’s where the danger would be. I don’t think I’ve said anything to him that I’d be worried about someone knowing.”
“Do you think there’s a chance you were recognised by the guy in the flat?”
Marta shook her head. “I doubt it. I keep out of the spotlight. I don’t go to the fancy parties and I’ve not hung out with Ash anywhere except on the Station. I don’t think there have been any pictures of me in any of the papers or magazines.” Her lips quirked in a brief smile. “No one cares about the Princess’ childhood friends.”
Tarkken agreed with her assessment, even as a stray thought crossed his mind that the press were missing a trick. Asha was more typically beautiful with those sultry grey eyes and her sun kissed skin, but Tarkken thought if the two of them stood together, it was Marta who would draw the eye. Asha had the public attention, but Marta was, well, she was dramatic. Loud. And gorgeous with it.
Tarkken almost frowned at himself for thinking it, but caught himself before the expression formed. Somehow, he had Marta a little bit on side, and he intended to keep her there, for the sake of his sanity if nothing else. His brain would probably break if he tried to keep out any more of her anger.
“Okay,” he said. “Good. So you’re not worried about leaving here, carrying on as normal?”
“Considerably less worried about that than I am about not being allowed to leave.”
She narrowed her eyes a fraction, scrutinising him.
“You’re not going to be kept here,” he said. “They’ve got no reason to keep you. They asked if I had one - I’ve already told them I don’t.”
A flicker of relief crossed her face and her emotions, but it was short lived.
“And my father?”
“I told them I didn’t know anything about your father."
She caught his gaze, held it, a faint flush building in her pale face, announcing her embarrassment as clearly as the pulsing emotions only Tarkken could sense.
“Look,” she said. “Prison is usually an education, and not in the way it’s supposed to be. My Dad has definitely picked up some wonky ideas about the Intergalactic Community. He’s… he’s the sort of guy who always finds someone else to blame for his own problems, and I suspect you guys are just an easy and convenient target. I don’t think it’s deep-rooted, because honestly, except laziness and entitlement, nothing is deep rooted with him.”
She didn’t move, but Tarkken felt her shore herself up, preparing for rejection. Her mouth hardened, brows furrowing a little as she took a deep breath.
“If that guy he was hanging round with is a member of the EHPL, odds are that my Dad now knows about it and probably agrees with the messaging. But I can’t see him agreeing with the methods you’re concerned about. The bombs and the riots. My Dad is the sort who loves to run his mouth in the pub and get riled up with a load of people that agree with him - then stagger home and sleep it off and be back to his affable self the next morning. He’s not a baseball bat wielding hooligan.”
Tarkken thought of Superintendent Jackson’s words. Model prisoner. Nothing violent. There was no rosy tint to Marta’s emotional landscape, either, no indication that she was recalling only what she wanted to recall. Her emotions were a roiling, churning mess, but there was nothing dishonest there.
“I am trying really hard to get him back on the right path,” she said. “He just got out of prison, and I’m here, instead of on the Olympia with everyone else, because I’m trying to keep him out of trouble. Unfortunately, he’s extremely good at finding it. Which is why we’re in a Police Station, twenty-four hours later. But whatever his strange ideas about the Intergalactic Community are - the stuff that guy in that house we were arrested in is in to, my Dad hasn’t had time to get involved in that. He can only have met that guy last night at the earliest, and while I’m beyond furious that he used the time he was supposed to be using for filling in job applications to go to the pub and hang out with drug dealers, he doesn’t deserve to be locked up for this any more than I do.”
“Okay,” Tarkken said. “Then I’ll let the Superintendent know that I can see no reason not to release him with you.”
“Thank you,” Marta said, her shoulders sagging with relief. For a moment, she just sat there, taking a few more deep breaths. Tarkken could sense her trying to compose herself, and when she looked up, there was no trace of the emotional turmoil on her face. “So… The EHPL are still going, huh?”
“They’re one of the last holdouts,” Tarkken said. “Most of the others have disbanded now.”
“And is this about catching the people from last time, or are they up to something new?” Marta frowned. “You probably can’t tell me that, can you?”
“It’s about taking out Nick Gillespie,” Tarkken said. “I don’t have any intelligence that there’s going to be another attack. But then I didn’t last time.”
He tried not to wince as he said it, the little voice in his head loud and insistent.
You let them all down.
If Marta had any feelings about his failure, he managed to stay close enough to the surface of her emotions to avoid them. There was a flash of anger, but remembered anger, not current anger. There was a difference, and with some people, Tarkken couldn’t tell. But Marta, even when he was trying his best to stay out of her head, was like an open book to him.
“I hate the thought that that asshole is somewhere out there, gunning for my girl.” She shot him a wry grin. “And your boy, too, I’ve grown rather fond of him.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to them,” Tarkken said.
Not this time.
Chapter 5
MARTA TRIED HER BEST NOT TO scowl at the officer handing over her belongings. Objectively, she knew they were just people trying to do their jobs, and that they’d had every reason to be suspicious of her. But still - she’d had to spend several hours sitting on a disgusting blue mattress in a cell that had been used by God only knew how many people before her. And she’d watched police shows before. She knew what people got up to in those cells.
The need for a shower and a change of clothes itched across her skin. It wasn’t just the cell - she could still remember the stink of the bedsit, could practically feel it in her lungs. A thorough decontamination was what she needed. And then to sleep for about a week.
Tarkken waited by the door for her. He’d offered her a lift home, which surprised her, since his feelings for her obviously hadn’t shifted from contempt. Marta supposed his dislike of her had to do with the fact that she had a stolen police radio. She wasn’t going to waste her breath explaining that she wasn’t the one who stole it, that it had been one of a collection of dodgy things she’d found shoved in the back of one of the wardrobes in her flat, a parting gift from the guy who’d lived there before and had to go on the run after embezzling a large amount of money from the Government. Marta’s only crime had been in keeping it.
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