Caught in Amber

by Pegau, Cathy

  She knew he trusted her not to run to Guy with what he was doing, but being a government lawman didn’t make him trustworthy in her eyes. In fact, in her experience, she should be more wary because of it. Power and corruption and all that.

  But he had changed her status, like he said he would. Those pics, the evidence of Guy’s impact on women, would haunt her if she refused to do as little as listen to his plan. She shivered, remembering the ferocity of his gaze, the passion behind his words, as he asked for her help.

  Sasha drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She could hear him out then make a decision. A chance to get the damn chip deactivated was worth that much at least.

  “Not completely,” she said as she continued to the street, “but I’ll go with you for now.”

  The CMA agent caught up with her in a few strides. His comm was in his hand and he tapped icons as he spoke. “We can catch a taxi at the corner.”

  They waited beneath the blue light of a street lamp, stamping their feet against the cold. Snow crunched underfoot and cars hummed past. There were few pedestrians and most were more interested in getting out of the cold than in paying attention to her and Sterling. Eighty million kilometers beyond the orbit of the closest of the three more hospitable Core planets, the average temperature of Nevarro hovered at a brisk negative ten Celsius.

  When the ground taxi pulled up to the curb, Sterling opened the rear door for her. Sasha slid across the crackling plastic seat, grateful for the warmth inside, even if it stank of damp feet.

  “Broadway and Juniper,” he told the driver as he settled in and shut the door.

  The engine whined and the taxi peeled away from the curb.

  Broadway ran through the center of Pandalus’s Revivalist Quarter, home to about one hundred thousand of the faithful, and Juniper Road skirted a middling neighborhood. Did he live in or near the Quarter or just feel more comfortable here?

  Revivalists had been on Nevarro practically from the landing of the first colony ship in 2095. Nearly half of the current seven million inhabitants followed the tenets or were descended from practitioners, and she suspected Sterling was the latter. Growing up, Sasha had been one of the few of her friends who wasn’t involved in the church, though her family might as well have been.

  She sneaked a sideways glance at him. He lacked the Revivalist verve, but Sterling struck her as the kind of guy who kept to the straight and narrow. The kind of guy who wouldn’t have given her the time of day under normal circumstances. But these were far from normal circumstances.

  Arms crossed, she peered out the side window. Snow whipped past, blurring the buildings and the colorful adverts. Streetlights lit the inside of the taxi like a blue strobe. Other ground cars hissed by, dark hulks edged with muck-dulled operation lamps. The occasional air car passed high overhead, its running lights blinking. Beside her, Sterling shifted on the seat but said nothing.

  What did he have in mind? Whatever his plan, all she had to do was introduce him to Guy then get the hell out. He couldn’t expect her to do more than that. Acting was not her thing, and too much conversation with Guy might lead to her telling the drug dealer exactly how she felt about him. That would blow Sterling’s plan and likely get her killed. Maybe get them both killed.

  Sterling knocked on the plasti-glass between them and the driver. “Here’s fine.”

  The taxi pulled over in front of a row of stores, dark and closed for the night. This was a quieter neighborhood, even for the Revivalist Quarter. None of the buildings looked like a hotel or boarding house.

  Sterling held his comm close to the meter attached to the back of the driver’s seat and tapped keys. After a beep of acceptance for the amount he transferred from his account, the door locks disengaged. Sasha levered the handle and they got out.

  On the snowy walkway, he took her elbow again. His hand on her was more familiar than she’d let anyone become in a long time. She didn’t pull away. She should have, but she didn’t. Even if it was only to prevent her from slipping on a patch of ice, the idea of someone making an effort to keep her from getting hurt made her chest twinge.

  It wasn’t surprising that Sterling was the sort of man who’d take a woman’s elbow. What surprised her was that he’d taken hers. And that she welcomed it.

  He led her toward a narrow building with a large window adjacent to its front door. She stopped and peered inside. Simple wooden chairs surrounded several long tables. Along the walls stood shelves of old-fashioned type books, with carbon-fiber covers and flimsy pages and reader sticks. Each table had a couple of dark lamps on them, but the light came from a few dimmed overhead fixtures.

  Above a stone fireplace at the far end of the room hung an embroidered tapestry. She couldn’t see the details, but she was as sure of its content as she was of her own name; the same sort of hand-stitched piece hung in the Revivalist market where she worked. Three hands around a circle that represented Nevarro. In each hand, a symbol of the Revivalist Movement: calipers, a sickle and a dove. The script encircling the images read, Laboriosus manuum addo pacis ut.

  Laboring hands bring peace to the soul.

  As participants in the Corrections Department’s parolee Back to Work program, her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Larch, had preached the Revivalist motto to her often enough in an effort to keep her on the right path. It was meant to inspire you to do for yourself as a way of finding satisfaction and enlightenment. Sasha wondered if dealing with Sterling would fulfill that particular notion better.

  Maybe. If it didn’t get her killed.

  “This is a Revivalist Reading Room,” she said.

  Sterling continued past the front door. “Yes.” He escorted her around the corner, down an alley between the reading room and a low, dark building with large bay doors. “Fewer eyes on a Revivalist church,” he said, steering her around a slushy puddle. “My room’s above it.”

  Sasha looked up, seeing only the blank wall of the two-story building. “You don’t live here in Pandalus?”

  “My place is outside the city. I needed something anonymous and closer to the Quarter.” His eyes narrowed as he stared ahead, avoiding eye contact with her.

  She knew exactly why he rented a room. “So you could follow me more easily.”

  “Yes.”

  His honesty was at once refreshing and disappointing. So much for the parity she’d mistakenly imagined between them while in the club. He was a lawman. She was a parolee. Period.

  Sterling stopped before a recessed door and swiped a key card over the metal box beside it. Revivalists seemed to hang on to the notion of key cards, while most of the rest of civilization used bio scans of one sort or another.

  No telltale admittance light flashed or beep sounded to let him know the key worked. The door opened with a low squeal into a pitch-black space.

  Pocketing the card, his hand came back out, holding his comm. With a tap on the end, a beam of light flicked on, cutting into the darkness. Directly across from the door, metal stairs rose into more darkness.

  Sasha crossed her arms over her chest. “You want me to follow you up there.”

  He held her gaze, weariness and frustration in his eyes and in the lines across his forehead. “No more games, Sasha. No more little tests from either of us, clear?”

  She could walk away if she chose, accept the slightly better muck hole of a life than she had yesterday. And Guy would be walking around in his thousand-credit suits, screwing up one girl after the next.

  “Clear.”

  Sterling climbed the stairs, the soles of his shoes twanging on the metal treads and the flashlight bobbing behind him to light the way for her. “Push hard when you close the door.”

  Sasha did so. The clang echoed against the walls, reminding her of the cell block at the NCRC. Shaking off her apprehension, she followed him up.

  *
* *

  Sterling preceded Sasha into his room and twisted the light switch just inside the door. A single globe flickered to life overhead, threatened to go out then glowed with a harsh white glare to reveal just how crappy a room can be obtained for fifty untraceable credits a week.

  Finding an unwired, relatively safe place to conduct his business required compromises to be met, breathing room being one of them. The dank little space at the end of a danker hallway wouldn’t hold more than four adults without forcing someone to stand in the doorway. He hadn’t expected to bring anyone here, least of all someone who could turn on him if she chose to. But something about Sasha James said he could trust her. He hoped he was right.

  Sterling closed the door behind them, not bothering to lock it. No one else lived in the building, and leaving it unlocked might ease Sasha’s mind somewhat. He removed his coat and hung it on one of the hooks jutting from the back of the door.

  Sasha wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were still standing out in the snow. Her skin looked starkly pale in the unforgiving light; he couldn’t read her expression. Did he scare her that much, or was it the situation? Probably a little of both, but it couldn’t be helped. All he could do was assure her he’d do his damnedest to keep her safe. As long as she played square with him.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  Not that there was much choice in seating. A narrow cot sagged against the left-hand wall. Across from the bed was a rickety, straight-backed chair with barely space for a body to move between them. In the corner beside the chair, a Revivalists Chapbook sat on a low, painted chest.

  She took the chair and turned to face the bed, her knees together beneath her black skirt. The hem rose as she sat, revealing the shapely curve of her legs. What did the rest of her look like beneath the heavy material clothes and tights?

  Sterling gave himself a mental shake. She was anxious enough. No need for him to add ogling her legs to the stress.

  “Do you want me to take your coat?” He approached her as he would a wounded animal, risking the loss of an arm if he moved too fast.

  “No, I’m good. Just start talking so I can get back.” She threaded a hand through the long strands of hair on top of her head.

  Her eyes held steady on his as he sat across from her on the thin mattress. The bed frame creaked beneath him. Face to face, their knees nearly touched. The smallness of the room had never bothered him until now. It was impossible to ignore how tiny it was, with the two of them filling the space. Impossible to ignore how close she was when a mere intake of breath brought her rain-and-flower scent to him.

  Sterling swallowed hard and shifted backward, eliciting a rhythmic creaking from the frame. Heat rushed to his face as Sasha’s gaze dropped to the bed then quickly rose to meet his eyes. She scooted back as far as she could on the hard chair.

  “I’m going to get a job that doesn’t start until after twelve-hundred. Maybe on a planet that never has winter.” Her tone was conversational, but the words were more than lamentation about being tied to the system or the relentless cold of Nevarro. They probed for affirmation, reminded him about the terms of their agreement.

  Sterling nodded, confirming a promise he wasn’t completely sure he’d be able to keep. He’d pull every string he could to make it happen for her; he just couldn’t guarantee her chip would be deactivated like he’d said. His only relationship to Corrections was his friendship with Mickelson. But telling her that now would blow everything.

  “I know you don’t want to be with Christiansen any longer than necessary,” he said, rubbing the side of his hand across the scar on his forehead. “The less time you’re with him, the better.”

  Sasha snorted a quiet laugh. “At least we agree there.” He smiled and her cheeks pinked, but instead of glancing away she kept her gaze on him. “Where did you get that? The scar, I mean. Most people would have had it erased.”

  Sterling stopped rubbing the slightly raised line and lowered his hand. “An accident, when I was a boy. Fell on my head off a cattle feeder and got stomped.” She winced, and the compassion in her eyes for the injured boy he’d been embarrassed him. He waved off her concern. “Dad refused scar treatment, saying it would teach me not to fool around near the cows, but okayed a new eye so I could still work. Impressed my friends when I made it move independent of the other.”

  Sasha laughed at his childhood antics. Unguarded moments brought out a side of her Sterling liked. A side of her he’d bet hadn’t seen the light of day in a long time.

  As if realizing she’d let him see too much, she sobered, her features closing to him once again. She cleared her throat. “What do you need me to do?”

  Mentally, Sterling shook his head at her wariness. Damn Christiansen for what he’d done to her. “Introduce me as a potential amber dealer, someone who can expand his distribution in a new direction.”

  The muscles in her jaw tensed. “What better way to get close to him than be the same kind of low-life bastard he is, right?”

  “Exactly. I’ll be a guard you met at rehab, someone who works the system as well as works for it.”

  “That’ll sound true enough,” she said with a wry grin.

  Sterling ran his hand over his damp hair. “Yeah, as frustrating as that is in real life, it works to our advantage.”

  “So you’ll be a guard-cum-drug dealer at the rehab center.” She shrugged and shook her head, dismissing the set-up. “Those are a demi-cred a dozen. He’ll never bite on that.”

  “Not at the rehab center. I’ll propose dealing at one of the correctional mines.”

  Not to say there wasn’t drug use in the correctional mines, but it was underexploited territory for amber dealers because of the high security of the facilities. There’d been a shake-up at Exeter Mining a few months before, when the company had flouted CMA practice standards and the development of their revolutionary K-73 filters hit a lethal snag.

  The scandal had been brought to a head by the unlikeliest of people—Liv Braxton, a corporate blackmailer who fell in love with Exeter’s VP of research, Zia Talbot. Sterling had more than enough evidence to slam Exeter for its unethical, deadly research, and the fallout prompted a flurry of increased safety measures, tighter regulations and harsher penalties. Exeter’s disgrace now brought the CMA running for the slightest infraction, both in government-run correctional mines and in the private sector.

  Illegal ventures were difficult to pull off, but not impossible. If he could convince Christiansen selling amber in the correctional mines was doable, he might be able to forge a relationship with the drug dealer and get close enough to Kylie to get her out. Sterling’s position at the agency gave him plenty of inside information and some room to maneuver between departments, allowing him to create a scenario he hoped Christiansen wouldn’t be able to resist.

  He also hoped his superiors would understand, as his wasn’t a sanctioned operation. Easier to ask for forgiveness for stepping on Justice Department toes than for permission. Maybe. And if he lost his job or became an inmate himself over his plan? Well, that was a risk he was more than willing to take.

  The CMA and Justice Department weren’t his only worries. If Christiansen discovered he wasn’t who he claimed to be, it would likely get him killed and possibly put Kylie and Sasha in danger. He was used to the challenges of undercover work. Involving civilians was another matter.

  Sasha stared at him, doubt clear on her face. “Do you really think you can pull that off?”

  “We just have to make Christiansen think I can.” He grinned at her, but she didn’t seem to share his confidence. His smile faltered. “Without you, he probably wouldn’t see me at all. With you, maybe I can get close enough, get inside fast enough to get Kylie out of there.”

  A sadness darkened her eyes. “If she sees you first, if she learns you’re there to get her, she’ll hide. Or te
ll Guy. You know that, don’t you?”

  Her words and expression spoke of experience, making him wince. Had Sasha hidden from her family when they tried to retrieve her from Christiansen’s hold? Had they given up on her? Was that why there was no record of them ever coming to visit her at the NCRC? No record of a comm call or message in the last five years?

  He couldn’t imagine abandoning his sister like that, but would she spurn him and their family for the drug? If she were caught in amber, Kylie wouldn’t care about him, wouldn’t care if Christiansen threw him out or maybe even killed him. The idea of his own little sister turning on him made Sterling shake with pain and anger. He knew amber did strange things to users, and he prayed he could get Kylie out before she sank that far.

  “I know. For some reason, Kylie’s PR position doesn’t allow her to travel away from his compound very often. When she does, it’s with Christiansen or a bunch of other people.” Or was it her position with the bastard himself that kept her locked away behind the gate and walls? Either way, Sterling knew it was risky to infiltrate the drug dealer’s world, but he had no choice. “That’s why I need you to get me an in. If I can get past Christiansen, I can try to find her on my own. As long as I see her before she sees me, I have a good chance of getting her out.”

  Kylie’s life, and the lives of who knew how many women who followed her, might depend on it. He knew Sasha realized it as well, but fear of Christiansen lurked in her eyes.

  “He won’t believe me,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll mess up.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll be fine.” She had to pave the way for him or he was back at square one. “Christiansen’ll be wary of you coming back into his life, but if you can convince him you’re trying to make peace, it’ll work.”

  “Guy’s no fool. After the way I talked to him last time we were in the same room, he’ll expect I’m up to something.”