He was a fantastic investigator, though, with a closure rate that rivaled Xyven’s. Having Ostaka on her team kept her closures high. She valued that.
She also sent him on a lot of jobs, ostensibly because of those high closure rates, but also because he unnerved her.
Sometimes she wondered if he was stalking her or if he just wanted her to feel uncomfortable and complain about him. She thought it might be the latter, which was why she didn’t report him. She didn’t want to get into a he-said she-said situation with Lawrence Ostaka. She had a hunch his meticulous investigation skills would carry over into any conflict he had with another employee—particularly a superior—and quite frankly, she hadn’t cared enough about him to meticulously record every single thing he had done to irritate her.
“Xyven didn’t want to do a joint investigation, huh?” Ostaka said.
She started and for a moment, wondered how Ostaka had known that. Then she smiled herself. She could be so clueless sometimes. Duh. Of course, he had known that she wanted a joint investigation. Why else would she come to this part of the base?
“What brings you here, Lawrence?” she asked, taking advantage of the fact that she didn’t have to use his last name.
She knew she was being a bit passive-aggressive. Her behavior was less about Ostaka than it was about Xyven, and she knew that too. She didn’t care at the moment.
“Honestly,” he said in a tone that put her on guard. People who said honestly like that often meant just the opposite, “I was here to volunteer for whatever assignment you were going for.”
She frowned at him. “You followed me?”
“Yeah,” he said.
She was surprised he had admitted it so easily, and was about to say so, but he hadn’t finished.
“I was coming to your office to see if you had something new for me. I’ve been back on the base for nearly a month. Usually you send me somewhere new before now.”
This time, she let her surprise show. He was right: she usually did try to reassign him quickly because she found him so very annoying.
She had gotten sidetracked with the entire Moon investigation thing.
She pushed past him just a little so that she could hang up the suit. As she did so, she made sure she placed it on the extra cleaning rack. She had hit the suit’s automatic cleaning cycle, but she hated leaving any DNA behind, so she always set the suits she wore on the automated cleaning rack.
“And,” he added when she still hadn’t spoken, “I’ve never done a Joint Unit investigation. I’d love to see how some of the other investigators work.”
“I wish I could help you there,” she said. “Xyven and I don’t have a joint investigation going.”
“Then why were you visiting him?”
She turned.
“Lawrence, you want to rethink that question?”
His face fell just a bit. She didn’t like it when he did the “I’m so innocent” thing. It never worked. He didn’t have the ability or the personality to pull it off.
“I’m just—is there something you can assign me to? Because this Moon bombing thing has me antsy. I’d love to go to the Moon to investigate.”
“Wouldn’t we all?” she asked. “I’ll see what’s up next on the rotation, and let you know, all right?”
“You’re not tasked with running that investigation?” he asked in such a way that let her know he already knew she was in charge of that investigation.
“Excuse me,” she said, and pushed past him. Then she headed down the corridor at her normal clip.
She turned up her hearing enhancement, listening for his footsteps in case he was following her. As far as she could tell without looking, he wasn’t.
She knew she shouldn’t be so annoyed by him, but she was.
And because she was, she wasn’t going to assign him to the Moon. She would set up her own teams without Lawrence Ostaka.
She had an investigation in Valhalla Dome that needed a second eye. She’d send him there. He’d close that case faster than the original investigator.
She probably wasn’t making the most professional decisions regarding Ostaka, but she didn’t care.
He’d annoyed her one too many times, and she didn’t need the distraction right now.
She checked her links as she walked, trying to see just how fast she could get him off this base.
Because the sooner he was gone, the better she would feel.
EIGHTEEN
DABIR KASPIAN WOULDN’T let her work right away. Berhane understood, really she did, but she felt an underlying frustration. She wanted to work. She needed to work.
He wanted her to change her mind.
He didn’t say that in so many words—or maybe he did. After scanning the forms she had filled out, he had said, You won’t be assigned field work until you’ve finished training, and training won’t start for two more days. If things change in those few days, please feel free to let us know.
She had almost told him in no uncertain terms that of course she would return, and no, she wouldn’t change her mind, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the realization that his words were less about her than they were about the experiences he’d had with Armstrong S&R. Or maybe she finally understood this was about not pissing off a donor, and dealing with volunteers.
She had smiled at him, asked him what time he needed her, and then thanked him. She didn’t ask him for the shorter way out of the warehouse.
She wanted to see all those supplies again, to know exactly where her donations were going.
The red lines of the map had reappeared in front of her eyes. She could tell immediately that the track back was shorter. Kaspian had updated her exit routes without her even asking.
She blinked the new route away and asked her system to let her retrace her steps.
The lines vanished, then reappeared, adding a good ten minutes onto her walk.
She added more, threading her way through the pallets of material. She was nearly to the door when she heard someone curse.
She started. “Sorry?” she said, then wondered if she should even have spoken up. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought attention to herself.
A man peered around a pallet covered with dried food packages. He held a small, ancient scanner in his right hand. His straight black hair flopped over his forehead.
She had seen him before; she knew she had. It took her a moment to place him.
The port. Fiona’s father. What was his name? Donal. Donal Ó Brádaigh, he had said, with just a bit of a lilt in his voice.
“Mr. Ó Brádaigh?” Berhane asked.
He stepped into the small aisle between pallets. The effect was startling. The narrowness of the aisle made his shoulders seem broader than she remembered, but the height of the pallets made him seem short. She had remembered him being taller than she was.
“Ms. Magalhães?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you.” She walked toward him, even though she probably should have been leaving.
He was taller, just like she remembered.
“I’m just finishing up,” he said.
“You work here?” she asked.
He wasn’t wearing any kind of identifying clothing. What he was wearing had some black stains along the ankles and thighs, and some heavy wear on the knees. He also wore work boots that looked like they were older than he was.
“Volunteer,” he said. “When I can.”
“When your wife can watch your daughter,” Berhane said, understanding in her voice.
His cheeks turned a dusty shade of red. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid my wife is gone.”
Gone. Berhane didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he said the word with such sadness she wasn’t sure she should ask.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No need to be sorry. It’s been four years.” Even though something in his voice made it sound like yesterday.
Berhane frowned just a little. W
asn’t little Fiona about four? But Berhane had been nosy enough.
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said. “I was just on my way out.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m just waiting for the next train. I thought I’d get a bit more scanning done before it showed up.”
Berhane looked over her shoulder. “How do you know when it gets here?”
“There are announcements,” he said. “This place is so huge, we don’t want anyone to miss a train and get stuck here.”
Echoing her thoughts from her arrival. She nodded, hoping she didn’t look quite as nervous as she felt.
“First time here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Inspecting where your money is going?” Somehow he didn’t make the question sound rude. It seemed routine.
“No,” she said. “I want to go to work.”
“It’s rather dull, scanning things in the warehouse,” he said.
“I…was hoping to be in the field.”
His eyebrows went up. He snapped a finger and a serving bot showed up, floating down the aisle, its top a flat tray. He set the scanner on the tray, and the bot disappeared.
“Why don’t they scan?” she asked, nodding toward the bot.
“We need eyeballs on everything,” he said. “Since we’re working with volunteers, we have to make sure they don’t ‘accidentally’ compensate themselves with some of our supplies, and then fudge the system to cover it.”
“Can’t someone set up an inventory system that’s hard to fudge?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. “For a lot of money. And then that someone would have to update it. It wouldn’t be volunteer friendly.”
“But wouldn’t the volunteers be better off in the field—”
“Not everyone can handle the field,” he said. “And a lot of people are like you. They want to do something, but they might only have an hour here or an hour there. They can scan things or help with the ordering or make sure the right supplies are on the right train. There’s so much more to do here than we could ever manage. Especially now.”
She nodded. She wondered if some of the people who couldn’t “handle” the field had tried, or if Kaspian and his crew washed them out in training.
She would find out, she supposed.
“Do you work here?” she asked.
He smiled. “No. I volunteer.”
“It’s clear you didn’t just join up after Anniversary Day,” she said.
His smile faded. “I’ve been here a while. Less than I want, but more than I should, probably, given Fee.”
It took Berhane a moment to realize he meant his daughter, Fiona, and not some fee for working here.
“Your daughter is special,” she said.
“I like to think so,” he said.
An announcement for the next train into Armstrong sounded overhead and across her links. It would leave ten minutes from now.
“I guess we should go,” he said.
She nodded and let him lead her out of the warehouse of pallets. She kept the map on in her links though; she was beginning to wonder if she would ever entirely trust anyone.
He was leading her the way the map showed.
They reached the platform. The train waited, silver coated with gray Moon dust. No one sat inside the car.
Ó Brádaigh gestured with his hand, as if he were holding a door open for her. She smiled at him and boarded first.
He followed, and hesitated as if he wasn’t sure if he should sit near her. After a moment, he sat across from her.
“I’m kind of amazed you want to go in the field,” he said.
She shrugged a shoulder. “I want to contribute.”
“There are other ways to contribute.” He sounded like Kaspian.
“Yes,” she said, “and I’m doing them. But they don’t feel like enough.”
Ó Brádaigh studied her for a moment. “Guilt?” he asked softly.
She stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“It just seems like a reaction… I don’t know. I’m sorry. That was presumptuous of me.”
The train beeped. A warning flashed across her links that the train would leave in less than a minute.
No one else joined them on the train.
“What was?” she asked.
“That, you know, I thought, maybe you…” He shook his head again.
“I’m feeling guilty because I’m rich and privileged?” she asked, careful not to sound bitter.
“No, I was thinking, sometimes when a major crisis happens, we feel like if we could just do something, then we can make up for surviving it.” He looked down. “Or, at least, I do.”
She was going to argue with him until that last sentence, uttered so softly she almost missed it.
Did she want to explain herself to this man? She didn’t even know him, yet she felt like she did.
“I…um…yeah, that’s probably a component,” she said. “My mother died four years ago. In the first bombing.”
He raised his head. His expression was…quizzical? Fascinated? She couldn’t quite tell.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t have to pick up Fee for another hour. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
A cup of coffee. No one had offered to buy her coffee while on a train since her mother’s last morning.
Berhane felt a pang deep in her heart. She almost said no. And because she almost said no, she made herself smile.
“I’d like that,” she said.
NINETEEN
“FIRST,” THE GIRL said, “you tell me what a famous rich guy like you is doing here.”
Deshin stared at her, activating one of his chips. She was clearly Pietres’ daughter. Then she figured out who Deshin was. Most people in Armstrong had heard of him, but not seen him. It was rare for him to be recognized outside of the city or the Moon’s business community.
But that didn’t mean much. If she paid attention to people like her father or people who had done business with her father in the past, she might know who Deshin was.
So he launched a quick search of his internal databases, to make sure she was who she said she was.
He also checked for a record of Pietres’s death. That came up immediately and confirmed what she told Deshin: Pietres had died a week before Anniversary Day, but no cause was listed.
The lights had finally turned completely on in the small storefront. It was cluttered and dusty, filled with unlabeled vials and boxes. Some rocks and gems glittered on one shelf, a few bound books were stacked on another. He’d worked with books like that before. Their pages were often coated with poisons that were best transferred on paper.
In this place, he knew better than to touch anything with his bare hands. He had warned Jakande about the same thing, and he hoped Jakande remembered.
Jakande was focused on Deshin and the girl, standing a half step behind Deshin, and probably turned slightly so that he could see the door as well as the girl behind the counter.
Deshin didn’t turn to look, so he didn’t know for certain. He just knew how Jakande did his job.
The search on the girl came back slowly—the private network that Deshin used was having trouble getting power down here. But it was a tribute to the network that it could work even in this place. Deshin would wager that most people’s private networks didn’t work at all in Pietres’s storefront.
According to the search, the girl’s name was Ethelina. She was twenty-two, and she was the only surviving member of Pietres’s family. His sons had been killed more than a decade ago, and his wife had died twenty years before.
Deshin had known none of that before now, even though he had done business with Pietres more recently than twenty-five years ago. Of course, Deshin hadn’t done the business face to face. He had made the contact, then had his people handle things.
Pietres had been in a dangerous business, and the collateral damage that had been his family simply showed it.
“Ethelina,”
Deshin said, and the girl started. Her colorless eyes grew wide. She hadn’t expected him to find her name at all. “Tell me what happened to your father.”
She bit her upper lip. To her credit, she didn’t look in any direction or even seem to access her links. That, more than anything, told Deshin that she was alone down here, and that no one else had hacked the business or the business’s networks.
She swallowed hard, then glanced at Jakande.
“You may as well trust me,” Deshin said. “Because no one else is going to help you out. Since your family is gone and your father didn’t make many friends, you’re going to have to try to run his business on your own. And believe me, a protected kid who went to the Moon’s best schools wasn’t trained to run this kind of work, not with the kind of people you’ll run into.”
She swallowed hard again. “People like you, Mr. Deshin?”
He smiled. It was an old smile, one he rarely used any more. Half charm, half menace. It used to have quite an impact on women all those years ago. They saw the charm and discounted the menace. Men often saw only the menace and discounted the charm.
She glanced at Jakande again, then back at Deshin. She had apparently noticed both the charm and the menace, because the attitude she had shown just a moment before faded.
He waited. She would come around. She had no one, and she was scared. She’d already made two mistakes in this conversation, and if she thought it through, she would realize what those mistakes were.
“If I tell you what happened to my father, will you leave me alone?” she asked.
“If you want me to,” Deshin said, and meant it. He would leave her alone. But he might send a business associate here to try to buy out the last of Pietres’ stock and his stored information.
Deshin wasn’t going to tell her that, though.
She swallowed a third time. It seemed to be an involuntary response, a tell, something that would destroy her in this business.
He couldn’t help himself: He thought of Paavo, and how unsuited the boy would be at her age if Deshin had died without training him. (Even if Deshin did train him; Paavo was marching on a similar education track to the one Ethelina had marched.)
Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel Page 12