Take Two

by Evangeline Anderson

  Holt nodded at Blakely, signaling his partner to call in the back-up while he kept Van Heusen busy. If everything was done correctly, the old pimp would be safely in restraints before he knew anything was wrong, but Holt wanted to be nearby when it happened. Van Heusen had been prosecuted many times before but never convicted, mostly because the witnesses had a convenient way of dying and the evidence always somehow melted away. Holt didn’t intend for that to happen this time. They had Van Heusen dead to rights with the largest collection of illegal tanks he or anyone else had ever seen, and he didn’t want to give the old man a chance to start a countdown and blow the evidence and all the workers that knew about it sky-high while Van Heusen himself slipped out some secret entrance.

  “Keep close and stay behind me,” he murmured to Sadie, thinking of the deadly snub-nosed needler hidden in Van Heusen’s smoking jacket. “Things are gonna go down fast and I don’t want you hurt. Understand?”

  “Got it,” she replied, her lips barely moving. Holt could feel some of the emotional turmoil inside her mind turn to excitement as they walked back toward where Van Heusen was sitting easily in a floating air-cushion and smoking his pipe again while he waited for them to tour the room. Holt felt it pumping in his own veins as well—the thrill of a bust about to go down; it never failed to fill him with adrenaline.

  “Well, well.” Van Heusen got to his feet carefully and smiled. “And how do you find my equipment, Mr. Day? It’s top of the line, you know.”

  “It’s fine equipment all right,” Holt agreed. Through the adrenaline-heightened T-link he heard Blakely directing the back-up squad through the back door and knew federal agents would be swarming down the long, tank-filled isles at any moment. He could feel his own version of Van Heusen’s cold, sharklike grin spreading over his own face at the thought.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mr. Van Heusen,” he said to the anxiously waiting man.

  “Your processes won’t work with my equipment?” Van Heusen looked so upset it was almost comical.

  “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.” Holt moved in closer so that he could keep an eye on the old man’s hands. “Not only is there no ‘conditioning process,’ but you’re also under arrest for the possession of illegal flesh tanks and the use of black market brains.”

  Van Heusen made a move toward his jacket’s inside pocket, but this time Holt was too quick for him. He slapped a set of restraints he’d had hidden in his own inner pocket on the skinny, withered wrists and removed Van Heusen’s needler in one motion.

  Van Heusen looked at him angrily. “I suppose the girl isn’t really a prostie at all,” he said in disgust. “I should have known better than to think such marked improvements were possible.”

  “Got it in one,” Holt said, grinning. “Although you have to admit if you really could make a prostie as attractive as my colleague here,” he nodded at Sadie who stared back impassively. “You’d make a mint overnight.”

  “Agreed,” Van Heusen said sourly. “Unfortunately, I was more interested in growing a new body for myself that was perfect in every respect than ‘making a mint’ as you put it. Money I have in abundance, but my youth is long behind me. You have greatly disappointed me, Mr. Day.”

  “It’s Detective Holtstein, Old Earth Vice,” Holt said. “Pleased to meet you, Van Heusen. My partner and I will be seeing you in court. Now, you have the right to remain silent,” he began and then there was a sudden commotion behind him and all hell broke loose.

  19

  Later Sadie couldn’t remember anything but a melee of yelling voices and colored uniforms. The workers, dressed all in white, were being herded into a loose group by the federal agents in orange and blue, but they weren’t going quietly. She was trying to stay close to Holt, but somehow she got swept into the crowd, just another body in the rising tide of disorder.

  Van Heusen’s voice, surprisingly loud and clear, suddenly cut through the racket of babbling voices. “The girl—get the girl!” he shouted, and after one horrified moment Sadie realized he was talking about her. Why me? she had time to think and then a thick arm was locked around her neck, choking her, cutting off her air. She fought instinctively, kicking backward with the high-heeled shoes she had on, trying to connect with something solid. But all she felt was the soft give of the protective suit of the worker that held her, kicking and squirming, against his body.

  “I’ll do it, I swear I’ll do it,” he was shouting in her ear and Sadie felt the sharp pricking of a pointed instrument against the side of her neck. Oh my Goddess, he has a knife! The thought was barely a blip in the front of her mind and then someone knocked the man holding her flat and she was pinned beneath a bulky, male body, all the breath crushed immediately out of her lungs. The weapon he had been holding at her throat jogged upward as his arms came up instinctively to break his fall. Sadie felt a burning line of pain across her cheek and there was a silvery glint in the corner of one eye before the sharp, pointed thing skittered away into the confusion of shuffling feet.

  Almost got my eye, she had time to think and then her forehead connected with the floor and everything was darkness.

  “I think she’s comin’ out of it.”

  Sadie opened her eyes to a dimly lighted room that seemed familiar somehow. Home? she thought confusedly, thinking of her austere little bedroom at Aunt Minnie’s house in Goshen where everything, including the walls and sheets, was a pure, blank white. Aunt Minnie had forbidden her to decorate the room, believing that Sadie would hang “devil posters” as she called the holo-vids of music stars most girls liked, on the walls of her guest room. Sadie supposed she might have, too, if there had been any way to see a concert in Goshen, but none of the bigger groups ever stopped there because the colony was too morally uptight for them to sell enough tickets to make it worth their while.

  “Sadie?” She recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. Gerald? But no, this voice was deeper than Gerald’s whiny tenor; a soothing baritone she associated with warmth and comfort and safety and…love? That couldn’t be right, though. Who had ever loved her, truly loved and wanted her since her parents had died in the shuttle crash when she was twelve?

  “Sweetheart, don’t try to move. The medi-tech had to give you somethin’ for the pain and it knocked you out.” Another deep, gentle voice, this one with a New Brooklyn accent. She knew someone from New Brooklyn, didn’t she? But how could she? Old Earth was millions of miles from Io.

  Sadie tried to sit up in bed and failed. She became aware of a dull throbbing pain behind her eyes, the remains of a really bad headache, she supposed, and then strong arms were lifting her into a semi-sitting position.

  “Easy, honey,” the first voice soothed.

  “Weak as a kitten.” It was the second voice again. Who were these people and why did the voices floating above her head provoke such a storm of emotion inside her?

  Sadie blinked; everything was fuzzy and her head throbbed. She reached up, thinking to brush hair out of her face and found that the right side of her face was covered with something rigid and unyielding.

  “Wha’s wrong with my face?” The stiffness over her cheek caused her to slur her words. A vague, nameless fear was beginning to surface in her brain.

  “You were cut,” the first voice said again. “In the mess after we arrested Van Heusen. Another eighth of an inch to the left and you would’ve lost an eye.”

  “Holt, don’t scare her. You’re all right, sweetheart,” the second voice said gently.

  Van Heusen…wait a minute, the bust! The name brought everything rushing back and Sadie made a conscious effort to throw off the rest of the drug-induced drowsiness and come back to herself. She remembered Holt and Blakely, the plan to pretend she was a prototype prostie, the things they’d had to do to make Van Heusen believe, the bond between herself and the two detectives…The bond. That must be why I can feel their emotions. Sorrow, regret, worry, love, and an aching need filled her head before she made an effort to bl
ock it out.

  She was getting better at that, she realized, better at ignoring the alien emotions in her head so that she could think clearly. Maybe in time she’d be able to use the bond like a vid-screen, tuning in and turning it up when she needed to know the emotional state of her men and turning it down to avoid mental confusion and strain when she didn’t.

  What am I thinking? Sadie realized she was thinking about the bond as though it was a permanent part of her life when she knew that could never be. She had to get away from Blakely and Holt, so far away that the bond lost all its power, thinned away to nothing, so that she could be on her own again. But why? Why do I have to leave and get away? Blakely and Holt love me… She pushed the thought away; it was obviously just the remains of the drug in her system talking anyway. Right now she had to ascertain how badly she was hurt.

  She brought up a hand and felt the stiffness over her right cheek again. “How bad?” she croaked, struggling to focus her eyes on the two worried faces leaning over her on either side of the bed. In the dim light she could see a worried frown on Blakely’s dark face and a grim expression on Holt’s chiseled features.

  “Not good,” Holt said at last, apparently deciding to tell her the truth and get it over with. “You’re going to need some reconstructive surgery, and even then there might be a scar.”

  “Holt!” Blakely hissed, shaking his head. The blond detective frowned at his partner.

  “She needs to know, Blakely.”

  “Well didja have to just say it out like that?”

  “I need to see.” Sadie interrupted them. She struggled to sit up and swing her legs over the side of the bed, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “Not right now, honey,” Blakely said in an appeasing tone. “Why don’t you try to get a little more rest?”

  “No. I need to see,” She insisted. She finally managed to get her feet on the floor, but the drug residue that lingered in her system made her feel like her legs were made of lead, and she wasn’t completely sure they would support her. “Now,” she added, tottering to her feet. For a moment she was sure she would make it to the fresher door, and then the world tilted and she felt herself collapse in slow motion. Strong arms caught her and Holt supported her on one side and Blakely on the other. Sadie was glad because her legs now seemed to be made out of rubber and she realized there was no way she was getting anywhere on them.

  “Blake’s right; you really don’t want to see right now,” Holt said in her ear. “Just wait a little while until the swelling goes down, Sadie.”

  “Don’t want to wait,” she said as forcefully as she could. “Please, Holt, just let me see. My face feels so strange.”

  Holt sighed deeply and she felt Blakely’s arm tighten around her waist. “All right, fine,” the blond man finally said. “But I’m afraid you’re not going to like what you see.”

  “Anything’s better than not knowing,” she said, feeling that it must be true. Sadie had never been the kind of person who could wait patiently for bad news—she had to know the worst immediately. Borrowing trouble, her Aunt Minnie had called that particular character trait. Getting to the bottom of things, Sadie called it.

  “C’mon, honey.” It was Blakely in her other ear and together, he and Holt supported her into the fresher and stood her in front of the holo-viewer that hovered in front of the sink.

  Sadie took a deep breath and looked at her own face in the viewer. Her hair was a wild, honey-colored bird’s nest of tangles and there were dark, bruised-looking hollows beneath her matching eyes. A lump the size of an egg was rising from one side of her forehead and the entire right side of her face was covered in a stiff white flexi-seal that contrasted oddly with the screaming red prostie dress she still wore. Why hadn’t Blakely and Holt gotten her into something more comfortable? Probably didn’t want to touch me without my permission, she realized. Although after what the three of them had done together at Van Heusen’s house, it seemed like a needless precaution. Just the thought of that, the memory of all three of them on their knees on the rug with the firelight playing over them while they moved together, touched each other, was enough to make Sadie’s breath come short and her face turn red, the half of it she could see at least.

  Putting the incident firmly out of her head, Sadie turned her attention back to the face in the viewer. Carefully, wincing as the adhesive that held the seal in place pulled at her skin, she moved the bulky white covering aside to look at her face. What she saw was worse than she could have imagined.

  I will not cry, Sadie told herself grimly but despite her determination, the girl in the holo-viewer had tears leaking down her ravaged face and so Sadie supposed she must as well.

  She had never thought of herself as a beauty queen, although she supposed she was pretty enough or she never could have passed as a prostie. Other than that she’d never given her looks much thought, had taken them for granted. Looking in the viewer, Sadie realized she’d never be able to take being pretty for granted again.

  A jagged red line bisected her right cheek starting at the corner of her right eye and ending just below her ear. The wound was stitched together with neat little sutures that pulled the right side of her face into an ugly grimace when she tried to move her mouth. Holt was right, even with reconstructive surgery it was probably going to leave a hell of a scar. Sadie stared until the image in the viewer doubled and then trebled into a blur of tears and she couldn’t see anymore.

  Stumbling, she staggered away from the sink and would have fallen if Blakely hadn’t caught her and pulled her close. Sadie buried the left side of her face against the side of his neck, feeling the rough brush of his dense curls against her hot skin and sobbed. Blakely held her close, one arm locked around her waist, the other stroking her back.

  “Shh, honey, don’t cry. It’s not so bad,” he whispered softly.

  Sadie pulled away from him abruptly. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “I’m…I’m disfigured for life. How could it be any worse?”

  “He was aiming for your throat,” Holt said grimly. “If he hadn’t missed you wouldn’t be here right now. That would be a hell of a lot worse.”

  “You’re not makin’ this any easier for her, Holt.” Blakely’s voice was low and angry. He pulled Sadie close again, being careful of her injured face and resumed his soothing backrub. “I’m sorry we didn’t get you fixed up better kid,” he said to her. “But there weren’t any reconstructive surgeons on Iapetus. I told the medi-tech we were takin’ you back to Io though, and he said you oughta get somebody top of the line to see you once you got home, no problem.”

  “Back…back to Io?” Sadie pulled away again, looking doubtfully into the indigo depths of Blakely’s black-fringed eyes.

  “Sure, back to Io.” Sadie turned her head to look at Holt as well. The blond detective was leaning against the sink platform in a pose of casual grace, but the set of his shoulders was tense and stiff. “The bust is over, Sadie, and you saw it all from the front line. You can write it up and send it out to the news-vids the minute we get to Io. It’ll be breaking news and you’ll have an eyewitness account.”

  “But,” Sadie looked at the ice-blue eyes, confused. “I thought with the bond…”

  “What didja think—we’d kidnap you ’n take you back to Old Earth?” Blakely asked gently.

  “You made it pretty clear how you felt about everything, kid. We wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “No…no, of course not.” Sadie pulled away from him to lean against the sink beside Holt, her back carefully to the holo-viewer. Of course they wouldn’t force her to come with them if she didn’t want to. They would drop her off on Io, leaving her to get on with her life while they got on with theirs, millions of miles away. She would probably never see them again. Sadie swallowed hard, wondering why there was suddenly such a lump in her throat.

  “What…what about the bond?” she made herself ask. “What will happen when we get so far…” she swallowed again, “so far away from
each other?”

  Blakely cleared his throat. “We think it’ll fade after a while, especially as Holt and I get farther and farther away from you.” His deep voice had a hollow tone and Sadie could feel his regret and sorrow loud and clear at the back of her mind.

  “Oh.” She turned to go, where she wasn’t sure, maybe back to bed or to look up reconstructive surgeons in the Io web-pages online. She knew exactly what Aunt Minnie would say when she saw her niece’s horribly scarred face. She would say it was all Sadie’s fault for going off on such a crazy, immoral mission in the first place instead of staying home and marrying that nice Gerald. A large part of Sadie was inclined to agree with that; she was only getting what she deserved for the way she’d been acting lately.

  “You don’t deserve any of this.” Holt’s voice was a little ragged and he grabbed her arm to keep her from leaving the fresher “Sadie, please stop being so hard on yourself.”

  “How…?” She looked at Holt blankly and then remembered the bond. They must be feeling her guilt and who knew what else through it.

  “Besides,” Holt continued roughly. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to go back to Io by yourself. You can come with us to Old Earth…”

  “Holt,” she said as gently as she could. “You know I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Blakely let out a sigh. “Yeah, we know but Holt couldn’t help askin’, kid.”

  “At the very least, though, you don’t have to go back with a scar,” Holt persisted. He ran a large hand through his pale golden hair, making it into a nimbus of light around his head. “Let us…let us heal you, Sadie. One last time,” he pleaded softly.

  “Heal me?” For some reason it hadn’t even occurred to her, although now that she thought about it, she knew it was possible.