Paloma Read online

  “I’ve met him before,” Nyquist said. “I’ve read his files here. I’ve followed up on a few of the rumors. Otherwise, I have had nothing to do with him. He’s an interesting man. I have a hunch he’ll be important to the investigation, but how, I don’t know yet—and neither do you.”

  She glared at him. He had to remind himself: she had an ego. She needed it for this job. He had to accept that he would run into it as well.

  He just hated how the ego dominated her, making her forget her inexperience.

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “I’m always sure of the things I don’t know.” he said.

  Six

  Noelle DeRicci stood in front of the windows of her office, staring out at the City of Armstrong. The damage done to the dome more than a year ago by a bomb was nearly repaired. She could still see the scar—the condemned buildings, the hole in the once-familiar network of streets.

  But the dome itself looked perfect. The dome workers had just replaced the last panel two days before. She had gone to the ceremony, had spoken about loss and sadness and rebirth just like she was supposed to, and she kept her left hand beneath the podium, her fist clenched.

  No one seemed to notice that they—the police, her office, the other teams assigned to the investigation—had never figured out the identity of the bomber. They didn’t even know what had happened in that neighborhood, not really.

  The theories got bandied about all the time, and the government had settled on one—terrorists from outside Armstrong, angry at the policies of the Earth Alliance, had set off the bomb to coincide with some meetings on controversial issues inside the Alliance.

  But that was as big a guess as the one she’d heard only two days ago—that the government itself had blown a hole in the dome to scare the populace so that they’d be more complacent as the United Domes of the Moon gained more power over the citizens of the Moon.

  That last rumor—that the government had done it—was the only one that DeRicci knew to be false. The rest could be true, for all she knew. The investigations had stalled nearly a month after the bombing, and nothing she did could revive them.

  So she stared at the remaining destruction, using it to remind herself that she had gotten this job under false pretences. She was being rewarded for a heroism she never felt, for work that she felt was incomplete.

  That she had saved Armstrong once before that hadn’t mattered—that nearly disastrous Moon Marathon was a long-forgotten event. It hadn’t even been mentioned on the two-year anniversary.

  Of course, why would the sponsors mention a near disaster at Armstrong’s most popular athletic event?

  DeRicci shook her head, hands clasped behind her. She wore an expensive suit, complete with skirt, because she could afford such things now. But she kept some grungy work clothes, the kind she would have worn when she was a lowly police detective, in one of the nearby closets.

  She’d learned last year that she needed ratty clothing in case she had to oversee a crime scene.

  She should have gone to the scene this afternoon, but the phrase biochemical goo, stopped her. Maybe it provided her with her first real chance to act like a governmental official.

  She didn’t have to go to a crime scene, particularly one contaminated with some kind of biochemical goo. That was for flunkies, her nominal boss, the Moon’s governor-general, Celia Alfreda, would say.

  Biochemical goo scared DeRicci. She had been too close to a biohazard in the past, and it was not an experience she wanted to repeat.

  At least that part of the crisis was over. The building had been evacuated, HazMat teams had gone in—first the robotic units and then the human ones—and they had found nothing.

  She sighed and ran a hand over her face, then turned away from the destroyed part of the city. Her office was more to her tastes than it had been a year ago. She’d gotten rid of the clear furniture—so very trendy—and replaced it with expensive antique wood furniture, much of it purchased from shops in Armstrong’s reviving historic area.

  A few of the pieces she’d purchased herself. Then the governor-general had noticed on some visit or another here and authorized payment for a complete overhaul of the office.

  DeRicci left the green plants that spilled off most of the surfaces. They added a warmth and freshness—and she didn’t have to take care of them. Someone else took care of that.

  But everything else she had picked out. Right down to the rugs, woven in Tycho Crater, which added a touch of color to the entire place.

  She finally felt safe here. She finally felt at home. She finally felt like she belonged.

  Although she had to keep looking at that mess out her window to remind herself that she hadn’t deserved that promotion, despite what she had done during her first few months on the job.

  She had to remind herself so that she wouldn’t make any more mistakes.

  Contacting Flint, telling him about Paloma’s death, would be a mistake.

  Much as she wanted to. The news hadn’t leaked to the press yet—all they knew was that someone had died in Paloma’s building—and they were only identifying the building by neighborhood, to stem any kind of panic.

  Paloma had no next of kin that DeRicci knew of. But the police would research it anyway, and until someone was satisfied that Paloma either had no loved ones or the loved ones were notified, her name wouldn’t hit the media.

  As long as a pariah like Ki Bowles didn’t find out about any of this.

  DeRicci crossed to her desk. No matter what, she no longer needed to worry. She had to turn to other measures—whether or not Armstrong Dome needed a full-time security force; how many of the paltry funds that the United Domes of the Moon authorized her should go to large domes like Armstrong and how much should go to smaller ones like Glenn Station; and the big one, whether or not the presence of various alien groups inside the cities led to civil unrest.

  She sighed. She wasn’t designed for these kinds of decisions. But she was learning about the other kinds—the political ones.

  Keeping Flint in the dark was political. Who knew what he would do when he found out? This case was probably going to be public anyway—the city would have a mild panic when it became clear the building had been evacuated—and any investigation that would tie Flint to DeRicci wouldn’t be good.

  Still, she felt odd not telling him. Paloma meant a lot to him. In many ways, he was her next of kin.

  DeRicci sighed and forced herself to focus on the decisions she was being paid to make. As it stood, her office hadn’t had much involvement. The governor-general would be pleased that a crisis was averted.

  DeRicci should be, too. A biohazard of any kind inside a dome was more dangerous than fire.

  But she was uneasy, and not just about Flint. Something about this case, the way it started, the direction it was going, bothered her.

  Something she couldn’t investigate because it was no longer her job.

  But she knew whose job it was.

  She sent a message down her links to her assistant. Tell Nyquist to report to me as soon as he can.

  Maybe he could let her help with the investigation—just enough to get rid of this nagging sense of unease.

  Seven

  Flint had nearly made it to the office before he remembered that the place was a ruin. He would have to clean up everything and rebuild entire systems before he could trust it again.

  Right now, the only safe place he had to view all the material he’d recorded at the crime scene was the Emmeline.

  So he parked in his assigned spot at the port—not caring if someone (like Nyquist) thought he was leaving Armstrong again—and headed to Terminal 25.

  No one seemed to notice him. Back when he’d been a cop in Space Traffic, people used to watch him out of the corner of their eyes. They would try to judge if he was coming after them or if something bad was about to happen.

  He would pretend to ignore them, but he would j
udge them in return. He would see if they needed examination, if they were truly pursuing some kind of illegal activity, if they were afraid of him because of his uniform or because they knew he could arrest them if they were doing something wrong.

  Now they just treated him like another passenger, hurrying to a ship, heading out of Armstrong on business. He couldn’t change who he was, though. He still watched everyone—from the group of young men exchanging information outside one of the restaurants to a Disty couple shrinking away from all the passing humans to half a dozen Rev who plowed through this part of the port as if they owned it.

  Flint was happy to go through the secondary identification door at Terminal 25, the one that used to ask him, a Space Traffic cop, if he had any reason to be in this restricted area of the port. Now the door simply opened for him, recognizing him as one of the elite who belonged.

  He hurried past, feeling time pressure. He wanted to study his recordings. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  But as he scurried down the ramp that led to the yacht bays, he realized he could do one other thing while he was here. He could examine Paloma’s yacht, the Dove.

  He doubted the police had even thought of it. In fact, he bet that they didn’t even know about it. Only DeRicci had known—and that was because Flint had used the Dove to help her with a case back when she was still on the force.

  But DeRicci wasn’t on the force any more, either.

  He had some time.

  The question was whether or not he wanted to take it.

  He was already a suspect—Nyquist had made that clear. And, to be fair, Flint would have considered anyone close to Paloma a suspect at this moment.

  But did he want to compound it by entering her space yacht right after he had found out about her death?

  He stopped, glanced at the fork that led to the various docks. His was to the right; hers to the left.

  He’d go to his first—if nothing else, he’d make copies of the recordings so that he wouldn’t lose them—and then he’d figure out what he wanted to do.

  He had to hurry.

  He wasn’t sure if the police were ahead of him or not.

  Eight

  Ki Bowles stood. Her knees cracked and her back ached. She’d been on this dock longer than she had planned.

  The silence felt good. It was impossible to maintain all her links in this shielded section of the port. She didn’t even try. Instead, she’d been staring at the Emmeline reassessing her life.

  She stretched. She’d been here for hours, wishing her life were different. Thinking about Flint, wondering what he was really like—not the harsh man she’d met on a few occasions, nor the broken man she’d seen on that vid she’d played over and over again, the man who had barely held himself together when his baby daughter died.

  But the man who named his space yacht (of all things!) for that daughter. The man who vanished for long stretches at a time, who sometimes made choices that seemed inconsistent with the job of Retrieval Artist. The man who also made choices inconsistent with those of a cop.

  He had fascinated her, and he was inspiring her—although she wasn’t sure of the route he was unconsciously encouraging her to take.

  She’d been thinking of him so much that she wasn’t surprised when she saw him on the edge of the dock. She thought he was a figment of her imagination.

  He had to be, because Flint never looked like this—his curly blond hair messed as if he’d been in a Terran wind storm, his face blotchy and streaked with dirt, his eyes red. Usually he looked like a cherub or one of those drawings of Cupid she’d studied back when she had been an art history major, deep, deep in her secret and idealistic past.

  Not even when his daughter died had he looked so wild.

  He froze in place, and something in that movement made Bowles realize he was really here—she hadn’t conjured him up from her imagination by thinking about him so very hard. He had actually come to his yacht.

  And he had caught her staring at it.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  She deserved that. She deserved worse, really. She’d hounded him for weeks, trying to get dirt on DeRicci, and he’d repeatedly told her to leave him alone.

  Then, when the story had backfired, it was his voice she’d heard, telling her she couldn’t be trusted. Maybe that was why she had focused her attention on him, why she had studied him, why she was here now, staring at his yacht and thinking of him.

  “Well?” he asked.

  She licked her bottom lip, feeling like a schoolgirl caught staring at her first crush. She didn’t have an answer for him.

  “I don’t have any comments about any story,” he said. “So if you’re here to dig up dirt, I’m not going to help you.”

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  He stared at her, as if he couldn’t believe she had said that. “I mean it. And if you took footage of my ship, then I ask you to delete it or give it to me.”

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  “What the hell are you doing here, then?”

  She shrugged. “It’s quiet here.”

  “It’s private here. People like you aren’t supposed to get in.”

  In the past that would have angered her. In the past, she actually had been somebody who thought highly of herself, who thought she had a right to be in places like this.

  God, she’d been arrogant. She was as tired of herself as everyone else was.

  “I know,” she said. “I can still talk my way into any place.”

  His gaze met hers on the word still. He had always unnerved her a little, the way he seemed to see right through her.

  “You don’t belong here,” he said. “I’m going to make sure you won’t get in here again.”

  She held up her hands. “Don’t get anyone in trouble. It’s my fault, really.”

  Now he was staring at her as if she weren’t quite human. Maybe he’d heard the panic in her voice. She didn’t want to get Laxalt in trouble. She didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, not any more.

  But if she said that, Flint wouldn’t believe her—and who could blame him? She hadn’t always thought about the consequences of what she did. She used to think everything took a back seat to the story—that once the story—the truth, whatever it was—came out, then people would be okay with the way she had acquired it.

  She had learned how wrong she was the hard way. The truth hadn’t impressed anyone, and nearly got Bowles fired.

  That had certainly gotten her attention.

  “I don’t have time to deal with you,” he said and pushed past her. “Get out of here.”

  He smelled faintly of sweat and something else, something a little foul. And his pants legs were covered in a fine dust that looked like Moon dust.

  Her stomach clenched. Something was happening here, something important. Maybe that story she’d been waiting for.

  But his face was wild and sad. And scared.

  And reckless.

  Something had happened. Something awful. But if she pushed, she would be back where she had been only a short time before—following gut instinct and ignoring the people around her.

  He had asked her to leave.

  She would, as soon as she figured out where she was going to go.

  Nine

  Flint stopped just outside the Emmeline. He couldn’t bring himself to open the yacht’s doors until Ki Bowles left.

  He hadn’t seen her so subdued before. Even her clothing was subdued—dark pants, a dark sweater, and no scarves at all. Her hair was a strawberry blond that suited her and made the decorative tattoos across her face seem like etchings.

  She clutched a bag to her chest and watched him as if she couldn’t quite believe he was there.

  “Leave,” he said again.

  She nodded, bent her head, and walked off the dock, heading down the long port tunnel and back to the main area.

  She was behaving oddly. If she had come here because of Paloma
, she would have asked him a series of questions. But she hadn’t. She acted as if she didn’t know at all.

  Had Nyquist kept this information from the media? Or was Ki Bowles still off InterDome’s main reporter list? They’d pulled her after those disgusting stories about DeRicci. The stories—at least the ones that Flint saw—made DeRicci seem mean and vindictive, two words he would never use to describe her.

  He waited until he couldn’t see Bowles any longer, then he went to the side of his ship, climbed the ladder that led to the main hatch, and pressed his palm against it.

  On his trip, he had upgraded the security even more. The door now used a palm scan (from living tissue), a DNA scan, and a retinal scan, followed by a vocal ID once he was inside the airlock. There he had to go through two more layers of security before entering the ship itself.

  For a while, he had thought the Emmeline would be his only home, and he wanted it to be as safe as possible. When he arrived back on Armstrong, the precautions seemed a little silly. But now that he had found Ki Bowles, of all people, right beside his ship, he no longer doubted his methods.

  The door finished its scans and whooshed open. He entered the airlock, and the door closed behind him. Then he said his own name, so that the system could double-check his vocal imprint, plugged in two different codes into the systems on the far side of the interior door, and watched as that opened for him.

  He stepped into the Emmeline. Usually he relaxed the moment the airlock door closed behind him, but today he did not. He couldn’t.

  He couldn’t get the image of Paloma’s ruined body from his mind.

  He took the bag with the tech suit and placed it in one of the coded lockers near the door. The lockers were hidden to the naked eye. They seemed like part of a larger wall. Only the manufacturer and the owners of these yachts even knew the lockers were here.

  Space yachts of this level had all sorts of secret compartments and hidden storage areas. Flint had never used all the storage spaces on the Emmeline, not even when he spent months on her like he had recently.