Think.
The dummy names made cash withdrawals. Where did that cash go?
“Brady,” I ask, “could you force SCAPE Finance and Credit to turn over video from security cameras?”
Brady sighs, frowning. “I could ask for a letter from the Board.” Realizing, he says, “Couldn’t you get a warrant?”
“I don’t want to wait on it,” I answer. It could take weeks, and it doesn’t help that I just asked for one on shaky grounds. “Or tip our hand,” I add.
“Makes sense.” As though embarrassed that he doesn’t know the answer, he asks, “Why do you need that footage?”
“I want faces to match to these names and run through the ID database. Maybe we’ll get a legit ID.”
He nods. “I’ll ask about a letter. Might take a day or two.”
I stand up, stepping to the window-wall. I wave my hand diagonally in front of the sensor, and it snaps from frosted translucent to transparent, with just a slight darkened tint. The city sprawls out below, striped with alternating elongated rectangles of deep red light and stark shadow in the late afternoon sun. “Make sure Greenman doesn’t find out. No actual Board members, either, if you can help it.”
“You still think the Board could be behind all this?”
“Dummy identities on the patient list with Board jobs and paystubs. Plus, the man who attacked me at ParkChung was an off-worlder, and so was Frank Soto. I think the heart of this could be off-world, and the Board is too close to those interests.”
“The Board lobbies against those interests.”
I shoot him a cynical glance. “You really believe that?” His blank stare doesn’t answer the question for me. “You know,” I tell him, “I was tailed on the way here. I lost them, though, I think.”
He straightens, surprised and worried. “Followed? By who?”
“I don’t know.” My command to pick up the nav data went through, but my phone didn’t grab anything—the signal was jammed. “I think someone is still trying to kill me.”
“Maybe protective custody is a good idea.”
I shake my head, watching the streets below, not bothering to move away from the window-wall even as I wonder how hard it would be to locate this apartment and shoot me through the view-glass with a sniper rifle. “It’s do or die now. I either get to them, or they get to me. I can’t hide on this world forever, and I can’t afford a ticket off.” I wonder aloud, “Can I trust you, Brady?”
“I hope you’ve figured out the answer to that by now.”
“They keep trying to kill me, but what about you?”
“I haven’t tried to kill you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh,” he says, taking a second before he gets what I’m saying. “That assassin shot at me in ParkChung, too, you know.”
“Hmm.” He’s right. I remember that happening, but I can’t help but wonder if I missed something or if my memory or perceptions might be deceiving me somehow. Why am I so suspicious of this man? He could kill me right now if he wanted to, with no witnesses. Or at least, I suppose, he could try.
He sidles up a meter or two from me, leaning an elbow against the view-glass, searching for eye contact that I try to avoid giving him. “You didn’t tell me how your visit went,” he states, half-asking, half-observing, his concern seeming genuine. When I don’t respond, he clarifies in a soft, sheepish tone, “With that little girl… ”
“It didn’t go well. Let’s leave it at that.”
“What happened?” For some reason I can’t name, I don’t want to admit it. It’s like I killed Jessi Rodgers myself. After a few more seconds of silence, he asks again, “What happened?”
It comes out as a whisper. “She’s dead.”
Brady freezes. Still I avoid eye contact, but I can tell that his are wide open. “I’m sorry,” he says, sincere.
“You didn’t know her.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
“Oh.” I wish I had some other words in response to that, but I can’t come up with any. He’s making an effort, and as rough-edged and hard to swallow as it is, it’s more than anyone’s done for me in years, except maybe Myra. How sad is that?
“What happened?”
I let out a deep sigh. “I don’t know for sure. I beat a confession out of her aunt. She sold the body to a black market buyer.”
“You’ll get her put away.”
“She reported the girl missing,” I snap. “Happens all the time, not enough evidence for charges.” It’s true. After my mother reported my father missing, some Forced Collections Agents came to our home and did a lazy, not very thorough search, which didn’t even turn up the four thousand cash units hidden between pallets of fertilizer in the farm, and that was as far as the investigation went. I’ve seen dozens of similar cases since then, and no one ever looks very hard. No body, no crime.
Brady takes a small step closer but leaves me some space. “It wasn’t your fault, Taryn.”
“It could have been me.”
“You’re not the girl’s mother. Hell, do you think your parents would have wanted you to make that kind of sacrifice for a stranger? How well do you even know her?”
“I could’ve paid for her surgery. I could’ve adopted her, or kept a closer eye, or… or… or something, I don’t know.”
“That’s not your job.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“And it doesn’t make it any more fair,” he says, “I know.”
I want to shout at him that he doesn’t understand, but he’s basically summed it up correctly, and that only makes me more irritated. My jaw clenched, I fold my arms across my chest, staring out the window-wall. “I want someone to blame,” I confess.
“That’s a rational response.”
I bristle, my shoulders tensing. Why does he have to be so damned reasonable? I want to be angry right now, I realize, but I’ve got no one to bear the brunt of it.
As if to break the uncomfortable silence, Brady offers, “I’ll put in a request for that footage?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “Do what you can.”
Some silence passes between us before Brady speaks again. “Really,” he says, “it wasn’t your fault.”
He reaches for me, and instinctively I tense and jerk away from the unfamiliar feel of human contact. But I stop myself, reminding myself that I can probably trust him, and in fact I probably need to trust him if I’m going to get out of all this alive. He’s got no weapon, no gun, no knife, no little poison promise on his index finger. He’s just trying to reach out. I let his hand rest there, next to the nape of my neck, as I turn toward him. There’s a sympathy in his eyes that I haven’t yet seen.
He just wants to have sex with me, I tell myself, and he thinks I’m vulnerable enough right now to actually go for it. Hell, maybe I am. He’s not the worst-looking guy with his nicely parted sandy brown hair, his smooth, tan skin, his sharp, observant brown eyes. And those teeth. He’s got a sort of obnoxious confidence about him that got under my nerves at first but now seems strangely comforting. I’ve been in a constant and tense state of alertness for over a week now, and it’s starting to wear on me. Maybe a meaningless go around with Brady Kearns would help loosen me up.