“There isn’t one.” Widening the excavation area, she found the same divot-like flaw that he was examining on the other side of the wall. “What was your most memorable Christmas, Edison?”
There was a beat of silence. “I thought you were going to say something about the case. Or your butt.”
“This is sort of about the case, and since my butt is now numb it’s no longer a concern.” She huffed as she kicked at the heavy snow, bracing herself against the warehouse wall. “So?”
“None of them were great. I never had a dad and my mom was an alcoholic who drank away our money, so December 25th was pretty much just another day in the life. Though I do remember one year she made a real stab at drying out,” he added as if it had just occurred to him. “That was the year I got pajamas. I’ll never forget how amazed I was that she’d even bothered. I wore those things until they were no more than rags, I loved them so much.”
Reina’s throat tightened at how deeply touched the boyish Edison had been over such a simple gift. If only his mother had cherished him as much. “Edison Wicke, you were a truly good son.”
“Yeah, well.” Clearly uncomfortable, she saw his POV slide up to the window above their heads. “What about you, Reina? I know you haven’t celebrated Christmas since your parents died, but did you have any great Christmases before then?”
“Sure I did. But the most memorable Christmas I ever had was the one I wasn’t supposed to survive long enough to see.”
His intake of breath was audible. “What?”
“The info you dug up on me was almost right, but not all of it. You said my family and I moved to Chicago to escape the first pandemic, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, come to find out, we didn’t escape it. Or at least I didn’t. We hadn’t been in Chicago more than a few days before I got sick and wound up in the children’s ICU at Mercy Hospital. I was ten years old and I could feel my energy—my life force, I guess—draining out of me like water. I remember the heaviness of all the machinery hooked up to my body to keep me alive when part of me was ready to let go. I still have nightmares about being more machine than human, and having that machinery suddenly give out. And in case you haven’t already figured it out, that’s another reason why I don’t ever want to mech out. I’ve often wondered if all that weird mechanical heaviness is what it feels like to be cyberized, and if it seems so alien you feel like it could stop working at a moment’s notice.”
“I’m sure it’s different for everyone.” In his POV display window, she saw him lay his hand flat against the wall separating them. “You nearly died. Shit...you nearly died.”
“I lived, and I have that Christmas to thank for it. At least, I like to think so.” Digging out snow in a blizzard was a losing battle, but at last the blacktop was becoming clearer to see. “When you’re at death’s door and suffering, the need to let go is...overwhelming. But a single gift from my parents made me happy that I was still alive to enjoy it.”
“What was it?”
“Paper dolls. I’d always loved playing with dolls, but when I got sick I didn’t even have the strength to hold them. So, brilliant people that they were, my parents found something that I could hold onto. Do you realize how much thought and love they must have put into coming up with that? That one gift was so simple but so perfect, it made me want to live long enough so I could play again.”
He cleared his throat. “I love your parents.”
“Me, too. What’s more, that incident in my life makes me think about the Seldon children. The toys they were given were almost as simple as paper dolls, right? No spoiled, modern-day kid would appreciate them, yet you saw how happy those kids were to have them.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So the perp probably had an idea those kids would be thrilled to receive a gift of any sort, just the way my parents knew I’d be happy to receive something as simple as paper dolls. And to me, that means our guy knows these kids.” At last satisfied with her dig-out job, Reina adjusted her visor. “I’m streaming the damage done to the ground outside the window now. You seeing this?”
“It’s definitely done by the same implement,” Edison said by way of confirmation. “Damn, it’s such a concentrated area. What did this?”
“I’ve seen something like this before.” Backing up a step, Reina stared hard at the buckled asphalt, the cracks radiating outward from the center. Those cracks were now filled in with hard-packed snow to stand out whitely against the blacktop, and the outline made some sort of pattern.
No. Not a pattern.
An imprint.
“I’ll be damned.” With her teeth starting to chatter and her toes cramping in her jackboots, Reina backed up again to get the big-picture view. “They’re footprints.”
“What?”
“This damage...it’s an impact crater, Edison. See the outline of the feet embedded into the blacktop? Someone heavier than a human, but obviously a biped, jumped from the window above and landed here.” As she spoke, the memory of Edison doing the same thing at the Seldon crime scene bloomed in her mind, as did the differences. “When you jumped down from the balcony at the Seldons’ apartment your impact crater was significant; there was no mistaking it. Yet this crater is much shallower. If it weren’t for the fussbudget Kricek worrying over his grave damage, this could have easily been overlooked.”
“Do me a favor and put your hand next to the footprint to give me perspective.” As Edison spoke, his POV display window showed he was doing the same thing on his side of the wall. “Holy crap. Are you seeing this, Reina?”
“I see it, but I don’t believe it.” She did as he asked, laying her hand next to the pattern only to discover they were roughly the same size. And she had small hands.
“A child’s imprint,” she heard Edison mutter. “But that’s impossible.”
“Okay, let’s figure this out. No pure human can make an impact crater, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And it’s both illegal and ultimately deadly to cyberize a growing human body; cyberization is only successful on full-grown adults. So...could this be a cyberized person born with dwarfism?”
“Genetic anomalies don’t mesh well with the current technology, so no adult that size would pass the physical to receive any kind of bod-mods. And it can’t be an android, obviously.”
Reina nodded and rose to lean back against the warehouse wall. Almost immediately after Delbert Conrad introduced his new droid technology to the world, people corrupted it to use the machines in the worst imaginable ways, including pulling off all manner of crimes. Within weeks of droid introduction into society, Conrad had pushed for anti-crime programs to be written into the basic-function systems existing in all droids today. If pushed in any way into law-breaking, a droid would suffer a terminal cascade effect and become nothing more than a human-shaped paperweight.
“Okay,” she said again, teeth chattering in earnest now. “What other options are there?”
“Maybe a woman with bod-mods and petite feet?”
“I have petite feet and they’re still bigger than these imprints.”
“Santa’s elf, then.”
“That’s all I’m coming up with.” As she looked toward Mercy Park, a dark image through the snow caught her eye. “I think I see someone.”
Edison’s response was immediate. “Wait for me.”
“Check my visor’s readout. It’s minus-nineteen out here. Stay put while I check it out. It’s probably just a warehouse worker, but it might be someone who saw something. You never know until you ask.”
“Reina—”
But she was already slogging her way through the deep snow, her attention focused on the small dark smudge against the white-on-white landscape. For all she knew she was chasing down a tow-away zone sign or a trash barrel, she tho
ught, her breath huffing loudly in her ears as she picked up her pace to an ungainly jog. Maybe even an evergreen bush. If it was, it was probably suffering from Diplodia.
But she wasn’t chasing down a bush or a sign or a barrel. Not unless those things had gained the ability to move.
“Hey!” Hopeful of bringing attention to herself, Reina broke into a loping sort of run, her frozen feet graceless and brick-heavy as she cut a swath through the thick blanket of snow. The wind howled and she had no clue if whoever was out in this mess with her was even able to hear her. “Hey, wait up! Police!”
“I’m getting the car.” Edison’s voice sounded from her earpiece and she could hear he was slightly breathless. “Looks like you’re headed southeast toward Mercy Park, right? I’ll be there in under a minute.”
“Can’t see who it is. I think I scared them into off-roading it. Question is, why would they run?” With more luck than skill Reina stumbled onto the path of whoever was in front of her, and suddenly the going was easier. She picked up speed, and through the blinding sheets of snow she could see she was catching up to someone. Someone small.
Child small.
“Hey, kid, wait! I’m not going to hurt you, I’m with the police—”
A pale flash of a tiny face looked back over a shoulder a moment before the kid turned back around with an odd, stiff-limbed gait before doing something so impossible she found herself skidding to a dumbfounded stop. Before her disbelieving eyes the person in front of her launched into the air, with the forward momentum carrying the tiny body twenty feet ahead.
What. The. Fuck.
The small body hit the ground running with an impact she could hear despite the muffling snow. In seconds the kid was once again nothing more than a smudge in the veiling sheets of white, and she forced herself to go again, to move, because that kid wasn’t anywhere near normal. It was, however, exactly what she was looking for when it came to the investigation and—
It happened so fast she had no hope of preparing for it. One second she was crazy-leg hopping through the deep snow, and the next she was falling, falling, with no ground to catch her. Too late, she realized there had been a snow-blanketed reason why the kid had jumped.
Chapter Six
“Cold. C-Cold.”
“Almost there.” Pressing his hand to the Ident lock on his townhome’s front door, Edison hauled a soaking wet Reina into the spacious, open-plan area the moment the door sprang open. He shot a harried glance at her and was amazed the ice that encrusted her frictionsuit still hadn’t melted during the drive over with the heater blasting on high. “Hang on a few more seconds.”
A monosyllabic mumble was her only response before she slumped against him.
He didn’t think twice about hauling her up and making a beeline for the bathroom. Fully clothed, he walked straight into the shower. “Shower on.” In an instant, steaming water gushed out from the powerful jets on either side of the black marble and glass-block walls, kicking off a shudder of protest from the woman in his arms.
“N-no m-more w-w-water—”
“It’s hot water, as hot as you can take it. See the digital readout? A hundred and eight degrees of pulsing-hot goodness. Any hotter and we’d turn into a matching pair of boiled lobsters.” When she didn’t laugh at his bad joke, Edison searched the face lying against his shoulder in gut-tightening concern. Always pale, Reina looked like death warmed over, her porcelain-like complexion almost waxy and her lips an alarming shade of lavender-blue. Her eyes were closed so that the dark semi-circles of her lashes fanned out on her paper-white cheeks.
Even half-dead she was still the hottest thing going.
“Have I ever told you that it was the capture of the Lake Shore Drive Cannibal that made me transfer to your precinct? Weird, I know, but I had to meet you. It became my number-one mission in life.” The thin glaze of ice covering her legs slid off her like frozen plates of armor to crumble in slushy clumps at his feet. “I needed to see if you were even a fraction as amazing as the woman I saw on all the vid clips and sound bites. And now here we are, two short years later, in the shower together. Fully clothed, but still.” Ignoring the discomfort of boiling away inside his sodden clothes, Edison bent to warm her lips with his. “You know something, Reina Vedette? You have the sexiest brain I’ve ever known.”
She mumbled a vague protest before the inky pools of her eyes slitted open. “There...there was a creek.”
He sighed and kissed her again. “A sexy brain that’s just coming out of the deep freeze. Yeah, Vedette, there was definitely a creek. I almost ran the car into it in my rush to fish your ass out of it.”
“The kid.” She squirmed, returning to life by the second. He let her down before she could fall out of his arms, but couldn’t stop himself from hovering anxiously in case she decided to take a sudden header. “You saw it through my visor feed, right? I didn’t imagine it, did I? That little kid...jumped.”
“Jumped, hell. I would describe it as semi-flying.”
“That’s our perp, Edison.” With an air of exhaustion verging on defeat, she rested her forehead against his chest. “Our perp is a tiny little kid who shouldn’t exist.”
“Yeah. I know.” His sigh was as quiet as the hiss of water cascading down on them, and he stroked the wet hair over her head with tender hands. “It’s been a real pisser of a day.”
“No doubt, if you’re winding it up by wearing a coat and shoes in the shower.” As if just realizing her surroundings, she curled her hands around his lapels to steady herself before she lifted her gaze to meet his. “Thank you.”
She was so beautiful. So beautiful it hurt him in a way he never wanted to end. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You saved me today. You’ve been saving me since this case started.”
“Have I?” With the greatest gentleness he brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips that were now a healthier pale pink. He nearly fell to his knees when they opened at the sensual caress. “How’ve I been doing that?”
“After the year I’ve had I no longer had any joy in the job, much less any purpose. I wanted to quit and go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
The thought of her vanishing made his hand slide to her nape to hold her in place. “You’re not going anywhere. We’re both exactly where we belong.”
“For the first time in a long time, I can safely say that I agree with you. I’m exactly where I should be, and I love what I do. And even though I have an organic chassis, it means the world to me that you’ve never treated me like I can’t do this job.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Fury roughened the edges of his voice. There wasn’t one damn person on the force worthy of breathing her air, yet she was made to feel inferior. It was enough to make him want to punch the first thing that moved. “You’re the best at what you do. The best. Don’t let any dumbass jackhole make you think otherwise, you hear me? They’re nothing. You’re everything. That is all.”
A huff of laughter whispered out of her, and her hand came to land on his chest. “You’re good for my ego. And not completely awful, as partners go.”
“Careful, Reina. Keep talking that way and you’ll have me thinking you like me.”
“Let’s not go overboard here. I never said I liked you.” Her face lifted to his, rivulets of water flowing down her cheeks to wet her mouth. Desire coiled with heady, never-ending urgency deep in his gut. “I just said you weren’t completely awful.”
“If I were smart, I’d chalk that up to the hypothermia talking.” Helpless to stop himself, Edison closed a hand over hers and rubbed it over his chest while every nerve ending tingled with the frantic joy of her touch. To his delight she didn’t fight his guidance; on the contrary she moved closer until her thighs brushed his. As his muscles began to shake with the force of holding himself in check, her fingers slid between the butt
ons of his shirt. “I, uh...I’m guessing you’re not completely recovered. Hypothermia does cause confusion, right?”
“I will admit I’m not exactly feeling like my usual grouchy self at the moment.” The bowl of her hand seemed to be made to slide over the contour of his pectoral muscle. A shudder bounced from him to her when she rubbed his nipple, telling him she got just as much of a thrill at the intimate touch as he did. “What else could possibly explain why I want you so much right now?”
Edison’s fingers tightened on hers, the words rippling a sudden coldness through him that not even the shower could wash away. “Yeah? If that’s how it is, fine.” It took everything he had to pull her hand from his body, and something feral howled inside at the loss. “Let me know if you ever come up with an explanation as to why you might want to be with me. Great detective that you are, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out eventually.”
With his iron-hard body raging at him to stop being an idiot while his brain consigned her to hell for not needing him like he needed her, Edison started to step over the tiled lip of the walk-in shower. Then a firm hand clamped down on his shoulder and stopped him in his soggy tracks.
“Don’t even think about leaving me now.”
* * *
For a cocky, Grade-A specimen of magnificent manhood, Reina couldn’t help but be surprised at Edison’s flare of insecurity, even as it touched a soft spot she didn’t know she had. Never before had he taken her teasing to heart. It was almost as though he needed her to admit she wanted him. Needed him. Desired him with a force so profound it could change the course of her life.
It was almost as though what she felt mattered to him.
As she pushed him under the steaming spray and his ferocious gaze crashed and slashed into hers, Reina found it mattered to her as well. So much.
His breathing was shallow, disturbed. An echo of her own. Those cyberized ears of his had to be picking up on the thundering of her heart, because she could hear it, too. For two years she’d made herself ignore him when she could get away with it, compete with him when she had to, and prove herself to him whenever the opportunity arose. Because deep down, she’d wanted to impress him. Just as much as he impressed her.
A Galactic Holiday Page 7
