by Kris Delake
“You think he put something in your beer?”
“Or he used one of those touch drops, you know, the aphrodisiacs?”
Windham raised her chin lightly. Touch drops were illegal in most sectors but that didn’t stop their use. Their name reflected what they did: they changed behavior with a single touch.
“What makes you think that?” Windham asked.
“Two things.” Rikki bit her lower lip, and winced at the slight pain. Okay, maybe she was taking this acting thing a bit too far. “The first are these.”
She raised her hand to her collar and brought it down, just like she had done in the main part of security.
Windham didn’t even look, which confirmed what Rikki already knew: that the woman had seen the bruises through that tiny drone and had decided to take on this incident herself.
“The second is…” Rikki let her voice trail off as if she was embarrassed. “I, um, saw him tonight, and I went up to him, thinking that maybe, you know, it would, I would, you know, feel the same way?”
The woman nodded. “But you didn’t.”
Rikki made a face. “We danced and I wanted him to stop touching me.”
She was lying. It was surprisingly hard to lie about this part.
“And I kept telling him I wanted to stop, and he wouldn’t, so finally, I just stopped, and then I got away from him as fast as I could.”
“Did you have a physical reaction to him tonight?” Windham asked.
Oh, yeah, Rikki wanted to say. Just as strong, just as thrilling as last night. Only I didn’t let myself act on it.
“Yes,” she said with some emphasis. “But not what I expected. He disgusted me. I couldn’t wait to get away from him.”
Windham closed her eyes for just a brief moment, but that moment was enough. Rikki knew what it meant: Windham dealt with a lot of aphrodisiac-based crimes, and she thought this was another.
“I realize that you’re not the police,” Rikki said before Windham could speak up. “I know you can’t do anything to him, and you probably don’t want to, since he has a suite the size of your office—”
Windham looked like she was about to deny that was an issue, which she probably had to do to cover the ship’s ass in some kind of legal proceeding, but Rikki didn’t let the woman talk.
“—but I’m not sure he is who he says he is.”
That caught Windham’s attention. “What do you mean?”
“Like I said, it’s all pretty hazy. But he said a few things. For one thing, he asked me to call him Misha, and I have no idea how you get from Rafael to Misha.”
“That’s not enough, ma’am.”
“I know,” Rikki said. “I remember laughing about something, about the way it took only so much money to get a ship to think you were really rich, but I’m not sure I dreamed it or what. And he said something about being rich giving you access—”
“We can’t help you in a lawsuit against him, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Windham said.
“No, I’m not,” Rikki said. “It’s just that I, um, haven’t washed my hand, and I touched his face, and I’m pretty sure I have some of his DNA…”
Windham’s gaze met Rikki’s. It wasn’t exactly legal for the ship to check DNA without suspicion of a crime. Rikki just hoped that she had presented enough information to give the ship cover.
Windham’s gaze flitted to Rikki’s neck again. Then Windham nodded as if she had made a decision.
“We’ll do a swipe,” she said. “Come with me.”
Chapter 15
The square little man with the injured hand had left the ballroom, and Rikki hadn’t returned. Misha still leaned against the pole, a bit amazed at himself. He wasn’t sure why he had thought she would come back. To apologize?
Not that she had anything to apologize for.
But it seemed odd to him that she was so angry at him, and yet she had clearly waited for him. The square little man had confirmed that.
So what had she wanted? To confront Misha? But why? They had had their confrontation that morning, and she should have left things alone.
He frowned, went over their interaction, and found it somewhat strange, but he couldn’t quite tell why.
Maybe she had wanted him to follow her. But why would she want that? To take their disagreement into the corridor? To play some kind of sexual game he didn’t entirely understand?
She certainly had been experienced and the square little man had thought she was some kind of professional.
Sometimes female assassins used all of their wiles to deal with their targets. She had certainly flirted with Testrial, but she hadn’t gone to his room until the night she killed him.
So that didn’t seem like it was the way she operated.
Still, Misha had been misjudging her from the start.
The waltzes continued. He was getting sick of them. One two three, one two three. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to hear that rhythm in his head for days.
He pushed up his sleeve and checked his wrist screen. Rikki’s icon remained motionless outside the side exit. She was just standing in the corridor.
He frowned, wondering if she had dumped her identi-card. He caught himself thinking that she didn’t know how to turn it off, but he couldn’t make those assumptions now. She was smarter than he gave her credit for. He constantly underestimated her abilities and it had hurt him. He couldn’t continue doing that.
So why was she just standing in that corridor?
He sighed. He could, he supposed, just stomp his way down that corridor and confront her. But where would that get him? He had done that just a few minutes ago, and she had walked away from him.
Then, as he watched, the icon moved down the corridor. After a moment, the icon moved inside the ladies room and stayed in the front part of the lounge for a good five minutes.
Now he was getting suspicious. She was up to something. Had she taken two jobs on this cruise? The ship was still in the NetherRealm. If she killed another person here, she would try to get away with that as well. And if it was an actual job, she might actually be right.
He glanced up. No one watched him. The dancers continued to turn, bright swirls of color against the room’s black-and-silver background.
Yet he had been thinking so hard about Rikki that he had forgotten to keep track of his surroundings. Again.
That was why the woman was dangerous. She took away his concentration.
He certainly hadn’t concentrated on anything but her the night before.
He glanced at his wrist screen. She had left the ladies’ room now, and had found one of the lifts. It was heading to the main floor.
Something about that bothered him. She was up to something, but he didn’t know what.
He tugged his sleeve over the screen, then circled the dance floor, staying at the edges. He remained in the shadows as much as possible, feeling a bit unsettled.
He had no idea if anyone was watching him. He even double-checked the chip in his hand to make sure it was off.
Then he slipped out the same door Rikki had used. He half-expected to find her in the corridor, waiting for him, arms crossed. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she had slipped someone else her chip, and tried to see if Misha was following her.
But she wasn’t there. The corridor, blazing white after the darkness of the ballroom, was empty.
He walked carefully in the direction she had gone, and then, as he got on the lift, he looked at his wrist screen again.
His breath caught.
She had gone to the security office.
Why would she go there? To turn him in for Testrial’s murder? To confess?
He stopped the lift.
He needed to make a decision. He had no idea what she was telling the security office. He wanted to wait for her outside, but he wasn’t sure how that would look, particularly if she told them that he had ordered the hit on Testrial.
Misha sighed.
He had no idea why
she would report him. Or maybe she was going to report the square little man. Maybe the man had lied to Misha. Maybe he had tried to hurt Rikki.
A flash of anger ran through Misha. He didn’t want anyone to hurt her, anyone to touch her.
But he knew she could handle herself.
He would talk to her later, after she left the office.
Until then, he would continue to imitate a passenger having a good time. The best way to do that would be to return to the lounge on B Deck. He would drink or, to be more accurate, pretend to drink, and continue to maintain his cover.
There was nothing else he could do.
Chapter 16
Windham led Rikki to another part of security. This cubicle had lab equipment, which surprised Rikki. The ship had more sophisticated systems than it claimed to have. She would have to be careful not to get her own DNA mixed in here, because that might misidentify her as well—not as Rikki Bastogne, but not as Rachel Carter either.
Windham brought over a small device, shaped like a keypad. Rikki recognized it: a DNA coder.
“This won’t tell us who he is, unless he’s in one of the systems we have access to,” Windham said. “But it’s a start, anyway, and if he’s not here, then we can check other systems when we get to port.”
Rikki nodded. She had known that, but her alias Rachel hadn’t. Or at least, that was how she decided to play it.
“What do I do?” Rikki asked.
“Which hand is it?” Windham asked.
Rikki did not hold up the hand she used to touch her collar. She had been very careful here.
“Touch it right there.” Windham pointed to the tiny pad on the device.
Rikki touched it, and released Misha’s skin cells from the pouch she had kept them in. Then she looked up. “Like that?”
“Like that,” Windham said.
“What if my DNA gets mixed with his?” Rikki asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Windham said. “I have it set to look at male DNA only.”
Excellent. That was better than Rikki could have hoped for. That way Windham wouldn’t know that none of Rikki’s DNA got into the mix. Windham would have thought that odd.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Windham said.
Rikki nodded, hoping the gesture came off more nervous than knowing. She wondered if the ship had access to the Assassins Guild’s member database. It wouldn’t surprise her if the ship did have it; that would be one way to protect Guild members if there was a dicey incident far from any port.
“Well,” Windham said.
Rikki looked at her. Windham was staring at the device. Rikki couldn’t see the display, and she knew that had to be on purpose.
“You found something?” she asked, making her voice more breathless than usual.
“Yeah,” Windham said, and in her slow speech, Rikki could hear Windham debating something, probably how much to tell this passenger who suspected she had been coerced into something she wouldn’t have normally done.
“What?” Rikki asked.
Windham frowned a little. “You’re right. He’s not who he says he is. He’s a member of the Assassins Guild. Have you angered anyone lately, Miss Carter?”
“N-No,” Rikki said. She was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all. She hadn’t thought that Windham might think her an interstellar criminal.
“I see nothing in your records that would indicate problems either,” Windham said more to herself than to Rikki.
Rikki had to get her away from this line of thought. “Was I, like, um, a diversion or something?”
She made her voice sound small and frightened. She hunched as she spoke, as if she couldn’t believe who had touched her.
“Possibly,” Windham said. “It says here that his name is Mikael Yurinovich Orlinski.”
Rikki looked up in alarm. Suddenly she was no longer acting. “What?”
“Mikael Yurinovich Orlinski.” Windham looked up at her curiously. “Do you know him?”
Rikki’s breath had left her body. She had to force herself to inhale. She felt ill.
She sank into one of the nearby chairs.
“Miss Carter?” Windham asked. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Rikki said softly, and she wasn’t lying.
“Then you do know him,” Windham said.
“Not exactly,” Rikki said.
“Then what is it?” Windham asked.
Rikki looked up at her and told her the absolute truth:
“Eighteen years ago,” she said, “his mother murdered my father.”
Chapter 17
What she remembered about that night—the night her father died—lived in flashes. Initially, she had no memory of it at all. She woke up in a hospital bed, burned and immobile and in more pain than she had ever been in in her life.
A nurse soothed her, told her to go back to sleep, she would be taken care of, really, and oh, she was lucky to have survived.
Survived what? she wanted to ask, but she drifted to sleep before she could form the words.
It took weeks to form the words. By then, she had had nanotreatments that had repaired every wound, and had prevented the worst of the scarring. Later she got more nanotreatments, these to permanently vanquish the scars.
(Which made her privately wonder as she told the story to Windham: why hadn’t Misha gotten rid of his scars? The treatments were easy, harmless, and certainly not expensive for an assassin with the Guild.)
But as she sat in that security office on a cruise ship, eighteen years later, she found she couldn’t explain how the memories came back or indeed, even what had happened.
She never talked about what had happened. She tried not to think about it, which of course meant she thought about it every single day.
About the flashes, and why they only came in flashes, and why the memories were never complete, even after the courts ordered a review, something that should have brought the entire memory back. Her counselors and therapists—and there were dozens—all said the power of her mind kept those memories away, that as long as she didn’t want to remember, she never ever would, at least not past the memories that she already had, that she had permitted herself, because those memories were, apparently, the only safe ones.
Or at least the ones that weren’t the most traumatic.
What she remembered was this:
—Her father’s face, purple with anger, his eyes small and flashing, his voice lacerating: You don’t beg. You never beg. Begging gets you nowhere.
—The barracks (she and her father had lived in barracks) burning orange against the night sky, the flames illuminating the entire neighborhood, families standing outside covered in blankets and wearing nothing else, one little girl crying, sobbing so hard that Rikki wanted to tell her to shut up, crying got you nowhere, crying certainly wouldn’t rebuild a house or make the pain go away. Instead, Rikki stared at that little girl—blond, heavy—as if that little girl held the secret to the entire universe.
—The quiet inside the house, a movement in the shadows, Rikki’s heart pounding so hard it sounded like it came from outside her rather than inside. She couldn’t catch her breath, but she knew someone was here, someone who didn’t belong, someone was inside the house, someone else, someone stealthy and silent and oh, so very terrifying.
—And then, finally, a woman’s face, embedded in Rikki’s mind like a brand. The authorities had pulled that image. It had been predominant in Rikki’s mind, and it had stayed that way, although eventually it was more than a harshly beautiful face, more than the close-cut white-blond hair, the pale ice-blue eyes.
Later, as the memories shifted, grew, returned ever so slightly, the woman spoke to Rikki: Don’t worry. We have not come for you. You will survive this. You will be Just Fine.
Just Fine. Sure, she was Just Fine. Damaged, battered, bruised, unable to speak for weeks, unable to cry for even longer. Even now, she rarely cried, never saw the point really; tears were for weakling
s after all, weaklings and chubby little blond girls who had lost their homes to sudden fires, but not their fathers, not their entire lives.
Rikki had not been blond or chubby. She had short brown hair, and had been so thin that the hospital staff kept encouraging her to eat, worried that she had forgotten how in her long sleep, worried that maybe—like some spacer families—she had never really learned how to eat solids, only how to absorb liquid nutrients just to stay alive.
She had eaten real food her entire life, but her family—her father—had never had money, so she hadn’t eaten a lot of it. She hadn’t done a lot of anything Before. That was how she thought of it all: Before and After.
She liked After better.
But the In-Between, as she healed and people kept asking questions, and they kept wanting to know exactly what happened and why, she had hated the In-Between.
Mostly because she hadn’t known the answers. Only that the terrifying blond woman, whom they later identified from the image in Rikki’s mind as Anna Ilyinichna Valentinov, better known as Halina Layla Orlinskaya, one of the most ruthless assassins in the galaxy. It was said she only killed for political gain and she never, ever left survivors, But later, Rikki learned that was not true, not in the years when Rikki’s father died.
In those years, Orlinskaya had killed for money, and she had left dozens of survivors. In fact, she had become a wanted woman by her own government because she had refused to destroy an entire town, a town (it was said) that she had fallen in love with, a town that she notified of her government’s intent to utterly demolish it, thus preventing the town’s destruction, and saving thousands of lives.
After that, after that nonevent, Orlinskaya had killed at least a thousand people, but only those she was contracted for, leaving parents and siblings and casual bystanders alive.
Oh, and children as well. She left a lot of children, mentally scarred from what they had seen, but never, ever touched or bruised or physically damaged in any way.
