Spin State - Chris Moriarty [125]
She fell silent for the space of a few breaths, looking down at her plate. Li said nothing, reluctant to break the thread of the memory that gripped the woman. “He was a surveyor,” she continued. “Cory Dean. Is that Irish?”
Li nodded.
“I thought so. He was nice. He didn’t stare. And he talked to me. He’d tell me jokes while we worked, stories. Haas got it into his head that he was my lover. He never said anything, but he thought it. It was ridiculous, of course.” Her nose wrinkled in obvious distaste. “I didn’t want him. Not that way, at least. But I hadn’t lived with humans long enough to see how it looked.
“Cory was missing for days. They checked the whole station, the mine, Shantytown. Voyt found him.” Bella’s face twisted as if it hurt to say Voyt’s name. “Someone had beaten him. Stolen his credit chip and then just left him in the gutter. He drowned in his own blood. I didn’t know you could do that.”
Bella shifted in her chair. When she spoke again, her voice was as hard and unyielding as virusteel. “The Shantytown watch had him for days before they called the station; they thought he was just a drunk miner. They said he’d gotten in a fight, but Cory would never have done that. Still, they’d found witnesses somehow, people who were willing to say they’d seen him fighting. You don’t have to throw around much money in Shantytown to get people to say what you want.
“Haas told me. I still remember how he looked when he did it. Like he was proud of it. Like he was daring me to say something. The next day he moved my things here, and it’s been . . . what you see now, ever since.”
Bella had given up even pretending to eat. Li watched her twist her napkin between white-knuckled fingers and thought about Haas, and about the blank impersonalness of Sharifi’s quarters and the single unexplained initial Sharifi had written in her datebook the week she died.
Maybe it was time to risk a shot in the dark.
“Did you tell Sharifi this story when she came to dinner?” she asked.
“What?”
“When she had dinner with you. The night before she died. Was Haas here? Or was he conveniently off-station that night too?”
Bella stared, her mouth open, her face white. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”
“You were lovers, weren’t you?”
“I never said—”
“You never had to. It’s all over your face every time you talk about her.”
Bella scrubbed at her mouth with her napkin. The skin of her face looked as pale as the bleached linen. “You can’t tell anyone,” she said. “Haas would . . . I don’t know what he’d do.” Her hand twitched toward the faint remnant of the bruise on her cheek, but she forced it down into her lap again.
“Doesn’t he know already? Isn’t that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“No.” Bella stood up so quickly she jostled the table and set the glassware ringing. “No. Not possible.”
She moved to the side window and leaned her face against the viewport. Li followed.
It was second night, and the Companion cast its faint light into the room, etching the angles of Bella’s face in a red so dark it was almost black. “What can I do?” she whispered.
“Can’t you just go home, tell them you can’t finish it out?”
She shook her head violently.
“Well, then—”
“Forget it. You can’t help. No one can help.”
Bella turned. She was so close now, the light behind her, the beautiful face lost in shadow. Li touched her cheek, and the feverish heat of the pale skin shocked her.
Bella leaned into her, sighing, and Li shuddered at the soft flutter of breath against her skin. Bella’s lips played along her neck, around the angle of her jaw, over her earlobe, and Li turned her head for the kiss she wanted so badly.
But in the last breath before their lips touched, she looked into Bella’s wide-open eyes—and saw something that stopped her cold. Not fear. Not reluctance. But . . . something. Something as deliberate and calculated as the blue-on-black MotaiSyndicate logo set into the outer perimeter of the violet irises.
Li stepped back, hands dropping