Spin State - Chris Moriarty [190]
Bella moved her hand to cover the pendant in the same half-embarrassed, half-protective gesture Li had seen the cleaning girl in the Helena airport use. Then she said what Li had known beyond a doubt she would say: “Hannah gave it to me.”
“When?” Li said. “When did Hannah give it to you?”
“The night before she died,” Bella answered, her voice no more than a whisper.
“Before or after she sent the message from Haas’s quarters?”
“She didn’t send—” Bella stopped, looked at Li for a long moment, then sighed. “After she sent it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before, Bella?”
“Because she asked me not to. Because it was a secret. Hannah’s secret.”
“That secret may have killed her.”
Bella jerked her head back as if Li had slapped her. “No,” she said. “No.”
“Who was the message to, Bella? Who did she talk to in Freetown? What did she tell them?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even listen. I didn’t want to know.”
“Because if you’d known, Haas would have found out?”
“Haas, Korchow. What does it matter who? I couldn’t risk knowing.”
Li laughed softly and rubbed at her sore shoulder.
“You don’t understand,” Bella said, her voice harsh, urgent. “The contract, all that . . . it was secondary. She asked me to help her. She came to me. She said she needed me, that I was the only one she could trust. That it was the most important thing she would ever do, the most important thing either of us would ever do, but that it had to be our secret. I did it for her.”
A gust of wind buffeted the flophouse, and the big sheet of viruflex that sealed the window snapped and billowed like a ship’s sail. Bella jumped, trembling. “Why don’t you believe me?” she whispered.
“I do believe you,” Li said. “I do. I just . . . I don’t know what it means.”
Li had put a hand on Bella’s shoulder while they talked, and now Bella turned into her arms and buried her head in the hollow of her neck. Li started to pull away, then realized the other woman was crying. She put her arms around her, reluctantly, and found herself patting Bella’s fine-boned shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Bella said, “it’s just . . .”
“No, I’m sorry,” Li said. “It’s none of my business what you do. You didn’t promise me anything.”
“I would, though.” Bella looked up at her. The violet eyes had cleared, though there were still tears hanging on her eyelashes. Bella reached a pale finger up and touched Li’s mouth, just where Cohen had touched her. “What I said about . . . you and Hannah. I was just angry.”
Oh, Christ, Li thought. It’s time to leave. Now. So why did she feel like her feet were bolted to the floor?
Someone coughed. Li jumped away from Bella like a dog caught with its nose in the trash can. “Arkady,” she said.
“No,” Cohen said from the doorway. “It’s me.”
“I—”
“I have to go,” Bella said. “Korchow will want me.”
Cohen turned and watched Bella down the hall until they both heard the slap of the blanket against the airlock and the shuffle of her soft-soled shoes moving away across the dome.
Li started to speak, but he put a hand up. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” He lounged against the doorframe in a casual posture that Li suspected was a put-on, and when he spoke, it was in that neutral, inflectionless voice that she’d long ago learned meant storms ahead. “Watch out, Catherine.”
“Watch out for what?” Li asked. But the answer was obvious; Bella’s perfume still hung in the air between them.
“She’s out for revenge. And revenge is a tricky kind of idea. It makes people shortchange the future. It makes them take the kind of risks that can drag everyone down.”
“Now you’re the expert in human motivation?”
Cohen shrugged. “Fine,” he said, as coolly as if they were discussing the weather. “Do what you want. But I think you know she’s using you.”
“Then she has plenty of company, doesn’t she?”
Cohen just sighed and inspected Arkady’s fingernails. When had he learned to make her feel so damn guilty by standing there doing nothing?
“I figured out what Sharifi was up to,” Li said. “Now that it’s too late to do