Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(7)
Kellen pinched his jeans at the knee and sat. He placed his hat brim-up on the seat at his side and tried real hard to look comfortable. Natural. But who was he kidding? When one of those helms snaked down and fitted itself to his head, he nearly jumped out of his boots. He was about as comfortable as a butterfly in low-gravity.
The headset wrapped itself around his skull, its cold spike seeking I/O connectors. It wouldn’t find any on him, of course.
Holo projector horns extruded from the helm’s sides, and they vibrated a split second before the image shimmered in front of him. Kellen caught a breath in his mouth and held it.
For a long moment, she was just a shape, a wire frame filling with gray. Then the textures started arriving: crisp couture blue skirt, slim and tight over her legs, not a crinoline but somehow managing to look fashionable rather than a decade out of date. Severely tailored coat, scraped-back hair in a tight knot, cameo at the throat, and sleek red boots, buckled up the front. Her hands rested easy at her sides, encased in bio-deterrent gloves.
Her face resolved last, or maybe his eyes just took their time to get there. For a half second, he could convince himself he was just looking at a campaign promo spot.
Then she tilted her head fractionally and frowned. “Oh, goddamn fucking hell no.”
Her words were so at odds with her slick put-together image that whatever he’d been about to say shriveled up and died behind his teeth. He released the breath.
“Look, Dr. Farad,” she lasered at him, “I have no idea what game you’re playing, but if you know that face, that…person, clearly you’ve been hunting through my personal history, and I can tell you categorically that you have fucked yourself over in the worst way. Putting Kellen Hockley’s pretty face on your screw-up isn’t going to move me to mercy. It’s more likely to make me hunt you down in whatever shitty hovel you call home and scoop your goddamn machine eyes out with a pair of tweezers.”
Now see, she probably intended that minispeech to reduce him to a wibbly pile of yes-ma’am. Probably would’ve worked, too, if he couldn’t see right through her. But Kellen knew her, remembered her, every crevice and curve on her body, every quick fang in her mental arsenal. So instead of being cowed by her ferocity, he wanted to stand up and holler victory.
Because she wasn’t some plastic pretty thing that made speeches and played the newsvids. She was still Angela, through and through. And before he could self-censor, the thought seeped up: my Angela.
In spite of everything, he grinned wide. “Pretty? Woman, you ain’t never called me pretty.”
Her mouth had been open, ready to launch some more verbal shrapnel, but when Kellen spoke her lips froze that way, part open. She closed them, but it looked like the movement cost her. The wobble in her composure was fleeting, but he caught it.
“But anyhow, you’re partly right,” he went on. “Heron Farad sometimes speaks for our crew, and I know he sent you that message, but our family is bigger than one man, as you no doubt figured. I been working with him, oh, ’bout eight years now.” The bulk of the time since he’d last seen Angela Neko, in fact. Since he’d touched her. The pads of his fingers remembered. They tingled.
Wherever she was, likely on the other side of the country from where this station was tethered, she had been standing. She sat down now. Her face still looked calm, in control, but her nostrils flared. Breathing fast? Her gloved hands found each other in her lap and clasped. Too hard.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your…to Daniel,” he said. It was only half a lie. He didn’t know Daniel Neko from Adam, but what he knew of the dude indicated the world was a better place without him. And that wasn’t even jealousy speaking. Kellen was sincerely sorry if her husband’s death had caused her pain.
Except she didn’t look particularly pained. Mostly she looked pissed. “Farad messaged me on the darknet, told me he had information on Daniel’s shooter, things I needed to know,” she said, “and then he sends you instead, to…what? Plead for mercy? And I get nothing. No answers. Any way you look at this, it is supremely shitty.” She could have been talking about a lot of things, not just her husband’s murder or Heron’s message or the circumstances placing Angela and Kellen on opposite sides of a conflict swiftly shaping itself into a war.
“I ain’t gonna beg you for anything, princess.”
Her mouth tightened, an obvious crack in her equanimity. “Don’t call me that.”
He half shrugged but didn’t apologize. “What I will do is cut a deal for Mari. She didn’t know that was flesh-and-blood Daniel. She bought a capture-or-kill contract for your mech-clone, that swanky robot you tote around.”
“Don’t paint her, or yourself, as an innocent. Even if mech-Daniel had been the one out in California, even if he’d taken that bullet, your team would still be responsible for felony property destruction—he is stupid expensive—which… Wait. Her name is Mari?”
Was it his imagination or had Angela suddenly gotten really still? Even for a holoprojection still. He shouldn’t be saying this, confirming his shooter’s name for the authorities, but something in her face, in her confusion, drew the words out like leeched poison. “Yeah. Mari Vallejo.”
Silence stretched for a long time. So long he imagined he could feel the movement of this station through space.