Caught in Amber (3 page)

A heaviness settled in Sasha’s chest for a moment. Level Two parole status meant she would be moving out of the halfway house. Would Sterling help her find a new place? Wherever it was, she probably wouldn’t see Jules every day, maybe ever again. Parolees weren’t the “keep in touch” sort. Sasha could lose the one person she’d met since getting out of the NCRC whom she really liked. But if Jules knew it meant a chance to deactivate the chip, she would understand. Hell, she’d probably want to help. Not that Sasha could tell her.

“You were more or less right pegging me as a lawman,” Sterling said just loud enough to hear over the music. “But I’m not a constable or sheriff. I’m a senior agent with the Colonial Mining Authority.”

Sasha frowned. A government man? The CMA regulated the keracite mining industry—the economic backbone of Nevarro. Its enforcement branch of agents left day-to-day legal issues, like drug dealers and other criminal activity, to the Justice and Corrections Departments or local authorities. “What does the government want with Christiansen?”

“Nothing. That’s my problem,” he said, his tone bitter. “Kylie went to Christiansen of her own accord, got hired on with his PR department. She’s of age. No crime has been committed. The CMA has no jurisdiction even if there had been.” He took a large swallow of beer, wiping the foam from his lips with the back of his hand. When he looked at her again, none of the anger at Christiansen or the CMA showed on his face, but she knew it was still there. “I figured I had to go in and get her myself, so I accessed interagency links with Justice and Corrections for information on Christiansen and his operations, legal and otherwise. Several sources of data on him mentioned you. When I decided to go after her, I thought you could provide the connection I needed.”

Of course he had. Her life hadn’t been her own since she’d met Guy Christiansen. First it became entwined with his, then open to scrutiny by any law or government agency with due cause.

“You know we were close. That I did everything and anything with him. We were more than dealer and user. We were companions. Lovers.” Her stomach threatened revolt at the memories. She watched Sterling for a reaction.

He remained expressionless, his eyes ice cold.

“What made you think I’d help?”

“Because he deserted you? Made you an addict? Ruined your life?”

She shook her head and sighed. “No.
I
ruined my life. He was just there to provide the means.”

“Making excuses for him?” Sterling sneered, his disgust for Christiansen—for her weakness?—undeniable.

Sasha traced the spot where the chip was embedded in the side of her neck. “No. Never. I’m just being honest with myself. For once.”

His sneer melted into a frown. “I can appreciate that, and I want my sister to get the hell away from him before
her
life is ruined, or worse.” He rubbed the scar on his forehead with the side of his finger. “I tried going through channels but got stonewalled.”

“He has the local constabulary pretty much in his pocket,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a few regional offices on the payroll as well.”

Sterling nodded and lowered his hand, weariness in his eyes. “I know. Thought it better to back off for now rather than force things and make myself known to him.” He winced. “Or scare Kylie into hiding from me.”

And she would, Sasha knew, because she had done that exact thing when her father came for her. Christiansen’s security insulated him and his entourage from the outside world when necessary. She hadn’t cared about her family while she was caught in amber, but their refusal to even accept a message from her since then hurt more than detox ever had.

“You want me to do what, Sterling? Get back into Christiansen’s good graces to save your sister? I barely saved myself, and that was unintentional.” Her eyes burned with unshed tears. Crying for herself had ended long ago; she wasn’t going to resume now.

“I can’t force you to help me.” His hands fisted on the table.

Sasha studied the white knuckles, the blue veins bulging beneath ruddy skin. The hair on the backs of his hands was blond and fine, almost invisible. Slowly, she brought her gaze up to his face. “But you will if you have to?”

His eyes widened slightly as if in surprise, perhaps insulted. He glanced down at his hands and flattened his palms on the table. “No. Of course not. But if you help me, I can help you.”

“How? Get me a job in one of the keracite mines? No, thank you.”

“Name your price. What do you want?”

What did she want for being face to face with Guy Christiansen again? Something Sterling couldn’t ever give her. She said it anyway, unable to hide the smirk that curled her lips. She’d be back in her flat in no time. “Deactivate the chip.”

He stared at her for several heartbeats. She remained still to show she wasn’t scared of him, that her pulse wasn’t suddenly pounding in her head or that her throat had dried as he leaned closer, giving her a hint of his earthy, masculine scent.

He raised his hand, and the tip of his finger feathered over the skin covering her offender status chip. She shivered. An electric pulse surged from the point of contact, through her chest and along her limbs.

His voice rumbled through her, low and earnest, as he replied, “I can do that.”

* * *

Sasha jerked back as if his touch burned her, bumping her chair into the wall. “That’s not funny.”

Sterling lowered his hand to his lap, curled his fingers against his palm and tried not to think about the softness of her skin. “I’m not trying to be funny.”

He knew she’d demanded deactivation as a way out without outright refusing. Even after changing her status, Mickelson still owed him, but getting the tech to deactivate an offender chip would definitely swing the debt back the other way. It was well worth it to Sterling.

“These things are permanent.” She covered the side of her neck with her hand, as if to protect it from accidental contact. “I’ll die if it’s tampered with.”

She spoke with the conviction of someone who’d been warned ad nauseam, perhaps as a daily part of her routine at the NCRC. She was right. For the most part.

Once embedded, the chips relayed information to the Corrections system database until the person died. Even after serving out their time, offenders were placed on inactive status but forever trackable. With another arrest, it was merely a matter of a few keystrokes to reactivate their chips. Disturbing the chip or the tissue within three centimeters of it, or any attempt to use electronic or magnetic disrupters, triggered the release of nanos that sent the person into cardiac arrest. Usually not fatal if the medics reached them in time.

But the warnings offenders received weren’t completely true.

“I know people,” he said.

Her gray eyes narrowed. “Yeah? I’ve heard of
those
people. Back alley scammers who offer to fry your chip for a few thousand in cred chits. If they don’t kill you outright, you’re left drooling, sitting in a puddle of your own piss.”

Sterling shifted closer to her, surprised she didn’t try to move away. Then again, with her chair against the wall there wasn’t much room for escape. “My friend in the tech department changed your status easily enough, didn’t he? Only current Corrections techs can reprogram or deactivate the chips.”

Wariness furrowed her brow. “It’s one thing to change parole status. Why would he mess with my chip for you? Why wouldn’t he help you save your sister?”

“The guy I know doesn’t have the kind of influence I need to get to Kylie.”

“But he can get me out of the system without anyone the wiser.” She sounded skeptical, and he couldn’t really blame her.

“You’d have the freedom to go where you want, when you want. Without Corrections or anyone else looking over your shoulder.”

Hope blossomed in her eyes, but it was tempered by disbelief.

“Help me, and I can make that happen for you.”

“You want me to risk my neck to get Christiansen.”

“Isn’t reclaiming your life worth it?”

Lips pressed together, Sasha stared at him. He knew she was afraid of Christiansen, afraid of being that close to the temptation of amber again. Weren’t the physical dampeners in the chip enough to convince her she’d be able to resist, or was it something else? Once she helped him, she could have a normal life. Would she pass up that opportunity? He hoped not.

“All you have to do is introduce us. I swear,” he said, holding her gaze and meaning every single word. “I will keep you safe to the very end.”

Sasha didn’t speak for several seconds as she seemed to weigh his sincerity, weigh the risk. She swallowed hard. “What’s your plan?”

Chapter Three

“Not here.” Sterling rose and dug a few cred chits from his pocket. He tossed them beside the plates. “Want the food?”

Sasha glanced down at the cooling empanadas, her stomach protesting the mere thought of eating. As it was, the beer sat in her gut like keracite slag. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

He offered his hand to her. “Me neither. Come on.”

She stood to don her coat. “Where are we going?”

Cupping her elbow, he guided her between tables and hooting customers toward the door. “Someplace I don’t have to tell the whole neighborhood what we’ll be doing.”

Sasha couldn’t argue that. The noise of the club helped to mask their conversation to an extent, but some exchanges required more privacy, and this was going to be one of them. As they passed Jules, the dancer raised an eyebrow in question. Sasha mouthed,
I’m okay
, and waved. Her roommate nodded and returned to taking orders.

Back in the alley, her ears thrummed in the relative silence. Sterling buttoned his coat and took a deep breath, blowing it out in a silvery stream. The temperature had dropped significantly in the short time they were inside. Tiny pellets of snow collected on his shoulders and caught in his short hair. A metallic bite to the air promised more of the same for the remainder of the night.

“We can get some food later, if you want,” he said.

Sasha shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets and hunched her shoulders. “Yeah, okay, but where are we going?”

He took her elbow again, and she was surprised to feel the heat of him through the thick material of her coat. The gesture made her feel safe—even while it sent a nervous tremor through her. She resisted the urge to lean closer into him as they started to walk toward the street.

“I’ve got a room.”

Her sturdy shoes kept her feet firmly planted in the alley, forcing him to stop or yank her off balance.

Sterling read the obvious question on her face. He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, disturbing the snowflakes. “We need privacy. The halfway house isn’t a good place for us to be seen together. We’ll talk. Nothing more.” He held a hand out, palm up. “Do you trust me?”

She knew he trusted her not to run to Guy with what he was doing, but being a government lawman didn’t make
him
trustworthy in her eyes. In fact, in her experience, she should be more wary because of it. Power and corruption and all that.

But he had changed her status, like he said he would. Those pics, the evidence of Guy’s impact on women, would haunt her if she refused to do as little as listen to his plan. She shivered, remembering the ferocity of his gaze, the passion behind his words, as he asked for her help.

Sasha drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She could hear him out then make a decision. A chance to get the damn chip deactivated was worth that much at least.

“Not completely,” she said as she continued to the street, “but I’ll go with you for now.”

The CMA agent caught up with her in a few strides. His comm was in his hand and he tapped icons as he spoke. “We can catch a taxi at the corner.”

They waited beneath the blue light of a street lamp, stamping their feet against the cold. Snow crunched underfoot and cars hummed past. There were few pedestrians and most were more interested in getting out of the cold than in paying attention to her and Sterling. Eighty million kilometers beyond the orbit of the closest of the three more hospitable Core planets, the average temperature of Nevarro hovered at a brisk negative ten Celsius.

When the ground taxi pulled up to the curb, Sterling opened the rear door for her. Sasha slid across the crackling plastic seat, grateful for the warmth inside, even if it stank of damp feet.

“Broadway and Juniper,” he told the driver as he settled in and shut the door.

The engine whined and the taxi peeled away from the curb.

Broadway ran through the center of Pandalus’s Revivalist Quarter, home to about one hundred thousand of the faithful, and Juniper Road skirted a middling neighborhood. Did he live in or near the Quarter or just feel more comfortable here?

Revivalists had been on Nevarro practically from the landing of the first colony ship in 2095. Nearly half of the current seven million inhabitants followed the tenets or were descended from practitioners, and she suspected Sterling was the latter. Growing up, Sasha had been one of the few of her friends who wasn’t involved in the church, though her family might as well have been.

She sneaked a sideways glance at him. He lacked the Revivalist verve, but Sterling struck her as the kind of guy who kept to the straight and narrow. The kind of guy who wouldn’t have given her the time of day under normal circumstances. But these were far from normal circumstances.

Arms crossed, she peered out the side window. Snow whipped past, blurring the buildings and the colorful adverts. Streetlights lit the inside of the taxi like a blue strobe. Other ground cars hissed by, dark hulks edged with muck-dulled operation lamps. The occasional air car passed high overhead, its running lights blinking. Beside her, Sterling shifted on the seat but said nothing.

What did he have in mind? Whatever his plan, all she had to do was introduce him to Guy then get the hell out. He couldn’t expect her to do more than that. Acting was not her thing, and too much conversation with Guy might lead to her telling the drug dealer exactly how she felt about him. That would blow Sterling’s plan and likely get her killed. Maybe get them both killed.

Sterling knocked on the plasti-glass between them and the driver. “Here’s fine.”

The taxi pulled over in front of a row of stores, dark and closed for the night. This was a quieter neighborhood, even for the Revivalist Quarter. None of the buildings looked like a hotel or boarding house.

Sterling held his comm close to the meter attached to the back of the driver’s seat and tapped keys. After a beep of acceptance for the amount he transferred from his account, the door locks disengaged. Sasha levered the handle and they got out.

On the snowy walkway, he took her elbow again. His hand on her was more familiar than she’d let anyone become in a long time. She didn’t pull away. She should have, but she didn’t. Even if it was only to prevent her from slipping on a patch of ice, the idea of someone making an effort to keep her from getting hurt made her chest twinge.

It wasn’t surprising that Sterling was the sort of man who’d take a woman’s elbow. What surprised her was that he’d taken hers. And that she welcomed it.

He led her toward a narrow building with a large window adjacent to its front door. She stopped and peered inside. Simple wooden chairs surrounded several long tables. Along the walls stood shelves of old-fashioned type books, with carbon-fiber covers and flimsy pages and reader sticks. Each table had a couple of dark lamps on them, but the light came from a few dimmed overhead fixtures.

Above a stone fireplace at the far end of the room hung an embroidered tapestry. She couldn’t see the details, but she was as sure of its content as she was of her own name; the same sort of hand-stitched piece hung in the Revivalist market where she worked. Three hands around a circle that represented Nevarro. In each hand, a symbol of the Revivalist Movement: calipers, a sickle and a dove. The script encircling the images read,
Laboriosus manuum addo pacis ut
.

Laboring hands bring peace to the soul.

As participants in the Corrections Department’s parolee Back to Work program, her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Larch, had preached the Revivalist motto to her often enough in an effort to keep her on the right path. It was meant to inspire you to do for yourself as a way of finding satisfaction and enlightenment. Sasha wondered if dealing with Sterling would fulfill that particular notion better.

Maybe. If it didn’t get her killed.

“This is a Revivalist Reading Room,” she said.

Sterling continued past the front door. “Yes.” He escorted her around the corner, down an alley between the reading room and a low, dark building with large bay doors. “Fewer eyes on a Revivalist church,” he said, steering her around a slushy puddle. “My room’s above it.”

Sasha looked up, seeing only the blank wall of the two-story building. “You don’t live here in Pandalus?”

“My place is outside the city. I needed something anonymous and closer to the Quarter.” His eyes narrowed as he stared ahead, avoiding eye contact with her.

She knew exactly why he rented a room. “So you could follow me more easily.”

“Yes.”

His honesty was at once refreshing and disappointing. So much for the parity she’d mistakenly imagined between them while in the club. He was a lawman. She was a parolee. Period.

Sterling stopped before a recessed door and swiped a key card over the metal box beside it. Revivalists seemed to hang on to the notion of key cards, while most of the rest of civilization used bio scans of one sort or another.

No telltale admittance light flashed or beep sounded to let him know the key worked. The door opened with a low squeal into a pitch-black space.

Pocketing the card, his hand came back out, holding his comm. With a tap on the end, a beam of light flicked on, cutting into the darkness. Directly across from the door, metal stairs rose into more darkness.

Sasha crossed her arms over her chest. “You want me to follow you up there.”

He held her gaze, weariness and frustration in his eyes and in the lines across his forehead. “No more games, Sasha. No more little tests from either of us, clear?”

She could walk away if she chose, accept the slightly better muck hole of a life than she had yesterday. And Guy would be walking around in his thousand-credit suits, screwing up one girl after the next.

“Clear.”

Sterling climbed the stairs, the soles of his shoes twanging on the metal treads and the flashlight bobbing behind him to light the way for her. “Push hard when you close the door.”

Sasha did so. The clang echoed against the walls, reminding her of the cell block at the NCRC. Shaking off her apprehension, she followed him up.

* * *

Sterling preceded Sasha into his room and twisted the light switch just inside the door. A single globe flickered to life overhead, threatened to go out then glowed with a harsh white glare to reveal just how crappy a room can be obtained for fifty untraceable credits a week.

Finding an unwired, relatively safe place to conduct his business required compromises to be met, breathing room being one of them. The dank little space at the end of a danker hallway wouldn’t hold more than four adults without forcing someone to stand in the doorway. He hadn’t expected to bring anyone here, least of all someone who could turn on him if she chose to. But something about Sasha James said he could trust her. He hoped he was right.

Sterling closed the door behind them, not bothering to lock it. No one else lived in the building, and leaving it unlocked might ease Sasha’s mind somewhat. He removed his coat and hung it on one of the hooks jutting from the back of the door.

Sasha wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were still standing out in the snow. Her skin looked starkly pale in the unforgiving light; he couldn’t read her expression. Did he scare her that much, or was it the situation? Probably a little of both, but it couldn’t be helped. All he could do was assure her he’d do his damnedest to keep her safe. As long as she played square with him.

“Have a seat,” he said.

Not that there was much choice in seating. A narrow cot sagged against the left-hand wall. Across from the bed was a rickety, straight-backed chair with barely space for a body to move between them. In the corner beside the chair, a Revivalists Chapbook sat on a low, painted chest.

She took the chair and turned to face the bed, her knees together beneath her black skirt. The hem rose as she sat, revealing the shapely curve of her legs. What did the rest of her look like beneath the heavy material clothes and tights?

Sterling gave himself a mental shake. She was anxious enough. No need for him to add ogling her legs to the stress.

“Do you want me to take your coat?” He approached her as he would a wounded animal, risking the loss of an arm if he moved too fast.

“No, I’m good. Just start talking so I can get back.” She threaded a hand through the long strands of hair on top of her head.

Her eyes held steady on his as he sat across from her on the thin mattress. The bed frame creaked beneath him. Face to face, their knees nearly touched. The smallness of the room had never bothered him until now. It was impossible to ignore how tiny it was, with the two of them filling the space. Impossible to ignore how close she was when a mere intake of breath brought her rain-and-flower scent to him.

Sterling swallowed hard and shifted backward, eliciting a rhythmic creaking from the frame. Heat rushed to his face as Sasha’s gaze dropped to the bed then quickly rose to meet his eyes. She scooted back as far as she could on the hard chair.

“I’m going to get a job that doesn’t start until after twelve-hundred. Maybe on a planet that never has winter.” Her tone was conversational, but the words were more than lamentation about being tied to the system or the relentless cold of Nevarro. They probed for affirmation, reminded him about the terms of their agreement.

Sterling nodded, confirming a promise he wasn’t completely sure he’d be able to keep. He’d pull every string he could to make it happen for her; he just couldn’t guarantee her chip would be deactivated like he’d said. His only relationship to Corrections was his friendship with Mickelson. But telling her that now would blow everything.

“I know you don’t want to be with Christiansen any longer than necessary,” he said, rubbing the side of his hand across the scar on his forehead. “The less time you’re with him, the better.”

Sasha snorted a quiet laugh. “At least we agree there.” He smiled and her cheeks pinked, but instead of glancing away she kept her gaze on him. “Where did you get that? The scar, I mean. Most people would have had it erased.”

Sterling stopped rubbing the slightly raised line and lowered his hand. “An accident, when I was a boy. Fell on my head off a cattle feeder and got stomped.” She winced, and the compassion in her eyes for the injured boy he’d been embarrassed him. He waved off her concern. “Dad refused scar treatment, saying it would teach me not to fool around near the cows, but okayed a new eye so I could still work. Impressed my friends when I made it move independent of the other.”