Justin (11 page)

Recently, Rees had began working to get the Shareem off planet, to someplace they could live without so many restrictions. Not an easy task, and if any of them were caught, all Shareem could be terminated. Justin, who knew people on Sirius who could help the Shareem, had agreed to assist.

But Justin couldn’t leave the planet right now. Not until he figured out what to do about Sybellie.

And now Deanna knew about her.

Jeanne returned, wearing a silk sheath that hugged her body but covered her to Bor Nargan standards. Eland donned a tunic, lent Justin some leggings, and they all left together.

Judith’s place was full tonight, with both Shareem and the dock workers, male and female, who liked to hang out there. Shareem attracted women, the male workers weren’t ashamed to pick up Shareem leavings, and the female workers sized up both Shareem and the human males.

Judith gestured to a table in a shadowy corner where a Bor Nargan woman waited alone. Jeanne waved at the woman and led them there.

When Judith brought ale to the four of them, she paused to duck toward Jeanne and kiss her full on the lips. “After?” Judith asked.

Jeanne nodded without worry and sipped her ale.

“Wait a minute,” Justin asked before Judith could walk away. “What happened to ‘Mitch doesn’t like it?’”

“Oh, he doesn’t mind Jeanne,” Judith said. “He just doesn’t want a Shareem’s testosterone-laden hands all over me. Mitch likes Jeanne, and likes to watch us go.”

Eland grinned at Justin. “It’s a great show.”

“I’ll bet.”

Once upon a time, Justin might have begged a front-row seat, but now that his life was complicated, Justin drank his ale and waited impatiently for the conversation to turn to what he’d come here for.

Jeanne’s friend must have become used to Shareem—and Jeanne—because she didn’t look shocked in the slightest at either the kiss or the obvious appointment for a threesome later. Jeanne introduced the woman as Mira, a freelance sailor on transport ships.

Mira’s face was lined with experience, age, and travel, but she had lively dark eyes, and her hair held no gray. Her job explained her unworried expression. She’d have been to many planets and seen practices far beyond what Bor Narga’s inhibited stance on sex allowed.

“I think the woman I knew used to work for DNAmo,” Mira said once introductions were done. “She lived on Madallin Row with her mom and dad.”

Justin’s heart beat faster. “That’s her. Do you have any idea where she is now?”

“Sorry. Wish I did. She was a good friend.”

He tried to hide his acute disappointment. “When did you last see her?”

“About fifteen years ago,” Mira said. “I shipped out with a company that did runs in the Paladias system, and was there for a year or so. When I got back, Lillian’s mom had died—her dad had gone a few months before that, I heard from her neighbors—and Lillian had moved out. No one in the neighborhood knew where she’d gone. Someone said the mountains, but when I had the chance to go out there, a couple years later, I never saw her. I looked, but didn’t find her.” Mira shrugged. “She might have gone off-world. I didn’t try too hard, because my life had moved on, and I figured hers had too. But do you want me to ask around?”

Justin turned his ale glass on the table. “I don’t want her getting into trouble because a Shareem is asking for her.”

Mira sent him a little smile. “I can be discreet.”

“Be
really
discreet.”

“You can trust her,” Jeanne said. “She understands.”

“I do,” Mira said. “So, Justin, you busy for the rest of the night? You for hire?”

She made him sound like a taxi. Justin had urged Deanna to engage him for his services, but when Mira asked for it, the appeal did a complete turnaround.

“Sorry,” Justin said. “Not tonight.”

“He’s not been interested in sex very much at all lately,” Jeanne said. “Poor guy. He must not be feeling well.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Justin said. “I’m getting over something.”

“You two leave him alone,” Eland rumbled. “Drink up. It’s on me. If you want a Shareem, I’m handy. But only with Jeanne too.”

Mira laughed. “No thanks. You’re cute, Jeanne, but I don’t lean that way. Maybe later, Shareem.” She winked at Justin then absorbed herself in finishing off her ale and signaling for more. The woman was a serious drinker.

Justin finished his ale more slowly, noting that Mira was on about her seventh by the time he quit the place and went back to his apartment to think about what she’d said.

The mountains. Not extremely specific, but it was a place to start.

Deanna wasn’t in the apartment when Justin reached it. He shucked his clothes and lay down on the bed, her fresh scent still lingering on the sheets where he’d pressed her. He closed her eyes, and sighed when his cock began to rise again.

*** *** ***

Deanna had spent some time after Justin left his apartment searching it. She didn’t know why she wanted to, but the ache in her heart made her need to do
something
.

She didn’t find much. Justin’s apartment was bare of anything but necessities, and he had little in the way of clothes or personal belongings.

Behind his bed, she found a wall compartment that slid open to her touch. When closed, the compartment blended seamlessly into the wall, but the catch to open it wasn’t hidden. Inside the compartment, she found two boxes.

One was about two feet on a side and made of wood, an incongruity on Bor Narga. The box was not locked, and Deanna opened its lid to find an interior lined with black cloth and divided into sections, a top tray lifting out to reveal a deeper space beneath.

The things that lay in the slots in these sections made her still. He had handcuffs, several pairs. Not the functional kind that Deanna carried to subdue arrestees, but thick cuffs lined with velvet, cloth, or fake fur. Each had a slim chain between the cuffs that looked almost like jewelry.

Straps, both leather and cloth, were folded into another slot. In another she found a small, velvet-lined box that contained three small spheres. What those were for, she had no idea.

She also found the wands—small, slender ones as well as shorter, wider plugs. She stared at them a moment, before realizing they were for insertion . . . into various places.

Deanna’s imagination conjured Justin’s fingers warm on her while he carefully slid one of the wands inside her.

She shivered and opened her eyes, which had drifted closed for some reason.

Another slot carried tubes of lubrication, and another held three small glass bottles. She worked out the stopper on one bottle, smiling in delight when she breathed in the heady aroma of cardamom and other spices.

Justin smoothed these oils on the lady he pleasured, she presumed. He’d restrain her with the cuffs and use the plugs to fill her, while he worked the oil into her skin. The straps? For teasing and tickling, or for something harsher?

Deanna pictured herself lying facedown on his bed, her wrists fixed to headboard by the soft cuffs, while he drew the straps down her bare back. She’d be filled with the plug, warm from his caresses, waiting for his kisses on her skin, and for him to fill her himself . . .

Deanna shuddered, nearly dropping the bottle of oil. She quickly put in the stopper and returned everything to the box where she’d found it.

The second box in the wall compartment was smaller and made of plastic. This too was not locked. Deanna opened it and found . . . Justin.

Printed photographs, which they still used on Sirius and other backwoods planets, lay scattered on top of souvenirs. The first photograph showed Justin, grinning, wearing a body-concealing work coverall, looking so
normal
.

More shots of Justin—in a bar, holding up a glass of ale, surrounded by other laughing men; with his arm around a brown-haired woman who wore the same kind of coverall; of the same woman in a short tunic at an ocean, then one of Justin, wearing short leggings and nothing else. He balanced on a rock, laughing, while the ocean crashed behind him.

The woman must be Shela, the woman he’d lived with for fifteen years. They both looked so happy.

The other things in the box were bits and pieces of Justin’s life on Sirius—plastic entrance discs for various shows, his work ID for his job on the space docks then the permit to start his own offloading company, plus the deed to a house a little outside the city.

Deanna looked closer at the deed—Justin still owned the house. That was a blatant violation of laws on Bor Narga, but not on Sirius. Touchy if the issue ever came to a trial.

At the bottom of the box was a faded piece of silk—a Bor Nargan veil, Deanna realized when she pulled it out. The veil was old but had been kept with care. With it was a small plastic card, a note of some kind maybe, though Deanna could see nothing on it when she held it up to the light. She’d need a computer to read it.

The veil and card gave her an idea. She folded the silk around the card and tucked both into the pocket inside her coverall. The veil was so fine it folded to nothing.

Deanna closed the box and slid it back into its place, shutting the wall compartment again, before she left Justin’s apartment for the darkness of the desert night.

Pas City had cooled from the terrible heat of the day, the district and markets coming alive with people, color, lights. But Deanna turned her back on the laughter pouring down the streets and headed home.

She entered her apartment quietly to find Reda in the living room watching a vid.

“Sleeping,” Reda said, answering Deanna’s unasked question. Deanna nodded. She looked in on her mother, saw Kayla indeed sleeping heavily, and went on to her bedroom.

Deanna brought up her computer, unfolded the veil from her pocket, stuck the silk into the full scanner, and read the secrets it revealed.

Not surprisingly, the DNA on the veil matched the DNA for Lillian Passan. Perhaps she’d left the veil behind at DNAmo one day, and Justin had kept it for her, or perhaps she’d given it to Justin as a remembrance gift.

Deanna set the veil aside and keyed in her authorization code to search the highly restricted DNA databases for all of Bor Narga. Very few had the clearance, but Deanna had qualified for it—something else she might lose if her captain decided to fire her.

The DNA database found a partial match for Lillian’s DNA in a young woman called Sybellie, who had the same birth date as the anonymous birth recorded at the backstreet medic’s. The girl’s mother was listed as anonymous, father unknown, and the database showed she’d been adopted as an infant by a Vistara family.

Why a Vistara family would adopt a working-class illegitimate child, Deanna didn’t know, but perhaps they were kindhearted, or couldn’t have children themselves, or . . . Who knew?

The holopic of Sybellie showed her to be one of the young women Deanna had seen at the coffeehouse. Sybellie had seemed to be accepted by her friends and happy—Deanna could find no evidence in her records that she’d had difficulties in school or was thought inferior.

There was no information listed for Sybellie’s biological father—no name, no DNA record. That was not unusual in the matriarchal society of Bor Narga, where the mother was the most important connection. Money, land, inheritance, and names came through the woman.

The father would be listed only if he came from a good family connection or had a lot of money for his children to inherit. If the mother did not want the father to have responsibility for or even access to the child, she could leave him out of the records altogether. Many births among working-class women had no father listed.

No one, it seemed, had bothered to check at Sybellie’s DNA for a father match. No one had cared. Lillian was the important person in the equation, not the man who’d gotten her pregnant. Though, in this case, no one had much cared who the anonymous mother was either.

Deanna did not run the search for the father now. She did not want to risk leaving any trace of her search, and lead those who policed the databases back to Justin.

Although, they might not notice. Deanna’s opinion of the people who watched the government databases for illegal activity wasn’t high. When Deanna worked with them to track down criminals, they took a lot of things for granted and didn’t look beyond their assumptions.

Even so, she didn’t chance it.

Deanna went back to Lillian’s DNA record and ran the search for her DNA again.

After about two hours of scrolling, backtracking, and tracing through linked databases, her back aching, she found another match.

*** *** ***

Justin ignored the buzzing of his com that woke him out of half-drunk slumber the next morning. The caller was Deanna—she didn’t bother to disguise her number.

He ached to see her again, but some part of him feared to. He was falling for the woman,
needed
her, but she knew too much, and any danger to Sybellie made him wild.

Then again, if he kept Deanna in his sights, kept her sated with pleasure, he could control her and what she knew. Maybe.

Either recourse was dangerous.

Justin reached for the com to answer it just as it went silent. His thumb hovered over the button to return the call then he sighed and lowered his hand back to his side.

Damn it.

Time to start moving. Justin dragged himself out of bed, put himself through the shower, dressed, and decided to hit the street to find breakfast at a vendor’s cart.

His door opened before he could reach for the control, to reveal Deanna standing in the sunshine holding two coffees. She held one out to him.

“Ready?” she asked.

Justin braced himself on the doorframe and blinked down at her, the half-hangover pounding through his head. “Ready for what? Are you arresting me? Luring me into your paddy wagon with coffee?”

“What are you mumbling about? I hired a car. You want to go up to the Vistara, don’t you? It’s almost time.”

Sure enough, a tiny hovercar waited a few feet down from Justin’s apartment door. “What the fuck?”