Lanniah Ceti Three was the largest of Lannis's habitable moons, and it boasted the busiest port in the solar system. It was also far enough from Depsis that Kai felt better for the distance, even if his mended shoulder did ache and itch every moment of the journey. Ilsa reminded him more than once that the discomfort was entirely in his head; the medic had done a professional job patching the deep wound, not just with needle and thread but with respectable technologies to speed the body's natural repair processes.
Kai didn't care. It itched. And it wouldn't stop itching until he could take the damn bandage off and put the entire ordeal behind him. It didn't help that Dantes seemed to consider it perfectly natural that Kai should have been injured in his service. Dantes seemed to take the fight and rescue for granted, never once thanking them for hauling his ungrateful ass out of harm's way. Kai rankled at the presumption. If Dantes had remained behind from the start and simply allowed Kai and Ilsa to follow their usual procedure, working alone and reporting progress from a distance, they could have avoided the situation entirely. There would have been no attack in the first place if Kai and Ilsa had been traveling alone.
He silently conceded that there was no point confronting a man like Eleazar Dantes about ingratitude, and he swallowed his irritation silently. Ilsa seemed to be doing the same. They would have to make do with Dantes's reassurances that they were already traveling beyond Iain Merck's sphere of influence.
They arrived at port during the midday rush and exited their small passenger frigate into regulated chaos. There were large crowds disembarking from other vessels standing parked in an orderly row along the same airfield. The port facilities were a short distance away, a building so wide it looked squat despite stretching nine stories tall.
Sections of the ground were marked off, designating moving walkways, and elsewhere there were hovering carts offering rides toward the main building. The walkways were overcrowded, and the carts demanded payment for services—up front, no free rides—but Kai and Ilsa didn't mind the longer walk. Ilsa especially seemed in no hurry to leave the open air, crisp and cool with a vividly clear sky overhead.
More surprising was Dantes following them meekly without complaint, and without requisitioning one of those passing carts. Perhaps he felt guilty for endangering them after all. It was the only explanation Kai could muster for the silent concession.
Two days later, Kai was bandage-free. The unmarked skin of his shoulder gave no indication that he had almost bled to death on Depsis. Kai recognized his near miss more from the frantic fear in Ilsa's eyes than from his own lightheaded memories of pain, but at least he felt at home in his own skin once more.
He also felt restless, as two days had passed without any useful task on which to spend his focus. Their search was no longer following Abigail's physical trail. The pressure was now entirely on Ilsa as she honed in closer and closer on the traces of capital Abigail had been so keen to hide. Kai doubted Abigail had physically set foot in most of the ports they were passing through now, and the truth was it didn't matter if she had. The trail they were on was all investments and business portfolios. Dantes was of some use when Ilsa had questions about the meaning of what she was finding. But it was all far beyond Kai's purview and even farther beyond his skills. It wasn't the first time he'd landed on this side of a labor disparity in their usually efficient partnership, but it was the first time the lack of utility had thrown him quite so hard off his stride.
In the absence of ways to make himself useful, Kai had too much time to think. Ilsa was never far from his mind—she was his partner, after all, and his closest friend—but after the loading bay on Depsis, he found her distracting in ways he usually managed to avoid.
He didn't want to admit he might be in love with his partner. Love was complicated and difficult, and in Kai's limited experience, it tended to end badly. But he had kissed Ilsa. A fleeting, ill-timed kiss that taunted his memory and left him wanting more. There was no point pretending he didn't want the chance to kiss her again, and this time do it properly.
In two days of inaction, the wanting had only gotten worse.
It was midmorning the third day on Lanniah Ceti Three when he acknowledged the truth with painful clarity. There was no uncertainty left in this equation. He was in love with Ilsa Vance.
Partner or not, he couldn't keep the revelation quietly to himself.
Ilsa's room was in the same hall as Kai's, on the seventh floor of a massive building that did double duty as a hostel and dockside business nexus. The upper levels were all rooms for rent, and Dantes had booked himself a larger suite on the nineteenth floor despite the fact that the smaller rooms on the seventh were perfectly pleasant and well equipped. Kai hadn't made any effort to talk Dantes out of his course. It was a relief to have their intrusive client a little farther out of reach. Dantes still managed to make a nuisance of himself along the way, turning up, checking in, pinging them over the building's personal communications network. But he wasn't right next door, and in this moment especially, Kai was glad for the reprieve.
In the narrow hallway, he had only one corner to turn before he reached Ilsa's room. For the first time in years, he hesitated. Neither of them had any qualms about barging through the other's door unannounced, but this was different. This wasn't business as usual. This was a conversation apt to change all the rules.
Kai pressed the panel beside the door instead.
He could just barely hear the low-pitched tone announcing his presence, and a moment later the door slid open. Ilsa stood on the other side, a look of forced patience on her face. She was clearly expecting Dantes. When she caught sight of Kai, her expression changed to one of mild confusion.
She stood back and gestured him inside. Kai took a step across the threshold, painfully aware of the nervous tension simmering beneath his skin. The door slid automatically closed behind him, leaving him beside Ilsa in a spacious single room with wide windows. Ilsa had raised the transparent panes despite the intense afternoon heat, and the room's climate adjusters were audibly struggling to compensate for the inhospitable open air.
"Everything okay?" Ilsa asked. There was uncharacteristic wariness in her voice, and Kai felt a twinge of guilt for having put it there.
He suddenly wished he had rehearsed this before storming his way to her door. Ilsa's question demanded a better answer than the disingenuous, "Fine," that was all he managed to muster up. He looked at her with new awareness, taking in familiar lines and curves, and wondering how he'd ever been able to pretend his feelings away. Ilsa favored comfortable clothing, fabrics that didn't cling too tightly or restrict her movements, but there was still no mistaking the pleasant shape of her figure. She was dressed now in a shirt with a low neckline and barely any sleeves, concession to the dry heat of their current layover. Her hair was wet from a recent shower, and damp curls clung to her neck and draped between her shoulder blades.
Ilsa took a cautious step toward him, dark eyes searching his face. "You don't look fine," she said, eyeing him warily. "You look like you've seen something frightful. What's wrong?"
Kai had to bite his lower lip to prevent a bark of laughter. Ridiculous that realizing he was in love should feel so much like terror. The sliver of mirth vanished almost as quickly as it had arisen, and Kai drew a slow breath that did nothing at all to steady him.
Ilsa was standing directly before him now, paying no heed to Kai's personal space. Their difference in height was even more pronounced at such close range, and she had to tilt her head back to peer sharply into his eyes. She set a hand to his shoulder and spoke his name with a low edge of fear.
Kai's breath stilled as a feeling like panic swelled in his chest. He had no voice, and even if he had, how could anyone hear it over the racket his pulse was making in his ears? Ilsa was still watching him with wide eyes, and Kai moved on instinct, raised a hand to cup her cheek. Ilsa's lips parted, perhaps on a question, but Kai leaned down and in before she could speak.
She retreated before he could kiss her. A single backward step took her out of range, and her hand disappeared from his shoulder. Kai blinked in surprised disappointment and, after an awkward moment, let his arm drop once more to his side.
Ilsa was staring at him now not with worry or fear, but with wide-open shock. "What the fuck are you doing?"
She hadn't retreated any farther than that single step, but Kai had sense enough not to follow. The frantic pounding of his heartbeat took on a different timbre as he realized this wasn't going to go anything like he'd hoped. Ilsa should be in his arms right now, not gaping at him like he'd lost his mind.
"I just thought, now that we're not surrounded by gunfire we might..." He trailed off and an unwilling blush rose to his cheeks.
For several seconds Ilsa regarded him in indecipherable silence.
"I don't understand," she said finally, in a voice gone impossibly quiet. "You're not— If this is about Depsis and that kiss... I figured it was just the heat of the moment."
"It really wasn't." Kai's confession matched Ilsa's sudden quiet. He was watching her closely, and it troubled him that he couldn't tell what she was thinking. Her face was far from blank, but her indecipherable expression still gave nothing away. She watched him back for almost a full minute, wordless, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
Fraught impatience tugged beneath his skin, but Kai held himself perfectly still.
Disappointment squeezed his heart when Ilsa turned and made for her desk. She said only, "We have a job to do."
"Ilsa," Kai protested, taking a single step in pursuit before his feet froze uselessly to the floor.
"I can't talk about this right now." Ilsa still wasn't looking at him as she dropped into her chair. Her gaze focused determinedly on the haphazard arrangement of data screens atop her desk. "I've almost cracked through the final layers of data protection. I need to focus."
It was a curt dismissal, and it stung. Even consoling himself that he'd caught her off guard, that of course she would need time to consider what he was offering, didn't ease the feeling of rejection. She was right—they had a job to do—but Kai's heart and pride both smarted at being so easily brushed aside.
Kai was an attractive man, and he had spent a lifetime honing his charm. Romantic rejection wasn't a plight he'd faced often; this ambiguous dismissal was almost worse. Ilsa had already returned to her screens, and the deliberate blank of her expression—a poker face Kai himself had helped her perfect—gave no indication at all of what she might be feeling beneath the surface.
He had no choice but to walk away, leaving his confession to hover between them until the job was done. Awkwardly, and with heavy reluctance, Kai left Ilsa's room. He flinched at the hiss of the door closing behind him.
When Ilsa told him, later that very evening, that she'd broken through to the information she needed, Kai felt a sliver of relief. Though the fact changed nothing, it was reassuring to learn she hadn't been exaggerating when she said she was close. That night she summoned Kai and Dantes both, excitement and success in the bright timbre of her voice.
Her room was lit garishly when Kai arrived to find Ilsa and Dantes sitting on either side of the cluttered desk. Evening sunlight slanted through the open windows, leaving the air uncomfortably warm. The room was more spacious than the space-bound lodgings they'd been cramming themselves into one after another over the past few days, and Kai realized there was a third chair by the foot of the bed. He grabbed it and dragged it near the desk, then turned it so he could sit backwards and cross his arms over the back.
"You found her?" Dantes sounded hopeful, but also clearly braced to be let down.
"No," Ilsa admitted. "But I figured out where all her money went. After passing through dummy accounts and short term investments and backdoors, nearly all the funds ended up in one place. A small company with its base of operations on Praxica VI."
"And the name of this company?" Dantes pressed with an air of impatience.
"The Roy Vis Medica Group," Ilsa answered, and even Kai's eyes went wide at the name.
"That's no small company," Kai protested, his expression mirroring the shock on Dantes's face. "That's one of the largest pharmaceutical conglomerates in the entire quadrant. Even I've heard of Roy Vis."
"It's grown a bit since that initial investment," Ilsa conceded, glancing back and forth between the two members of her startled audience. "It was just a tiny research lab during the war. Vis Medica. But the sudden influx of capital allowed them to expand and compete on a wider scale once the war ended."
Kai could well imagine. By the time the Alliance had finally driven off the seemingly endless swathe of invaders, most of the existing corporate superpowers had been taken down a notch. While a well-placed few like Dantes had come out ahead of the game, most had suffered drastic losses in their business interests. Attrition, compromised trade routes, communications blackouts and supply shortages had done immeasurable damage to the galactic economy, even in sectors that had managed to avoid outright violence. The changing terrain would have been a perfect opportunity for an emerging player with capital to burn.
Kai turned to Dantes. "Had your company dealt with Vis Medica previously? Maybe there's some preexisting connection."
Dantes shook his head in a firm negative. "I remember them coming almost out of nowhere after the war, but I'd never heard of them until they started marketing to multiple sectors. They weren't exactly in my sphere before that. Praxica VI isn't a close neighbor to any of my holdings."
Kai readily conceded the point. Praxica VI wasn't a close neighbor to any of the places they'd traveled so far, either. Assuming a direct connection, it would still take them nearly two weeks to make the journey from Lanniah Ceti Three to the Praxica system. That was no hop-skip-jump. That was real distance.
"So we're operating under the assumption that Abigail is involved with this company?" Kai asked, glancing at Ilsa over the tops of her clustered screens.
"Not necessarily." The quick look Ilsa threw at Dantes before dropping her eyes seemed strangely furtive, but her hesitation made sense when she admitted, "At this point in the data stream, I've lost all track of Abigail. Until near the end, I could still see her fingerprints on every transaction, but by the time the money flows into the pharmaceutical company, there's no sign of her."
Dantes's brow knitted heavily and his mouth turned down at one corner. "How is that possible?"
Ilsa tapped a quick sequence into the bottom corner of one screen, then turned it so Kai and Dantes could look. Text only, a screen full to overflowing with what looked like personal information.
"The final investments were made by this woman. Tullia Roy." Ilsa pointed to a section of screen that seemed to provide some kind of corporate timeline, including the change of the pharmaceutical company's name from Vis Medica to the Roy Vis Medica Group. "She may have already been involved in the company in some capacity. Early corporate records are incomplete, so I can't be sure. But the mass investment of new capital was essentially a buyout. Roy took over operations and began making changes almost immediately. She turned the company into one of the most powerful economic engines in the entire sector, and she did it in under two years."
"Impressive as this is," Dantes interrupted, unclenching his jaw to speak, "I'm more interested in finding out how this woman got her hands on my daughter's money."
"That's what worries me," Ilsa admitted. "The money seems to have changed hands abruptly. One second I was following Abigail's trail, the next I was looking at completely different accounts. I did some digging, and this Tullia Roy doesn't exactly cut a reassuring history. What little I could learn about her comes from sources so scattered I can't put together a coherent picture." She pointed to the screen that was still facing Dantes. "That's as complete a bio as I could construct, and there are dozens of holes in the timeline, not to mention a suspicious lack of photo identification. Whatever she was up to before Roy Vis Medica, I'd bet hard credits it was shady business."
Except shady business was only one possible reason for such a fractured history, and when Kai raised his eyes from the screen, he found Ilsa watching him pointedly. Kai didn't need her wordless admonishment to hold his tongue. He kept his thoughts to himself as the screen finished scrolling through information and then stilled.
"And Abigail?" Dantes pressed. "How does this get us any closer to finding my daughter?"
"It doesn't," Kai said, deliberately drawing Dantes's attention. Kai exchanged a quick glance with Ilsa, a split second of perfect understanding, and she nodded at him to continue. Kai forced himself to meet Dantes's glower and explain, "If the digital trail has run cold, there's only one way to find out what happened to Abigail. We need to talk to the only person who might know."
"Tullia Roy." The hard edges of anger didn't soften from Dantes's face, but they shifted inward so that Kai no longer felt trapped at the center of Dantes's displeasure.
Kai nodded. "She's the one who ended up with Abigail's money. It stands to reason that she and Abigail crossed paths while your daughter was in hiding. Obviously there's no guarantee she'll help us willingly, but if anyone can point us in the right direction, it will be her."
Dantes stood, and there was renewed impatience in the stiff line of his posture. "I'll book passage to the Praxica system immediately." It was a blatant breach of protocol. Their contract stated Kai and Ilsa had final say in all travel arrangements, and Dantes had so far abided those terms without complaint.
He didn't wait to see if Kai and Ilsa agreed with his announcement now, and Kai said nothing to interrupt his sudden retreat. A quick glance confirmed for Kai that Ilsa didn't intend to protest either. Neither spoke as Dantes removed himself from the room with all possible speed, rushing to see the business done.
After Dantes was gone, Kai turned to Ilsa and asked, "What do you really think?"
"I don't know what to think. Nothing's adding up the way it should, and when I try to dig deeper, the data just isn't there."
More quietly Kai asked, "Do you think Abigail is still alive?"
"Maybe." Ilsa scowled and began shutting her screens down one by one, methodical ritual in every tap and swipe. "I mean, I goddamn hope so. It's possible Abigail met Roy on the run and handed over her resources willingly in exchange for protection or some other consideration."
"Or maybe Abigail is Tullia Roy," Kai said. Valiant optimism made him add, "Just because there's been no sign of her doesn't prove something awful happened. Hell, for all we know, she could be avoiding her father."
Ilsa's scowl deepened. "You think I haven't considered the possibility?" She paused as the last screen fell dark, and for just a moment, she closed her eyes, her face smoothing into a calmer expression by force of will. When she opened her eyes again, they were still bright with frustration. "The war's been over for three years. Why should Abigail Dantes still be in hiding?"
Kai peered at Ilsa for a long moment, until understanding abruptly hit him. "You have a different theory. But you don't like it."
Ilsa crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. "Tullia Roy didn't become a player in this drama until well after Helena Kanne disappeared."
Kai blinked in unhappy surprise. "You're saying Helena found Abigail after all."
"I'm saying it's possible." Ilsa breathed a quiet sigh, uncrossing her arms and slouching forward to brace her elbows on the desk. "I've got a bad goddamn feeling about all this. I should be able to find solid information about Tullia Roy. If she's someone trying to protect Abigail Dantes, there should be a connection for me to trace. If she's Abigail, she's done too good a job covering her tracks. And if she's Helena Kanne, then God only knows what we'll find at the end of this trail. I'm trying not to assume the worst when there are so many possible explanations."
"You don't have to assume the worst to prepare for it," Kai countered gently.
Ilsa's fierce expression softened, and she shook her head almost sadly. "I know. I just wish this search weren't starting to feel like a murder investigation. I don't want Abigail to be dead. I want to reunite her with her father." She shrugged helplessly. "I may not like Dantes very much, but I don't want to see him bury his only child."
Kai reached forward and covered her hand on the desk, giving it a sympathetic squeeze. The smile he offered felt sad on his face, and he wished he could join her in hanging onto hope by simple force of will.
"We'll find her," he promised. "One way or another, we'll find her." And if Abigail Dantes was dead, then Kai silently vowed they would see justice done.