FIFTY-TWO

 

 

SHE KNEW SHE shouldn’t have been so relieved, but she was. Noelle DeRicci led Miles Flint into her office. His daughter, Talia, followed him uncertainly, and DeRicci realized she hadn’t given Talia explicit permission to join them.

DeRicci gave the girl a tentative smile, and Talia smiled back, then lowered her head, as if that big a display of emotion was too much for her.

They hadn’t had a great deal of interaction—Talia and DeRicci. Usually when DeRicci needed to talk to Flint, Talia excused herself and left the room, or was at school. DeRicci did know that Talia was as gifted at computers as her father—maybe more gifted—and she was scary brilliant.

She was also beautiful in an exotic way, that blond hair on top of copper skin. Most women had to use enhancements to achieve the same effect, and they often forgot to change the color of their eyebrows. But Talia’s looks were completely natural. Smart, beautiful, and athletic—or so Flint said. Talia had never applied herself to sports before, but she was now. She had been too gangly before to be very coordinated.

That wasn’t a problem now.

Talia moved with the smooth grace of a dancer.

In short, she was growing into the kind of woman who made DeRicci both nervous and self-conscious.

Both Flint and Talia stood next to the big screen in the center of the room. DeRicci had frozen all of the images when she realized that Flint had arrived. She didn’t want him to watch the crisis unfold. She wanted to tell him about it herself.

“You saw the mess out there in my office, right?” DeRicci asked Flint.

He nodded. “Popova and Soseki were involved?”

Flint sounded both skeptical and appalled—probably because he had never really liked Popova.

“It was news to me too,” DeRicci said, “but she’s devastated, and she begged me to let her stay. She can’t work, and the assistant we brought in—well, it’ll take him weeks to get up to snuff. I need someone who can coordinate information for me, and help with a Moonwide investigation.”

“What’s Nyquist doing?” Flint asked. He clearly knew how things worked. He knew that DeRicci wouldn’t have brought him in if she had other alternatives.

“He’s following a very important lead, or so he says. He couldn’t be here as quickly as I wanted.”

Of course, Flint hadn’t arrived in record time either. It had taken nearly thirty minutes for him to make it to the office. Had DeRicci known it was going to take that long, she would have stressed the urgency even more.

“Do you want me to wait out front?” Talia asked, her voice so soft DeRicci almost didn’t hear her.

“No,” DeRicci said. “I need people with excellent computer skills. However, you have to swear to me that you won’t say anything about this investigation. It’s confidential, and if you tell one unauthorized person, you’ll put the entire Moon in danger.”

Talia’s back straightened just enough to make DeRicci realize how tall she was—taller than DeRicci, certainly.

“It seems to me,” Talia said stiffly, “that the Moon is already in danger.”

“Talia,” Flint said.

“I mean it,” she said. “There’s all kinds of rumors everywhere. Kids were being pulled out of classes because they’re killing all the important people. I heard people died as far away as Moscow Dome.”

DeRicci looked at her in surprise. Not so much at the mishmash of information, but that she had put together the nature of the threat from all the leaks.

DeRicci was going to have to make some kind of statement, and do it soon.

“Talia.” Flint put his hand on his daughter’s arm. “This isn’t the place—”

“Actually, it is the place,” DeRicci said. “Talia’s right. We’re in trouble here, and it might extend throughout the entire Earth Alliance. Something is going very wrong. I don’t have the resources to investigate it properly. Governments not used to handling this kind of thing are scrambling to respond. My people are spread throughout Armstrong. The police department is working on two separate cases—”

“Two cases?” Flint asked.

She had forgotten. No one knew about the governor-general.

“I don’t think Celia’s going to make it,” she said softly.

He cursed.

Talia looked at him in concern. “That’s the governor-general, right? Someone tried to kill the governor-general?”

DeRicci looked directly at the girl. She needed Talia to remain calm, but she probably couldn’t in the face of this information. Better to give it at once.

“You never answered me. Can you keep everything we discuss in this room confidential?”

“Of course I can,” Talia snapped.

“Talia,” Flint said, but it sounded like a reflex. Then he looked at DeRicci, as if he knew he had to step into this. Poor man, he was out of his depth. With no wife to steer him through the difficulties of raising a teenage girl.

DeRicci would have smiled in a different circumstance. She remembered being the same kind of girl Talia was—smart, defensive, shy, and insecure. It made for a volatile combination, particularly with all the hormones added in.

“Talia’s great at keeping secrets. She knows how important some of them can be.” Flint gave his daughter a sideways look, almost a cautionary look, and for the first time, DeRicci wondered what kind of secrets Flint was keeping.

Then she shook off the thought. She didn’t have time to mistrust him. Besides, he had proven himself trustworthy repeatedly over the years. She needed to believe in that.

“All right then,” DeRicci said. “Let me tell you what’s going on and exactly what kind of help I need.”