Chapter 15
Aryl

Ver and I back away from the door, and the AI shuts it all the way.

“Look!” Ver whispers, pointing to three midsize screens on the wall. Security feeds. One shows the door of the apartment building, one displays the entrance to the unit, and one, a newer model, is of the living room. I bet Cal and Jaha installed that one to keep an eye on Dimmi.

Our eyes lock onto the screen with the living room feed. Even though Ver’s close enough for me to feel her body heat, she’s leaning away, as far as her spine will allow. She’s scared, I think. Scared of me. Of my strength. A little intimidation is good in a situation like this, but I still feel ashamed.

In the living room, Osmio is standing stock still, watching Jaha with focus and cunning—so differently from how he looked at me.

Jaha turns her head slightly toward the camera, and I wonder if she actually hopes we’re watching. Yuan is smiling at Dimmi’s crib. He gets up, peeks inside at the baby, and dangles his finger in front of her face. Dimmi coos and grabs at his hand.

“I’d love to have a kid,” Yuan says, sighing. “But I don’t have the time, with work. My wife says she wants one, and that she can take care of a baby alone, but she shouldn’t have to.”

Jaha’s nodding, looking wistful. “Cal always worried he wasn’t doing enough for Dimmi. Or for me. But it was too hard for him to change.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, if I become a dad,” Yuan says. He sits back down next to her on the sofa and picks up his tea.

“And once you have a child, Paul, there’s always one more thing to be afraid of,” says Jaha.

I suspect that’s exactly how my parents feel. Scared, all the time. But they couldn’t have imagined that their own daughter would hurt them the way I have.

“Jaha, we’re family. We always have been. If I can do anything to make things easier for you, please let me know.”

“Thank you,” Jaha says, her voice hollow.

Yuan unrolls his neon-green flexitab. “There’s something I want to show you.” He bends to whisper something to her, and a tear rolls down Jaha’s cheek. She wipes it away on her white sleeve.

“Maybe . . . maybe Cal did kill himself,” I mutter, moving closer to the holo screen. “Busted self-esteem . . .”

Jaha is scrolling on Yuan’s flexitab, reading some kind of document.

“Cal would not kill himself like that,” Ver says, shaking her head. “TTX is a bad way to go. If Cal wanted to die, he could have ordered sodium pentobarbital—legal euthanasia, much less painful. And he is licensed to purchase it. But why would he even consider suicide in the first place?” Ver’s whisper sounds desperate. “He had a big future. Research was going well—I know he was excited! You have to believe me.”

I nod, slowly. “He had a baby girl too.”

“Some parents do not stay for their baby girls,” Ver says. I can hear her throat closing up.

Where did that come from? Though I’m dying for her to elaborate, I bite my tongue.

“Investigators do stay for their experiments,” Ver says. “He would not have left me to finish mine alone.”

“Maybe he thought you could do it independently. Didn’t he call it a side project?”

“He is humble,” Ver says. So she admits it: Her project was a big deal. Or it would’ve been, if Cal’s death hadn’t put an end to their experiments.

In the living room, Jaha picks up a stylus with her left hand and signs the document on Yuan’s flexitab. They get to their feet, and she bows her head in thanks. She’s smiling through the tears. Why?

“I’ll have my assistant process this right away,” Yuan says to Jaha. “The funding is yours now, which means the Institute will approve your promotion in no time. Congratulations, Investigator Linaya. I expect great things.”

Osmio takes this as his cue to move toward the door. Yuan bows to Jaha and follows his bodyguard out of the apartment, standing a little straighter than when he came in.

Watching him, I feel dizzy, as if I’ve done too many turns across the stage without spotting. The bedroom swirls like the Milky Way, and without thinking, I grasp Ver’s narrow shoulder to stay upright. But only for a moment.

I whisper, “Investigator Linaya.”

Jaha is next in line for Cal’s position. An understudy poised to become principal dancer. Why didn’t I see it?

Because I didn’t want to.

“We are such dense matter,” Ver breathes, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her other hand clenches around my wrist, and a warm sensation spreads through my belly. “You know why Jaha wants us to think that Cal was depressed? So that no one suspects her.”

“She wasn’t even in lab last night.”

Of course, neither was Ford. And Xenon asked about his involvement.

“Jaha has always, always wanted to be Cal,” Ver insists.

“You think Yuan isn’t aware of that? He’s known Jaha since she was our age.”

“He was Cal’s friend, not Jaha’s. Besides, I think he brought a bodyguard because he is afraid of her. Did you hear how cold Jaha became when he mentioned that the police will do a rigorous autopsy?”

“But she bailed us out.”

“To take suspicion off herself,” Ver says. Her hand floats off my wrist and back to her side. “What is something no one would expect a killer to do? Free other suspects who had already been arrested.”

This twisting logic is giving me a headache. But Ver may have a point. Jaha said she and Cal have been having money problems, so how’d she scrape together thousands of Feyncoins to free us? Maybe we can’t trust anything she’s said.

And I have to admit it: Jaha’s the perfect murderer. She’s the person closest to Cal. She knows all the ins and outs of the lab. She has more to gain from Cal dying than anyone else: his job, his money, full custody of their daughter. It’s easy to believe that resentment was festering. Loneliness, from all those nights Cal spent away from her. And who knows what was going on inside the walls of this apartment when he did come home?

“I don’t want it to be Jaha,” I admit. “She’s the best person in lab. Helped me when everyone else thought I was too dense to get anything done.”

Ver bites her lip, not missing the accusation. Everyone loves Jaha, except maybe her. Sometimes I’ve even wished we worked for Jaha, not her husband. People always forget that she and Cal have the same qualifications. They don’t know that Jaha’s better at building scopes and rigs and relationships—at least with me. Cal refused to help when I got stuck on a problem. Jaha slyly sent books and articles to my flexitab that would steer me toward a solution. She not only accepted that I had a life outside of lab; she came to my dance shows and helped me book cheap tickets home to Celestine. She cared for the mouse colony while I was away. When Cal and I had our worst spats, Jaha would force a compromise.

Despite all this, Cal was the investigator, not Jaha.

What if this ideal wife and lab manager planned to kill Cal for a long time, while playing the roles that would deflect suspicion? Shivers tickle my spine.

The walls of the dark octagonal bedroom seem to inch closer. And I know that no matter how good Jaha has been to me in the past, I can’t spend the night here.