Search & Recovery: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel (21 page)

His gaze stayed on hers a moment too long. When was the last time a man had looked at her like that? When anyone had?

She couldn’t remember.

Her mother would say that she just wouldn’t have noticed, that her thoughts were tied up in Torkild, and that had probably been true.

But Berhane hadn’t thought of Torkild as much this last year, except to resent him or dismiss him. It hadn’t been working out. She had known that, but she had been unwilling to admit that to herself.

“It’s nice to laugh,” she said to Donal. “I can’t remember the last time.”

His smile faded. He looked around the shop. The ten other patrons had been looking at them.

“Yeah,” he said. “It almost feels inappropriate.”

She remembered that feeling from the days after the first bombing. When someone laughed in public, everyone stared. It seemed like the whole city had agreed that laughing had been banned for at least a month.

And she had been grieving so hard for her mother that she had felt the same way.

“We have to laugh at small things,” Berhane said, as much to herself as to him. “We’re not alive if we don’t.”

That gaze of his was deep. She could get lost in those eyes.

What would her mother say? She was searching for a rebound.

And this man wasn’t someone to toy with. He had a darling child who would become too attached to anyone in his life.

Berhane didn’t want to hurt either of them.

And little Fiona had been the highlight of her Anniversary Day. The
only
highlight. (Unless Berhane counted the break-up with Torkild, which would only benefit her in the long run.)

She took a sip of her espresso. It was good and sweet, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. Somehow the flavor worked.

She made herself focus on Donal, not on the past. She wasn’t sure why he wanted to spend time with her, but she wasn’t going to ask him either.

Asking would make her seem needy.

“Are you going to try to talk me out of going into the field?” Berhane asked.

He rested his right elbow on the table and put his chin in the palm of his right hand. It was a young, wistful move, making her realize what he must have looked like as a boy.

Dark eyes, incredible intensity, lips that seemed to smile even when he was serious.

“No, I’m not going to talk you out of anything,” he said. “I think I understand why you want to go.”

She turned her head. He was going to say something patronizing. Torkild would have. Her father too.

Since she was attracted to this man, and it was too soon to be attracted to anyone, she decided to let him disparage her. It would be the best way to make her see him as a real person and not as someone interesting.

“Why do you think I want to go?” she asked.

He let his arm drop. He took the glass of pink liquid and pulled it toward him.

“My wife,” he said quietly, not looking at Berhane. “She died in the bombing four years ago.”

Berhane’s face flushed. Whatever she had expected him to say, it hadn’t been that.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t.” He grabbed a spoon and stirred the latte. The spoon clinked on the glass. “They didn’t…find her…right away, and I kept thinking she would come back to us. Fee was only two months old. I was babysitting her that day. I should have been at work, and Laraba should have been at home. She had leave to stay with Fee. I didn’t. But Laraba had some appointment at the medical school—she was a professor there—and I agreed…”

His voice trailed off. He raised his head.

“You don’t want to hear this,” he said, his voice suddenly normal again.

“I do,” Berhane said. She hadn’t met anyone who had lost someone in the first bombing.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She hadn’t met anyone who wanted to discuss what they lost.

But the opportunity had fled. He was already shaking his head, clearly embarrassed. “Long story short, it took them three months to identify her.”

“By small amounts of DNA found somewhere,” Berhane said.

“Yes.” His eyes glittered. “Your mother too?”

Berhane nodded. “It took forever. I thought—I hoped—she had run away.”

He laughed, only this time, it wasn’t the deep-in-the-gut joyful laugh he’d had before, but a bitter laugh of recognition.

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “But I couldn’t understand how she could leave Fee.”

“And you,” Berhane said.

He shook his head. “Oh, I can be an asshole, and I wasn’t happy that day about missing a morning of work. I could understand how Laraba could leave me. But Fee was her whole world.”

Such sadness. Berhane felt drawn to it, and knew she shouldn’t.

“It sounds like Fiona is your whole world too.” She didn’t feel that she had the right to call the little girl “Fee.” That seemed like an affectionate, earned nickname.

He smiled, the warmth back in his face. He wasn’t looking at Berhane. Instead, he looked to the side, as if he could actually see Fiona.

“She is my whole world,” he said. “I didn’t think I could raise her without Laraba, but I am. I’ve managed. And Fee saved my life.”

Berhane understood that too, that need to grab onto something. She had made Torkild that something, to his dismay. Maybe the end of the relationship hadn’t been all his fault. Maybe Berhane had refused to let him go because she couldn’t let anything go after the bombing.

Donal was saying, “I know it seems silly to say that about a two-month old, but really—”

“You had to stay focused on the present,” Berhane said. “You didn’t have time to grieve.”

His gaze was on hers again. She felt an odd jolt, as if he had actually touched her.

“Yes,” he said with a kind of wonder. “Exactly.”

“Anniversary Day couldn’t have been easy for you,” Berhane said.

“Oh, God, you have no idea—” He stopped himself and smiled sheepishly at her. “Except that you do.”

She nodded. A lump formed in her throat. She made herself take a deep breath, hoping the lump would go away without tears.

“And,” he said, as if by way of apology, “your fiancé was an asshole to you just before so you had no one to go to for comfort.”

That made Berhane smile. Whatever Torkild was good at—and there were many things (mostly intellectual)—comfort wasn’t one of them.

“He came back,” she said. “They didn’t let the ships leave, and to his credit, he tried to comfort me. The softer emotions aren’t in his skill set.”

Donal took a sip of that egregiously pink drink, then set it aside.

“Forgive me, but you two didn’t look like you belonged together. Even fighting…I mean…” Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m out of line.”

It was her turn to rest an elbow on the table. “No, I want to hear this. No one besides my mother ever talked to me about Torkild.”

Donal gave her a surprised look. “No one?”

Berhane shrugged. “I…my close friends, they all went to school or took jobs off-Moon. They kinda thought I was a throwback for staying here.”

And of course, she hadn’t made many other friends in the last few years. Since her mother died, at least, if not before. There were a few people she had regular conversations with at the university, but she hadn’t seen most of them after the bombing.

She hadn’t seen anyone for a long time.

He nodded. “Sometimes life just gets in the way, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. Then she made herself smile at him. “Which is not going to get you off the hook. Tell me what you saw with me and Torkild.”

“Why?” Donal asked.

“I’ll tell you later, so I don’t taint whatever it is you’re going to say.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “When people in love fight, the passion spills over. Bystanders should be able to look and see the attraction. The fighting should be just as profound as the lovemaking.”

Berhane’s cheeks heated.

Donal’s eyes twinkled. He clearly saw her discomfort.

“However, you were mad. He just stood there, as if you were some off-kilter stranger. He looked at you with a little sadness, but it was that superior sadness some people get when a child is out of control and those people believe that no one should ever let their child behave like that.”

That last bit sounded like experience. But Berhane understood it.

“Of course, I might be biased,” Donal said. “I like you, and the fact that someone was treating you like that…”

He shrugged and spread his hands in a silent apology.

“And here I am, making an ass of myself,” he said.

“No,” she said. “No.”

She took a deep breath, then extended her hand. The movement felt like such a risk. A tentative touch with someone she didn’t know.

“Thank you,” she said. “For the honesty. It means—”

He took her hand and stole her breath at the same time. His fingers were warm and dry and callused and somehow electric. They sent a charge through her skin.

She felt like she hadn’t been alive until that moment.

The flush on her face grew.

He could probably see her acting like such a school girl, and he was probably thinking she was such an idiot.

“I’ve got to pick up Fee,” he said. His hand was still entwined with hers, so she started to pull away.

He tightened his grip.

“But,” he said, as if he knew that she was uncomfortable.
Embarrassed
. “I’d like to do this again. I’d like to spend some real time with you. Is that something…?”

Her father would say that this man, who flat-out told her the day they met that he couldn’t afford a ring like the one she was just giving away, was after Berhane for the money. Her mother would have gently suggested an investigation. Torkild would have laughed and said that Berhane had come down in the world.

“I would like that too,” Berhane said. “I would like that very much.”

Donal grinned. He brought their entwined hands up to his mouth and kissed the knuckle beneath her middle finger. A shiver ran through her.

“Wonderful,” he said. “The end of the week, maybe? Dinner?”

Her father would want to know why she was out for dinner, who she was seeing, what her plans were.

She didn’t care.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll make plans,” he said. “I’ll send them to you. Do you have a link I could access…?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll send it, if yours is easy to find.”

“It is,” he said.

Then mine is too
, she sent, using a private link that her father did not have access to. One she hadn’t used in a long time, not since her mother was alive.

Berhane wrenched her thoughts away from that.

Wonderful
, he sent along those links and smiled. He kissed the knuckle on her thumb, then set her hand down gently, before disentangling.

He stood at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t be late for Fee.”

“No, you can’t,” Berhane said. “Go.”

“Remember,” he said as he headed toward the door. “Dinner!”

“I will,” she said, as she thought,
How could I forget?

TWENTY-SEVEN

ALFONSO LET GOUDKINS run the DNA match. He didn’t even look at the screens.

Security, in this lab at least, was frighteningly lax. She was glad that she had decided to follow protocol after all. She couldn’t imagine what kind of junk was on the machines and what might have gotten stolen as a result.

After her DNA sample was analyzed, it only took a minute to run the match against the unidentified bodies from Anniversary Day. As she had already guessed, her sister wasn’t among them.

Since Alfonso was spending more time leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his eyes closed than he was supervising Goudkins, she figured she could run one illicit search. He probably wouldn’t care. Not that he would notice while he took his micronap.

She ran her DNA against the information listed for the bodies that had already been identified. It took the machine a moment longer to perform that analysis. It wasn’t a common request and she’d had to input a few extra queries.

She did it all through holographic keystroke, so that she didn’t leave extra DNA on the keyboard he had provided, and so that she didn’t wake him with her voice commands.

While the machine compared the data, she scanned the room. Nothing untoward that she could see. Not that it mattered. She had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t working.

Work seemed to be a default for her. She relied on it when she didn’t want to think about anything else.

After a moment, the results came back. No matches.

She wasn’t surprised, and weirdly, she was a little disappointed. She wanted to know what had happened to Carla, and deep down, she feared she never would.

She wiped the information from that search just like she had done with the previous search. She would need Alfonso’s help removing the chip.

“Alfonso?” she said softly, so that she woke him up gently.

“Hmmm?”

“I think I’m done.”

He coughed and stopped leaning against the wall, all before he’d opened his eyes. When he did, he looked even more exhausted than he had when he’d fallen asleep standing up.

“Done?” he sounded surprised. Had he not known he had fallen asleep? He needed a few hours off.

But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Did you find her?” He managed to have compassion in his voice despite his exhaustion.

“No.” She sounded curt, even though she hadn’t meant to. It was hard to hide her feelings today. It probably would remain hard for quite a while.

“Have you taken out your chip?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Let’s try one more thing.” He walked over to her side, then crouched. It looked like he was going to use the keyboard before he remembered himself and stopped.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, making sure he couldn’t manipulate any of the screens or the data.

“We have a lot of small…” He glanced at her, as if he wasn’t sure how to express what he needed to say.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You won’t offend me.”