Chapter One
Damn his cyborg vision.
He scrubbed his eyes, wishing he could unsee the human and alien nakedness on parade.
Spaceport Authority required commercial passengers to don SA-issued travel suits on commercial flights. Most people saw white unitards. But, to security scanners, the special polymer fabric was invisible, allowing contraband or weapons to be detected and neutralized. To a cyborg with enhanced vision…also invisible. He’d gotten an eyeful of things no man should be forced to witness.
He averted his gaze to have it rivet on a tall brunette striding among the crowd. Now, there was a sight for sore eyes. He could view only her back as she marched ahead of him, but the shifting upside-down heart of her derriere kick-started his libido.
Nice ass.
Sexy legs, too. Long, shapely. Her skin was as smooth as milk-infused coffee. Waves of chestnut hair curled about her shoulders. The hair, that ass, and legs, her creamy skin reminded him of—
“Excuse me! Excuse me! I have to catch my shuttle.” A male passenger shoved his way through the crowd. As the woman moved to let him pass, Carter caught a glimpse of her profile.
I’ll be go-to-hell! “Liza?” He darted forward. “Liza!”
She halted and turned, but her blank expression showed no recognition. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“Carter,” he identified himself. “Carter Aymes.” Physically, he had changed since they’d parted company, but not so much as to be unrecognizable. She looked the same. Still beautiful. He kept his gaze trained on her face.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not Liza O’Shea?” She was one hell of a doppelganger. Cybernetic facial recognition software kicked in and analyzed the width, height, and distance between her half-moon-shaped eyes, the radius of her eyebrow arch, the diameter of her nostrils, and a dozen other markers, and produced one name: Liza O’Shea. “You didn’t attend Terran Technical Institute?”
She bit her full lower lip, and he remembered their first kiss like it had happened yesterday.
“You must know my sister. I-I’m Beth O’Shea,” she said.
Sister? Not according to his software—or his human memory. He and Liza had dated hot and heavy for two years. Although he’d never met her family, he’d heard plenty about her parents and their hyper-doting, but controlling ways as well as occasional references to aunts, uncles, and cousins. No siblings. Not a one. He remembered her telling him she was an only child.
“M-my…twin,” Beth said.
A natural genetic double would explain the facial recognition analysis. Still…he shook his head. “I guess I forgot Liza had a sister.” He hadn’t forgotten. Why would Liza pretend to be an only child? Or maybe he was talking to Liza. Could the sister story be the pretense? He hadn’t been happy when she’d left him, but they hadn’t parted on bad terms. If she’d encountered an Obliviscatorian, she could be suffering from amnesia; however, it wouldn’t have implanted a false memory.
Usually, the answer turned out to be the obvious one. Probably Liza had had a twin but never mentioned her. Except…
People glared as they were forced to swerve around them. Carter motioned with his head, and, after a brief hesitation, Beth followed him out of the throng.
Let it go. Say sorry for the mistake, give Liza my regards, and go back to Cy-Ops HQ.
Except, dammit, gut instinct refused to let go of the puzzle, and not because he’d mistaken a stranger for the ex-girlfriend he hadn’t seen in fifteen years.
“Liza and I…” Beth twisted the strap of her SA-issued travel bag. “We didn’t always get along. Sometimes, we didn’t speak for a while.”
A shame, but not uncommon. Siblings didn’t necessarily like each other. One didn’t choose family; you got what you got. Nor did children always see eye to eye with parents, even if they were among the galaxy’s wealthy elite and owned a terraformed satellite the size of a small city. Liza’s disagreements with her “parental units,” as she’d jokingly referred to them, hadn’t prevented her from taking a hiatus from the university and breaking up with him to go on a star safari with them. That his annoyance outweighed the hurt signaled parting was for the best, anyway, and he had fond memories.
He smiled. “How is Liza?”
“She’s…dead.”
“What! When?”
“A little over fourteen years ago.”
Shock rocketed through him, but he calculated the timing. “On the safari?”
Beth nodded.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” His heart constricted with regret for a young life lost. All this time, he’d assumed she’d decided not to return to school. What could have happened? Shuttle crash? Contagion? Alien attack? Safari guides were diligent about keeping travelers away from dangerous life forms, but sometimes tourists circumvented the rules. While Liza could act impulsively, she wasn’t stupid. Accessing his wireless, he searched the vital records database for Elizabeth Ann O’Shea.
Record not found.
Odd. There should be a death certificate. He tasked his cyborg brain to drill deeper. “What happened?” he asked Beth.
She glanced around. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about it with—here, I mean.”
“I understand,” he said. She didn’t feel comfortable talking to him. If Liza hadn’t bothered to tell him about her sister, she probably hadn’t told Beth about him. Beth only had his word he was who he said he was, but if Liza had been killed in a shuttle accident or contracted an alien disease, wouldn’t her sister say so?
Let it go.
He didn’t have time to indulge his curiosity. Abductions and terrorism were on the upswing, Lamis-Odg had gained control over more sectors, and a pivotal Association of Planets Summit would occur in a little over two months. Cyber Operations and Aym-Sec, the private security firm which served as a cover for Cy-Ops, raced to beat the clock.
Ping! No record found. His cyberbrain had finished scanning the major databases and come up with zip. “Why is there no death record for your sister?”
Beth’s eyes narrowed. “Who says there’s not?”
Let it go.
He shook his head. “Never mind. I apologize for bothering you. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
* * * *
That was Carter Aymes! The head of Aym-Sec.
Not a man to mess with. He looked like he could bench-press a PeeVee. Beth kicked herself a dozen times, and called herself twice as many names. Stupid! Idiot! Could I have botched this any worse?
When she showed up at his office tomorrow, he would wonder why she hadn’t revealed she’d known of him or that she had an interview at his firm. Would the omission make him wary of hiring her? Flustered by his questions about Liza, she hadn’t responded as she should have.
My interview is with Brock Mann. Obviously, Aymes isn’t involved in every hire, or he would have known who I am. Maybe I won’t run into him tomorrow.
Except, the way her luck was going…
She’d figured by going planetside she ran the risk of encountering an acquaintance of Liza’s but hadn’t expected it to happen so soon—at the spaceport before she even got to Terra! Or that the person would own the company she counted on to hire her. Aymes appeared to be mid-thirties, so maybe he’d been a student the same time as Liza. Ex-boyfriend? He’d seemed more shocked by the news of her death than a casual acquaintance would be.
She dug her PerComm from her travel bag and swiped a finger over the screen to activate it. After tapping into Liza’s files from fifteen years ago, she groaned. Sure enough. Liza had dozens of still vids and holos of her and Aymes hugging, laughing, kissing. She squinted. He’d changed a lot in those years.
Attractive and well-built then, he’d matured into an imposing figure, his features chiseled and stern, his muscles bulging with strength and power. If she wasn’t mistaken, he’d gotten taller, too. She and Liza were the same height, but in the vids, Liza had topped his shoulder, whereas she’d had to tilt her head way back to talk. Gone, too, was the openness. The striking blue eyes of the man at the spaceport had acquired a permanent skeptical squint.
What didn’t change in a decade and half?
Except her recurrent pain. That hadn’t changed, other than to get worse. She massaged her temple in a circular motion. When the sharp edges wore off, she stowed her PerComm, and rejoined the throng streaming through the concourse.
A special charter would whisk her to City of Angels on Terra, where Aym-Sec would put her up in a hotel for the night. Tomorrow, she’d interview with Brock Mann. The start of a new life. Oh stars, I hope. She wiped clammy palms on her white flight suit. It would be a fresh start only if Aym-Sec hired her. If she didn’t get the job, she didn’t know what she’d do. She couldn’t return to the satellite. In fourteen and a half years, she’d never been anything but an unwanted liability to the O’Sheas. A mistake of epic proportions. After a few weeks of tenuous optimism, hope had withered into bitterness and blame, as if the scheme had been her idea.
Maybe, on Terra, I can make a home. I have to get the job. I have to...
Perhaps she would have been better served to have pretended to be Liza, except “her sister” hadn’t finished her final year at the Terran Technical Institute, and Beth needed better credentials. Forging a new identity was easier than changing an existing one. And, despite the O’Sheas’ original intention, they wouldn’t accept the pretense. Though she bore their beloved child’s name, Elizabeth Ann O’Shea, she wasn’t their daughter.
So “Beth” had struck out on her own.
The O’Sheas had hired someone to forge credentials enabling her to seek employment and fronted her enough credits to get by until she secured the job. Assistance hadn’t originated from the goodness of their hearts, but from a desire to get rid of their problem.
The rejection shouldn’t hurt anymore, but it still did.