Chapter Four
Aym-Sec officers Morhain and Butler led Beth into the interrogation room. Her hands were cuffed with electronic restraints, and a security visor had been snapped over her eyes to prevent her from seeing anything she wasn’t supposed to. Her helplessness tugged at him, but Carter hardened his heart. He couldn’t afford sympathy or leniency until he settled the matter of her identity and intent.
She’d changed from the transparent flight suit into black slacks that hugged her legs and ass in a way almost as distracting. A mauve tunic stretched over her chest and nipped at her waist. Gleaming brunette curls framed her delicate face. Lips, bare of cosmetic augmentation, appeared rosy, as if she’d been biting them.
He motioned, and his men deposited her into a chair before leaving. Accessing the processing unit in his brain, he signaled the restraints to release. The instant they relaxed, she tore off the visor. She blinked. “You! Where am I? What’s going on?” She darted her gaze around the naked white room.
“You’re at Aym-Sec.”
“Those men really were with the security firm?” Anger lit up her face, turning pretty to stunning, which his male hormones responded to immediately. Annoyed with himself, he ordered his nanos to halt and reverse his autonomic sexual reaction.
“They scared me to death! This is how you treat job candidates?” She tossed the visor onto the table and rubbed her wrists. “You blindfold and cuff them?”
“You’re no longer a job candidate.” He sat across from her and folded his hands. His facial recognition program conducted another analysis of her features and produced the same conclusion: Liza. Except, Carter the man wasn’t convinced. Her expressions weren’t the same; she moved her body more fluidly, her gestures more graceful. If she was Liza, her personality had changed.
Accessing his wireless, he contacted medical.
“Why am I here, then?” she demanded.
“You tell me,” he countered. “Why are you here?” Who are you? Who sent you? Who do you work for?
She scowled. “What game are you playing? If you’re the Aym-Sec director, you know I had an interview with Brock Mann for the logistics coordinator position.”
“Why didn’t you mention at the spaceport you knew who I was?”
“You surprised me! I didn’t make the connection, at first. You approached me, asking about my…my…sister.” The faintest bloom of color tinted her cheeks, so subtle an ordinary human wouldn’t have noticed, but cybervision caught it right away. Interesting. She’d been telling the truth until she mentioned the sister.
He focused on her face. “Who is Liza to you?”
“I told you.” Beth pursed her lips. “She was my twin sister.”
“Try again.”
“I’m done.” She shoved away from the table. “I’m getting out of here.”
“Sit down,” he ordered with the steely edge he reserved for enemy combatants, criminals, and suspects.
“I’m leaving.” She tried to fake courage, but his acute hearing caught the quaver in her voice. She was frightened.
“I said, Sit. Down.” He rose to his feet, adding his superior height and massive bulk to the threat in his tone. She couldn’t leave; the door wouldn’t open for her. The first lesson involved learning he was in charge.
She met his gaze with a glare, holding it for a long moment then dropped back into the chair. “Why are you doing this?”
“Tell me who you are.”
“I’m Beth O’Shea!”
“Beth is short for…”
“Elizabeth!”
“Liza was your sister, you say.” He scrutinized her, watching for tells indicative of falsehood: fidgeting, brushing her clothing, licking or biting those plump pink lips, shrugging as if she disbelieved her own words.
“Yes.” She shifted in the chair.
Ah. He’d intended to press for information about who might have sent her, but the sister angle appeared to be the weak link. “Liza is short for?”
“Elizabeth.”
“Your parents named you both Elizabeth?”
“Yes.”
He arched his eyebrows with exaggerated skepticism.
“I didn’t choose the name.”
“Your parents named both twins Elizabeth, but called one Liza and the other Beth,” he repeated.
She bit her lip. “That’s right.”
“Didn’t that get confusing?”
“No, it was perfectly clear,” she replied with an undertone of bitterness.
“You and Liza didn’t get along.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Yes, you did,” he reminded her. “At the spaceport. You said you and she didn’t always get along, and you hadn’t spoken for a while.” He cocked his head. “Were you lying then—or are you lying now?”
She opened her mouth then closed it and pressed her lips together. “I’m not lying. You’re twisting what I said.” She winced, blinking as if the light pained her, and massaged circles against her temple. This wouldn’t be the first time a suspect faked illness or disability, except she paled, and his cybervision detected a faint sheen of perspiration.
“Are you all right?” he asked, kicking himself for his sympathy and for not using her discomfort to press his advantage.
“J-just a headache. I get them sometimes.”
The door whooshed open to admit a medtech.
“I need a complete analysis as fast as you can get it,” Carter instructed.
“Should take the computer fifteen minutes tops, depending on what we have.” The tech removed an extractor from his case and approached Beth. She squinted at him, her forehead still furrowed with pain.
“She’s having headaches. Do a bioscan, too,” he said.
“Excuse me, but I need to get a DNA sample,” the tech said.
“What?” She jerked away. “No! I won’t agree to that.”
The tech hesitated.
“Do it,” Carter ordered.
The tech pressed the extractor to her neck and withdrew a blood sample before she could react. The extractor had both a pain inhibitor and a coagulator, so she didn’t feel more than a slight pinch, but she twisted in the chair, her face darkening with a scowl. “You can’t do that. That’s a violation of my rights!”
She was at Cy-Ops headquarters. The instant she’d crossed the threshold, she’d lost all rights.
The tech continued to perform his job. He packed the blood sample in his case and scanned her with a handheld. After a beep signaled the data had been collected, he stowed the device. “I’ll forward the medreport with the DNA analysis.”
The door opened for the tech to exit, and Beth catapulted out of her seat. Carter dashed around the table to grab her.
“You can’t keep me here!” She fought him.
“Go,” he ordered the tech.
The man slipped out, and the door closed.
Carter released her but did not move away. Cybersenses recorded the flare of her nostrils, heightening color, rising body temperature—and, dammit, his growing libidinous response. Memories of him and Liza rolling in a tumble of twisted sheets rushed through his brain, transmitting unwanted signals to his cock. Double dammit, she would probably turn out to be an infiltrator, a spy, or an enemy combatant, and she was not Liza.
“You have no right to steal my medical information! It’s against the law!”
“Around here, I am the law.”
Her chin jutted out. “When I leave here, I’ll report you to the Terran United authorities.” She bumped up against the table.
He closed the space to hem her in. “Well, that’s the thing,” he drawled. “You’re assuming you’re going to leave.”
The fear skittering across her face pricked his conscience, but he had to get answers. He couldn’t allow himself to be seduced by her vulnerable, little-girl-lost act. The lives of his Aym-Sec officers and Cyber Operations field agents depended on the secrecy and security she’d come close to breaching—which meant she was very, very good at what she did. Determination sliced through sympathy.
“Y-y-you can’t keep me here. That’s kidnapping.”
Grudgingly, he admired her bravado in standing up for herself when he was at his most intimidating. Remember what she is. What she might be. His hardening body had already forgotten or didn’t care.
“People know where I am!”
“What people?”
“Like, like, the O’Sheas!”
Since the couple ranked among the wealthiest people in the galaxy, and money went hand in hand with power, theoretically, they could pose a threat, but his own wealth, which few knew about, rivaled, if not exceeded the O’Sheas’, and he had connections and capabilities they didn’t. They couldn’t touch him.
How interesting she referred to them by name and not relationship. His dad had been as strict as parents got, but never would Carter have called him Mr. Aymes. “You mean, your parents?” he probed.
“Yes! A-and…other people, too!”
Carter folded his arms. Anyone not on the payroll who had cause to visit headquarters arrived under blackout. “Well, that might help you if anyone knew the location of Aym-Sec, and if you are, in fact, at Aym-Sec,” he added to generate doubt.
“You said I was at Aym-Sec. Were you lying then, or are you lying now?” She lobbed his words back at him.
“Take a seat.” He spun her chair around. She glared, but sat. He sauntered to the other side of the table. Being close to her affected him physically, and he wasn’t sure how long his nanos would be able to control his body’s reaction.
Why her? Why now?
He’d never been attracted to a person of interest before.
Because we had a prior sexual relationship?
Except, until running into her at the spaceport, he hadn’t thought about Liza in years. And, most importantly, instinct insisted she wasn’t Liza. On the surface, she resembled her, but more significant differences discounted the similarities.
Ping! A message from medical shot into his processing unit.
Ping! On its heels, a communique from Brock followed.
He’d get to Brock in a sec. He accessed the medical report. Markers confirm subject’s genotype as Elizabeth Ann O’Shea with 100 percent accuracy. Race: Terran. Ethic/national origin: 23.4 percent Irish, 22.4 percent Czech, 16.3 percent African, 37.9 percent Hispanic. DOB 10172449 to father: Reuben Marcus O’Shea, mother: Georgetta Elizabeth O’Shea nee Hartwell. Known aliases: Liza O’Shea.
According to infallible DNA evidence, Liza sat across the table from him.
He was stunned. He’d been so sure.
Why hadn’t she acknowledged their prior relationship? They’d slept together for two years. Why had she pretended to be someone else? Why apply for a job with Aym-Sec? Unless…she had encountered an Obliviscatorian on the safari, and her memory had been wiped?
Carter scanned the rest of the report. Medical had detected no anomalies to account for her headaches. So stress, maybe? Or a ruse. She’d faked an entire identity, why not a headache?
He tightened his lips and responded to Brock’s hail. What do you have? he asked via his wireless.
Prior to scheduling Beth’s interview, I had investigated the O’Sheas, but after I left your office, I ran a more comprehensive audit including finances. Initially, I detected nothing out of the ordinary, other than the fact that they are filthy rich. However, about fourteen and a half years ago, they purchased a cryo unit at ReGenCo.
So? What’s significant about that? Many rich people left instructions for their bodies to be placed in cold storage post mortem, in hopes scientific advancement would one day allow them to be revived. Dead was dead, so companies like ReGenCo were scamming the gullible. However, selling cryo storage units wasn’t illegal.
Well, those units have a two-tiered fee schedule. There’s a reservation fee, and then a maintenance fee when it’s put into use. The O’Sheas have been paying maintenance fees since they reserved the unit.
The unit is occupied?
Affirmative. ReGenCo notates the genetics of each body placed in its facility. Records are confidential, but Illumina accessed the database without any trouble. Elizabeth Ann “Liza” O’Shea died fourteen and a half years ago, and her body was placed in a ReGenCo cryo unit on Dorsus 9. Whoever our interviewee is, she is not Liza O’Shea.
Thanks for the info, he said, and disconnected.
DNA said Liza was dead, and DNA said she was alive and sitting in this room.
“Who the hell are you?” Carter said.