17.
CASSIE
Cassie was having a hard time controlling herself. Miranda stood by the wall, and she headed towards her aide. “Hey,” she said, arms crossed, trying to calm down. It was nearly time for them to go in and the conference to start. “Ready for today?”
Miranda frowned in the direction of the Tevisians. “Did they say something to you?”
“I was saying something to them. The assassin who killed Archie, he was a Tevisian.”
Miranda's eyebrows shot up. "You're kidding? Those bastards—"
"Yeah." Cassie screwed her eyes shut for a moment, taking a breath. "Yeah. Those bastards. And they had the nerve to deny it, to act like I was being an idiot for even suggesting it."
Miranda laid a hand on her arm. "The police are handling it," she said. "They'll arrest the Tevisians if they're the ones who did it."
"If?"
"You don't know for certain." Miranda was trying to soothe Cassie, but all Cassie felt was like she was being patronized. Like people didn't believe her. "All you know is who the assassin was."
"Motive, means, and opportunity." Cassie held her fingers up. "Do you not think all of those are covered here? They hate Archie. They've always hated Archie. They didn't even come to his funeral even though everyone else who hated him did. It was guilt, I'm sure of it."
"Cassie—" Miranda began.
But then the doors to the conference room opened, and they were filtering in.
The conference room was circular, with a podium at the front for the mediator—an IU official, and, so Cassie believed, completely biased toward the non-legislation lobby—and then seats coming backward like an amphitheater. They'd arranged them into parties, with exactly enough seats for each delegation in each spot.
The foundation's cluster still had three seats, and Vikram had taken Archie's place.
“What do you think they’ll start with today?” Miranda asked, getting her binder out of her bag. “Where we left off yesterday, I suppose.” The agenda had gone out of the window after the first day, as it always did. Arguments were stopped halfway through at the end of the day and resumed in the morning.
“It’ll be focused on economics,” Cassie muttered. “They’re doing an awfully good job of talking about anything other than the actual issue at hand.”
Her rage was overflowing. Other than the two people around her, she hated every single person in that room for a split second, even the ones on her side. They were allowing it to be about economics, allowing it to be taken away from the emotive aspects that they needed to rely on to win.
Was everyone incompetent?
Was she delusional to sit and think she knew better when she was just a girl compared to all these seasoned delegates? She knew she was—knew she must be missing something—but she couldn’t rationalize it in her mind and so she struggled to accept that this was just the way things were.
They’d always been this way at conferences, if she thought about it, but she wasn’t thinking. Archie was dead, and the only thing she was thinking about was justice.
She didn’t listen to much of what was being said, her mind whirring. Miranda was busy making notes and pushing them in Cassie’s direction.
“Did the police interview you?” Cassie asked in a whisper as Prince Qugrom was, once again, given an inordinate amount of time to make the argument that the IU was a body created to deal with economic issues, and that this would be acting outside of their remit.
“No, not yet. They spoke to me a little bit the day after… after Archie, but I’ve not had a formal interview yet. I’m sure they’re busy pandering to these lot.”
Cassie shook her head, fists clenched at her sides, and pushed the button on the keypad beside her to signal that she wanted to respond to the point that had just been made.
Archie’s death was being made a mockery of.
The police hadn’t bothered to interview the two key witnesses, who were right there beside Archie when he died, and knew him the best out of everyone in the conference. They hadn’t bothered to do the polite thing and keep them up to date with how the investigation was going. When Cassie had asked them, after she’d almost been attacked, how the investigation was going, they’d snubbed her.
And this was the final straw.
The Tevisians did it, and no one was going to make them pay.
Miranda frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to say something.”
She made eye contact with the mediator, and he gave her a slight nod. He was going to let her respond. And she had no real intention of actually responding to any of the points Prince Qugrom had made.
Everyone was just ignoring what had happened, and she was completely sick of it.
Miranda was furiously looking through her notes and shoving pieces of paper toward Cassie. Vikram was watching it unfold with pinched eyebrows.
His hand hovered at his side, but they were in public now, and he didn’t touch her.
She was probably being a fool, but everything had finally just boiled over the edge. Archie was her best friend, and she wasn’t going to allow his death to be swept under the rug. Not when she had a platform like this to stop it from happening.
She chewed on the end of her pen and scribbled down some notes, a brief structure for what she intended to be a brief speech. She hadn’t changed personality—she still couldn’t conjure up meaningful words on the spot by just letting instinct take over. She needed a plan, a script.
She’d got enough to work with when Qugrom sat down and the mediator announced her name to speak.
She stood up and all eyes were suddenly on her.
She’d spoken once at the conference so far, and it had been a short response that had been quickly cut off and handed back to someone who wanted to talk economics.
This felt completely different.
She cleared her throat and fingered the edge of the note she’d just made.
She had to do this, for Archie.
“A lot of talk at this conference so far has been about the limit of the Intergalactic Union’s powers, about how they should be used and fettered, and when they’re acting outside their remit. I don’t think anyone would disagree that their remit includes solving a murder—an assassination—that occurred on their space station.” A ripple of murmurs spread through the crowd. Cassie addressed the mediator rather than looking around at anyone else. It kept her more grounded. “These police who are supposed to be solving the murder of a well-respected IU citizen haven’t even interviewed two key witnesses, who were right beside him when he died. They never followed up, or gave any reassurance or updates on the case. They didn’t tell us when they found the identity of the assassin—a Tevisian —and never inquired from the people who knew him best what a possible motive could be. We talk about the IU’s competencies a lot here, and I think that in this regard they have been completely incompetent.”
Cassie sat down, hands shaking, and wanted to run from the room. She didn’t want to hear the rebuttals or even the possibility that her statement would be ignored. She wanted to go and find out more, she wanted to press this until she found definitive proof.
It took everything not to let her shoulders slump, to ask Vikram to just hold her and let her forget that all this was happening for a few minutes.
She’d dared to say her part, though, and she had to stick around for the response.
Rugul stood up immediately, not bothering to wait for the mediator to signal the next speaker, and was gripping the edge of their little pod so hard his knuckles turned purple. “The child speaks, as always, without knowledge on her tongue. She accuses us of killing her friend with no understanding of our culture or our loyalties. Did she not think to find out that this Tevisian was on the other side during our revolution? He was part of the government that we—” he pounded his chest, and his party behind him did the same, “—overthrew. The government that this girl who claims to be against torture supported. She is speaking out of her—” he made a noise in the back of his throat, and the Tevisians behind him laughed at this. Cassie’s cheeks burned, and she fought the urge to flee. “Her ignorance and her incompetence are showing.”
No one outright laughed, but they looked in her direction and the mood in the room was obvious.
She’d embarrassed herself.
Miranda clenched her hands into fists. “Those scum,” she said, under her breath. Things had already moved on and they were back to talking about economics on the floor. “How dare they just brush you off like that.”
“No, they’re right. I was ignorant. I hadn’t bothered to verify anything before throwing around stupid accusations. It’s like I didn’t listen to a single thing Archie tried to teach me.”
She spent the rest of the day sitting in her chair with her head down, trying to make notes and not just give in to mortification, but it wasn’t working very well.
“It’s not as bad as you think it is,” Vikram had tried to tell her, leaned in so his breath was caressing her ear so his deep voice didn’t carry across the conference room. “It’ll be forgotten by tomorrow. Other people have been embarrassed, too. It never lasts.”
“Being needled a bit by someone you’ve been attending these things with your entire life isn’t the same,” she’d hissed. He was just trying to help, but it was only rubbing things in more.
Vikram was a sore point that dragged her mood down further.
She was never going to make it in the same way Archie had, and she was never going to get Vikram, either.
She let her self-loathing eat her up for the rest of the day.
All she’d wanted to do was make sure Archie got justice, but she’d ended up embarrassing him as much as herself. He would have been ashamed of her performance just then.
At the end of the day they filtered out of the conference hall, and Cassie made sure she was near the back, not having to deal with the chatting and people giving her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as they left.
She still had the memory card. She could still redeem herself.
They got the elevator to their floor and Miranda wrapped Cassie in a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Let me know if you need anything.”
Their roles had been reversed. Miranda was asking her if she needed anything, being the support, when Cassie was supposed to be the experienced one making sure her aide was okay. It was emasculating.
“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered, unlocking her door and looking longingly at the bed and mini-bar. She just wanted to collapse and drown her sorrows. She had work to do, though.
Vikram locked it behind her, and did his normal sweep of the room. He didn’t stay near the window watching the lobby like normal, though, and instead stood directly opposite her, arms folded. “Don’t beat yourself up.” It was a command, but it wasn’t as simple as just going, Okay, and magically feeling better.
“It’s kind of hard not to.”
“Everyone will have forgotten by tomorrow.”
“That’s not true.” And she knew it. “You have moments that define your career, and this is going to be the one that defines mine. Even if I came up tomorrow and made the best fucking speech of my life, people would go behind their hands and laugh because I’m the stupid little girl Rugul embarrassed.”
“That’s not true.”
He went to rest a hand on her shoulder, but she batted it away. “Yes it is. You don’t have to baby me. I’m not some stupid little girl, and I can handle the truth.”
He folded his arms again, muscles straining against his tight shirt, and allowed his face to fall. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. For the rest of this conference your reputation has taken a hit. That does not mean your career is over.”
"This conference was everything to Archie. He hated what people can get away with because the IU refuses to step in. He's worked with so many people who have been subject to torture."
"This isn't going to change the outcome of the conference."
"Isn't it? We're already losing. If I mess everything up then it's a definite loss."
Vikram put his hands on her shoulders, and squeezed them. "You're just one person, Cassie. You can't do everything, and you're not responsible for everything."
"I just wanted to make Archie proud."
"I'm certain he is." His thumbs rubbed circles into her shoulders, and although she was still crying inside from the embarrassment, it was beginning to distract her having him this close. Nothing could banish the fact she knew exactly how it felt to have those hands on her without the thin layer of her blouse—in more intimate areas than her shoulders. "Besides, isn't that what the memory card is for?" He brought her back to real life before she could slump against him and beg for a massage. "I got the impression that was your trump card."
Her lip quirked. "It is. I'm not sure I'm going to even be credible enough to blackmail someone at this point, though."
His grip tightened on her. "Why do you insist on putting yourself in danger like this?"
"I won't be in danger. It's fine. It's maneuvering, not blackmail."
"That doesn't make it sound much safer."
"Well, that's why you're here."
"I'm not indestructible."
She rapped his rock hard chest with her knuckle, grinning. "I'm not sure I believe that."
"I've never been so stressed as guarding you makes me," he teased, hands moving from her shoulders, dragging along her skin until they cupped the back of her neck, lacing together there. "You're a menace."
She grinned, perfectly happy to have his hands anywhere he put them, resisting the urge to step toward him. She wanted their chests pressed together, their breaths shared as they gave in to the tension between them again.
She didn't, though, because there was no awkwardness yet. This was light and teasing, just talking like normal people would, not needing to regret their actions.
"I try my best. Really, though, I don't want to use the memory card until the last couple of days. I don't want to risk giving the Prince enough time to find an out."
He opened his mouth and then shut it again. "Okay," he settled on. She wanted to tell him everything—knew he was curious about it all—but she couldn't bring herself to risk it. It had been months since they'd found out this information, and they'd been waiting for the perfect moment to use it ever since then. She'd held onto it for so long, just the three of them knowing about it, that she couldn't bring herself to break the silence.
It would be over, soon, and she could tell him. He'd be there when she finally confronted Prince Qugrom, anyway. He'd be in the room. She refused to go in there without him, even if it made her look weak. She needed to know he was beside her to stay strong.
"I think I should get someone in to do the rest of the conference." Her embarrassment flooded her once more, and she pulled away from Vikram completely. "They should send someone out so they can save face. It's not just me, it's the entire foundation."
"Your friend just died and you were put in at the last minute, no one expected you to be perfect. Everyone looks down their nose at you because you're a hot woman, not because you let your emotions get the best of you. If one of those old bastards had gotten angry and thrown false accusations around people would have admired him for how much he cared about his former partner."
Cassie's eyebrows knitted together. "It's not just that I'm a woman. They might like to stare at my boobs, but there are plenty of high-powered women who garner respect. It's just because they don't know me. I haven't earned their respect yet. They think I'm just a little girl." She sighed, finally giving in and grabbing a bottle of scotch from the mini-bar. "There's more to it than men being men."
"It doesn't help."
"I should get someone in," she repeated. "Did you want a drink?"
"Not while I'm on duty."
She felt bad that he could never truly wind down while he was with her, but it wasn't enough to stop her pouring the drink. "I'm going to call Jensen after I've given myself some liquid confidence."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know. I want to."
"Do you? It sounds like this is something that means a lot to you. Do you want to let someone else do it?"
"I want it to work. I want them to make it illegal under Universal Law to be able torture someone."
He gave her a long look, searching her face, and she tried not to crumble under it.
"Okay, okay," she admitted. "Okay. I want to do it myself. I want to prove to everyone that I'm not just someone Archie carried along for the ride and was the brains behind everything. You know, I was the one who found the information on that memory card. I'm the one who made it all happen. Sure, Archie would have been able to do the politics side of it better, but I'm good in the field and I'm the reason it's there in the first place."
"Then you should do it."
"It's so selfish. It's so selfish to want to be recognized for it when someone else could do it better."
"It's natural."
"I should be able to overcome it."
"I think you should give it a shot. I think you could do it."
She resisted the urge to fish for more compliments from him. She wanted to bait him into telling her that she was the best person for the job, and she'd destroy everything in her way. "I thought you were worried about me getting in danger," she said instead. Fishing for how much he cared about her definitely wasn't out of the question.
"You’ve convinced me I’m indestructible," he mocked. "Really, though. I want you to be happy, and I think doing this would make you happy."
Secretly she was certain it would, too. But it was high risk, high reward. She couldn't risk this information going to waste because she was too incompetent to make the best use of it.
She linked her hands together in her lap, giving in and walking over, giving him a peck on the cheek. "I really did nothing to deserve you. I'd have thrown myself out of the window by now if you hadn't been around. Thank you."
He laced their fingers together, running his thumb over her knuckle and smiling at her. She wanted to kiss him but she didn't; she just allowed herself to get lost in the sweetness of the moment. It didn't have to always be sexual between them.
"I'll give Jensen a call tomorrow," she decided. "And get his advice. At the very least I ought to let him know before I do something that big by myself. It’ll reflect poorly on the entire foundation if I get it wrong."
He nodded. "That sounds good."
They stood for a few minutes longer, linked by the hands, a hair's breadth from being in each other's arms. It was complete peace, even though moments ago she'd been reeling from embarrassment and considering throwing the towel in on everything. Vikram brought her back down to the ground. Made her see things more clearly.
Made her feel home.
She squeezed his hand once more before coming to her senses and pulling away. "I'm going to stay up and do some work, but you should get some sleep. If I'm keeping you awake just tell me." She had to figure out exactly what she was going to say to Qugrom. The time where she would confront him was coming up quick, and she needed a script. Archie might have been able to stride in there and know exactly what needed to be done, but she didn't.
They shared a last look before he nodded, standing up and stretching. "Yeah, okay. Don't stay up too late."
"I won't."
She sat down with her back to the bed so she wouldn't be distracted by watching him, and opened her laptop, this time grabbing an energy drink rather than whiskey from the fridge.
It was time to rely on the same method she always had for solving her problems: to work them away.