The bodies have been transported to the clinic of Dr. Melanie Roussel for pathological examination.
Lene Landvik is set to inherit her father’s sizeable fortune when she turns eighteen. Until then, the estate will be managed by the Oslo-based law firm of Jørgensen, Isaksen & Berg. The heiress was unavailable for comment.
The article went on, but I didn’t want to read any more. I put the Gizmo on the cold metal floor. I huddled in a corner, hugged my knees, and buried my face.
I tried to hold back the tears. I really did. My panicked flight had kept me amped with a sense of purpose. But once I was safe, the adrenaline wore off.
Trond was a good guy. Maybe a little underhanded and he wore that stupid bathrobe everywhere, but he was a good guy. And a good dad. God, who was going to take care of Lene? Mutilated in a car crash as a kid and then orphaned at age sixteen. Jesus, what a shitty draw. Sure, she had money but…fuck…
It didn’t take a degree in criminology to figure out it was revenge for the sabotage. Whoever did it would want me dead too. Maybe they didn’t know I was the one who did the sabotage, but I wasn’t going to bet my life on it.
So now I was hiding from a murderer. And, side note, I’d never get that million slugs, even if I trashed the last harvester. It’s not like Trond and I had a written contract. I’d done it all for nothing.
I shivered in the freezing confines of the access nook. I’d been there before, long ago when I was homeless. Ten years of struggling to stay afloat and now I was right back where I started.
I sobbed into my knees. Quietly. That’s another skill I learned back in the day: how to cry without making too much noise. Wouldn’t want anyone in the hall to hear me.
The nook was a tiny triangular space with a removable panel so maintenance workers could get at the inner hull. There wasn’t even room to lie down. My coffin was a palace compared to this. Tears stung my face as they turned ice cold. Bean Down 27 was a great place to hide, but it was frigid. Heat rises, even in lunar gravity. So the lower you go, the colder it gets. And no one puts heaters in maintenance nooks.
I wiped my face and picked up my Gizmo again. Well, Harpreet’s Gizmo, but you know what I mean. My own Gizmo sat in the corner of my nook with the battery removed. Administrator Ngugi would only release a Gizmo’s location info if there was a good reason, but “wanted for questioning in a double homicide” was a pretty good reason.
I had to make a decision right then. A decision that would affect the rest of my life: Would I go to Rudy?
Surely he cared more about murder than my smuggling operation. And I’d be a lot safer if I just came clean. He might be an asshole, but he was a good cop. He’d do everything he could to protect me.
But he’d been looking for a reason to deport me since I was seventeen. He already knew Trond was screwing with Sanchez Aluminum, so it’s not like I’d provide useful information. And I assumed the “amnesty for ratting out Trond” offer was off the table—Trond was dead. So if I went to Rudy, I would:
a) Give him all the evidence he needed to get me deported, and
b) Not help him solve the murders at all.
No, fuck that. Keeping my head down and my mouth shut was the only way to come out of this alive and still living on the moon.
I was on my own.
I looked over my supplies. Probably a few days’ worth of food and water. I could use the public restrooms down the hall when no one was looking. I wasn’t going to just stay in the nook, but for the moment I didn’t want to be seen. At all. By anyone.
I sniffled back the last of my tears and cleared my throat. Then I called Dad’s number through a local proxy service. No one would know that Harpreet Singh called Ammar Bashara.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Dad, it’s Jazz.”
“Oh, hi. Weird, my Gizmo didn’t recognize your number. How’d the project go? Are you done with the equipment?”
“Dad, I need you to listen to me. Really listen.”
“Okay…” he said. “This doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not.” I wiped my face again. “You have to get out of the house and away from the shop. Stay with a friend. Just for a few days.”
“What? Why?”
“Dad, I messed up. I messed up bad.”
“Come over. We’ll work it out.”
“No, you have to get out of there. Did you read about the murders? Trond and Irina?”