“Thanks a million, Kelvin. Will do. Jazz out.”
I hung up and turned off the Gizmo. I had no idea what was going on, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to walk around with a tracking beacon on my ass.
I ran to the main concourse of Bean Ground. The nearest hotel was called the Moonrise Inn. Pretty stupid name, if you think about it. Artemis is the only city in existence that can’t see a moonrise. But whatever. Any inn would do.
Just as I had done with Nuha Nejem, I picked up a hotel Gizmo for Harpreet Singh. An Arab looks the same as an Indian to clueless hotel clerks.
Okay. Alias taken care of. I’d be Harpreet Singh for the foreseeable future. Tempting though it was to check into the hotel right then, I wasn’t willing to hide in plain sight. I had to go where literally no one would see me.
I knew just where to go.
DOUBLE HOMICIDE IN ARTEMIS
Business magnate Trond Landvik and his bodyguard Irina Vetrov were found dead today at Landvik’s estate in Shepard Bubble. Artemis has only had five other murders in its history and this is the lunar city’s first double homicide.
Constable Rudy DuBois, acting on a tip, found the bodies at 10:14 a.m. The door had been forced open and both victims had been stabbed to death. Evidence indicates that Vetrov died attempting to protect her employer and may have inflicted significant damage on the attacker.
Landvik’s daughter, Lene, was at school during the time of the murders.
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 J?rgensen, 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?”
“Yes, I saw that. Very unfort—”
“The killers are after me now. They might go after you for leverage because you’re the only person I care about. So get the hell out of there.”
He was silent for a while. “All right. Meet me at the shop and we’ll go stay with Imam Faheem. He and his family will take care of us.”
“I can’t just hide—I need to find out what’s going on. You go to the imam’s. I’ll contact you when it’s safe.”
“Jazz”—his voice quavered—“leave this to Rudy. It’s his job.”
“I can’t trust him. Not now. Maybe later.”
“You come home right now, Jasmine!” His voice had risen a full octave. “For the love of Allah, don’t tangle with murderers!”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. Just get out of there. I’ll call you when this is over.”
“Jasmi—” he started, but I hung up.
Another benefit to the proxy service: Dad couldn’t call me back.
I cowered in the nook the rest of the evening. I darted out to go to the bathroom twice, but that was it. I spent the rest of the time just fearing for my life and compulsively reading the news.
—
I woke up the next morning with cramped legs and a sore back. That’s the thing about crying yourself to sleep. When you wake up, the problems are still there.
I pushed the access panel aside and rolled out onto the corridor floor. I stretched out my complaining muscles. Bean Down 27 didn’t get many people coming through, especially this early in the morning. I sat on the floor and ate a hearty breakfast of unflavored Gunk and water. I should have stayed hidden in the nook but I just couldn’t take the cramped quarters any longer.
Sure, I could just hide out and hope Rudy caught the killer, but it wouldn’t help. Even if he succeeded, the people behind it would send another one.
I took another bite of Gunk.
It was all about Sanchez Aluminum.
Duh.
But why? Why were people killing each other over a bygone industry that didn’t even make much money?