Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (34 page)

The laugh she gave rippled with cynicism. “I tried once. Before I left for the job on Erisen, I took her to lunch one day. I apologized for some of my more…
extreme
behavior in the wake of Dad’s death. I told her I understood now she had been grieving as well. And though I was only a child, it had been selfish of me to act as I did, and I was sorry if I had made her life more difficult at an already difficult time.”

She stared into her glass, but her gaze seemed focused on someplace very far away. “She responded by saying I was still a child—note, I was twenty-five at this point—and I should never presume to believe I was capable of understanding anything she had gone through or anything she had or had not
felt
.” A quick gulp of her wine. “And as for my behavior, while it was disappointing as she had expected better from me, it amounted to nothing of real consequence.”

“No…” her head shook with an air of finality “…I’m afraid it is much,
much
too late. Whatever emotions the woman may have once possessed, they departed the premises long ago.”

“I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve such a reaction.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I was quite the recalcitrant teenager.” She took a deep breath and slid her chair out, leaving the nearly full glass of wine on the table. “And on that lovely downer, I’m going to call it a night. But….”

Her eyes found his. “Thank you.”

He met her gaze with his full attention. “For?”

She gave him an almost wistful half-smile. “Being honest.”

He had told her she probably couldn’t tell the difference, but perhaps she truly could. He didn’t know whether the possibility comforted or terrified him.

He instinctively leaned forward, his hand moving toward hers. It paused halfway to its destination.

She hesitated halfway to standing, her expression now completely unreadable to him. “What?”

Stay.

He withdrew his hand and eased back in the chair, though his attention didn’t leave her. “Nothing. Good night, Alex.”

25

SENECA

C
AVARE,
I
NTELLIGENCE
D
IVISION
H
EADQUARTERS

I
T WAS ONE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING
when Michael, freshly showered and wearing pressed khakis and a crisp forest green shirt, walked in the incident command center at Division HQ. His wife was a saint, and as soon as this crisis passed—if it passed—he owed her a nice dinner out, if not a weekend getaway.

He smiled at an agent who handed him a steaming mug of coffee and let his gaze run calmly across the room. Most of the Summit delegation had been brought directly here from the spaceport upon their arrival; a few lower-level staffers cleared of involvement or knowledge were allowed to go home for now.

The agents tasked to Atlantis having exhausted their avenues of interrogation during the nineteen hour trip to Seneca, his best interrogators had taken over upon the delegation’s arrival. Several of the senior Trade Division officials were, shall we say,
displeased
about being detained. They shouldn’t have hired an assassin as an employee, then.

Karin Pitrone, the team lead on Atlantis, spotted him and came over. Her stride appeared purposeful and her shoulders rigid, though she must have been awake for going on fifty hours now. He gave her a sympathetic smile, which she acknowledged only by a tight nod.

“You asked to speak to Assistant Director Nythal, sir? He’s in Interview Room 3 whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Karin. No time like the present.” He was kept apprised of events via a constant stream of updates over the last two days and didn’t need further briefing.

Jaron Nythal sat on the edge of his chair, his hands drumming a rapid rhythm on the table while his eyes darted around the empty room, then up to Michael as he entered. A half-empty cup of coffee sat to his right, a crumb-filled plate to his left. Dark irises almost masked the dilated pupils.

Michael recognized it had been a long few days for everyone and would understand if the man was running on caffeine and adrenaline, but he just wasn’t sure it had been the best idea for him to take amps before the interview. He recalled Delavasi’s warning regarding Nythal; he already understood what Delavasi had been getting at.

He made certain none of those thoughts tainted his expression as he smiled professionally. “Mr. Nythal, I’m Director Michael Volosk with the Division of Intelligence. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I realize the situation is far from ideal for everyone involved, so I appreciate it.”

Nythal cracked his neck. “It’s fine…Volosk, is it? I’m still in shock over what happened. I can hardly believe it. We all had high hopes for the Summit, and it’s a shame it went down this way. It truly is.” He dragged a hand through sleek black hair. “So what do you need from me?”

“Merely a bit of information.” Michael cleared his throat and sat down opposite his ‘guest.’ “I won’t take any more of your time than is necessary. What can you tell me about Christopher Candela?”

Nythal shrugged. “I didn’t really know him.”

“I understand if you didn’t know him socially, but he served as a staffer in your department, and you oversaw administration and coordination for the Summit. You approved his attendance, correct?”

“Well, yes. But you must realize, there were thirty-seven people in the delegation. I can’t be expected to know each of them individually. I can tell you Mr. Candela’s record was clean. He wouldn’t have been permitted to go were it not.”

“I’m sure.” He really wished the man hadn’t doped himself up, as it made it difficult to judge and interpret his body language. He considered putting the man on ice until he’d returned to a baseline state…but there was a lot to do and little time to do it in. “Do you have any personal impressions of him you can share?”

Another shrug. “He was…young. Eager to please. Seemed intelligent enough, but we hadn’t asked anything of him yet. My
impression
of him is he didn’t make much of an impression.”

“What about during the Summit? Any out-of-character behavior?”

Nythal leaned into the table and clasped his hands together. His thumbs continued to dance erratically. “Look, Mr. Volosk. I stayed busy two ways from Sunday during the Summit. I barely noticed what my personal secretary did, much less some no-name lackey.”

Michael maintained perfect composure, offering no hint of annoyance. “Of course you did. Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

Nythal blew out an exaggerated breath and crashed back in the chair. “Uh, I think I saw him at the dinner Tuesday night. Wednesday though? I attended meetings all day.”

“And around the time of the incident?”

His gaze drifted around the small room as if deep in thought. “No, I don’t think so. I mean I was in the ballroom, so I suppose my eyes might have drifted across him, but….”

Now Michael did show annoyance, with deliberate intent. He’d let the man play out his routine. Now to remind him he wasn’t actually in control of his situation. Nythal was a government official of moderate stature, certainly, but one didn’t get far in the intelligence business without learning to disregard political niceties. Granted, once you rose to a department directorship you needed to begin to practice them again, but not in this particular circumstance.

“Fine. Did he have a reason to be in the receiving line? He doesn’t sound like the type of person who would want to glad-hand dignitaries.”

“Maybe it was a secret dream of his. I don’t even know if he’d ever met Kouris—”

“What was his job at the Summit? It doesn’t appear as though he did much of anything.”

“He was an attaché, he…got shit for us. Ran errands. Made notes, whatever.”

“How many
attachés
did you have serving you?”

“Um, four, five? I don’t…remember….” The lines had begun to deepen around his sagging eyelids. The amps were wearing off.

“Seems like a little too much bureaucratic padding to me—this isn’t the Alliance. What about the following individuals: Alice Terre, Gerald Michaels, Treyson Rivers, Brandon Chao?”

“Wha—what’s special about them?”

“They also participated in the receiving line and greeted Minister Santiagar prior to his collapse. We’ll need to review their files and activities as well.”

Michael sat at his desk, the door closed. A few moments’ respite. His hands rested at his chin in a thoughtful pose. And he
was
thoughtful.

He’d conducted half a dozen interviews at the request of his agents, spent hours reviewing summaries of three dozen more interviews and viewed the footage of the incident from every angle and the cams of the pursuing agents. He’d confirmed the logs of every exit and patrol on Atlantis.

The man in the receiving line
was
Chris Candela. Scans of both Kouris’ and Santiagar’s hands minutes after the incident recovered trace DNA. Yet the man pursued into the service corridors displayed evasion and subterfuge skills which nothing in Candela’s life history indicated he should possess.

Worse, he was gone. Despite an ironclad lockdown on the facility in under two minutes—due as much to quick-moving Alliance security as anyone else’s actions—and a meter-level grid search, no trace could be found of the man.

The exit logs stared back at him from the screen above his desk. Eventually they had been forced to allow the uninvolved guests and bystanders to depart. The official Summit attendees were accounted for, save Candela. The nine attendees not present at the final dinner—an Alliance staffer, three reporters and five corporate executives—were interviewed on-scene and provided viable reasons for their absence. After follow-up they had been cleared and allowed to depart as well.

He exhaled softly, feeling every gram of the weight though it didn’t show in his posture or the bearing of his shoulders. Diplomatic relations with the Alliance hung by a dangling strand of a thread. If they could provide hard evidence of this being the act of a lone crazy, they stood a chance of at least regaining an uneasy détente. Otherwise, their claims of non-involvement came off as weak and impotent. But damned if he could find any such evidence.

He traded the exit logs for the rapidly growing file on the life and times of Chris Candela.

He had seen many criminals in his years in Division. Dangerous men and even more dangerous women. Small-time hucksters and savvy crime lords. Spies, gangsters, assassins, insurgents and wannabe-revolutionaries. True believers and soulless mercs willing to kill children for the right price.

Candela was none of these things. While the possibility continued that something in the man’s past, some event they had yet to uncover would open a Pandora’s box of secrets, it became increasingly unlikely with each passing hour. Even if—

His eVi blinked red, and a second later a brief message flashed into his vision.

We found him.

The body had floated onto a beach filled with frolicking children mid-morning Atlantis time. Once the children were corralled for counseling and the scene secured, a thorough forensic investigation was conducted onsite before moving the body to a medical facility.

The examination indicated a time of death between late afternoon on Wednesday and mid-morning Thursday; two-plus days in the water made a more precise TOD impossible. The cause of death was determined to be drowning. All evidence indicated that upon escaping the convention facility, however he accomplished it, he had simply dived off a walkway and let himself drown.

Oceans did not constitute a significant feature of Senecan topology. They existed of course, but were shallow and unexceptional, and generally far too cold to frolic in. It was conceivable Candela didn’t know how to swim. Unlikely, but conceivable.

It remained a mystery how he escaped the lockdown. But he clearly had—after which, by all indications, he committed suicide.

The evidence at this point was near to irrefutable. And despite herculean efforts and their most earnest protestations, they had nothing they would be able to show to the Alliance government to prove the assassination was anything other than a premeditated act on behalf of the Senecan Federation.