Erasing Time (14 page)

Taylor whispered, “Mum’s the word.”

“I won’t spill the beans.” To show they were united, Sheridan reached over and gave her sister’s hand a squeeze. Really, Taylor should have told Sheridan her secret at the beginning. Sheridan wouldn’t have told anyone that Taylor was really Tyler Sherwood.

After Jeth and Echo left, Elise went over to the computer and skimmed her hand across the control panel. “Echo isn’t the only one who can force a computer malfunction. This will give us fifteen minutes to talk before the recorder cycles round again.” She turned away from the computer and plunked down on the overstuffed floral couch. Her dark eyes were pensive underneath her pink eyebrows. As she looked at Sheridan, she wound a lavender strand of hair around her finger. “I know I don’t understand all the male and female customs of your culture, but what sort of relationship do you expect with Echo now?”

Taylor smirked, folded her arms, and dropped down onto the couch next to Elise. “Yes, do tell, Sheridan. What is your future with Mr. Blue Moon?”

Sheridan’s cheeks grew hot, and she sat down stiffly on the leatherlike couch across from them. It was one thing to feel you had acted foolishly; it was another to be openly questioned about it. “I don’t know. It’s hard to think of the future when I might be dragged away by Enforcers tomorrow.”

Elise fluttered a hand in Sheridan’s direction, waving away her statement. “You don’t need to worry. Echo will erase it. He has a way of manipulating things—and people—to his benefit.”

Taylor turned to Elise and in a confidential tone said, “I always wait until the second date to kiss a guy.”

Sheridan ignored Taylor. “Do you think Echo kissed me to manipulate me—that it didn’t matter to him?”

Elise made a scoffing noise. “I don’t think kissing has ever mattered to Echo.”

Sheridan felt numb, used. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

Taylor cocked her head at Elise, surveying her. The teasing faded from her tone. “You don’t like Echo, do you?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you used to?” Taylor asked. “Did you two date?”

“Echo and me?” Elise shook her head. “If I had dated either of them, it would have been Joseph. Joseph was more like me.” Her voice caught as though she couldn’t say his name without sadness. “Echo has always been too spun for me.”

“Spun?” Sheridan asked. “What does
spun
mean?”

“It means he spins from girl to girl,” Elise said.

“Oh, how nice,” Taylor said to Sheridan with pointed emphasis. “You were his latest stop.”

And for all Sheridan knew, by tomorrow Echo would be ready to spin to someone else. Perhaps to Taylor.

“It isn’t that Echo is bad,” Elise went on. “He just made the wrong friends and got wrapped up in a bad situation. He’s always been so reckless. And it’s like that saying from your time: the reckless never stay wreck-less for long.”

“We never said that,” Taylor said. “It’s catchy though.”

“You didn’t say that?” Elise’s eyebrows dipped. “I must be mixing up my centuries.”

Sheridan’s mind was still back on Echo spinning away from her. “Does Echo date lots of girls?”

“He used to,” Elise said, “but he changed after Allana’s death, after Joseph’s—he doesn’t go anywhere now. Doesn’t match up at all.”

Which was a relief. Only Sheridan shouldn’t be relieved that Echo didn’t date when it meant he was still grieving his brother’s death. Or perhaps it meant he was finally ready to stop spinning, that his kiss meant something. “Who’s Allana?”

Elise ran one hand across a printed rose on the couch cushion. It was faded to nearly a tan color. “She was one of Echo’s girlfriends. His favorite. The only problem was, she preferred Joseph.” Elise’s fingers momentarily stopped their track across the petals. “Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe Joseph just presented more of a challenge for her. Anyway, Echo didn’t like it. Girls always loved him best. He was the better dresser, better dancer, better flirter. He knows how to splice the compulocks at the Virtual Reality center to get more entertainment time. He’s so smart with computers and is always doing such stupid things with them.”

Elise gave a wan smile, one that only thinly veiled the sadness behind it. “I used to hate it when people compared Echo and Joseph, and now I’m doing it.
Pues
, they were wrong about Echo. Everyone said he was the smarter one because he could computigate so easily. But Joseph was smarter. He was just smarter in a gentler way. He never saw the faults in people. Especially not in his brother. He couldn’t figure out what Echo had become.”

Sheridan felt each word in the pit of her stomach. “What had Echo become?”

Elise stared down at the couch, then glanced over at the door. “Maybe I shouldn’t say. I’m only guessing, and I might be wrong. It’s a heavy thing to accuse anyone of.”

Sheridan waited, not breathing. She knew she was supposed to steer the conversation to the Doctor Worshippers and leaving the city, but she wanted to hear Elise’s accusations—not in order to hear Echo’s faults. In order to figure out how she should feel toward him.

Elise continued, her voice lower and faster. “Allana was here in the office waiting for Joseph the day before her death. I heard her talking with one of her friends on the computer. She didn’t see me come in, although it probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had. She was so arrogant about everything. She told her friend, ‘I’ve decided on Joseph.’

“And her friend said, ‘But has he decided on you?’

“Allana leaned back in her chair like she was planning on napping in it and said, ‘I can overcome his concerns.’

“When her friend asked, ‘Aren’t you worried that Echo will be angry?’ Allana just laughed. I guess she thought that since her father was the chairman of trade, nothing bad would ever touch her.”

Elise shut her eyes, swallowed hard. “The next night Joseph and Allana were both murdered. Joseph was shot not far from here, on Plymouth Street. Now every time I go past there, I think of it.”

Sheridan couldn’t speak. The horror gripped at her throat until she was incapable of sound.

“You think Echo killed them?” Taylor asked.

“Oh, it wasn’t Echo,” Elise said. “He was walking with Joseph at the time. But it might as well have been him. His group did it. It was their usual type of execution.”

“His group?” Taylor repeated.

Elise lowered her voice. “It isn’t good to speak of them.”

“The Dakine,” Sheridan said dully.

Elise’s eyes grew wide. In a cracking whisper she said, “You know of them? How?”

Taylor and Sheridan exchanged a look, but neither answered. Was it better to keep Echo’s secret or expose him? Who did they trust now? They had trusted Echo and found out he might have been involved in a double murder.

Elise’s lips drew into a tight line. “Echo told you about the Dakine, didn’t he? What did he say—that they’re a stellar organization?”

Sheridan hesitated, still reluctant to betray Echo. “He said they were bad people. That’s all.”

Elise grunted. “
Pues
, he told the truth about that. They run crime groups. If you have enough credits, you can buy anything from them, from pleasure drugs to city council rulings. People know the Dakine are dangerous. But no one does anything to stop them. Half the people are afraid, and the other half go to the Dakine for fat-reduction treatments.” Elise looked from Sheridan to Taylor emphatically. “Stay away from all of it.”

Taylor folded her hands calmly in her lap. “Echo also told us you knew people who could help us get out of the city—the DW.”

Elise stood up so fast, it looked like she’d been jabbed. One hand flew to her chest, and her jaw went slack. “Why would he tell you that?” and then after several quick breaths, “How did he know?”

Taylor stood up too, as though to help Elise in case she tipped over, but as quickly as Elise had stood up, she sank back down onto the couch. “Joseph,” she said weakly. “I told Joseph. He promised he’d never tell anyone.” She blinked several times and wrapped her arms across her chest, holding on to herself. “I should have known he wouldn’t keep it from Echo. Now I’ve endangered people. What else does he know?”

“I’m not sure,” Sheridan said. “He just told us you had connections to the DW, and that they could help us get out of Traventon.”

Taylor sat down beside Elise again. “He wants us to make plans with you and then tell him what they are. Don’t worry, though. We won’t tell him anything.”

Elise leaned back against the couch and shut her eyes. “He’s planning some sort of trap for me.”

“Would he do that?” Sheridan asked. “Is he really so …?” The sentence dropped from her mouth, unfinished. She was afraid she knew the answer. Echo had been kind to her and kissed her. Was she naive enough to think that meant he could be trusted? How simple she must seem to him, how easy to deceive.

“We’ll tell him he was wrong,” Taylor said. “We’ll tell him you don’t know anything about the Doctor Worshippers.”

Elise’s lips trembled. “He won’t believe you. I’ll have to leave now, myself.”

Taylor reached out and put one hand on Elise’s arm. “You can take us with you.”

Elise didn’t answer right away. Her expression grew vacant. She was already far away, planning things and going over options. “I need to talk to some people. I need to explain to them, to ask them for help.” Her voice faded to a whisper. “It isn’t an easy thing. You need to have three days of provisions before you start out. Three days. You can’t get three days of food from a dispenser. They’ve got compulocks on them. They track everything you buy.”

“Could Echo get around the compulocks?” Sheridan asked.

Elise shot Sheridan a severe look. “Echo can’t know about this. He doesn’t want to help you. The Dakine hate the Worshippers. They’re the only ones who won’t bend to Dakine power.”

Taylor glanced at the door. “Echo is expecting us to tell him some sort of plan. We’ll pretend we’re going to let him know, and then after he’s given us food, we’ll give him the slip.”

“The slip?” Elise repeated. “We’ll give him underwear?”

“We’ll leave without him,” Sheridan clarified.

Elise bit her lip. Her words came out in a hurried rush. “It’s dangerous to admit to anything. And if something went wrong … If he insisted on knowing names or places before he helped … I have to consider everything.” She looked down at the time flashing on the top of her comlink. “I need to talk to someone. I’ll go now while I’m certain Echo isn’t tracking me.” She stood up, took two steps toward the door, then turned around.

“My mind is frozen. When Echo and Jeth come back, they’ll wonder why I’ve left you here alone. I can’t go now.”

“You went to get us more clothing,” Taylor supplied. “We wanted to try the new fashions, so you went to get us things.”

Elise shook her head, making pink and lavender shimmers. “You’ll have to come with me for them to believe that story. But you can’t come, because even if we left them a message telling them we’d gone shopping, they’d most likely track my crystal and see we weren’t in a fashion district. Then they’d know.”

Taylor stood. “I’ll go with you. Sheridan will stay here because …” Taylor waved her hand in Sheridan’s direction as though this helped with the excuse. “She doesn’t like shopping and doesn’t need to try anything on, because anything that fits me will fit her too. She’ll keep Jeth and Echo busy so they won’t have the time to check on us. And we’ll really have to come back with some clothing to make our alibi believable.”

Elise nodded and walked quickly toward the door. Even panicked, she glided so that her soft shoes hardly made a sound.

Taylor turned to Sheridan. “Whatever you do, don’t let them track Elise. And listen to some feeds on the computer while we’re gone. We need to work on our accents if we want to blend in.”

Sheridan glanced at the monitor. “I don’t know how to work the computers.”

Taylor sighed, walked back over to a computer, and typed on the control panel. “They’re simple once you’re logged in. Just say or type in what you want it to do.” She headed toward the door again. “You can listen to news stories.”

Before Sheridan could ask anything else, the door swished closed behind Taylor and Elise. Sheridan stood for a moment in the silence, then slowly sat down.

She looked over the keyboard. The computer wouldn’t understand her accent, but most of the symbols were familiar. She could figure out how to make it work. She had to figure it out, because she knew exactly what she wanted the computer to do: find information about Joseph’s and Allana’s deaths.

“Show me information about the murder of Joseph …” Sheridan let her hands rest on the desk. It had taken an annoying amount of time to type out the sentence. The spelling had changed for half the words, so that every time she typed in something, the computer gave her a list of alternate words to choose from. Now she realized she didn’t know Joseph’s last name, didn’t even know if people had last names anymore. She went back to her entry, typing,
the daughter of the chairman of trade
.

She believed Elise about the story, and yet she didn’t.

How could Echo be capable of having his own brother killed? People just didn’t do that.