False Hearts (21 page)

He searches for quotes relating to
red
. The following appears on the wall:

Isaiah 1:18: Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Exodus 28:15: You shall make a breast piece of judgment, in skilled work. In the style of the ephod you shall make it—of gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen shall you make it.

“Mean anything to you?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nope.”

He searches for “the fair one” and the snippet from the Song of Solomon appears:

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

I still shake my head. Tila is beloved to me, of course, but the quote doesn’t jump out to me in any significant way. Does she want me to come away with her?

He frowns. “I’m sure we’ll find out something. There’ll be a kink in this trail somewhere.”

He tries a general search, not in the Bible, of “the red one, the fair one, the handsome one.”

“Got it,” Nazarin whispers.

The triliteral Semitic root ADM: red, handsome, fair. And a word from it, “adamah,” meaning “ground” or “earth.”

“Adam.” The word rasps from my throat. My head spins and I lean back on the chair, closing my eyes, hiding my face in my hands.

“The first man? Does that mean anything to you?”

Of course it does. And it has nothing to do with the original Adam from Genesis, the rise of Eve’s original sin or the fall of man. It has everything to do with a nice boy with a genuine smile, laughing through the pain as he tried to catch green grapes in his mouth, his left arm a stump on the pillow, his infected foot propped up on the bed. A lifetime ago. A world away across the bay.

“It does. We knew a boy named Adam. But I don’t know how the hell he’d have anything to do with this.”

“Maybe Mia wanted us to speak to him. Where is he?”

Not opening my eyes, I say, “He’s dead. Died ten years ago, in Mana’s Hearth. Maybe she meant another Adam. Or she was babbling nonsense hopped up on Zeal or Verve. Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t think about this any more.” I take my hands away and reach for the bottle of SynthGin. It only has enough for half a glass.

“Any more?”

He brings out the bottle of SynthTequila. Holds it out to me like an offering.

“That’ll do.”

*   *   *

Our empty SynthTequila glasses sit on the table by the window, glowing silver in the moonlight. Nazarin and I are on the bed. The detective is splayed against the wall, his arms crossed behind his head. His eyes are half-lidded, his lips parted. I’m lying on my side, my head resting on my arm. He makes a pretty picture. In this soft light, he does not look so fierce. I can’t see his scars.

Nazarin stretches, his shirt lifting just enough to show the muscled planes of his stomach.

“Do you want another drink?” he asks, his voice quiet.

“No,” I say. I sit up, move a little closer. We pause, six inches apart, sizing each other up. We both know what the other wants. What we don’t know is if we should cross that line.

The old Taema wouldn’t have. The old me would have decided it was too improper, unprofessional. The new me, though? The one who has given up everything, who just nearly killed my foster mother in a dream world? She’s a different creature entirely.

Nazarin opens his mouth to say something.

I close the distance between us.

His mouth is warm. His lips part further, his tongue darting against mine, soft and tasting of tequila. His stubble scratches my chin. I pull him against me, and his body is the opposite of his mouth—hard, angular, strong. I roll on top of him, and his lips move from my lips to my neck. I close my eyes, a small smile curling my lips.

I sit up and Nazarin pulls my shirt off of me. His fingers trace their way down my scar before reaching behind me, unclasping my bra. I slide it down my arms, tossing it to the floor before helping him out of his clothes.

We are not slow. We are not gentle. We are not tender. We each take what we want, what we need, yet we do give the other what they desire. It’s been almost a year since I broke up with David. It’s a long time to be alone. I concentrate entirely on Nazarin and the sensations he gives me, determined to quiet my racing mind.

Afterward, I lie on top of him, my breasts pressed against his muscled chest. From this close, I can see all his scars, crisscrossed against each other. I trace my fingertips along them as he drifts off to sleep, wondering what story lies behind each one.

His heartbeat is in time with mine.

FOURTEEN

TAEMA

I wake up curled up against Nazarin’s side.

In the harsh light of day, sleeping with my undercover partner doesn’t seem like the brightest idea I ever had, even if I am delightfully sore and sated. I ease myself away from him, running my tongue over my dry lips. Synth alcohols don’t give you a hangover, but your body still understands on some deep level that you’ve messed with it. I lean on my knees.

I dreamed of Adam. My first crush. How he used to visit us and stay for dinner. He’d flip through the books in our room, and I’d watch his fingers turn the pages. I’d often wondered if he liked either me or my sister, or both of us. He was so tall, and strong from helping plow the fields for grain. I could picture his face so clearly in my mind, as if I’d just seen him the day before.

Nazarin shifts, curling on his side, turned toward me, his face burrowed into his arm so I can only see the tips of his eyebrows and his buzzed hair. He looks cute, something I still find remarkable in such a large, intimidating man. Images of the previous night flash in my mind, and though they are pleasant memories, I’m nervous about how he’ll react when he wakes up. I watch him for a minute, willing my body to feel better, even if nothing exactly hurts. Nazarin’s breathing hitches, his brows furrowing. I wonder what his dreams are.

I move to leave the bed and Nazarin stiffens, his arm snaking out to grab my wrist. I cry out in surprise. We freeze. Nazarin meets my eyes, the sleep clearing from them as he remembers what we did. His gaze darts down to my naked torso. He lets go of my wrist and I rub it.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Light sleeper.”

It’s more than that. He’s someone used to sleeping with one eye open and a gun under his pillow.

I stand, feeling his eyes on me as I slip the cotton dress over myself. I go to the bathroom and shut the door. Looking in the mirror is still a shock. My hopes rise for an instant when I think it’s my sister, and then crash when I realize it’s only me. My imitation-Tila hair is a wreck. I try to pat the blue spikes into some semblance of order, and give up.

When I come out, he’s up and dressed in a tank top and sleep shorts, making coffee in the kitchenette. There’s a bulge in his shorts. I feel a shot of desire go through me, culminating between my legs. Even in the light of day, knowing it’s a bad idea, I’m more than half tempted to go over, push him against the wall and do it all again. I clear my throat, slide my eyes away, and take the cup when he offers it to me, sipping gratefully.

It’s real coffee. The caffeine settles into my system. They haven’t outlawed that from the city yet, even though it’s stupidly expensive to buy with the extra taxes.

“Good God, Taema, you can drink,” Nazarin says, admiringly. “If that was real alcohol, I wouldn’t be able to open my eyes today.”

Are we pretending last night didn’t happen? I play along. It’s easier this way. “So you’ve had the real stuff?” I ask, taking another sip.

“Of course I have. I haven’t always lived in this hippie ecotopia.”

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“I was born in Turkey, but moved to Dakota when I was eight.”

“Ah. Rural boy.” I skirt about asking him why he left Turkey. There was a nasty civil war in that area of the world at that time, though it’s stable now. Chemicals, bombs and far too many civilian deaths.

“I grew up on a farm. Might have been a little similar to how you were raised, come to think of it.”

My mouth twists, my hand hovering to the top of my scar. “Probably not quite like me.”

He raises his coffee cup in acknowledgment. His eyes dart down, but I’m not sure if he’s looking at the scar or my breasts. I feel the thrum of desire again.
Get it together
, I admonish myself.

“Definitely not,” he says, as if echoing my thoughts, but he’s still talking about his childhood. “I just have a little more in common with you than someone who grew up surrounded by this.” He gestures out the window at the distant skyscrapers. “We had plenty of moonshine out there. Real beer. No one out there would touch synthetic alcohol if their lives depended on it. They pride themselves on swilling the real stuff, even if they’re left with skull-splitting hangovers.”

He stops and tilts his head, his vision going distant. Seems like we’re both plagued with memories this morning. Then I realize he’s been pinged. I down the first cup of coffee and pour myself another as he listens to his auditory message.

He shakes his head to clear it and the way he looks at me makes my insides freeze.

“What is it? Is it Tila?”

“No. Not your sister. But Mia is dead.”

*   *   *

I can’t have my answers right away. Nazarin has been called back to the Ratel, and they’re still performing the autopsy report. We’ve returned to the gingerbread safe house, and I’m alone for most of the day. I work out and practice the fight sequences that I’ve brainloaded. I order a lonely meal from the replicator, barely tasting it. I take a long shower, turning the water up as hot as I can bear, staring at my toes. First, I try to read, then I try to watch something on the wallscreen, but I take nothing in. I end up wandering the empty rooms, staring blankly into space, numb.

Mia is gone. The woman who took me and my sister in. The woman who helped us navigate our brave new world of San Francisco. She was flawed, she was deeply troubled, but she loved us, and we loved her. Now she’s gone. I wonder if they told Tila, and what she’s thinking, wherever she is.

When Nazarin returns, late that night, he has the autopsy report. He lays the tablet on the kitchen table and we perch next to each other on stools. We still haven’t talked properly about what happened, but I don’t want to anymore.

“They warned me it’s inconclusive,” he tells me. “They’re not going to incinerate her right away.”

I jerk my shoulders up at that. I can’t stand the thought of her turned into nothing but ash.

“Sorry. I’ve been told I can be insensitive in times of loss. When I had a partner, she was usually the one to break any news like this.”

“Yeah, you’re not being remotely comforting here. Why don’t you have a partner anymore?” I can’t believe it’s never occurred to me to ask. I also don’t want to look at the autopsy report just yet, so I’m stalling.

“She died. Not long before I went undercover. Right now, you’re the closest to a partner I have.” He looks away from me, but there’s a tension in his muscles that wasn’t there a moment before.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Were you two … close?”

He raises an eyebrow. “We weren’t fucking, if that’s what you mean.”

I don’t react, though of course, his words make me think about him without his clothes. It’s a nice mental image.

“She was actually married to Dr. Mata,” he continues. “That’s how I met Kim. But yeah, we were close. And she was a damn good detective. We cracked a lot of cases together. Put a lot of bastards away. One got away and killed her.”

“Did you catch him?”

“Nah. Asshole got away with it. I ever find out who did it … they won’t make it to prison.” He works his jaw, hesitating, as if deciding whether or not to tell me what’s on his mind. “I’m pretty sure it was the Ratel.”

Was that why he went undercover? “If they hurt your partner, wouldn’t they then know who you were?”

“You’re not the only one wearing a false face and using a false name,” he says.

I wonder what he used to look like. What his real name is. I’m not sure he’d tell me, so instead I ask: “What was her name?”

He closes his eyes. “Juliane. Juliane Amello.”

“Pretty name.” I raise my coffee cup, and he taps his with mine. “In memory of Juliane.”

He smiles at my sentimentality, and drinks. “We’re toasting with the wrong stuff.”

“Can you stand the thought of more SynthGin or SynthTequila?”

He grimaces, and I laugh. I sober when he glances down at the tablet again. I don’t want to see a hollow re-creation of Mia. I don’t want to remember the way she was in the Vervescape. I don’t want to think about how she might have screwed Tila and me over. I want to preserve her in my mind as the woman she was when we were sixteen and scared, and she protected us.

“Did you find out anything about Mirage?” I ask, stalling further.

“Yeah. I think we’re OK. Another Knight told me Mirage was a bust for recording dreams, too, and that the King and Queen were annoyed. They’ve only managed to do it in small batches, with one or two people, and they want to do it with more people at once.”

“How many more?”

Nazarin sighs. “As many as possible. Get them hooked, get them buying straight from them. Money and information flows toward the Ratel. The Ratel becomes the true power in San Francisco.”

Hence why the government and Sudice have to squash them before they can’t any longer. What would San Francisco be like, if we were all under Ratel control? Even less privacy than now, if not even our dreams were our own.

“Still terrifying that the Ratel are using Zealots as experimental subjects. Have any died from Verve?”

“Plenty.”

“Why isn’t the government doing more? Surely they could do something to protect them?”

Nazarin’s face is impassive. “In this case, it means the government can watch what they’re doing. If the Ratel realizes the government knows, then they’ll do something more underground. Maybe take people to experiment on. Zealots are expendable.” His mouth tightens.