The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (29 page)

She had only gotten four hours of sleep, but that had been at least two more hours than she would have gotten if she had gone home. And probably four more hours than she would have gotten if she stayed here.

He wanted to harangue her for living on sleep blockers and artificial wakefulness drugs, but he didn’t dare. Better to feed her and try to manipulate her into resting. That way, she wouldn’t avoid him. If he started nagging her, he was truly worried that she would stop talking to him out of sheer self-protection.

He smiled at her. He had missed her.

“I need something useful to do since that stupid law firm tied our hands,” he said.

“S-three,” Popova said. “I wish I had never heard of them.”

“We have more than enough to do without worrying about the Peyti clones,” DeRicci said, frowning at Popova over Nyquist’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s something I want to talk with you about.”

“Bring that yummy food into my lair,” DeRicci said. “I’m not sure how much longer I can withstand that wonderful smell.”

He took the bag with him as DeRicci led him into the office.

He wasn’t quite prepared for it. He’d been here many times, but it always seemed organized. Now there were pieces of desks and chairs in the wrong place. The plants had been moved, and DeRicci’s desk was mounded with all kinds of detritus—some of which, he realized, were shirts and pants. She’d been changing clothes here, possibly on the nights she had nothing to wear at his place.

She grabbed some water bottles from a nearby fridge—that was new as well—and set them on the table in the center of the room. Then she eased into one of the chairs.

“Theoretically, I shouldn’t talk to you about what we’re doing,” she said tiredly. “But there’s no one left to yell at me for breaking rules that aren’t even codified into law yet. So, Bartholomew, what do you want to ask?”

He wanted to hold her. She was so sad and she hadn’t dealt with any of those softer emotions yet. But she kept giving herself away with phrases like the one she just used:
There’s no one left to yell at me
. She had hated the restrictions before, and now, she missed them.

Or rather, she missed the people who had imposed them.

If he were less charitable, he would say she missed having something to push against, but he knew that wasn’t entirely the problem. She used to say that she wanted to be the person in charge, but now that she was, it was eating her up from the inside out.

Or maybe that was just the nature of the entire crisis.

He took the two burgers out of the bag. He’d also indulged and bought French fries made the old-fashioned way, in oil, with salt and sugar. He knew that DeRicci loved the things, and he also knew they were the most unhealthy thing he could find.

But he didn’t care. Food was food. And the restaurant he’d bought this at used only the best ingredients for its meals—as if good grease made the food healthier.

“I was wondering if you need another investigator,” Nyquist said.

“Because S-Three tied your hands?” DeRicci asked.

He nodded.

“I’m sure you have other cases,” she said, adjusting the bun on her burger. She seemed to know that the guards downstairs had messed with the food, and apparently it didn’t bother her.

“I do,” he said. “But an unsolved murder from seven months ago seems a lot less important than solving millions of attempted murders less than two weeks old.”

She gave him a weak smile. “Well, when you put it that way,” she said.

She took a bite out of the burger, and closed her eyes. She made a sound he thought she only made in bed.

“You know,” he said after a minute, “you have a staff. Someone could bring you food on a regular basis.”

He regretted the words the moment he spoke them. But DeRicci just opened her eyes and smiled at him.

“Then I wouldn’t get to see you,” she said.

He adjusted the pieces of his burger. The bun was hot. The bag had kept everything just-cooked-fresh, even though the guards had tampered with the food.

“If you brought me on,” he said, “I’d double as your food-provider.”

She smiled, but the look didn’t go to her eyes. Something he had said disturbed her. “I thought you were working with Miles on the side,” she said.

“I thought so too,” Nyquist said, “but I haven’t heard from him since the Peyti Crisis.”

“Did you contact him?” DeRicci asked.

“I left a few non-urgent messages for him,” Nyquist said, “in the last few days. I actually thought I’d be busy until those injunctions.”

She nodded. “Miles was here. He’s got problems with Talia.”

“Serious ones?” Nyquist asked.

DeRicci shrugged. Nyquist wasn’t sure if that meant that Flint’s problems
were
serious or that she didn’t want to tell Nyquist because she felt that he had no right to know.

He really didn’t.

“I think you should keep working with him,” DeRicci said.

Nyquist felt his heart sink. “I’d hoped—”

“I know, Bartholomew, but I can’t request you, and I’m juggling so much here.”

“I can take some of that off you,” he said.

“Can you?” she asked, looking at him. “Because most of what I need done is United Domes political stuff, and you’re no more qualified than I am.”

He felt his heart sink further. “If anything, I’m less qualified. You’re doing a great job.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “Since I’ve become head of security for the Moon, we’ve suffered two devastating attacks. I’m sure there are more on the way. I just can’t find the perpetrators. I can’t figure out what’s going to happen. I can’t
foresee
them any more than I could foresee the Peyti Crisis.”

“But you saved lives,” Nyquist said.

“Did I?” she asked. “Or is that just the lie we tell ourselves to make it all better? Are we sure those Peyti clones would have set off the bombs? Are we really?”

“I am,” Nyquist said. He remembered standing outside the interrogation room in which he had locked Uzvaan, one of the Peyti lawyers, someone he had known for decades. Their gazes met through the window, and Uzvaan had removed the bomb from his mask, trying to activate it.

Nyquist still saw that moment in his sleep. Only in those dreams, he was inside the room, and the environmental controls hadn’t shifted to Peyti normal, and as Uzvaan pulled his mask apart, Nyquist knew he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“You’re sweet, Bartholomew.” Her tone was dismissive. She thought he had told her she had saved lives to make her feel better.

“And you’re tired, Noelle,” he said with a bit more bite than he intended, “or you’d remember that one of the lives you saved was mine.”

She stared at him. Then she frowned ever so slightly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“That you saved me?” he said. “I told you that—”

“No.” She waved what was left of her burger. “That you actually have a reason to see—what was his name? The Peyti lawyer?”

“Uzvaan,” Nyquist said. “His name is Uzvaan.”

“You had a reason to see him that day,” DeRicci said. “That’s how you were able to isolate him.”

“I lied to him, Noelle. I told him I had information on his client, Ursula Palmette.” Palmette had been involved in the assassinations on Anniversary Day. She had supplied the materials used in at least one assassination—or so Nyquist believed.

Flint’s sources believed the materials came from somewhere else, but that never explained why Palmette was going to try to set off her own makeshift bomb at the Port when Nyquist caught her.

“But this Uzvaan had a client, and he needed to see you,” DeRicci said.

“He used it as an excuse to come to the precinct,” Nyquist said. “He was probably excited about how many people he could kill.”

Nyquist’s words were clipped. He could hear the anger in his own voice. He usually kept that anger down, but the fact that Uzvaan—whom he had known for years—had been willing to kill him so very easily infuriated him.

“You can’t interrogate any of the Peyti clones about the crisis, right?” DeRicci said.

“Yeah,” Nyquist said.

“But they are lawyers,” she said.

He stared at her.

“They haven’t been disbarred—at least, not yet. They haven’t been taken off cases. We’ve been reacting to their actions and what the clones turned out to be, but we haven’t removed them from anything.”

“S-Three would say we’re playing games here,” Nyquist said.

DeRicci set her burger down. “Of course we are, Bartholomew. That’s what the law is all about. It’s about games. S-Three is going to be playing games with us. They just caught us off-guard, is all. They’ll twist language and ideas and anything else they can to protect their clients. We’ll fight back in the courts by saying that these clones have no right to an attorney, and we’ll meet each challenge with another. Each challenge will be all about words and interpretations of the law, but even while we’re doing that, life goes on. Like you said.”

“I did?” Nyquist’s head was spinning. He set his burger down, remembering to put it on top of the warming bag so that the burger remained hot.

“You did,” she said. “You said you still had cases, but who cares about them in the face of the Peyti Crisis.”

He nodded.

“Start caring,” she said. “Palmette is one of your cases, and it ties to Uzvaan. I’m sure there are others, with other lawyers involved.”

He let out a breath.

“Okay, let’s take this a bit slower,” he said. “I was a little relieved that the injunctions came down, because my colleagues aren’t in a cautious mood.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they believe that destroying property is allowed under the law,” he said.

“See?” DeRicci said, apparently not shocked. Had she thought of this too? “Twisting the rules to make them work. We’re all going to be doing it.”

“You don’t care that they were going to harm the clones?”

“Not for the clones’ sake,” DeRicci said.

Nyquist felt his world shift. DeRicci, of all people, should have cared. She wasn’t like Romey. She knew—

“But,” DeRicci added, apparently not noticing his distress, “I don’t want to lose a single one of those bastards. Because we don’t know which one will talk to us. And with that many clones, that many
opportunities
, one of them will talk. Maybe that one is Uzvaan.”

“He’s tough,” Nyquist said.

“And smart, I’ll bet,” DeRicci said.

“Of course,” Nyquist said.

“So he’ll know that they’re going to be coming for him, with everything they have.”

“He’s a failed suicide bomber, Noelle. He’s not going to care about his own safety.”

She took another bite of the burger, chewed. Thought. Then she nodded. “It’s a dilemma, granted, but I doubt it’s insurmountable. You’re assuming that he wanted to die.”

“Yes, I am,” Nyquist said. “Because he did.”

“No,” she said. “He might have believed it was his
duty
to die. He might have believed in the cause, whatever that cause is. He might have had other reasons to take his own life, reasons that no longer exist.”

Nyquist shook his head. “I doubt he’ll talk to me for any reason.”

“He’s smart,” DeRicci said. “He knows he’s lost. He knows—”

“He doesn’t, though,” Nyquist said. “He doesn’t know he’s lost. If there is a third attack coming, then all he has to do is wait.”

She finished her burger, then licked off her fingers. He watched her, wondering if she even realized how quickly she had eaten, the way that it showed how ravenous she was.

“And if he doesn’t wait,” DeRicci said, “if he makes a deal with you, if he’s even willing to
talk
to you, then we’ll know that he no longer believes in the cause.”

“We can’t make that assumption,” Nyquist said. “Because he might not know there is a third attack.”

“He might not,” DeRicci said. “Or he might assume the attack has failed.”

“He’s a lawyer, Noelle. Even if he wants to talk to me, he’ll want something in exchange.”

She nodded. “I already thought of that. We can give him immunity.”

“
Immunity
?” Nyquist asked. “From what?”

“Treatment as a clone,” she said, and Nyquist let out a breath of air. He had thought that she would give Uzvaan immunity from prosecution, period.

“That might make things worse for him,” Nyquist said.

“That might allow him to live a long life,” DeRicci said. “As a full-individual, he’ll be able to appeal. As a clone, he can be destroyed at any moment.”

Nyquist thought for a moment. “I can’t offer him anything, Noelle,” he said. “I can’t talk to him about the Peyti Crisis.”

“So, offer him a deal if he talks about Palmette,” DeRicci said. “What is the standing of a clone lawyer? He’s not subject to laws for individuals. He’s property. So all that confidentiality, all of those protections afforded a normal lawyer, he wouldn’t have—”