For the first time since she caught this case, she grinned. "Yeah," she said, finally taking his hand and shaking it. "An affair I can handle."

"Me, too," he said. "In fact, an affair"s perfect. I"m not sure I want to face my case alone." She glanced over her shoulder at the car. Maybe it was good to have backup when she went head-to-head with Whitford Security.

"Yeah," she said, deciding to maintain the metaphor. "Sometimes an affair is just the thing."

21.

Six different reports in front of her, and all Noelle DeRicci could think about was how annoyed she was. Not just at the stupid rehash of Ki Bowles"s old news story, but also at Nyquist.

He shouldn"t have tried to take advantage of their relationship to get her to shut down security at the Hunting Club.

She had thought that when he went back to work he would not bother her that much. It had been hard while he was healing; he"d needed a lot from her, and she"d been willing to provide it, even though it meant she didn"t get a lot of sleep. She had to be able to do her job, and see to him.

That request today did not bode well for the future of their relationship. If he tried to use her again, she would have to tell him that such behavior compromised her.

He"d hate to hear it, and she"d hate to say it. But she had to draw a line.

And what upset her the most was that the line would be at the expense of her relationship, not at the expense of her job, just like those lines had been in the past.

She leaned back in her chair. Did that mean she valued her job more than Nyquist? That"s what someone like Bowles would say.

Flint would tell her that a person had to take care of herself, and DeRicci was doing just that. He would also remind her that limits made relationships possible.

Of course, he hadn"t had a relationship since his wife left, and that went so well for him, given that he now had a daughter he hadn"t known about until six months ago.

So maybe DeRicci shouldn"t turn to someone like Flint for relationship advice, even if it was just in her imagination.

She made herself focus on the reports. They had come to her desk for a reason. Half a dozen lower-level employees of the newly formed security department had reviewed them, and decided that they meant something.

She usually didn"t read the lower-level employee a.n.a.lysis until after she looked at the problems herself-it kept her mind clear, and made sure she didn"t focus on the area that the underlings had. Sometimes they didn"t see the entire picture accurately, and she had to adjust things.

If she always looked at things from the employees" point of view, she would miss the central fact of some of the issues she faced.

At other times, though, her lower-level employees had been exactly on target. She never knew until she looked at the raw data herself.

The raw data here was attached to the end of the reports. She rearranged the information so that she looked at the raw data, then at the originating reports-which came from outside her office, from someone who believed there was a security breach or some kind of similar problem-and then the a.n.a.lysis from the members of her department.

It took her a minute to understand what the raw data was. The raw data concerned outside tampering with the Moon"s public net.

She had never thought the public net very important. Even though everyone used it, from communications to watching vids and holos to getting information from news to personal messages, everyone also knew that the net was notoriously unreliable.

No one-except someone too poor to afford their own links (and that was hardly anyone anymore)-used the net for secure personal business. People used it for hurried communication (Hon, I"m at the port. My links are down, so I had to use the public system. I"ll be home in an hour) to the most basic level of research (such as discovering the names of all the publicly listed companies in Armstrong that sold clothing) before using private services to search out more exclusive information.

Old news stories sometimes floated around the public net and so did old plays or programs, but even those had expirations or copyright limitations. Usually a net user saw only headlines or possible links for news stories, and entertainment options, available at a price for private download. Never the news or the entertainment itself.

So DeRicci was a bit confused as to why information concerning the public net had made it to her desk. She studied the data for a few minutes longer. From what she could understand, items had been removed from the public information network. And those items hadn"t been removed from within the network itself, but from outside.

She frowned, trying to make sense of that. Technically there was no central home from the public net-not the way there was for the city government or for InterDome Media or even for the Human Library Project, her personal favorite because it tried to contain everything ever published by humans within this solar system.

As she understood it, people could take anything they wanted off the public net and they could delete anything, if they found out where its home base was located. They could then, if they had the time, delete all references to it.

If that piece of information had found its way into any of the Earth Alliance information networks, then the information might still exist in the Earth"s public net or on Mars"s public net. So information didn"t just vanish.

And even if it did, she didn"t understand why someone would present that to her as a security breach.

She tried the raw data again, trying to see whether she got a different understanding from it. She was hoping she had misread what had come before her.

But so far as she could tell, she hadn"t misread it. Of course, she didn"t do the close a.n.a.lysis her underlings did. But she should have some sense of what was before her, just by the information she was looking at.

And she got nothing different than the first time she went through it all.

Finally, in frustration, she gave up digging through the raw data and turned to the first underling"s report. It concerned a block of information that had just vanished from the public nets. That block of information disappeared from backup systems as well, and if it weren"t for some retired citizen who believed that all the information on the public net should be backed up on a private network (his private network), no one would ever have even known what the information was.

The information was a list of people who had come through the Port of Armstrong during one week over fifteen years ago. The port kept such information as well. In fact, the port"s records should have been extremely detailed.

But the security a.n.a.lyst went to the port with a request for the information, and discovered that the port"s records for that week were missing.

They had gone missing about two weeks ago, at the same time the information disappeared off the public nets.

DeRicci leaned back. Now she was beginning to understand. Someone was trying to cover up their entry (or exit) from Armstrong fifteen years ago.

Because they"d been charged with a crime now? Or because of some other event she didn"t know about?

She opened a screen on her own personal system, the one that wasn"t linked to anything, not even her a.s.sistant"s system. Bowles and her ancient story were no longer important.

This was. And DeRicci had an idea how to track down that information without access to the port"s records or the public net.

But first she was going to look at the other cases.

She was going to see what else she needed to know.

22.

Flint waited until they reached his air car before he spoke to Talia. The car was in the VIP section of Van Alen"s parking structure, off to one side.

He loved the VIP section because it scanned for illegal links. It also shut off all but the most common emergency links. Many of Van Alen"s clients were people who believed they needed to Disappear, which meant that they were in some kind of trouble. They were tailed or watched or hounded. Over the years, Van Alen had put the best possible security in her VIP section.

He had parked the car in a corner near the jamming systems. He knew that proximity gave extra protection.

On this afternoon, his was the only car parked up here. It was a sleek, state-of-the-art model, a little larger than he liked. He had bought it after Talia had come into his life, and he felt that he needed something bigger and safer.

Of course, he hadn"t expected to work much during the years he raised Talia, so he didn"t think speed was as much of an issue as it had been just a few months before.

He was no longer sure that he was right. Talia hadn"t asked a lot of questions while they were still in Van Alen"s office. When they got into the elevator, she asked what the police wanted.

Flint had held up a single finger, silently asking her to wait, and looking pointedly at the walls of the elevator. He doubted anyone was listening in except maybe Van Alen"s people, but he didn"t want to take any risks.

He touched the driver"s door and the car unlocked. Talia opened her door before he did, and slid inside, slamming the door so hard that the car shook.

She had had an interesting day-trying to leave, getting caught, having her research examined, and then accompanying him to Van Alen"s. Talia was surly on the best of days, and this wasn"t the best of days. Flint got in beside her. He turned the environmental systems on, checked the logs to make sure no one had so much as looked at the car in his absence, and then turned to his daughter.

"I"m going to tell you something difficult," he said. "We have a problem and I"m not quite sure I know how to solve it."

Talia faced him, looking like the adult she would someday be. He sensed she was flattered that he trusted her enough to tell her about this, even though she didn"t yet know what he was going to say.

He couldn"t tell her everything. In fact, he couldn"t tell her much. But he had to tell her enough. "You remember Ki Bowles?" he asked.

"Yeah." Talia had a slight frown, as if she were trying to stay ahead of the conversation, antic.i.p.ating everything he was going to say.

"She was murdered this morning," he said.

Talia"s breath caught. She blinked and then looked away.

He wondered whether he should have broken the news to her more gently. After all, her mother had just died-and that might have been a murder, although the Recovery Man who had kidnapped her insisted it was a suicide.

"Tal?" he said.

She nodded, then turned toward him again. Somehow she had gotten control of her facial expression, but her eyes held some fear.

"Maxine and I were working on a project with Ki."

"I know," Talia said.

He moved sharply, cutting off his own reply, which would have been harsh. He wondered if she had looked through his or Van Alen"s files.

Talia must have sensed what he was going to say because she added somewhat defensively, "You told me, remember? When you introduced us that one time?"

He barely remembered. He had muttered something about working together and left it at that. "I a.s.sume it was a dangerous project?" Talia asked.

"It might be the reason she died," he said.

Talia"s lips trembled. She nodded, then looked away again. He put his hand on hers.

"I took on the project," he said, "long before I knew about you. Then when we came back here, you and me, I didn"t really give the project much thought. It was just something that was under way. I should have stopped it then, and I just didn"t think of it."

"You"re in danger?" she asked.

"I don"t know," he said. "The news is sketchy and I learned long ago not to act without all the facts. Ki Bowles had a life besides this project. Something else might have gotten her killed. It might even have been random."

"But you don"t know that."

"I don"t," he said. "And that"s the problem."

She kept her hand under his. He could feel her trembling. This poor girl, who had lost her entire life, was just gaining a new one, and he was telling her that it was threatened.

"I have to investigate what happened to Ki."

"Isn"t that what the police are for?"

"What we were working on is confidential," Flint said. "The police won"t-they can"t-have all the facts."

"Why not?" She turned toward him again. She looked more like the terrified young girl he had first met than the woman she would be.

"Because," he said, not sure exactly how to answer this, "although our motives were pure, our methods may not have been."

"You broke the law?" Her voice rose. "You mean what the kids at school say about you is true?" "What do they say?" he asked, not liking her distress.

"That because you"re a Retrieval Artist, you"re a criminal."

He smiled in spite of himself.

She pulled her hand away from him. "They say that. They do. And they mean it."

"I"m sure they do," he said.

"Is it true?" she asked.

"Retrieval Artists don"t always follow the law," he said. "That makes you a criminal." "If you look at the universe in black and white, maybe," he said. "Police look at the universe like that," she said. "Shouldn"t lawyers? Shouldn"t you?"

"Police don"t always," he said, choosing not to answer the last question. "Some of my referrals have come from the police."

"You"ve done illegal work for the police?" "And for the United Domes of the Moon." He sighed. "Sometimes it"s the only way." "And this thing, this thing that got Ms. Bowles killed, it was illegal?" Talia made it sound dirty. "Not exactly," he said. "Technically, what we were doing was defendable in court." "Which is what Ms. Van Alen says." "Or she wouldn"t have been involved." "But it got Ms. Bowles killed." "We don"t know that," he said. Talia glared at him. "But right now we have to a.s.sume it." He sighed again. "I"m sorry, Talia." "Sorry why? Because you"re going to die now, too?" He started. He hadn"t thought of it that way. He"d only thought of the threat to her.

"No," he said. "Because this threat shouldn"t even exist. I told you I was going to mostly retire until you were out of school. Part of the reason was to minimize the dangers of my job. I didn"t want to deal with crises like this."

"Have you before?" He nodded. "A lot?" Her lower lip was trembling again.

"Enough," he said. "As a police officer, too. Being a Retrieval Artist isn"t day-to-day dangerous like being a policeman, but it sometimes gets the wrong groups after you. And while I didn"t mind that for me when I was on my own, I mind it now."

"So don"t do it anymore," she said.

"I wasn"t going to, at least until you were away from home. I don"t need the money," he said.

She raised her eyebrows. He knew she had poked into his bank accounts. He had let her. She would never discover all the money he had, no matter how good she was. She only discovered the money that was in his surface accounts-the accounts he used for the next two years. His deep accounts, the base of his fortune, were scattered throughout the known universe, under various names-and in some cases, only under numbers.

"So I don"t see the problem," she said. "If Ki Bowles died because of this project," he said, "quitting won"t help. If whoever killed her knows that I"m involved, then I"m at risk."

He paused, knowing this next part would be even harder to say. Because it would be hard for her, too. "One of the ways that I"m at risk," he said gently, "is through you."

Her jaw snapped closed. Fear flashed through her eyes, quickly replaced by fury. "What do you mean through me? You think they"ll come after me?"