“It’s funny,” he said. “You run with a pack in the war, and once those guys are gone, it’s like you’re missing a limb.”
She nodded. That pain she knew all about. Still felt it, every day.
“I’ll tell you how I tracked you down,” he said. His voice was soft now, his Boston accent faded. “My tour ended and I was a lone wolf. So I come back to the Rotten Apple, and the first thing I do in New York is look you up, like I promised you. And him.”
They exchanged a long, low glance, and Anika knew he was thinking of the memorial, too. The things he’d said to her. The way he’d sworn to protect her, the way he’d held her in his arms as she’d cried.
That was a long, long time ago now.
“But you were gone,” he continued. “Six months after the memorial, and your house was all locked up, I couldn’t find you online. At first, I figured you was dead too, and why not? So was everybody else. But you took care of everything too neat. You disappeared too perfect.”
She’d tried like hell to stay away from Billy. Because if a rival corporation had killed Roberto like she suspected, then a rival corporation would likely want to kill her too. After all, she and Roberto had worked as a scientific team. She had told her FortuneCorp regional supervisor about her fears, and they had told her the matter was under investigation. But, like Billy, she’d heard nothing more.
And that silence had terrified her. Both she and Roberto had done research on classified techniques for human genetic modification and ecological re-engineering. Those techniques were worth billions. Now that Roberto was dead, Anika had been the only one who could complete the research track they had started together.
Anika had run off-world, all the way to AlphaZed3, to escape the reach of any other corporation. Her new technology, the Bowman eco-drive, would serve as a living legacy of her husband’s vision. And Anika had believed the remoteness of this posting would protect her from deadly visitors.
Billy’s appearance put the lie to that notion. She knew to her core that Billy would never hurt her, that he had sworn to Roberto that he would protect her. But if Billy could make it way out here, anybody could. And the blaster under her pillow wouldn’t save her.
The tears spilled over Anika’s cheeks, onto her lips, tasting of regret and loss and fear. And loneliness, such terrible aching loneliness, so deep that she didn’t dare surrender to it.
Billy got out of his chair and covered the space between them in a couple of bounding steps. He kneeled next to her low cot, and he was so tall that, even kneeling, his eyes were level with hers.
They were only centimeters apart now. Her breath caught in her throat.
Anika couldn’t care less about her legacy now. All she could see in her mind was the wisteria, the morning glories, and the snapdragons climbing the glass windows of her bedroom in Forest Hills, where she had once said goodbye to Roberto before he left for war for the last time.
“You aren’t safe out here,” Billy said gently. His eyes flashed with the tears he never shed, never. As he’d told her at the memorial, Billy Murphy didn’t do tears.
The unshed tears in Billy’s eyes flashed silver into midnight, lightning over a summer sea.
A rush of panic spread through Anika’s body. “I have to hide. You understand why.”
“I know you believe it was a rival corporation that murdered Roberto, to shut him up. To shut down your research. But think about it, Annie. Why didn’t they murder you in New York?”
The question hovered in the air between them. Billy’s hands reached for her and caressed her shoulders. And the shock of that touch roared through her like an ion storm. “I told you, Annie, that I love you. The night of the memorial I knew. And I told you. I knew it was too soon. You had to let him go, and I told you I’d wait, as long as it took. I fell for you the second I saw you. Roberto told me that I would.”
Anika tried to speak, but she couldn’t manage a word.
“Wait up, hear me out. The genmod does funny stuff, you know that. It gave Roberto some precog, he knew when stuff was going to happen.”
Anika swiped the tears off her face, as if she could wipe Billy’s words away. His fingers tightened over her shoulders, and she took a big, shuddering breath, fighting not to let go, not to release her true feelings.
“He had changed, by the end,” she finally said. “Maybe it was the genmod. Or maybe it was just the war.”
“Roberto told me he was going to die, the night before he was murdered. He told me he was planning to speak out about the stuff he’d seen in the war. But it was too late. And he told me I was going to save your life, just in time. And here I am, before it’s too late, just like he said.”
His arms slipped around her, protecting her, and Anika melted into him. After two years of running away from Roberto’s killers, she’d finally turned around and faced the past, the grief of not just losing Roberto, but Billy too.
“I’m safe out here, I think,” she said, her voice muffled from inside Billy’s arms. “As long as I just do my work and don’t cause any trouble, I don’t think any other corporation can get through FortuneCorp’s sectors. FortuneCorp runs the whole show out here.”
“It’s not safe. It wasn’t safe for Roberto, surrounded by his brothers. It’s not safe for you, out here all alone. I came to get you out of here.”
Anika cried then, remembering. Billy just held her, his silence saying so much more than words ever could. The tears slipped away after a while, though she knew, like the tides, they’d return. They rolled in every night, as she stretched out on her cot, her fingers touching the blaster for courage.
But that time was done, now that Billy was here. He could still leave in the morning. If she had her way, he’d go when daylight came, free and alive. Free of his obligation to her. But everything had changed because he had found her. Even after he went back to his life, Anika would remember that he had come.
“One night,” Anika insisted. “Stay the night and you’ll go in the morning. Just like I first said. And as long as I stay here working, and as long as you don’t poke the powers that be and just go your way, we should both be okay.”
Billy’s smile flashed across his face, banishing the shadows. “I got the Murphy luck, Annie. Too late to stay out of trouble, too late the day I was born. But I’m here.”
He knew as well as she did that a night could last forever, that anything could happen between this moment they shared, and daybreak.
Reunions are funny, time-bending things. After only a few minutes more, Billy and Anika had recovered from their emotion. Anika took Billy into the jungle to show him her artistry.
She beamed her arc-light torch skyward and dappled shadows filtered through the broad leaves stretching over their heads. “Those are tiny weeds back at home,” she whispered. “My technology grows crabgrass into trees, clovers into climbing vines. I grew this jungle in a single growing season. It would take fifty years, a hundred, for any other terraformer.”
Anika crouched down and dug around in the sandy dirt until she found what she was looking for. She pulled the black tube out of the ground to show Billy. “This is what the trouble is all about,” she said.
“The Bowman eco-drive.”
“Could anybody just take it and grow stuff?”
“You need the expertise, of course. But if you had the secret of it . . .”
She left the rest unspoken. Such a technological revolution was worth espionage, murder. To steal it, to control it, or at least to stop it.
They shared their dinner, eating picnic-style on the floor by the side of her bed, leaning against it.