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He wanted to think it had been finding Julie, seeing what had happened to her body, knowing he hadn’t been able to save her, but that was only because it seemed like the sentimental moment. The truth was his decisions before then—leaving Ceres to go on a wild hunt for Julie, drinking himself out of a career, remaining a cop for even a day after that first kill all those years earlier—none of them seemed to make sense, viewed objectively. He’d lost a marriage to a woman he’d loved once. He’d lived hip deep in the worst humanity had to offer. He’d learned firsthand that he was capable of killing another human being. And nowhere along the line could he say that there, at that moment, he had been a sane, whole man, and that afterward, he hadn’t.
Maybe it was a cumulative process, like smoking cigarettes. One didn’t do much. Five didn’t do much more. Every emotion he’d shut down, every human contact he’d spurned, every love and friendship and moment of compassion from which he’d turned had taken him a degree away from himself. Until now, he’d been able to kill men with impunity. To face his impending death with a denial that let him make plans and take action.
In his mind, Julie Mao tilted her head, listening to his thoughts. In his mind, she held him, her body against his in a way that was more comforting than erotic. Consoling. Forgiving.
This was why he had searched for her. Julie had become the part of him that was capable of human feeling. The symbol of what he could have been if he hadn’t been this. There was no reason to think his imagined Julie had anything in common with the real woman. Meeting her would have been a disappointment for them both.
He had to believe that, the same way he’d had to believe everything that had cut him off from love before.
Holden stopped, the body—corpse now—of Ko tugging Miller back to himself.
“What?” Miller said.
Holden nodded at the access panel in front of them. Miller looked at it, uncomprehending, and then recognized it. They’d made it. They were back at the hideout.
“Are you all right?” Holden said.
“Yeah,” Miller said. “Just woolgathering. Sorry.”
He dropped Ko, and the thug slid to the floor with a sad thud. Miller’s arm had fallen asleep. He shook it, but the tingling didn’t go away. A wave of vertigo and nausea passed through him. Symptoms, he thought.
“How’d we do for time?” Miller asked.
“We’re a little past deadline. Five minutes. It’ll be fine,” Holden said, and slid the door open.
The space beyond, where Naomi and Alex and Amos had been, was empty.
“Fuck me,” Holden said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Holden
Fuck me,” Holden said. And a moment later: “They left us.”
No. She had left him. Naomi had said she would, but confronted with the reality of it, Holden realized that he hadn’t really believed her. But here it was—the proof. The empty space where she used to be. His heart hammered and his throat tightened, breath coming in gasps. The sick feeling in his gut was either despair or his colon sloughing off its lining. He was going to die sitting outside a cheap hotel on Eros because Naomi had done exactly what she’d said she would. What he himself had ordered her to do. His resentment refused to listen to reason.
“We’re dead,” he said, and sat down on the edge of a fern-filled planter.
“How long do we have?” Miller asked, looking up and down the corridor while he fidgeted with his gun.
“No idea,” Holden replied, gesturing vaguely at his terminal’s flashing red radiation symbol. “Hours before we really start to feel it, I think, but I don’t know. God, I wish Shed was still here.”
“Shed?”
“Friend of mine,” Holden said, not feeling up to elaborating. “Good med tech.”
“Call her,” Miller said.
Holden looked at his terminal and tapped the screen a few times.
“Network’s still down,” he said.
“All right,” Miller said. “Let’s go to your ship. See if it’s still in dock.”
“They’ll be gone. Naomi’s keeping the crew alive. She warned me, but I—”
“So let’s go anyway,” Miller said. He was shifting from one foot to the other and looking down the corridor as he spoke.
“Miller,” Holden said, then stopped. Miller was clearly on edge, and he’d shot four people. Holden was increasingly frightened of the former cop. As if reading his mind, Miller stepped close, the two-meter man towering over him where he sat. Miller smiled ruefully, his eyes unnervingly gentle. Holden would almost have preferred they be threatening.
“Way I see it, there’s three ways this can go,” Miller said. “One, we find your ship still in dock, get the meds we need, and maybe we live. Two, we try to get to the ship, and along the way we run into a bunch of mafia thugs. Die gloriously in a hail of bullets. Three, we sit here and leak out of our eyes and ass**les.”
Holden said nothing; he just stared up at the cop and frowned.
“I’m liking the first two better than the last one,” Miller said. His voice made it sound like an apology. “How about you come with?”
Holden laughed before he could catch himself, but Miller didn’t look like he was taking offense.
“Sure,” Holden said. “I just needed to feel sorry for myself for a minute. Let’s go get killed by the mafia.”
He said it with much more bravado than he felt. The truth was he didn’t want to die. Even during his time in the navy, the idea of dying in the line of duty had always seemed distant and unreal. His ship would never be destroyed, and if it was, he would make it to the escape shuttle. The universe without him in it didn’t make any sense at all. He’d taken risks; he’d seen other people die. Even people he loved. Now, for the first time, his own death was a real thing.
He looked at the cop. He’d known the man less than a day, didn’t trust him, and wasn’t sure he much liked him. And this was who he’d die with. Holden shuddered and stood up, pulling his gun out of his waistband. Under the panic and fear, there was a deep feeling of calm. He hoped it would last.
“After you,” Holden said. “If we make it, remind me to call my mothers.”
The casinos were a powder keg waiting for a match. If the evacuation sweeps had been even moderately successful, there were probably a million or more people crammed into three levels of the station. Hard-looking men in riot gear moved through the crowds, telling everyone to stay put until they were taken to the radiation shelters, keeping the crowd frightened. Every now and then, a small group of citizens would be led away. Knowing where they were going made Holden’s stomach burn. He wanted to yell out that cops were fake, that they were killing people. But a riot with this many people in such a confined space would be a meat grinder. Maybe that was inevitable but he wasn’t going to be the one to start it.
