Bright of the Sky Read Online Free Page B

newsTide, really cash in, reveal what a piece of shit that ship was, that you sold as safe to all those colonists who died. Aren’t you?” He grabbed Lamar’s coat and shoved it at him. “Be somewhat easier if I just walked out a ship hatchway into the void. Regrettable space accident. Former pilot tragically dead in same K-tunnel where his family was lost. Make a nice, tidy ending to the sorry tale, wouldn’t it?”
    “Christ, Titus, you think we’re trying to kill you? You think—”
    “Don’t call me Titus. That person’s dead now.” The gloves were shoved in his face, and the door opened before him.
    Titus’s face had lost its anger, the expression replaced now with a kind of thousand-yard stare. Lamar waited until Titus said, “You really think I’m going to believe you’ve found that place after all this time? After I begged you to search, to pay attention? Now, all of a sudden, Stefan has taken the big step of saying he was wrong?” He shook his head in some mirth. “Pardon me, Lamar, but that’s such bullshit.”
    It was time to convey the last piece of information. “Your brother,” Lamar said. Damn, this was distasteful. It made even Lamar hate Stefan Polich. “Rob’s turned forty. The only reason the Company keeps him is that he’s your brother. I’ll do all I can for him, Titus, I swear it. But they’ll let him go, you know they will.” He felt like an ass.
    Quinn’s voice was eerily quiet when he said, “If you touch my brother or his job, I’m going to put my trains away and come after you. All of you.”
    From the yard came a crash, perhaps some jury-rigged tree limb, or a smoke bomb. As the sun broke through a tattered cloud, Titus’s eyes glinted. “Now then. I’ll turn off the system for three minutes. By then, you’d better be gone.” The door slammed shut.
    Lamar was left standing on the porch, staring at the door knocker in the shape of an oddly thin and sculpted face, both beautiful and disturbing.
    Lamar spoke so that Titus would hear him through the door.
    “Titus . . .” No, not Titus any longer; he wanted to be called Quinn. “Quinn, for Johanna’s sake. I thought, for her sake . . .”
    From inside he heard the tinny hoot of the St. Paul Olympian racing through the living room.
    Along with the damp cold, a sense of dread crept through Lamar’s jacket. Quinn was wrong if he thought this was the end of it. As far as Minerva was concerned, it was just the beginning.

CHAPTER THREE
    A CRASH CAME OVER THE BOW OF QUINN’S KAYAK. A patchy, thin fog tore now and then to reveal a sky the color of what Johanna used to call cerulean. He sped northward, lulled by the rhythm of paddling. Brief glimpses of the horizon drew his gaze outward, to the limit of sight. Some days he thought he would try to reach that horizon, just paddle without stopping. He’d thought of that more and more lately. He’d even fantasized that he’d find—somewhere past the horizon—the place that eluded him, that kept Johanna and Sydney. The place that Lamar Gelde claimed was now found.
    He kept up a brutal pace, propelling the kayak through the chop. It was no coincidence that Lamar Gelde had shown up just when the newsTides were nosing around to do a major story on Titus Quinn, one that would bring unwelcome attention to Minerva’s stellar transport losses. To protect his coveted privacy, Quinn had no intention of giving an interview, but Stefan Polich couldn’t know that. The man would do anything to shut him up, even concoct a story that they might have a lead on Johanna and Sydney.
    He sliced the paddle again and again into the waves, reaching for exhaustion, for peace. Not that peace was that easy to come by.
    The ocean always conjured that other place, but when he tried to summon the details, all he grasped was fog. And a vast emptiness. In that vastness were his lost memories. This was the reason he couldn’t move beyond what had happened. Because he didn’t know what had