gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap Read Online Free Page B

hand, made sure my prints were all over it. After that, I was hauled away and charged with Theo’s murder. It was publicized as a lover’s quarrel.” He grimaced, running a hand through his short-cropped dark hair. “Theo and Liam were both very good men, and I admired them, but I don’t play for that team. Not that anyone cared much about the truth by then. They just needed a scapegoat.”
    Cassidy had already gotten the impression that Derek was thoroughly hetero, but she still experienced an odd flicker of relief at his words. Then she wanted to shake her head at herself. What the hell difference did it make whether Derek Tagawa was gay, straight, or somewhere in between?
    “What happened to Liam?”
    “Nothing. That is, he’d never been involved with or had known anything about the hacking Theo was doing — Theo made sure of that, to keep him safe — so although Liam was questioned, he was never held for anything. Anyway, I had the impression that Liam’s parents are pretty far up the food chain in the local government on Ganymede, and I think his younger sister just married an exec with MonAg. So Liam had some pretty highly placed people to speak for him. Also, swearing that he was going to kill me himself probably didn’t hurt his cause, either.”
    “So he really thought you killed Theo?” That seemed difficult to believe. After all, what would’ve been Derek’s motive, if Liam knew his husband wasn’t actually having an affair?
    Derek’s face went blank. “He did…I mean, he does. And nobody’s bothered to disabuse him of that notion.”
    She wasn’t sure how to react to that. Something didn’t feel as if it was adding up, but she wasn’t sure which questions to ask. “So they shipped you off to MaxSec.”
    “Two years, five months, and eight days ago. Yes.”
    “Why not kill you, too?”
    “They probably thought about it. But they wanted to cover up Theo’s death more, and they probably figured I wasn’t going to be much of a threat locked up on Titan. After all, everyone in there is innocent, or claims to be. I could tell everyone within earshot that I didn’t do kill Theo Karras, and it wouldn’t matter a damn bit. The ironic thing is, I know for a fact that a couple of us prisoners actually are innocent.”
    He got up from the copilot’s seat and gave a quick glance around. “What kind of food do you have on this boat? Escaping from MaxSec works up a hell of an appetite, and it’s a long way to Europa.”
    For a second or two, she only stared at him, jarred by the sudden change in topic. She got the feeling, though, that he was done talking for the moment. So she stood up as well, then said, “I’ll show you.”

CHAPTER THREE
    He couldn’t be positive, but Derek thought Cassidy Evans believed him, or at least she was beginning to. In the grand scheme of things, it really didn’t matter whether she thought he was telling the truth or lying his ass off…but something in him wanted her to believe his story, to understand that he was no criminal. The criminals were the people desecrating those bodies in Hunan Province, the man who had shot Theo point-blank between the eyes.
    All other considerations put aside, Derek was pretty sure he couldn’t have hit any kind of target with that sort of accuracy, let alone a human skull. He’d had some basic firearms training before being sent into the field, but he knew he was no marksman. The soldier who’d leveled his gun at Theo?
    It was pretty clear that he knew what he was doing.
    “It’s not exactly gourmet,” Cassidy was saying, going to the refrigeration unit and pulling out a few packets of food.
    “It’ll be better than what I got in MaxSec,” he told her, and the tight set of her features relaxed into a reluctant smile. It seemed to light up her face, give a glow to those hazel eyes, and he hoped he’d get to see that smile a few more times before he had to leave her. There had never been much time in his life for women,