Girl From Above #3: Trapped Read Online Free Page B

jacket. “We were recently married, as of yesterday …” I added a giggle. “Kinda trick … right?”
    He lifted his chin as my lie slipped into place. It had been the accent—too clean for Lyra. I made a mental note to soften my dialect as well as my appearance. “He’ll be out soon enough, ma’am.”
    I took a seat and waited, pretending to watch the video stream in the far left-hand corner while surreptitiously watching both the entrance doors and back corridors. I didn’t believe he’d notified fleet, but that didn’t ease my itching restlessness.
    I reached behind my neck and touched the slightly raised Chitec brand. It didn’t used to bother me, but I was changing—the way I processed and compartmentalized information, the way I dreamed, and the way I woke and choked on words my internal protocols prohibited me from saying. I wasn’t just a synthetic. I was one more.
    A slither of unease moved beneath my polymer skin. The sensation wasn’t synthetic. Nothing in my processes accounted for it. I’d felt it before, when being watched. A quick scan of my surroundings yielded nothing unusual.
    Slamming doors lifted me from my roaming thoughts, and I found Caleb Shepperd sauntering down the hall. He sported a medi-strip and bruise above his left eye, and a few scratches about his face. I scanned his vitals. His heart rate had tripled in the space of a few strides, almost as though he were afraid—of me. I hadn’t seen that response in him for a few weeks and believed we’d moved beyond fear. My scans also indicated he was in pain—his lower back, judging by his gait. A few splotches of dark blood marred his white shirt. Caleb Shepperd was a mess, physically and mentally. At my conclusion, a curious twitch of sensory pain darted through me. The pain wasn’t tangible. It didn’t have a direct source and wasn’t something I could dismiss with a simple instruction. It was new and worthy of later study. Human empathy. I shut the sensation away, closed my mental processes around it, and kept it safe before it could escape me, as though I were cupping a butterfly in my hands.
    With a breezy, enthusiastic smile, I stood and said, “Honey …”
    Captain Shepperd had called women the same often enough, usually in jest.
    He blinked and frowned in quick succession—surprise, confusion—then he caught the officer watching us and adopted a smile that mirrored mine. “You came?”
    It sounded like a question, and I wasn’t sure if he’d meant it as one. “Sure. I wasn’t gonna leave you here.” My accent gave him pause, but his sideways smile told me he appreciated it.
    “Sign here.” The officer dumped an electronic form in front of the captain, who dutifully planted his thumbprint on the document. “This here’s to say you have no intention of leaving Lyra. Should you get any ideas about leaving the entertainment capital of the nine systems, you’ll lose your bail money, and me and the boys get to spend a wild weekend of drinking and gambling on you.”
    Shepperd grunted a derogatory term, turned on his heels, and strode through the department doors.
    We’d barely descended two steps when he growled, “What the fuck, synth?”
    Anger pulled his voice tight, but there was a lot more hidden in its resonance: fear, as well as despair. He tried to hide it, control it, but in doing so, his efforts only further alerted me to their presence, and once I knew they were there, I went hunting for more physical hints.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” he continued. “I told you, if anything went wrong, you were to get the fuck off Lyra. Take the credits and go.”
    We reached the strip and he hailed a pod. The automated glass bubble veered off its track and rocked to a halt in front of us. Its curved door slid upward.
    Cocooned in silence, I sat opposite Shepperd. He slumped in his seat, knee jumping while he stared through the glass dome. His dark eyes reflected Lyra’s lights. He barely blinked and barely