Page 29 of Captain Santiago and the Sky Dome Waitress
“Couldn’t you…you know…talk to him?”
“And say what, Barney? Please love me, because I’m a pathetic echo of the woman you loved desperately, and I’ll never be like her?”
“Well, don’t you have totry, at least?”
“He knows his own mind, Barney. And he didn’t say anything. I already have my answer.”
She thought Barney had gone away, for the silence stretched on long enough for her to feel the sleep she craved beginning to take hold of her, when it was safe to let her thoughts drift aimlessly.
“Luce…?” Barney said, very softly.
She blinked and stirred. “What, Barney?”
“There’s something in the printer. You need to read it.”
“What is it?” She was so comfortable here!
“It’s a copy of the report that Captain Santiago’s men filed on the death of Blake Bloodwood.”
“Youprintedit?”
“It’s how he got the report. For security reasons. No network transmissions allowed.”
Lucie was awake, now. Sleep had fled far away. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t want to read it.”
“You should.”
“No, Barney.”
“Then I’ll read it to you.”
“No!” She waved her finger at the lens she knew Barney was using to monitor her. “This is not nice. This is not what a friend does. I don’t want to know anything more about Elijah Santiago. There’s no point.”
“There’s one point. It’s right there in the summary.”
Lucie slumped. “I just can’t, Barney. Not anymore.”
“This investigation concluded that the so-called Big Showdown on Van Andel’s equatorial icefield, when Investigator E. Santiago and his team were forced to a standing battle of gunfire with Bloodworth and her associates, was not where Bloodworth died, as is commonly believed. She in fact managed to escape off-planet, and made her way to Ey’Liv, where she lived for eleven standard months with no trace of criminal activity during that period. It has been established by this investigation that Bloodworth was lying low, in order to avoid detection by the many enemies she had made as a natural result of her criminal activities. She was found in the small house she had purchased on the outskirts of Ey’Liv City, with her throat cut three times, which is a trademark of the Montema Cartel. At the time, no one associated the body with Bloodworth, as she was presumed already dead, and she had been living on Ey’Liv under the name of Lake Sang. Biomarker analysis has now confirmed that it was Bloodworth.”
Lucie wiped her eyes. “Oh, Barney! Why did you read that to me? I don’t need to know that!” She wiped again, for her eyes would not stop dripping tears. “He had toreadthat! Probably in front of his men!”
Barney appeared abruptly on a screen that formed in front of her. “Don’t yousee, Lucie? He made amistake. He spent two years risking his neck, trying to throttle his squad’s pursuit of her, while looking like he was chasing her with all due diligence. Something slipped. He screwed up. The Big Showdown happened because he let his team get too close on her heels.”
“And hepaidfor that mistake, Barney! He thought she died on the icefield. Then he had to read about how she really died, all over again, when this report was handed to him!”
Not only that, but now Lucie understood why Elijah had reacted so strongly when he had spotted her in the docking bay, the day she had arrived here. He must have thought that Blake had defied death a second time, and had been hiding, all these years. For a few short moments, until Lucie had explained she wasn’t who he thought she was, the hope that would have rushed through him must have been overwhelming.
And she had killed it dead.
Barney clapped his hands together. Sharply.
Lucie jumped a little. “What is it I don’t get, then?”
Barney leaned forward. “Don’t you think, Luce, that after something like this, having to go through her death twice, and pretend that he didn’t give a damn about anything but his mission…don’t you think he might be just a little bit afraid of fucking up again? And getting someone else killed?”
Lucie felt her jaw sag. She couldn’t think of anything to say.
She closed her mouth. “If he’s too afraid to say something, then that says, everything, doesn’t it? He doesn’t want a relationship. He doesn’t want…” She hung her head.
