“Cómo estás, mi vida, is everything okay?” Regina asked.
“Yes, I’m fine, things are fine. How are you?” Eva hated small talk. She stuffed her knuckle in her mouth and tried not to scream from impatience.
“Bueno, you know, poniéndome más vieja cada ciclo,” Regina said. “Did Mari tell you I got promoted?”
“No, um, she didn’t.” Mari hadn’t told her a lot of things. But when Eva was in cryo for a whole year after being kidnapped by The Fridge—Mari’s fault, technically—at least Mari had the presence of mind to cover for Eva so their mom didn’t get suspicious.
The background noise shifted, like her mom had moved. “Ay, you two, que Dios te bendiga. I’ll tell you about it later, pero let’s just say I used to be catching little fraud fish, and now I’m catching big ones.”
As if on cue, Eva’s fish tank spat food out of a hidden compartment, and the various fish swarmed to the surface. The hermit crab was unimpressed and continued to dig in the gravel.
Regina sounded so proud of herself. Considering that she’d left Eva’s dad because he was a criminal, and Eva herself had spent years doing the conga all over the line between right and wrong, it was hard to share her enthusiasm for law and order. Justice, though, was something Eva could get behind.
“That’s great, Mami,” Eva said. “How are Abuela and Abuelo?”
“Ay, don’t get me started, that’s a whole other call.” Regina sighed dramatically, and someone in the background shouted something Eva’s translators didn’t catch. “Mira, I’m working on a big project right now, so I can’t really talk for—”
“I need a favor,” Eva said, wincing at her own abruptness.
Regina paused. “What kind of favor?”
“I need you to look at some account records and tell me about the transactions,” Eva said. “What they were, where they were made, that kind of thing.”
“Eva-Benita Caridad Larsen, that is extremely illegal. Where did you get those records?” Regina’s voice was quiet but her tone was angry, suspicious, and Eva’s own temper rose as her body regressed to being a teenager.
“From the account holder, Mami,” Eva said, barely controlling her sarcasm. “What am I going to do with random stolen bank records?”
“Bueno, okay then,” Regina said, more calmly. “But why wouldn’t the account holder know what they were? And why aren’t they just calling the bank to ask?”
The green chromis that Eva associated with her mom bullied the red hawkfish away—her father’s, amusingly, which swam back to the bottom of the tank.
“It’s complicated,” Eva said.
“Uncomplicate it for me,” her mother replied.
“Her brother is missing,” Eva said, fiddling with her blanket, “and we think he’s using the account, so we’re trying to see if we can track him that way.”
Regina paused again. “Is he in danger? Have you contacted the police?”
“He’s fine, it’s just . . . a family thing. She doesn’t want to make it a big deal. She’s afraid he might find out if she calls the bank, and you know how cops can be.” Even as she said it, Eva wished she could cram that back into her mouth. She and her mother had always had very different opinions about law-enforcement professionals, with “bastions of order” at one end and “fucking pigs” at the other. Ironic that Eva was basically dating a cop now. . . .
“Oh, I know that very well,” Regina said dryly. “Bueno, I really have to get back to work. Send me the information and I’ll see what I can do.”
Eva’s stomach unclenched and her shoulders softened. “Gracias, Mami,” she said.
“De nada, mi vida.” There was another shout in the background, and Regina sighed. “Cuídate, hija, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye.” The call ended, and Eva flopped backward onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling.
That hadn’t been so bad. Then again, her mother had a knack for being pleasant in public, when someone whose opinion she valued was nearby, and for sweeping things under the rug when she felt like it. Eva calling out of nowhere to ask for a favor ranked high up there as a shitty thing to do, given their history; she was basically gifting Regina with ammunition to be used against her later.
Eva stuck the copies of the transaction logs Sue had given her in a q-mail and sent it to her mom, with instructions about starting with the items from about six months earlier, especially if any of them occurred on Medoral. She only had twenty cycles to earn that bonus, but with any luck, she’d have something to work with by the time they reached the nearest Gate.
If she didn’t hear from Regina beforehand, they might as well see what they could find at Josh’s last known location. Maybe Sue would notice something The Forge’s agents hadn’t, something only siblings would find significant because they knew each other well.
It was better than nothing, and Eva had worked with less. Plus now, The Forge was paying for her fuel, so she might as well use it.
Two cycles to reach the Gate, then a few hours to Medoral. Eva pinged Vakar with ((Busy?)) and then settled back to wait.
Medoral was a planet, but Medoral Station was where the real action was, orbiting high above the placid chartreuse clouds to make it easier for passenger and large cargo ships to load and unload. Huge, uncomfortable shuttles packed with hundreds of interstellar travelers came and went at regular intervals, dodging the asteroid mine freighters delivering vast quantities of unprocessed ores. Most of the planet was covered in sprawling industrial properties occupied by companies of every size, all storing things and manufacturing things and taking things out of larger containers so they could be repackaged into smaller ones. This was the backbone of commerce, or maybe its entire skeletal structure, supporting the daily lives of a few hundred planets all over the universe.
Eva had once aspired to having clientele with facilities on Medoral. Now she just aspired to having any clients at all.
La Sirena Negra docked at the station, with Min staying aboard to search the local q-net for information on what was happening there around the time Josh would have been passing through. Thanks to Vakar’s research while they were in transit, Eva knew about the main corporate and criminal players on the planet, the standard methods for greasing palms and avoiding authorities, and that The Fridge had a presence there, maintaining a variety of shell corporations that helped them quietly move whatever naughty stuff they needed. She wished she had time to fuck with them properly, but her current mission took priority.
Weapons had to stay on the ship due to security regulations, so Eva settled for bringing Fuácata. The week of travel time meant her leg had finished healing enough that she probably didn’t need a cane, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance. After a leisurely stroll through a sterilizer, she and her crew stood at one of the entrances to the Playa district, which had absolutely nothing to do with beaches and apparently translated to “moderate discount” in the native language.
The place was an unsettling combination of empty and packed, crowds forming and vanishing and re-forming as shuttles came and went, loading and unloading their passengers for appendage-stretching and rapid, impersonal retail transactions. There were restaurants and quick-sleep compartments, and stores that sold the kind of stuff that could probably be printed if you had the right pattern, but that you might prefer to try on first so you didn’t waste the mats. There were also places to buy more advanced tech, ship parts and electronic gadgets and such, none of which Eva could afford even with The Forge paying her a pleasantly excellent amount of money for finding Josh.