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

guarded and his heartbeat steady.
    “Bruno offered me five hundred thousand credits to hand you over.”
    That might explain the mixed messages. “Did you accept?”
    “Yes.”
    He didn’t look away, didn’t falter. His gaze almost challenged me to retaliate in some way. He wanted me to argue, to fight, to accuse him. It’s what Fran would have done. But I wasn’t Fran, and I had no intention of falling into his trap. The offer, the money, him—it all made sense. It was logical. He should have accepted. What didn’t make sense was why he was telling me.
    His sigh came out shaky and weak. “He gave me a fifty-thousand deposit, which the cops now have to ensure I don’t fuck off. I never had so much money in my account.” He flicked his fingers. “And now it’s gone.”
    “If you intend to hand me over, why tell me?”
    “Because …” He wet his lips and slumped back in the chair, rubbing his forehead.
    I faced away again, allowing him to speak without feeling pressured to say the right thing beneath my glare. His heartbeat increased.
    “Fuck, I don’t know. It sounded sweet, all that credit. It’d change my life. But folks around me keep dying. The choices I make, they never turn out right. So, you get to decide. You’re the machine. Tell me what the best course of action is.”
    The solution was more complicated than that. I didn’t have the answers he was seeking. “I don’t have all the data. The smallest error could result in an undesirable outcome.”
    “That sounds like a cop-out.”
    “I can present options and solutions to likely scenarios, but you aren’t telling me everything, Captain. You’re deliberately omitting certain facts, facts that you’re struggling with. Until you tell me the truth, there is little point in me advising you.”
    I didn’t need to look at him to know my words had struck him close to his heart, similar in the way to how his words had hurt me.
    “I’ve been charged with murder, I’ve spent Bruno’s deposit, and he’s going to hand me over to the Candes if I don’t bring you in. I’m trapped, synth. Every way I turn, everywhere I look, there ain’t no good way out.”
    He was right. Knowing what I did, there was no way out for him, and perhaps that was how it should be. He’d been running for a long time. Now his past was catching up with him, and there was justice in that. Order. A sense of fairness. People had died because of his greed. Shouldn’t he pay? But in the brief time I’d spent on his tugship, I’d learned the nine systems didn’t function that way. Life wasn’t neat; it wasn’t controlled. Life was random, and unfair, and illogical. I had once wanted him dead, but it had wounded me to think of him so.
    Run, One Thousand And One. Run! Chen Hung’s parting words haunted me. This wasn’t just about Caleb. The synthetic wanted me. Chen Hung wanted me. I hadn’t yet been able to free the vital information from my head. Chen Hung, Chitec CEO, was a synthetic, and nobody knew but me. That information was worth more than Caleb or Starscream and her crew. I couldn’t be caught, not until I‘d spoken the truth. There had to be a way to escape.
    “I may be able to hack into the port authority controls via the cloud.”
    Caleb leaned forward, eyes widening. “I’m listening.”
    “I don’t know if it’s possible, but, similar to the way I harvest information from the cloud, I could attempt to enter the port authority data. Once inside, there’s a chance I could manipulate it, providing I can find Starscream’s docking commands. It’s a slim chance. In all likelihood, there are firewalls that prevent unauthorized access, but we already know I’m not a typical synthetic unit. It’s certainly not legal and could result in the arrest of your crew.”
    “Are there any other risks?”
    “No. I don’t believe so.”
    “Do it.”
    It wouldn’t stop the Candes or Bruno from hunting us, but it would get Starscream in the air. I closed my