The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) Read Online Free PDF

toilet, which flushed automatically, and closed her eyes for just a moment.
    Then the sirens went off.
    They weren’t the escape sirens—those blared, with actual voices coming through the links, warning the staff that some prisoner had managed to slip out of the secure holdings. Since she’d been here, no one had managed to get outside of the cell blocks, to the staff area where she worked, but not for want of trying.
    That was what was so impressive about maximum security: notifications started the moment the prisoner failed to follow routine, not the moment some human (or staff member) realized the prisoner had actually disappeared.
    It wasn’t alert sirens either, the kind that every station had, that called for a total evacuation (of everyone who could evacuate: the prisoners couldn’t).
    No, these sirens—loud, but not so loud that the dead would awaken—ran for a few minutes, followed by an order inside the links for authorized personnel to hurry to Frémont’s cellblock.
    She wasn’t authorized, but she had been there.
    Frémont was dead, and here she was, sitting on a cold bathroom floor, her clothes stained, her left arm still gripping the evidence box with all of the evidence bags containing Frémont’s DNA.
    If she got caught….
    At that moment, her supervisor’s image rose in front of her. Markita Duran was tiny, with a round face and rounder eyes, a turned-up nose, and a bow-shaped mouth. Outside of the prison, Jhena had actually heard a man call Duran pretty.
    She wasn’t pretty. She had a sweet face that hid one of the meanest souls Jhena had ever encountered.
    “You’re away from your post,” Duran’s floating head said. She looked awful, superimposed against the stall’s open door. The image reflected slightly in the wall of mirrors, but only as a square blocked-out shape, not as a person.
    Here it was: Jhena had to think clearly when she was at her absolute worst. Plus she had to keep Duran from noticing the evidence box.
    Or did she?
    “Yes, I’m away from my post,” Jhena said. She wanted to add, when you throw up, it’s better to do it away from your desk , but this was her supervisor. She didn’t dare. “I just threw up. I’d like to take this off visual.”
    “No,” Duran said. “You’re holding an evidence box. What’s that about?”
    Jhena hoped her face didn’t show the spike of fear that just went through her. “Didier Comte contacted me through my private links. He couldn’t access the network inside the cellblock.”
    “Then how could he reach you?” Duran asked.
    “I don’t know,” Jhena said miserably. “Maybe because it was my private links—”
    “Are you two seeing each other outside of work?” Duran asked. Jhena wanted to check regulations. She wasn’t sure if fraternization wasn’t allowed. She was convinced friendship was, because in the apartments where they all lived, she’d seen lots of employees talking with each other, and it didn’t look like work.
    “We know each other.” Her voice rasped against her throat. The smell in here was clearing out, and the fresh air of the environmental system felt good on her face. “But we’re not dating, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “It was what I was asking,” Duran said. “He’ll give me the same response?”
    “I hope so.” Jhena felt miserable, and beneath it, angry. She had just gotten sick, for godsake, and there was a dead man in the cell block and this was what Duran cared about?
    “You were telling me about the evidence box,” Duran said.
    “Didier requested it,” Jhena said, and leaned her head against the edge of the toilet seat. Not that it mattered. Nanobots had already cleaned that part of the room. They just hadn’t touched her, because they needed permission to do so.
    She probably shouldn’t have used Didier’s first name in this conversation. Too late now, though.
    “Why did he contact you?” Duran asked.
    “Didn’t you get my message?” Jhena said.