Tandem Unit Read online

  “I'll do it, I swear I'll do it,” he was shouting in her ear and Sadie felt the sharp pricking of a pointed instrument against the side of her neck. Oh my Goddess, he has a knife! The thought was barely a blip in the front of her mind and then someone knocked the man holding her flat and she was pinned beneath a bulky, male body, all the breath crushed immediately out of her lungs. The weapon he had been holding at her throat jogged upwards as his arms came up instinctively to break his fall. Sadie felt a burning line of pain across her cheek and there was a silvery glint in the corner of one eye before the sharp, pointed thing skittered away into the confusion of shuffling feet.

  Almost got my eye, she had time to think and then her forehead connected with the floor and everything was darkness.

  * * * *

  “I think she's comin' out of it.”

  Sadie opened her eyes to a dimly lighted room that seeme d familiar somehow. Home? she thought confusedly, thinking of her austere little bedroom at Aunt Minnie's house in Goshen where everything including the walls and sheets was a pure, blank white. Aunt Minnie had forbidden her to decorate the room, believing that Sadie would hang 'devil posters' as she called the holo-vids of music stars most girls liked, on the walls of her guest room. Sadie supposed she might have, too, if there had been any way to see a concert in Goshen. But none of the bigger groups ever stopped there since the colony was too morally uptight for them to sell enough tickets to make it worth their while.

  “Sadie?” She recognized the voice but couldn't place it. Gerald? But no, this voice was deeper than Gerald's whiny tenor; a soothing baritone she associated with warmth and comfort and safety and … love? That couldn't be right, though. Who had ever loved her, truly loved and wanted her since her parents had died in the shuttle crash when she was twelve?

  “Sweetheart, don't try to move. The me di-tech had to give you somethin' for the pain and it knocked you out.” Another deep, gentle voice, this one with a New Brooklyn accent. She knew someone from New Brooklyn, didn't she? But how could she? Old Earth was millions of miles from Io.

  Sadie tried to sit up in bed and failed. She became aware of a dull throbbing pain behind her eyes, the remains of a really bad headache, she supposed, and then strong arms were lifting her into a semi-sitting position.

  “Easy, honey,” the first voice soothed.

  “Weak as a kitten.” It was the second voice again. Who were these people and why did the voices floating above her head provoke such a storm of emotion inside her?

  Sadie blinked; everything was fuzzy and her head throbbed. She reached up, thinking to brush hair out of her face and found that the right side of her face was covered with something rigid and unyielding.

  “Wha's wrong with my face?” The stiffness over her cheek caused her to slur her words. A vague, nameless fear was beginning to surface in her brain.

  “You were cut,” the first voice said again. “In the mess after we arrested Van Heusen. Another eighth of an inch to the left and you would've lost an eye.”

  “Holt, don't scare her. You're all right, sweetheart,” the second voice said gently.

  Van Heusen … wait a minute, the bust! The name brought everything rushing back and Sadie made a conscious effort to throw off the rest of the drug-induced drowsiness and come back to herself. She remembered Holt and Blakely, the plan to pretend she was a prototype prostie, the things they'd had to do to make Van Heusen believe, the bond between herself and the two detectives … The bond. That must be why I can feel their emotions. Sorrow, regret, worry, love and an aching need filled her head before she made an effort to block it out.

  She was getting better at that, she realized, better at ignoring the alien emotions in her head so that she could think clearly. Maybe in time she'd be able to use the bond like a vid-screen, tuning in and turning it up when she needed to know the emotional state of her men and turning it down to avoid mental confusion and strain when she didn't.

  What am I thinking? Sadie realized she was thinking about the bond as though it was a permanent part of her life when she knew that could never be. She had to get away from Blakely and Holt, so far away that the bond lost all its power, thinned away to nothing, so that she could be on her own again. But why? Why do I have to leave and get away? Blakely and Holt love me … She pushed the thought away; it was obviously just the remains of the drug in her system talking anyway. Right now she had to ascertain how badly she was hurt.

  She brought up a hand and felt the stiffness over her right cheek again. “How bad?” she croaked, struggling to focus her eyes on the two worried faces leaning over her on either side of the bed. In the dim light she could see a worried frown on Blakely's dark face and a grim expression on Holt's chiseled features.

  “Not good,” Holt said at last, apparently deciding to tell her the tr uth and get it over with. “You're going to need some reconstructive surgery and even then there might be a scar.”

  “Holt!” Blakely hissed, shaking his head. The blond detective frowned at his partner.

  “She needs to know, Blakely.”

  “Well didja have to just say it out like that?”

  “I need to see.” Sadie interrupted them. She struggled to sit up and swing her legs over the side of the bed but couldn't quite manage it.

  “Not right now, honey,” Blakely said in an appeasing tone. “Why don't you try to get a little more rest?”

  “No. I need to see,” She insisted. She finally managed to get her feet on the floor but the drug residue that lingered in her system made her feel like her legs were made of lead and she wasn't completely sure they would support her. “Now,” she added, tottering to her feet. For a moment she was sure she would make it to the fresher door and then the world tilted and she felt herself collapse in slow motion. Strong arms caught her and Holt supported her on one side and Blakely on the other. Sadie was glad because her legs now seemed to be made out of rubber and she realized there was no way she was getting anywhere on them.

  “Blake's right; you really don't want to see right now,” Holt said in her ear. “Just wait a little while until the swelling goes down, Sadie.”

  “Don't want to wait,” she said as forcefully as she could. “Please, Holt, just let me see. My face feels so strange.”

  Holt sighed deeply and she felt Blakely's arm tighten around her waist. “All right, fine,” the blond man finally said. “But I'm afraid you're not going to like what you see.”

  “Anything's better than not knowing,” she said, feeling that it must be true. Sadie had never been the kind of person who could wait patiently for bad news—she had to know the worst immediately. Borrowing trouble, her Aunt Minnie had called that particular character trait. Getting to the bottom of things, Sadie called it.

  “C'mon, honey.” It was Blakely in her other ear and together, he and Holt supported her into the fresher and stood her in front of the holo-viewer that hovered in front of the sink.

  Sadie took a deep breath and looked at her own face in the viewer. Her hair was a wild, honey-colored bird's nest of tangles and there were dark, bruised-looking hollows beneath her matching eyes. A lump the size of an egg was rising from one side of her forehead and the entire right side of her face was covered in a stiff white flexi-seal that contrasted oddly with the screaming red prostie dress she still wore. Why hadn't Blakely and Holt gotten her into something more comfortable? Probably didn't want to touch me without my permission, she realized. Although after what the three of them had done together at Van Heusen's house, it seemed like a needless precaution. Just the thought of that, the memory of all three of them on their knees on the rug with the firelight playing over them while they moved together, touched each other, was enough to make Sadie's breath come short and her face turn red, the half of it she could see at least.

  Putting the incident firmly out of her head, Sadie turned her attention back to the face in the viewer. Carefully, wincing as the adhesive that held the seal in place pulled at her skin, she moved the bulky white co