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  Holt nodded at Blakely, signaling his partner to call in the back-up while he kept Van Heusen busy. If everything was done correctly, the old pimp would be safely in restraints before he knew anything was wrong, but Holt wanted to be nearby when it happened. Van Heusen had been prosecuted many times before but never convicted, mostly because the witnesses had a convenient way of dying and the evidence always somehow melted away. Holt didn’t intend for that to happen this time. They had Van Heusen dead to rights with the largest collection of illegal tanks he or anyone else had ever seen, and he didn’t want to give the old man a chance to start a countdown and blow the evidence and all the workers that knew about it sky-high while Van Heusen himself slipped out some secret entrance.

  “Keep close and stay behind me,” he murmured to Sadie, thinking of the deadly snub-nosed needler hidden in Van Heusen’s smoking jacket. “Things are gonna go down fast and I don’t want you hurt. Understand?”

  “Got it,” she replied, her lips barely moving. Holt could feel some of the emotional turmoil inside her mind turn to excitement as they walked back toward where Van Heusen was sitting easily in a floating air-cushion and smoking his pipe again while he waited for them to tour the room. Holt felt it pumping in his own veins as well—the thrill of a bust about to go down; it never failed to fill him with adrenaline.

  “Well, well.” Van Heusen got to his feet carefully and smiled. “And how do you find my equipment, Mr. Day? It’s top of the line, you know.”

  “It’s fine equipment all right,” Holt agreed. Through the adrenaline-heightened T-link he heard Blakely directing the back-up squad through the back door and knew federal agents would be swarming down the long, tank-filled isles at any moment. He could feel his own version of Van Heusen’s cold, sharklike grin spreading over his own face at the thought.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mr. Van Heusen,” he said to the anxiously waiting man.

  “Your processes won’t work with my equipment?” Van Heusen looked so upset it was almost comical.

  “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.” Holt moved in closer so that he could keep an eye on the old man’s hands. “Not only is there no ‘conditioning process,’ but you’re also under arrest for the possession of illegal flesh tanks and the use of black market brains.”

  Van Heusen made a move toward his jacket’s inside pocket, but this time Holt was too quick for him. He slapped a set of restraints he’d had hidden in his own inner pocket on the skinny, withered wrists and removed Van Heusen’s needler in one motion.

  Van Heusen looked at him angrily. “I suppose the girl isn’t really a prostie at all,” he said in disgust. “I should have known better than to think such marked improvements were possible.”

  “Got it in one,” Holt said, grinning. “Although you have to admit if you really could make a prostie as attractive as my colleague here,” he nodded at Sadie who stared back impassively. “You’d make a mint overnight.”

  “Agreed,” Van Heusen said sourly. “Unfortunately, I was more interested in growing a new body for myself that was perfect in every respect than ‘making a mint’ as you put it. Money I have in abundance, but my youth is long behind me. You have greatly disappointed me, Mr. Day.”

  “It’s Detective Holtstein, Old Earth Vice,” Holt said. “Pleased to meet you, Van Heusen. My partner and I will be seeing you in court. Now, you have the right to remain silent,” he began and then there was a sudden commotion behind him and all hell broke loose.

  19

  Later Sadie couldn’t remember anything but a melee of yelling voices and colored uniforms. The workers, dressed all in white, were being herded into a loose group by the federal agents in orange and blue, but they weren’t going quietly. She was trying to stay close to Holt, but somehow she got swept into the crowd, just another body in the rising tide of disorder.

  Van Heusen’s voice, surprisingly loud and clear, suddenly cut through the racket of babbling voices. “The girl—get the girl!” he shouted, and after one horrified moment Sadie realized he was talking about her. Why me? she had time to think and then a thick arm was locked around her neck, choking her, cutting off her air. She fought instinctively, kicking backward with the high-heeled shoes she had on, trying to connect with something solid. But all she felt was the soft give of the protective suit of the worker that held her, kicking and squirming, against his body.

  “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 upward 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 seemed 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 because 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 medi-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 bl