The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

the wrinkles smoothed out. More to the point, though, he simply loved the work.
    Travis’s temptation to accept his offer, during the past year, had at times nearly swayed him all the way. Even now he felt some strain of remorse. Like he’d missed an exit from the freeway, one he’d been supposed to take, but that he’d never get back to now.
    It struck him that, of the two of them, if someone had been asked to guess which brother would end up in a place like Border Town, the smart money—the only money—would’ve been on Jeff. Tangent probably had an army of computer techs designing and running customized systems for their research.
    Travis turned away from the phone, and was heading for the refrigerator when someone knocked on the door.
    He crossed the living room, opened it, and found Paige standing there, also having just showered. Still looking keyed up. Looking like she wished she could relax.
    “Tell me you haven’t eaten,” she said.
    “I haven’t eaten.”
    An hour later they were sitting cross-legged on her bed, facing each other. Sometimes she looked down at her hands fidgeting in her lap, and her hair fell across her face in a way that Travis couldn’t stop staring at.
    They talked about random things. Paige had finished high school at sixteen and gone to Texas A&M. She’d set out to become a historian, but four years later had found herself going for a master’s in the new nanosystems engineering program there, working on the Model-T versions of what would someday, with any luck, be digital white blood cells, the cure for pretty much everything. When Travis asked her why she’d changed her major, she said she’d realized something: as much as she loved to understand where the human story had been, she was more interested in where it was going. Nothing excited her like the forward edge of technology, the best minds in the world building on one another’s work at an ever-increasing speed. By twenty-one she knew she wanted to spend her life in that world. And then, in one very surprising weekend, her father—her only living relative—had brought her to this place and shown her what he really did for a living. Quite the revelation, it’d been. With it had come another: there were grave security risks attendant to the loved ones of Tangent operators like Peter Campbell. Paige was in danger, just by living her life, just by being who she was. She would be safer here at Border Town, so long as the threat persisted.
    “Lived here ever since,” she said, glancing around at her apartment. Two levels below Travis’s, it was identical except for the touches her taste had brought to it.
    Her hands found their way into his. He held them, his thumbs tracing back and forth across her palms.
    She spoke softly. “Since prison, has there been anyone special?”
    “No one,” he said. A moment later he added, “No one special in prison, either.”
    Paige laughed, glancing up from their hands to meet his eyes.
    “After I got out,” he said, “part of me thought there was no point in trying. You can only get so far into a conversation before you run into the wall. ‘You’re from Minnesota? Oh, what did you do there?’ ”
    She laughed again, quietly. “What did the rest of you think?”
    He was silent a moment. “That this was my real punishment. The one I’d never get free of. And that I deserved it.”
    “For what happened to—” She paused, and Travis could see her parsing her memory of the police report she’d read. At last she said, “Emily. Emily Price.”
    Travis nodded. “She saved me from what I was. Saved my life, figuratively, even literally, I’m sure. And they killed her because of it. I should’ve known. I should’ve seen it coming, and I didn’t.”
    “It’s easy to underestimate the bad in people,” Paige said. “I don’t think it should carry a life sentence.”
    He managed something close to a smile, and held her hands a little tighter.
    In the darkness their clothes evaporated, and there was only her skin against his, so much warmer than he’d imagined, and her hair falling around him, scented sweet like apple trees in October. He tasted on her tongue the white wine they’d had with dinner. Tasted the soft skin below her jawline. Tasted everything.
    Later, holding her close, Travis felt the silence filling up with all the questions he knew they were both dwelling on. All the things that didn’t add up, no matter which way they were