Masterminds by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online Page B

bought this seat with her own money right after talking to her father. She wasn’t going to charge a first class ticket to ADVI-RS, no matter how much she needed the privacy right now.
    She could afford the ticket, of course. She was only recently coming to terms with the fact that she was incredibly rich. She always had been, but she had once thought of that as her father’s money, something that had nothing to do with her.
    Yet Berhane was extremely wealthy in her own right, and she was now using that money in a way that made her feel less like a spoiled rich girl and more like an important person.
    Her father didn’t approve, of course. He didn’t believe that charitable foundations were worth anyone’s time, except as a public relations obligation, but he had soon realized if he didn’t stop complaining about her work, he would never see her.
    It was only after she had started working for charities—first with Armstrong Search & Rescue, and then with ADVI-RS—that she realized how much alike her father and Torkild were.
    And how very different Donal was.
    She wondered what he would say when he learned about Torkild’s death. Donal had grown to hate any mention of Torkild. With his reactions and his occasional comments, Donal had helped Berhane understand just how dysfunctional her relationship with Torkild had been.
    Maybe that was why she had been so angry in her last meeting with Torkild. She had said some things that appalled her, things that in the past she would have apologized for.
    But, on that day, Torkild had made it plain that they no longer had any common ground. And he had been right.
    He had been rehired by the law firm that had kept him off the Moon for nearly a decade: Schnable, Shishani & Salehi, also known as S 3 . Rafael Salehi had hired Torkild to start a branch of S 3 on the Moon, and that branch was handling the defense of the Peyti clones that had tried to blow up the Moon not two weeks ago.
    A tear ran down her cheek. She wiped at it, then ran a finger over the moisture accumulating under her lower eyelids.
    She had been so mad at Torkild. He didn’t seem to understand how devastating that second attack had been. Even though only a handful of Peyti clones had been successful—all of them outside the various domes—the idea of the attacks, of the Moon’s continued vulnerability, was bad enough.
    And then Torkild felt that those crazy Peyti bastards needed a defense .
    Berhane’s father said that was probably what had gotten Torkild murdered. Everyone was saying that the police did it, and that didn’t surprise her. Everyone was mad at S 3 . She had been furious with Torkild when she learned what he was doing.
    She felt like he was betraying everything and everyone they had ever known. Certainly all of the dead, whom she had come to represent.
    Especially since she had lost two of her volunteers at their day job in the Growing Pits during the Peyti Crisis. They had been meeting with the Peyti clone lawyers over some contractual matters when the lawyers activated the bombs in their masks and had blown everyone to bits.
    Berhane closed her eyes for just a minute.
    She had never told Torkild that she had nearly died during the Peyti Crisis as well. She had been running late for a meeting with the lawyers who were drawing up some documentation for the next fund-raiser she had been planning. Those lawyers included one of the Peyti clones.
    The meeting had been delayed because of her and, it turned out, only the Peyti clone lawyer had been in the conference room when it got sealed off and the environment got changed from Earth Normal to Peyti Normal, deactivating the bomb.
    Berhane saw that damn clone lawyer just afterwards, and stared in his big eyes, wondering how she had ever trusted him. Then she had turned away, shaking with fury, determined to let the police handle the bastard, because she knew she couldn’t deal with him at all.
    Especially after she heard about the collateral damage