They get back to find a digital forensics team crawling all over the outfit. The Cap greets them by confiscating their phones, handing them burners and an envelope of cash, and Suggesting™ that they might like to be dropped off at the spaceport, buy tickets to somewhere nice and spontaneous using cash, and take another week off.
"I wish we were back at work," Beeper says, glumly slumped against a shuttle window, looking small and wadded up with tension. They spend a week at a low-gravity spa on a local spacehab, and she's relentlessly stoic about it.
The ex-wife turns up on the last day.
Fletch is sleepily settling down to coffee and pancakes in the hotel restaurant, wondering if maybe after breakfast xie'll just go back to bed for a while. Beats the hell out of camping in a walker for comfort, even if Beeper's in a whole other room of her own and they don't doze off, stargazing shoulder to shoulder, and wake up with Beeper's face buried in the crook of xer neck, and don't talk about it.
And then the ex-wife slides into the seat opposite, face buttoned into a tight expression, and Fletch carefully puts xer fork down and laces xer fingers together and meets her eyes.
Well. Now xie's awake.
Julia puts some kind of glossy brochure down on the table with a crisp snap of expensive card, and slides it a little across.
"What's that," Fletch says, not taking xer eyes off the other woman. Or, well. Fletch guesses from some perspective xie's the other — not that xie actually is, but. Anyway.
"Sales and marketing material," Julia says. "For a suite of — industrial software named Byzant4."
Uh-huh. Fletch has heard of that. Marketed primarily to nation-states, intelligence agencies. Also to PMCs. Multiplatform, multivector malware; you drop the payload on an initial target system, and it intelligently, autonomously pathfinds to where you actually want it, based on the criteria you set it. As it infects, it continuously evaluates its routes for data exfil, keeps any suborned systems it needs as relay stations, purges itself from intermediate footholds it no longer needs. Hard to detect.
"I could say I want to talk to her," Julia says. "And you'd say you'd like me to fall under an APC." Her shiny lips tighten. "I'm not an expert, I can't — I think we all agree what we think happened here, but I can't prove anything was ever on my phone. Or where it might have gone after." She glares at Fletch, like it's somehow xer fault. "I didn't do it."
Fletch pretends to give it a little thought, and shrugs.
"I'm reevaluating my employment options," Julia adds tightly, and sure. Sure. Berwick is a notorious dirty tricks outfit, and the reputation sticks to everyone who's worked for them; but it was all cool while it was the other guy, right?
Fletch shrugs again, and picks up xer coffee.
"I didn't do this to her," Julia insists.
"Okay," Fletch says, because — yeah, it is easy to justify things until they're done to you. And xie believes her. Passing on malware to Beeper's phone would take, what, one fleeting contact? One plausible, faux-accidental run-in at a Mechspo or something. Not turning up like a conspicuously bad penny every time she could track her down. No; Berwick brass saw someone behaving in an exploitably irrational way, and it didn't matter it was one of theirs. Fletch has no trouble believing that, and so xie just eyeballs her in an accusing and here you are again way.
They're so busy staring accusingly at each other that they don't notice Beeper until she's standing at the table, putting a hand on Fletch's shoulder. "Morning," Beeper says, dragging the word out a little, eyes flicking between them.
Fletch starts to say Morning back, and gets as far as M— before Beeper, looking down at xer with a bright, determined focus that deliberately cuts her ex out of her attention, runs her hand casually from Fletch's shoulder up her neck and laces her fingers through the roots of Fletch's hair. Fletch, helpless, is making entirely too much mmmmmmm.
And then Beeper curls a fist and pulls Fletch's head right back, gentle but inexorable, neck taut, and swoops. Kisses hard and filthy and filled with nipping teeth, until Fletch is winded and trembling.
"Catch up with me when you're done," Beeper says casually, letting her hand slip out of Fletch's hair with a last affectionate scratch at xer scalp, but she doesn't move for a second, eyes lit with — with things Fletch doesn't feel smart enough for, just now, feeling all raw and flushed and taken by surprise. And the corner of Beeper's mouth quirks, looking down at her, and before she pulls back entirely she taps the tip of her thumb affectionately to the end of Fletch's nose.
"Beep," she whispers, and then she's gone, kicking off in the low gravity like she lives in it, crossing the room in two effortless gliding steps and vanishing into the corridor, leaving them both staring after her. And Fletch has sudden questions about how routine a gesture of affection has to be before it ends up your nickname, a nickname that outlasts your affection and your marriage and all the shared friends who called you that—
Julia shoves her chair back sharply. Stands. Hovers ominously.
"Don't hurt her," she says roughly, and Fletch blinks at her, at white knuckles and a white face, and before xie can find any damn thing to say, Julia leaves.
