“We’ve arranged for home care for your father, at least for a while,” Rayna was saying. “Better if we just have one or two caregivers to deal with rather than the whole staff of a facility.”
An image resolved in the air in front of him. A woman’s face—high cheekbones, a wide, gentle smile, eyes the color of the oceans swirling on the planet below, hair a deep auburn. She looked as if she was capable of handling anything life sent her way. She looked as if she could even handle him. If he would let her. He inhaled a slow breath and let it out, his heart pounding for no reason he could think of.
“Her name is Charlotte McIntyre.” Rayna’s sharp gaze was on him, not on the holo. “She runs her own home health business, taking care of clients like your father. She grew up around here, has a great reputation in her community.”
“Would she live in?” His face heated at that thought. He didn’t think it would be such a great idea. He hadn’t been around a woman like that in a long time.
“I haven’t arranged for that. Is it necessary?”
He shook his head. “No. I can manage the daily care.” He’d been doing that for half a circuit, since he’d realized how bad the Old Man had become. “I just need the professional stuff.”
“She knows her business, Rafe. She’s an R.N., with specialties in geriatric care and psychology. Plus lots of experience.” Rayna waved at the datapad he was holding. “Details are in your pad.”
He’d save that for later. “What does she know about me?”
“The basics. Rafe Laurence was born and raised in Canada, followed his dad into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, blah, blah. I gave her the broad overview from your cover story. You can fill in the details as you see fit.” Rayna grinned. “I figured we had to find a way to explain that accent ASAP.”
“What accent?” He glared from Rayna to Murphy, who shrugged.
“According to the locals, everybody who doesn’t sound like a plucked banjo has an accent. That included me, and it will surely include you.”
Now he was really confused. “What the hell’s a banjo?”
Rayna leaned forward on her bench, eyes flashing. “For chrissake, Gordon! Did you read your file or not? You go down there with no prep and you’ll be a star on YouTube in no time. As soon as that happens, the people Admiral Sheffield warned us about will know just where to find the former Rescue Chief of Operations.”
Before she could continue her tirade, Rafe interrupted. “About that. Do we have more information on the assassin?”
“Nothing,” Rayna said. “He left no evidence and the surveillance cameras were scrambled. But you’re aware Sheffield’s warning wasn’t limited to your father? He rallied as the medic was working on him long enough to mention Kwai Tone Ze, the religious leader.”
Apprehension squeezed Rafe’s heart. “No, I didn’t know.” The blood drained from his head, leaving him dizzy and shaking.
Rayna put a hand on his arm. “You know him, I take it.” Her voice was gentle.
“Since I was a kid.” He shuddered, suddenly cold. Who wanted these old men? “He was with the group that escaped the labor camp with Del. And the Admiral.” He caught Rayna’s gaze. “Have you warned him?”
“We’re trying to find him now. He’s in some kind of spiritual retreat, and it’s like he’s dropped completely off the grid.” Rayna’s frustration showed in her expression.
Kwai had been known to disappear for weeks at his retreats, Rafe knew. At least it would make it hard for any assassin to find him.
“We still don’t know why Kwai is a target?” Rafe said. “Or my father?”
Rayna shook her head. “Kwai may know more about this, but until we can find out, keep your head down. I personally took charge of the advance team to keep Del’s location as secret as possible, even within Rescue. But don’t think just because you’re here on the most clueless planet in space that you’re safe. The people of Earth may not have any idea of what goes on around them, but let me assure you, our enemies have their agents here, just like we do. And even Masey, North Carolina, isn’t isolated enough to keep them from finding you.”
CHAPTER TWO
Somewhere in the Minertsan Empire, approximately 50 Galactic Standard circuits earlier
“We’re moving again, Del. Heard a guard say the ships are coming at dawn.” Shef lay curled in the bunk across from his, the thin blanket covering his head so that only his barely-moving lips could be seen.
“Bullshit. We just got here. Go to sleep.” But something nagged Del about this place. The security was lax: the fences too low, the guards too few. And they hadn’t been properly processed.
“Oh, yeah? Then why aren’t we working? Where are the mine shafts? The fields? Where’s the factory?” Shef shifted in his bunk and sighed in disgust. “There’s something screwy about this place.”
Del’s companion wasn’t the only other slave resistant to the Gray’s mindwipe procedure. Others among their squad of thirty had somehow retained part of their memory and identity and managed to hide it from their captors, as Del had. But Shef was one of the smartest and most observant. He’d been military in his old life back on Earth, although, as he put it, he was “just a grunt.”
“Okay. I see it, too,” Del said. “What am I supposed to do about it?” Because it always came down to that, didn’t it?
His friend peeked out from under the blanket. “Did I say you had to do anything? Just giving you the information, boss.” Then he covered up again and was silent.
Yeah, well, as far as Del could tell, the information only led in two directions. Either they were only here as a stopover on their way to somewhere else. Or for some reason he couldn’t imagine, the Grays planned to kill them all.
“They’re gonna kill us! They’re gonna kill us all!”
Rafe could hear the shouts in the corridor outside the cabin he shared with his father. The monitor on his wrist had been beeping for no more than twenty seconds, but by the time he got in the cabin with him, the Old Man was already in a state. Rafe knew full well if Del could have gotten out of his bed and run from the room, he would have done it. But the bed was equipped with a low-level forcefield; Del was a prisoner under the field, flailing his arms and kicking his useless legs in a desperate effort to escape.
Nothing Rafe said or did could convince him his enemies were not in the cabin with him.
“I’m telling you, if we don’t get out of here, those Gray bastards are gonna phase us all and throw us in a fucking ditch. You hear me?” He was shouting, and though the words were clear, their meaning was anything but.
“Hey, Del! We’re safe. The Grays are a thousand light years from here right now. They can’t find us.”
His father looked right at him. “Whaddaya mean they can’t find us? Where are we gonna hide?”
Seizing on what looked like a moment of lucidity, Rafe explained. “On Earth. We’re going home, Old Man.”
“Home? To Terrene?”
“No. Home. To Earth. Where you always dreamed of going.”
The Old Man sank back onto the mattress, every muscle going slack. “You’re shitting me.”
Rafe brought his voice down to match. “No. I’m not.”
“They can’t find us here,” Del murmured, his eyes losing the focus they’d had for that fleeting second. “We’re going home. To hide.” He nodded, then struggled to sit up—slowly, to allow the field to adjust, an example of logical thinking that surprised his son. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go.”
Rafe held up a hand. “Hold on, partner. We’re in orbit, but we gotta wait for nightfall over our target. Wouldn’t want to shock the natives, right?”
The Old Man squinted in confusion. “What’s the holdup? Let’s go now!”
“We can’t, Del.” Rafe sighed. He tried distraction. “How about we eat first? You hungry?”
“Yeah. Where’s dinner?”
“I’ll call. They’ll bring us something from the mess. You want stew?”
“Yeah.
Stew is good. And beer.”
“Okay.” Rafe agreed to the beer, even though the Old Man couldn’t have it. If he still remembered he wanted it once the food arrived, they could argue about it then. Only one thing worse than the Old Man in this shape: the Old Man in this shape and drunk.
Rafe glanced at the chrono. Dinner should kill an hour or so. Then he could give his father his meds. Del should be sleeping when they transported him down; that would make things easier for everybody. Because, though the Old Man had been adamant about returning to Earth, Rafe really had no idea how he would react when he woke up on a planet he hadn’t seen in 65 years.
The sun slid down the face of Big Mann Mountain as Charlie and Happy wound their way through the woods surrounding her cabin. Now it was touching the top of Little Mann below and would soon flood the cove between the peaks with golden, early-morning light. Along the flanks of the mountains, the tips of the winter-bare branches caught fire as the sun hit them. From the ridge where Charlie’s cabin perched in the new day’s light, the little valley, with its tiny town of Masey, lay spread out below, still swathed in shadow. That was one reason Charlie liked it up here—she was first to see the sun and greet the day.
Happy agreed with her. If Charlie wasn’t up at first light, the Belgian shepherd mix was in her face, licking and whining. He was better than any alarm clock. Or security system. Or husband. Especially husband. Damn it.
She clumped up onto the front porch and sat to take off her muddy boots. Happy circled in mingled excitement (walk!) and anticipation (feeding time!). Charlie took the space of a frosty breath to admire the view from her chair, then got up and headed for the warmth of the kitchen: kibble for the pooch, coffee and yogurt for herself. Or maybe one of Louise’s homemade angel biscuits and plum preserves, what the hell. It had been a good, long walk today.
Inside, the cabin was small and efficient, with a galley kitchen just big enough for her and the dog to fit in at the same time, a great room with a woodstove that heated the whole place with quiet cheer, but not much subtlety, and two bedrooms and a bath off to one side. At one time this had been her granddad’s hunting cabin, and the big bedroom had slept six in floor-to-ceiling bunkbeds. Various woodland creatures had moved in by the time she took over from her dad, whose only hunting had involved opposing counsel at the bench in the Buncombe County courthouse. She’d needed a place of her own, then, and a means of escape that didn’t involve running back home to Asheville. So, she’d taken some of the money she’d saved and, with a little help from her friends, made the cabin her own.
Breakfast dispatched, Charlie slipped her feet into warm slippers and took Happy and her coffee to the couch in front of the woodstove. The dog settled down at her feet with a contented sigh, his chin resting on his favorite stuffed toy, as she picked up the file of her new client. She felt that familiar heaviness engulf her chest as she read. This was gonna be a heartbreaker.
Del Laurence, 77 years old, retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police captain, Ottawa, Canada. Born: Masey, NC, March 31, 1940. She paused to underline that last bit of information. How did he get from Masey to Canada? Did he still have people here? She couldn’t recall any Laurences around Masey, but she didn’t know everybody.
Diagnosis: Lewy Body Dementia (presumed). (Test results: Attachments 1a,1b,1c, 1d.) Presentation: Disorientation in space and time; fails to recognize familiar people 25 percent of the time; hallucinations; can be physically violent when disoriented or hallucinating; irritability/volatility; periods of disassociation/disconnection when patient is non-communicative which can last up to two hours. Such periods invariably end in episodes of disorientation, sometimes violence.
Other issues: Injuries sustained in the field, including a car accident that led to his retirement in 2004, limit patient’s mobility. (Attachments 2a, 2b; 3a, 3b.) He has been confined to a wheelchair since January, 2013 out of concern for his safety due to increasing weakness in his legs and a series of falls. (Attachment 4a.)
The rest of the file consisted of the results of Laurence’s standard tests for dementia, both the general ones that revealed the problem, and the specific ones that pinpointed the Lewy Body diagnosis; his medical files pertaining to the car accident and his subsequent care; and his medication list, which, surprisingly, was less extensive than many she’d seen. In fact, the standard meds for the type of dementia Laurence had were missing from the list; the meds for kidney and bladder function were in a price category most of her patients couldn’t afford to even consider; and the pain meds were of a type she’d never seen before. She could recognize the chemical construction—barely—and could guess pain control was their use from that, but she’d never heard of them. Surely something so new wouldn’t be available as a generic this soon. Why weren’t they listed under a brand name so she could look them up?
Charlie drew a king-size question mark on the meds list. If she was expected to dispense these meds, she damn well wanted to know what they were.
She let out a grunt, and Happy lifted his head to look at her. “I’ve got a strange feeling about this case, Hap.”
Happy wuffed and thumped his tail on the floor.
“Why would you leave Canada, where they have national health care, and come here to North Carolina to depend on Medicare when your loved one is so sick? What kind of person does that?”
She glanced down at the last page, Del Laurence’s family and contacts information.
There was only one name—Rafe Laurence, son—and the address on the opposite ridge where she was due to report in an hour.
There was no hint of why the Laurences had come to Masey, no clue as to why they had chosen Charlie to help them. The woman who had hired her had provided almost no background information, and what she had said certainly didn’t indicate that the Laurences were independently wealthy. In fact, she’d said the son had been a police officer like his father—no, not just a police officer, a Mountie! A noble calling, perhaps, but hardly lucrative. What were they thinking?
Or more properly, what was Rafe Laurence thinking? Because, it was clear from the file, Del wasn’t capable of that kind of thinking anymore.
“What do you think, Old Man?” Rafe stood beside his father’s wheelchair and took in the view from the porch of their new house. Down from the ridge into the little valley the tops of the trees were painted in fiery gold sunlight, the branches rippling in a brisk breeze. It was cold on the porch, despite the morning sun streaming down onto the decking, so he’d bundled the Old Man up in a comforter. Rafe figured the fresh air was good for his body, even if his mind was thousands of light years away.
“I don’t know about you, but I think Rayna’s team did pretty good finding this place for us.” He talked even though the Old Man didn’t respond—couldn’t, or wouldn’t. “Shit, I wouldn’t know a pine tree from a petunia, but this is . . . I don’t know . . . peaceful or something. The air smells clean, like breathing pure oxygen.” He shook his head. “I never knew people actually lived like this.”
Del just stared straight ahead, his deep brown eyes glassed over with that faraway look he got from time to time. He’d drifted away after breakfast, and it was too soon for more of the medication Rafe had brought with them from Terrene, the only thing that seemed to have any effect on his dementia. Rafe hadn’t added it to the list he’d supplied Rescue for the advance team. It had been risky enough to list the meds that could conceivably be found on Earth, but he’d had to list something. He’d just have to find a way to explain why the Old Man wasn’t taking any of the standard meds currently in use on Earth for his condition. The immediate problem was the disconnection his father was showing and the violent awakening he was bound to have later. All the medication in the galaxy couldn’t keep those episodes at bay for long.
Rafe heard the engine of a vehicle negotiating his steep drive long before the green boxy thing rolled to a stop at the side of his house. Raised metal markings on the vehicle read Subaru and, in another place, Forester, and there
were labels on the back that exhorted readers to “Buy Local!” and “Practice Random Acts of Kindness.” Rafe had no idea what any of it meant.
At least one mystery was solved when the driver’s side door opened to reveal his visitor—the woman from his debriefing, Charlotte McIntyre. She raised a hand in greeting, a bright smile on her beautiful face, and he suddenly realized he was rooted to the spot, staring. Snap out of it, ptark! Act like you have some manners.
He crossed the porch and went down the steps to meet the woman, but drew up fast when he saw the big, furry creature she was letting out of the back seat, a thin piece of leather attached to a collar on its neck. The thing had four legs, a tail like a flag—and teeth.
Charlotte took one look at his face and spoke to the animal before it thought to charge him. “Happy, sit!” Then she turned back to him and held out a hand. Her smile made him forget about the creature at her feet—for a second. “I’m Charlotte McIntyre. Everyone calls me Charlie. Rayna Murphy arranged for me to see your father? You must be Rafe.”
Her hand was warm and strong; Rafe felt like he’d just gone out an airlock and that hand was the only thing keeping him from drifting away into uncharted space. “Nice to meet you, Charlie. Uh, is this your bodyguard?”
The beast was still sitting—at least it was well trained—its head cocked at an angle, as if it couldn’t figure out how best to tackle and eat him.
Charlie laughed, a sound warm and light, like the sunshine buttering the valley below. “He looks scary, but Happy wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s my best friend. He goes everywhere with me—even to visit my clients, as long as they respond well to him.” She paused to look at Rafe again. “You don’t like dogs? Had a bad experience with them, maybe?”
Rafe stood up a little straighter. “Well, it’s not that. It’s just . . . I’ve never been around them much.” He’d seen dogs, of course. But they were small, like the Jack Russells on the Shadowhawk, and rare, animals whose ancestors had been part of some smuggler’s booty call to Earth. Rayna’s pissed-off face came back to haunt him. Yeah, he should have done more homework.
Not Fade Away: Interstellar Rescue Series Book 4 Page 2