by Mikayla Lane
Decano ducked down behind the thick bushes and watched in horror as Niklosi stomped right in front of the policewoman standing a few feet from the dead Relian. There had been no way to warn his friend before he’d already exposed himself to the cop—not that killing the Relian and having its body skid across the road in front of her had helped Niklosi.
Decano silenced Traze when the boy finally caught up to him and waited patiently as Traze quietly crawled to where he was hiding behind the bushes.
Traze clapped a hand over his mouth when he looked up and saw Niklosi tasered in the forehead, maced in the face, and subsequently handcuffed with a series of zip ties to accommodate his large hands and shoulder width.
“Why isn’t he breaking free?” Decano whispered, wondering why Niklosi was putting up with this when he could easily overpower the woman.
Traze shrugged his shoulders.
“He probably doesn’t want to hurt her,” Traze suggested.
“Then how are we supposed to help? I’m not hurting her if he’s not willing to do it. Maybe it’s his mate?” Decano wondered aloud.
“I bet that’s it!” Traze agreed with a grin. “Let’s get the transport and find out where the hell she’s taking him. We can pick him up there. Maybe the time alone together will help them bond before she realizes she’s stuck with an asshole.”
“He looks really pissed off. Are you sure we shouldn’t step in? I can sneak up behind her if you create a distraction,” Decano suggested, seeing the look on Nik’s face as he was placed in the back of the car.
“Nah,” Traze assured Decano. “He looks fine. A little surprised, but who wouldn’t be finding your mate way the hell out here. A cop too! Who knew there were cops way the hell out in bum fuck this place?”
“Oh shit!” Decano whispered when they saw the beat up old truck crest the hill and park behind the police car Niklosi was in.
“Well, looks like we’re waiting until they take him in. I don’t think that ambushing humans in the woods like this would bode well for any of us,” Traze said, looking around and seeing no way to prevent something from going wrong if they tried to interfere now.
“Yeah, that old man doesn’t look like he’s any slower with that gun he’s keeping his hand on just because he’s ancient. Why isn’t he dressed like a cop though?” Decano asked, unsure if they were doing the right thing.
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe he was the closest thing to backup she had. She’s a little thing, and Nik’s pretty big; she was probably scared. All the more reason to not make her start shooting,” Traze reasoned.
“I think we should call Grai,” Decano suggested, thinking they needed a little more guidance on the best way to rescue Nik.
“Nah,” Traze said with a grin as he put a hand on Decano’s shoulder. “This is one of those really backwoods places; we can probably get him out and be gone in no time if we need to. What could go wrong?”
Decano looked at Traze incredulously and gestured to where Niklosi was now being driven away in the police car.
“I think it went wrong already! We should call Grai,” Decano argued as he stood and watched the car bounce awkwardly down the uneven dirt road.
“No, we’re not. We can do this!” Traze said before he contacted their transport pilot. “We need pickup and we’ve got to get the scanners on the vehicles leaving our location. Nik’s in the back of the car.”
“Traze, I really think we need to let Grai know we’ve had a problem, and we should really call in another team for backup,” Decano argued.
Decano had a sick feeling in his stomach and the man-child’s nonchalant attitude wasn’t making him feel any better about the situation.
“Look, our ride’s here. Let’s just go check out where she’s taking him, and we’ll decide from there,” Traze suggested before he ported into the ship.
Decano shook his head and followed. He wasn’t as confident as the rash, young Traze, but he went ahead with it for the time being, thinking there was no harm in getting specifics for when they contacted Grai.
“Someone want to tell me why Nik’s in the back of a police car and why I can’t get him on the shengari’,” Disc, their pilot called out when they were inside the transport.
“The cop tasered Nik, and it probably knocked out his beast. We think it’s his mate and that’s why he didn’t just escape her, so we’re just giving him a little time to get to know her while we scope out the situation,” Traze said confidently.
Decano shook his head while he moved into the cockpit and stood next to Disc. He looked down at the car as they followed above it and again felt like they needed to call someone.
“Or the Taser to the forehead and mace in his eyes could have temporarily disoriented him, and he’s been waiting for us to get him,” Decano countered, a bad feeling growing inside of him.
“He would have called out to us knowing we were close by and we didn’t hear from him,” Traze argued, still believing everything was all right.
“He wouldn’t have given us away to the cop no matter what!” Decano countered.
“I’m just the pilot,” Disc said, “but I think you need to call Grai or Ivint.”
“And tell them what?” Traze erupted. “We don’t know anything yet until we see where they’re taking Nik!”
Decano and Disc exchanged wary glances, and Disc finally shrugged.
“You two fight this out, but if you fuck this up, I’m calling Grai, Ivint, and the whole damn Alliance to come laugh at your asses,” Disc warned.
“Gee, thanks,” Decano huffed out.
“This is going to be easy, just wait and see. Seriously, have you looked at what they’re calling a cop car? Whatever jail they’re taking him to, we’ll be able to port him right out of when he’s ready,” Traze said with a laugh.
“He looked ready when she put him in the car! Why the hell don’t we just yank him out of there now?” Decano countered, getting frustrated with Traze.
“Great! So we can cause another damn UFO abduction story!” Traze huffed out in frustration.
“How is an alien being convicted of murder going to work for us?” Decano snapped back.
“Why?” Traze moaned. “Why are you being so dramatic?”
Decano looked at Traze’s dramatics with a raised eyebrow, wondering if he even had a clue he was the one with the drama problem.
Traze rolled his eyes.
“Look, you know it won’t get that far. We’ll see where he’s going and plan his retrieval from there. In and out quick,” Traze suggested, hoping they’d go along with it.
Traze had a major reason for wanting to fix it on their own: Lieutenant David Jacobs. Tracking the Relian unit was his first official mission without David, and he wanted to prove that he no longer needed to be mentored by the ex-Navy SEAL and could command missions on his own.
Quick thinking decision making was one thing he really sucked at, and Traze was hoping to knock the mission out of the park and earn his own team. Niklosi’s arrest was thrown into his lap by fate and was the perfect opportunity he needed to prove himself to his brother and David, and he wasn’t going to pass it up.
Besides, Traze thought, what could go wrong when it’s just a small female and an old man if we have to get Nik by force?
“We’re heading into the town of Baker’s Creek,” Disc called out.
Traze whipped out his comm and entered in the name. He laughed as he scrolled through the information. When he looked up, he saw Decano had the same idea and was reading on his comm.
“OK, 354 residents spread out over 62 square miles of heavily wooded mountains. One cop, paid for by the residents, whatever that means. I think we got this,” Traze said with a huge grin.
Decano wasn’t the least bit convinced it was going to be as easy as Traze thought it would be. Far too many things could go wrong, and he would have felt better if they called Grai—if only to let him know something had gone wrong. Unfortunately, the chain of command left Traze in charge t
he moment Nik was put in the car, and it wasn’t his call to bring in the big guns.
Decano looked at Disc, who was shaking his head, and he sighed heavily, wishing there was another option.
“Where’s the police station?” Decano asked Disc as he looked at the one-block town laid out beneath the hovering craft. There wasn’t even a stop light to be found.
Disc pointed to the right of his seat where a live video feed from beneath them that was displayed on a screen.
“It’s the renovated gas station,” Disc said.
“A gas station is the police station?” Traze asked with a laugh.
“I have a layout. It looks like the holding cells are in the building, and the office is where the garage used to be,” Decano said as he looked at his comm. He didn’t like the situation at all.
“Move directly over the building,” Traze told Disc. “I want to check something out.”
Disc moved the craft and tweaked the live image on the screen until they could clearly see around the whole building.
“Woo hoo!” Traze said as he pointed at the screen. “Right here! They have the breaker box outside! I’ll flip the breaker while Decano gets Nik.”
“Hey! This is your fuck up, not mine. You go in, and when you get caught, I’ll call Grai,” Decano argued, crossing his arms over his chest.
There was no way in hell that Decano was going to encourage Traze’s ridiculous idea of breaking Nik out of the jail. If they were going to help Nik, they should have done it before they got into the town. Now they needed to call Grai and let the big guys handle it.
“Come on, you big baby! Look,” Traze said as he pointed at the vid, “there’s Nik. Exactly where the cells are. There’s a door that leads to the cell area from the outside. Hit it with a pulse blast, and it’ll silently take out the lock. I’ll hit the power, you go in and grab Nik, and we’re out of there.”
“Why the hell can’t you just port him from the cell?” Decano asked, completely unconvinced Traze’s plan would work.
“You know he either has to have a port stone on him or he has to be in the open. He has no port stone because you never should have let it get this far, and he’s in an iron cage. I could adapt the port to account for the iron, but there’s no telling what I could port back with him if I have to change the port parameters on the fly,” Disc warned them.
“So, worst case scenario if we wait until we modify the port is that we could bring back a toilet with Nik. Or we can foolishly try to break him out and really turn this into a national news fiasco?” Decano asked, trying to make the man-child see that this wasn’t going to work.
“You’re being over-dramatic,” Traze said with a grin. “We can’t wait, or his fingerprints are going to get a hit with Freedom Security International, then we’re going to have a national news fiasco,” Traze countered, knowing that a mercenary being charged with murder would be big news.
“Exactly why we need to call your brother!” Decano warned in exasperation. “I’ve known your brother longer than you’ve been alive, and I’m telling you, he’s going to be pissed as hell if you don’t call him.”
“I’m with Decano on this. And I’m going to start the port recalibration now, just in case,” Disc said, hoping Decano and common sense would win out.
“The longer we stand here arguing, the more this is going to blow up in our faces! Fuck you guys; I’ll do it myself,” Traze huffed in anger.
He walked back to the door, hit the button on the wall, and dropped into the middle of the road. Disc and Decano cursed when they saw him run behind the police station.
“Damn idiot is going to get us all killed,” Decano grumbled. “Call Grai before this goes even worse for us all.”
Disc nodded his head and sent a call through the shengari’ to Grai as he watched Decano drop from the craft and run behind the building after Traze. He was really hoping that Decano could hold off Traze long enough for him to get direction from Grai.
“What’s wrong?” Grai asked him just as Disc watched the lights go out in the building.
Disc held his breath, hoping like hell he wouldn’t have to explain it to Grai when he saw a light stone activate inside the building. Several flashes went off and it went dark again. Disc was waiting to see the three men come out of the building and groaned when he saw one lone human run outside and turn the power back on.
“Grai, everything went wrong. We have two, I repeat two, potentially three, team members in police custody. Town called Baker’s Creek, Missouri. Just from observation, I would say the charges will be murder and attempted escape.
“Tell me this is a fucking joke,” Grai asked as he sat up in bed and looked at his vibrating comm.
Grai looked at the information scrolling across the screen, and he jumped out of bed and began dressing as quietly as he could so he wouldn’t wake Tristan and Grace.
“What’s wrong?” Tricia asked with a yawn as she stretched.
“Traze, Decano, and Niklosi have been arrested for murder. We just got an NCIC hit on Nik’s prints. Fiorn’s group is scrambling to bury it, but we need to get them out of jail,” Grai muttered, caught between worry for his team and brother, and his impulse to strangle Traze the moment he saw him.
Tricia sat up and slid out of bed. She went to her closet and began pulling on a pair of dress slacks.
“What are you doing? Go back to bed, honey,” Grai said, hoping she’d get some rest.
“They need a lawyer until you can figure out how to fix this. We can’t let them go unrepresented. Criminal law may not be my specialty, but I can practice in that state, and I can help,” Tricia said, as she finished putting on a silk blouse and jacket.
Grai sighed, knowing she was right. He hated he needed her brilliant lawyer mind in a situation like this at all, but he was grateful she was so willing to help.
“You’re amazing. I’ll have Blade go with you,” Grai said as he kissed her temple and sat to pull on his boots.
Tricia pulled on a pair of pumps and sent up a prayer that Blade and his unique skills wouldn’t be needed.
Chapter Three
Niklosi was livid by the time they reached the old gas station the cop had called her police station/jail. There had been more than a dozen opportunities for Traze and Decano to intervene along the road, and they’d done nothing to help him escape.
“OK, Nik, we’re here,” BJ said as she pulled her car under the overhang where the gas pumps used to be.
She got out of the car and sighed in gratitude when she realized Mojo had already arrived and she wouldn’t be alone with the unnerving man in the back seat.
BJ opened the back door and jumped back in surprise when Nik got out of the car and stretched his arms over his head. She immediately put her hand on her gun and looked at him warily, wondering if he was going to resist now that he’d broken free of the cuffs.
“Oh, stop acting like I’m going to kill you. I could have strangled you from behind long before we got here if I was going to. I’m a little big for zip ties,” Niklosi growled, unexplainably hurt and angry about the fear he saw flash in her eyes.
BJ was startled and creeped out by his admission. She’d no idea he’d gotten out of the ties while she’d been driving and couldn’t believe the man she witnessed kill someone so easily hadn’t bothered to just kill her and be done with it. With his size and strength, he could have easily overpowered and killed Buford as well and gotten away.
BJ cleared her throat and looked away from him when she realized she was just staring at him. She gestured to the door of the station set in a wall where the garage door used to be.
“Let’s go inside,” BJ said evenly, praying he would, but keeping her hand on her gun just in case he didn’t.
Niklosi looked to the door and snorted.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said.
He strode to the door and yanked it open so hard the wall shook violently before he stepped inside, and the door shut behind him. Nik looked around the office
area, noting the tall, thin man with thick, black-rimmed glasses who stood and put his chair in front of him.
BJ ran in behind Nik and watched as Mojo stood, his mouth hanging open in surprise.
“Oh my, Lord Jesus!” Mojo whispered as he craned his neck to look up at the larger man.
“Mojo, this is Nik. I’m going to put him in lock up real quick,” BJ said before she turned to Nik, and gestured to the door to the holding cells.
“Nik, I need you to head in that door over there,” she ordered.
Niklosi turned and noted the open door and the iron bars in the next room. He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“This is fucking crazy,” Nik whispered as he walked over to the door.
When he passed through the doorway, he noted two cells with their own toilets and sinks, and he stepped into the first cell and closed the door behind him until he heard it lock. Then he turned dark eyes to the cop.
“Happy now? Don’t I get a phone call?” Nik asked sarcastically.
BJ looked at him in surprise before she shook herself out of it. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure what it was, but nothing in her experience added up to this stranger and his complacency considering his charges.
BJ stared at him for a few moments longer before she shook her head and walked out into the office area. She turned her chair so that she could see into the cell area and keep an eye on the Houdini wanna-be.
“What the hell, girl?” Mojo demanded the moment she sat in the chair.
“Something weird is going on, Mojo,” BJ whispered. “I want you to get his information and the evidence taken care of yesterday.”
“Yeah something weird is going on! You brought in a killer without handcuffs! What’s got into you girl?” Mojo asked.
BJ leaned over the desk.
“I did put cuffs on him! He broke out of them during the drive, and I didn’t know!” she whispered.
“He didn’t kill you? Buford said you saw him kill someone,” Mojo said in awe.
“I did see him kill someone,” BJ said, sneaking a glance at the huge man sitting on the bunk in the cell.
BJ shivered at the look in Nik’s eyes and could have sworn he could hear them talking even though she knew he was too far away.