“There you are!” the woman greeted. “The talk of Urania! Finally, I have the chance to come and see you. What a fury these past couple of days have been! So, how do you like your new-found celebrity?”
Skye tried to hide her nervousness, feeling the press of time. “I’m sorry, Marion, but I’m kind of in a hurry. There’s something I must take care of. We’ll talk later, all right?”
“Sure!” Marion replied, although she was surprised.
Skye had one thought in mind and that was her hope of making it to the Fountain Square in time. She made her way to Nicholas’ rooms, to his small arsenal that was nearby his bed. She opened the bureau doors and considered the two rows of diverse weaponry and power supplies, and borrowed a suitable M-5, making sure that it was equipped with full power. Satisfied, she placed it in her coat pocket. She then went off to find a red rose, and took one from a vase in a deserted hall, and hid the bloom in her other pocket. Now having all of her accoutrements, she went to the royal auto bay to request a ride into Seascape, under the guise of a frivolous shopping spree.
Skye arrived at the Fountain Square with nearly fifteen minutes to spare. Her anxiety began to rise within her as she left the driver behind, declining his assistance. She entered a boutique, and then left it, slipping out a side door. She moved into the chaos of the walkways, the outdoor maze that lined the shops of this market square. She made her way through the throng of shoppers, her guise working since no one paid her any heed.
She reached the west side of the fountain, a resting place for the weary, finding that the crowd had thinned. Twenty or so people were scattered about, enjoying the artistry of the multi-colored plumbs of water that shot high up into the air, the many streams set in a soothing, rhythmic motion. She sat on the stone edge that lined the huge waterworks, her eyes searching for a red rose, and finding none. She pulled her rose out from her pocket and pretended to idly appreciate its splendor, all the while keeping her hand in her other pocket, ready on the M-5.
The faces changed while the shoppers moved to and fro, and she discreetly assessed every one, appearing calm but nervously awaiting the mysterious witness. She had expected a prompt appearance from her—or him—but time passed on, with excruciating slowness. She began to wonder if she was in the right place, although she knew that she was. She weighed the possibility that someone was just toying with her, that this was all a hoax. Or, perhaps the witness had lost her nerve? She rose to pace, then sat again, then rose to pace, keeping the red bloom out in clear view.
When more than an hour had past, she gave up, deciding that she had been had. She headed back toward her driver at the boutique, relieved and yet disappointed that the witness hadn’t been real. Still, she kept her hand on the M-5 ...
Suddenly, a hard object was on her lower back. She gasped, in a stark wave of fear.
“Don’t scream!” a deep voice warned. “Don’t be afraid—I am your witness. Sorry, but I have a gun on you. We must talk. I will tell you everything you need to know. Take your hand out of your pocket—without the gun!”
Her heart drumming wildly, Skye obeyed. There wouldn’t be time to use her gun on him before he used his—and his could be set to kill!
“Now move, slow and easy.”
Skye moved, the brutal thoughts fleeting through her head. The witness was a man—but he wasn’t a witness, at all! She realized that he was leading her away from the crowd to an enclosed parking bay, to an auto. She must act—give no heed to the gun on her back—
Before a scream could pass through her tight throat, a quick and airy injection shot into her back. She began falling, knowing a sudden familiar darkness.
***
Nicholas stole a moment away from the FAS clan—who were dealing with the fallout from the Trobin attack—to call his Skye. He wanted to hear her sweet voice and tell her that he’d be with her as soon as he possibly could. He rang her comm, but she didn’t answer. He tried again, but still no answer. He passed off a quick, irrational fear that something was wrong; she was simply away from her comm. He contacted Palace Security to have them track her down.
“I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness,” the female security officer said. “She isn’t here. She took an escort to go shopping in Seascape City.”
“Shopping?” he uttered. That didn’t sound like a pastime Skye would choose. She didn’t even know yet that her accounts were active ... did she? “When did she leave?”
“The driver reports the dispatch at five-thirty-two. He doesn’t report that they’ve returned.”
Nicholas checked his watch; it was seven-nineteen. He listened to his instincts, a feeling that nagged him, one that was becoming more insistent. “Find the location of her comm,” he commanded.
The officer complied. A moment later she replied with, “It’s located nearby Seascape City.”
“Nearby?” he asked. “Not in?”
“Correct,” she said. “It’s been stationary for nine minutes.” She paused and then asked, “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But send a few Royal Guards to her location. It’s better to be safe than sorry. And I want immediate word when she’s found.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Nicholas flicked off his comm and strode over to his coat nearby the entrance, and shrugged himself into it. “Sorry, guys,” he said. “Something’s come up. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He left them, laughing off their good-natured yet truly envious ribbing about the beauty who had him up, and went to his ship, leaving the lunar base on the shortest flight path to the palace ...
While on his way to his rooms, he happened upon Marion who was heading in the other direction. “Hey, Marion!” he called, and she smiled as she approached him. “Did Skye say anything to you about going shopping?”
“No,” she replied. “But she did leave in quite a hurry. She said she had something to take care of. Why?”
A call rang in on his comm and he quickly answered. It was the Royal Guard. They had finally located her comm, but not Skye. Her comm had been found off in a gully on the side of a rural road, on the outskirts of Seascape.
Nicholas’ panic instantly consumed him. “Find her!” he snapped.
“What’s wrong?” Marion asked, suddenly concerned.
He called up security. “I need a report on the log of Skye’s comm,” he demanded. “I need to hear every call that came in to her today. Send them through to me.”
It was the last call she'd had that they ran by him first. It was a message from a devious data wizard who knew how to decode the palace’s security system. He read the text in disbelief, knowing that this had been a lure.
“She didn’t!” he uttered. “She’s smarter than that.”
“What?” Marion asked anxiously.
Nicholas knew that Skye was intelligent, but these were all the right words to entice a grieving daughter. He instructed security to do a trace on the call, and headed for his rooms to gather his weapons, with Marion trailing behind him. He would find her, himself. Skye was naive to the ways of the world—despite all of her savvy smarts—and she could have fallen right into the hands of who could very well be her father’s killer. Whoever had killed the man was still on the loose, and there had always been too many unsettling questions surrounding his murder. What if Skye were marked for death, the way Tavis Hamilton had been ...
He refused to give in to the fears that threatened to consume him; he needed his level head if he were to find her. He threw open wide his bureau doors and right away he saw that an M-5 was missing. He knew that she had taken it, and he recalled their bout with the game ‘Blades’. He remembered her skill, and suspected that she believed that she knew how to use one—as, he realized now, she always had. But, this wasn’t a game, and who knew what she was up against.
Swiftly he searched his arsenal, taking his best weaponry and putting it into his vest—the power supplies, the FAS alarm bypass, the laser knives and scaling ropes—everythin
g that he would need for a possible hostage situation. If Skye’s abductor had wanted her dead, she would by lying on the side of the road with her comm. He knew of other reasons why a man would keep her alive ...
Again, he used his will to ward off his panic. He called security. “What’s taking so long?” he barked.
“I’m sorry, Sir!” the woman replied, exasperated. “We’ve traced the call but it’s from a public booth in Seascape, a token booth. We have an image of the man who made the call, but he concealed his identity very well and didn’t give us much to go on. We’re doing an LS—the layer stripping scan—on his eyes, right now.”
“Send the image here,” he commanded.
The picture that came onto his comm was of a man with a tall and lanky build. He wore a long dark coat and gloves, and a low-brimmed hat—and very deep black sunshades. It could take hours to decipher what was beneath, if it was even possible, and he needed the man’s identity known to him now. If he only had a name ...
He raked his mind, delving through every conversation he'd had with Skye about her father, searching for any clue he might have missed. The man had cried out before he had died, the word ‘gunner’. He had always thought that this was odd. Skye had also said the same word, when she was in the throes of her coma, after Stra Akka’s collar. He had assumed that she was reliving her father’s death, but ...
“Is ‘gunner’ a name?” he asked the woman.
“One moment, please ... There are no listings under ‘gunner’, but there is one with an ‘a’ instead of ‘e’, a ‘Gunnar.’ A Gunnar Skogs.”
He had a swift surge of hope, whether it was justified, or not. “Give me his residence.”
The woman complied while he hurried for his auto. It was a long shot, but he had to do something until the Royal Guard had the means to find her. His Skye was in danger ...
He sprang into his auto, leaving a flabbergasted Marion behind.
***
Skye came to awareness, her head swimming with an old familiar ache. She knew it was the lingering effects of a drug, one injected into her ...
“Are you awake now, my sweet?”
Her eyes flew open at the sound of a man’s unfamiliar voice. With a flinch she discovered that she was on a bed, with her wrist handcuffed to a bedpost. She cried out and struggled in her surprise and panic, but dropped back when seeing the man who was dressed all in black, looming ominously above and beside her. He stared down on her with a strange, indiscernible smile.
“You sure are a hard one to track down,” he scolded, his voice deep and smooth. “And you turn up in Queen’s Palace—of all places—but with Prince Nicholas? You are doing wrong, Aria. You are in love with me!”
Skye gaped at him in her shock. The man was striking in appearance. He was tall and lean with broad shoulders, having shoulder-length black hair and a goatee that were touched with white. His fresh graying and the subtle lines on his face gave evidence that he was well into his fourth decade, and he could be called handsome for his age if not for his blue eyes that had a distant, vacant look. They stayed on hers, sending a chill through her, for she was looking into the soul of one deranged. This was the man who had killed her father!
“Aria,” he said softly, his eyes misting while he slowly reached for her cheek.
Aria was her mother’s name—he thought that she was she! “I’m not Aria!” she choked, recoiling from his touch.
She realized that this was the wrong fact to point out. He snatched his hand away from her, his face twisting in his anger.
“I know you’re not Aria!” he snapped. “You’re their brat! You’re Tavis’ child—and you should have never been born.”
Skye shook, vulnerable with her chained wrist. She fought off her hysteria, knowing that she must keep her wits if she were to survive ...
Her gaze fleeted about, searching for a means of escape. This was a very affluent dwelling, its architecture exclusive to the rich. The bedchamber was huge, so much so that it was an ostentatious show. The ceiling was high and vaulted, inlaid with glittering scrolls of gold, and the white walls also had this pattern, lined with rows of expensive artwork. The gilded bureaus and plush tapestry carpets also gave evidence of one who arrogantly enjoyed displaying his wealth. Off to her left, a wide staircase dropped down into a foyer where there was an archway that would certainly lead to an exit. Off to her right, the wall was a long window, the wide doors in the center open, a deck beyond. She saw a hint of a railing and knew that there was no escape there, for the sounds of the sea were faint and broken while the waves crashed on the rocks far below.
She must free herself from this cuff. Then, make it to the archway ...
Her abductor’s harsh laugh brought her full attention back to him.
“You’ll never escape me again, girl,” he said, as a promise.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice breaking.
Clearly amused, he laughed again. “You know who I am, don’t you? Your father must have told you about me. Gunnar? Gunnar Skogs?”
From the dark recesses of her memory, she recalled her comatose haze, and that her father’s spirit had told her: ‘Gunnar will come for you, but he will not succeed.'
She gasped, understanding that her divine meeting with her father had truly been real.
Gunnar eyed her calculatingly, a curious look coming into his dull blue eyes. “I know you didn’t suspect me. I knew that the day after they found him, when they didn’t try to apprehend me. I wonder how much you know, though—what that liar told you. I’ll set you straight, so that you know the truth about your beloved father ...”
He began to pace, slowly, with his hands cupped behind the small of his back, his head bowed as if he struggled with a torment that had haunted him for ages. “She was mine, you know,” he finally said, quietly. “Aria was mine, back on Earth. Twenty long years ago ... actually, over seventy, with my suspended sleep on the flight. I followed Aria and Tavis on the next transport. She left me. We were to be wed, but she ran off with Hamilton. She betrayed me—they betrayed me ...”
He fought with his emotion and then found his composure, wanting to tell her his tale. “Aria was so young and beautiful ... We were schoolmates together. The Lovas family was descendent of the Norwegian aristocracy. They were very wealthy, as was mine, but her parents had died when she was sixteen and her care was entrusted to her Aunt Halle. Halle always liked me and said that we could marry, after Aria finished college. We had it all planned out ... but then I made the mistake of introducing her to Tavis. I should have known, with how he looked at her. I had befriended Tavis through our interest in artistic investments. I saw his easy ways and Scottish good looks, but I never imagined that he’d be a threat.”
He fought with his emotion, again.
“I found out too late that he had filled her head with dreams about a distant world, a paradise where they could be together. She told me that she was in love with him ... They slipped away, the day before our wedding—they made me a fool! I couldn’t let her do that ... I had to follow ...”
He overcame his pain.
“By the time I arrived here, they had already wed. I checked every transport record and looked for any purchase they could have made to bring up their names in my computer search, to track them. But they just flat out disappeared after they became citizens. It was seven long years later when I heard the news about her accident, about her trying to save her brat from drowning ...”
He somberly met her eyes.
“All that time they were living in the Colossal Mountains, in a handmade shack, thinking that they were happy there, living off the land. I paid Tavis a visit. I would’ve had my revenge right then, but he saw me coming and he grabbed you and drove off before I could get a clear shot. He disappeared again, but I religiously checked my computer, waiting ... It took me years, but I made it into his personal records—there isn’t a code yet that I can’t crack! He had changed your names to ‘Williams’. All he had to do was make t
he tiniest purchase, and I could find him. But you both vanished into thin air. Where did you go? How did you survive?”
Skye had a knot in her throat and couldn’t respond.
He waved it off with his hand. “Ah, it doesn’t matter, anyway. All that matters is that I did find him and he got what he deserved. When he used his real name and bought that estate, he was baiting me ... He planned to kill me—he said that he wanted to talk, but I knew better than that! And when you came up the walkway, he had to come out of his house. I thank you for that, since you ended our standoff.” He laughed, harshly. “So it was, that my old nemesis met his end!”
He became curious again. “But, where did you go? I heard you screaming and searched the lane in my auto, but I had to get out of there fast when that neighbor came out. What happened to you? Even the authorities were looking for you. And then, you turn up in Queen’s Palace—you’re famous! How did you manage that?”
She couldn’t speak.
“What matters is that you’re here now. Patience—it really does pay off. Finally ...”
He took a moment for profound thought. “This planet has been good to me, all things considered. I have my whores—it’s a good life. But, Aria ...”
Suddenly, a wave of fury came over him. “Do you see now?” he barked. “Do you understand what a traitor your father was? He stole her from me! She wouldn’t have died ... she wouldn’t be gone ...”
His blue eyes became distant again. “You are so beautiful, Aria, my sweet. You look just like you did before you ... But, your hair never had the red in it before. That’s Tavis’ doings—you’re his brat. Be Aria for me, will you?”
A scream caught silently in her throat as, from a side table, he picked up a dagger. He considered the long sharp blade, taunting her with his calculated perusal.
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