Like the others, Bit shook her head.
“Well, if we find them, will you be pressing charges?” asked the officer.
Jack shot his mother a look before shaking his head. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary. It’s just a little paint. No one got hurt.”
The officer nodded, his eyes wide as though he hadn’t expected that sort of a response. Finally, the officers gave them one final examination before turning away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jack suggested.
Their audience parted, giving them a wide aisle as the wet group slogged forward. Bit wasn’t terribly upset about their day out being cut short. Instead, she felt her heart constrict as she looked at her ruined crew jacket. Would Jack buy her a new one? She knew he was having to spend a lot on repairs for the ship, and she had seen a new worry in his eyes each time a department head came to him with a new purchase order. He thought his stress went unnoticed by the others, but she saw it. Bit let out a long sigh.
She wouldn’t ask for a new coat. It wasn’t necessary. Even if he did give her an official job on the ship, she could do it without the formal jacket.
Bit set aside the little hurt. There were more important things in life than the outward image of belonging. She would just have to remind herself as often as she needed. And knowing her struggles, it would be most nights as she tried to fall asleep.
She pressed her arm against her hurting ribs and trudged on after the others.
“Well guys, it’s been a blast as always,” Kat said as she slapped Jack against his leg, throwing a wink at Debby.
Jack ignored the boisterous woman. She was just trying to get a rise out of Debby, and his best defense against her schemes was to give her machinations no attention at all. The future conversation with Debby, when he revealed that he intended to take Kat on as his XO, was going to be tough enough without Debby worrying about a secret affair.
“We’ll continue that conversation later, eh Jack?” asked Kat as she rose from her seat on the train, leaving a red paint stain on her seat.
Jack cringed inwardly. “Sure thing, Kat. Call me tonight. We leave port Tuesday morning.”
Kat nodded and left the train.
“What was that about?” Debby asked as the train pulled away from the station.
Jack hardened himself for the coming battle. “I’m hiring Kat as my new XO.”
Instead of bursting her top, as Jack had expected, Debby closed in on herself, hunching her shoulders and clamping her mouth shut. She stared at the windows on the opposite wall of the train and remained silent for the rest of the ride. Guilt weighed his shoulders down as he realized how relieved he was to sit in silence with his own girlfriend.
Jack turned his gaze on Bit. She was sitting next to Lexi, her gaze on her new-to-her crew jacket, her hands absently rubbing the red stains. Ironically the red paint was very nearly the same color as the crimson fabric of the jacket, off just enough to be noticeable. Jack felt a sad smile pull up at the corners of his mouth—sad because he knew the precious jacket was beyond saving. He would have to try and replace it as soon as possible.
The captain let out a long sigh and leaned he head back against his seat. Slowly they made their way back to his mother’s condo, the other members of their group exiting the train as they reached their stops, dwindling their group down to just his family, Debby, and Bit.
Finally, they disembarked from the train and descended the elevated platform. Jack tried not to notice the decay of the creaking staircase or the rust of the railing. When his family had moved into the condo a few years before his father’s death it had been a beautiful neighborhood, but years of decay and a rough economic crash had hindered the district until it had reverted in on itself, until one good round of violence would sink it into a true ghetto.
Tilly refused to allow Jack to move her and Lexi into a new district. Perhaps she knew that he really couldn’t afford it, even with Tilly’s help from her income at the nearby community college. As an adjunct professor she didn’t make much, but it did pay part of the mortgage and the utilities. Jack felt his jaw tightening as his eyes scanned over the crowded street, his eyes resting on two men making a discreet exchange. Even if the neighborhood got worse, he couldn’t afford to move them. Beside, another year or two and Lexi would be off to college.
College. How was he supposed to pay for that?
“Jack?” came Debby’s voice.
He turned to her, suddenly realizing he had missed her question.
“Never mind,” she grumbled, picking up her pace until she reached Tilly’s side.
Jack let her go, too stressed with other issues in his life to worry about her. Whatever her issues were, she wasn’t willing to talk through them, and he wasn’t ready to chase after her.
The group entered the lobby and squeezed into the elevator, their new fashion statement mostly dry. After the slow climb of the elevator, they reached the forty-second floor and approached the door.
It stood ajar.
Jack held up his hand, signaling them to stop. Calen and Bit obeyed, immediately falling into silence. The others continued to talk and walk. Debby sauntered forward, ignoring Jack’s signal. He grabbed her and pushed her back behind him. Lexi bumped into his back, her eyes fixed on her pad.
“What?” she demanded, jabbing him in the back. “Why are we sto—”
Jack turned, ready to smack his sister when he saw Bit jump into action. He left Bit to take care of the other women, leaving him and Calen to deal with the new threat. Normally if he saw his front door left open he would have assumed one of them had just left it open, but it wasn’t just ajar. The entire doorjamb was torn asunder where the deadbolt had been ripped through it. Someone had forcefully pried the door open.
Jack felt Calen come up to his left arm, into flanking position. Together they entered, scanning the room just as Randal had taught them. As Jack had expected, the entire main room had been tossed.
“Check the bedrooms,” Jack whispered as he worked his way across the main room, moving as softly as he could across the broken glass and disheveled books.
Jack went into his mother’s master suite while Calen checked the other three smaller rooms. They returned to the main room just in time to see the women enter.
Bit jumped forward, grabbing Lexi and clamping a hand over the younger woman’s mouth. The effort sent a piercing pain through her ribs. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep from voicing her pain as she struggled against Lexi’s natural reflexes.
“Ssshhh,” she hissed in Lexi’s ear, dragging her back to where Debby and Tilly waited, wide-eyed.
Bit had no idea what had sparked Jack’s warning, but she wasn’t about to question his judgement. Too many things had gone wrong lately. Paranoia seemed like a solid plan of attack.
Calen stepped forward, flanking Jack. The two men moved together, giving Bit a view of the door to the condo, standing open, the deadbolt torn through the doorjamb. The sight of the broken lock brought the sought-after silence from the women and Lexi stopped struggling against Bit’s grasp. Finally, Bit released her, collapsing against the wall and grabbing her ribs, moisture glazing over her eyes.
The men reached the door, Jack easing it open until they could glimpse inside. They slipped in, scanning the room from one corner to the other, just as the security team had taught them. Bit waited a few seconds before motioning for the other women to stay put and slipping up to the door. Like the men, she checked the main room for intruders before waving the others forward.
The women slipped in, preparing to just walk forward into their house. Bit grabbed Tilly and pulled her back to the wall.
“Stay put,” she ordered before turning back to eye the elaborate mess laid out before them.
Jack and Calen emerged from Tilly’s room and glared at them.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked in a normal tone.
Bit assumed they had finished searching the entire condo and felt her shoulders relax.<
br />
“Is it clear?” she asked.
“Yes. Did I tell you to come in?”
“I just thought we’d be safer inside rather than out in the hallway like sittin’ ducks,” snapped Bit, matching him tone for tone.
Jack glared at her for a second longer before letting out a long sigh. “Calen, get the door shut. Put something in front of it if you have to.”
Calen burst into action.
“Everyone else, look around, see if anything is missing while I call Randal.”
“Who would do this?” asked Tilly, still pressed against the wall near the door.
“I suspect the same people who would try to kidnap Bit,” said Jack.
He pulled out his short-range comm. device and dialed in the right frequency. A moment later it clicked and Bit could hear the low murmur of Randal’s voice. Bit followed the other women into the condo, eyeing the disheveled contents. The cushions of the sectional couches were thrown across the room and the couches themselves were tipped over onto their backs. The various Asian rugs were pulled up and draped over the furniture as though someone had been looking for a trap door. Enormous gouges were visible in the dark wood of the floorboards where someone had searched for a loose board. The contents of the large bookshelves were strewn in piles on the floor and the contents of the kitchen were thrown about. The pictures from the walls were shattered on the floor, mixed in with the contents of the silverware drawer—the lightest items from the kitchen which had flown the farthest.
Bit felt thankful for her new, paint-stained boots. Had she been barefoot like before her feet would have been torn to shreds.
“Yes. The entire condo has been tossed… Good…See you soon.” Jack ended his call. “Randal is collecting the security team. They’ll be here as soon as they can.”
Bit moved into Lexi’s room. Like the living room, it had been searched. The mattresses were pulled off the frames and cut open, their stuffing pulled out. The drawers of Lexi’s dresser were emptied and contents of her closet were added to the pile on the floor. Lexi followed Bit and let out a little gasp of surprise, as though she had expected to find her room untouched.
“Why would they do this?” Lexi asked in a hushed whisper.
“Randal will figure it out,” replied Bit, not feeling up to easing Lexi’s fears.
“Okay guys, we got to get this cleaned up before the security team gets here looking for a place to bed down,” Tilly said from the main room in an authoritative voice.
“Not until Randal gets here and has a chance to look at it,” interjected Jack.
“But…”
“No, Ma. We leave it until he gets here. It won’t be long.”
And so they waited. True to his word, Randal arrived ten minutes later, a small pack strapped to his back. The family waited out on the small porch where the invaders had destroyed Tilly’s little garden. At the sound of the knock, Calen ran to the door, calling out.
“It’s me and Blaine,” came Randal’s voice from the other side of the door.
Calen pushed the heavy chair aside and ushered them in. Blaine was already showered and freshly dressed, no sign of red paint on him. They stopped in the doorway and eyed the disaster, Randal letting out a soft whistle of surprise. Blaine’s eyes drifted to where Bit stood in the kitchen. Without waiting for his superior, Blaine crossed the main room to where she stood.
“Are you okay?” he asked from a safe distance.
“I’m fine,” she said trying her best to keep her voice neutral.
He nodded once and turned back to Randal. It was a long and tiring wait before Randal declared his search complete, by which time Reese and Nathyn had arrived. When the search was declared finished and futile, Tilly began organizing the group into cleaning up the mess, selecting one red-covered person at a time to get showered. To her embarrassment, Bit was sent first. Tilly insisted it was because Bit’s clothing was still half-folded on the top bunk of Lexi’s bunkbed, and, therefore, she had something clean to change into.
When Bit emerged paint-free, she was set to work pushing stuffing back into the mattresses in Lexi’s room and sewing them back up. It was rather boring, lonely work as the others labored together out in the big room. She tried not to feel excluded. After all, it kept her out of Blaine’s way, and she assumed that had been Tilly’s plan when she sent Bit in to clean up Lexi’s room.
If only it had worked.
Bit was standing on the bottom bunk, reaching up to put the final stitches in the top mattress when Blaine appeared in the doorway, entering silently, his comm. device in his hand. She flinched, the movement bringing a new stab of pain to her ribs. Bit gripped the railing of the top bunk and took a few shallow breaths before she turned to see Blaine carefully cross the war-zone of the room as he put his comm. away.
“You okay?” he asked, nearly placing his hand on the small of her back to steady her; he caught himself at the last second and lowered his outstretched hand.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry about earlier. At the park. I lost my cool. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she replied, turning her focus back on the large needle in her hand.
“So I’m forgiven?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re back where we were before?”
“Where is that, exactly?”
“Together, I mean. Are we together?”
Bit let out a long sigh. “We were never together, Blaine.”
“Yes, we were. You just don’t want to admit.”
Bit jammed her the needle into the side of the mattress, momentarily imagining it was Blaine’s eye, and jumped down to the floor. The landing brought yet another stab of pain to Bit’s ribs and put her in an even worse mood.
“One kiss does not make a relationship.”
“Just ‘cause you’re too afraid to try. Is it so hard to believe that someone might care for you?”
“Right now? Yeah, it is hard to believe.”
“Like I said before, I’m not giving up on us. I’m still here. I’m still fighting for this,” snapped Blaine, not sounding very much like he had warm, mushy feelings for her.
Bit held up her hand, stopping his tirade midstream. She glanced around his large frame to find Debby standing in the small hallway, a fresh towel tucked up under her arm, her hand on the doorknob of the bathroom.
“Can I help you?” demanded Bit as Blaine turned to take in their audience.
Debby shrugged, a happy smile playing across her thin lips. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. Bit waited until she heard the water turn on before looking back up at Blaine.
“Does this mean you will not honor my request?” asked Bit.
“In regards to touching you?”
Bit nodded.
Blaine hesitated a long moment. “No, of course not. I won’t touch you unless you ask me too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I want nothing more than to show you how much I care.”
Bit glared up at him, annoyed at the attractive way his hair fell into his eyes. “Then show me by doing what I ask.”
“Fine.”
Bit and Blaine emerged from Lexi’s room to find Jack on his comm. device. He ended the call without saying anything.
“They’re not answering,” he said to Randal.
“Who were you calling?” Blaine asked.
It was Randal who answered. “I had him call the genetics company. To see if we could deliver the embryos early, just in case this is all about the delivery and not about Bit. After all, the protesters seemed to know who you are easily enough. If uneducated greeners can find you, then so can high-end corporate espionage.”
Bit glanced at Tilly. The middle-aged woman’s lips were pursed as she worked to wash the large pile of chipped dishes. Bit knew the professor sympathized with the protesters, but wasn’t sure how she would take to Randal’s words. By the set of her brows, she was thoroughly offended.
Bit stepped away, hoping to draw attention away f
rom the angry woman.
“But they’re not answering?” Blaine was asking.
“No. Evidently the entire building is shut down for the holiday.”
“Typical,” grumbled Blaine as he carefully glanced out the window down to the street level.
“You really think this might not be about me?” Bit asked, feeling hopeful for the first time.
“It’s wise to consider all angles, Little Bit,” Randal said, giving her no real idea either way.
“For now we hunker down and get some rest,” Jack said, ending the conversation.
Chapter Nine
Calen worked to spread out a bedroll across the clear floor space in his bedroom. With the security team bunking down in the condo, almost every square inch of space was being taken over by bedrolls. Of course, none of the men would be sleeping in Lexi’s room or in his mother’s room. This left Jack and Calen’s rooms and the living room. Debby had been moved out of Jack’s room into their mother’s. Calen felt his lips pull up into a smile as he battled the bedroll; it had been curled up for too many years and didn’t want to lay flat.
Debby had thrown one hell of a fit when she learned that she would have to sleep with Tilly. Calen hated to admit it, but he had enjoyed every minute of their battle. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, the entire condo had enjoyed listening in on World War VI taking place inside Jack’s room—in the same way one enjoys watching a daytime soap opera or reading the tabloids. Everyone felt the awkwardness of listening in on the angry couple, but a few smiles were seen as Debby shrieked her outrage.
Finally, the fight settled down and the couple emerged, while at the same moment the workers found themselves suddenly very busy.
Calen smiled again. At least he was finding something humorous in the midst of their awful day.
“What’s so funny?” Nathyn asked from the doorway, his pack slung over his shoulder.
“You my bunkmate?”
The burly redhead nodded before dropping his pack just within the doorway.
“I was thinking about the little soap opera we heard earlier.”
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