Tangled Fates

by Carly Fall

  A girl with good taste. “Add a muffin to my plate as well,” Blake said, handing his menu

  to the waitress.

  Laura stared into her lap.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened? Why you ended up in the situation you did?”

  So much for waiting for Annis; his curiosity got the best of them.

  There was a silence while Laura did a number on her fingernail, then the waitress brought

  their coffees.

  “Not now,” she said in a soft voice, her gaze turning toward the door of the diner, looking

  for Annis, he presumed. Bringing the coffee to her face, she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes

  in appreciation.

  “I haven’t eaten in two days,” she murmured.

  Blake didn’t say anything for a long while. “So where’s home, Laura?” Studying her, he

  could tell she came from a good home. Her hair had subtle highlights, and her complexion was

  clear. As she removed her jacket, he could see her shirt was name brand expensive, and her nails

  were short, but had been professionally polished. He figured she was some sort of runaway and

  was expecting a story about her terrible parents who took away her iPhone after she broke

  curfew, or something to that extent.

  “I live in Napa Valley, California.”

  Blake smiled. He loved the area, and remembered one particularly awesome weekend in

  his life when he went there with a long-ago girlfriend. They had ridden his motorcycle through

  the hills of grapevines and old, giant oak trees, stopping at a few wineries. They stayed at a little

  bed and breakfast nestled in a grove of ancient oak trees, their branches reaching out like the

  devil’s claws. He remembered the bed squeaked relentlessly as he and his girlfriend had sex,

  leading to sideways glances from other guests at breakfast. As with all the women in his life, she

  hadn’t lasted too long, citing that he never “let her in.” She had been right about that one. He

  always kept his shit pretty close to his chest, especially the details of his childhood.

  “Nice area,” he said. “Why did you leave?”

  “I didn’t.”

  The waitress brought their plates, and Laura grabbed a piece of bacon.

  “Well, what happened then? You’re approximately three thousand miles away from Napa

  Valley.”

  She took a huge bite of the blueberry muffin and closed her eyes in appreciation as she

  slowly chewed.

  “I was kidnapped,” she said in a soft voice, not meeting his eyes.

  “From where?” Damn, the omelet was good.

  “The mall,” she said, and finally looked at him. “I was so stupid. The oldest trick in the

  book and I fell for it. Some guy came up to me while I was waiting for my friend and said he was

  a photographer. He thought I was pretty enough to be a model. He said he wanted to give me his

  information. I went out to the parking lot with him, and the next thing I knew I was in a van with

  him and two other men. They stuck me with a needle, and I passed out. I woke up in that

  woman’s apartment, and she told me she had sold me.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “So stupid.”

  “So, I can assume that you want to go home,” Blake said.

  She nodded, shoveling the food into her mouth.

  Blake pulled out his phone and laid it on the table in front of her. “You can call your

  parents if you want.”

  She quit eating and looked at the phone. A long minute passed. “I do want to call them,

  but I have no idea what to say.”

  Blake shrugged. “I’ve found that most of the time the truth works pretty well.”

  The door to the diner opened and Annis walked in. She stood at the door and looked

  around. When she finally saw Blake, she gave him a wide smile. As she walked over to them,

  Blake couldn’t help but stare. Her long, wet, jean-clad legs carried her confidently, her steps as

  graceful as a ballerina even though she was wearing boots. Yet, there was nothing delicate about

  her. Blake knew she was lethal, and he wondered if she had put an end to shitbag-Susan’s

  miserable existence.

  “Looks like you two have some good food,” she said as she slid into the booth next to

  Blake and grabbed a piece of his bacon.

  “Get your own, Annis. I’m not in the mood to share.”

  She arched an eyebrow, and he laughed.

  “I was just trying to get Laura to call her parents,” Blake said. “It sounds like they’re

  good people.”

  Annis smiled at Laura. “Good idea. I’m sure they’re worried sick about you.”

  “But there’s some things you can’t be completely honest about, Laura,” Blake said. “Not

  that I condone lying, but you can’t let your parents know about us.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated. But you should call your parents and tell them that you were

  kidnapped, but you escaped and found some people to help you. Tell them that you don’t have

  anything to tell anyone about who took you.”

  He couldn’t have this girl telling anything about him and he wished he had the

  forethought of giving her a fake name, but hopefully nothing would come of it. He had read

  somewhere that there were over fifty-eight thousand people named Blake in the United States, so

  he felt reasonably certain he was safe on that regard. How many of the fifty-eight thousand had

  broken their oath to their government and busted into a top-secret government facility, he didn’t

  know. His guess was one.

  Laura studied him a moment and then nodded. She reached across the table, grabbed the

  phone, and dialed. Ten minutes later, she hung up the phone, tears running down her face, but

  she was smiling.

  “They were happy to hear from me,” she said.

  Of course they were. Blake had never wanted to have children. Maybe it was because he

  didn’t wear any rose-colored glasses when he looked at the world. His vision was twenty-twenty,

  and it showed that this world was on the south side of fucked up. He didn’t want to bring kids

  into the cesspool. Besides that, with the Colonist DNA flowing through his veins, he wasn’t

  about to pass that down.

  However, he did have some compassion, and he couldn’t imagine being a parent and

  having your kid go missing. The degree of agony and worry would be off the charts. His mother

  had always told him that he would only understand how much she loved him when he had his

  own children. That wasn’t going to happen, but he did know his mother had loved him very

  much.

  Twenty minutes later, everyone finished eating, Blake had paid the bill, and they stood

  outside. The snow had stopped, and the air was frigid yet still, as the wind had calmed down.

  “What do you say we see about getting you home?” Blake said.

  “How are you going to do that? Laura asked.

  “Let’s get you to the airport and get you on a plane out of here,” Blake said, pulling his

  phone out of his pocket to call Noah about getting Laura on a plane home.

  Chapter 6

  “See, Neptune? That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Cohen stroked Abby’s huge black cat that seemed to have attached itself to his lap the

  past few days. At first, he had tried to get the feline out of his quarters, but the cat was having

  none of it. Finally, Cohen just accepted that the big guy was here to stay. He had to admit, it was

  nice having someone to talk
to that didn’t talk back except for the odd howl now and then, and a

  lot of purring. He was trying not the think about Annis and Blake in New York, and Neptune and

  the MMA match on TV was a nice distraction.

  “That guy should’ve countered that roundhouse kick with an uppercut. This match would

  be over by now if he had.”

  Neptune meowed.

  “I knew you’d see it my way,” Cohen said, sipping his Captain Morgan.

  He loved a good MMA match, and the one on his big screen didn’t disappoint.

  There was a knock on his door, and Cohen looked down at Neptune, who was curled up

  in his lap. “Do you want to get that?” he asked.

  The cat closed his eyes as if to say he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Me neither. Maybe if we ignore them long enough they’ll go away. What do you think?”

  Neptune just purred, and the knock came again. Cohen didn’t move, and the knocking

  turned into pounding.

  “Or maybe whoever that is will just stand there banging on the door until we answer,”

  Cohen said. “It’s too bad Rayner took my guns or we could just shoot them.”

  He picked up Neptune and set him on the ground. Neptune let Cohen know of his

  displeasure with a loud howl, but then ran over to the door and sat down.

  Cohen followed him and opened the door to find Hudson and Noah standing there.

  “What’s up?” Cohen asked, not inviting them in.

  “Where’s your manners?” Hudson asked, pushing past Cohen, and Noah followed.

  “Hey, Neptune,” Noah said, scooping up the cat. “Abby’s been looking for you.”

  “He wouldn’t leave,” Cohen said.

  Neptune pushed against Noah and hopped down to the floor. He made his way to the bed

  and nestled among the tangled sheets and comforter.

  “Get dressed,” Noah said.

  Cohen looked down at himself. He had forgotten he was hanging out in his boxers for the

  day. He didn’t have plans to go anywhere. He hadn’t had plans to go anywhere for a long time.

  “How come?”

  “When was the last time you were out of the silo?” Hudson asked.

  Cohen struggled to pinpoint that time, but he couldn’t. He shrugged in ignorance.

  “It’s been a couple of months, Cohen,” Noah said, placing his hand on Cohen’s shoulder.

  “Let’s get you out of here for a couple of hours, okay?”

  Cohen sighed. He really didn’t want to go anywhere, but he didn’t have the energy to

  argue with Noah either.

  He slugged back the rest of his rum. “Fine. Where are we going?”

  “To a gun show,” Hudson said.

  “That’s funny,” Cohen said, “Neptune and I were just talking about guns.”

  “Really?” Noah said.

  “Yeah. I was saying how I’d like to shoot whoever was banging on my door, but Rayner

  took my guns away.”

  Cohen picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and slipped them on. He moved his foot

  through another pile of clothes and found an old T-shirt that read, I’m a Virgin.

  He looked over at Hudson in his perfectly fitted jeans and three-hundred-dollar black silk

  shirt, then back down at the wrinkled ensemble he had thrown together.

  Whatever.

  “Let’s go.”

  They stepped onto the elevator, Neptune hot on their heels.

  Two hours later, Cohen was inside the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno looking at guns,

  knives and other weapons and artifacts. He loved this shit, and was glad to be out of the silo.

  Maybe he needed to get out more often.

  He walked up to a table that had some nice assault rifles.

  “Hi there,” the seller said. Cohen looked up at the man, who looked to be in his forties,

  dressed in a pinstripe suit and tie. His brown hair was impeccably kept, and unlike Cohen, there

  wasn’t a wrinkle on his clothing anywhere. He smiled, revealing straight, white teeth.

  Cohen didn’t like him. Yeah, it was a knee-jerk reaction, but the guy didn’t fit in here

  with the other sellers who were far more casual and definitely not as slick.

  “Hey,” Cohen said, turning his attention back to the guns. He picked up a Semiautomatic

  Colt M4 OPS .22 rifle and looked down the scope.

  “That holds thirty round of ammunition,” Pinstripes said.

  “I know,” Cohen said.

  “Why would anyone need thirty rounds of ammunition?”

  Cohen recalled a couple battles with Colonists where he wished he had more.

  “Would you want to own one of those?”

  Cohen shrugged noncommittally. They had two at the silo, and Cohen remembered the

  first time Annis had shot the gun. They were out in the middle of the desert at night at their

  makeshift gun range where they had set up a bunch of milk jugs on a fifty-foot wooden table

  they had built. At first, her aim had been all over the place, but after a couple of minutes, she

  gained control over the gun, and her shots were tight, knocking down forty-eight of the fifty jugs.

  “Those type of guns should be outlawed.”

  Cohen tried to ignore the guy, his irritation growing.

  The smile on Annis’s face when she had mastered the beast was proud and sexy, all at

  once. Hudson and Noah gave her a high-five, and Blake hugged her. The jealousy that tore

  through him watching those two embrace was off the charts, but then Mia shimmered to life next

  to Annis, reminding him what a rat bastard he was.

  “You should sign this petition to let our lawmakers know that we don’t need guns like

  this out on the street. We don’t want to take away all guns, just ones like these,” Pinstripes said.

  Cohen stared off into space. Mia. She always hated weaponry and didn’t understand why

  he wanted to join the military. The fight that had ensued had been the worst of their mating, and

  she only accepted it when she realized how happy he was. However, she had strict rules that he

  wasn’t to talk about his work with her—she simply didn’t want to hear it.

  “Don’t you agree?” Pinstripes said.

  Cohen shrugged. He couldn’t imagine anything he cared about less than human politics.

  None of the Warriors did, but Noah groused every now and then at the increasing taxes he had to

  pay.

  Cohen looked over the gun again. He imagined being mated to a female like Annis,

  someone who shared his interests. What would that be like? To be able to discuss Warrior stuff

  such as guns and fighting? A female who enjoyed a good action flick? It would be different, and

  definitely something he had never experienced, even with the human women he had been with.

  Hell, with the human women he had been with, there were very few words exchanged, except

  maybe about birth control.

  And his whole line of thinking pissed him off.

  “So what do you say? Will you sign the petition?”

  Cohen sighed and looked at the man. “What are you? Some member of an anti-gun

  group?”

  The man smiled. “Well, sort of. We aren’t anti-gun, just anti-assault rifle. Burt

  Flemming,” he said, sticking out his hand and flashing his teeth, “I’m with—”

  “I don’t give a fuck who you’re with,” Cohen said. “And why the hell are you at a gun

  show?”

  “I’m trying to educate—”

  Let me tell you something, Burt old boy.” Cohen set the gun down. “See this gun?

  Laying here like this, it’s nothing but a hunk of metal.”

  Cohen picked up the bo
x of ammunition next to the gun. “And see this? These are

  harmless as well.” He grabbed the gun again in one hand and the ammo in the other. “Even when

  you put them together, in the hands of a responsible person, they aren’t dangerous.”

  Cohen knew he was going off the deep end. It was a regular occurrence these days. He

  would have never snapped at this guy under normal circumstances, but “normal” had jumped

  ship almost eleven months ago. “But when you put them in the hands of someone a little

  unstable, like me, for instance, then that’s when shit goes wrong!”

  Burt backed up, and Cohen thought about loading the gun just to make his point. He

  wouldn’t actually shoot the annoying asshole. Well, probably not.

  Noah and Hudson appeared at his side, one taking the gun, the other the ammo.

  Hudson pushed Cohen toward the door as Noah apologized to Burt.

  “You think about that, Burt!” Cohen yelled.

  “Jesus, we can’t take you anywhere,” Hudson said, turning Cohen around and pushing

  him toward the door.

  Cohen shrugged him off. “I never asked you to,” he growled.

  Chapter 7

  Annis paced the small apartment, focusing on the papers she held in her hands.

  After getting Laura on a plane, they had made a mad dash back to Susan’s apartment.

  Annis noted that the man she had beaten and his car were now gone, except for the bloodstain in

  the snow.

  They had entered the empty lobby of the apartment building, double-checked the

  apartment number for the now-dead Susan Kresper, and headed for the elevator. Blake had

  quickly picked the lock, and they were in.

  Annis had felt nothing when she sliced the woman’s throat. She wasn’t joyful, sickened,

  or upset. It was just something that needed to be done. The woman had been a descendant of

  Jack the Ripper, a Colonist. And based on her arrest record, as well as what Annis had seen with

  her own eyes, the woman deserved exactly what she got. However, she also knew that she had

  blown the mission. The information gathering had been blown right out of the water, and she

  wondered what Noah and the other Warriors would say.

  The apartment was a cramped one-bedroom. There was a tidy living room with two old

  threadbare green couches and a coffee table that had seen better days. Both couches faced a large