“What you said earlier about Mary.”
Michael remembered very well what he’d said in a moment of passion. He kept his eyes on the map. Damn it all, Duster didn’t drop his knowing, razor gaze for a second. Michael straightened and returned his intense glare.
“Mary is anything but remarkably average.”
“Oh, I got that. So did you.” Duster popped a seed apart with his teeth. “Her breach in security makes that crystal clear. You and I both know that isn’t my point.”
“You always have a point, don’t you?”
Duster rolled his eyes and let out a great guffaw. “Kraft would’ve accused you of dancing a very tight two-step, not with me, but with the truth. Maybe with yourself.”
“I told you to stop bringing her up.”
“Sure. Glad to. You just get rid of the morbid shrine to her on the base tarmac first.” Duster leaned over and tapped the op-pan until an audvid of Whisper popped up.
Michael glared first at the ship, then at Duster. “Not pulling our punches, are we?” He cut off the audvid. “I’ll get rid of Whisper if you get rid of that.” He pointed to Duster’s hand.
“What?” Duster plunged his right hand in his pocket.
Michael forcefully pulled out Duster’s hand and touched the slender band of platinum that encompassed his third finger. “Widows wear the wedding band on the right ring finger. Widowers might too, depending on the culture, but you can’t wear that ring at all.”
“You prick.” Duster yanked his hand away but didn’t bother to hide it. This was familiar ground for an argument, one they’d stomped many times.
“Granted. You started this round of truth time, not me. If you’re going to remind me of the truth, the least I can do is return the favor.” At his command, Whisper popped up on every holoplas screen in the room. Amber lights cast the needle-shaped ship into sharp relief. “I may have a morbid shrine, but at least I don’t delude myself into thinking I married Kraft.”
“You unbelievable prick.” Duster turned away, exuding the scent of fresh bread.
“Granted. You never married Diane. She left you in a shuttle with less than an hour of air. Not at the altar, as is customary for brides of her…ilk. But long before you ever got to the church to seal the vows you swore to in the depth—”
“You don’t know anything about me and Diane.” Duster thrust himself up, shoving the chair forward. “Nor should you, as my Commander, acquaint yourself personally with—”
“The massive pomposity flowing from your lips,” Michael interrupted him, and laughed. “You want to point out my foibles but slap up fences when I attempt to point out yours.”
Duster dropped his gaze to the floor. “Torment me about Diane, and I will torment you in the same measure about Kraft.”
“Equal ammo,” Michael said.
Duster lifted his chin, ready for battle.
They could lob verbal bombs at each other for days on end. They knew more about each other than they did about themselves. A best friend, a truly intimate friend, could become a dangerous opponent.
“I concede.” Michael bowed with formal dignity.
Duster took a step back, his brows lowered. “Who the F are you?”
“I am Michael Parker. Not Overlord, not Commander, just a man named Michael Parker.” As soon as he said it, he realized the truth of his words. He didn’t want to be Overlord, or Commander, or some young-girl fantasy that Mary held up so high over his head. He wanted to be himself, just a man, one who didn’t always do the right thing. Not a hero by any stretch but not a vicious villain, either.
“You won’t make Mary a stand-in for Kraft?” Duster asked.
“No.” Michael killed the audvids of Whisper and sighed. “In some ways, she is like Kraft, but not really. Mary is…” He trailed off. “I don’t know how to describe her, how to put into words why she attracts me the way she does.” Michael considered the search map on the desk again. “Unique. Remarkable. Compelling. The game you set afoot is no longer a game. She’s more than the elusive Bandit of Taiga, more than a challenge that took my mind off mourning Kraft.” Feeling the fear, yet admitting the truth anyway, Michael softly said, “I think Mary is the woman I’ve been looking for my whole life.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mary ripped out the lining of Commander’s black leather jacket so she could compress her swelling ankle. At the first touch of silken fabric, she passed out.
Regaining consciousness, she discovered her foot had swollen to five times normal. Her leg looked as if a huge, lumpy ball had swallowed her foot. She realized she never should have taken the boot off in the first place, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that now. She left off trying to compress her ankle and turned herself around on the hill to elevate the most massive screw-up in her short life.
Chilly night air would help slow the swelling, but it also bit into her flesh, making her shiver. She peered up at the star-strewn sky as she drank deeply of cold, damp air that smelled of sagebrush. How could she splint her ankle? A moot point when she realized that, splinted or not, her ankle couldn’t bear her weight. She’d have to drag the stupid thing behind her. Just the thought of bumping it sent a new surge of pain rushing up her leg.
Breathing in shallow, hurried breaths, she checked her pulse by placing her hand at the base of her neck. Rapid and weak. Her skin was cool and clammy.
I’m going into shock.
She tried to remember how to treat someone for shock.
Keep them warm, right? She zipped up the jacket and plunged her hands into the pockets, although without the lining, the jacket didn’t help as much as she’d hoped.
Don’t eat or drink anything. Why? She couldn’t remember. Probably so she wouldn’t strangle on her own vomit. Not that she had a lot to eat or drink at the moment. All she had was a hunk of smelly cheese and an orange. Besides, she wasn’t hungry. Dinner and wine still warmed her belly.
Thinking of the picnic made her think of how good Commander had looked in the double half moonlight. His dark hair shimmered and his teeth glistened. Sorta like a scary, sexy manwolf. It would have been incredible to see his wicked body in the moonlight, all naked and primal. Glistening velvet skin over rippling muscle. Smelling so strongly of citrus and pine.
She should have taken him up on that deal before she ran away. What could one night in his big, strong arms hurt anyway? Whether he let her go or not didn’t matter when she could just run away afterward. Giving in to a base part of her body and being able to justify her actions mattered more.
“A noble sacrifice.” She giggled. “Yes, I would throw myself into his arms to protect my people. I would willingly toss myself upon the sword of injustice to protect the cause and suffer delicious torture at his hands.”
Just the thought of his hot touch and his wicked control raised goose bumps along her flesh. She could feel his mouth against her neck, her breasts, his hands holding her, pinning her against the wall with the whole of his body. All that power in him held in check by his need to taste her surrender. Heaven help her, she wanted to submit.
In the same breath, she wanted him to take charge the way she always imagined Overlord would. His strength would overwhelm her until she had no choice but to surrender to him. Then he would do anything he wanted for, well, what could she do against such a powerful man? Her mind wandered off into just how Commander would claim her if she accepted his deal.
“No, no, gotta stay focused here.” She shivered, snuggling farther into the jacket that smelled like him. “I’m trying to treat me for shock.”
She thought the next treatment for shock was to summon aid.
“Yeah-huh. Therein lies the problem.” She giggled deliriously. “I’m hiding from the man who could render aid.”
Looking at her chunky bracelet, she wondered what would happen if she picked the plastimirror off. Would he come, or would he leave her out here to die?
Swirling cream and sugar into his coffee, Michael asked, “H
ow in the Void did we ever become friends?”
“Mutual goals.”
“I wonder if I ever would have stopped working the slave trade if not for you.” Michael rarely thought of that ugly part of his past when script became an end in and of itself. He’d blinded his eyes to anything but acquiring more money. Even the screams of his cargo could not sway him. He just turned the music up louder on the Damn You.
When the smell of misery overpowered him, Michael started drinking. Alcohol made the smell go away, almost made the pain go away. He damn near died in a drunken haze when Duster decided he’d had enough.
“You would have stopped, Michael, eventually. I leapt on board too, remember? I was just as greedy and vicious as you were. We were a brutal team.” Duster peered into his cup as if he could find forgiveness there.
“For six months,” Michael said. “You were the one who called a halt to it. At gunpoint.”
One blurry, drunken day, music blasting over the ship, Michael turned to find Duster standing on the bridge of the Damn You with a McWilliam Sneek clutched in his fist.
At first, Michael laughed, but stopped when Duster cocked the gun. So drunk he could barely stand, Michael gave up without a fight, and Duster took over the Damn You without a struggle.
Duster tied Michael to the pilot chair, let the slaves go, and escaped with Diane, who later turned on him.
After Michael sobered up and freed himself, he saved Duster from the shuttle Diane abandoned him in, and they agreed to smuggle books. Michael ended up selling the Damn You to a Runner named Foster Nash, the man and the ship that dragged Mary before him. Mary had a knack for making everything in his life loop back.
“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” Duster said. “Not after I saw what we were really doing to women like Diane. Eighteen years old and sold into slavery by her own father, for what? A paltry bit of script so he could drink his pathetic life away?”
Diane would have compelled Michael if he hadn’t been drunk all the time. Diane came from a home as rotten as his. His father had been an abusive gambler with a taste for floozies. After almost beating his father to death, Michael left home at fifteen and never looked back, not until Diane forced him to look back. As much as he wanted to amass a fortune, he couldn’t do it by someone else’s misery. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it for six months. Michael became an ex-slaver turned viciously against slavery.
“How could you let Diane go?” Michael asked, even though he feared the answer.
“She didn’t love me,” Duster said with resigned acceptance. “I loved her, but she didn’t feel the same, and try as I might, I couldn’t make her love me.” Biting his lip, he tapped the map still spread on the desk. “You might want to give some serious thought to that notion before we find Mary.”
“You don’t think she could ever love me.” Michael voiced his own greatest fear as a simple statement, but he felt dead inside as soon as the words left his lips. Darkness filled him and he feared no amount of good works would ever light the void in his soul.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to.” Michael closed his eyes for a moment. “What woman in her right mind could ever love a man who’s done the horrible things I have?” He grew weary of looking into the mirror Mary held up to him.
“I’m not saying that either,” Duster said. “People change. You changed. People in love forgive an awful lot, but you can’t make Mary love you. You could keep her here for the rest of her life, and it still wouldn’t make her fall in love with you.”
That simple truth had driven more of his actions than everything else combined. Michael tried to convince himself he only wanted her to desire him when he actually wanted to smell that lovely scent of unconditional love on her.
“But how the hell can I just let her go?”
“If you love her, you will.” Duster spoke the words as a simple yet profound truth.
“Is this a variation on a theme?” Michael asked flippantly. “Not the ‘I told you so’ speech, but the ‘if you really loved her’ speech?”
“Give Mary a load of script and send her on her wily bandit way,” Duster said. “Let her do whatever it is she has to do. If she loves you, she’ll come back.”
“Risky.”
“Sure.” Duster nodded. “Matters of the heart usually are.”
Chapter Seventeen
Picking at the plastimirror on her bracelet, Mary struggled to keep rising panic at bay. No matter how hard she pulled, the damn stuff wouldn’t come off. She tried to jam a stick under an edge, but she couldn’t get the mirror to go pliable again.
Somehow, the plastimirror bonded to the plastimetal. She tried bashing her bracelet with a rock and ended up with a bleeding wrist for her trouble. It was too hard to pick off, but not hard enough to shatter. If she couldn’t get the mirror off the bracelet, there wouldn’t be a way for Commander to find her.
She raised her wrist to her mouth, sucking blood away from the scratch to see how deep was the cut. The copper taste caused bile to rise in her throat, and she swallowed several times to keep from throwing up.
It vexed her that her plan to escape had worked far too well. Everything would have gone smoothly if not for one massive snag—breaking her stupid foot. She hated to admit it, but she desperately needed help.
Bleary-eyed, she looked down at her throbbing ankle. In the double half moonlight, her foot looked as if a black beast had swallowed her whole foot and was making its ponderous way up her leg. Broken bones must have cut open an artery, and it bled inside her flesh, filling the surrounding tissue.
If she didn’t figure something out, she would die, and she didn’t want to die. Certainly not on a planet she didn’t know the name of, brought here by a man she didn’t know the name of. Icing on the cake, she sure as spit didn’t want to die without knowing her own name, her real name.
A frantic, burbling laugh rose in her throat. Given the scope of her twisted, tragic life, it seemed fitting her death would be just as screwed up and just as anonymous as her birth.
She always imagined she’d perish in a flaming burst of glory, fighting off the IWOG as they tried to invade her world. The Void had a cruel sense of humor to let her die like this. Really cruel, considering her death would be her own damn fault.
“If I could have one wish before I go, I’d like to meet Overlord just once. Just to see what he looks like.”
Would he be as sexy as Commander? Well, no man should be that sexy. Seemed damn near appalling that one man got not only seconds, but thirds and fourths, when it came to sex appeal. For what he’d been given, she imagined at least four men running around the Void so ugly not even their own mothers could stand to look at them.
“Maybe that’s why my mother abandoned me.” She wondered if she’d been a painfully ugly baby. Or maybe she’d been too mouthy even then, crying and wailing to the point she drove her own mother away. “Most folks can’t stand me after five minutes.”
She tried to keep her mind focused, tried to keep herself awake, but she drifted in and out of consciousness. Dreams of making love with Overlord wearing Commander’s face made her body hot despite the chill night. Then pain ripped through her, waking her up. If nothing else, she had to move. No way would they find her hidden by all these bushes.
Pulling on a reserve of strength she didn’t know she had, she sat up, fought off insistent waves of nausea, then crab-walked, dragging her butt down the hill. Holding her injured foot high, she sweated in the chill night as she scrabbled down the sharp, rock-strewn dirt. Damp air laced with the pungent smell of the gray-green scrub brushes filled her nose.
Passing out, waking, moving foot by foot, she finally made it to within a few yards of the electric fence around the tarmac. Bruised and bloody, her hands felt pampered by the smooth gravel around the fence.
She glared at the pounding pain of her foot. “What now, O brilliant brain?”
She had to find a way to attract attention and consider
ed screaming, but she didn’t have much strength left. Without any guards patrolling the area, bellowing would be a pointless waste of energy. Throwing something against the fence wouldn’t do any good, either. She had to find a way to short it out.
“All those ships, just sitting there. What I wouldn’t give to be in one right now.” Once home, she would warn Emmet and they would run. “Gotta get back over that fence first.”
Racking her brain, she took stock of her meager possessions. Cotton bra, panties, homespun shirt, pants, one leather boot, one wool sock, a leather jacket with a wad of torn silk lining in the pocket, one orange, a hunk of smelly cheese and a gem-encrusted platinum compact.
She knew if she touched the fence, that would bring them running. “To find my charred corpse hanging off it.” She shivered and shook her head. “I’d like to be alive when they show up.” Conflicting thoughts of escaping, yet needing help, muddled her mind. Fight or flight? She couldn’t remember.
Shock. I’m in shock.
But she couldn’t remember why that mattered. Something about being in her right mind. Something like that. Right mind, left mind. She shook her head and forced herself to focus on how to set off the fence without touching it.
Her brain swam with confusion, and she couldn’t fight the nausea any longer. Turning her head, she vomited. Up came the romantic dinner Commander had fed her earlier. Chunks of half-digested food sparkled in the light of two half-moons.
Thank the stars he wasn’t here.
The thought jarred her. Didn’t she want him here? Him who? Commander. No, Overlord. Her mind spun off again with perplexing confusion as she frowned at the puddle.
Wet. Something wet tossed into the electric fence. Wet metal. She didn’t have anything metallic other than the compact, but it had too many gems to give her a good surface area.
Stuffing her hands into the jacket, she flopped on her back, too exhausted to even move away from her own puddle of puke.
Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 Page 14