“She does,” he answered. “But right now, she’s angry with me. She’ll get over it.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
He didn’t want to believe that would happen so he dismissed the question. “Are you hungry?”
Knowing the subject was closed and now off limits, Dorrie sighed with exasperation. “Aye, Reaper, but not for food.”
Cree chuckled. “Slut,” he teased and turned to his back. He stretched then sat up, wincing as his hand encountered the empty vac-syringe of triso he’d used during the night.
Dorrie pushed herself up in the bed and watched him as he padded barefoot to the bathroom and opened the door. “Where are we, anyway?”
“For lack of a better word, my home,” he answered. “At least for the time being.”
She frowned as she took in the tawdry surroundings. Without having to ask, she knew the room had to be in a rundown motel. The vinyl chair sitting askew of the round Formica table, the wall hung double dresser and nightstands were a dead giveaway.
“Either you enjoy subjecting yourself to such morbid digs or you didn’t have much money last night.”
“I took all the money you had in your purse to pay for these delightful accommodations, my love.”
Dorrie grunted. “I should have known.” She swung her legs off the mattress. “So I guess that means we don’t have any money for breakfast, huh?”
“Guess not,” he replied as he walked to the chair and sat down to pull on his boots.
“You’re not seriously considering staying here, are you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“Aye, you do. You’re going home with me,” she challenged, expecting him to refuse.
“Good,” he said, surprising her. “I was hoping you’d say that.” Then he frowned. “Will McGregor mind?”
Dorrie turned as she was walking into the bathroom and looked at him. “Raine moved out yesterday afternoon,” she told him. “I guess he got tired of me or else he’s found a Terran woman who is titillated by his boyish charms.”
“And you’re not,” he stated.
“He’s a boy,” Dorrie said. “I prefer men.” She winked then walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
Cree sat there for a moment, staring at the worn carpet, disgusted by the smell of the place and the offensive clash of colors and fabrics.
“Have I been reduced to this?” he asked softly, remembering the elite accommodations he had taken for granted aboard FSK-14. His yearly credits could have purchased outright a dozen such dilapidated establishments such as this.
On his world, he had been at the apex of his class. He had been respected, feared, catered to at every turn. His had been an elite existence where nothing was denied and everything provided. His every wish had been fulfilled. But now....
He closed his eyes and hung his head. His heart ached and he was tired to the very marrow of his bones. He felt useless, worthless on Bridget’s world and without her he felt lost. She was his guiding star, his reason for living, and at the moment, she wanted nothing to do with him. He wondered how long it would be before her anger turned to apathy then slipped into dislike. He knew he had to make her understand why he could not bond with their son as she wanted him to.
“You ready, Reaper?” Dorrie asked.
He looked up. This woman, he thought as he came to his feet, would do anything he asked. She would care for him, she would look after him, and she would love him if he encouraged it. At the moment, her interest in him was more sexual than spiritual and he had to be very careful he did not allow her feelings for him to become anything more than physical desire.
“Aye, Lady,” he whispered, avoiding looking at her open face.
Kamerone Cree would have been stunned to know that Dorrie Burkhart had fallen in love with him the first time she saw him on FSK-14. And though the incident had such little meaning for him that he had dismissed it from his mind, she had once flirted with him as they passed in the corridor. Since he had ignored her, she’d turned her love at first sight to sarcasm when he was delivered into her hands in the Be-Mod 9 unit.
There was a light mist falling as Cree opened the door for her and Dorrie walked out of the motel room. She stared at her car-one wheel over the curb, the vehicle angled into the parking slot so that it took up three spaces-and turned to him. “You are a piss-poor driver, Reaper.”
Cree shrugged. “But give me a starcruiser and I can conquer the universe.”
Dorrie snorted and held out her hand. “Give me the keys.”
“I’ll drive,” he responded, fishing the keys from his jacket pocket and dangling them on his forefinger.
“No, you won’t!” She snatched the keys. “I’d like to live to see my next birthday.”
“Picky, picky, picky.”
“Shut up,” she ordered, but their eyes met and they smiled at one another.
To one of them, the smile was an easy giving of trust.
But to the other, it was bestowed with deepening love.
Chapter Nineteen
Major Akkadia Kahmal paced the floor of the conference room with a heavy scowl in place. For three days now, ever since they had come so close to capturing the Reaper, the team had been plotting scenario after scenario and none of the suggestions had been deemed worthy of an attempt.
With the cloaking device in place, the long-range starcruiser could not be picked up by the primitive Terran radar. But each day they were forced to cool their heels in orbit, was one less day they had before obtaining their goal: the capture and, ultimately, the execution of Kamerone Cree.
“He has become more cautious,” Lieutenant Melankhoia Chanz reminded her fellow team members. “We must bide our time until he relaxes his guard.”
“Something he will not do,” said Lieutenant Augeania Deon.
“We must find a way to make him,” suggested Cirolia Sern.
“Where is he now?” asked Thalia Chakai, the Captain of the LRSC Aluvial.
“Living with the whore, Burkhart,” replied Melankhoia.
Akkadia stopped pacing and turned to the others. “Does his woman know this?”
“We do not believe she does,” Cirolia answered.
The leader of the Strike Force came to the conference table around which sat the other four members of her team, the Captain of the ship, and the lone Healer who had accompanied them from Amazeen, and braced her fists on the tabletop.
“Then she should be told immediately,” Akkadia recommended.
“Why is this important?” the Captain asked.
Akkadia’s smile was lethal. “Because she will be as angry about her mate living with that one as the Reaper was angry about Rhye.”
“Jealousy.” said Cirolia.
“Aye,” Akkadia agreed. “We’ll use the green-eyed monster, as the Terrans call it, to catch the red-eyed Dearg Duls!”
Captain Chakai could not see the merit in making the Terran woman jealous, but that didn’t matter. At this point, she would agree to anything that might garner them the Reaper’s capture.
“Do what needs doing,” the Captain ordered, “but be quick about it. I wish to leave this godsforsaken part of the universe before the next solar storm forces us to retreat to the dark side of their moon. We dare not run into his cybot.”
The Chalean Healer who had accompanied the Amazeen to Terra said nothing. Her input was not necessary. All she need do was sit back and wait until the Reaper was delivered into her hands. Once that was accomplished, she would make the Dearg Duls rue the day he was ever conceived.
The elevator doors shushed open and a tall, striking woman in a long white lab coat stepped on board. She nodded at Bridget then punched the fifth floor button. As the doors closed and the cage began to rise, the woman turned to Bridget. “You’re Dr. Dunne aren’t you?” she asked in a thick foreign accent.
Bridget smiled. “Yes, I am.”
“Hi,” the tall woman greeted Bridget and held out her hand. “I�
�m Hestia Theodopalys, the new Ob-Gyn in town.”
“Welcome to Albany, Dr. Theodopalys. How do you like it so far?”
“Please,” the woman asked, her eyes sparkling. “Call me Hestia.”
“All right, Hestia.”
“It is nothing like my native Greece, but I am sure it will grow on me.”
Bridget laughed. “Albany has a way of doing that.”
“Perhaps you can help me. I am looking for a woman named Dorrie Burkhart. Do you know her?”
Bridget nodded. “She was my assistant up until a few days ago, then she quit to take a job at Dougherty General.”
“Ah,” Hestia drawled. “Perhaps that is why I did not find her here.”
“May I ask why you’re looking for her?” Bridget asked, hating herself for being nosy, but anything that concerned any of the women who had accompanied her from Rysalia was important to Beryla.
“ I heard she might be moving out of her apartment and since I am looking for a place to rent, I thought perhaps I might-what is the American word? Sublet?-from her.”
“I didn’t know she was looking for a new place.”
“Perhaps she isn’t, but the nurse who mentioned this to me said Ms. Burkhart and her friend, Kamerone, would-”
“What?” Bridget gasped, her eyes widening. “Don’t you mean Raine? Raine McGregor?”
Akkadia Kahmal, a.k.a. Dr. Hestia Theodopalys, pretended to think. “No, I am sure it was Kamerone. Kamerone Cree. I remember the name because I know a man named Khiershon Cree back home.”
A shaft of hurt spiked through Bridget’s heart and she slumped against the wall. “I think you’re mistaken,” she said, her gaze searching the floor.
The tall woman smiled. “I don’t believe so, but I could be.”
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and the doors opened.
“Dougherty General?”
Bridget looked up. “Yes,” she said, unaware her eyes were dark with anger.
Akkadia Kahmal nodded. She had accomplished what she had beamed down to do. As the doors of the elevator closed, she wondered how long it would take Bridget Dunne to drive to the rival hospital to confront the whore.
It took Bridget roughly seven minutes to leave Albany Memorial, get into her car and drive to the other hospital. It took her another three minutes to find out in which department Dorrie Burkhart worked and another two minutes to track the woman down. Finding her standing outside a patient’s room, flirting with an orderly, did nothing to improve Bridget’s rapidly escalating temper.
“I want to talk to you!”
Dorrie stiffened at the tone and turned away from the good-looking orderly. Her hands tightened on the tray of vials she was holding. “About what, Doctor?”
Bridget was clenching her fists in an effort to keep her voice down. “Is he staying at your place?”
“Who?”
“My gods-be-damned husband, that’s who!”
“I wasn’t aware that you were married, Dr. Dunne,” Dorrie drawled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were just living with Captain Cree, were you not?”
Bridget took a step closer to Dorrie and lowered her voice. “Don’t give me any of your crap, Burkhart. Is he staying with you or not?”
The blond woman’s eyebrows shot up. “He had to stay somewhere after you kicked him out. Where did you expect the man to go?”
She couldn’t believe that Kamerone would turn to Dorrie. “Are you telling me he is with you?”
The right side of Dorrie’s mouth cocked upward. “What you’re really asking is have we slept together, isn’t it, Doctor Dunne?”
Bridget shook her head. “I know damned well he hasn’t-”
“As a matter of fact, we have,” Dorrie interrupted. Her smile was nasty. “Slept together, that is.”
Bridget blinked. Dorrie Burkhart was a lot of things, but a liar she was not. Hearing her admit to having been to bed with Kamerone hurt more than Bridget was able to bear. Without another word, she turned and headed back down the hallway.
“Just remember,” Dorrie called to her over the ringing of the telephone at the nurses’ desk. “You threw him out, Bridget!”
The Reaper’s lady turned and looked back at Dorrie. “You,” she said, her voice low and fierce, “are a whore, Dorrie Burkhart.”
“Never claimed to be anything else,” Dorrie admitted and turned back to the orderly who was grinning from ear to ear.
Head Nurse Mary Ellen Lanier knew Dr. Dunne only in passing and had met the lab technician just a few hours earlier; she didn’t like either one. Having heard the conversation between them, Mary Ellen knew the two women were enemies and fighting over a man. More than likely it was the man she had just put on hold. Always eager to cause trouble for any doctor she could, the head nurse spoke loud enough for Bridget Dunne to hear.
“Miss Burkhart, your roommate is waiting for you in the cafeteria. He said he’d buy you lunch if you’d like.”
Bridget snapped her head around, found Dorrie’s challenging eyes mocking her and could have scratched those gas-flame orbs from Burkhart’s bleached blond head. As it was, the elevator doors opened and she stepped inside, peripherally aware of Dorrie running toward her.
Mary Ellen saw the doors closing, watched with glee as Burkhart skidded to a stop before plowing into the stainless steel panels, and hooted as the lab tech shouted. “Leave him alone, Bridget!”
Dorrie pounded on the doors then spun around and ran for the stairs. The last thing she wanted was for Kamerone to go back to Bridget.
The cafeteria was nearly empty as Cree sat nursing a glass of iced tea. His third tuna sandwich had long since lost its appeal and he shoved it aside in lieu of consuming eight bags of corn chips, four candy bars, and two fat Kosher pickles. He wasn’t feeling well and suspected it was the kosher dill pickle he’d eaten for dessert that had caused his indigestion.
At the moment Bridget Dunne entered the cafeteria, he was stretching his leg out to get change from his pocket to buy some sherbet to settle his stomach. As he looked down at his palm, counting the coins, he was completely unaware of the advancing virago that was the love of his life.
“You son of a bitch!” Bridget hissed.
Cree jerked his head up in time to have Bridget knock the money from his hand. Coins flew across the terrazzo floor and rolled.
“How could you, Cree?”
The Reaper stared up at her, guilt staining his cheeks for he knew he was where he should not be with a woman he knew he should not be anywhere near.
“Let me explain...” he began, but the stinging slap that rocked his head to one side had enough strength in it to nearly unseat him.
“I trusted you!” Bridget shouted.
There were four other people in the cafeteria, all having stopped what they were doing to stare at the commotion. Each of them turned to the woman who came running into the cafeteria, the light of battle blazing in her blue eyes.
“Leave him alone, Dunne!” Dorrie ordered.
Cree’s eyes widened when he saw Dorrie and he groaned. “Merciful Alel.”
“You disease-ridden slut! If you don’t stay away from my husband...”
“He isn’t yours, Dunne!” Dorrie snarled, cutting her off. “I’ve claimed him!”
Bridget shrieked at that pronouncement. “I’ll pull every strand of that cheap dye job out of your head, you bitch!”
“Come ahead and try, you flat-chested hag!”
“ Arghhhhh! ”
Before the two women could leap at one another, Cree shot up from his chair like a rocket and grabbed both of them, one with each hand, trying his best to keep them apart. But even with his superior Reaper strength, it proved to be quite a task. Hissing and spitting like two enraged cats, the women were clawing at each other’s arms, trying to kick one another, and shrieking like banshees.
“Shut up!” he yelled, but neither woman heard him.
So engrossed in the cat fight taking place in the center of th
e cafeteria, no one noticed the soft pulse of light near the entrance and the sudden appearance of five very tall, very strong-looking women in gray jumpsuits.
Bridget’s hands were curled into claws as she tried her best to grab Dorrie’s thick blond braid. Her intention was to snatch the bitch baldheaded. But Cree kept swinging them in opposite directions to keep them apart and it finally occurred to her that he was the only obstacle in the way of her beating the crap out of Burkhart. With that thought firmly entrenched in her infuriated brain, she lashed out with her foot and kicked him as hard as she could behind his right knee, knocking his leg out from under him.
Cree grunted with the pain and pitched sideways, dragging Bridget’s arm with him as he fell, but he let go as soon as he heard her yelp of pain as her arm was wrenched.
On one knee, still gripping Dorrie’s arm, he was relieved to see a stranger rush forward and grab Bridget around the waist to keep her from jumping on Dorrie.
Relieved until he looked up into the unforgiving eyes of the Amazeen woman who had been trailing him for months.
Chapter Twenty
Tylan Kahn had been uneasy all morning. Although his office at GaNetCo, the Georgia Network Co-op, was about 50 miles away in Thomasville, he was getting vibes from Kamerone Cree and the uneasiness was intensifying.
Unable to work until he found out what was troubling the Reaper, Kahn had left his office at 10:45 a.m. and headed north. He was following the intense vibrations like a homing device. Just as the ruckus in the cafeteria began, he was driving into the Dougherty Memorial parking lot, looking for a place to park his sports car. When the air around him begin to throb, he knew what it meant and jumped out of the car-which was still in gear-and ran for the hospital’s side entrance.
Dorrie had gone perfectly still, staring across the room to the stern faces of the tallest women she’d ever seen. Each of the four standing behind the woman whose arm was around Bridget Dunne’s waist, held a weapon aimed at the other people in the cafeteria. Her heart pounding furiously, Dorrie gripped Cree’s arm as he came slowly to his feet.
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