by Susan Kelley
Ben’s superior smirk soured. “Not something I’m likely to tell you. The new papers will be ready this evening. We made some modifications in your room that will make your stay more comfortable. You have a few hours to contemplate how you want this to go. It’s not like I will leave you penniless. I’ll see you can continue to live in your rich, brat style.”
Emma didn’t react to the lie. The papers probably gave Ben complete control of all the Brand assets and named him as the only beneficiary of her will. In a year or so she would suffer an accident and Ben would have it all. “At the end, my mother knew what you were. Your charm wore off like a coat of thin paint. That’s why she changed her will so I would get everything, including majority shares in Hadrason Mining. And now that Hadrason is a convicted felon, he forfeits his shares to me. My father insisted on that clause in their partnership.”
“Your stupid mother only slowed me down. By tomorrow this time, I’ll be the richest man ever.”
“Perhaps.”
“Nemon, escort her to her room. No one goes in not even the maid.” Ben gave Emma a mock bow. “You look like one of those peasant miners yourself, Emma. Why don’t you get a bath and change your clothing? It’s going to be a long day.”
She hated thinking someone like this monster walking beside her had been in her room and among her belongings. But as she trudged in front of Nemon, sympathy rose in her. This poor young man had been turned into a soulless slave by her stepfather and other arrogant men. Had they bred his large size into him or jiggered his pituitary gland to achieve great height and then added hormones to grow all the muscle? Nemon had had no choice in his own destiny, but there could also be no cure if they had cut and sliced around in his brain.
They’d welded bars across her windows and bolted the connecting door to the maid’s room. But her prison had lots of her very own clean clothing and a luxurious bathing room. After Nemon locked her in she hurried to her desk. No paper, no pens or writing material of any kind. Damn.
She searched her wardrobe for a plain white shirt and found one made of synthetic silk that would do. On her makeup table she selected a bright shade of lip paint. Her all-male jailers lacked imagination. She wrote a short message on the shirt. Fine until tomorrow. Help on the way. Vannie injured and with military. Don’t come here.
She recapped the bitty stub of lipstick and then turned out all the lights she’d turned on to brighten the pre-dawn gloom. Two of the windows in her room overlooked the courtyard. She slipped her hands between the new bars and pressed the shirt against the glass.
If Vin lurked out there, he would by spying on the admiral. She feared he’d witnessed Nemon bringing her into the manor. Vin would try and save her. Now that she knew for sure that Ben hadn’t recaptured Vin, she expected her marine would still be on the hunt for his prey. She held the message against the window for a count of five hundred and then hung it among her clothing again where no one would see it.
After drawing a hot bath, she soaked in it for a long time. At least this time Ben had imprisoned her in a comfortable cell. And soon her friends would be free and safe from her stepfather’s games. If only Vin stayed out of it from here on.
* * * *
Vin worried what method they’d used to force Emma to hold the sign up to the window. He’d seen them carry her in and been helpless to stop it. Not even he could take on twenty armed men plus Nemon. He wanted to invade immediately, but Lester needed her alive. So he waited, not patiently, for them to relax their vigilance.
Then the light came on in one of the third story rooms and he saw Emma through the windows using the goggles. After only a few minutes, someone extinguished the light and then Emma held the cloth up to the window with the message.
They wouldn’t have made her do it unless they suspected he watched them. His position no longer was safe and the coming day would make him more visible to an accidental sighting. But it was time to leave anyway. He had a castle to storm.
Chapter Nineteen
Vin paid a visit to a shop he’d noticed on his way to and from the port. This business had better security than many retail stores. He found the energy line leading from the building to the underground conduits for all utilities on the street. He severed one of the major lines so any alarm sounding would be general and not for the specific store he intended to rob.
He shouldered his way through the back door, feeling the urgency of imminent daylight. Sturdy locks hung on every display case but the glass fronting them broke easy enough. Taking only the tools and gadgets he needed as well as a small backpack to carry them in, Vin ran out the back door even as stealthy feet crept down the stairway leading to the sleeping quarters above.
Stealing bothered Vin, but Emma’s life meant more than his ethics. If he survived he would reimburse the owner of the hover and the merchant he’d just made a few coins poorer.
Dawn arrived by inches on this planet but many street lights brightened the area around the castle frontage. Vin took one of his stolen items out of the pack and aimed the heat laser at a selected street lamp. Unlike shooting out a light, overheating one caused the bulb to temporarily shut down to avoid a burnout or fire. He moved as soon as it winked out and used his deep vision goggles to check the position of the roving guards on the other side of the wall. He waited a minute and a half for a gap between two of them. He heated up the wall of the retail building closest to the right corner of the castle wall. The metal structure, made to look like wood, could withstand the temperature rise but the security camera would see only a large blob of heat. It wouldn’t notice the human form passing through its field of view.
He didn’t have time to do anything about sensors on top of the wall so he took a running start and set his hands on the top for only an instant to help him vault over. They might think it a bird or a glitch. Or not when combined with the other things happening in their security perimeter. Once over the wall he used the heat laser to melt the camera’s lens, pleased with the power of the little gadget considering it came from a civilian shop.
As he suspected from his surveillance, the castle walls had been constructed of old fashion masonry, mineral composites shaped to look like real stones. Only the very rich could afford such. Did it belong to Lester? Had he built it with the riches made off Hadrason’s illegal dealings and on the backs of miners treated like slaves?
It didn’t matter now except that the cracks and crevices created by mortaring stones together allowed for easy climbing if one’s fingers were strong enough. Vin’s were. Booted feet approached below and someone spoke into a comm unit about the broken camera.
Vin reached the eaves. He grasped it and swung out dangerously with his legs dangling free while he pulled himself up and over the edge of the roof. Various wings of the sprawling castle jutted their own sharply inclined sections of the roof toward the starlight. The window where he’d spotted Emma on was the only room with bars. His plan counted on there not being alarms on the upper floor windows either.
He jogged across the roof, well back from the edge though he didn’t expect any of the guards to look up. Earlier he’d selected the window he would enter through but he had to do so without alerting the guards below with the breaking of glass. He found the chosen spot and swung down over the eaves. After assuring himself of his grip, he let go with one hand while he wielded the laser again. He used a sharp focused beam that cut through the glass with swift ease. Using his foot to put pressure on the glass, he kept it from falling outward as he finished slicing a rectangular piece from the bottom.
After stuffing the laser behind his belt, Vin set his feet on the narrow window ledge. Letting go of the eaves required more agility than climbing up them had. He once again gripped them with two hands and hung for a moment to rest the arm that had held all his weight for a time. Then he pushed off with his feet, swinging out slightly from the roof. On the return arc of his swing he let go with one hand and reached for the window ledge. He grasped it with just his fingertips and at
the same time let go of the eaves with the other. His body slapped against the wall as he got his other hand on the ledge. He hung there for a few minutes, hearing a guard moving beneath him. Even if the man looked up, he wouldn’t spot Vin in his camouflaged armor.
As soon as the footsteps faded Vin again transferred his weight to one arm and reached through the opening in the glass and unlatched the window. It swung in on silent hinges, pushing aside heavy drapes. He vaulted inside and rolled while pulling out his pistol. He found the room empty of people and furniture. Storage crates sat against one wall. A good place for ingress.
The door to the room opened to a wide hallway that led to an even wider stairwell. He suspected an elevator serviced the upper floors of the castle, but he wouldn’t use such a device that could turn into a trap.
The fake stones comprised the floors and stairs also, formed into artistic patterns. At least he thought he thought they were meant to be artistic though what pleased his eye might not be a true measure of art. He drifted down the curving stairs quieter than the warm draft touching his face. He paused at the next floor’s landing. He heard movement to the left, the direction of Emma’s room.
Vin went the other direction, suspecting from the shape of the building that the hallway formed a rectangle with rooms both inside and outside it. He tried one of the doors on the interior wall. It opened to storage as did the next. He approached Emma’s room from the rear of the building and hoped the guard he’d heard moving about would watch the front.
He came to the last corner separating him from Emma’s hallway and pulled the small mirror he’d stolen from the shop from his pack. Squatting down so it would be below eye level, he angled it so he could see the length of the hall.
One guard, fortunately not Nemon, stood outside Emma’s door. The man walked a few steps and then turned and walked back. Trying to stay awake but his pacing about didn’t help his concentration. Not many men could maintain an alert state in what they thought was a safe environment. Forty feet of open hallway lay between Vin and his target. Even an incompetent sentry might get off an alarm by the time Vin could transverse it. A shout in the quiet house would alert everyone.
No choice. Vin stowed his mirror back in the pack and stood up. He listened to the pacing and timed his charge. His boots made no sound on the stone floor, and the guard died without ever hearing him. A simple lock bolted the door to the frame. A quick search of the guard revealed no key. The heat laser proved itself invaluable as the lock gave way before its beam. He eased the door open and found the room dark behind the drawn drapes.
A large bed sat to the right of the window, neatly made with a fluffy covering except for a small lump in the middle. Something relaxed in Vin’s chest at the same time the sight of how small she looked all alone in the bed gave birth to a need to protect her so fierce a tingle chased its way across his entire body.
He approached her on silent feet, catching the scent of her clean hair and hearing the steady rhythm of her breathing. He looked down at her sleeping and knew he would put aside all his need for vengeance to keep this woman safe.
Mired in his anger and revenge over the last six months, he’d lost track of the prime directive of his life. To protect civilians, innocent and good, like Emma. Like Vannie and Moe. But Moe was dead, and it was his fault. He’d failed Hovel Port. He’d known what kind of man Admiral Ben Lester was and hoped that man would come for Emma. Yet he hadn’t prepared properly. Even this minute he operated without a firm plan of how to lead Emma out of the castle.
Vin touched her shoulder, startling her. She bolted upright, probably unable to see him clearly in the dim light. But she didn’t cry out, instead reaching a hand toward him. “Vin? How did you get in here?”
“We have to go.” The getting out was his concern now.
“Didn’t you see my message?”
“I did.”
“Why did you come?”
Vin saw a pair of sturdy new boots sitting near the foot of the bed. He took her hand and tugged her to the edge of the bed. “I came to get you out of here.” He picked up her boots and handed them to her.
She took them but didn’t put them on. “I sent for help, Vin. If Ben catches you, he’ll have leverage to make me cooperate again.”
“Let’s go.”
“You go. Get out of here and hide somewhere until this over.”
“I’m not leaving you here. You don’t know what the admiral might do to you.”
“I can’t.” Emma caught her trembling lip between her teeth. “Vin, Moe died because of me. Vannie almost died too. I can’t lose another person I care about. Please.”
Vin sorted through her words, understanding the tears she held back for Moe and Vannie but her last statement…. “You care about me?”
Her tears spilled over but her lips curled. Somehow she managed to smile and look sad at the same time. “Yes. Quite a bit.” She rose on her knees and pulled his head toward her. Her kiss asked nothing but seemed like a gift given to him.
He wanted to ask her what it meant, what her words meant, but he didn’t know the right question. So he shoved her boots at her again. “I’m not leaving without you and every minute we spend talking increases our risk of getting caught. Whatever help you sent for can assist you from somewhere outside this castle.”
She smiled for real and took her boots. “Castle?”
The sight of the big bed distracted Vin from his mission for a moment. What would it be like to make love to Emma in the comfortable expanse instead of his narrow cot?
“I’m ready.”
She’d gone to bed fully clothed in a style of attire that muddled his thoughts more than the bed did. He’d seen similar form-fitting clothing on the women engaging in outdoor sporting activities like rock climbing but Emma wore the clinging material in a manner unlike any he remembered seeing. Only when his gaze climbed back up her body and met her amused look did he recall the need to hurry.
Vin opened the door a crack and listened for an entire minute. He heard nothing moving, but something stirred his instincts. He took his mirror out of his pack. Careful to make sure the lamps along the hallway didn’t flash on the mirror, he checked the hall. Nothing in either direction. Nothing except tension so thick he could almost smell it. But they couldn’t linger and wait for a better moment.
He led Emma out of the relative safety of her room. They went the same direction he’d arrived from. Emma gasped when they stepped over the dead guard but she didn’t hesitate as Vin broke into a jog. He kept her behind him as they rounded the corner. The wall along the back of the rectangular hallway held only one door, an unlocked one.
Vin took Emma’s hand and led her into the room he’d considered using to enter the premises before deciding to use the roof. The air in the room, though scented like clean laundry, gave Vin the impression it wasn’t used very often. He tried to raise the window but found it locked. Emma reached around him and fiddled with the latch so it slid up smoothly.
“Are we climbing out this way?” Emma sounded excited, her eyes glittering.
Vin shook his head and put his fingers to his lips. Though floors below them, he heard one of the guards on patrol. He doubted Emma’s arms could make the trip down from this height with only small crannies for her fingers to grip. He took the phosphorous light tube from his back and waited until he heard the guard turn the next corner before igniting it. It flashed and then glowed with a hot, white light. He threw it out the window toward the right so its brightness and heat would capture the interest of the camera in that corner.
He grabbed Emma’s hand and ran back to the hall. They slowed as they approached the wide stairs. Vin heard shouts from two stories down. He led Emma down to the next landing and paused. Voices drifted up, definitely from the ground floor. He took them down another flight.
Ideally the guards would rush to investigate the light tube and he and Emma could walk out the front door, but he couldn’t expect them to fall for that. He turned and
jogged back the right side of the second floor hallway. He started to enter one of the rooms, intending to use the window to go out the opposite side of the castle from the distraction, but Emma stopped him. With a gesture of her head, she directed him to the next door.
Vin went through the door first, finding a small landing and a set of steps leading down. Emma closed the door behind them and complete darkness closed in. Not even Vin could see in the absence of all light.
Emma reached out and touched his arm. She slid her hand down his arm until she found his hand. Her whisper echoed in the hollow space. “This is an emergency exit for family and staff. It leads to the sub-basement and to a tunnel that takes us off grounds. There’s a light switch along the right wall.”
Vin ran his hand along the wall and found it. A dim illumination glowed from low on the wall, lighting only the steps. He started down, keeping hold of Emma’s hand and slowing his pace to match hers. With his other hand he reached out and touched the wall, finding more of the mortared fake stones. No artistic arrangements graced these walls and the bonds between them seemed smooth and level. They passed the door for the first floor and kept going. He wondered if he should use the laser to seal the locks. But doing do would slow their retreat if they needed to return.
The air changed as they hurried down the next flight, becoming cool and damp. When they reached the bottom, Vin saw rows of stores stretching into the distance. Food, canned and dehydrated. Wines in dark bottles took up an entire row to themselves. This even more than the castle above displayed the admiral’s wealth.
“This way.” Emma pointed to the aisle between the wine and shelves of cans.
Vin turned off the lights for the stairs before continuing. He held tight to Emma’s hand and jogged through the pitch dark in the direction she’d indicated. The thick darkness inspired an uncomfortable awareness of the tons of stone over their heads. Vin took out the laser heater he’d tucked in his belt. Estimating they’d reached the end of the row, he slowed down and dropped Emma’s hand. She laid her hand on his shoulder, keeping a contact he appreciated. He blindly made adjustments on the power and intensity of the laser so it wouldn’t be hot and the beam would scatter. It emitted a soft red glow that revealed a solid wall in front of them.