by H. E. Trent
“Why the hell would you do that? Come here, I mean.”
Luke shrugged and pinned his gaze on the stars ahead. “You ever just do something because you have to? You can’t come up with a single logical reason for why you should entangle yourself, but you can’t sleep until you commit to it.”
“Maybe.”
“I guess that was me with Jekh, you know? I didn’t have anything on Earth holding me back, and out here, I can always go farther.” He leaned across the aisle again, giving Owen’s arm a lighter punch. “Same with you, right? You gotta go forward, but you gotta go forward better.”
“And you’re going to help me?”
“Yeah.” Luke crossed his arms over his chest and let his eyelids drift shut. “I’m gonna tell Court I’m building myself a little bachelor pad on her farm the exact distance from the hunter’s cottage that my folks’ place is from your folks’ place back in Boston. I’m gonna find myself a job of some sort—you know, I hear they’re always on the lookout for peacekeepers in Little Gitano—and I’m gonna keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t fuck up.”
Eyes closed, Luke drummed his fingers against the sides of his arms, and Owen just stared.
They’d never had a particularly sentimental sort of relationship. They didn’t even discuss the women they’d shared in overly flattering terms, so Owen was at a loss as to how to participate in the conversation Luke had broached. Instinctually, he knew that laughing it off and changing the subject would have been not only rude, but also hurtful. Luke had said everything that was on his heart, and—hard as it was—Owen could do the same in his own, emotionally stunted way.
“What kind of adventures do you think we’ll have on that rock, huh? You think Granddad will ever get to go home?”
Luke snorted. “Oh, hell. He’ll get home. And if anyone can find trouble to get into, it’ll be a McGarry.”
“A McGarry with a Cipriani lookout. And by lookout I mean mastermind.”
“You think Ais’ll let you out of the house?”
Owen twined his fingers behind his head and hoped such an argument would occur, because if it did, it’d mean that everything was normal, she was safe, and that he hadn’t fucked up yet.
“If I were her, I probably wouldn’t let me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ais lay with her head curled onto Erin’s lap, and stared at the back of Alex’s dark head as he piloted the flyer.
Her brother. Half-brother, anyway. He had some sort of plot to whisk her to Earth, and she was trying to understand, but no one seemed to be asking the right questions. She couldn’t figure out which ones she should have been asking, only that there was some information missing.
She didn’t know what the time was or where they were, but the sun had gone down, and her stomach was growling.
Erin smoothed a hand over Ais’s hair and leaned toward Courtney, who—even after hours of flying—was still watching Reg with hawkish attention.
He was tied to the chair, gagged, and blindfolded, so he probably wasn’t the one who needed monitoring. Courtney had a dangerous glint in her eyes that hinted that given time, space, and minimal amount of impetus, she’d kill the man.
Erin tapped Courtney’s wrist.
Courtney looked down, whispered, “Oh,” and then turned the COM band over to face upward. She and Erin had been sending slowly typed text messages to Headron and Murki for the better part of the flight. They weren’t too far behind, and were being careful to stay in Alex’s blind spot.
“How’s your arm?” Courtney asked lightly as she tapped in a message with her index finger.
“Hurts,” Ais said. Erin had used the flyer’s med kit to disinfect the wound and had managed to excise the bullet from the flesh. She’d been a paramedic on Earth and had the know-how, but had admitted she didn’t like nursing people she knew. The pressure was higher. Ais had thought she’d worried for nothing, though. She’d done a fine job.
“Worse than before, better than before, or about the same?”
Ais sighed. “Little better. Still hurts.”
“Yeah. The wound is pretty vicious, but I always say it’s better to feel the pain than to not be able to feel anything.”
“I just don’t understand how any rational person could think the best possible plan would be to shoot a fucking hole through a window and then put a bullet into a lady,” Courtney said.
Reg grunted some response.
Before Courtney could stand, Erin grabbed her by the sleeve of her dress.
“I’ll deal with him,” Alex said from the front.
“You keep saying that,” Courtney said, “but, sorry, I don’t trust you. I don’t care who you are or who you’re related to.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Land this flyer so I can dig a six-foot hole for him now?”
“That’d be a good start.”
Reg grunted again and writhed in his bindings.
Ais hoped he chafed. She hoped the rope dug into his flesh and that the skin festered from infection.
“Got a murderous streak, do you?” Alex asked her.
“Don’t take that sanctimonious tone with me,” Courtney said. “You live the life I have, and guys like you all start to look the same and sound the same.”
“And what the hell do you think you know about me, huh?” Alex turned his seat around and, furrowing his brow, tucked his hair behind his ears. Dark hair, like Ais’s. No signs of red, though. He was perfectly human.
“I know guys like you have made my family miserable for about twenty years,” Courtney said.
He turned his hands over, and shrugged. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“But your father did,” Erin said. She stopped rubbing Ais’s hair. “Hauge. We know that name.”
“I’m sure you know lots of them, but why would you assume you know me?”
“You’re here, aren’t you? Capitalizing on people’s hurt and loss like a goddamned ghoul.”
“Says the woman who’s obviously integrated quite well with the same people. Who’s really the user here?”
“I didn’t come here for this,” Erin said. “I didn’t come here to stay, but a couple of guys decided to keep me. They chose to welcome me into their fold, and I’m not going to continue to insult them by refusing the kind offer. Like my grandfather, I’ll do the best I can to keep people like you off this planet so the people who belong here can go back to living life as they used to.”
“You keep saying people like me, and you have no idea what that means.”
“You keep deflecting,” Courtney said. “You’re not saying shit.”
Alex cut his gaze toward Reg and, sneering, stood. In a flash, Reg was slumping in his seat, passed out, and Alex was shaking out the fist that had landed on the side of the bound man’s head. “You were saying?” Alex said.
Courtney and Erin shared a look.
Sighing, Alex paced in the small area behind the pilot’s seat, hunching a bit. The vehicle had certainly been built to accommodate the height of the typical Jekhan male. Alex wasn’t quite that tall, but pacing probably hadn’t been one of the intended uses of the space. “You don’t know what my life is like,” he said after a minute of that useless walking. “I didn’t want to come to this place.”
“Yet here you are,” Courtney said.
“Yeah, as are you.” He walked over and knelt in front of Erin—thankfully a couple of feet back. Ais wasn’t ready for him to get too close. Brother or not, she didn’t know him. “I’m trying to get off the planet. Isn’t that what you want for men like me?”
“But you’re trying to take Ais with you.”
“Isn’t that the sane, rational thing? If you’re trying to get the hell back to Earth, you’d take your sister and run? I would have left months ago if it hadn’t been for my father sending me to find her.”
“Sorry if I don’t trust your father’s motives. He’s got a lot of money invested in this place. His money has he
lped cause the displacement of millions of Jekhans and countless deaths.”
“My father is a man who hasn’t handled his own affairs since I was three. Not that this should endear him to you at all, but he doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on here. He’s got aides and consultants. People tell him what things to sign and he signs them.”
“You’re right,” Erin said. “That doesn’t endear him to me in the slightest bit.”
“Under my counsel, he cut funds three years ago.”
“Yeah? So why are you still here?”
“Not still here. I haven’t been here continuously. I had no intention of coming back, but then he found that message and I didn’t have a choice.”
“What message?” Courtney asked.
Alex glanced over his shoulder, seemingly at Reg, who was still slumped over. If he were listening, he was doing a very good job of pretending to be unconscious.
“Because my father doesn’t handle his own affairs, he overlooked the message longer than I want to admit. He found it while preparing for some state event and nearly caused a scene in front of a gathering of various European princes and dukes. He’d found a small tablet.” Alex held up one of his large hands and traced an invisible rectangle around his palm. “About that big. He’d thought the message was a scam and demanded to know who put it in his pocket. None of his servants would confess to doing the job.”
“What was…in the tablet?” Ais asked.
Alex furrowed his brow again. “Pictures. Medical information. Personal things that no one outside the family could have known, but they got it.”
“Who?”
“The Jekhans, we thought at first, and he sent me here to raise hell, but the Jekhans weren’t to blame, were they? It took me weeks on-planet to figure out that the Tyneali were to blame. They had made you and others like you. Pawns.”
Ais sat up slowly. “I…don’t understand.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know the extent of what they did, but I can count five men in Father’s extended family who got similar messages all with different pictures, different information.”
“What are you telling us?” Courtney asked. “That…these guys created hybrids like Ais in the lab to—”
He put up his hand, silencing her. “I don’t care what their motives were. They violated men who didn’t even know they had been, took their sperm, and then planted hostile little seeds of doubt about the Jekhans long before they arrived on your planet. I can tell you Ais’s exact birthdate down to the minute, and I guarantee you that she was born before the Jekhans arrived. We believed the Jekhans had made women like her to blend in and be the perfect spies, but that’s not it at all. The Tyneali made women like her. They knew the Jekhans were going to visit you.”
Courtney pounded the seat of her bench. “The Jekhans had been planning those diplomatic convoys for twenty years before they left for Earth. The Tyneali didn’t want the Jekhans to go home—or back to Earth, rather—did they?”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s the whole story. I haven’t cared to further investigate.”
“Well, someone needs to find out,” Erin said. “That probably has a lot to do with the Tyneali skirmish on the Beshni farm, and I gotta say, I don’t believe all the Tyneali are working on the same team.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked.
“There are countless stories of the Tyneali still quietly visiting Jekh to deliver supplies, even in Little Gitano. Perhaps they abandoned their experiment on the planet, but that doesn’t mean they don’t pay attention. And maybe there are some who are tapping the population for their own gains.”
“Unsanctioned gains.” Alex rubbed his chin.
Court sighed. “I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next girl, but right now, what the Tyneali had or have planned doesn’t concern me as much as where this flyer is going and when the hell you’re going to let us out.”
“I already told you.” Alex stood and turned toward the sound of Reg’s pathetic groaning. “I have a ship waiting, and it’s going to Earth.”
“You’re not putting her on that ship.”
“I don’t think that’s your call.”
“Oh, I’d say it is. I don’t purport to be Ais’s mouthpiece, but I’m fairly sure that if Ais had any intention of visiting Earth, she’d do so on her on volition and not under duress.”
“She’ll be safer on Earth.”
“Says who?”
Alex pushed up an eyebrow. “The Tyneali, perhaps, and any other scoundrels who’d want her?” He shoved the sole of his boot against one of Reg’s knees.
“Fuck you,” Reg whispered.
Courtney crossed her arms atop her round belly and canted her head. “What about all the other little experiments like Ais? Do you have seats waiting on your ship for them, too?”
“If their fathers aren’t concerned about them, why should I be?”
“Perhaps because that’s the right thing to do?” Erin said. “I know thinking outside your little bubble is hard for guys with top-tier privilege like you. Also, have you stopped to think about how their mothers might feel, assuming they’re alive?”
Alex stopped pacing.
“What do you know about her?” Courtney asked.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jumpsuit and stared toward the front of the ship.
“Was that in your data packet? Her name and maybe a picture? Did they tell you whether she was alive or dead? Because Ais has never met her. When she came to us, she wasn’t so sure she even had parents.”
His shoulders rose and fell with his deep breathing, but still, he didn’t turn. “My father wants Ais.”
“And does your mother want her, too? How does Mrs. Hauge feel about her husband’s hybrid daughter?”
There was a level of hostility in Courtney’s tone Ais had never heard from her before, at least not directed to anyone she was in the same room with. Ais was feeling somewhat torn. She trusted Courtney and Erin and knew they were asking all the right questions, but she was starting to pity Alex, too. Carrying out the wishes of someone so clueless and detached from the drama couldn’t have been so simple, especially if that someone was unyielding and simply wanted what he wanted.”
“Does she know?” Ais asked softly.
Alex shook his head. “No. She doesn’t.”
“And you thought taking Ais to your home and trussing her up as a long-lost aristocrat would be a good idea?” Erin asked.
“This wasn’t my idea, remember?” He turned then, and the look on his face was haunting. “He told me to get her. I figured I’d think of the right words to say to my mother by the time I got back to Earth, or that my father would have come up with some.”
Ais shook her head, and then hung it. “I won’t go.”
“You have to.”
“No. I won’t. Can’t be there. Have to be here.”
“Even when here is the worst possible place for you?”
“Not worst. Owen is here.” Or would be, she hoped, and sooner rather than later. She wanted to be in his arms and held tight—wanted to be promised that everything would be fine. She wouldn’t believe anyone else. Owen didn’t shelter her from the truth.
“Who the hell is Owen?” Alex asked.
“Mine,” she said softly. “He’s…mine.”
Understanding seemed to dawn slowly on Alex’s face. “Your…” He gave his head a slight shake and drew in a breath “Well, he’ll just have to follow you to Earth.”
“No. I’ll stay here with Erin and Courtney and Owen, and my baby. McGarrys, not…Hauges.”
His brow furrowed deeper and bright eyes darkened. Then he turned to Reg.
Still blindfolded, Reg wasn’t turned Alex’s way, but that that didn’t matter. His voice was barely-restrained growl. “You shot a pregnant woman?”
Reg’s eyebrows slanted just before Alex hit him so hard that there was blood on the flyer’s floor.
Courtney calmly studi
ed her nails. “That’ll probably leave a mark. Poor baby.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
At Salehi’s gesturing, Owen leaned in closer to Salehi in the dark corner of the establishment.
Salehi whispered, “The others’ll be here soon, but I want to go ahead and see what’s in there before they dock.”
“What’s wrong? Worried there’ll be a shoot-out or something?” Owen muttered, glancing around the festering diner on the station and pulling his hat down farther to disguise his brow. The floors were slick and greasy, the metal walls covered with grime, and none of the trays coming out of the kitchen appeared to have been washed—much less sanitized—in quite some time. Fortunately, they weren’t planning on eating.
Owen was nursing some sort of alcoholic beverage that smelled strong enough to strip paint—not drinking it, just dribbling the liquid on the floor occasionally whenever the blue-tongued, nostril-less bartender wasn’t looking.
Luke sidled up behind Owen’s chair and murmured, “Marco just pinged me on the COM. He’s down there now by the market. The slavers don’t look like they’re in such an eager hurry to move their wares, but we shouldn’t linger here.”
“They’re all human, right?” Salehi asked. “The guys?”
“All but one. Don’t know what the other is, and I guess Marco didn’t see fit to describe him. He’s kinda just sitting around, real bored-like, you know? Trying not to be suspicious and is acting like he does this every day. No one’s giving him a second look.”
“Marco blending in for a change?” Owen snorted. Marco was a huge dude. He was the kind of guy who people hated having live in the apartment upstairs because there was no such thing as quiet walking for a man who could probably make an aircraft carrier lean to one side.
“He probably looks like everyone else over there,” Salehi whispered. “Especially if they’re Terran rejects from Jekh. Those folks didn’t recruit scrawny guys.”
“Are they still all right?” Owen asked. “The women over there, I mean.”