Graham considered, nodding slowly. “Unless she brought them.”
“If they knew enough to send her, they would have just raided us. Why go through the extra step?”
Graham took another look at Jeanell. “Well, if you truly are Jeanell Glenn—”
“I am.”
“Then you’re quite welcome here! An honored guest.”
“Um… thank you.”
“I wish you could stay.” Graham turned to Ric. “You realize the danger you’ve put us all in by coming here?”
“I do. And I never would have come without my suit, but there just wasn’t time before we escaped.”
Jeanell asked, “You have a suit like this?”
“It’s how I make my way in and out of the city, but we didn’t exactly have time to pack,” Ric explained, turning to Graham. “We’re hoping you might have a few extra.”
Graham huffed and nodded. “You know that I do. But what did you have in mind?”
"Not sure, to tell you the truth. This morning I was ready to kill her.”
“Naturally.”
Jeanell said, “Hey!”
Ric said, “But now I figure we have to get her back to her own time before the chancellor gets to her. With her friends captured, one of them’ll crack and it won’t be long until they start hunting her.”
Jeanell shivered with mortal fear.
Graham nodded. “Definitely.” He asked Jeanell, “Can you travel through one of these holes with any confidence?”
“Not really,” Jeanell said. “I mean, I know what caused the anomaly in the first place, but we weren’t planning on traveling through time, so we wound up here just sort of by chance. I suppose I could recreate what happened and wind up leaving this time, even if the chances are about one in ten million. But I’m not really sure if I’ll go back or forward, or how far, or if I’ll get anywhere at all.”
“Well,” Graham said, “anywhere is better than you staying here and now, that’s for sure.”
Jeanell asked, “Why?”
“Because the chancellor rules now, and he’s the most dangerous leader this country, or the world, has ever known. If he gets the power to travel through time, it would be disastrous.”
Jeanell felt a cold stone sink in her gut. “Maybe I should kill myself.”
Ric said, “As long as you’re here, you could still be of some use.”
“Oh, well, when you put it that way.”
Graham said, “He’s quite right, my girl. You do have knowledge nobody else has. Surely, we can use that.”
Ric said. “That’s what I was thinking. What’s happening with those disappearances?”
Graham snapped his fingers. “You’re right! They’re black hole wipeouts, kill holes of the highest order; maybe she can help with that!”
Jeanell said, “Okay, first, I’m still alive and I’m sitting right here. Please don’t speak of me in the third person; it’s very rude.”
Ric looked at Graham with a mischievous little smile. “She’s got a point.”
Jeanell ignored his little tease. “Secondly, what are black hole wipeouts?”
Ric explained, “Swaths of people are disappearing; a whole meeting of the Veteran’s Administration, a stadium filled with basketball fans… just disappeared in an instant.”
“And black holes were used?” But Jeanell didn’t need an answer, the question answered itself. “But… you use them to travel through space, not time. Which means those people are still alive, they’re just… kidnapped?”
Ric said, “But we have no idea where they are, or if they’re still alive. I mean, where do you stash a stadium full of people?”
“But why do that? Who would want to kill, or kidnap, a stadium full of people?”
Graham said, “Terrorists.”
“Or the chancellor himself, keeping the populace on edge, living in fear, maybe testing the weapon for foreign use.”
“Testing it… on his own people? Thousands of them? What kind of monster is this chancellor of yours?”
“The worst kind,” Ric said. “Do you think you can do anything about it?”
Jeanell pressed her hands to her forehead, eyes clamping shut. “I… I don’t know. Wait a minute; if he can do that, why send his armed men into the collider compound? Why not just use a black hole to scoop us up?”
Graham smiled. “You really are quite bright, my dear. We’re not sure, but our theory is that these kill holes, as we call them, or any artificial black hole, can penetrate deep ground. Apparently, if they’re generated underground, they drop you underground, the way you apparently were. We know for sure that, surface to surface, it’s the same thing.”
Jeanell gave it some thought, and it made reasonable sense, as reasonable as anything under the circumstances.
Ric asked her, “What do you think? Can you help us?”
“I will if I can, but… I can’t imagine what I can do.”
Graham scratched his chin and stood to pace around his living room. “Probably best if we just send her back.”
Ric said, “She started this, she should be the one to end it.”
“Third person,” Jeanell said.
Graham said, “She could do more harm than good, Ric.” Graham turned to Jeanell. “Can you recreate your time hole?”
“I suppose I can, but the God Particle was a pretty big part of that. Do you have any of that?”
Graham said, “Almost certainly in the Denver complex.”
“The Denver complex?”
“After the Great Darkness, the Boulder facility was abandoned, structurally unsound. But they built a better one in Denver, just under the Rockies. If we can get into it…”
“No chance,” Ric said. “That’s gonna be the most heavily guarded area in the state.”
Graham paced around, shaking his head. “What difference does it make? As long as the chancellor’s in power, and that criminal regime, they’ll find a way to do what they want, no matter what.”
Ric said, “Then maybe it’s time to kill the chancellor and end the regime, once and for all.”
Graham said. “You want to hole it to New York.”
Ric shrugged. “That’s the easy part. The hard part would be getting into his tower. It’s lead-lined—”
Jeanell said, “One of my black holes can’t get through lead? I thought you guys would have perfected things by now.”
“Enough to take out twenty thousand people at once,” Ric said.
“And how does that happen?”
Ric snapped back, “You don’t know? Who are you, really?”
“It’s been a long time, Mister! We never mastered it in my time, so I really can’t be expected to know, can I?”
Graham held out his hands, palms flat to calm them both. “Okay, you two, take it easy. We’re on the same side here.”
But Jeanell and Ric shared a glance which said, for each, Are we?
Graham went on, “Let’s get you into some less conspicuous clothes. You can hole around a bit, get used to the tech. Miss Glenn, you’ll be able to learn whatever you need to know.” He looked at Graham. “If we’re gonna hit them with a kill hole, we gotta figure out where, or when, they’re going.”
“Not to mention how to get into the tower.”
Graham nodded. “Yeah, that’s going to be a serious problem.”
***
With all that had happened, Jeanell didn’t realize how exhausted she was. She intended to use the second bathroom while Ric used the first, but she couldn’t resist the pull of the empty bed beyond the opened door. Just for a second, she told herself, just enough to rest my eyes.
She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
CHAPTER SIX
That night Jeanell slept, deeper than she ever had. The pillow was so soft and welcoming beneath her head, the sheets clean and soft. After traveling so far, in time and in space, trudging through the woods, her entire bo
dy hummed with immobile satisfaction, a glorious paralysis. Her mind was likewise blank, ready to fall into that dark, peaceful slumber.
A hard strip of duct tape was suddenly slapped over her mouth. She looked up in a terrified instant, the chancellor's soldier looking above her. She tried to scream, her own voice muffled and meaningless.
She was quick to struggle, but there were more than one of them, and they were big, powerful men. One pinned her legs under his arm and despite her kicking and bucking, secured a zip tie around her ankles. He pulled it tight and the thin plastic strip locked down around her, digging into her skin.
They flipped her over, cranked her hands behind her back, with another zip tie around her wrists, and secured them in a flash. Jeanell tried to pull her wrists free, but the hard plastic dug in and sent blots of pain shooting up her arms. She was completely helpless and about to be carried away by those men to a terrible fate.
One of them was about to hoist her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when he snapped back with a loud gunshot. Jeanell turned to see Ric standing in the bedroom doorway, a handgun flashing at the end of his long, muscular arm. Bam! Bam, bam, bam!
Two more of the black-suited men snapped back, but they returned fire, the clear walls around Ric taking shot after shot. Jeanell couldn’t free her arms or legs, but she could roll off the bed and out of the way of the gunfire. She hit the floor with a hard thud.
Jeanell could hardly count the number of uniformed thugs pouring into the bedroom from seemingly every direction. Her eyes were locked on Ric, now fighting them off with his bare hands. He threw a punch at one, square on the jaw. The man snapped back and staggered, barely remaining on his feet. Ric grabbed another thug and snapped his arm over this knee with a terrible snap. He threw the man into his staggered comrade and both toppled back.
Ric threw a sidekick at another advancing adversary, the man cramping forward with an oof! Ric pulled a handgun from the officer’s holster and blasted him once in the head before turning the gun on the two injured men.
But that left three more pouring down the hall behind Ric, gunshots ringing from the next room.
Poor Graham, Jeanell realized, they probably got him. And it’s my stupid fault!
And we’ll be next.
Ric turned the soldier’s gun on his fellows, blasting away until the gun clicked dry. Then they fell upon him. He knocked one back with a hard punch, still holding the gun and pistol-whipping the man into a daze with that single blow. He struck at another and missed, the man grabbing his arm and holding tight.
Ric pulled hard, the uniformed man slipping on his feet but not letting go. Another man leapt, throwing himself at Ric.
Contact.
But Ric used the man’s momentum against him, turning and sending him stumbling past, head smacking into the polyurethane wall. His neck snapped and the man fell dead. The last man turned to face Ric just as he pulled a knife from the failed soldier and rammed it into the other’s chest. He fell with a grunt, his body twisting with a pulse of his death nerve.
Jeanell was still on the floor, tied up and gagged. Ric rushed to her, lifting her up and peeling the tape away from her mouth. He lifted her up, cradle-carrying her away from the carnage. They stepped down the hall, kindly Graham passing them with a smile to clean up the mess.
Ric carried Jeanell into the living room, where there was no gore, no bodies.
But there was still one more combatant, a uniformed goon who lurched up from behind the couch, a long dagger in his hand. He lunged down just as Ric turned to face him, grabbing his wrist and holding it just inches above his own chest. Jeanell was pinned beneath Ric, helpless as that dagger inched closer to his chest, ready to pierce it and then her own, if she was lucky.
Ric was exhausted, and his adversary had the advantage of momentum and gravity. That quivering dagger neared its deadly target, ready to plunge into Ric’s heart. Jeanell screamed, hoping it might pump some strength into Ric’s death struggle, his hands locked around his opponent’s hand.
Then Ric jutted a leg forward and his adversary croaked, eyes wide. Ric’s knee was firmly lodged in the man’s groin, and it was enough to turn the tide. Ric smashed his forehead into the man’s face, sending him snapping back. It only took one graceful move for Ric to use the man’s own dagger against him, a thick wet crunch underscoring the killing strike, the chancellor’s last goon stumbling back.
But he pulled a hand grenade from his belt, an old-fashioned weapon from the mid-twentieth century. He pulled the pin and threw the grenade at them.
Ric screamed, “No!” and scrambled for the grenade. He found it and tossed it back at the man before reaching over and pulling the entire couch up and forward. It fell over Ric and Jeanell before the blast, a deafening explosion that tore through the apartment, charring and blistering every exposed surface.
The explosion echoed and gradually gave way to a grave silence. Ric and Jeanell were pinned in the smoky, dark sanctuary of the overturned couch until he pushed it up and off them, revealing the chaotic rubble of the apartment.
Ric looked up to see Graham nodding from the hallway and reclining into the shadows.
Ric retrieved the stolen knife and turned Jeanell gently around, severing her plastic bonds with a single, masterful stroke. He bent down and freed her ankles, then turned her and pulled her soiled lab coat off, then the dress she wore beneath it. She’d never imagined feeling this way about a man she barely knew, one so mysterious and potentially dangerous. But she also couldn’t deny that she was attracted to him in ways she could not resist and didn’t want to. He’d proven himself and more; and he’s won her, body and soul.
She stood naked before him, relieved of her skepticism, engorged with lust. He kissed his way up from her throbbing ankles to her shapely calves, then up past her knees to her quivering thighs. Every kiss created little bolts of pleasure, nearly sending her knees to buckle. His kisses ascended, her legs parting to give him access. His lips found hers and she spasmed with pleasure, hands finding his head, long black hair rising up between her fingers. She raised one knee, her head falling forward, blond hair slipping past her face.
“Oh yes, Ric,” she whispered, almost a moan. There was a lingering sense of mystery around him, of danger, but he’d killed for her; she owed him her life. And her attraction to him was now more than she could resist. She’d been lying to herself that she didn’t want him, and even at the risk of her own life, she had to have him.
And she wouldn’t be denied.
She pulled him up to his feet, their eyes locking. They kissed for the first time, her own juices fresh on his lips and creating an erotic flavor combination she’d never imagined but instantly recognized. He kissed her with the same confident mastery he’d used to kiss her below, and the sensation was almost as if he were doing both things at once. He wrapped his muscular, naked arms around hers and pulled her close, Jeanell’s firm breasts pressing against his hairless chest. Her nipples were hard, rubbing against his to become even more erect, eager, and ready for anything.
Ric seemed to read her body, his strong hands finding those nipples and letting them flick between his fingers and he gave her a squeeze, strong but gentle. He groaned into her ear, his breath hot and sweet in the nape of her neck.
“You’re so beautiful, Jeanell.”
She threw her head back as his kisses descended, his mouth soon finding those eager nipples. He took one in, little electrical pulses shooting through her chest, his low growl ringing in the very fibers of her being, filling her heart, her belly, her loins.
She reached down to find his massive member, engorged and rock hard, throbbing and ready for action. She gave it a squeeze, not even able to get her fingers around that thick shaft. She gave it a few good strokes, that wondrous wand reacting to her like a loving pet or an old friend. She kissed Ric, tongues flicking as she pumped his reedy rod a few more times. His hips gyrated a bit, telling Jeanell that he was as ready a
s she was.
He led her from the center of the room to the wall, where he slipped one hand under each of her thighs. With one swift, confident motion, he pinned her against the wall, raised up off the ground, her calves idle at his sides.
But he froze, his attention distracted by something outside the window. He stood motionless, eyes peering over her shoulder.
“Ric? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Without saying a word, Ric shifted and tossed Jeanell aside, her strength nothing compared to his urgency. She toppled and landed on the couch, rolling on the cushions before looking up at Ric with a shrill, “What the—?”
A laser blast shot through the window, shattering the clear walls to reveal a drone hovering just outside the building. The blistering beam cut through Ric like a knife, legs barely able to stagger him out of the shattered glass and to the streets far below.
Jeanell called out, “Ric!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jeanell’s eyes shot up, a gasp in her throat. She sprang to wakefulness and jutted up in the bed, sitting up in the rumpled sheets. She looked out the window to see daylight, realizing she must have slept through the entire night. Her heart pounded in her chest, cold sweat collecting along the crevice of her spine.
Well, she thought, I’m sure ready for that shower.
Jeanell was relieved to be in the shower, that hot water coursing over her naked body. She’d needed the rest and felt the better for it, but the shower was refreshing, rejuvenating, sustaining. As the hot water coursed over her naked skin, plastering her blond hair to her cheeks, it only reminded her how hungry she was, how her muscles still ached from her trek through the woods.
And while in that steamy chamber, Jeanell couldn’t help but think about her dream. It foretold a terrible attack from the chancellor’s forces. And it suggested more than that. Jeanell tried to take her mind off Ric, who was the center of that fantastical night’s journey into her own secret desires.
Don’t be foolish, she told herself, spreading the soap over her body, fingers trembling to imagine that they were his fingers, standing there with her in the heat and wetness. You can’t just fall in love with him, under these circumstances!
Maruvian Bride (Alien SciFi Romance) (Celestial Mates Book 5) Page 29