by Moira Reid
“Also correct.” He placed his palms on the hood of the car and stared up at the sky.
What did he see up there? Was he homesick for that place, or was he carrying around an enormous load of payback he hoped to unleash? If that had happened to her, old Miss Raanana would be nigh on an ass whopping.
“So, basically, you got screwed on your home planet; then your people sent you here because they use Earth as their prison.”
He looked down at the ground, then nodded. “Yeah.”
“Butch, I’ll tell you something.” She pushed herself off the hood and dusted off her backside. “There are a lot worse places to live. You’ve been here how long?”
“A little over ten years.”
“And you haven’t even watched television?” She laughed. “Putting aside the fact that your people think this is a dumping ground for criminals, and putting aside the fact that you got the major shaft if you haven’t realized that already, there are fun things to do on this planet. I’ll tell you what. Until you find this Garren guy and put him in jail, I’m going to make sure you have some fun with whatever time you have left. But first, tell me how he fits into this story.”
“Garren was her intended—her destiny.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I think we need to consider the possibility that your father is tied up in this somehow too.”
“My father? But how…” She paused for a moment. “You’re telling me that Garren was sent here before? He knows my father?”
Butch nodded. “Fourteen or fifteen years ago, he was convicted of assault and spent a year on this planet. He always said he was going to find a way to get back here. He wasn’t too fond of it, and he really wasn’t too fond of your father.”
“Few people are,” Claire said wryly.
“He told me more than once that he would get your father for the way he’d been treated while he was here. He said no petty human was going to have the last word.”
“That’s my father all right,” Claire said. “He does like to get in the last word. Do you think he’s after me to get even with my dad?”
“It makes sense. We know it’s him; there is no denying that. And we know he doesn’t like the captain. What better way to hurt a man than by trying to hurt his children?” Butch glanced at his watch. “Are you still planning to go to work today? I don’t think it’s safe, Claire. Until I can find where Garren went, we have to assume he is lying in wait in places he knows you’ll be.”
She patted his shoulder and walked to the passenger door. “Well, I’ve got you, don’t I? Keep me safe long enough to get this deal put together, and you can put this guy away. You’re absolutely right. We know who he is now. My father might have some input on how he’d like to get this guy. In the meantime, we’ll be friends, okay? We’ll both have some fun for a change. Besides, you still haven’t told me about that third eye thing. Now, let’s get going.”
Half an hour and a great deal of weird explanations later, including how Viven palmed humans, the third eye that appeared with a Viven’s murderous intentions, the mental messaging they called gripen, and the worst of all—the sensing of others without physical touching—it was just about the weirdest car ride she’d ever had. No wonder her father hadn’t told her any of this before. She would never have taken him out of that veterans’ hospital and would probably have gotten him a very good psychiatrist.
The key now was focus. Butch would stay with her to make sure this other ET didn’t kill her, while trying to find out exactly what in the hell he wanted to hurt her for in the first place.
* * * * *
Butch pulled her Civic to the front of the building and parked in her designated parking space. To hell with parking at the back. That had been the first mistake, and he didn’t intend to repeat it. Besides, he doubted she could walk that far this morning.
Claire made one phone call during the drive—not to her father as he’d suggested, but to the hotel to tell them she would pay for the broken window.
“Call your father.”
“There’s no reason to get him upset by this. If you’re right, and he’s involved somehow…I’d rather wait. You’ve got to trust me on this. I know what I’m doing.”
She said nothing further as she exited the car and headed toward the front door. He locked the car and followed her, glancing around the parking lot as he moved, extending the radar of his inner ear across their surroundings. A lot of people in suits and dresses were moving toward the door, chatting about breakfast meetings, corporate filings, and other business topics. One was talking about the run in her panty hose. Not a single white van in sight.
Claire climbed the steps, then turned around and waited for him to catch up. She stepped close and whispered, “I’m going to introduce you as Mark Wren, a visiting management consultant here to evaluate our operation. I don’t want any of my employees knowing what happened to me. All right?”
She straightened her shoulders, adjusted the strap on her leather briefcase, and smiled, a gesture neither warm nor happy. As people passed by them, their “good mornings” low-key and appropriate when speaking to the boss, he saw the facade she pulled on like a pair of pants. The young, beautiful woman he’d drunk coffee with at the kitchen table had turned the internal switch to “corporate mode.” Claire Simonson didn’t want their pity or their interference in her personal life. She wanted respect.
He nodded. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to take it away from her. “I’m Mark Wren.”
With one final glance around the parking lot, he followed her inside.
Hours, and many smooth introductions of him as the visiting efficiency expert later, Butch had experienced about as much of corporate America as he could take. The military was one thing; this was over the top. What a bunch of kiss-ass phonies she had surrounding her, not one of them speaking their mind, not a single one with a mind of their own at all as far as he could see.
During his stint on Earth, he’d followed orders, but not because he didn’t know how to think on his own. He’d followed orders because they were orders, and if he expected to get out of here, he had no choice. Claire asked the opinions of employees present in every meeting they attended. All she got was the standard company line over and over again, as if each of these automatons had eaten the company manual whole and couldn’t stop vomiting it back up.
Each time she introduced him, he saw at first an interest in his sham business that she quickly quashed, then a perfected front intended just for the “boss.” He wondered how many of these people were loyal, if any of them owned a white van. He wouldn’t put it past Garren to bribe someone on the inside to assist him. Maybe her problem worked in the midst of these corporate suits, crisp white shirts and ties by day, lying in wait with Garren to rough up the boss by night.
As he sat at another of the endless meetings of corporate clones, he glanced at his watch, a stainless steel and eighteen-karat-gold Baume & Mercier Capeland he’d borrowed from the captain for his jaunt into Claire’s world. The only watch he’d ever worn had been a Luminox Dive watch, definitely not appropriate for this corporate landscape. Still, as he’d put on the twenty-five-hundred-dollar timepiece, he’d thought he’d have been better off with something that could survive deep diving into shit.
It was already after two, and his stomach had begun a low growl. Claire continued with her meeting, her skin even paler than it had been this morning. She had yet to consume anything today other than the cup of coffee he’d poured her seven hours ago, and he had to wonder why she would try to survive on coffee and adrenaline. Didn’t the business world know the needs of the human brain and body, the most important tools in their arsenal?
The meeting finally broke, and all the human robots rose from their leather chairs and began to form groups of two and three as they exited the room. Butch got up and resisted the urge to place a hand on his empty belly to still the churning. Claire flipped through a stack of folders and rose from her chair.
&nbs
p; “Why don’t we get some lunch?” Butch asked.
Claire didn’t look up from her papers. “I don’t have time.”
Exactly the response he’d expected. “You’ve been at this nonstop for hours. Let’s take a break.”
“I don’t have time for breaks. I’ve got a lot to do, and not much time to do it in.”
Claire tapped the bottoms of the file folders on the table and turned to leave. Butch stepped in front of her, the scent of her perfume wafting toward him. The mixture of lavender and orchid struck a memory now embedded in his memory. Standing in the shower, imagining her naked with his cock—
“Why are you looking at me like that?” She took a step to move around him. Her eyes had taken on a frosty glaze, and although her posture was as erect as it had been when they’d come into the building, he could see the darkening of the skin beneath her eyes. Her blood pressure was up, she was tired and weak, and she needed to eat.
“Claire, wait.”
“What?”
“Let me get you a sandwich.”
“I don’t need anything. Thank you.”
She tried to step past him again, and he grabbed her by the shoulders. She winced, then glanced around them, her eyes darting back and forth in quick, jerky movements. Overcaffeinated, he thought. He released her but did not let her pass.
“This is ridiculous; you haven’t eaten since last night. You’re pale and sweating and still bruised. Probably took some painkillers on an empty stomach when you went to the ladies’ room too, didn’t you?”
Her face reddened, and she leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “You are my bodyguard. Not my dietitian, not my doctor. My bodyguard. Please keep your comments specific to that profession and no other, all right?”
He was guarding her body all right, had barely taken his eyes off it since his arrival. Surprisingly, he hadn’t noticed any of the clones around her looking at her, but they’d already proven themselves to be little more than idiots. Sycophants surrounded her, and she was the force behind her business. A ball of energy and focus packed into a tight, great-looking, well-dressed package.
Shit. Concentrate on your job, idiot, not hers. And definitely not on her.
“I am guarding your body, and right now, your body needs fuel. You’re operating on coffee and adrenaline, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to miss something important.”
“Miss something? Like what?” She shook her head. “No, don’t tell me. You’ve spent half a day watching me do my job, and you’ve decided you can do it better.”
Butch took a breath to regroup. He was not a person who liked to argue, but since meeting her, he seemed to be doing nothing else. Something about her just begged to be disagreed with; all her employees managed to fight the impulse. He’d better figure out a way to do likewise.
“I’m not your consultant either, remember? I’m your bodyguard.”
“No, feel free to comment.” She put a hand on her hip and clasped the stack of folders tighter to her chest. Her breasts rose and fell with each quick, angry breath.
Just one observation? Could he allow himself just one if it would convince her to eat something? She had another four or five hours of this, and she’d never make it without something in her system. If he brought her back home this evening looking as pale as she did now, the captain would go ballistic before he could get his ass in the door.
“Your military has prepackaged food, MREs they are called—meals ready to eat—and they taste like shit. But the troops always eat on a schedule, even in the middle of a war. You know why? Because the human body is a machine, a thinking machine that depends on the same thing all machines depend on—a steady power supply. No power, no proper functioning.”
She nodded as if she was listening carefully to his every word. The thin line of her lips suggested she had comments but withheld them only by supreme effort.
All morning he’d heard her ask her people for feedback and, getting none, had proceeded with her own plans. Now, as she watched him, her eyes glazed but intent on his, he realized this was most likely the first command dissent she’d heard in a long time.
Butch softened his voice. She was not in the military; a woman almost entirely on her own. She had important work, a Viven with a chip on his shoulder after her, and a father who followed her every move with a secret GPS tracker. If he was to be the only real support she got today, then he might as well go for broke. “You have a lot on your plate. You need some food on it too, to get this job done right.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “I hear what you’re saying. I appreciate your saying it.”
He frowned. “Don’t bullshit me. Are you going to eat or not?”
Her lips moved into a half smile, and she shook her head slightly. “I’m not eating that MRE stuff, am I?”
What was this? Was that a crack he saw in the wall of her defiance? “What’s your cafeteria food like?”
“A lot like war food, I’d imagine, but it would qualify as a power source.”
He stepped out of the doorway. “Good. Why don’t we get some of it?”
She stared up at him a moment longer, her shoulders still straight back, her stance unchanged. She was exhausted, and yet she continued working as hard and as much as any man he’d ever worked with. His respect for her moved up a notch.
“What did you mean when you said I might miss something?”
He had said that, hadn’t he? Damn it. His job was to watch over her, not tell her how to run the place.
She’d told everyone they met he was a business consultant, but he didn’t have even an hour’s experience in the business world. Why she even cared what he meant surprised him. He understood war tactics and strategy, but next to nothing about running a business.
But recruits were recruits, and she had many of the same problems in her unit that he’d seen over the darchas. Even tired and possibly still in the middle of a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder, she didn’t miss much. But she was, in fact, missing one crucial thing. Because she was tired and overworked, she saw the tactical plan but was missing the appropriate overall strategy: to get her people doing the work while she led them.
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll share my observations when you take your first bite.”
She nodded and stepped past him. “Okay, follow me, then.”
She strode down the hall toward the elevators, and he glanced around at the cubicles as they passed. Not a single eye missed their exit.
* * * * *
Claire swallowed the first bite of her sandwich and took a drink of her soda. She felt almost immediately better. What a horrible day. Her pulse hammered against her temples, her muscles ached, and she could have slept for a week. If she didn’t have to be here getting this done, she could easily imagine sitting on a beach somewhere, the warm sun soaking into her skin as she napped.
Instead she had two missions today: get everything finalized for Monday’s meeting and try not to get killed in the meantime. In her next lifetime, she would take up something easier. Maybe world domination.
She took another bite and, after chewing it slowly, swallowed and looked up at her bodyguard.
“This is pretty good.”
Butch sat across from her and grinned as he chewed. She didn’t mind admitting to herself that his outburst a few minutes ago had shocked her. Of course, she wouldn’t admit it to him, but that wasn’t necessary anyway. He’d been right; he knew it, and she knew it.
Her father had always told her that military men took orders so they didn’t have to think for themselves. They were all trained the same way so that in any situation, they would know exactly how to respond, and they would all respond without having to think. That’s why they drilled, why the training never deviated and none of the trainers asked for suggestions. They had a protocol, a process that worked, and they worked the process.
How did that gel with being an alien prisoner? Butch appeared to have an actual brain tha
t not only functioned but was well utilized.
Must be all those MREs.
Claire made a mental note to start bringing food to eat at her desk. He’d been right about that; trying to run a business operating solely on caffeine and adrenaline was not conducive to good decision making. What other gems of wisdom did he have hidden behind those gorgeous, extraterrestrial eyes?
Why was she not more surprised that extraterrestrials were alive and well and living on planet Earth? Hadn’t she always suspected something like this could happen? Not for a moment had she believed humans were the only beings populating the universe, but to come face-to-face with one was another matter.
“How many people know that your kind are here?”
“All of us, your father, you…” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah, no kidding. Who else?”
“That’s classified.”
She shook her head and leaned closer. “I’m not going to disclose intergalactic secrets to the media, Butch. Tell me how long this has been going on. You’ve been here ten years… When did the first of you arrive?”
“Classified.”
Claire took another sip of her drink. A different tactic was in order. “Then tell me about Garren.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and she held up her hand. “Wait. Do not say „classified’ again. He already tried to kill me once—whatever you know, I am now officially on a „need to know’ basis. I’ll go over what you told me already, and you fill in the blanks. Okay?”
“No comment.” His smile remained in place as he took another bite of his sandwich.
“You knew Garren, years ago—worked with him. He was told by the Auquerel that he was to be bound with the Princess Raanana, whose father was your boss. You were working toward being in the inner circle… What was it again?”
He hesitated only a moment, then must have decided she knew this much already. “Ontetni.”
“Right, you wanted to be one of the Ontetni. Was Garren one of them?”