Kidnapped By Her Husbands (Wings of Artemis Book 1) (8 page)

“You’re brilliant, aren’t you?” I don’t know why I said my thoughts aloud without filtering them first. Maybe it came from the protocol statement. I’d hit too close to something they couldn’t tell me. I had to say something to move on because the current subject made me want to throw things and alternatively cry. My body, my emotions—they were all over the place.

He lifted his blue-eyed gaze. “It doesn’t help anything. When it comes down to it, I’m pretty useless.”

“You just told me you’d keep me safe. Sounds like the opposite of useless to me.” I would have taken his hand, this man who wouldn’t let me leave, because he needed someone to reassure him. Except the plastic bubble around my center made it impossible.

Dane opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. “You’re kind, aren’t you?” He said the words as though he couldn’t quite believe them. Or maybe the crinkle in his forehead made me feel that way. I didn’t know for sure.

“I don’t really know what I am, for obvious reasons.”

“A return to the first product…that had been the idea.” His voice trailed off and I didn’t understand what he was saying anyway. The machine beeped. I was glad he could decipher what the various noises meant because they all sounded the same to me. “Let’s see, now.”

A picture appeared on the ceiling above my head and Dane leaned to look at it. I wasn’t sure at first what I saw. It took a few seconds for the blurry image to come into focus. And then I saw my heart beating steadily, displayed on the screen.

“Is it beating okay?”

Dane rubbed at his eyes. “Looks to be. Nice and strong.” He typed on the screen in front of him and the image of my heart moved around in a various directions. “I just want to see it from various angles.”

“Should I be concerned?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Nope. I’m good with hearts. And I’m really thinking we had a glitch. Oh.” His hand stopped moving. “What the fuck?”

Those were words I never wanted to hear any doctor say. I reared up and hit the plastic. “What?”

“Lie down.” His words were nothing short of an order and I did as he said. He claimed to be good at hearts. That’s what he’d said. Whatever was wrong…he’d fix it. The baby would be fine. He wouldn’t suffer because something had gone wrong with me.

“Dane.”

He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. A second later, he pounded on the side of the machine once like whatever he saw there offended him. “I’m sorry. I’m scaring you. I…I’m surprised. There’s something in you. Attached to your heart. A piece of machinery.” He pointed upward while he hit a button and the small black dot on my heart grew larger. “I don’t know what it is. Maybe the Nobles designed some new kind of medical tech I’m not familiar with. We’re going to figure it out. Right now. Whatever it is, if it’s helping you, we’ll leave it alone. If it’s not, I’ll take it out. Don’t be afraid. Nothing is wrong.”

“Except you just told me I have some machine in my heart. I’d say that qualifies as a problem,” I shouted. I didn’t need to be pacified or treated like an idiot.

Dane hit his wrist. “Wes, I need you.”

A second passed before a voice answered. “I told you, I can’t do this. Not yet.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t imperative. Get in here, now.” He hit his wrist and then typed on the keyboard again. “I’m sorry. This is awful. I never let my patients become afraid. Wes will come. He’ll know what we’re dealing with, and we’ll have some answers. Did I ever tell you about the first time I delivered a baby?”

Tears leaked from my eyes. I couldn’t keep them in. There was
something
attached to my heart. I was stuck on a ship with a bunch of crazy people, and I couldn’t even get answers because to do so might destroy my brain. Nothing had changed. I’d exchanged one cell for another, one captivity for another, and I remained as helpless as I’d been the first time I’d woken and not known my own name.

“How would I know about the first time you delivered a baby?” I spoke between sobs.

He pinched his nose. “You’re crying.”

“Thanks for the obvious statement,
Doctor
.” I turned my face away from him. What had I done in my previous life to deserve everything going wrong? I’d probably had more than one lover. I’d been with the rebels—I insisted on thinking of them as such; screw the whole Nomads thing—and I’d probably hurt a lot of people. Was this punishment? Of course it was. Had someone decided the only way I could pay for my crimes was to die?

“Melissa.” Dane approached me, then with gentle fingers turned my chin so I faced him. I didn’t want to but, once again with nothing to do but comply, I let him look at the tears as they poured down my face. “I’m sorry. I’ve bumbled all of this. I haven’t seen tears in so long, I can’t really remember them. Even six months ago, none of us cried. The pain was too much for tears. I forgot them. Forgive me.”

“Are you talking about the same woman Geoff did earlier? His wife? The one he shared with Nolan? Did you share her, too?”

The pain had been too much for tears
. Such a thing existed?

He didn’t answer me but instead grabbed something from behind him. A second later, Dane wiped at my face with a soft towel, and I wanted to stop crying. I’d opened a dam, though, and drawing them in proved harder than it should have been.

“Here, look.” He pointed upward.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to see it again.”

“That’s not what I want to show you.”

Curiosity won and I turned to look at the monitor again. A figure I had never seen before illuminated the scene. A beating heart. A swooshing of tiny limbs. Dane had put up an image of my baby. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and my tears quickly changed from sadness to utter and complete joy. I cried as I laughed.

I placed my hand on the top of the plastic enclosure as though I could reach forward and somehow make contact with the screen. Inside of me, the baby jumped. I would swear the little guy responded because he knew we were talking about him.

“That’s my baby.” I could see his face. It looked smooshed but everything was where it should be. Lips. Mouth. Eyes. Cheekbones. “He’s okay?”

“She.” Dane’s voice cracked.

“What?” I banged the plastic as my body jolted in surprise.

He pushed on the plastic to allow me rise. “She. At least now we know why they didn’t terminate your pregnancy.
She
is very healthy.”

I swung my legs over the side of the table, letting them dangle while I tried to catch my breath. “You’re sure.”

“I am.” He pulled me against him, pressing my head into his chest while he hugged me. I let him. I needed the hug, and from the way his body vibrated when he held me, I guessed he needed to give me one.

“I never dreamed…” A girl. So rare. She’d be a gift to someone, a hope our worlds could continue. The thought jarred me, and my stomach turned. She was life, growing inside me, almost ready to be born. Did I want her to be a gift? Shouldn’t she have a choice? Oh by the heavens, even my stream of consciousness had become scandalous.

His shoulders relaxed. “Neither did I, trust me on that. Give me your wrist a second, will you?”

I raised my hand, and he pressed it against the plastic. “Need a reading. Nothing to worry about.”

“When did you deliver your first baby?” He’d wanted to tell me earlier.

Dane laughed, which surprised me. The grin on his face made him look younger. “You can’t possibly want to hear about it.”

“I do, actually. I think I could listen to you talk all day. You’re absolutely fascinating.” It must have been the giddiness making me honest. What did I care? My baby was okay.
She
was healthy. I’d seen her.

“Melissa.” His grin disappeared. “Who are you?”

“I’m here.”

Dane whirled around as a stranger entered the room. He must be Wes. He was tall, but then all of them seemed that way to me. Wes stood a little above Dane in height. His hair was strawberry blond and freckles danced over his nose, drawing attention to his high cheekbones and green eyes. Whereas I was fairly sure Dane and Geoff were older than I, I guessed Wes’s age closer to mine. He wore a pair of frayed cargo shorts. His white T-shirt was stained in places. Like Geoff and Dane, dark circles were visible under his eyes.

Dane stepped away from me. “Melissa, this is Wesley Darby.”

Wes’ jaw ticked. He still hadn’t moved from the entrance. “It’s Wes.”

His gaze met mine, and my stomach tightened. This man might be young, but it didn’t negate his danger. Geoff seemed powerful and in some ways Dane stayed hidden—a mystery I still wasn’t sure about—but Wes made me wonder if I should slide off the table and run for my life. Nolan’s coldness had nothing on Wes’ heat.

“Hello.” I wasn’t sure what else to say and decided to go with what worked with Geoff and Dane. With no history to draw from, I had to speak my mind. “Are you going to hurt me?”

Wes stalked further into the room like my question spurred him forward. “No. Are you going to hurt me?”

“As though I could.”

Wes exchanged an unreadable glance with Dane before he spoke. “Is she okay?”

“Healthy and pregnant with a girl.”

Wes’ mouth fell open. “No shit?”

Dane nodded. “I’ve sent the results of her fertility chip to your comm. Would you mind taking a look? I’d love to know if she turned it off on purpose or under duress. The exact day of conception is probably useful.”

“Right. You could have told me that over the speaker.” Wes approached me slowly. He didn’t walk so much as inch in my direction. “What did I have to see here? You don’t need me to look at her baby, do you? That’s much more your thing than mine. Unless…” His voice trailed off.

Dane shook his head. “Won’t know that for a while. No, I called you in for something else.” He moved to the keyboard and clicked on it. The image of the thing attached to my heart returned. Dane must have recorded it earlier. One more item I didn’t understand. The story of my so-called
new
life. I needed a break—to think, to process.

But not as much as I wanted to know what had been attached to my heart. If scary Wes was the person to figure that out, then I’d be grateful for his presence even if he made me squirm.

“Holy shit.” He pointed upward. “Is that her heart? What the fuck is that doing in there?”

“What is it?” Dane stood next to him.

“Increase magnification,” Wes instructed. “So I can see it better.”

The doctor did as Wes asked, enlarging the image until the device took up the whole screen. Silence descended on the room and they both stared upward. I swallowed hard. Something inside of my body made the two of them very tense.

Adding to the moment, Nolan reappeared. He stood without speaking in the doorway. I only noticed him because he cracked his knuckles and drew my attention. As though not looking at me was his job, he walked on quiet feet until he stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the other side of Dane.

After a moment he spoke. “What are we looking at?”

“Something in her heart.”

If Nolan had a thought about a foreign object in my body, he didn’t voice it. Instead, he waited without uttering another word.

“I want to be wrong.” Wes shook his head before he closed his eyes.

Nolan reached around Dane and patted Wes on the back. “You’re never wrong.”

“That’s the problem.” Wes opened his lids and walked toward me. When he spoke, he addressed me. “You have a wireless receiver inside you. A really good one. It moves across sub space, meaning it can go over long distances. I know this stuff bores you.”

“It doesn’t,” I hurriedly interrupted. “And we’re talking about something inside me. Near my baby. Even if it did bore me, I’d want to hear about it.”

Why did they keep telling me what I did and didn’t want to talk about? A pang struck my head and I ignored it. This was too important for another headache. My mind had to deal with information, whether it wanted to or not.

Nolan looked at his shoes, the floor, and the windows while Dane positioned himself at my side, his hand steady on my shoulder.

“So they’re tracking her?” Nolan asked.

“That’s not what this one does. It’s fused to the inside of the pericardial sack around her heart and is set to trigger the secondary device attached to it. It’s clear. It’s one of Geoff’s. It’s a smart bomb.”

Nolan’s head shot up and he finally stared right at me. “So she could be killed? At any moment?”

The room spun, and I grasped my belly. On the edge of the table, my last conscious thought was,
That floor is going to hurt
.

* * * *

When I woke again, I was alone on the metal bed. The lights in the room were dimmed and a steady beeping dinged low in the background. I was unfettered, no plastic surrounding me to keep me in. I didn’t have a headache and nothing ached like I’d hit the floor. Maybe someone had caught me before I’d actually made contact. Or Dane had fixed the injury. I didn’t know.

The baby jumped inside me. He—correction, she—seemed okay.

I took a deep breath and swung my legs over the side. This time
I
jumped. Having not stood in far too long, my legs were shaky and I took a few steps before I steadied. If no one was there with me, I had to take advantage of the situation.

I had a bomb inside of me and if it went off, my baby and I would die. I couldn’t allow any harm to come to her. She counted on me to make good decisions. One of the last things Wes said was Geoff made the bomb. I was travelling on a ship with a bunch of guys who hurt people as a living. Geoff made bombs that blew up people’s babies.

The best thing I could do constituted getting far away from him and whatever viciousness the others engaged in. I made my way to the doorway and walked out, half-expecting an alarm to trigger or some kind of force field to keep me in. When nothing happened, I kept going.

Somewhere, they had a shuttle. Geoff had stolen Prince Cooper’s. For hours I’d listened to him complain about how it was nothing to fly it. Point and click. I was smart enough. I could figure out how to get it to go. I’d fly away, fast. They’d made us study the important planets. I could even go directly to Ochoa. Someone would help me. They wouldn’t kill my daughter.