Authors: Cara Crescent
Griffin sipped his coffee while he waited for Merrick.
Lucan had taken Prudence out for a walk, which made him twitchy as hell. He didn’t like her out there where people might see her, but Lucan insisted and she wanted to go. There wasn’t a damned thing he could say to stop her. Maybe it was best. She didn’t need to be here while he set his plans.
His hand went to his stomach and he lifted his shirt to look at Prudence’s mark. Prudence Angelica Parnell loved him. She shouldn’t, but she did.
Merrick walked in with a middle-aged man. “This is Grady. Back when I tried to get into the spaceport, he helped me draw up a blueprint based on what we could see from a distance, memories of those who have passed through, and things we heard about the place.”
Grady stood a few inches shorter than Merrick, but his body was rail-thin. Thick glasses made his eyes appear overlarge and his movements were so slow as to be almost sloth-like. Even his Southern drawl seemed to creep along. “You Chief Payne?”
“Yeah.” He held out his hand and then waited while Grady took hold. Griffin gave the man’s hand a hard pump, hoping to instill a little energy into him. “Thanks for letting me take a look at your blueprints.
“’S not much. Drawn from hearsay, to tell the truth. I’ve got true blueprints of every other building for miles ‘round. Figures you’d want this one.”
Griffin started to chuckle, then stopped when no one else even cracked a smile. He cleared his throat. “Well, let’s take a look.”
He had the distinct urge to pace while Grady placed the rolled paper on the table and, methodically smoothed the blueprint out, setting little weights at each of the four corners. Catching Merrick’s attention, Griffin rolled his eyes.
The blueprint showed an octagonal-shaped building with two sets of perimeter fencing. “Are those chain-link?”
Merrick chuckled, moving to stand next to him. “Outer fence is electro-wired. Inner wall is eighteen-inch steel, ten feet high with barbwire over the top. Each fence has one opening. The outer fence here.” Merrick reached over and pointed to a spot on the map, pressing up against Griffin. “The inner gate here.” He did the same thing again when he pointed to a spot on the exact opposite side of the map. “Guards with dogs patrol between the two.”
Griffin moved over to give the larger man more space. “You have got to be shitting me.” He stared at the two men. “Everybody has to walk half the perimeter to get to the second gate?”
Grady rocked back on his heels. “No, sir. There’s a moving walkway. Moves real fast, too. We all got to take a ride on it when we first arrived. They took us off the ship, straight onto the walkway and escorted us out. None of us have ever been back in.” He glanced back at Merrick. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yep.”
“Takes about ten minutes get from one door to the next. And here”—Grady pointed to a notch in the inner fence line—“And here.” He pointed to the next in the row. There were about twenty little notches between the gates and he had no doubt Grady intended to point out each one.
“Grady, spit it out, man. What do the notches represent?”
“Sniper towers.”
Merrick folded his arms over his chest. “And all this is before you even hit the security check points.”
Fuck.
Griffin’s heart pounded in his chest and sweat broke out on his brow. For the first time, he had to face the very real possibility he might fail. That he might spend the rest of his dishonored life protecting Prudence from a man light years away. Being with her wouldn’t be a hardship, but not being able to make up for his sins would make him crazy. “I gotta get in there.” He sat down. “I can’t—” Even if the rest of his mission failed, he had to take out Randolph if he wanted to keep Prudence safe and that meant he needed to get back to Earth. “He won’t stop hunting her unless I make him stop.”
Merrick patted Grady on the shoulder. “Thanks for bringing this by. You mind if we hold on to it for today?”
“Nope. I don’t need it for nothing. There’s nothing on the other side of those fences that’s any better than what’s on this side.” His overlarge eyes seemed to see right through Griffin. “Well, if ya need me, I’ll be at Lucky’s.” Grady meandered out of the room.
Merrick pulled up a chair. “Tell me what’s going on. Maybe if we brainstorm this out, we can come up with an alternative plan.”
Griffin shifted. He was so wound up he felt like electricity ran under his skin. Worst of all he felt stupid. Naïve. “There’s no information about Asteria’s spaceport back on Earth. I hacked into the military’s system. Everything was redacted.” He sat back and looked at Merrick. “I can’t believe I fucked up so bad again.”
“That’s not helping anything. Talk to me. I get that you couldn’t make a true plan until you got here, but you had an idea in your head. A goal. What was it?”
“I . . . . I wanted to get to Lucan. When I found out he’d been transported I was terrified he'd been hurt or killed.” Christ, he couldn’t breathe. His heart raced in his chest and the whole room seemed to want to close in on him. “I had to see him. Christ, I had it in my head that if he wanted to go back to Earth, I’d get him there.” Griffin shook his head and wiped the sweat from his brow. His whole body shook. “I lost my base, everything was FUBAR, and I went home and he was gone. Neighbors told me the Blue Helmets took him and that he’d been sent to Asteria. And I had nothing. My base got fragged. My accounts were frozen. I didn’t—”
“Look at me.”
The compassion in the other man’s expression floored Griffin. Here he was damn near losing his shit, telling his brother-in-law what a stupid fuck he’d been and . . . . And Merrick must not understand. “I went after Alfred because I knew a high-profile crime would get me transported. And I hated him. I hated the things I did for him. I hated what he’d taken from me and I hated what he’d turned the world into. I’ve killed a lot of people in the line of duty, Merrick, but I’d never killed anyone in cold blood before and, oh God, I shot him right in front of Prudence.” His gut churned. Why had he never thought about that before? She’d watched him kill her husband in cold blood. No wonder she ran from him those first few days.
Merrick’s hand closed over his shoulder, making him realize he’d bent in his seat, hanging his head between his knees. “You’re safe now. If you want all this to be over, it’s okay for it to be over.”
Griffin got to his feet and paced. He couldn’t sit still. He’d fucked everything up and no one
understood
. “It can’t be over. I wanted to make up for what I’d done when I killed Alfred, but I made things worse. You don’t understand what Randolph is like.”
The other man’s gaze was sure and steady. “He is not your problem, Griffin. He’s not.”
“He is.” He could hear his voice edging up, could hear the frantic quality, but was helpless to stop. “My actions put him in charge. My actions. And I cannot live with myself until I make things right. Do you understand? I have to get my honor back.”
*****
Prudence and Lucan came in from their walk and went upstairs. On the way back, Lucan had repeated enough times that everything would be fine until she almost believed him.
However, when they reached the second floor, she took one look at Griffin and her smile faded. The weather was cool enough that she’d borrowed Lucan’s jacket, but Griffin was sweating. All his muscles were tensed up and even from across the room she could see how hard he shook. “What’s wrong?”
Griffin turned away, but Merrick motioned her in. “Maybe we should all sit down and talk about this.”
Griffin met her gaze, his scowl fierce. “It’s not up for discussion.”
Lucan led Prudence over to the table and pulled out a chair for her. “Quit barking at Angel. You’re lucky as hell she’s such a sweet lady.”
Merrick took hold of Lucan’s arm. “Babe, would you bring in some wine? Maybe get something from down in the cellar. I think we could all use a drink.”
Prudence watched as some silent communication ran between the two men. In the end, Lucan went downstairs. Merrick gave her a pointed look. Okay. Lucan said if Griffin started getting agitated that Merrick wanted them to keep their voices low, their hands in view. He said not to move too fast or make any threatening gestures. She slid her hands onto the table.
Merrick nodded. “Come on, Griffin. Sit down.” Merrick used his foot to slide a chair closer to him. “No one here is going to stop you from doing what you need to do, but if we put our heads together, we’ll figure something out.”
Griffin sat, but he pulled the chair back from the table first so he sat with his back to the wall. She suspected he wanted to keep an easy escape route. He almost looked the same as he did that day on the velocepillar when he’d had that fugue.
All she wanted to do was go and comfort him, but she couldn’t. Not yet.
“So, after you got here what did you expect to happen?”
“I was on the wrong side of things, I guess. I didn’t expect any of this.” He motioned to the room they sat in. “See, before we realized what was going on, I was hauling people to the spaceport for transport. I saw how scared everyone was. I got to see the dossiers on Asteria describing how inhospitable this place is. I didn’t expect to find Lucan working, married, and happy. I expected him to want to go home and I intended to find a way to get him there. I expected typical spaceport security—intimidating but easy enough to breach if you know what you’re doing.”
“Which you do.”
Griffin let out a mocking laugh. “Obviously.”
“You got here in one piece.” Merrick nodded to Prudence. “You and your lady. I’m pretty sure you two are the first to survive that trek without transportation and heavy artillery. Now, who is looking for Angelica?”
Griffin looked as stunned as she felt.
Merrick smiled. “Before Grady left, you said him won’t stop hunting her unless you make him stop.” He glanced at Prudence and bumped his shoulder against hers. “Besides, I knew I’d seen you somewhere. Can’t forget pretty eyes like yours. Prudence, right?”
She nodded and drew in a shuddering breath. “I suspect Randolph Parnell wants me back.”
Merrick turned to Griffin. “Which is why you want to get back to Earth to kill him.”
“In part, yes.” He reached up to rub his temples. “But also to help with the Rebellion.”
“I wondered if you’d heard about that.” Merrick dragged his hand down his face. “I don’t know if my opinion will matter to you one way or another, but I’d appreciate if you’d hear me out anyway.”
“What, then?”
“You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. Let it go. The rebels have this. Randolph’s days are numbered. Concentrate on you. Get your head on straight and help me keep this town safe. We want you in our lives.”
For a heartbeat, she thought Griffin might give in. The way he stared at Merrick suggested he was hearing the last thing he expected, but the expression of absolute shock twisted into something gut-wrenching. She’d seen that particular look once before. The day she’d told him he wasn’t a hero.
Guilt tore through her. “Baby, I don’t understand why you’re still punishing yourself. You are a hero. Maybe you had to kill your CO, maybe you weren’t a hero to him, but you asked the questions that needed to be asked. To the men in your unit who were saved from having to kill those kids, you were a hero. To those kids, you were a hero. You’ve served your time. You don’t have to give your life.”
“Christ, you never give up. Don’t you get it?” He held his arms open. “What do you think might have made me start questioning my CO?”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” Merrick said. “Whatever happened, it’s in the past.”
Griffin didn’t spare him a glance, though. He stood up, his attention resting on her. “Go on, ask.”
She shook her head. “No. This isn’t good for you. Just—”
Merrick eased to his feet, arms held open in a placating gesture. “Listen, man, we don’t need to—”
Griffin’s voice rose to a shout. “
Ask me why I questioned my CO
!”
Lucan walked into the middle of the tension, carafe in one hand, glasses in the other. “What made you question your CO?” Everyone turned to stare. “What? What’d I miss?”
Merrick swore.
“Since Lucan was nice enough to ask, I’ll tell you. See, I went out on border patrol with my unit and we got a call about a terrorist cell on the move—twenty-two of them headed our way in one vehicle, no civilians in the area—can we take them out? Hell, yeah. Ooh-rah. How do you want us to do it? My CO, he didn’t care, he wanted them taken out. So, me? I get this brilliant plan to plant heat-sensing IEDs across the bottleneck in the road.”
Lucan set the carafe down on the table and put his hands on Prudence’s shoulders. He gave her a gentle squeeze.
Prudence shook she was so scared. Not for herself, but for Griffin. He was torturing himself over things that were long over and done with. “Baby, you don’t have to do this.”
“I do.” Agitated, he paced in front of them. “You need to understand, Pru. I didn’t half-ass the job, I had my team plant six of the damned things, there wasn’t a chance in hell anything could get through that bottleneck without hitting at least one of the bombs. And once they hit one, all of them were going off. Fucking. Brilliant. We all hunkered down and waited, smoking and joking. Next thing I know, here comes a hover-bus down the road. The driver was hauling ass, big plumes of dust cutting out behind the thing. And I’m thinking to myself, what a bunch of fucking pricks to hide in a school bus.”