“What?”
“I know that if I change the direction of this stunner,”
Katya whispered, “that if I press it to Tag’s head, you’ll do anything and everything I want.”
Tiara sucked in a breath.
“But I don’t want to do that.” It was a plea. “I don’t want to become a monster.”
“You won’t get away, you know.” Tiara’s tone shifted. “Dev will hunt you down.”
Katya gave the other woman a shaky smile. “So it shouldn’t matter if you let me go now.”
“Katya, I know you’re not going to shoot me,” Tiara said point-blank. “So this standoff is pointless.”
“The weapon’s set for mild stun,” Katya said. “You really want to leave the child vulnerable by making me take you out?”
Tiara swore under her breath. “You’re not as helpless as you look.”
“Thanks. Now walk over to the alarm panel.” She shifted to keep Tiara a good distance from her as the woman moved. “Input the code.”
Tiara complied without further questions.
Katya felt her lips quirk. “Did you send out a silent distress signal? It doesn’t matter—just as long as the alarms don’t shriek when you open the door.”
“Why do you care?” Tiara arched one perfect eyebrow. “I’m already awake.”
“I don’t want to scare the boy.”
A huge sigh. “I was on the way to liking you, Katya. Now you go and point a stunner at me.”
“Open the door,” Katya said, knowing the other woman was stalling.
Tiara did so without argument. No alarms sounded. As the Forgotten female strode out onto the porch and took the steps down to the lawn, Katya followed. Knowing Tiara would go for her weapon now that Tag was no longer under threat, she said, “Sorry,” and fired the stunner.
“Fuck!” Tiara collapsed onto her knees, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. “Not sporting.” It came out slow, uneven.
Tucking the stunner into her pocket, Katya put an arm under Tiara’s shoulders. “I know. You can curse me later.” Right now, she had to get the telepath to one of the vehicles.
The other woman resisted, but the stunner had short-circuited her nervous system. However, nothing could be done about the fact that the gorgeous woman was taller and heavier than Katya. As a result, Katya was sweating with a mixture of panic and stress by the time she dragged Tiara to the closest four-wheel drive. Taking the woman’s hand, she pressed her thumb to the lock.
The door slid open and back.
Pulling Tiara’s upper body into the driver’s seat, Katya managed to get the woman’s thumb on the ignition switch. The car started with a quiet purr.
“Won’t restart,” Tiara murmured, eyes starting to sharpen.
“I’ll just have to keep it running.” Lowering the Shine operative to the ground, she took Tiara’s cell phone from her pocket. “I used the lowest possible setting—you’ll be up and moving in less than five minutes. I’ll make sure the boy’s shields are solid until then.”
Tiara smiled. “Dev is so going to kick your ass.”
Taken aback by that smile, Katya hesitated. “The stunners don’t have any strange effects on Forgotten physiology, do they?”
“Hell, no.” Tiara’s speech was beginning to clear. “I’ve just decided to find this amusing.”
Shaking her head at the telepath’s strange sense of humor, Katya got in the vehicle and backed it carefully out and onto the drive. She went a hundred meters down, then pulled over into the night-shadow of a large tree. No one would be able to see her if they came down the road. And if she was right about the silent alarm, they were already on the way.
She continued to hold the shield on the boy until she felt Tiara’s energy replace hers, snapping back into her mind before the other woman could attack her on that level. In the nick of time. Two vehicles raced down the private road, heading for the house. Katya waited until they turned the corner, then she threw the cell phone—and its GPS chip—out the window and drove like a bat out of hell.
The car’s navigation system got her out of the isolated area and onto a major road still heavy with traffic. She drove for twenty minutes before pulling over into the parking lot of a diner packed with monster rigs. The hover-trucks had their own special automatic navigation lanes on the highways, often traveling at speeds three to four times that of cars.
Parking beside one of the rigs, she took a deep breath and turned off the engine. She was now effectively stranded. But if she knew Dev, this car had some kind of a tracking device embedded in it. She left the stunner under the seat, having no desire to cause any more harm.
Conversation stopped the instant she walked into the diner, but she didn’t—couldn’t—back out. Tiara was probably already putting the trace in motion. Girding herself, she looked around. Most of the people at the counter were men.
Sweat broke out along her spine. Getting into a vehicle with a stranger was hardly the smartest of moves, but it was the only choice she had. And she was a telepath. No one was ever again going to make her a victim. Giving a small smile, she moved to the counter.
“Buy you a coffee?” The offer came from a twenty-something man to her right.
“I’d prefer an orange juice,” she said, judging him “safe.” If all she had left were her instincts, then she had to trust them.
He smiled, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. “Juice it is. Hope you don’t mind me saying, but you could do with some meat on your bones.”
Her mind cascaded with images of Dev making her smoothies, sliding granola bars into her pockets. “I’m working on that. Thanks.” She took the orange juice and began to sip. “I don’t suppose you’re going north?”
The trucker gave her a disappointed look. “Aw, damn. South. Jessie!”
A woman with a long blonde ponytail looked up from the shadowy end of the counter. Her face was all freckles and glowing skin. “What?”
“You going north?”
“Maybe.” The woman looked at Katya. “You need a ride?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
Jessie shrugged and got up. “I’m heading out now. You can keep me company.”
Thanking the man for the juice, Katya followed Jessie out of the bar. The female trucker didn’t say anything until they were in the cab of a sleek silver truck with a dash that looked more like something you might find in the cockpit of a small jet.
“Not smart what you’re doing,” Jessie said as they hit the highway. “Most of the boys, they’re okay. But there’s a few that think giving a ride means getting something in return.”
“I know,” Katya said, deciding for honesty. Something about Jessie said that for all her fresh-faced looks, she’d spot a lie a mile off. “But I didn’t want to be caught on surveillance at the travel depots.”
Jessie switched to automatic navigation after smoothing the truck into its specified lane. The steering wheel slid away as the truck’s computronic software took over, accelerating the rig to a speed no human would ever be able to control. “You running from someone?” A concerned glance. “Someone been mistreating you, honey?”
Arms holding her close. A kiss to wish her sweet dreams
. “No. But I have something I need to do.” A demon she needed to face.
“Fair enough.” Jessie kicked back, putting her feet on the dash. “So, you like jazz?”
“I’m going to—”
Dev bit off the words, staring at a grinning Tiara. “You just let her walk out?”
“Hey, she stunned me,” the woman said, affronted. “And wasn’t I the one who tracked the car down to that diner even though she had the devil’s luck and took the one with the malfunctioning tracker?”
Knives lanced Dev’s stomach at the thought of who Katya might have ridden with, what they might have done to her. “Did Lucas call back?” The leopard alpha had gone to talk to the folks who owned the diner after Dev’s attempts had met with stony silence.
His cell phone rang at that moment. Snapping it open, he looked at the caller ID. “Lucas, you got it?”
“She’s on a rig heading north,” the DarkRiver alpha told him. “With a driver named Jessie Amsel.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
But that, Dev thought, didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. “I’ve got a contact in the truckers’ union,” Dev said. “I’ll get her route.”
“They left about four hours ago.”
“Then I better start moving.” Hanging up, he called his contact and five minutes later had a printout of Jessie Amsel’s route. Eyes narrowing, he made another call. “Michel? I need a favor.”
“You going to owe me, cousin.” A smile he could almost hear. “What’s up?”
Dev outlined what he needed. “Is it doable?”
“Against the rules, but I figure you’ll pull my butt out of jail if I land in it.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Even if she doesn’t switch rides beforehand, Traffic Comp tells me the roads are clear all the way to the border. If she hits Canada before I get to her, nothing I can do about it.”
EARTHTWO COMMAND LOG:
SUNSHINE STATION
18 August 2080:
Official incident report: Ten members of the scientific team are currently recovering from exposure in the medical bay. It appears they lost their sense of direction in the dark on their way back from a survey mission
.
None of the ten contacted base camp for help, and they do not appear to remember the hours they spent without shelter. All ten have been confined to the med bay until they can be fully evaluated
.
CHAPTER 32
“You got the
papers to get over?” Jessie asked as she brought the truck to a stop three hours south of the Canadian border, the world still night-dark around them though it was early morning.
Katya shook her head. “No. I’ll have to find a way to sneak through.”
“That’s not exactly easy. They’ve got Psy guards now, too—apparently there was a problem with people using telepathy to cloud human guards’ minds.”
That eliminated the very plan Katya had been counting on. “I don’t suppose you know anyone who makes fake IDs.”
“Do I look like the criminal type?”
“No, you look resourceful.”
Jessie grinned. “What the hell. Come on.”
Twenty minutes later, Katya had an identification card that was “good for one use only,” according to the wizened little man who made it for her. “They’ll get a bounce on it mebbe ten minutes after you scan it through, so make sure you hightail it out of there fast.”
Katya nodded and handed over most of the cash she’d taken from Tag. “Thanks.”
“And if you get caught, you never saw me.” Beady black eyes pinned her in place. “Understood?”
“Got it.”
“Are you going over the border?” she asked Jessie once they were on their way again.
The other woman shook her head. “My delivery’s to a facility about forty minutes shy of it. You can hitch a ride with another trucker from there—I’ll make sure it’s one of the good ones.”
“Why are you helping me so much, Jessie?” Katya asked, running her fingers over and around the hard edges of the ID card. “I’m obviously someone in trouble, someone who could get you in trouble.”
“You heard that thing about paying it forward?”
“No.”
“Where you been living, in a cave?” Without waiting for an answer, Jessie quickly explained. “It’s like this—if someone does something nice for you, you got to do something nice for another person down the road. It’s meant to put good back into the world.”
“I see,” Katya said slowly. “The world would indeed be a better place if everyone did that. Can I ask—whose niceness are you paying forward?”
“When I was a scrawny little sixteen-year-old, a scary fucker of a trucker picked me up on a dark and deserted street.” Jessie’s smile turned her striking. “After he finished chewing me out about the dangers of hitchhiking, he fed me, let me shower in his truck, and asked me where I was going. When I said I didn’t know, he gave this big sigh.”
“And?” Katya prompted when Jessie fell silent.
“And I ended up riding with him for the next five years. Isaac’s the one who taught me how to drive the big rigs, who got me my first gig.”
“He must be so proud of you. Is he retired now?”
“Hah! He’s only six years older than me!”
“Oh.” Katya bit her lip, but couldn’t contain her curiosity. “You don’t see him as a brother, do you?”
“God, I’m pathetic. And obvious.” The other woman rolled her eyes. “He still sees me as that scrawny kid he picked up. It hasn’t sunk into his tiny male mind that I not only have boobs, I’d like to use them, thank you very much!”
Katya burst out laughing just as dawn began to whisper on the horizon. “You’re waiting for him?”
“I’m giving him one more month. I swear, after that, I’m taking the first offer that comes along.”
“It’s wonderful, you know,” Katya said, mind filling with memories of pure molten heat. “Being with someone who touches your heart.”
“You don’t sound very happy.”
“I think he’s going to hate me now.”
A siren pierced the air, cutting off her breath.
“Damn.” A scowling Jessie pulled over to the side of the long, otherwise empty road. “I swear,” the blonde muttered, “the hick cops have nothing better to do than hassle law-abiding citizens.”
“Jessie, we’re actually—”
“Shh. Think law-abiding thoughts.” Sliding back her door, Jessie grabbed her coat and jumped down. Katya couldn’t see her as she moved toward the officer, but she heard her words. “Michel Benoit, don’t you have to go eat a doughnut or something?”
“That’s Officer Benoit to you” came the drawling response. “I got a report you’re carrying contraband, sweetheart.”
“Hell you did!” Now Jessie sounded pissed. “I’m clean and you know it.”
“Contraband’s about yay-high, dark blonde hair, on the thin side. Ring a bell?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Katya had every faith in Jessie’s skills, but she had no desire to get the woman who’d helped her so much into real trouble with the law—it wasn’t as if the cop wouldn’t check the vehicle. Sliding back her own door, she stepped out into the frigid winter air and walked around the front of the truck to stand beside Jessie, the dawn soft and muted around them. Even the snow lining the roadside looked warm in the red and gold light.