by C. Gockel
“I’m counting on it.”
“Excuse me?” Miala stared at Thorn, who, with his stained sleeping garments and soot-smeared face, looked somewhat out of place in the travertine and chrome interior of the plush lift. “You mean you want them to find us?”
The elevator doors chose that inopportune moment to open. Even though the small foyer that fronted the entrances to the two penthouse suites was empty, Thorn remained silent until the door of their room slid shut behind them.
“They’re after money,” he said, as he went to the bank of windows that comprised one wall of the suite and activated the sunshield that rendered the glass opaque. “Now we just have to wait and find out how much.”
“I thought paying ransoms never worked,” Miala objected, her throat tight with worry and unshed tears. “At least, that’s what the news reports and vid-flicks always seem to say.”
“Sometimes it does...sometimes it doesn’t.” Thorn moved past her to the bathroom and turned on the hot water. Seemingly unfazed by her glare, he stripped off the stained sleep shirt and baggy pants he wore and stepped into the stream, closing his eyes briefly as the water sluiced off his hair and ran down his shoulders and chest. The waterproof bandage Quin Lassiter had applied looked shockingly white against his dark skin.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Miala refused to let herself get distracted by the sight of his naked body. Except for a few more scars, he looked much the same as he had eight years ago.
“Every situation is different.” Thorn opened his eyes and looked at her through the clouds of steam the hot water was generating. “Want to join me? Plenty of room in here.”
“Thank you, no,” Miala said icily. How could he possibly think she would be interested in sex at a time like this?
“You could use one,” he replied.
“Later,” she gritted.
He shrugged, poured some liquid soap into the palm of his hands, and began working it into his hair. “This is all about Mast’s money. You and I both know that. They failed with you on Iradia, so now they’re trying a different angle. That’s all.”
That’s all? she wanted to scream, but losing control right now wasn’t going to do anyone any good, least of all Jerem. It still infuriated her to think that Murgan and whatever cronies he had left thought they had some divine right to the treasure that had once lain in Mast’s vaults, but so be it. They could have it all. What was money, compared to her son?
While these unpleasant thoughts occupied her mind, Thorn finished his quick, efficient shower and stepped out under the molecular dryer. Within seconds the moisture had been wicked away from his body, and he reached up for the clean white robe that hung from a hook next to the shower unit.
“We’ll need clothes and other supplies,” he said.
“I can order those up in the morning,” Miala replied, her voice dull. Logically she knew that those commonplaces would have to be dealt with at some point, but for now all she could think of was Jerem in the hands of kidnappers, men so desperate they were willing to endanger the life of an innocent boy just to achieve their own mercenary ends.
Thorn gave her a keen look. Then he disappeared into the main room of the suite. After a few seconds he called, “I need your thumb.”
“What?” The bizarre request shook her momentarily out of her stupor, and she followed after him, wondering what the hell it was that he wanted. As soon as she took a few steps, she thought she understood. He had paused in front of the bar unit with which the suite had been supplied, but it had a biometric lock keyed to the person who had rented the rooms.
“You looked like you could use a drink.”
Well, she couldn’t argue with that. Miala crossed to the bar, applied her thumb to the sensor-lock, and then stood there for a moment, staring at the gleaming little bottles and wondering how many it would take to make her forget that her son had been stolen.
“Here,” said Thorn. He reached past her, grasped a bottle filled with some deep reddish-orange liquor that reminded her of the color of an Iradian sunset, and poured a few centimeters of the liquid into a square glass he found conveniently placed on top of the bar unit.
The sharp smell of it hit her nostrils even as he handed her the glass. Lately she hadn’t drunk much at all save a glass of wine with dinner once or twice a week. She didn’t know what Thorn had poured for her—not that it really mattered. Shutting her eyes, Miala tossed back approximately half the drink, feeling the fire of it as it hit the back of her throat and began to burn its way down her esophagus. She wanted to cough but refused to allow Thorn to see her inexperience with this sort of thing, so she settled for a slight throat clearing before she set the glass down on top of the bar.
“Smooth,” she managed.
A corner of his mouth lifted as his dark eyes gave her the lie, but he said nothing.
Still, Miala had to admit the sensation of heat that traveled down to her midsection and then on to all her limbs was fascinating. The blurred gray dullness of a few minutes ago had been wiped away by the potent liquor. Now she felt charged, energized. If Murgan’s henchmen had shown themselves in the suite at that moment, she would have taken them all on with her bare hands.
“Think I’ll have that shower now,” she said, after a brief pause.
“Good idea.”
Although she hated to keep having to acknowledge that Thorn was right, the shower felt sublime. She cranked the heat to the very edge of tolerance and let the massaging waves of water knead away some of the despair and terror that had stained her psyche just as surely as the soot had smudged her clothing. The alcohol coursing through her veins probably helped, too. Things were bad, no doubt about that, but at least she was still alive, and she had Thorn at her side to make sure Jerem was returned to her safely.
Miala stepped out of the shower and let herself be dried off before reaching for the second, smaller robe with which the bathroom had been supplied. When she went back out into the main room, she noticed Thorn had tuned the large vidscreen on the wall opposite the bed to a local news channel.
“Looking for something in particular?”
“Your house.”
“Excuse me?”
He waved the remote at the screen in a gesture of contempt. “Local channels love house fires...especially big, expensive house fires. But I can’t find any mention of yours.”
“So?”
“Obviously someone doesn’t want it publicized.”
Miala stood there for a moment, watching as Thorn flipped through the channels. At this hour of the night, the fare wasn’t particularly appetizing—vid epics most people had seen a hundred times before, hacks peddling improbable inventions guaranteed to make your life better, rebroadcasts of serials for those whose schedules kept them away from the vid during the daylight hours. But there were also three channels locally that broadcast the news twenty-five hours a day, and certainly an item such as her house fire would have caught the attention of one of the crews that trolled the city all day and night in search of those sorts of tasty items.
“What do you think it means?” she asked, the warm glow of the liquor abruptly turning into a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach.
He frowned. “Nothing good.”
“Thanks.”
Ignoring her brittle sarcasm, he turned the remote over in his hands and then abruptly switched off the vscreen. “Those police officers...”
“What about them?” Right now all she cared about was the fact that Thorn had managed to kill them before they killed either him or her. Or both of them at once.
“They didn’t seem like criminals masquerading as cops. They talked like cops, looked like cops, shot like cops.” Thorn ran a thoughtful finger down his chin, as if feeling the stubble there might aid in his logic processes. “I’m starting to think they really were cops.”
“But if they were real cops—if they weren’t just faking it—” Miala trailed off, watching Thorn’s impassive dark face.
&nb
sp; “Then I think we have to consider the possibility that the local security force is somehow involved in this,” the mercenary said.
The bottom seemed to fall out of her world. Oh, she’d grown up on Iradia, and she knew how crooked a place the universe could be, but once she’d found refuge here on Nova Angeles and settled her life in line with its orderly, long-civilized routines, she’d thought she was safe. But men were infinitely corruptible, it seemed.
She stood very still for a long moment. Then she looked directly at Thorn and said, “I think I’ll take the second half of that drink now.”
Jerem had never seen a Stacian in person before. Sure, one of his favorite vid heroes was Lem sen Korsadda, a Stacian whose fictional war injuries led to his riding around in a hover-chair everywhere—a hover-chair that had been specially modified with guns and grappling hooks and everything else a chair-bound crime fighter might need. It had been a gamble, casting one of the aliens in the lead when the Stacians and the Gaians maintained at best an armed neutrality. But the show had been a hit, and Jerem loved it because the hero wasn’t some square-chinned Gaian. However, what the vid series never really got across was how big a Stacian in the flesh really was.
Of course, this Stacian wasn’t confined to a hover-chair. He loomed, all fiercely knotted hair and glaring copper eyes, over the boy as the two kidnappers—a pair of scruffy-looking humans—who had stolen Jerem from his room stood slightly behind him. One of them held him by the shoulder. For some reason, he felt almost glad of their spurious protection.
Jerem wasn’t really sure how he had gotten here—wherever “here” was. They stood in a smallish room with blank concrete walls. Off to one side was a narrow cot with some meager bedding, and a few feet away from that was a small round table flanked by a pair of no-nonsense metal chairs. There were no windows; unshielded glow tubes glared down from the ceiling.
How it had all happened, he didn’t quite know. Jerem had heard the door chime sound, but he’d figured it must be Dr. Lassiter coming back for some reason. But he’d still slid his bedroom door open a crack, just in time to see his mother pulling on a robe and heading purposefully down the stairs. Jerem had been able to hear some muffled voices, but he couldn’t really understand what they were saying. He’d stood there for a minute, wondering whether he could get away with going over to the landing to hear things better, but suddenly Eryk Thorn had been standing in front of Jerem’s partially open door.
“Not a good idea,” said the mercenary.
Jerem had noticed that his father was dressed for bed, but the baggy sleep shirt he wore couldn’t completely conceal the gun he held down below hip level.
“What’s going on?” Jerem asked.
“That’s what I’m about to find out,” Thorn replied. “But you’re going to stay in your room, and lock the door. Don’t let anyone in except me or your mother.”
Somewhat mystified, Jerem nodded and shut the door. His mind had sprouted with questions, but Thorn could put on an even more no-nonsense glare than his mother, and the boy knew it would be useless to try and get any more information. Instead, he shut the door and locked it, then went back to his bed and waited. All remained quiet for a few more minutes, but then Jerem thought he heard a sound he immediately recognized from his favorite shows—guns going off. Guns! In his house! And all he could do was sit there on the bed like an idiot and miss out on all the excitement.
Of course, that thought had barely crossed his mind before the window next to his bed abruptly swung open, and two dark-clothed figures wriggled through. Jerem let out a little yelp of fright, but he didn’t even stop to think—he dove for the floor, knowing these intruders couldn’t mean any good.
It might have worked, except that his feet got tangled in the stupid bedclothes, and instead of bouncing back immediately to his feet and making a run for the door, as he had intended, he tripped. That gave the intruders enough time to regain their bearings and close on him. The last thing he remembered was the hiss of a hypo-spray against his neck. After that, it was just darkness, until he had come to even as he was being carried into this room.
Jerem thought about it for a minute, decided he probably was supposed to be afraid, then realized he wasn’t, not really. This was, after all, the height of coolness—to be kidnapped from your room in the middle of the night like the hero of some vid adventure story! Besides, he had to think that pretty soon Eryk Thorn would be hot on these guys’ trail anyway, and that was certain to be a lot of fun once the mercenary caught up with them.
The taunt—Just wait until my dad shows up and kicks your butt—rose to Jerem’s lips, but then he thought maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. After all, Thorn had made Jerem promise not to say anything about him being his father, and Jerem certainly didn’t want to let Eryk Thorn down. There was no way of knowing whether these goons had any idea that Thorn was Jerem’s father, and if they were unaware of the fact, it would be even more satisfying when the mercenary showed up out of the blue and started doing some serious damage.
So he remained silent, staring up at the Stacian with some curiosity. The alien definitely looked irritated about something, but maybe that was just his usual expression.
After a moment the golden-skinned kidnapper snapped, “What the hell are you looking at, kid?”
“You,” Jerem replied truthfully. “See, there’s this show, Moon of Syrinara, with this guy who—”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” interrupted the Stacian. “It stinks.”
Jerem opened his mouth to protest, caught the glare out of the alien’s hard copper eyes, and thought better of it. Obviously this guy had no taste in vid series.
“Better,” the alien said. “You—go sit over there. And keep your mouth shut.” He gestured with a huge fist in the direction of the cot, and Jerem scowled but went. After all, it was no use arguing with someone three times your size and armed to the teeth with at least two guns that Jerem could see, as well as a molecular blade in a sheath at his sizable hip.
So Jerem sat down on the cot, which was hard and lumpy and boded ill for any kind of decent sleep if they ended up keeping him here for any length of time. He wrapped his arms around his knees and balled himself up into the section of the cot that was shoved into the corner. From this position he hoped they would think he was defeated and afraid, but instead he shut his eyes and listened furiously.
He’d discovered some time ago that grown-ups tended to ignore a child’s presence if said child wasn’t doing anything to attract their attention. It was in this manner that he’d managed to overhear the complete details of Risa’s sister’s unplanned pregnancy and the lengthy “vacation” on New Chicago that had ensued. Not that Jerem really cared whether or not Magri had gotten herself “in the family way,” as Risa had put it, but you never knew when information might come in handy. And it wasn’t until he’d sneezed unexpectedly during this discourse that his mother discovered he’d been curled up behind the back of the sofa the whole time. She’d gotten that funny expression on her face, the one she got whenever she was trying to be stern but instead wanted to just start laughing instead. Somehow managing to clamp down on the smile, she’d ordered him from the room. He hadn’t gotten punished for that, but he’d also noticed she was a lot more careful in the future to make sure he wasn’t around whenever she was having a sensitive conversation.
The Stacian was asking the older of the two men who had kidnapped Jerem whether there had been any further “trouble.” The guy looked nervous and shifted his weight, but admitted that Eryk Thorn had intervened and shot the two RilSec officers dead.
Yeah, Dad! Jerem thought, but made no outward response.
“What the hell is the connection between those two?” the Stacian demanded, and the two humans looked at each other and shrugged.
“Don’t know for sure,” said the other man, who had a slight singsong accent Jerem didn’t recognize. “I mean, she’s a good-looking bit, that’s for sure, but who ever heard of Thorn giving a
damn about that sort of thing?”
“No one,” replied the Stacian grimly. “Something to do with Iradia, I don’t doubt, but my brother didn’t have time to figure it out, and right now I don’t care. If he’s working for her, then he’ll do as she says. And if we make it very clear that if Thorn shows up, the kid dies, then there shouldn’t be a problem.”
Those words, spoken so carelessly, made Jerem swallow. Maybe this wasn’t such an adventure after all...
“Anyway, Chaddick just told me she’s checked into the Rilsport Plaza, so now we have a contact point. We’ll wait until morning—let’s give the woman her beauty sleep, shall we?”
Jerem felt rather than saw the leer that accompanied that statement, but he knew better than to move or look up. But why would his mother have gone to a hotel? You’d think she would have stayed at home and waited to find out what had happened to him. But wait—Jerem supposed maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to hang around a house that had a couple of dead police officers in the main salon.
“And then?” the first man who had spoken asked.
“Then we find out how much this kid really is worth.”
22
In her dreams Eryk Thorn reached out for her, drawing her close, bringing his mouth against hers. His hands moved down her body, touching her once more, in a way she had only been able to imagine during the last empty years of her life. Miala sighed and relaxed into his encircling arms, reveling in the sensations even if they were only the phantom embraces of a dream...
Suddenly she realized she wasn’t dreaming. Those really were Thorn’s hands on her, his mouth moving against the sensitive places on her body. For a second she froze, wondering if she should make some protest, but then she realized she didn’t want him to stop. For eight long years she’d thought of Eryk Thorn, ached for him, and now she desired nothing else but to become one with him once more. Was it really so wrong to want to leave behind the worry and doubt and fear, if only for a while? This was no betrayal of Jerem. Rather, it was an affirmation that hers and Thorn’s lives had become inextricably entwined.
