Taken by Surprise

by Anna Argent

  She buried her nose against his neck and breathed him in to steady her nerves. She wasn’t sure why his presence was so soothing, but it was, and she needed that right now.

  He set her on her feet. “Don’t look back. Eyes forward.”

  She did as he said and opened her eyes. The backyard was untouched except for a set of footprints leading to the back door.

  This was how the asshole who’d wrecked her house had come in.

  “No one’s been near the corner of the yard with the light,” Talan said. “That’s a good sign that your father hid his treasure well.”

  As he always did.

  A flutter of grief filled her gut, but she ignored it. They had a job to do. Lives were at stake.

  More important, whoever had trashed her house was going to be pissed as hell when she found the treasure after he hadn’t.

  “Take that, bitches,” she said aloud.

  Talan raised his brows, making his tattoos shift. “Take what?”

  “I’m going over there to find what Dad left me.” She picked up the snow shovel propped against the back of the house and tromped through the snow.

  A pool of light fell squarely in the rear corner of the yard. Even the eight-foot privacy fence her father had put in couldn’t keep the overhead light at bay.

  She started in the center of that spotlight and cleared a circle of frozen grass. While she did, Talan ran all over the yard, leaving a weaving path of footprints and disrupted snow.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Making sure that no one can figure out what we were up to from our tracks. No sense in giving away any advantage.”

  She never would have thought to go to those lengths, but then that’s why she needed a man like Talan around.

  The plastic blade of her shovel hit something hard and scraped.

  Excitement slid through her, making her hands shake on the handle of the shovel.

  Talan appeared beside her. “Let me. You’ve shoveled enough.”

  It took him half the time it would have taken her to clear the rest of the area. What she’d scraped across was some kind of metal plate. It was about the size of a manhole cover, but square. There was an obvious gap around the edge, like it was meant to open, but it had been welded shut in several places.

  “This wasn’t here when I was a kid,” she said. “I would have remembered it. I played back here all the time.”

  “He must have put it in sometime.”

  “When I went to college, maybe.” She wasn’t certain about that, but she did remember there had been a lot of mud in the kitchen when she came home for the summer one year.

  Talan took her by the shoulders and eased her away from the opening. “Stand back. I’m going to open it.”

  “How?”

  He pulled a small glass vial from his vest. “Acid.”

  “Is there anything you’re not prepared for?” she asked, grinning.

  He touched her cheek with so much gentleness, she could almost mistake it for love. “I wasn’t prepared for you, Zoe.”

  Her heart squeezed hard in her chest. She could fall for a man like Talan way too easily, and that scared her.

  She pulled away and took a long step back. “I’ll give you room to do your thing.”

  His hand fell, as did his expression, but he crouched and did the job, pouring a thin stream of yellow liquid across the welds. The metal hissed and smoked as it was eaten away. It worked in seconds, allowing him to pull the lid free.

  Lights came on as soon as the metal was clear of its housing. There, in her own backyard, was a tunnel leading straight down. The walls were cement, and metal rungs had been bolted in the wall for ladder access whatever was below.

  Zoe stared in surprise for several seconds. “I had no idea this was even here.”

  “I’ll go first,” Talan said.

  “What do you think is down there?”

  “Only one way to find out. Stay here.”

  He was on his way down before she even considered arguing with him. This was all just too surreal.

  As soon as Talan made it to the bottom, he looked up. “You need to come down and see this. But don’t touch the acid.”

  She climbed down, closing the lid behind her so that nothing could easily follow them down. The lights went off for a second, giving her a jolt of panic, before flickering back on again.

  “Motion sensor,” said Talan, pointing to a flat area on the wall.

  She’d never seen anything like it, but she did recognize her father’s handiwork on sight.

  At the bottom of the ladder was a small, round room. It was barely tall enough for Talan to stand upright, and only a few feet across.

  “It looks like one of those storm shelters—the kind they use in Tornado Alley.”

  Talan nodded. “Yeah, except it’s been modified. There’s Imonite tech all over the place down here.”

  There was a single work bench across one wall. Its back was rounded to fit the space, as were several shelves and colorful bins used to hold small parts and hardware. The space was far cleaner than her father’s usual work areas, telling her that he either didn’t spend much time down here or had cleaned shortly before he died.

  On the workbench was a sticky note with her father’s writing on it. She held it up to Talan. “What does it say?”

  “‘What is your favorite color?’”

  “Are you asking, or was he?”

  “He was,” Talan said.

  Zoe started opening red bins. There was another of those fabric pouches in the third one. From the weight of that and the way it fit her palm, she knew what was inside.

  With shaking hands, she opened the drawstring and slid out the other half of the sphere. Without even trying the two pieces together, she knew they would fit. She’d studied the first half for so long, she knew every scratch and ridge it held, and this piece was a perfect match.

  “This is it,” she said, beaming up at Talan.

  He had a strange look on his face. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t joy.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He said nothing as he shook his head. Instead, he pulled out a flat, disk-shaped device from his pocket and slid a smaller disk into the first. After studying the gadget for a few seconds, he said, “The next window is twenty minutes away. It opens in an hour.”

  “That’s it?” Zoe asked. “We’re done?”

  Talan nodded. “It’s time for you to go home.”

  *****

  Stevens waited until it was safe before he started his engine. As soon as he was in place well behind the couple and in enough traffic to not be noticed, he made the call.

  “Yes?” answered the freak.

  “They’re gone. I’m on their tail.”

  “Which way are they going?”

  “They just merged onto the highway going east.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Stevens.

  “Nothing. I know where they’re going.”

  “What about my money?”

  The freak let out a sound that was almost a growl—one that had every hair on Stevens’ body lifting in fear. “Follow them. I’ll be waiting for you there with your payment.”

  Something about the way the guy talked warned Stevens that this was a setup. He wanted the stack of cash he’d been offered, but there was no amount of money worth his life.

  Let the pretty couple from the bank deal with the freak. Money or not, Stevens was out.

  He took the next exit, none the worse for wear. He didn’t even suffer a pang of guilt that he hadn’t warned the couple that they were speeding toward a trap.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Talan did his best to ignore that he had less than an hour left with Zoe.

  She would leave this world and go home to use her gifts to help end the war. He’d stay here and keep hunting for the Taken. They both had jobs to do, and those jobs just happened t
o be light years away.

  He found her hand as he drove and clung to it like some kind of frightened child.

  He didn’t want to lose her. He cared about her too much.

  Hell, he loved her.

  She shifted in her seat. “Are you okay?”

  He wasn’t, but she didn’t need to know that. It was his job to show her courage and optimism. She needed him to be fearless and certain of her path so that she might be too.

  Talan forced himself to give her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine. It’s almost over now. You’ll be safe soon.”

  She squeezed his hand tighter. “I don’t know how living on a war torn planet can be safe, but I know for a fact that it’s not safe here—not so long as Krotian is alive.”

  “He can’t reach you on Loriah. The Builders are guarded. You’ll be free from worry so your mind can fly the way it was meant to do.”

  She fell silent as they neared the coordinates of the next window. The area wasn’t as far away from civilization as he would have liked, but it was in an industrial park with businesses that were closed down for the night.

  He bounced over a pair of railroad tracks and took the next left into the parking lot of a plumbing supply warehouse. He parked the truck near the chain link fence surrounding the rear of the building and texted Radek that they’d arrived.

  The man was still a few minutes away, but the way things had gone with this job, Talan wanted his friend watching his back. Just in case.

  Krotian would know about the window too, but that didn’t mean he knew that they’d found both halves of the data sphere and were sending her home. Since Krotian couldn’t be at every window, he had to pick and choose which ones to monitor.

  Talan deeply hoped that this one had slipped his notice.

  He unbuckled his seat belt and turned to Zoe. Security lights flowed in through the windows, painting one side of her face with a golden glow.

  She was so damn pretty. He didn’t know how he was ever going to go a full day—much less the rest of his life—without seeing her face.

  But he knew he would, because that was his job. His life. Even if he went back with her, they’d never be allowed to have a romantic relationship. Everyone would hate the idea of diluting her genius with the DNA of a destroyer. They’d all want her to have brilliant children who could ensure that the Raide were destroyed and no one else ever succeeded in invading their world again.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “I’m going to cut a hole in the fence so we can get back there when the window opens. We’ve got a few minutes until it’s go time.”

  She looked down at her lap and the fabric sacks filled with the treasure her father had left her.

  “What about this?”

  “You’ll be arriving in a safe location inside protected Imonite territory. They won’t know exactly when you’re coming, but they know when every window opens and someone will be there, waiting for you.”

  “I don’t know the language well enough to speak it.”

  “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “We’re taught Earth languages as children. Someone there will know English.”

  She clutched the sacks in her lap. “I don’t want to go. I’m terrified.”

  “Just think of it as a grand adventure—one your father would have taken you on himself if he could have.”

  “He always said this day would come, but I never thought it would be today, you know?”

  Talan nodded. “I understand.”

  “I wish you could come with me. I hate the idea of not knowing anyone there.”

  His heart broke for her. For him too. He had to let the woman he loved go, knowing he’d probably never see her again. How did a man do that and still sleep at night?

  He covered her hand with his, hoping to offer some small comfort. “I would go with you if I could, but my place is here.”

  Tears shimmered in her dark eyes. “I guess it’s best to just get this over with, then. Tear off the bandage, so to speak.”

  That’s not what Talan wanted—not even close. He wanted to linger with her here, in this quiet space where it was just the two of them, for as long as he could. But there was still work to do before the window opened.

  “Come with me,” he told her. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until you’re through the window.”

  She nodded and they both left the warmth of the truck. His tools were in the bed, and the sooner he used them to cut open the fence, the sooner they could come back to the truck and be alone together, if only for a few more minutes.

  *****

  Zoe couldn’t stand goodbyes. She’d said enough of those to last a lifetime.

  She didn’t know how she was going to let Talan go. He’d done so much for her—made her feel safe when her whole world was spinning out of control. How did a girl just get over a man like that?

  She doubted it was even possible.

  Rather than dwell on what she couldn’t change, she focused on what was right in front of her.

  She sat on a weathered crate against the fence while Talan worked to clear the area where the window would open. It was filled with pallets loaded with heavy bags of grain and seed. He loaded one of the huge bags onto each arm and hauled them several yards away where he stacked them up again.

  Whoever worked here was going to be confused as hell tomorrow when they saw all those heavy bags had been relocated for no apparent reason.

  She pulled her coat closed against a gust of cold wind. The hard lumps of the data sphere halves thunked together inside her pockets.

  Talan had swept her away from her father’s hidden workspace before she’d had time to play with the sphere her father had used his dying breath to tell her about. And now that she needed a distraction from her scary new life, it was right in her lap, ready to serve.

  She pulled both pieces of the sphere from their separate bags and studied them side-by-side. She’d known when she’d first seen the second piece that it would fit, but now that she was looking closely, she understood what a marvel this invention was.

  The tech was definitely not human, but it worked on the same principles of physics. Electrons still traveled along a conduit, but the storage device itself didn’t seem to use binary code like a computer would.

  She still had so much to learn about Imonite tech, and while she wished she could do it here, at least there was something exciting waiting for her on the other side of that window.

  Zoe fitted the two halves of the sphere together with a muted click. The reader she’d assembled—the one her father had obviously laid out for her to finish—was in her purse, waiting to be used.

  She hesitated.

  Talan had said that her father had stolen this sphere from his own people. That act wasn’t something she could imagine her dad even thinking about, much less doing. But what if she read what was on the device and it somehow proved her father was a thief?

  She couldn’t stand the thought of tarnishing his memory like that.

  Still, curiosity burned along the surface of her brain, demanding she take a little peek. After all, her mother had been killed for what she knew, and those secrets were supposed to be right here in Zoe’s palm, waiting for her.

  How could she resist a temptation like that? How could she resist such a legacy?

  She couldn’t. Like always, her curiosity got the best of her, driving her to act.

  Zoe pulled the reader from her purse and held it in her palm. She let it fuel itself by pulling energy from her cells. The concept should have seemed alien, but she’d seen her father do it all her life. Talan had also powered his weapons in the same way.

  As soon as she felt the tug of energy leaving her body, she recognized it—knew she’d done it before. This wasn’t her first time, though she’d never powered anything with as much pull as this reader had.

  As soon as the device stopped drawing energy from her, she knew it was ready. With a deep breath and a quick wish for good luck, she settled th
e sphere into the cradle.

  Nothing happened at first, but then the sphere started to spin. The speed picked up until it was whirling so fast that she couldn’t see any detail at all—it looked like one solid piece of dull metal, rather than individual components.

  After a few seconds, the sphere came to a sudden stop and hovered there, suspended above the reader without touching it.

  Nothing had been displayed. There were no images or text.

  Maybe she’d put the reader together wrong, or maybe there was some part missing, like a screen.

  She picked it up to see what might be the matter, and the instant her skin made contact with the base, a jolt streaked up her arm and lit her mind on fire.

  Images exploded in her brain, along with knowledge and exacting sensory detail. She didn’t simply read what was on the sphere; she experienced it.

  She saw plans for a weapon—one designed to target specific DNA sequences and eliminate them—but it was more than just seeing the plans. She remembered designing this weapon, though she’d never done so. She felt the hours she’d spent bent over a table, testing her theories to see which ones worked and didn’t. She felt the despair of failure over and over, followed by exhilaration of success when she finally found the ultimate solution.

  This weapon was going to save her people. It was going to save the daughter she loved so deeply.

  She had to get the information out of her head before the Raide reached her. They’d invaded and were on their way to her workshop. It was only a matter of time before they found her.

  The only choice she had was to remove all memories of the weapon so no enemies could discover them and rip them from her mind.

  So that’s what she did. To save her husband. To save her baby girl.

  The sphere finally let go. Zoe sat back, breathing hard and shaking. It took a few seconds for her rattled mind to catch up, but she finally realized what she’d just witnessed.

  These events and experiences were her mother’s, somehow turned into data and stored in physical form, just waiting for Zoe to find them—to feel them.