And while each time had been just as amazing as the time before, they felt a little regretful when they had to leave. Surprisingly, Sophie had the most energy out of all of them.
She looked at them with careful eyes, and Jayne knew that she had heard them the night before. Her suspicions were answered when D’Anil found one of his other hideouts. While the girls stood out in the night air, Sophie crossed her arms and said quietly, “I was wondering why he was helping us. I think I know now.”
“It’s for money,” Jayne answered, “I promised him 1,000 imdallions… Which I’m sure we could get, once we report everything that’s been happening here.”
Sophie didn’t look at Jayne, staring straight ahead at the house that the man was rummaging through. “He’s in it for more than just money, Jayne. You know that… Otherwise, you wouldn’t be rewarding him at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you want to punish every wrongdoer here, but you want to pay someone who helped smuggle us into the city.”
Jayne opened her mouth to argue, but she didn’t know what she could say. It had been something she battled with since she first started to humanize D’Anil, and that was weeks ago, when they were still living in his apartment.
It was only getting harder to imagine reporting him, handing him into the authorities and watch the Empire punish him by law. But it was something Jayne was going to have to deal with soon. “He’s… Helping us,” she said, “He’s risking a lot to be here, and even if it’s just for his stupid money, it’s still better than the others that left us to rot.”
Before Sophie could continue the conversation, D’Anil stepped out, another pack in hand. Jayne smiled gratefully and grabbed it from him, taking a water bottle out to drink. She pretended the conversation never happened, that things were just as they were the day before, but Jayne could feel it, the burning of Sophie’s gaze, the entire time.
Luckily, with the pace that D’Anil set, it only took them the two days to make it. It was easier, a faster trip, when there were less people to carry out and take care of, even with the sun to deal with this time, a factor they hadn’t had to work with before. Once they all knew they would make it by sunrise, both Jayne and Sophie’s moods lifted considerably.
They even started to talk about things like they had before, in their rooms. Jayne talked about her family some more, and her work with kids at the school. Sophie went on about some boy that she had a crush on, how he always preferred blondes anyways. “I’m still dying it back, once we get home,” she mused, playing with her light locks.
“I like you better with the red hair,” Jayne smiled as they stopped for a break. She took a swig from a water bottle, then passed it to D’Anil. He took it gratefully. He had been silent the whole trip, save for orders telling them to speed up, or to head into another direction. “You could rock the blonde.”
“No thanks,” he scoffed, “I don’t even trust people to cut my hair, let alone change its color… My mom always liked my brown hair anyways. Brown like hers.”
Jayne took the water bottle back, sipping. “You never mentioned you had a mother.”
“Everyone has one, don’t they?” Sophie asked.
Her friend smiled. “I’m not allowed to ask questions, so I have to start getting creative with convincing him to tell me things.”
D’Anil took the water bottle and put it back with the rest of the pack. He’d have to refill these at some point. He’d only saved enough in the other packs they’d passed by, leaving them behind so that one person could survive. If things went wrong for the three of them, the water could become an issue. “She died during summer season,” he said, “Before we were able to get into the caverns. And we’ll all die the same way if we don’t get a move on.”
Jayne frowned. She didn’t expect the tale to come so easily, and she didn’t expect it to be so sad. But he didn’t dwell. He just kept on walking. Jogging up to him, she caught him by the arm. Sophie hung back, looking up at the stars in the sky. She didn’t care about his past, not like Jayne did. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“How old were you?”
“Too young,” he answered. He could feel Jayne’s presence weighing on him, her curiosity growing. He rolled his eyes. “Twelve. It was about fifteen years ago, happy?”
“No,” Jayne said softly, and hugged her body into his arm, kissing his bicep. And just as quickly as she was there, her warmth left him, giving D’Anil distance. “But I won’t pry anymore. Sorry.”
And she kept her word. The rest of the trip was simple chit-chat, falling silent only when the sky started to turn blue again, and they all stopped in front of a group of clay huts. And in the middle of them, there was the tallest one. The tallest clay building. Jayne stopped walking completely as she remembered the scene, remembered how she first saw all of this while being shoved out of a ship. A ship that was still there. “How is it still here?” she asked.
“Summer season,” D’Anil answered, “They don’t do trips during the summer season. The odds wouldn’t be worth it, the people they’d lose…” He sighed, looking at the large ship that sat on the edge of the circles, completely lifeless. If not for the gleam of the rising sun on the metal, it would look as abandoned as the base it inhabited. “Can you fly it?” he asked.
“That?” Jayne asked, nodding her head towards it. Her breathing picked up. This was the first time she’d ever been out of her planet before. She’d never had the money for it before that. She didn’t even have the money for it now, having been forcibly taken.
“I can drive it a little bit,” Sophie said, coming up from behind them, her eyes fixed on it. “My little brothers are both obsessed with being space commanders. If there’s a manual or something, and coordinates for another place we could go… I think I might be able to try. I’d need a co-pilot, too.”
Jayne met her blue eyes and nodded. “Hey, as long as you tell me what to do, I can try not to blow this thing up.”
D’Anil looked at the both of them, unsure. “How did either of you expect to get off this planet before?”
Sophie smiled wanly at him. “That was Jayne’s job to get us here,” she said, “Now, I’m going to go figure out how to get this thing working.” She didn’t tell D’Anil goodbye or thank you for helping them, and it was only when Jayne realized the rude gesture that she realized she’d also need to do that too.
She looked at D’Anil, a hint of desperation in her eyes. “So… I guess… I guess this is it.”
He crossed his hands over his chest, not quite looking at her. He was doing that thing again, building up walls around himself and pushing her out. “Yeah, well, just figure out a way to mail me my money,” he said, “I’ll probably have to change my address. Alem is going to know it was me that helped get you in. But that’s fine; there’s other cities.”
Jayne shook her head. Was D’Anil, the epitome of all that was stoic in the universe, rambling? “D’Anil, I need to tell you something, and I also need to ask you something,” she said.
“Of course you do,” he sighed.
She swallowed just as she heard the ship start, the engines revving and vibrating. Sophie called for her to come help, but Jayne stayed glued to the spot in front of him. Why lie? Why tell the truth? she thought, remembering the old woman and the son. How they treated her with distrust. D’Anil… He deserved better than that. And at this point, it would be too late for him to do anything about the lie she told. Besides maybe kill her.
“I’m not actually a schoolteacher,” she blurted out. Her arms fell tightly to her sides, hands balling into fists. Jayne looked down at her feet. “I… I actually work for the New York City police department.”
“What?”
She sighed. “I work for a justice team where I live. It’s how I got captured in the first place,” Jayne explained, “Women kept going missing, and I had to find out why! So I went… I went to one of the seedier parts of town, to places where t
hese women were last seen, and… And I got captured in the next batch. But I couldn’t say anything, not without risking my life even more, and I still had to figure out what was happening.”
“And now you know… God, is that why? Is that why every conversation with you is a damn interrogation?” D’Anil demanded. He stepped back from her, angry. And Jayne understood it, felt it was perfectly justified. While D’Anil didn’t tell her certain things, when he did, he never lied. The same could not be said for her. “What do you plan on doing, Jayne? Take down the entire city? Take me down?”
The woman shook her head vehemently. “No!” she cried, “Just them! You’re different, D’Anil, I know you are!”
“No, I’m not. I’m worse, don’t you remember? The smugglers just do human trafficking. I’ve done that, plus a dozen more crimes.”
“I don’t care!” Jayne argued, “They don’t have to know that! I’ll tell them that you saved us, and that’s that. Come with me, come back to Earth, and you can start a whole new life there. No more crimes, no more answering to Alem, no more corruption. Your society is centuries behind where we are on Earth, and I know that you could make it there.” With me.
He laughed humorlessly. “Coming from the Justice Crusader?” he asked, almost taunting her, “Jayne, you bringing me and lying to everyone is corruption… There’s no place for me there.”
“There’s no place for you here.”
And then, a voice that disoriented them both. “She’s right, D’Anil!” he said, “If you’re not careful with these next few minutes, anyways.”
They both turned to look at who it was, both recognizing the figure. He wasn’t dressed in rich silks like before though. He was dressed in armor, ready for a fight. “Kani?” D’Anil asked.
It was the merchant from the auction house, his woman, Phreema, standing beside him. Even she was dressed in something more ready for the desert, in her own set of armor, and half a dozen men stood with them. Jayne recognized a couple of them, the man with the one white eye. Gromm, she remembered, and beside him, Captain Randleman.
“That’s my ship there!” the captain yelled, his hand wagging at it. Jayne looked back, hoping that Sophie would have the sense not to come out, that she could see what was happening. “Think you could run off with it, did ya?”
D’Anil left Jayne’s side, walking towards Kani. He wasn’t careful, distrusting in his walk. Jayne had picked up on the fact that they were old friends, but now she didn’t feel right about it. Why was a merchant here, out in the middle of the desert, at this military base? Why was he with these smugglers? As if reading her mind, D’Anil asked the same thing. “You’re Alem’s second choice?” he asked, sarcastically, “Couldn’t have me do the job, so he asks you?”
“Damn, you love to stroke your ego, don’t you?” Kani grinned. His hand went to his hip, drawing out a blade. It was dark, a deep black, made from the rocks of the cavern. The edge was crooked, but it looked sharp enough to cut someone open on first contact. “That’s not actually at all how this worked out.”
“We had a complaint about our merchandise,” Phreema said, a smirk on her pretty lips, “We have a 30-day guarantee, and a very important client of ours reported his purchase missing.”
Jayne frowned. Alem wasn’t the one running the show for the slave trade. He was merely someone benefitting from it, like most of the city was. “You’re the ones running the trade?” she asked incredulously, mostly focusing on Phreema, “But… How could you condemn women to this life? You were a slave, yourself!”
“Yes, and see how far I got?” she sneered, “Slaves are a way of life on Imdali. It’s either going to be my fellow Drunae women abused, beaten, kidnapped, and taken from their homes… Or it’s going to be women from somewhere else. No matter what, it will always go on, you pathetic human. Kani and I just had the idea to save our own people from it and benefit from yours.”
“More Phreema’s idea than mine,” Kani smiled, his hand brushing down her arm affectionately, “But for obvious reasons, I’ve taken over as the figurehead.” He shook his head at D’Anil. “You didn’t think I made money off my little shop, did you? To afford to buy Phreema from Alem? To buy our house and afford our clothes?”
D’Anil frowned. “I always suspected you were up to something, but not something this stupid-“
“Stupid enough for you to agree to the job, no?” his friend asked, “You’re not the only one who can make money off of the sins of others, my brother.” He waved his blade in the direction of Jayne and the ship. “Hand them over. I’ll give you your money back, and you can carry on living like you’ve always done. Alone, in seclusion, in the shadows… Don’t make this hard on me.”
“What will you do with them?” The brunette looked back at Jayne. She couldn’t read his face, but she hoped that he could read hers. She lied to him, yes, but he wouldn’t do this, would he?
“Since when would that matter to you?” Phreema asked.
Kani answered for him, putting a hand up to Phreema to ease her off of him. “Alem’s slave will go back to her home in the capitol building… The other,” his eyes passed over Jayne’s, “She’ll go to a new buyer. We’ve thought it over, and she’s much too risky of an influence on you. She’s already dragged you out here once, D’Anil, we can’t risk it again.”
“I’ll take her for a night,” Captain Randleman grinned, “I don’t normally do earth girls, but I have a few things in mind for someone who wants to try and steal my ship.”
Jayne shivered at the thought. Please don’t do this. Please don’t do this.
Before anyone realized what happened, Captain Randleman was falling to the ground, a blade stuck in his head. Everyone looked around at one another before their eyes fell on D’Anil, his hand still in the air, frozen after throwing his blade. His eyes stayed on Kani. “No one’s touching her,” he said, “No one’s touching either of them.”
Kani didn’t even look at his fallen employee, locked in the staring contest with D’Anil. “If you do this, I will have to kill you,” he warned, “Don’t make me do this.”
“Will you let her go?”
His friend shook his head. “I can’t do that either.”
D’Anil shrugged, grabbing another blade from its holster, a longer one than the dagger used for Randleman. Jayne was stunned that he even had the first one. While he admitted to being a murderer, she never once saw weapons around the house, or even on him. When they stripped each other, she’d been too caught up in her lust to even pay attention, but they still felt like they came out of nowhere. “Then I guess we fight.”
Jayne ran. She didn’t want to see him die, couldn’t. Not when it was for her that he was dying. He could have just let her go, but he was playing the hero instead. She had to return the favor. Jayne continued to run up, ignoring the yells of Phreema as she ordered the men to follow her. She couldn’t panic now. She had to focus. When they dragged her through the ship, Jayne had tried to remember each turn and each room to prepare for her escape. And it was coming in handy now.
As soon as she entered the ship, she ran down the long hallway and turned a sharp right, then an immediate left and up the stairs. “Sophie!” Jayne screamed, just as she reached the bedrooms of the smugglers. “Hide!”
She heard a scurrying in the cockpit, but Jayne couldn’t stop to help her. She searched under the mattresses and in the drawers of the rooms where the smugglers slept. They were small and cramped, which helped her work through them quickly. On her third try, she could hear the pounding of steps on the floor as they approached.
“Two,” she murmured to herself, just as her fingers grasped onto something with a handle and a trigger. Yes, she grinned to herself. As a police officer, she’d had plenty of practice with shooting. Jayne backed against the wall, gun hugged tightly to her chest as the pair split up even more. With a cry, Jayne turned the corner and smacked as hard as she could with the handle. She felt his skull crack, his eyes widening in shock, one a pure white
. Gromm.
Jayne kicked him square in the chest. “Out of my way, bitch,” she muttered to him, his body crumpling to the ground. The commotion was enough to draw the attention of the other, a man she didn’t know and shot easily. She made her way back through to the front entrance, hoping that no one else had gone inside of the ship.
When she reached outside, though, she only saw two men fighting with D’Anil, Kani and another. Another was dead on the ground beside him. Jayne counted down the amount of people that were gone already. There should be two more.
“Agh!” a cry sounded from her left. Jayne quickly fired, shooting a man square in the chest. He’d tried to surprise attack her on her exit, but it didn’t work out the way he planned. None of them had known she’d have experience chasing down people who wanted to kill her.
“Nice shot,” Phreema commented from behind Jayne, smirking. The woman had two weapons, a gun and a blade that she twirled on each wrist skillfully. “But not as quick as me.” Quickly, she drew, but Jayne managed to dodge.
She threw her body off the walkway of the ship, falling onto her back with a resounding thud. It was only a few feet, Jayne rising quickly to run. Just as she did, a blade whizzed past her ear, grazing just along her cheek. She felt skin slice open and blood begin to seep, but with one less weapon in Phreema’s hand, Jayne counted it as a blessing.
She hid behind one of the clay houses, peeking out around the corner just in time to see D’Anil knock down one more man. It was down to him and Kani. Both were evenly matched, knowing the other’s skills. Jayne couldn’t watch for long, focusing on her own opponent. She had no idea where Phreema went, not until she saw something red in the growing sunlight. A shadow dressed in sheer clothing. Jayne’s heart sped up, realizing where the shadow was coming from. On top of the building? Are you kidding me?
Jayne somersaulted forward and turned around just in time to watch Phreema sail down. She was dangerously beautiful in the morning light, with her clothes billowing around her, like a mistress of hell. Jayne aimed and shot before Phreema could drag her down into the depths of the Underworld, shooting twice more in quick succession to make sure.
Alien Romance: Stranded With The Alien Assassin: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 3) Page 8
