“Maybe you should answer that,” she offered weakly.
He drew back, lowering her to the floor.
“What?” he snarled into his wrist com.
She flinched and bumped her head against the wall as she scrambled away.
Duster said, “R and D. Now.”
Spewing expletives in a creative blast, Commander strode from the solarium. He didn’t say anything she’d never said before, but she wondered why he cursed. Something going on over at R and D, probably something to do with that Jones guy he’d been pestered with before.
Silently thanking Duster for her reprieve, Mary vowed she’d be ready at her first opportunity to escape.
Chapter Thirteen
“What?” Scowling, Mary turned away from the windows in the main room. After what he’d done to her in the solarium earlier, Michael didn’t blame her for being suspicious.
“Going on a picnic,” he reiterated. “Here, take this. It’s cold.” He held out his leather coat.
Without getting too close, she yanked the jacket from his hand and slipped it over her shoulders. The scowl on her face softened when she glanced outside.
Encouraged when his idea to dine alfresco pleased her, Michael ignored all of Duster’s misgivings by pointing out that Mary probably spent most of her time outside. Keeping her locked up inside would drive her crazy. Even mired in daylong aggravations with the R and D issue, Michael still hadn’t been able to stop thinking of Mary. Guilt nagged at his conscience. He was determined to see that confident, sassy smile on her face again, and perhaps show her he wasn’t always such a determined bastard.
Using Scuttlebutt, he took her to a ridge high above his compound. After the sunset, the lights below would twinkle like a reflection of the night sky. He thought she would find the view romantic, but Mary was on edge and nervous, like a wild animal ready to bolt.
His old jacket, pressed with his own scent, made reading her scent difficult, but her actions spoke volumes. She sat as far from him as she could get and kept her attention on the sunset as she ate. After the sun dipped below the edge of the Borcherd mountain range, he told her to turn around on the blanket and sit facing the other way.
“Why?” She cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder.
Cibola and Midas, the two Windmere moons, rose over the Godin mountain range. Picture postcard perfect, he thought.
Mary turned around and looked at the moons, the land around them and the stars, just about everywhere but at Michael himself. He regretted backing her into a corner. His deal forced her to be a whore or a traitor. He cringed when he put himself in her battered boots. What a vicious villain he was, a prime bastard indeed.
“It’s pretty up here.” She sipped her wine.
Her razor gaze fell on every command post, fence and line of mounted gun. Not that such information would do her any good, since getting away was just the first obstacle she faced. She had to get airborne, and there was no way in hell she could do that, not with that bracelet on her wrist.
“It’s pretty up here, but you, Mary, are beautiful.”
Moonlight silvered her hair and turned her eyes dark obsidian against her pale, luminous face. She’d flipped the jacket collar up, and it made her seem even more ethereal, just a tiny face in the dangerous dark.
“Yeah-huh. Thanks.” She set her glass down and burrowed deeper into the voluminous folds of his black leather jacket.
“About today—”
“I haven’t decided yet.” The collar muffled her voice.
Stunned that she was actually considering his deal, Michael hesitated, his words of rescinding his offer caught in his throat.
“How do I know you would keep your word?” She snuggled farther into the jacket as if hiding from him.
Here was his golden opportunity. He could take everything back right now, but if she considered surrendering…villain and hero warred upon his shoulders.
“I guess you’d have to trust me.” Nice fence straddle, he mocked himself. Not a chance in the Void she would.
“And if you turn out to be a big liar with your pants afire, what recourse would I have?” She shot him a bright glare over the dark collar. “Really, Co-man-dur, you could bed me or take my information, shoot me in the head and be done with me.”
“If I was going to kill you, I would have done so by now.” Right after the words left his mouth, he realized how harsh they sounded. This wasn’t going at all the way he planned.
“Not if you wanted something first. I think the only reason you want to sleep with me is so you can brag about it.” She took a sip of wine. “Wouldn’t it make a delightful tale in the locker room, so to speak? You could tell all your sycophants that you bedded your wily bandit. But it’s more than that. I think I do remind you of Kraft, and you’d think of her while you bedded me.”
He grabbed the jacket collar, yanking her about an inch from his face. “Bullshit. Ever heard of it? That’s what that is, and you know it.” Shocked by his reaction to her accusation, he released the jacket abruptly.
Eyes wide with alarm, she fell back, dropping her wineglass as she scrambled away until she sat on the opposite edge of the blanket.
“I apologize if I frightened you.” Plucking a napkin out of the picnic basket, he blotted up the mess. “I’m not one for locker-room talk, and I sure as hell wouldn’t think of another woman while I made love with you.”
He had never taken one woman to his bed with another on his mind. To do so with Mary would be the sickest thing he could think of. He wanted to taste her enticing scent until he knew all of her down to his soul.
“Then why did you say her name in the dojo?”
He shook his head, certain he’d moaned out only Mary with a crazed, lusty growl of need.
“Remember when you had me pressed up against the wall with my legs wrapped around you? You said her name while you buried your face against my neck.”
He replayed that scene in his mind and shook his head. “I don’t know what you heard, but I said your name.” When he leaned closer, she pulled back. “I want you because I—” can’t get you out of my mind. He couldn’t bring himself to let her know how much of a hold she had over him.
“You expect me to believe that you honestly want to bed Remarkably Average Mary.”
“Don’t you ever call yourself that degrading name again.” He barely refrained from yelling into her face.
Her eyes went round, and she pulled even farther back.
“I’m—sorry.” He wished he could find a way to exorcize the tension in him rather than taking it out on Mary. He composed himself, leaning well away from her. “I don’t know what kind of insensitive fools put that in your head, but you are anything but average.”
Lifting her chin, she cast him a cool gaze. “The kind of people who put that in my head are just like you.”
“I’m not—”
“Like them?” she interrupted with an empty voice. “You are too.” She rubbed her face against the soft leather collar. “You expect me to either prostitute myself or betray my only friends.” She drew his battered jacket tight around herself like a sorely needed hug. “You think I’ll do one or the other for the dangling possibility of my freedom.”
Once again, she held up a mirror to him, and he hated what he saw reflected back.
“Reader you are, you know what I will do.” Oddly skipping, her laugh tumbled into the cold damp air on a rush of mist. “I’m just a game you want to figure out how to play.”
He hung his head. Had he the ability to contort himself, he would have gladly kicked his own ass. Once again, Mary used his own words to chastise him. He knew she would sleep with him to protect her people. Mary would bed him if only to gain the slim possibility she could get away and warn them.
“Mary, I’m sorry. I never—”
She stood abruptly, cutting him off. “This is rude, but, uh, could you hold that thought? I’ve got to—well, you know.”
Perplexed, he shook his hea
d. He wanted to take everything back. If she would just forgive him for being such a prime bastard, he’d let her go home right now. He’d take her there himself. Why on the Fringe she chose this moment to interrupt, he had no idea.
“Wine sorta goes right through me, if you know what I mean.” Demure, embarrassed, she toed the ground with one worn boot.
Mary snuck off behind a thick copse of trees, pulled the platinum compact from her pocket and molded the plastimirror around her bracelet. Once the mirror formed around the gray plastimetal, it set hard again, and she slipped the compact back into her pocket.
She hoped the plastimirror would block the tracking signal and blind the computers to lockdown. If all the myriad gods worshiped on the Fringe came together in agreement, her trick would also block an injection. She glared at her locator, locker and luller. Frustrated, she sighed and considered she had a big shiny bracelet on her wrist that might render her a vegetable. Leave it to the IWOG to create something as horrific as Baka.
“And leave it to Commander to put it in a bracelet.” Dubiously, she eyed her wrist again. “Guess I’m gonna have to wait and see.”
If her trick didn’t work, she’d never know. Screaming crazy in her brain by Baka, she would be discovered in a docile puddle of her own bodily fluids. Just the thought turned her stomach. Death would be preferable to drooling insanity.
Forced by Commander’s ultimatum, she put her dangerous plan into action, and she moved fast, mind racing. Commander would give her at least five minutes for her bathroom break in the woods before he went searching for her. A few precious minutes more would elapse before he sounded the alarm. No doubt, Duster would pounce. She knew Duster sat at the other end of Commander’s wrist com like a well-trained hound. Duster almost crippled her plan from the get-go when he reminded Commander a picnic might not be a good idea.
“Night falls fast this time of year,” Duster had said, leaning near to whisper as he and Commander stood several yards away from her in the grand ballroom. “During the fall, even at half, the moons don’t cast a lot of light.”
Commander dismissed Duster’s concern with an imperious hand. “I know what I’m doing.”
When Duster politely argued the point, Commander seemed on the verge of giving in, so she pressed herself against one of the windows and uttered a loud but forlorn sigh.
“She wants to go outside.” Commander sounded guilty. “What could it hurt to indulge her?”
Mary watched their reflections in the glass. Duster pressed his lips tightly together, forcing himself to silence. Duster knew why she wanted to go outside. Suspicion hardened his entire attitude. Despite a desire to argue further, Duster shut his mouth and followed orders.
Still leaning dejectedly against the gigantic window, Mary had grinned inwardly. Sometimes boot-licking toadies paid off.
As Commander had flown out to the picnic site, she’d carefully observed the security. She considered but rejected the idea of taking the shuttle. The puny craft would get her airborne but not off this planet. The shuttle would also make a great target for skeet shooting. As they’d flown out to the ridge, she’d observed several massive cannons pointed at the sky. She didn’t know the exact caliber, but she knew they were big enough to bring down any ship in atmo. If she got airborne, she needed speed, and the shuttle didn’t have enough guts to break through gravitation or the heavy atmosphere.
Unable to make a grand escape, she worked her plan by baby steps. One thing at a time. Get free and then worry about getting a ship, then worry about getting off-planet.
Now, running across the ridge, making her way toward the main compound, she glanced at the star-riddled sky but couldn’t find one familiar constellation. Home seemed impossibly far. Mary didn’t even know in which direction to look for Taiga. She had no idea what planet she struggled to get off. She’d never bothered to ask Commander. If he wouldn’t tell her his name, she sure as spit knew he wouldn’t tell her the name of the planet on which he held her captive.
For a fact, she knew this planet wasn’t Byzantine, Corona, or Taiga—that left a whole lot of possibilities. Two moons didn’t narrow the names of potential places she might be. No matter how beautiful the two rising half-full moons, they only reminded her of the fact she wasn’t where she needed to be.
Taiga.
Her escape plan, rife with ifs, onlys and hopefullys, seemed doomed from the start. But if she lingered, she’d end up telling that excessively sexy man anything and everything. Free will or not, she lost her mind when he touched her.
Roots, rocks and rough ground raced below her boot-clad feet. His gigantic coat flapped as she leapt with the nimble loping grace of a crag-goat.
She raced through the deepening night, oddly lit by the two half-moons. Taiga had only one. Taiga’s small moon, even when full, cast only a pale light against the night. Even at half, the two moons on this planet cast the night bright, a little too bright, despite what Duster had said. She could have used a more thorough darkness.
During dinner earlier, she’d surreptitiously hidden food in her pockets. She pilfered a good hunk of excellent cheese that could damn near mask the stench of a musk-squirrel.
She wanted to laugh at how contrite Commander had looked when she’d pointed out his own duplicity. Telling her not to call herself Remarkably Average when he treated her as if she were, just like the villagers of Pine Glenn. Anything but, he’d said. Well, he’d find out how true those words were. She enjoyed forcing people to eat their own false words about her.
Commander gave her a choice. Bed him or confess. A or B. Yeah-huh. She did the unthinkable. She took C. None of the above. Escape. An option he’d not offered but one she took anyway. As if madness possessed her, she ran in the one direction he’d never guess.
“Right back at him.”
Looping around, she emerged above the ridge where he had spread their romantic picnic. She couldn’t believe what she saw. Commander sat there, casting anxious glances toward where she’d disappeared into the trees. Finally, he rose to investigate.
She climbed down the short hill, boarded his shuttle and hunkered down in the small aft cargo bay. Slowing her breath, she zipped his coat from bottom to top. By the time he boarded, screaming into his wrist com, she had covered herself head to toe with his jacket, pulling the leather over her like a tight little tent around her slender, folded body.
He’d admitted he could read scents, but she didn’t think he could read hers if she masked it with his own by using his jacket. She took the stinky cheese with the same thought in mind. Amazingly, her plan worked.
The plastimirror must have blocked not only the Baka but also the tracking ability of her bracelet. Commander didn’t know she hid on his shuttle. Well, Duster’s shuttle, she thought. She knew this lived-in relic wasn’t Commander’s personal transport. His shuttle was the fancy job at the center of the base tarmac.
From what she could tell, listening to him rant and rave, he lost her signal the moment she slapped the plastimirror to her bracelet. He thought she was still on the ground, somewhere near their picnic site. She couldn’t believe her good fortune and had to refrain from uttering a victory cry.
Commander flew back to base, bellowing at Duster the entire time. Duster must be made of durosteel, because he never once talked back. When they landed, Commander stalked away from the shuttle still yelling into his wrist com.
Waiting for a lifetime, she finally emerged from the cargo bay. She looked out the dusty streaked windows of the shuttle as she set the fuzzy green dice swinging.
“So far, so good.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Why can’t we track her by the bracelet?” Michael strode from one end of his office to the other, his bare feet gripping against the cool marble. “The signal should cast a light as bright as daylight on the op-pan.” He couldn’t believe he’d sat there waiting for her to come back from the woods. Sweet, innocent Mary demurely asking to go to the bathroom. Demure? Mary? That should have be
en his first clue.
“I’m not reading any signal off her bracelet at all.” Duster leaned over the bank of sensors.
“Why the hell not?” Michael clenched his jaw and spoke through gritted teeth. “Thirty minutes and she’s gone.”
“She isn’t gone. She’s on-planet. We just don’t know where.” Duster’s fingers flew over the array of sensors.
“We’d best find her before she gets airborne.” Michael felt like an ass for underestimating her.
“Don’t snarl at me through your teeth like a talking wolf, Michael. I don’t like it when you do that.” Duster tapped rapidly at the banks of sensors with pointed jabs that echoed his anger. “Everything’s grounded. Nothing lands or takes off. I’m diverting inbound ships to Cibola or Midas. I’m grounding every ship on Windmere and having it searched. SOP.”
Deliberately calming himself, Michael unclenched his jaw. “She shouldn’t have been able to breach security. Even if she did, she shouldn’t be blank to us now.”
“She had the bracelet on.” Duster didn’t ask so much as he confirmed.
“Of course she did. I’m not a complete fool.” Michael could read the reproof in Duster’s eyes; not a complete fool, but damn close.
“It wasn’t my idea to take your bandit on a picnic.” Duster glared at him with righteous anger. “I tried to stop you, so stop getting crotchety at me for your idiotic idea.”
“Granted.” Michael tried to dispel his frustration by pacing. “I’m upset with myself because I’m an idiot. Now that we’ve resolved that issue, can we move on to the part where we find Mary?”
Duster’s face went suddenly pale and the lavender scent of concern rolled from his body.
“What?” Michael asked.
“If she ran, she had to jump. Mary had to fling her arms out to steady herself.”
“Your point?”
“Baka,” Duster said. “She could be out there alive, but—”
“I turned the luller component off.”
Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 Page 12
