“Neat trick, huh?” She smiled viciously. “I guess I’m not so remarkably average after all, am I?”
“I never thought you were.” Duster nodded formally. “I knew you were dangerous from the moment you attacked Michael in his office.”
The plastimetal bracelets were crucial to the defense of Windmere. That Mary managed to block one using a common household item, plastimirror, and now managed to switch them and partially disable them, scared the living crap of Duster. Scary Mary’s trick was responsible for an IWOG civilization attempt, but she twisted it again in order to escape.
“How did you switch the bracelets?” Duster asked.
“Michael took them off to show me how much he trusted me. He told me his first name too. That’s why I trusted him. He left out the crucial detail that he’s not just a Michael but also the Michael ‘Overlord’ Parker. Apparently a minor point when he wanted me to trust him. And I did until I finally grasped the truth. I guess he’s getting a big old dose of the truth as well. In my book, that makes us even.”
The screen faded to black. Duster tried to reestablish the link, but Mary refused to reopen the audvid.
What a nightmare. Duster stood and automatically went to retrieve Michael from Mary’s bedroom, but he stopped in mid-stride. A part of him wanted to let her get away, but his loyalty lay with his boss and his best friend.
Michael swore he wouldn’t hurt Mary. Obviously, he had. Duster wondered if Michael had been playing him and Mary all along.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Filled with a delicious relaxed energy, Michael stretched out in the luxurious bed. He rolled over, wanting to draw Mary into his arms and make love to her again, but he came up empty.
“She’s gone.”
He bolted up, salmon silk slithering across his body with a scent of Mary mixed with peach and hyacinth.
Duster sat on the vanity bench across the room, his posture a study in controlled fury. Duster’s military clothing, from his sand-colored multitask vest to his sharp-shined boots, clashed horribly with the feminine palette of Mary’s room.
“What? Where?” Michael fumbled to get out of bed, but he stopped when Duster pointed a gun at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Cashing in a promise.” Duster nodded to the IWOG officer’s pistol clutched in his rock-steady fist. “You promised me you wouldn’t hurt Mary.”
“I didn’t.” Michael frowned, trying to remember anything besides their spectacular lovemaking.
“She said you took the last bit of her innocence. What did she mean by that?” Duster’s gaze drilled as intense as the gun barrel.
“None of your damn business. Where is she?” Michael flung the covers back and yanked on his pants. Behind him, he heard Duster cock the gun, and he froze. “You’d better have one hell of a good reason for this.”
“Gee, let me think.” Duster paused for several seconds. “Yeah, I do.”
After zipping up his trousers, Michael turned around slowly, hands open and held away from his body. “Let’s hear it, then.” He tried to read Duster’s scent, but he was too far away, and the lovely essence of Mary still clung to him.
“Mary figured out who you are.” Duster almost spat the words at him. “From the way she looked, I’m thinking she figured it out after you conned her into the sack.”
“I didn’t con her.” Indignant that he had to defend a private moment with Mary to Duster, Michael tried to keep calm until he had a better idea of what was going on.
Duster snorted and rolled his eyes. “She was crying. She thinks you and I played a very nasty trick on her.” Guilt stamped worry lines all over his face. “I’m thinking she’s right.”
“I tried to tell her.” Even to his own ears, it sounded like exactly what it was, a pathetic excuse. “Things just—I didn’t get the chance.” Actually, he’d let the opportunity pass because he feared she wouldn’t want him if he told her, or she’d want him for the wrong reasons.
“You didn’t try hard enough,” Duster accused.
“I don’t have to justify myself to you. Now, where is she?”
“Like I said, she’s gone.”
“You let her go?” Michael couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“No, you did. Look at your wrist.”
In the place of his wrist com, Michael wore her plastimetal bracelet. He shook his head and covered his face with his hand.
“That woman.” Dropping heavily to the bed, he fell back and glared at his reflection in the mirror above him. Michael didn’t know if he wanted to yell or weep.
“That woman made the most of an opportunity you gave her.” Duster’s voice was quieter now but no less angry.
“It wasn’t like that.” Michael remembered her frantic kisses, his fevered response and their mutual sensual bliss.
“She said you took them off to show her you trusted her.”
“I did.”
“You did not.” Duster uttered a disgusted sigh. “You took them off to con her into the sack.”
“No, I—”
“I knew you were playing her, but I didn’t stop you, because you played me too.”
“I didn’t play anyone.” Michael sat up and clenched his hands into fists. When Duster put that gun down, and he would, Michael would make sure he was sorry for questioning him like this.
“You got me to believe you’d changed. I actually believed you when you said you loved her.” Duster kept his posture on the vanity bench as solid as his grip on the gun. “You know, it’s funny. You never said you loved Kraft. Had you, I wouldn’t have believed you for a heartbeat, but I believed you about Mary.”
“I do love her.” Michael realized how much he did once he said the words. “If anyone got played, I’m thinking it was me.”
“How classic that you think you’re the injured party here.” Duster uttered a hissing tsk, then rolled his eyes. “You really are a piece of work, you know that?”
“I’m a damn fool is what I am.” He stood and began to pace. Duster’s gun followed his every step, but he ignored the threat. “I underestimated her again. What’s this make, three times?”
Duster didn’t answer, just tracked him with the gun barrel.
“Go ahead and shoot me, because I’m going after her. Nothing matters to me but finding her, getting on my knees and apologizing until I’m blue in the face, or she forgives me.” He yanked his shirt on. “Either shoot me, or tell me where she is.”
Duster cocked the pistol. “Are those my only options?”
Michael realized how serious Duster was. He’d told Mary she was the most dangerous person he’d ever known. That was truer than he’d realized. Remarkably Average Mary turned his world upside down, stole his heart and managed to turn his second in command against him. All in less than three weeks.
“How can I convince you I’m telling you the truth? I love her.”
“You want to convince me,” Duster said while digging his boots into the wool carpet, “then you let—her—go.”
“No.” Michael vowed to find her and prove to her that he loved her and that his motive for deception was honorable.
“Don’t push me.” A hint of a smile danced around the edge of Duster’s mouth. “Maybe I won’t shoot you, but with her bracelet on your wrist, you are effectively confined by her parameters.”
“I have voice override.”
“Nope.” The hint turned into a full-fledged smile. “Try it.”
Michael spoke several commands. House uttered gibberish in response. For the first time in a decade, Michael was powerless, the one feeling he could not abide. As Commander of Windmere, Michael had placed Duster into custody during a pissing match and he’d imprisoned Mary. Such actions he’d enacted with impunity. Now that he found himself on the receiving end, he did not like the role of captive at all. Playacting a captive with Mary wasn’t the same as actually being one. No wonder Duster despised custody; it galled to be so fully at someone else’s mercy. Michael found
custody especially frustrating because he was the damn boss and this was his damn house and not a soul should ever defy his orders. “How the hell did Mary manage this?”
“Look at the bracelet.”
A fingertip smudge of plastimirror disabled half the functions. “Damn.” Michael pinched the bridge of his nose. “That woman is too smart for her own good.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “You and I both know where she wants to go. Do you know what waits for her on Taiga?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Duster lowered the gun. “She’s halfway there by now.”
“You gave her a ship?” How in the Void had everything gotten so crazy so fast?
“No, she stole one. You made her escape real easy since she’s wearing your wrist com.” Duster kept the gun in his lap as he munched crackleseeds.
“Why didn’t security stop her?”
“Don’t you dare try to blame security. This is your fault, Michael. No one grounded Whisper, because you’ve taken that ship up for a ride plenty of times without following SOP. Did you tell Mary that?”
“No.” But he didn’t need to, not with her strong intuitive streak. Mary just knew things.
“You and I both know there are bigger and better ships sitting out there on that tarmac.” Duster popped another seed. “Mary had her pick, and she took the one ship on this entire planet that we wouldn’t automatically shoot down.”
“We have to stop her from landing on Taiga.”
Duster snorted. “She’ll be fine. Your wrist com or no, she shouldn’t have been able to slip the guards. Doubly so with a cast-bound foot. Not to mention her cute trick with the plastimetal bracelets that resulted in a massive IWOG invasion attempt. That woman is a menace, and she can damn well take care of herself.”
“She’s made that fact abundantly clear, but she’s in for a world of hurt when she gets home.” Michael knew he’d touched on the right note when Duster stopped popping crackleseeds between his teeth.
“What do you mean?” Duster’s concern for Mary stamped clear lines of worry across his face.
“Go to my office, get the reports off my desk, read them and come back.” Michael plopped down on the bed, crossed his ankles, then his arms. “Go on. I’ll wait. I hurt her by lying to her, but Mary is about to get a dose of the truth that will destroy her.”
The trip had been uneventful. Mary kept checking the rear sensors, waiting for a contingent of ships to launch from Windmere. She was somewhat disappointed when they didn’t. Maybe Michael told Duster to just let her go because he didn’t care. Or perhaps there was a tracking device on the ship itself.
Looking high and low, she didn’t find an Ollie but realized they didn’t need one. They would know where she was going.
She left Whisper in orbit and took one of the two shuttles to Taiga. Thick night and a nest of towering sugar pines hid her landing near the courthouse in Pine Glenn. She hobbled through narrow brush and across hard-packed dirt to the tiny house in the back.
When she opened the door, she stifled a shocked gasp. It looked like a tornado had hit the cozy house. Dirty dishes and clothes littered every horizontal surface. Two of the chairs from around the dinner table were smashed. The embroidery samplers she and Joan had worked so diligently on were in tatters on the floor. Her collection of fragile, blown-glass flitterflies was nothing more than a pile of colorful shards under the corner curio cabinet.
The house reeked of turning food, body odor, and then, as she sniffed deeper, she found a pungent stench of cheap whisky.
“Emmet?” she called softly, afraid of what she would find as she carefully picked her barefoot way through the rubble toward the hallway. Milky moonlight threw writhing shadows across the whitewashed walls.
She glanced into the first open doorway and found her room the same as she’d left it—a narrow daybed that she rarely slept in anymore, and a trunk that held spare linens but also hid the false bottom where she once hid her books. She blinked back tears at how anonymous her room looked. No frills, no personal touches. She kept all her dreams locked up in that trunk with her books. Dreams now shattered by reality.
Before she reached the last doorway, she called out again, fear threading her voice. A muffled groan urged her forward.
“What’sit?” Emmet sat up in bed, a dark silhouette among darker shadows. “Mary girl?”
“Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?” She hobbled over and sat on the edge of her adopted father’s bed. The stench of body odor and cheap whisky turned her stomach. She reached out to turn on the light, but he grabbed her hand.
“Don’t turn on the light.”
She obeyed instantly and let her hand fall to her lap. “What happened here?” She had a pretty good idea that Emmet had been on another bender.
“Nothing, I had an accident.”
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw him pull his stringy gray hair back. He sighed as if he’d been without air for days. His movement increased the fetid odor of unwashed flesh, and his sigh rolled the stench of cheap whisky over her. She had to breathe through her mouth or she would gag.
“Those IWOG bastards were here again, weren’t they?” He drank only when they came. “Did they hurt you?”
“Where in the blazes have you been?”
She flinched back. The IWOG had been here. Emmet always got like this after their visits. He’d been on a bender for at least three days, given the condition of him and the house. Had she been here, she could have prevented most of the destruction.
“It’s a long story, but I’m here now.” She reached out to touch his face, but he smacked her hand away.
“You almost got me killed, you idiot! Gallivanting off to who knows where, then showing up like you’re all worried about me? If you cared about me at all, you never would have left, you ungrateful child! Did you run off with that Jameson boy again?”
His nasty verbal attack meant that alcohol still coursed through his veins. It would take at least a day to dry him out, and she hadn’t run off with Bobby Jameson in the first place, but no matter how many times she denied the rumor, Emmet didn’t believe her.
“No, Papa, I—”
“Don’t call me Papa.” His voice rose. “Papa makes me sound like an old man.”
She hastened to make amends. “I’m sorry, Emmet. I got caught by a Runner.”
He went still. With a trembling hand, he reached over and turned on the small bedside lamp, spreading a cool, greenish glow. “What did you tell him?”
When the light hit his face, she winced. His split mouth hung in a crooked line with dried blood caked in one corner. His left eye bulged purple-black and was swelled shut.
“Who beat you up?” She feared even her words might further wound his tender skin.
He grabbed her arm and shook her so hard the crutches fell to the floor. “You answer me, girl. What did you tell the Runner?”
“Nothing.” She reached for him again, but he slapped her hand away.
“A bounty hunter kept you all this time and you didn’t tell him nothing?” He finally focused his good eye on her and frowned. “What the hell you wearing? And what’s those—crutches?” He leaned over to peer at her bright blue cast. “What kind of trouble didja get into this time?”
“I made a mistake. A bad one, and we have to go.” She retrieved her crutches and stood. Time hung over her head like a sword.
“You told that Runner, didn’tja!” He managed to get his bulk out of the filthy bed. He was still dressed in his usual brown homespun trousers with the built-in suspenders, a homespun shirt and his filthy cowhide boots. The stench of body odor and whisky almost knocked her off her crutches.
“You a damn fool, girl. Go to your cabin and come back in the morning.”
“Emmet, please listen to me.” She started to move toward him, but his drunken anger stopped her. “You have to come with me. You are in danger if you stay.”
He swayed, one hand rubbing his chin stubble as he glared at her.
“Let me m
ake you something to eat. Then we can go. I have a ship.”
“You done stole a ship?” His eyes widened, at least the one that wasn’t swollen, and from the grimace that followed the movement, she guessed it still hurt. A lot.
“I didn’t have any other choice.”
“You best tell me what happened, girl. You best do so now.”
She told him everything from the moment the Runner abducted her from the Pine Glenn spaceport until now. As she talked, he sobered up and became sweetly apologetic for talking so rudely to her. She forgave him as she always did. Emmet was the only father she’d ever known, and the only person she’d ever trusted, but she hated when he was nasty, then contrite. If she could get him away from Taiga, he would stop trying to find solace in whisky.
“We have to get the money you’ve been saving for weapons and use it to flee. We don’t have a choice. Maybe, if we get away, we can do something to stop the IWOG, but we can’t do anything if we stay here.”
Emmet nodded slowly. His pale blue eye, the one she could see, seemed sharper than before. “You think this Michael Parker will come for you?”
“I don’t know. He said so many things.” Sweet words that destroyed her defenses until her heart lay vulnerable to him.
“You in love with him, ain’tja, girl.” The words were flat, almost without emotion, but for some reason, they raised goose bumps along her skin.
“Emmet, please, we don’t have time for this.” She was frantic to get off Taiga. Tracker on the ship or not, they would look here first. She needed to dump the ship on Corona, steal another ship and go to a Fringe planet, maybe Dardanis.
“No, we don’t got much time. Come on.”
Even with her crutches, she hobbled a straighter path than Emmet did through the jumbled house to the office. He flipped on the lights, and here everything looked as it should. Two clutter-free desks flanked the room, one for Emmet, one for a clerk, usually Mary herself. An old black safe stood guard behind Emmet’s desk. A large iron holding cell took up most of the west wall.
Since it was Thursday night, the cell stood empty. It wouldn’t be filled again till tomorrow night. Payday. Men and women got liquored up and feisty with a fistful of script.
Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 Page 24
