Domestic Duet: Domestic Alliance & Asset

by Cora Blu

  Chapter 14

  The cloudy humid day shielded them in the big Plymouth parked behind an empty furniture store warehouse, a few blocks from the grocery store and coffee shop. Sadie scanned the area out over the hood. From this angle, the side door to Richard’s warehouse situated in a dank abandoned freight car storage yard was visible.

  Perfect for doing dirt.

  Across the street, a chain link fence enclosing a storage yard held scraps of discarded paper trapped in the links. Old newspapers, brown paper bags, tissue, and wadded up sandwich wrappers, proved someone was using this warehouse. Sadie could picture someone standing guard, eating lunch then tossing their trash along the ground.

  Sadie smoothed her freshly straightened hair back, complements of her sister Theresa. She sat in silence with Oliver for a long quiet moment. They were too good at their job not to be able to work together, and after doing a work history check on Oliver, Sadie was impressed by his performance. They needed a plan.

  First Sadie had to come clean about her feelings for Aroc. That meant she had to figure them out first.

  She leaned down and tied the laces on her white uniform shoes. “Are we going to make use of this time staking out the warehouse to baby sit your car or talk about what happened?”

  “Did the alien deny killing my partner?”

  Appalled by his twist on the truth, Sadie’s fingers dropped abruptly from her laces. She angled her chin up to glare at him tapping an unlit cigarette on the steering wheel.

  “You blaming him for what happened on that operating table is unfair to the memory of Katherine.”

  “So he told you, how he let her and the baby die on that table?” he muttered incredulously.

  She sat quiet for a long moment, fighting the urge to tell him about Norese. She couldn’t break her promise to Aroc. “He lost a lot that day.”

  “And you share your time with him. I just don’t understand what you see in him.”

  “My personal relationship with the captain is, to put it mildly, complicated.” His dismissive glance combined with the cigarette jostling was too much. She took the cigarette and set it on the console. “You’re making me antsy doing that.”

  “Complicated means you don’t know what you want.”

  “No—it means just what I said.”

  “Tell me the truth and I’ll leave it alone. Are they making you stay with Captain Aroc to support the alliance?” His urgings came from the heart by the seriousness in his eyes. He plucked the cigarette from the console and returned to his monotonous tapping.

  How was she to explain this? “Initially, my visits were to save my life. I didn’t understand everything about space travel or advanced technology. And after a while my relationship with Captain Aroc Farkus took on a comfortable, less threatening vibe.”

  He sat forward. “He’s an alien, Sadie…a vicious alien. What comfort could he provide a woman?” His warning came with a sneer.

  “And I’m an alien to him with freedoms he doesn’t have,” she retorted. “I can come and go as I please on Earth and his space station. He can’t. Which one of us poses the bigger threat?”

  Oliver focused his gaze out the windshield.

  “Farkus respects those that respect him. A simple concept yet impossible for some.”

  Rain blurred the view outside and Oliver closed his fingers over hers, threading them together.

  “How long do you plan to be in this ‘complicated relationship,’ Sadie?”

  “Until I met you, Oliver, I hadn’t realized I was in a relationship. This case, this job, hasn’t allowed for much interaction outside of Farkus,” she said thinking of her promise to keep Norese a secret. “I won’t lie, having two men vying for my attention…a little dirty. Captain Aroc is a new world for me, and you are”—so taboo—“white and I’m black, an issue for the stodgy shirts in Georgia. We both come from Earth and after living on the station where there is so much more important things brewing, nobody cares what color your skin is. And no one’s hurling bricks with nasty notes taped to them through your front window—twice a week.”

  He groaned. “You make a point.” He dragged a knuckle playfully over her cheek. “Are you attracted to me or curious to have a taste of the white man you’re trapped inside a car with?”

  Shocked, she dropped her head on the headrest, eyeing the ceiling. “You are so unfiltered, Oliver.”

  “Don’t slip into your shy girl routine, Sadie. The woman that sauntered out of my bedroom was starving for male attention.”

  She gave him side eyes. “I’m not shy nor starving for male attention, Cantrell. In my thirty years on this earth, I’ve attracted more than aliens with this body and smile, plus a few women, but that’s not my party.”

  “Teasing me now, Sadie?” he said letting her name fall out on a whisper.

  “I’m not the one doing the flirting, Oliver. I believe you started this at the Edwards’ home.”

  He sighed.

  “Where’d you grow up, Oliver? I know your cover story places you in Ohio, but I hear a hint of southern accent that’s real.”

  “I wondered when you’d ask me,” he said on a thoughtful pause, his drawl relaxed and reflective. “The boys home on Corral Street, third floor, lights out at 7pm, no exceptions.”

  She caught the disdain in his words for his childhood. Visions of the kids on the streets during the depression, selling any and everything they got their hands on to make a buck, filled her head.

  He blew out a breath. “My mother left me to be raised by my elderly grandmother,” he admitted reflectively. “By the time I was eleven, she’d developed some wicked cough. We didn’t have insurance, none that allowed her a good doctor that would see her more than once a month,” he continued, attention unfocused out through the windshield. “…Died a few years later.” He brought his attention back. “After that, the state put me in a home. Four beds later, I landed on Corral Street.”

  “Seems to me, Oliver, you’d welcome a true friendship when it was offered instead of fighting for what’s not on the table.”

  He kissed her fingers and the dark side of Oliver peered out of those blue eyes. “So you and the Captain are playing house and we’re pretending there’s nothing between us?”

  “Don’t knock having friends, Oliver. We work undercover. Friends are a luxury.” It was in that moment she saw the real Oliver, desperate for love. She wouldn’t lie to him and feed him a story.

  “And true friends are rare,” he added, rain reflecting off the windshield to dot his tan face.

  “Shutting down these thugs in sharkskin suits and narrow ties is our focus right now.”

  “So I’m done—out of the race—without a taste?” he questioned with a dark-eyed sneer.

  Not doing this now. “Aroc and I have a history; a foundation for our attraction. This between us is just human nature. You’re handsome and I’m smoking hot,” she teased him. “So of course we’re attracted to one another.”

  He laughed aloud, and then dropped back in his seat and drew in a long breath. “Alright sexy woman, let me ask you something since we’re putting it out there and you’ve made it clear I ain’t getting none.”

  “I’m listening,” she replied holding a hand out, glad he didn’t push the subject.

  Loosening his tie, he took the offer and settled that serious stare on her.

  “I did time…ex-con…two years for armed robbery.” His finger pressed to her lip, quieting her surging question. “…A five year sentence dropped to two when an eyewitness came forward. Said I was the driver. Six months after that, they released me early on time served.” He played with the sun visor, flipping it up and down. “Prison hardens you, Sadie. I’m not the same man as when I went in. I’m colder now.”

  Of course he was. Spend every day fighting off men going after his junk whenever he’d bent over, who wouldn’t be leery? She wasn’t expecting a Kindergarten teacher, only a truthful man.

  The weight of the silence settled be
tween them. Fat raindrops plopped down on the windshield as the much-needed thunderstorm began to rage. Georgia thunderstorms were famous for washing out everything in its path. Unfortunately, it wasn’t inside the car washing away their problems.

  He let her stroke a finger across his middle finger knuckle. “Did you know your partner intended to rob the place before he came out of the store?”

  “Will it change the way you see me if I did?”

  She turned toward him. Twisting her mouth, she pondered over the best way to answer that question. “Will it change the way you relate to me if I know?”

  “Depends on how you react.” Those serious eyes didn’t blink.

  “Is Aroc the only killer I know?”

  He returned the tension on her fingers, gripping them to the arch of the wheel.

  “Sadie, you’ve thrown my arrogance in my face and stood up to Aroc. You’re my partner and whether or not I ever see this body stretched out, naked, in my bed in the future, you’re safe with me regardless of my past. Aroc’s not the only killer you know. When I was a boy, walking home from school, a group of guys jumped me. I defended myself, got beat pretty bad, but one of the boys I hit with a pipe never came out of his coma. He died a year later.”

  She curled her fingers around his hand bringing it to her heart. Ten minutes passed in silence.

  “That’s a pretty heavy burden to carry around,” she concurred, seeing the answer staring her in the face. Cantrell had killed before and it wasn’t an alien.

  “I like these honest conversations we have, Sadie.”

  “That’s how friends relate…honestly, or why bother with a relationship?” she replied. “Did Holston recruit you from prison or after you were released?”

  He nodded. “Captain Holston recruits from around the world, finding men and women that have the guts to handle an alien race.” He chuckled with a shrug. “He had some cock-a-mammie science fiction fairytale of aliens and saving the environment. Initially, I turned him down, thinking I could make it as an ex-con.” He shook his head. “After four months of joke job offers, mayonnaise sandwiches, and sharing a flat with two other guys—ex con’s were the last to be hired—I dug out his card, signed up, had my physical, and started a new life in outer space.”

  Everybody had a story.

  “Not everyone gets a second chance at a good life. Don’t blow yours waiting on me to walk away from Aroc.”

  Oliver’s squint altered his captivating blues enough to appear gray under his lashes. He shifted. “So you’re Aroc’s girl? His female?”

  “Yes! I’m in a relationship with the Captain and leading you on is trifling, and I’m not juggling two men.”

  Oliver tugged a book of matches from his inside breast pocket, then began flipping it over and over between the knuckles of his right hand. “We’re killing time waiting for someone to go into the warehouse. So we have time for some personal shit.”

  Taken aback, she blinked. “I’m listening.”

  “If you ever feel uncomfortable with Aroc, you’ll come to me for help.” He raised a hand out asking for a moment. “Before you say anything, I’ve seen the violence of his kind. Promise me, as your partner, as your friend, you’ll let me help you.”

  She wasn’t a battered woman, but understood his concerns. “As partners, I trust you at my back to protect my life.” And she did. Oliver wasn’t one to back down from a fight. “However, and you have to understand where I’m coming from when I say this, considering our attraction to one another, confiding in you about my relationship with Aroc is the same as cheating in my book. If I feel unsafe, I’m out. I’m not waiting around to be added to the domestic abuse statistics.”

  “I’m still here if you need me.”

  At that moment, two men poked their heads out of the warehouse side doors, looked around, then a garage door lifted. A navy-blue sedan backed out. Colson and Wixom.

  “Bingo, we gotcha punk and you’re going down.” Oliver eased from the car.

  “Watch the road. I’ll go inside.”

  “Dammit, Sadie where’s your weapon and no I’m going in first.”

  “I know what to look for and how Edwards thinks. You know what to shoot.” She patted a hand to her hip pocket where she’d sewn in a hidden pocket for her weapon.

  “Be careful, Ochi. Once you reach the door let me go in first…make certain it’s clear.”

  She winked, ducking and walking close to the ground, her back braced to the fence. Excited with her heart pounding, Sadie took advantage of the quiet to sprint across the street with Oliver’s footsteps trailing a whisper in the background.

  Oliver moved in beside her. He peered around as he slid a key into the lock Richard had given him, and eased the metal door ajar enough to slip inside. Scanning the dusty warehouse, she rocked on her white nurse’s shoes, waiting until he gave the all clear. Inside, she stayed close along the wall to an eight-foot-tall padlocked cage. She tugged a bobby pin from her braid, unbending it then began to pick the lock. Sweat beaded down her temple curling the fine hairs. She looked around when the lock popped.

  Oliver stood guard, his phaser aimed at the door. “You in?” he asked, his breathing tight.

  “I’m in,” she whispered. “Give me sixty seconds and I’m out.”

  Inside, she stepped over the cardboard box labeled brown packing tape, and eyed the floor. She clicked on the desk lamp and covered it with the box to dim the glow. It left enough milky light to see the contents on the desk. She set down her phaser and headed for the metal file cabinet in the corner. She flipped through the tabs until she saw what she wanted. Her pulse ramped up. Rummaging through the other drawers, she found more files. Launch plans. Invoices for the cylinders they’d purchased. Her hand froze on the linen paper with the government seal embossed at the bottom. A copy of the amended treaty she found in Richard’s vault between the karuntian and humans. Quickly, Sadie made copies of the invoices of cylinders and launch times with the camera function on her transporter. She stuffed the copy of the amended treaty inside her dress. She needed that to show the different ink where they made a fake and signed the altered copy.

  “You find it yet?” Oliver asked from across the room, keeping watch on the door.

  “Don’t rush me. There’re all sorts of junk in here: Burger wrappers, cigarette butts, and a filthy magazine that’s been sufficiently and thoroughly examined. You men don’t have a clue.”

  “Sadie, give me moral lessons later when we have more time and I have a beer in my hand. Did you find it?”

  “Three seconds, everything hinges on this. You make certain I don’t get my head blown off and let me worry about my end, Cantrell!”

  “Don’t worry ‘bout me. I got you covered.”

  The pitter patter of rain on the metal doors echoed through the space, adding to the tension building by the second.

  “Ochi, let’s go. We’re pushing it as it is.” Oliver’s frustrated voice echoed in the hollow space.

  She replaced the papers, closed the drawer, and left it the way she found it, and then stepped outside of the cage gate locking the deadbolt. Sticking the pin inside her braid, she ran across the dusty floor, careful her tracks blended in with the others.

  “I got it. Let’s go,” she exclaimed, tossing her head from side to side scanning the area, while her hand secured the paper under her bra.

  Outside, she sucked in the fresh air filling her lungs, her eyes scanning the area for anyone that may have followed them. This was too easy, she thought as they took off across the street. Arms pumping, shoes slapping the wet pavement, they ran through the rain toward the car. Her pulse pounded, and fear cramped in her veins at the chance they’d be stopped, because a black woman caught stealing was going to prison. She couldn’t go to jail. She’d transport first.

  A sound came from around the corner and Oliver’s hand locked on her forearms dragging her back, covering her from the tall man barreling for them, gun aimed straight at her. She went down at the so
und of a bullet leaving the chamber. She fell against the chain-link fence, biting back a curse when the metal scratched a line down her arm, leaving a trail of blood to drip along her skin. Pressing a hand over the cut, Sadie rolled to her feet to see Oliver kicking the gun from the man, but not before a second bullet caught him in the arm. He grunted, biting back the pain, and used his left hand to phaser shoot the man. The man crumbled to the pavement, his arms caught beneath his side appearing to be broken. Oliver dropped just as Sadie ran over to check on the unconscious man. Seeing the pulse in his throat pumping strong, she ran to Oliver where he lay sprawled out bleeding, his face contorted in pain.

  She knelt beside him on the ground, her pulse in her throat at his rapid breathing. “Where did it get you?” darting her attention up and down the street while searching his suit coat for the entry wound. Blood began to seep from his bicep through the suit jacket, darkening the fabric. Rain splattered his face and she wiped the moisture from his eyes.

  Oliver touched her hand with his and his grip was weak. “Go check him. I’m okay.” He wasn’t okay… trembling lips was far from okay.

  “You’re bleeding from a bullet, not a stun gun. I’ll get you to the medical bay. You’re losing too much blood, Oliver.” She started to grasp her transporter and his long fingers brushed her fingers on his arm.

  “Go and check the other guy.” Swallowing thickly he hissed out his pain. “We can’t leave a civilian out in the open. Delivery trucks roll through in an hour.”

  She knew he was right and got to her feet to check the other man’s pulse. “Stunned.” She picked up his phaser on the ground, tucking it between her belt and dress at her back. “He’s one of Edwards’ security guards from the bank. I’m contacting Ryner to get you out of here.”

  “I’ll get him, you take care of him.” Oliver depressed his com and rattled off an order in a teeth-clenching tone. Seconds later, two men from the space station appeared then disappeared with the man. She got behind Oliver, supporting his head from off the ground, and transported them to the station.