Perfect Strangers

by Barbara J. Hancock

  After filling the car with gas, Davis got in and pulled it around to one of the parking spaces at the front of the store. That way he could get to them quickly if there was a problem. Solstice and Piper walked out with their arms full of bags as he headed in.

  “I’ll be right back,” Davis said as he passed them. He needed to visit the restroom. He didn’t like leaving the two seniors alone, but it couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t force them to listen, but his concern for them lay heavily on his mind.

  Worry and fatigue and aching for a woman he was duty-bound to hate caused Davis Rule to walk right into an ambush.

  Silk brushed her teeth while Harry packed up his equipment. He had checked for Ronin one more time. If he or more of his IL-Bah were here, Harry could find no evidence of them.

  Silk faced a momentous decision. If she managed to get home, if she managed to leave Earth, she would be in direct violation of more codes than she could name. She would be a criminal, a fugitive. These last days on the run had proven it was a way of life she didn’t anticipate.

  The Coalition of World Governments would not allow a renegade JR to go unpunished.

  She could only hope Ronin did not prove too elusive. She wouldn’t have much time to hunt him down. If she could find him, if she could kill him, she would get the opportunity to start over again. But she could never go home. He had taken that option from her months ago.

  She would have to begin again on Earth or someplace like it. She would never be safe on a civilized world again.

  “Silk!” Harry’s shout brought her out of the bathroom with her gun in her hand. “Whoa, no need for shootin,’ Tex. I surrender. Put that thing down.”

  Harry held both hands in the air as Silk aimed her weapon in his direction. Seeing no immediate danger, she slipped the gun back in her waistband.

  “You’re not gonna like this,” he warned.

  Harry’s face was gray beneath his dark skin. She came to his side. For some reason, the adrenaline rush that had fueled her first reaction did not subside. Instead, her heart began to pound as if she’d run a race with a jet bike to cross the room. Her pulse raced, but the world around her seemed to slow down until even Harry’s voice sounded distorted and strange.

  “I got an e-mail from Sol.”

  “But that is good. He is not dead.” Silk was relieved. She was. She willed her body to feel the relief, but it refused. Her heart still pounded. Her skin became numb. There was an odd echo in her ears as if she listened to Harry through a long tunnel even though he was only inches away.

  “Right, well, that’s the good part.”

  The echo didn’t stop her from hearing the sadness and hesitation in his words. Silk reached for the back of his chair, and thankfully the brakes were locked. It held her steady and firm as her body began to quake. She knew this moment. She’d been here before. Those same reluctant eyes had looked at her. That same hollow voice had been filled with regret for having to cause her pain.

  “And the bad?” she forced herself to ask and her own voice echoed worse than Harry’s. As if the hollow tone of his had found its way all the way to her heart.

  “Rule. Davis Rule might be dead.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Silk reached for Harry’s computer. She was going to throw it against the wall.

  “Wait. Sol says the restroom was covered in blood, but Rule was gone. He might still be alive.” Harry summarized what he’d read while he held his beloved computer with a protective hand. “There was nothing he or Piper could do. Davis was gone before they knew what happened. They’re at a library in Illinois. And he wants to know where we are.”

  Harry began to type, but Silk pressed her hand over his fingers to still their movement.

  “Some of the blood was not Rule’s,” Silk thought out loud. No body. Davis had lost the fight because he had disappeared, but she knew the big muscular agent would have inflicted damage on whoever snatched him.

  She knew this because the alternative was unthinkable.

  Suddenly, the world resumed normal speed and the echo was gone. Her heart still beat faster, but now it was because she knew there was work to do.

  Harry read more.

  “Sol says he and Piper slipped away when the bloody bathroom was discovered. Must have been some ruckus.”

  “Tell him to take Piper somewhere safe and quiet,” she advised.

  “He won’t like that,” Harry responded, pausing. A hard look from Silk turned his pause into a typing frenzy.

  “Tell him I said it’s imperative for them to avoid the authorities,” Silk instructed. She was already thinking ahead. Her panic had turned into focus. Her fear into action.

  “Maybe they should go to the police for protection. Those alien assassins mean business,” Harry suggested, pausing again.

  Silk walked across the room to retrieve her bag and their guns.

  “The IL-Bah did not attack Rule,” she explained to Harry as she worked.

  “How do you know?” he asked, but at the same time he resumed typing.

  “If the IL-Bah had attacked him, there would have been a body.”

  No body meant their friends Larkin and Steele. No body meant FBI. But why would the FBI hurt one of their own? Silk didn’t know…but she intended to find out.

  Davis didn’t trust her. He needed her. One did not negate the other. They might never be together again, but she wouldn’t let him die without bringing down Armageddon on anyone who would hurt him. Somehow, like it or not, he felt like her partner. Even if he never accepted that fact himself.

  “I guess this means those Vegas showgirls are gonna have to do without me for a little while longer,” Harry sighed and quickly finished typing the message to Piper and Sol.

  “Silk is on her way.”

  While Piper and Sol went into hiding, Silk and Harry headed east. Davis Rule needed her now. Ronin could wait. Silk fought an adrenaline surge as it threatened to overpower her intellect. Davis needed her. That thought made her muscles bunch and her fists clench. Her physical reaction was nothing but a nuisance as long as there was no one to fight. She needed to focus on finding Rule. It took every ounce of JR training to discipline her emotions.

  She didn’t spend much time wondering why. She had known the FBI agent less than a week. In that time, she had battled him, wanted him and forced herself to leave him behind. She had also learned to respect him. While she could hurt him and had, she was furious to think of Larkin or Steele subjecting him to pain. They did not deserve the honor of bettering Davis Rule.

  By the time they reached the gas station where Davis had disappeared, she had achieved an icy calm tinged only slightly with fury.

  The training compound was perfect for his needs. Down for renovation, the facility was deserted and isolated. It also provided a delightful playing field.

  Designed to replicate a small town, it was meant to be used in training soldiers for urban warfare. Every square inch of it was wired with cameras, pressure-sensitive alarms and listening devices.

  He sat in the control tower located in the church steeple in the middle of this town and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. From here, he would watch Silk fight. He would allow her one final glorious hour and then he would be on hand to take her life. Thus, he would guarantee his future.

  With the flick of a switch, he zeroed in a camera located in one of the pretty little bungalows made to resemble a humble American home. Davis Rule did not look good. He sat bound to a chair, and from this distance miniaturized in black and white on the television screen, he looked more than diminished. He looked dead.

  With another flick of another switch, he was able to key on a speaker in the bungalow.

  “Yeah, Mr. Kale?” Larkin’s voice was tremulous. No doubt he was intimidated by the torture he had witnessed.

  “Enough. I want him to be alive when she gets here.”

  “Ah, sure thing, Mr. Kale.” Larkin sounded relieved.

  He saw Rule move slightly
with the sound of their voices. Good. The man would be alive, barely. It pleased him. He would be the one to kill Rule as well.

  With his own two hands.

  Bobby Steele had a bad case of the jitters. They shimmied and shook from the toes of his wingtips all the way up to the starched collar of his department-store shirt.

  He sat in his car outside of the gas station where Rule had been taken just as he’d been ordered to do. He had left Larkin with that creep at the training center just as he’d been ordered to do. He was going to deliver his message to the foxy blonde when she showed up, as ordered. Then he was going to disappear.

  A particularly bad shiver rocked Steele’s spine. It caused his knee to bump against the steering wheel. Something was wrong with William Kale. Very wrong. The guy had gone loco. He hated to leave Larkin with Kale. He really hated to leave him in the company of the big creep who tortured Rule. The guy wore sunglasses so you couldn’t see his eyes, but Bobby didn’t have to. He knew the guy was nuts just by watching some of what he’d done to Rule.

  Sometimes you couldn’t control the way things went down. Larkin was on his own. He was pretty sure his partner would have done the same thing.

  Neither one of them had ever liked Davis Rule. The guy was just too all-star-quarterback-top-of-the-class. He’d been a favored agent. Then things had changed. Suddenly, Bobby and Larkin were getting preferred treatment. For a while, it had been good. For a while. He didn’t mind showing Rule up, but the guy sure as hell didn’t deserve what he was getting back at the compound. Nobody deserved that shit. He hoped Larkin found a way out.

  Finally, Bobby saw her. A shock of silvery blonde hair and a tight fuzzy sweater exited a van across the deserted lot. The place had been closed down since yesterday. Right now, a cleaning crew was busy scrubbing smears from Davis Rule off the bathroom walls.

  She walked toward him with strong, purposeful strides. He knew he was probably in for it, but he was still glad he’d been the one chosen to give her a message. Silk Jones might beat the hell out of him, but she was nothing compared to what he’d left behind.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Late afternoon sun bathed the picturesque village in soft yellow light. Rows of houses, a grassy town square and a deserted main street gave off an eerie air of serenity. This was broken by the presence of an eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

  Silk stood on the west side of this barrier, knowing if she breached the fence and entered the facility she would walk into a trap.

  She had no choice.

  Davis Rule might be dead. He might be five hundred miles away, but he also might be beyond the fence. Judging from the expression on Steele’s face as he’d given her the message from William Kale, Rule was hurt and he needed her help.

  Her head told her she could handle whatever Kale threw her way, but her instincts told her something else altogether. Steele had been terrified of something he’d seen within this gated compound. And now, standing several hundred feet away from the nearest house, Silk felt the danger.

  It was in the air, blanketing the town darkly even as waning sunlight twinkled in glass-paned windows.

  She took a deep breath. It was time. The setting sun glared perfectly to her advantage. The stationary surveillance camera mounted on the fence would be blinded for a few seconds.

  Now.

  Silk climbed hand over hand, her muscles protesting after days of inactivity. Still, she was fast. She made it to the top with seconds to spare. The large coils of spiked wire couldn’t be avoided. She had dressed carefully. Jeans would protect her legs and a borrowed jean jacket from Harry should do the same for her arms.

  Placing her hands on the smooth top rail, Silk launched herself over and through the coils. She heard razor sharp wire shred fabric as she moved between the strands. She averted her face toward the sky.

  One jagged spike managed to part her skin along her back. It made a deep scratch that began at her waist and ended between her shoulder blades. She dropped to the ground on the opposite side of the fence. She dismissed the stinging slash on her back to focus on her next objective.

  Finding Rule.

  It wouldn’t be easy. She counted fifteen buildings made to resemble residential housing, two long rows of faux businesses on either side of a central thoroughfare as well as a library, a courthouse and a church, its tall white steeple reaching high above the rest of the town.

  Silk’s eyes were drawn to that steeple. Strategically, it would be an excellent spot to survey the whole compound. The skin on the back of her neck prickled with awareness. She moved to the shadows of the nearest building. There was little cover. In the whole town, less than ten trees and these were small with sparse foliage. Bushes were small and equally useless for her purposes.

  Silk crouched down with her back against the wall. She waited for night to fall. She would need complete darkness to search the town without detection.

  He grew impatient. Darkness crept over the town and with it came the certainty that Silk had arrived. Sensors were at the ready. Cameras were all operational. He double checked screens and switches and readouts.

  Nothing.

  Had he been wrong about Davis Rule? Had Silk been a one-man kind of woman after all?

  He reached his hand forward to key the switch.

  “Yes, Mr. Kale?” Larkin’s voice sounded tired and leery.

  “Be on alert.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How is our guest?”

  “He’s alive, but he’s gonna need medical attention to stay that way. You might want to tell your guy here to ease up again. He’s kind of—pacing. And he looks—”

  “Hungry?” he interrupted the FBI agent, enjoying the fear he could hear in his voice. “It’s the smell of blood. I wouldn’t get too close to him if I were you.”

  In another tone of voice altogether, he gave a command.

  “Stand down. Enough. Wait.”

  On the tiny screen, he could see the large form obey. It moved to a corner and crossed its arms over its chest.

  “Jeez,” Larkin groaned. “Why don’t I come up there with you, Mr. Kale?”

  “Stay where you are.”

  He flipped the switch to kill the speaker before Larkin could begin to beg. He couldn’t afford such idle amusements. More serious pleasures walked the streets below. He was sure of it.

  Cool air caressed Silk’s skin as she shed the ruined jacket. Her shirt was sliced through as well, but she needed the black stretchy turtleneck also borrowed from Harry to mask her pale skin in the moonlight.

  Night was good. She moved with some confidence, knowing that cameras would have a diminished range.

  Silk edged along the wall, embracing the shadows as she slipped into the first house. Cold, empty rooms greeted her, upstairs and down. She knew her time was limited. She knew there were probably unseen sensors in the floors or ceilings or walls.

  She also forced herself to ignore the urgency that prickled beneath her skin. She needed to be methodical. Rule could be anywhere. And she had to find him before it was too late.

  There. Movement. Pressure sensors in a house on the west end of the compound had lit up lights on the map grid he watched. The lights had gone off almost as quickly as they had gone on. Silk moved fast, but she wouldn’t be fast enough.

  Two more houses checked out negative as Silk made her way to the center of the town. The church still called to her, but she rejected it. Davis wasn’t there. The steeple called to her for reasons she couldn’t fathom. A constant nagging pull in her gut.

  The church would have to wait. She had to check each building along the way.

  After the gloom of seven empty houses, Silk came to a sign that read “Main Street”. Here were numerous store fronts, barber and beauty shops and the bank. And nowhere to hide. The buildings were joined with no crevices or alleyways between them. The glimmer from a hundred windows faced the street, watchful and wary.

  Silk was horribly exposed as
she edged along those windowed walls. She avoided the street, but the cold windows at her side were scarcely better. Behind them, the contents of the buildings were a mystery. The rising moon shone off the glass until only her reflection and the reflection of the street behind her could be seen.

  Beyond the glass, anything could lurk unseen in each building she passed. Seconds ticked by.

  Silk slipped from one store to another using the same procedure to check the interior of each one. Up, down, all around and out. She made it as far as the beauty shop. This designation was printed in block letters on the window at her back. Just as with each building before, she wouldn’t be able to see the interior until she went through the door. The door was three feet away.

  The window exploded in a spray of glass shards as two arms busted through to grab Silk and pull her inside. She was gripped and pressed to her attacker who ignored the slicing wedges of glass trapped between their bodies. The edge of one cut across her stomach before she could bring her feet up. Then she pushed off from the man who held her. Once, twice, three times, she pushed with her legs. Her legs pounded him right in the gut, but it took three strikes to break free.

  By the time she faced him in a defensive stance, she knew it was no FBI agent she fought.

  Silvery orbs glowed in the dark interior of the shop, and the IL-Bah stood tall regardless of the cuts he must have sustained in the attack.

  Silk had no time to wonder if Davis was alive. She had no time to wonder why the IL-Bah was here where she least expected him. She could only prepare to fight, knowing it would probably be her last.

  She pulled her gun from the waistband of her jeans. She heard one of her fingers snap as the IL-Bah’s fist knocked it from her hand like a child’s toy.