His father’s laugh was harsh, cold, and strange to his ears.
“Then why haven’t you given her to one of them and made sure she took a one-way trip off New Earth?”
“Because that’s not how it’s done. Plus, she used to be my sister-in-law. Why are you walking so fast? You’ve not been on the airship in a century. Do you even know where you’re going?”
“We can’t let them get away, boy. We have to constrain them before they have the chance to say anything to the world in general. Can’t let the secret of the abducted matchmakers get out.”
“They? Who’s they? Are you talking about Sheena and Brianna? I don’t understand what you’re concerned about and they don’t know anything. They both honestly think the alternates are sophisticated clones. Will you talk to me and tell me what’s going on?”
Nate stiffened when his father stopped them both and clapped two hands on his arms. The man stared into his eyes. Whatever his father was looking for, he must have found it because his father suddenly smiled. Why did that strange action suddenly make him want to run from the man who’d brought him into the world?
“Your mother was wise to make sure you got this assignment. We’re perfectly positioned to take any measures necessary. As Admiral of the AAS program, you can put this whole airship on lock down.”
“And why would I do that?”
Two more hard claps on his arms accompanied by laughter was his first answer.
“Because your father told you to” was the second.
Darcone was standing outside Brianna’s suite when Nate and his father arrived.
“Are Sheena and Bri in?” Nate asked.
“Yes. Like wind, Angus is. Erin do work.”
Nate watched as the alien guard he’d known and trusted for a century narrowed his eyes at his father. “Evil lurks,” Darcone said clearly, his gruff voice ringing in the hallway.
“What?” Nate asked.
“Dismiss the alien. We don’t need him,” his father ordered.
“No. Darcone’s their guard. He’s been here longer than I have,” Nate said, knocking on the door. When no answer to the knock was forthcoming, Nate watched his father push on the door and walk inside uninvited.
Darcone growled soft and low. “All dark, he is.”
“I have no idea what that means. You and I need to talk more. Now stay here and stay alert,” Nate ordered, following behind his rude parent.
He heard the rapid firing of a weapon and got inside the room just in time to see Sheena fall out of her chair. Across the room Bri slumped to the floor when the weapon hit her, the bottle of water she’d been carrying rolling away.
Nate knew his shock was on his face. “Sheena—no,” he called out, running to her side. He lifted her gently as he glared at his father. “What the hell have you done?”
“Nothing serious yet. The women are merely unconscious for now. We need to make their deaths look like an accident.”
Making sure Sheena was indeed still alive before he left her side, Nate rose and walked to check on Brianna. “Darcone, get in here,” he yelled as he moved. The alien burst inside the room, growling and glaring, especially when his angry gaze fell to Brianna lying on the floor.
“I told you to send the alien away,” his father protested, weapon drawn still.
“You gave me no reasonable reason for your request. What is going on?”
“You have no need to know, Nathaniel. I am your father and your superior. Do as I say.”
“No.” Rebelling was getting him nowhere, but it was all Nate could think to do.
Then Nate saw his father take aim at Darcone. Pure instinct sent him running across the floor. Grabbing his father’s arm, he pointed the weapon at the ceiling. The ultrasonic discharge made a dent in the metal frame, but luckily there was no breach. Still reacting to his anxiety, Nate pulled back a fist and let it fly. His father’s head snapped backwards only once before the man slumped in his arms. Damn Angus and his taunts about being weak. He owed the man again.
“Evil, he is. Told you, I did.”
“Lectures about my father are really not helpful right now,” Nate said.
Darcone lifted and carried Bri to her bed. He came back and took his father from his arms.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Nate confessed.
“Use brain,” Darcone ordered, hefting the unconscious man over his shoulder.
Nate went back to Sheena and picked her up. Sheena was unconscious, but at least she was still alive.
“Death now?” Darcone asked, growling the question.
“No. You can’t kill him. He’s my… never mind. You can’t kill him because I need to find out what’s going on. I need him alive. Take him to the cells. Chain him to one of the bars. And make sure he has no more weapons on him.”
“Hate idea, I do.”
“You hate everything,” Nate retorted.
“Like Brianna.” Darcone pounded his chest and looked at Sheena. “Sheena for you.”
Nate looked down at the woman he held. “Yes. Sheena is for me.”
“Love her, you do.”
“Yes. I love her. Are you happy now that I’ve confessed?”
“Bad parents, you have. Suck, this must.”
Nate didn’t want to find any of this funny, but sometimes on this frigging airship all you could do was laugh when an alien made a joke.
Chapter Fifteen
Angus sat in the chair and rubbed his face, saying nothing to any of them.
Sheena and Bri sat across the table from each, head in hand. They’d sent Carleton and Elsa to their room because they simply couldn’t handle more people fretting. Erin was doing enough of that for everyone. And it was starting to become more of a rant.
“Bastards. They’re all fecking bastards. Well, except the aliens—they’re alright. Real sweeties, most of them. Here, Bri.”
A cup of stimulant slid in front of her. Bri looked up at Erin and smiled. “Thank you. Do we have any pain killers? My head is hurting something fierce.”
“Yer poor head. Fecking immoral bastards, every last one,” Erin said, going to the bathroom to hunt for tablets.
Angus groaned from his chair. “Pay Erin no mind. She’ll be like that until the two of ya are yer old selves again. If Nate knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep the one that done this out of Erin O’Shea’s sight. She’d tear the skin from him before I could get across the room to beat him senseless.”
Sheena laid her head on her arms. All this passionate caring about what couldn’t be changed was way outside her comfort zone. She had the mother of all headaches, but also knew she was lucky to be alive. She was still quietly coming to terms with the fact that someone seriously wanted her dead. At least Novus Prime had only put a male leash on her.
Angus rose to answer the loud knock on the door. Darcone stood outside. Saying nothing, Angus waved him in. The alien’s gaze went straight to Bri, and just like that, another truth was out there for the collective MacNamara approval.
“I hope ya beat the hell out of him,” Angus said.
“Hurt him, I did. Kill him, I did not.”
Bri laughed. “That’s so sweet, Darcone. Did you save his death for me?”
Darcone’s responding snort was a surprise to all of them. Turned out he had a sense of humor after all. The alien walked to the table and stared down at Brianna.
“Is good you live.”
Bri nodded slowly. “Yes, it is good I live.”
“Nate…” Darcone drifted off, shrugged. “Saved you, he did. Happy, he is not. Father bad.”
Sheena lifted her head too fast and winced. “Are you saying Nate’s father did this to us?”
“Kill you, he tried.”
“Fecking cock-sucker bastard,” Erin spat.
Sheena had to move to keep from getting sloshed by the steaming cup of stimulant Erin pushed under her nose. Her gaze went across the table to her wicked sister who was trying desperately not to laugh at Erin
’s creative swearing.
“How can you find anything at all about this funny?” Sheena demanded.
“Sense of humor, I have. Get one, you must,” Bri said firmly, perfectly mocking Darcone’s speech pattern. She dissolved into a fit of giggling over the alien’s chastising tap on the back of her aching head.
Then they were all suddenly laughing, letting out the hysterical kind of relief that comes when you’ve barely missed dying.
As tears ran down her face, Sheena thought her head might actually explode before she stopped laughing.
Nate stood at his office window, frowning as he looked out through the small circle. It was hard coming to terms with the fact that his job had made him nothing more than a captured aviary trapped in a cage all these years.
His mother had confessed that she lied to him regularly and today his father had just tried to kill the woman he loved for no good reason. Not that his father knew he loved Sheena. The man obviously didn’t know him at all, but what the hell? What kind of gullible putz was he that he didn’t automatically sense the evil in the man? Darcone had. The alien he’d known forever had taken one look at his father and known he was up to no good.
“Talking to yourself is a bad habit. Just don’t start answering—you’ll find yourself in rehabilitation for the mentally unsound.”
Nate turned at the sound of her voice. “It’s called self-reflection.”
Sheena snorted. “When you’re being self-critical, it’s called whining. You’re not gullible. You’ve just been naïve about your parents. That’s what happens when you spend over a hundred years on an airship. The world went on changing without you.”
“It’s done a lot more than change. The world has officially gone mad, Sheena. I just don’t know what to do about it.”
“Neither do I,” Sheena said, dropping into a chair.
Nate slid into his chair and stared across the desk at her. “If my father hadn’t wanted your deaths to look like an accident, you and Bri would both be dead right now. And I just let him waltz right into your room and shoot you.”
“Nate, he’s not a known serial killer. He’s your father.”
“Maybe that’s a lie too. My mother’s been lying to me all along. She told me so.”
“And I told you first, but that doesn’t help the hurt you must be feeling,” Sheena admitted.
“Yes, you did tell me first. You told me a hundred years ago, but I didn’t fucking listen.” Nate drew in a breath. “Well, I’m listening now and you deserve the whole truth. Angus and Erin are from another universe. The Guardians are using the alien travel portal to jump between our mirror worlds. The current Angus and Erin were abducted for the sole purpose of replacing your parents.”
“Yes, I know all that.”
Nate snorted. “Of course you do. Did Angus tell you everything?”
“No,” Sheena answered, shaking her head slowly, mostly because it still hurt. “Angus never said a word. Neither did Erin. I found out from a more knowledgeable source.”
“Montgomery?”
“No, not him either. Scott doesn’t know anything. Why are you grilling me over this? Maybe I found out from my father’s notes. Did that ever occur to you? He left me all his private research.”
Nate narrowed his gaze. “I might not be a genius like you, but I’m good at reading people, well—other than my parents. So I’m not buying that either. I understand why you might refuse to tell me such a thing, but at least stop lying. I hate myself enough already.”
Sheena chuckled at his remorse. “You’re right. I’m a terrible liar. That’s why I don’t do it. I just say nothing and hope no one asks me questions.”
They stared at each other across the desk. Nate sighed and nodded, coming to the right decision for once. He felt it in his gut.
“I love you, Sheena. I always have and I probably always will,” he said finally. “If you want the real truth from me, I don’t even care how you found out about Angus and Erin. But if you have any clue about what’s going on with my parents, I’d really like to know at least that. My mother may be a habitual liar, but my father doesn’t usually try to kill people I care about. I figure there has to be an explanation that makes sense somewhere in the mess of my fucked existence.”
Sheena nodded. “Your mother likes power and she lies to get her way. Stop pretending that’s not true and you’ll be fine. Follow your own gut. Here’s what I know about your father—Bri said he was at the execution she witnessed. Six people were incinerated while your father and the Novus Prime director watched. What none of us knows is who those people were. We need to find out. I think that answer will tell us what kind of political shit show we’re dealing with.”
“My father will tell you nothing. I tried to talk to him. All I got out of him were slurs and he’s currently denying his part in my creation. He blames my mother for what he feels are my weaknesses. I liked it better when he simply ignored me for half a century.”
Sheena smiled at the man she adored. Nate was her weakness. God help her if anyone ever found out. “I can get your father to talk to me. I just need your cooperation.”
“Will what you do hurt him?”
“You have him locked in a cell because he intended to kill me, Admiral Tiberius. Do you honestly care if it hurts him?” she asked.
Nate sighed heavily. “Not really, but I’m not used to being this much a hard-ass. You’re going to have to let me ease into the role. The bastard is still unfortunately my parent.”
“What I plan to do won’t hurt him. In fact, he won’t even remember our conversation, if I don’t want him to.”
“Are you talking about some kind of brainwashing? Is that what you did to Montgomery?”
Sheena raised an eyebrow. “Novus Prime paid General Scott Montgomery to seduce me. I was his target and his job was to keep tabs on my activities. He’s lucky he still has all his man parts.”
“Right. Fucking bastard. What was I thinking? He deserved to have his mind violated.”
Sheena shrugged at Nate’s sarcasm. “I’m angry that the organization I worked for all these years thinks I’m some kind of problem that needs such close monitoring. Well, I just became one because their actions makes me wonder what else they’ve been hiding from me.”
“Welcome to my world,” Nate said.
“I know. If it helps any, the Guardians aren’t behind any of this crap fest,” Sheena said.
“My father worked for them. How can you be so sure?” Nate asked.
Sheena paused, stared at the man she loved, and then decided to just tell him. “Because I’m being recruited to be one.”
Nate pushed back in his chair and stared. Sheena? A Guardian? “You’re certainly smart enough. But…” What could he say to her? Stay and be my wife instead. Don’t take the highest honor on the planet. He couldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t. She hadn’t done it to him even when he was being a naïve idiot.
Sheena shrugged once more. “I haven’t said yes to anything, but I’ve talked to all of them. While they were testing me, I tested them back. I needed to know if they were telling me the truth about their motivations and their morals. I discovered they were.”
“So what explains my father then?”
Sheena smiled. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
“How are you going to do that?” Nate asked.
“I have a way of making people tell me the truth.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Thank you for securing him for me,” Sheena said, her body no long over-reacting to Darcone’s answering growl. She shared his preference for ripping her former father-in-law’s head off his shoulders, but that would not serve their purposes nearly as well as what she had in mind.
Sheena pulled a chair over and sat directly in front of the chair Nate’s father was tied to.
“My absence will mean your eventual death. Your own organization will see you as a threat if I go missing.”
“Oh, you won’t be missed. The Guardia
ns will just go to another universe and bring back a nicer version of you. See? Problem solved.”
“You’re just the Matchmakers’s daughter—a scientist. You know nothing of the real world.”
Sheena glared. “I know I love your son more than you or his mother does. I know I’m not about to let you fuck with Nate’s mind any longer or try to kill what’s left of my family. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know and we’re going to come to an agreement.”
“Why would I do that?”
Sheena grabbed his jaw, held his gaze, and pressed the delivery tube in her hand against his neck. She gave him twice the dose Nate and Scott had gotten. “You’re going to do it because I said so.”
She waited a couple minutes until he started blinking. “You look tired. I think you need some sleep.”
“Too much going on to sleep,” he said, eyes rolling back in his head.
Sheena waited two minutes more. “Who were the six people you and my boss watched be incinerated?”
“Experiments. We replaced the originals with their alternates. No one even suspected.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Alternates do what we say. They want to go back to their home and we use that to our advantage.”
“But they can’t go back to their home, can they?” Sheena demanded.
“Re-insertion is possible, but too difficult.”
“So what was the goal with all that collecting and replacing of people?”
“Goal?”
“Yes. Why bother to replace those exact six people?”
“They’re the ones who operate the portal.”
Sheena rose and paced. “All six of them?”
“Yes. I hired them myself.”
“Who directed this to be done? Novus Prime or the Guardians?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Who ordered the deaths of the originals? Who ordered the alternates to be brought here? Was it just you and the Novus Prime director working on this?”
“Many fund our efforts. Even criminals want things to change. The aliens cannot be allowed to steal our females any longer. By controlling the alien portal, we can travel anywhere in the known galaxy or across universes. One day we will find the proper weapons to fight them. That will be true liberation.”
Nate's Fated Mate: Aliens In Kilts, Abduction 2 Page 13
