by Christy,Dena
It had to be a momentary lapse in judgement on her part. The alien had bewitched her somehow. If the creature could morph himself into other people, who knew what other powers he possessed. He would go forward with his plans for Miranda, and for the first time since he’d woken up in the observation lab, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. At least now he had leverage and she would be powerless to say no to him.
He blew out his breath, and the smile dropped from his face. There was one person he needed to call. He didn’t want to involve Commander Clancy in this, but he lacked the resources to retrieve the alien on his own.
A glance at his watch told him that the Commander would be at home, and he pulled up his contact list, touched Commander Clancy’s name and the small house icon. The call went through and after a few moments Commander Clancy’s face appeared, looking far more casual than he had the last time John had spoken to him.
“John, this is a surprise. How is the autopsy going?” Commander Clancy said, his tone jovial and John’s stomach turned sour. His boss would assume he was calling him to let him know how the autopsy was proceeding and now he had to tell him that not only was the autopsy not happening but that the alien had escaped.
“About that sir.” John reached up to straighten his tie, only to realize he wasn’t wearing one. “The alien has escaped.”
The easy smile dropped off Commander Clancy’s face, and his expression turned thunderous as a dull red crept up his skin. John swallowed hard as he braced himself for the anger he knew was coming.
“What kind of operation are you running over there that you allowed the alien to escape? Was I wrong about you, John? Are you perhaps not right for the position of trust I’ve placed you in? Did I perhaps let the ambition I could see in you cloud my judgement? Was I wrong to ignore where you came from?”
“No sir.” His body grew hot that his boss implied that he was flawed because of his humble beginnings. He did his best to keep a neutral expression on his face as he pushed down the resentment his boss stirred in him. It’s easy to sit a place of judgement when you had everything you ever wanted handed to you as your birth right.
“How did he get out?”
“He can shape shift, I saw it in the security footage that he fooled the guard into thinking he was me, and he walked out the door.” John hoped Commander Clancy would accept his explanation without him needing to bring up Miranda’s involvement.
“And how did he get out of the observation room in the first place? How would he get an access pass to let him out?”
Commander Clancy would ask the one question that he didn’t want to answer. He would have to tell him about Miranda’s roll in all this. Damn it.
“He was let out of the lab by my assistant, Citizen Reynaud. He used some mind influence on her.” It had to be true that she hadn’t freed the alien willingly. He’d seen her with him, and the only word he could use to describe how she looked at him was hypnotized.
“Is she the one you insisted I bring up from downtown? You let your dick cloud your judgement, and now we’ve lost him.” Commander Clancy’s voice was harsh with condemnation, and John looked away from the screen for a moment. He had let his attraction for Miranda cloud his judgment, but no more. He had achieved his clarity as far as she was concerned. He knew now what she was capable of and he would not relax his guard around her until she was under his control.
“I will retrieve the alien. I put a tracking device in her purse, and if she is still with him, it will lead us to his location.” John looked at his display screen and met his boss’ eyes. He would no longer allow Clancy to intimidate him.
“And if he’s not with her? What are you prepared to do to get the information you need from her?”
John hoped it wouldn't come to that, since he still wanted Miranda for himself. If he could contain what she’d done, then there was no reason for him not to proceed with his plans. He doubted that Miranda had abandoned the alien once she’d helped him escape. He had no identity card, and no where he could go. If she was under his influence, he would want to keep her with him to use her further.
“John,” Commander Clancy’s voice came to him and jolted him out of his thoughts. “I asked you if you are prepared to do what is necessary to get this under control.”
‘Yes sir.”
“I don’t think I have to tell you what will happen if you fail. I will send a team to your lab, and you can instruct them on what you want done. I want a win John.” Commander Clancy’s face winked out as he ended the call.
“I want a win John,” he mocked as he turned off his comm panel. And he didn’t? The discovery of the alien would be the crowning achievement of a long career that he’d built himself. He would not let this little set back sway him from the bigger picture. He could fix this. All he needed to do was retrieve the alien and get Miranda under control. Once he learned how to break the alien’s mind control, she would see how inevitable their being together was.
Chapter Twelve
Synn opened his eyes the next morning. Something had woken him but he couldn’t identify what it was. Miranda’s warm naked body lay next to him, and he turned his head to look at her in the dim light of the bedroom.
Everything that happened yesterday and last night came flooding back. He reached out to stroke her hair when he heard a creaking noise in the hallway and his senses were on high alert. He shifted out of bed, being careful not to disturb the woman who lay sleeping. He put himself between the bed and the door, and whoever was on the other side would have to get through him to get to her.
The bedroom door slowly opened, and he reacted. He grabbed the shadowy figure and pressed them against the wall next to the door. A feminine scream rang out, and small female fists pummeled him and he had to raise his hands up to defend himself. He got short, disjointed impressions from the figure’s mind. It was Miranda’s friend Collette, the woman who owned the apartment.
“What is going on?” Miranda asked from the bed as she snapped on the bedside light, and it illuminated his error in judgement. Synn took a step away from the harridan determined to beat the daylights out of him and stepped toward the bed. “Collette why are you beating the hell out of Synn?”
“Why am I beating him?” Collette sagged against the wall, with her hand to her heart. “All I did was come home and go into my bedroom, and he pounced on me.”
“I’m very sorry.” All he could offer her were words, and his face heated at his hasty actions. In his determination to protect Miranda, he’d attempted to hurt another woman, however inadvertently. Shame burned through him. He would have to make amends to Miranda’s friend.
Something soft nudged his behind, and he turned to see Miranda offering him a pillow. He looked at it and then her, wondering why she would hand him a piece of the bedding. She looked pointedly down at his groin, and he realized that not only had he launched himself at her friend, he’d done so naked.
He quickly took the pillow and held it in front of himself. The burn of embarrassment crept from his face, down his neck and onto his chest. Now his humiliation was complete.
“Randa?” Collette leaned to the side to look around him to speak to Miranda. “What the hell is going on? Why are you in my apartment, in my bed, with a strange man?”
“Collette can you give us a few minutes to get dressed, and we will be out very soon. You’re home a little earlier then we expected.”
“Are you sure your okay to be alone with this maniac?” Collette looked back at him, a scowl drawing her perfectly shaped eyebrows together. Her determination to protect her friend helped Synn get over the embarrassment of attacking her in the nude.
“I swear to you, that I would never harm Miranda. Quite the opposite. I had the foolish notion that you were an intruder and my only thought was to protect her. Again, please accept my apologies for frightening you.”
“Okay. Come out when you’re ready.” She turned and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
Synn’s shoulders sagged. He wasn’t used to the protectiveness that welled inside him at the thought that Miranda might be in danger. From the moment she’d walked into the lab, he’d felt a connection, and having her share her body with him last night had only further cemented it.
He heard a snort behind him, and he turned to look at Miranda. Her shoulders were shaking, and for a moment he thought perhaps his going after her friend upset her. He threw the pillow aside and went to her.
“Miranda, what’s wrong?” He sat down on the bed next to her. “I’m sorry about what I did to your friend, if I had known that it was her I would never had leapt out of bed to confront her.”
Her body shook harder, and he tried to look at her face. He thought he could see the sheen of tears on her cheeks, and pain lanced through him at the thought he’d made her cry.
“Oh God.” She hugged her sides as her body shook. “The look on your face when you realized you were standing there in front of her in all your naked glory.”
Not only was she not distraught, she was laughing. While he was glad that she wasn’t upset, he didn’t think the situation was that funny.
“I was trying to defend you.”
“I know, my naked defender.” She blew out her breath and wiped her hands across her cheeks. “Thank you for acting without thinking, even if there was no danger to me.”
She put her hands on his cheeks and leaned forward to kiss him. Her contact with his lips was brief, and she pulled back.
“We should get dressed and go out there before she comes back in here.”
She got out of the bed and walked to a room that adjoined the bedroom. He watched her, his eyes drinking in the sight of her beautiful body as the corners of his mouth pulled up in a smile. Too bad her friend had come home when she had. He would have like to have known her again.
His smile dropped away. He would not see her like this again. As long as he was with her, he was endangering her. As much as he wasn’t ready to be parted from her, he needed to leave her. She’d risked her life to save him, and he wouldn’t put her in further danger. She deserved to move on with her life as if he’d never been in it, but it would be hard to say goodbye to her.
“Bathroom’s all yours,” she said as she walked back out. She must have seen something in his face. “You’re still not feeling bad about what happened are you? It’s not a big deal, Synn.”
“That is not what the issue is.” He patted the space next to him on the bed. She frowned for a moment as she came over to sit beside him, and he took her hand in his.
“Do you regret last night? Sleeping with me?” She pushed her lips into a smile, one he recognized as false. It was her way of pretending that what she was about to hear would not hurt her.
“I have no regrets about sharing my body with you last night. I’m worried that if I stay with you, I will only endanger you. I’m sure your boss will hunt me, and I don’t want you caught up in that.”
She was quiet beside him, and she didn’t even pretend to smile.
“And if you’re with me, it will be easier for him to find you. It would be best if we separate, but not right now. You’ll need chips, you must stay somewhere and to do that you will need to pay. I have some things I can sell, to get you the chips you need. Once we do that, we’ll decide what happens next.”
“I cannot take any more from you, you’ve done so much for me already.” He didn’t want her selling her things to fund his search for his friends. She would need all her resources for herself now that she’d given up her job to free him.
“Consider it a loan then. Pay me back by finding your friends and staying alive.” She stood up and reached for her clothes. Synn sighed. “You better wash up. Collette won’t wait forever.”
He stood and walked into the room she’d vacated and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked no different than he had the day before, but he felt like something inside him had changed, and she was the root of it. He turned on the tap and splashed water on his face.
Once he washed and relieved himself he was ready to go back in the room and face the prospect of leaving her. One last look in the mirror showed his chest was the same as it was yesterday. According to everything he’d been taught, once a Latrothian had found his true mate, a mark would appear over his heart in the shape of her hand. And if she bound herself to him, the mark would stay on him for the rest of his life. His chest was free of any marks, and he told himself that he was glad of it. He didn’t need to pull her further into his life than he already had. But why could I skim Collette’s mind and not Miranda’s?
He shoved the troubling notion aside and walked back into the bedroom. She wasn’t destined to be his true mate. It was a folk tail, nothing more. The difference in how he felt inside could be because she’d been the first female he’d been intimate with. It stood to reason that he would have a special attachment to her because of it.
Miranda had already left, and he pulled his clothes on so he could join her and Collette. As he walked out of the room, he took one last look at the bed where she’d offered herself to him. He’d meant it when he’d told her that he had not regretted sharing his body with her, but that would not stop him from walking away from her. Her safety mattered more than his desire for her. He turned away from the bed, determined to ignore the instinct screaming inside him to keep her with him forever.
* * *
Dr. Avery followed the two nondescript vehicles holding three soldiers, and his mouth tightened. Three guys was all Commander Clancy had sent him? He understood the need for discretion, but three? Commander Clancy assured him that they were the best at what they did. That remained to be seen. If they failed to capture Miranda and the alien, he would be the one to blame, not Commander Clancy. For all his talk of wanting a win, it was almost as if Commander Clancy was setting him up to fail.
They pulled in front of a luxury apartment building, and the men got out of their vehicles. They were dressed in black, and the bottoms of their pants were tucked into military style boots. They had the same intense scowl on their faces. They carried no weapons, since they didn’t want to stand out, and because they wanted to keep this under wraps as much as possible. Citizens of Nova Earth had gotten very good at ignoring things happening around them and minding their own business, but men toting weapons would be noted, particularly in the upscale neighborhood they currently stood in.
Dr. Avery got out the his car and walked to where they stood waiting for him to give them their instructions.
“As I’m sure you’ve been told by Commander Clancy, you are after two targets. A man and a woman.” John looked up at the one in the middle who seemed to be the leader. “The woman is a red head, and the man with her should be tall with dark hair.”
“Should be sir? Are you saying you don’t know what one of your own targets looks like,” the leader said, and Dr. Avery thought he could detect disdain in his voice. It was always the same with these types, they’d thought they were superior to him because of their strength and muscles. That would all change once he got to where he wanted to be. Then they would treat him with the respect he deserved. “Sir?”
“He may be disguised.” He had no intention of telling them of the alien’s ability to shape shift. The alien had probably reverted to his normal form while alone with Miranda, and there was no reason for him to take another form if they thought they were safe in the building. He would provide them with only what was necessary for them to capture their targets. While Commander Clancy may be prepared to trust them, he wasn’t.
“And what apartment are they in?”
Dr. Avery squeezed his lips together when the one on the left spoke. He had no way of telling them what apartment she was in. His tracker software only told what building she was in, not the apartment too. And since this wasn’t her home, and he hadn’t had time to scroll through the records of the residence to see if one had a connection with Miranda, they would have to knock on doors, unfortunately.
&nb
sp; “I don’t know what apartment they are in, you must search the building.”
The man in the middle rolled his eyes. Dr. Avery straightened to his less than impressive height and stared at him. Unfortunately harden soldiers were not as easily intimidated as junior scientists.
“So let me get this straight, we are looking for a red headed woman, and a man who may or may not be tall with dark hair. They are in the building somewhere, but you don’t know for sure. Have I got that correct sir?” The one in the middle spoke again, and although he stared straight ahead, Dr. Avery could see his disdain. He was sure that they thought they were on a fool’s errand.
“That woman has stolen something precious to me and your boss, and if you are to succeed in this mission, you are to take it as seriously as any other.” Heat churned around in John’s gut, and his heart picked up speed. He took a deep breath, to bring himself under control. He would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that he angered him, and he slowly eased his breath in and out. “Commander Clancy has informed me that you are the best, so I’m sure you are all up to the challenge. If you don’t think you are, there is no shame in saying so. I’m sure Commander Clancy would understand why you wouldn’t be able to do this.”
All three stiffened at the implied threat, and Dr. Avery tightened his mouth to prevent the smug smile from curling across his face. Not so superior now, are you?
“And what level of aggression are we sanctioned for.”
“What do you mean, what level of aggression? You are to do everything in your power to catch these two. I would have assumed that you wouldn’t need to be told that.”
“You misunderstand me sir. Are the targets to be taken alive or dead?”
