by Elin Wyn
The photos the PI sent looked grim. He’d provided rough coordinates, but not an address. I hadn’t been able to verify that there was anything at those coordinates other than snow, snow, and more snow.
I believed the compound was there. And I could believe that Ted had taken her.
Ted had always talked about wanting something like that, a place away from everything where he could work uninterrupted, when things…when things were good.
Not that those times had lasted long, I chided myself.
I pushed thoughts of him out of my mind before I totally ruined my appetite. I forced myself to eat a few more fries before pushing away from the table.
I’d been here too long. I needed to keep moving.
Every second wasted was a second longer I was away from Arabella.
I kept my head down as I quickly left the diner, but at the last second, a feeling struck me.
As if someone had silently called my name.
And when I looked up, the hot guy was looking right at me. Now I could tell that his eyes were dark blue, like sapphires in firelight.
Dark. Dangerous.
And not for me.
I’d already proved my judgment couldn’t be trusted.
I looked away and stepped out into the chilly late afternoon, searching for my car.
Finally, I found it, an unfamiliar shape under the thin blanket of snow on its hood and roof. I’d sold my car for a cheaper model once I realized how far I’d be travelling.
It was a calculated risk, but necessary. The cash I’d made off the exchange funded this trip, and although this rust bucket was probably as old as I was, it would have been fine, if I wasn’t driving through such rough terrain.
One more example of me and my questionable judgment.
From the outer pocket of my bag, I pulled out a worn paper map that I’d gotten from the PI. It was the only map of the area he could find that had trails and dirt roads clearly marked.
The area where my daughter was supposedly being held was circled in red ink.
It took a few tries to get the old clunker to start. It was a manual. I’d learned how to drive this car ten minutes after I purchased it, which was about twenty minutes before I started this trip.
I still had some trouble shifting, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was bad at it or because the shifter-thing was rusty and looked one good yank away from coming off altogether.
My parents thought I made terrible decisions because I was impulsive and reckless.
I thought it was because I’d never had that many good things to choose from to begin with.
The story of my life was just me making the best of bad situations.
Except for Arabella.
She was the best thing in my life. I couldn’t believe I’d let her slip away from me.
I could only hope Ted was being kind to her, had taken the time to get to know her, even a little.
She didn’t like the dark, and she got cold easily.
She was a good sleeper. She could fall asleep just about anywhere. I wasn’t worried about her being sleep deprived.
I was worried about her getting enough to eat. Like most five-year-olds, she was pretty damn picky.
Had he even bothered to childproof anything in the damn compound?
I gnawed my lip, peering through the windshield at the snow-covered road.
All the questions in the world wouldn’t answer the most important one.
Why had Ted taken her?
He’d never showed any interest in her before.
He’d shown up once, in the hospital room after she’d been born.
My parents hadn’t come by yet.
Disappointed. Again.
I’d been terrified, exhausted, clinging to my baby as he stood in the doorway, cold eyes peering across the room.
“Do you want to see her?” was all I’d been able to manage.
“Her?” He straightened, stepped away. “No.”
And that was that.
For five years.
But somehow, for reasons only known to himself, he’d changed his mind.
The PI had traced the giant who’d actually snatched Arabella, and then found the connection with Ted.
Thankfully, he’d stopped asking questions when I explained that the father and I were estranged.
That’s a reasonable way to explain what happens when your professor leaves you pregnant your sophomore year, right?
Like I said.
Questionable judgment.
Dr. Theodore Bonven had been considered a miracle hire at our tiny state university. He was a biochemist by trade, but was taking what he jokingly referred to as a “reverse sabbatical”, teaching whatever science classes the university couldn’t afford faculty for.
Sophomore-year-Megan never even thought to question it.
What had he been doing teaching at a little school like that?
But he’d swept me and my questions away by the sheer force of his personality.
I was an astronomy major in college.
My parents thought that was the latest mistake in a long chain of poor decisions. They wished I’d selected a more marketable major, like business or communications, but I loved the stars.
I loved the idea of investigating the mysteries of the universe. For me, there was no other choice of future.
It was everything I wanted.
And then, somehow, there was Ted, and everything I wanted, everything I’d planned, got pushed aside.
He wasn’t a professional astronomer. He said he’d started it as a hobby and fell in love with it, just like me.
Yes, he was more than two decades older than me, but he didn’t look old. He certainly didn’t act old.
When he taught, his whole body lit up with excitement. Passion sparked in his eyes when he spoke. He was the first person I ever met who loved astronomy the same way I did. It was beyond a professional curiosity.
It was a calling.
I’d convinced myself astronomy was in my blood.
I approached him one day after class, expressing interest in an astronomy club. To my outrage, I’d just found out there wasn’t one.
Dr. Bonven offered to help me establish one on campus.
To this day, I don’t know if he genuinely meant to help me or saw an opportunity to get a little action with the naive student with stars in her eyes.
He suggested the roof of the science building as a potential location for club meetings, since it was the tallest building on campus.
Even if the light pollution was unbearable, it was still our best chance of seeing the cosmos.
Instead of planning for the club, we spent hours talking about the stars. I was entranced. We decided to meet on the roof again the following night. He brought wine. I brought a pizza.
He didn’t take my virginity, but he may as well have.
We saw each other for three months.
Somewhere in that time, my Arabella was conceived.
When I found out I was pregnant, I’d never been happier. I was so excited to tell him.
He was…less excited.
He cut ties with me. He tried to get me removed from his class, but he didn’t have the authority to do so.
I left on my own a few weeks later. I couldn’t stay at the school. It was too hard, knowing he was on the same campus as me and didn’t care I was carrying our baby.
I couldn’t go home to my parents. The last thing I needed was a neverending lecture about all the ways I’d failed them.
So, I did what any expectant mother would do in that situation.
I figured it out. I got a crappy little apartment.
I worked three jobs. None of them were good jobs, but they paid the rent and the doctors. When Arabella came, it was all worth it.
And other than that one, brief visit in the hospital, Ted was nothing more than a memory.
Until now.
A sputtering noise tore me from my memories. My little car wasn’t do
ing so well. The incline and icy roads were just too much for the poor thing.
I pulled over on the side of the road just as the engine died completely.
“Okay,” I sighed shakily. “Don’t panic. You can figure this out.”
But how? I didn’t have enough money for repairs. I barely had enough for gas. I didn’t know where I was.
I pulled out my map. It was old, so it didn’t show lodging or public transportation.
How was I going to get to Arabella now?
Tears welled up in my eyes.
I’d been doing all right at keeping it together. If I broke down, I was no use to Arabella. I couldn’t help it now. Tears rolled down my cheeks. It was so cold in the car, I thought my tears would freeze.
A knock on the window scared me out of my wits. Expecting the highway patrol or something, I rolled the window down.
Standing next to the driver’s side was the man from the diner.
Apparently, this time, my bad decisions had decided to come to me.
Ryant
“Can I help you?”
What the skith am I doing here? I thought, but it was already too late.
The woman had already rolled her window down, I had already offered my help, and her teary eyes were looking straight into mine.
And her scent struck me like an enemy barrage.
There could be no backing down now.
Alarm bells went off inside my head right away, but I promised myself I wouldn’t let her big eyes distract me from my mission.
After all, the last thing I needed was another disciplinary procedure for operative misconduct.
It was possible that this mission was someone in High Command’s idea of a disciplinary assignment.
Possible.
“I think my car just died,” the woman finally said. She wiped the tears from her face with the backs of her hands, leaving tiny smudges of make-up under her eyes. She seemed delicate and frail, and I suddenly felt protective of her. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Alright, I’ll see what I can do for you.” Trying to think of a reasonable course of action, I walked toward the front of her stupid-looking car and popped the hood open, like I’d seen a man do in the parking lot of the diner.
Despite knowing ahead of time what the burned smell meant, there was no organic reactor hiding underneath the sheet of metal, and the dirty-looking boxes there didn’t look anything like quantum batteries.
Scratching the back of my head, I realized I had no other choice but to bring the woman along with me.
That would be something I would have to omit on my mission report, but as long as I dropped her off at the next town or gas station, I’d be fine.
Besides, it wouldn’t be so bad to have some company, and maybe she’d provide a little cover.
I preferred working alone whenever I was working a real job—tailing black ops operatives through Kanithar shanty towns, or sabotaging Lador cruisers while they flew from base to base—but my mission here wasn’t exactly an exciting one.
As an experienced operative, it was shameful that I had been assigned a retrieval mission. Some asshole in a satellite’s tech crew screws up, a data stick is discharged from a Vondin spy satellite after drifting through a meteor field too close to an unsanctioned, primitive planet, and the High Command thinks of me?
Yeah, this was punishment.
Besides.
I couldn’t leave her.
She’d be alone.
And vulnerable.
Someone might want to take advantage of her and…
“Skith,” I muttered, putting the hood back in place, and shoving down the completely irrational growing rage in my chest.
Going back to the driver’s side of the car, I looked down at the woman and shook my head. “Your engine’s gone,” I said, even though I had absolutely no idea what was wrong with her car.
As far as I was concerned, the damn thing had just stopped out of spite. “I can take you in my vehicle and drop you off at the next town.”
She ran her teeth across her bottom lip, an expression which I immediately recognized as one of hesitation, and then she averted her gaze. “Maybe I should just call a tow truck.” Awkwardly running one hand through her hair, she gave me a nervous smile. “But I appreciate the offer.”
“You’re going to call a tow truck?” I echoed, looking up at the road ahead. My own truck was a massive beast and I was struggling to drive with this weather, so I doubted anyone would come for her right now.
But that wasn’t my problem, was it? In fact, the woman had just given me a free pass to leave the scene without feeling guilty about it. And yet… Waiting alone. For a stranger to find her.
“That’s madness. You have no idea how long that would take.”
“At least I have a hoodie,” she said in a low tone, her eyes darting to my t-shirt. My forearms were covered with flakes of melting snow, a sight that was probably odd to her, and for the second time that day I realized that I would have to consider wearing that old man’s jacket to stop making people suspicious.
It was annoying—I was actually enjoying the cold.
“Yeah, I forgot mine at home,” I hurried to say, but I very strategically omitted the fact that home was a couple light years away from where we were standing. “Listen, it’s fine. You can leave your car here, and I’ll take you.”
“I really don’t know.” Once more, she started biting on the corner of her lips. Maybe she was hesitating because of how I looked—I was slightly taller and more muscled than all the other human males I had seen so far, so I figured she was intimidated by my appearance. Doing my best impression of a smile, I tried to put on a friendly, nonthreatening air.
And if she wouldn’t come with me, I’d just move her to the safety of the truck.
She finally nodded. “The nearest town is Gold Peak. If you’re headed that far, and you could drop me off there, I’d really appreciate it. I don’t really have any money to pay you with, but—”
“Never mind that.” Smoothly opening the door for her, I stepped aside and offered her my hand. “The name’s Ryant.”
She looked at me for a moment and then, cautiously, she laid her hand on top of mine and stepped out of the car, reaching back for a small bag.
“I’m Megan,” she said, and I could tell she was still cautious.
Fragile.
Nevertheless, I still opened the door on my truck’s passenger side for her, and she thanked me with a smile that made my heart leap.
“So, Gold Peak, huh?” I asked her once we were rolling down the road. “What’s there?”
Aside from the damn data stick, that was.
According to the last readouts I had been sent, the data stick’s last coordinates seemed to match Gold Peak’s location on the map, so it was a lucky thing we were both heading that way.
“Nothing important,” she replied, her teeth chattering.
She had her arms wrapped around her torso, and her cherry lips were now starting to grow pale.
“Are you alright? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” she lied, her whole body shivering. “I’m just a little bit cold.”
Right. Skith, I forgot. Restraining the urge to smack my forehead, I scanned the truck’s dashboard and once I found what I was looking for, I turned on the heat.
Maybe I should have read that briefing file more carefully.
Slowly, color started returning to her cheeks. Her teeth stopped chattering, and she was no longer shivering, her ragged breathing returning to normal.
She’d been freezing, but didn’t want to say anything.
Nothing that would possibly endanger her ride to Gold Peak.
I pondered that for a moment, stealing glimpses of her in my peripheral vision.
Fragile, but determined.
Soon enough, I had to focus on the road and not her, as the snowstorm kept on getting worse, a violent wind relentlessly throwing the snow against the windshield.
>
It got so bad that I could barely see the road in front of us, and our pace slowed to a crawl. As our speed decreased, Megan’s nervousness seemed to increase.
She fidgeted with the hem of her jacket, and her right foot was tapping the floor rhythmically.
Not sure what to make of it, I did my best to stop glancing at her and focused on the road.
Despite how primitive human vehicles were, I was quite pleased with the vehicle I had chosen.
Or been given.
Or taken.
Whatever.
A lesser car would have already given up under the constant battering of the snow, but this one just kept on trudging on.
Of course, there were limits to what it could do.
“Oh, God, no,” Megan breathed out, throwing her head back against the headrest as I slammed my foot down on the brakes.
A snowdrift had spilled into the road, creating a white wall that made it impossible to continue. “This can’t be happening,” she continued, her words coated with a thin layer of frustration.
Grabbing a little plastic rectangle from one pocket, she swiped her thumb across its glass screen and tapped it a few times.
Then, nervously glancing at me, she pressed it against her ear. “I’m calling 911,” she explained. “Maybe they’ll know who can send a snowplow nearby.”
I waited as she talked with someone through her little plastic rectangle, a type of comm unit she called a cellphone, but the haggard expression on her face immediately told me there was no good news to be had from whoever was on the other end of the conversation.
“They’re telling me we’ll have to wait till morning,” she said through gritted teeth. Her fingers were wrapped around her phone so tightly her knuckles were starting to turn white. “I can’t wait. I really can’t. I need to get to Gold Peak tonight.”
Clearly, there was something she wasn’t telling me.
Whatever was in Gold Peak, she couldn’t wait to get there.
Luckily for her, it was the same for me.
The sooner I got to Gold Peak, the sooner I’d find the data stick and get off this planet.
But suddenly, completing my mission and leaving didn’t seem quite so urgent anymore.
Megan
