by Celia Crown
The same glint that brings a terrible feeling in my gut. My blood boils, and I’m going to have to do research on this man.
I have met strangers who don’t give me bad feelings, and some do, but nothing like this man who just rubs me the wrong way. The hair on my arms rises, and the tread of danger licks the curve of my spine. The face of the captain gets its own slot in my head, and I take in all the details of him.
“I see,” the captain smiles, fake and charming. “What are you doing here?”
Tabby shrugs, “I need to pick up a document.”
“Document?” he inquires with curiosity, and his eyes flicker to me.
“Yeah, some confidential thing that I need to read,” Tabby presses her finger down on my pulse; it’s a definite sign of nervousness, and her skin is one degree hotter than what her normal temperature is.
The captain regards Tabby for a moment with keen eyes. The sharp attention he gives Tabby’s explanation is low, but his eyes are intense. It’s a tactic used by many to remain a sense of amity towards people while secretly digging for information.
“Alright, up you go then. Don’t let me keep you,” he smiles and nods; his steps are careful and deliberate when he walks past Tabby.
I yank her closer to me. His arm just misses her body by an inch, and he peers over his shoulder to me. Our eyes meet, and there is evil that swirls in those brown eyes. His smile widens to compensate the skepticism in me, and it doesn’t work to diminish the distrust in me for that man.
Tabby doesn’t look back, but she doesn’t move forward either. Her suspended state on the ground while the entrance opens and closes behind her indicates that the man had left.
Her amber eyes narrow; the distant expression on her face keeps the tension in the air thick and heavy. With a hand on the small of her back, I push her forward, and her little feet start to move on their own with her mind still miles away.
I will have to pry it out of her later, but we are here for something else, and she won’t tell me what it is.
“Doctor Sterling,” another man greets us with his uniform donned on his slim body.
We walk through the entrance, and the door closes behind us as an automatic response. Tabby shakes the man’s hand, and he nod towards me as a greeting.
“Doctor Shafer, I have heard great things about you,” he praises, and I don’t feel an ounce of accomplishment running through me.
“A SEAL and a doctor,” the man chuckles with eyes of mirth as he gestures us to his office.
“Adrian, can you stay out here?” Tabby whispers to me, and she doesn’t elaborate further.
I know that politics and confidentiality play a big part in her life, but I was never subjected to those when I was with her, and I don’t want it to start now. Nonetheless, I know when to let her become an independent woman with a strong sense of intelligence.
“I will be here,” I say as I stand at the door.
She nods as a thank you and follows the man into his office that I got a good look at; it’s a normal office space with a desk and a computer facing the door. A filing cabinet behind him and two chairs in front of his desk while the ivory lights cast harshly down on the sleek black desk that causes a coated sheen.
“I won’t be long,” she says over her shoulder with a smile, but it doesn’t make it to her eyes.
I hate being left in the dark; it’s not the same as the time she left me without a goodbye, but it has the same baseline of anxiety curling in my stomach.
Pushing myself back onto the wall, I strain my ears to listen for anything once the door locks behind her. The only thing I hear is a slight buzzing from the warehouse regulating the temperature. This sensitivity to change must mean that there are important machines in here that needs to be kept under a certain degree for them not to overheat or underperform.
The talk is longer than I expected, but whatever Tabby wants to know must be important or extremely comprehensive. For all the time I have known her, she has always been detail-oriented, and she needs to know all the facts for any future mistakes that can be avoided.
She never likes loose-ends, and whatever her mind had conjured up, she’s keeping it to herself until she knows all the facts. It’s a trait that is good and bad for her. I can’t be her backup if she doesn’t fill me in and I’m going into battle half-blinded with a million of things to expect.
With briefings during my Navy days, I know what to expect and can calculate any unexpected events.
I scan the area; it’s not big, and the entrance in front of me has no guard nor does this space have a guard to protect the access point of the highest-ranking officer in this place.
Ambush in this space is impossible. There is no way to enter without being seen unless they are using the element of surprise to create a big scene as a smokescreen for something else.
Shit, is this what Tabby thought of?
Coming out here to chase after a year-old robbery of a truck with stolen government technology from a company with a sun logo on it that got buried under legal paperwork to hide the identity of the company to prevent criminals from getting their hands on the latest technologies.
Is the robbery a distraction, or is it a piece of a bigger picture?
The door opens from my side and out steps Tabby with the man right behind her. She peers at me through the corner of her eye and smiles.
“Let’s go home,” she says, a tone slightly off with a weaver in them.
I step closer to her, eyeing the military man with apprehension. He doesn’t notice anything wrong with the atmosphere and shakes Tabby’s hand again when she turns around.
They exchange ‘goodbye’s and ‘thank you’, but too stiff and uncomfortable to the trained eye. I know when Tabby is not in her element, and this is one of the scenarios that she is slightly overwhelmed with the twitch of her lips.
We leave the warehouse. The wind from Arizona’s heat brushes against my skin that brings my temperature up from being in the cool warehouse.
The car waits for us, and I stop her from getting closer. I wait a couple of seconds to see if it would blow up and it doesn’t. I don’t trust anyone in the warehouse, and I certainly don’t trust this car when it’s been unsupervised for a good hour.
I carefully step closer to the car, inspecting it to see if it has been tampered with and when I don’t find any inconsistencies anywhere, I search the car for any foreign objects that weren’t there before.
There is no GPS, and no unsightly devices nor are there any bombs attached to the bottom of the car. It would make sense for the car to not blow up until it is away from the military warehouse to avoid suspicion, but for the sake of Tabby, I’m going to have to pass on the car.
“We will walk to the nearest diner,” I tell her, voice stern and uncooperative.
This is for her own good, a couple of miles down the long stretch of deserted road should get me enough time to wring whatever information she had gathered out of her. Walking in the dark is never a good idea, but it’s better than getting blown up.
Tabby doesn’t protest when I drag her out of the warehouse security gate and take her a couple of feet away before taking hold of her hand to make sure she doesn’t wander.
This place is too open for attacks, and kidnapping Tabby would be the best scenario since she is useless dead, in a manner of speaking.
It’s bad and I don’t want to jinx it, but it’s the ugly truth I must live with knowing that people will always want Tabby for themselves, for profit, or to use her for the chaos in the world.
“Why are we walking?” she asks after a mile into the long road.
She squints her eyes as she turns her head to look at me. The sand particles hit her face, and she winces while keeping her hand in mine to use her other one to rub her eyes.
“We need to talk.”
She hums, swinging her hand in mine with a childish hum that comes from her pink lips. Tabby is stalling, and we have miles ahead of her. I let her stew in her t
houghts and then I will get it from her one way or another.
“The less you know, the better it is, Adrian,” she says with a bright smile, humming a tune from a desolate movie that she binge-watched.
“Tabby,” I say firmly, the growl in my throat stops midway when she looks straight ahead.
“I trust you with my life,” she said, watching the sand move at the side of the road. “I’m asking you to trust me.”
It’s not something I want to do, but when she says it with such resolve, my heart softens, and a sigh escapes my lips. This goes against every instinct my body had years of training with and it is hard to turn off that part of my mind that she’s going to get hurt for keeping secrets to herself.
“I do trust you, but I can’t protect you if you keep things to yourself.”
Tabby, just as I predicted, laughs it off with a big smile. Her attitude towards this whole thing, the impending meteor, the robbery, and the meeting with the captain of the space shuttle doesn’t dampen her mood.
She is neither anxious, nor is she scared anymore; it’s as if she doesn’t have a care for anything.
“I can protect myself, Adrian.”
I know she can; Tabby is strong and iron-willed, but someone must remind her that she is also fragile and vulnerable.
Not everyone that walks on this Earth is kind; this isn’t a fairy tale, and there will be rogues that wait in the shadows for her.
“I want to protect you,” I squeeze her hand.
She stays silent, humming that same tune again; dreadful and hauntingly beautiful that it serves as ambiance noise in the quiet setting.
We walk in silence. She enjoys the quietness of the road while I keep my attention spanned across the deserted place for danger.
Coming across a dimly lit diner, she pulls me inside, and we are greeted by a young woman who guides us towards the table in the center of the floor. I requested that we be put into a corner. I can survey the entire floorplan with no chance of ambush.
We get seated with menus and a cup of ice-water to counter the blazing Arizona heat. Tabby swings her feet and accidentally nudge my longer legs. She smiles sheepishly as an apology and reads the food options with her head buried behind the black menu.
She asks what I want and gets up from her seat to order our food when the waitress is busy bringing food to the other customers in the diner.
It’s a small diner, and there are two other people here. They all look like locals and none of them pose a threat to me or Tabby. I watch her like a hawk when she goes up to the register to order the food, and the other waitress hands her a landline that she calls someone from.
I assume it is a family-owned diner given that the waitress and the cashier woman resemble each other. As she makes the call, I try to read her lips to know what she is saying, but I can’t when her back turns away from me.
It’s not a long conversation, but it’s not so short that no one picked up the phone on the other side. She had been able to talk with someone by the time she trudges back to me with little skips in her steps.
“I’m really hungry,” she comments with a moan, rubbing her stomach as it growls.
“You had dinner,” I mention lightly with an eyebrow raised.
“That was a long time ago,” she scoffs with a smile.
I change the subject quickly, “Who did you call?”
She sips her water, “I called for a car. I’m not walking in the dark.”
She has a point; it wouldn’t serve us well to blindly walk down an open road where there are too many variables to be accounted for. With luck, maybe we will get through half the road when the sun rises.
I’m not one for luck. I control my own environment, and I crave that control so much that I must dictate everything that happens regarding my own safety.
“Maybe they’ll send a helicopter here,” she muses with a giggle.
“They won’t,” I flick my eyes towards the window to her side that is aimed at an angle. The moon shines directly in, but the fluorescent yellow lights wash out the whiteness.
“Why not?” Tabby tilts her head sweetly, eyes clouded in confusion as her pout presents in a grouchy expression.
“It creates too much of a sand swirl here, and the terrain isn’t stable for a chopper to land.”
Her lips rounded, and she nods in understanding, “Well, road trip it is!”
Maybe she is too excited about the idea of driving in the dark, but I am not fond of it.
A sound of water swirling down comes to my right ear, and I turn my head. The bathroom is right there, and that means there is another customer here.
That makes three people in this isolated diner at an ungodly hour for dinner.
I wait for whoever comes around the corner, and it’s the familiar face of the space shuttle captain. He stands there with a shocked face and a paper towel balled up in his hand when he sees Tabby.
She is shocked, too, but her smile comes right back up to greet him.
The captain cocks an eyebrow, “Well, what a coincidence.”
Tabby chuckles, eyes twinkling with humor, “Are you stalking me, Captain?”
“How can I stalk you when I was here first,” he counters back with a faux scowl on his face.
He pockets the tissue, “I should be the one saying that; are you stalking me?”
“You know me,” Tabby remarks dryly.
“A night owl, I know. You are infamous for staying up way past bedtime on the shuttle.”
“I like the view outside when it’s dark,” Tabby runs her finger around the rim of her glass of water.
“It’s always dark out in space,” the deadpan tone supports the impassive expression on his face.
“That’s not the point,” Tabby says, “Anyway, why don’t you join us for a mid-night dinner?”
“A third-wheel to your date?” he teases.
Tabby runs her shoes up the side of my calf. She gets my attention, and when she looks over to me, a glint flashes in her amber eyes.
The molten gold is vibrant: predatory and animalistic. I have never seen her like this, and my cock surges with blood; it becomes thick and pulsing as I hold back the desire to take a handful of her hair and yield her into submission.
I want to tame that fearless animal in her.
“Stay, we have so much to catch up on.”
She says that, but she doesn’t mean it. Tabby has something else planned, and she is baiting this clueless man into a plan of spider silk. She will weave him into her prey and leave him to fend for his life.
Tabby Sterling is special, and mine.
Chapter Nine
Tabby
“Wow, you should try this burger,” I chew the juicy burger with a burst of flavor running down my throat.
I haven’t gotten a chance to enjoy much “fast-food” because I have been under the supervision of a nutritionist to make sure I am properly up to the standards and she would force me to have a plate of a healthy meal.
It takes my body a couple of weeks to get used to the strong flavors of the food when I have been depending on the bland dehydrated food in space. I thought I was going to die of dehydration the moment I bit into a chicken tender and even water had different taste in it.
There is sparkling water, filtered water, spring water, and ten other kinds of water. I believe two or three had been advertised as mineral water, and I don’t think I have heard anything more ridiculous until the news reports about people getting angry over Christmas cups.
Their arguments are that the cups are not neutral, and they want it to not represent one religion or idea, so it is universally generic without offending sensitive people.
Every little thing triggers a population of “sensitive” people as the news has reported, and everything must be approved by Public Relations.
This world is turning into a nightmare because politics are getting into places that it has no business with, and people are getting offended left and right.
“Fo
rgive me for say thing this, but don’t you have more important things to do?” my captain says as he drinks his coffee.
Adrian hasn’t touched his glass of water, nor did he pick up any of his food. I find that my hand would reach over and steal a fry that looks extra crispy since I prefer them that way; soggy fries aren’t my favorite, but I’ll eat them either way.
Food is food.
“What do you mean?” I ask back, sipping on the cold water to wash away the salt that sticks to my tongue.
“The meteor,” he says ominously, “We’re going to die if a solution isn’t found.”
When he whispers, it’s low, and he pulls himself closer to the table to make sure that the people in the diner don’t hear him.
I calmly bite into to the burger again, getting to the halfway point is easy when I’m hungry. It’s a cycle of eating and drinking water. My tummy is filling up hurriedly, and I still want more of the salty burger with melted cheese on it.
I had to take out the tomato. The taste ruins my burger, and I don’t like the sogginess that seeps into my meat.
“I know,” I say, humming softly to the flavor.
It’s smoked with a hint of cayenne pepper. I never thought it would work in tandem, but it’s new, and I like it.
“And yet, you are here eating a burger in the middle of the desert,” his eyes peer through my eyes when I look at him.
“You’re not panicking, Captain. Why should I?”
He opens his mouth, but no words come out, so he closes it. His brows creased as he thinks of something, and after several seconds of silence flies by, he keeps his voice in his throat with a cough.
“When I stepped into Hercules, you made everyone memorize one rule, and that is to never panic.”
He sniffs, “Yes, but this situation is an emergency, and you need to solve it.”
“I need to solve it?” I ask, appalled with a gasp. “There are other capable scientists out there who can solve it.”
“But they aren’t you,” he picks up his bottle of beer.
