“It all sounds great. I can’t wait to visit,” I said. I had an idea. “My sister, Isabelle Parker, is a veterinarian in California. I think this is the type of thing she’d love to do. Can we pose it to her?” The last time we’d talked, she seemed so down, and she had always been more of a space nut than me.
“Of course.” Clare beamed at me. “Anything for your family, Dean. Send me her number and we can contact her. Unless you want to make the invite?”
“Sure, how about I call her and ask? I’ve been meaning to talk to her.”
Clare smiled and walked ahead, talking to Natalia now, and I slowed, letting Mary catch up. “Oh, Dean, I wish you were coming with us,” Mary said in a light pouty voice, pushing her chest against my arms and giggling.
“That’s enough. I’m sure it has less to do with her wanting to sleep with me, than it does that I’m some sort of idol. God knows I deserve their attention less than any of you guys do, but if all the women in the world now want a piece of me, then I suppose I’ll just have to make myself be permanently unavailable.” I blurted the words without thinking what they meant, and when it clicked, I surprised myself by not regretting what I said. After Janine had passed three or so years ago, if you’d have asked me, I would never even have looked at another woman. Mary had changed all of that in the most unbelievable of scenarios.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Her joking tone was gone. “Or should I say, are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
We were twenty feet back from the rest of the group by then, and I stopped her, holding her hands in mine.
“Mary Lafontaine, would you do me the honor of being my wife?” I whispered beside her ear, my lips lightly touching it.
She nuzzled in, and now her lips were on my ear. “Yes. Yes, I will do you the honor,” she whispered back before biting my lobe.
“General Heart, you guys go ahead. We’ll be right there. We just… forgot something back at the room,” I called before we turned back, almost running to the hangar where a cart was waiting for us to borrow.
As the rest of the group went for a tour of the colony ship, all I could think about was how much I wanted to see my new fiancée’s pants on the floor of our little room.
ELEVEN
The next few days were spent with me going over training plans, Mary getting lessons on the new ships as well as the old, and Magnus and Natalia helping organize the colony supplies’ loading. It was a busy time for all of us.
It wasn’t until day five there that Heart came knocking on my door early in the morning. Mary was already out, and Carey sat at my feet as I ate a light breakfast, hoping I would give in and share with him.
Heart looked tired as I opened the door, seeing him outside his uniform. He shrugged when he saw me appraising him. “I’m supposed to be leaving today to see my family for the weekend. Before I go, I wanted to ask if you would visit the prisoners. They’ve asked after you, and frankly, we’re of two minds on them. If they are telling the truth, we’ll be doing something horrible. We don’t have a judiciary system set up for something like this. If they did kill those people, then we have to decide what to do.” He said the last sentence gravely.
Against my wishes, I said, “Sure. I’ll stop by this morning.”
Just like that, I found myself standing in the prisoner area an hour later, waiting to be let through a secured door. It was more than secure, it was like Fort Knox; steel doors two feet thick were the only way in, with thumb and retinal scans, as well as a passcode. They weren’t messing around. We had been given clearance for most things around the base, but not for this area.
As I waited, I pondered my engagement to Mary, knowing it was what my once-broken heart wanted, but wondering if that was the most opportune time for such an announcement. We’d decided to keep it secret for the time being, and it wasn’t easy since we were surrounded by our closest friends.
The door buzzed, and the guard on duty led me through. I saw myself on screens along the wall, being filmed as I walked.
“You guys take this seriously,” I said to the guard, who just grunted his assent. In a moment, we were at the end of the hall, past six or so empty cells.
“He’s all yours. Just holler if you need anything.” With that the guard was gone, back down the hall. Terrance and I were a few feet apart, separated by nothing but what appeared to be a thin wall of plastic. I knew better than that.
A folding chair was propped against the wall, on which I flipped down and set before the cell.
“Where is she?” Terrance asked. He looked sickly: pale and slick with a light sheen of sweat.
“Who?” I asked, before noticing Leslie wasn’t in any cell down the hall. “Leslie?”
He nodded. Sitting on the edge of his small cot in the tiny room, he looked half the size he had when we found them in Nashville.
They hadn’t filled me in on any of this. I imagined the two prisoners would have been kept apart so they could interrogate each alone.
“She’s fine.” I didn’t like making it up, but these people killed in cold blood, and I didn’t think a white lie was tipping the karmic scale in their case.
His head hung down below his shoulders. “Dean, we just want to leave Earth.”
“And where do you want to go?” I asked.
“There’s a place. Just get them to let us go, and there will be no further trouble.” It sounded like a veiled threat.
“What makes you think they’ll listen to me? I’m just an accountant.”
He made a noise like a snicker. “If you ask, they’ll consider it.”
These guys really gave me more pull than I had. I felt like an outsider at the base, but also knew that might change the longer I was there. Not that that was comforting.
“Why should I? We talked to Clayton in D.C. and he blamed you guys,” I said, voice rising slightly.
He looked up from his stoop, making eye contact with me. “The shooting in D.C. was our doing. We knew it would get your attention. There was no other way we could get you in front of us to talk.”
There had been a couple other shootings around the country in the past week, and Heart thought they might be connected to them. “Do you have anything to do with the other recent shootings?”
He shook his head. “No, we don’t. You know how people are. Once a rumor starts, it spreads like wildfire. You don’t think there are hundreds of people in the US that wouldn’t conspire to frame the hybrids for something like this? They hate us. They blame us for all their loved ones being dead, for them being ripped from their homes into the sky, and the torture they endured as they starved in space. Can you imagine their hatred? It’s venomous, and we just want to leave.”
He made a good point, but something was missing. “If you wanted to get our attention, why did you run when we showed up? Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
He shrank back. “We had our reasons, and they’ll be clear to you soon.”
I hated all the vague talk, and told him so, to which he just shrugged.
“If you want me to believe you, you better damned well give me something more than your word and a shrug,” I barked, standing up quickly. The chair flew back, clanging against the metal floor.
Terrance stood too, face right against the plastic wall between us. “Dean, they’re probably coming, and I don’t want to be here when they get here. Is that what you want to hear?” He was yelling, spittle hitting the barrier.
My pulse raced at his words. He was right. I could almost feel it in my hybrid blood. With each heartbeat, the Bhlat were closer to Earth, or closer to finding our location.