Blue Maneuver (19 page)

With talks like that, he could lead a pep rally. I looped my finger through his belt and nodded. “Let’s go.”

Sighing, he strode silently forward.

I managed to hit every pebble and send a few clattering across the tarmac. I caught my lips between my teeth.

Tobias didn’t say a word.

There was a benefit to the strong silent type after all.

Halfway to the plane, he broke into a run.

I sprinted after my finger still stuck in his waistband. Geez, a little warning would have been nice. Five steps into our race, I sucked air in through my mouth but hey, I kept up. Although I didn’t know how much longer I could.

He stopped short of the pilot’s side of the plane, and I halted just short of his back.

“Whatever happens, don’t scream.” He reached for the door handle.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? I held my breath.

Tobias twisted the door handle. As soon as the lock cleared the plate, the door banged against the plane and a body rolled out of the seat to land with a splat on the asphalt.

When the man’s body hit the tarmac, his swollen belly split open. Black muck splattered his green uniform shirt, oozed out between the buttons and filled the air with the heavy scent of fecal matter. I yelped and stepped back but I didn’t scream. I’d seen dead people before but this…

This man’s remains seemed more like a prop for a horror movie than real.

His fingers had swollen to oversized mittens and the skin that I could see hung limply on his bones like overstretched pantyhose.

“Konstantin obviously has another Scrambler.” Tobias turned the body over.

The corpse’s eyelids sunk into empty sockets, the tip of the nose folded against the upper lip and the jaw dropped open. The tongue and palate melted into the ebony goo that now trickled out his ears.

“A Scrambler did this?” I swallowed hard, holding back the bile that threatened to flood my mouth. Victor hadn’t been kidding when he said it was a horrible way to die.

“Yes.” Tobias removed his MP4 player from his back pocket, turned it on and held it against the man’s neck. “Fortunately, the skin is left intact so we can make DNA identification.”

Fortunately for those who investigated the crime maybe, but definitely not for the victim. I sidled out of the way of the liquefied remains trickling toward me and clasped my hands behind my back. Even though I knew there was nothing I could do for the man, I wanted to help. Do something.

Like catch his killer.

I might be able to do that, provided he was still on the planet. But really, why would Victor stick around? He’d done what he came to Earth to do.

Tobias’s MP4 player chimed a jaunty tune. “This isn’t Torunn.”

Torunn, right—the alien couple who were supposed to be my first job. And last, if I failed. Can’t fail much worse than a dead protectee. Hope filled my chest in a riot of wings as his announcement replayed. “It isn’t?”

Tobias angled the screen to see the words written under a picture. “This man used to be Levi Kim, UED Witness Security. He’s a ten year veteran with—.”

“Stop! Please.” I ran my hands down my face and made sure everything stuck out like it was supposed to. “The name is enough.”

Enough to remember always. Levi Kim’s blood was on my hands. He was my failure.

And my death warrant.

Tobias nodded and tucked the MP4 player in his back pocket.

He would probably kill me now.

I shook the pity from my thoughts. I wasn’t dead yet. I glanced through the open plane door. Another man sat in the passenger seat. Careful to avoid the seeping black entrails, I crept closer to the nose of the plane. Despite rising on my toes, I couldn’t get a clear view of the back seat. “Can you see Mrs. Torunn?”

Tobias stood up, stepped over Levi’s body and leaned into the plane. “She’s not here.”

I exhaled in relief.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Maybe if I could find Mrs. Torunn, he’d let me live.

“Without the WitSec file, we have no idea if she was even on the flight.” Tobias bent over, grabbed Levi’s lapels and hauled him up. Black goo slurped and bubbled over the corpse’s boots. With a grunt, Tobias braced the body against the side of the plane before levering it into the seat and folding the bones inside.

I quickly shut the plane’s door and leaned against it for good measure.

“Torunn might have escaped alone. SpecForces sent me here to debrief him, not her. He was the one that wanted asylum and he was bringing some very important information to trade for the good life here on Earth. Maybe he also wanted to ditch his wife in the process.”

Gathering the frayed edges of my courage, I followed Tobias around to the other side of the plane. Right. We still had to positively identify the other guy.

Then he’d kill me.

Tobias stopped by the plane’s passenger door and hooked his thumb on the handle. “Get me the pliers from the truck’s dash compartment.”

Pliers? Every muscle in my body tensed and my fingers curled into fists. Pliers could remove nails and do other unspeakable things.
Get a grip, Rae
. The pliers might not be pliers at all but something else—possibly more insidious and painful. I straightened. If I had to die, I would do so with grace and dignity. After all, I couldn’t run from his Rae-tracking device, if I made it to the RV Park more innocent people might die and there wasn’t any place to hide on the tarmac. “On one condition.”

Tobias cocked his head. In the dim light, his brow furrowed.

“I want you to kill me quickly and painlessly.”

His hand fell to his side and brushed his jeans. “You want me to kill you.”

“Quick and painlessly.” I reiterated for good measure. Since I had to die, I should have some say in the matter. “I don’t want to suffer. I know I failed and—”

“I’m not going to kill you, Rae and we haven’t failed. Yet.”

“But you said…”

Tobias ran his fingers through his short blond hair. “You thought I was going to
rape
you.” His lips curled and he shook his head. “I’m an officer in Special Forces. I protect human life, not degrade it.”

Son of a monkey’s butt! I opened my mouth but no words came out. Irritation twitched out my fingers. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “You threatened to kill me because I hurt your pride?”

If true, he was worse than a douche bag.

“Not pride, my reputation as a Spec Force Colonel. Even the whisper of rape would land me in the brig.” He crossed his arms. His green eyes glittered in the low light. “And control did want me to kill you. It’s less paperwork than bringing you on board the mission.”

Control, not Tobias, wanted me dead? That was good news of a sort. Still, my life could be negated because of an administrative snafu? What kind of world did Tobias come from? “God forbid someone gets a paper cut filing my W-4s.”

“Exactly. Those things hurt like hell! I’ll be glad when your world eliminates paper altogether.” Tobias winked at me and turned his attention back to the door. “Now that we’ve established I’m not going to rape or kill you, do you think you could get me the pliers?”

“One pair of pliers coming right up.” Anything to avoid watching another body slide out of the plane and splat on the ground. I practically skipped to the truck and eased open the door. He wasn’t going to kill me. I was going to live. Yay me!

My elbow sank into the seat cushion as I leaned inside. Where had he said the pliers would be? Right, the dash compartment. I glanced at the dashboard. The fancy scanners in the center console were now all dark. I pushed on one. It didn’t budge. Aw snap. Maybe they only opened if Tobias touched them. So why would he have sent me? My attention drifted toward the open door. Then again, I could be seriously over-thinking things. I twisted the knob on the glove box. The door popped open; tools gleamed in the low light.

“Dash compartment. Glove box. Same thing.” Reaching inside, I grabbed a handful of cold metal and pulled it out. I sorted the screwdrivers and pressure gauge from the pliers and returned the extra tools. After opening the pliers once for good measure, I shut the compartment then truck door and skipped back to the plane.

Tobias knelt by the body, holding his MP4 player against its neck. “This is definitely Torunn.”

He must have been a big man. Folds of his skin draped his skeleton and extended onto the black top. His nose, eyes and even ears had collapsed while he faced the dark sky.

I breathed though my mouth to mitigate the smell. Not bad but I swore I could taste the decay. I scraped my tongue against my front teeth and tightened my grip on the pliers. “I can’t believe the bad guys won.”

“This is a set back not defeat.” Tobias rolled the body on its side and patted down the corpse’s back. “Torunn may be dead, but that’s only half the mission. We can still expose those responsible for leaking secrets from WitSec, provided we can find the information he was bringing.”

I shuffled closer to the plane and peeked inside. “What does it look like?”

“Nothing obvious, like a data crystal, or the killer would have taken it.” Tobias held his hand over his shoulder and glanced up at me.

Right. The pliers. I placed them against his palm.

He opened and closed them, clacking the tips together.

God, I hoped he wasn’t planning on pulling out bones or teeth. “What are you going to do?”

“Find the information. This will locate any latent energy signal.” He touched the tip of the pliers to the ear phone jack of his MP4 player and blue light arced between the handles. Balancing his MP4 player on his knee, he wanded the corpse’s head.

Cool beans. I tossed my weight from foot to foot. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

I wrinkled my nose as more goop squelched out of the corpse’s shirt. Anything but touch the body that is.

“Use your datapad and interface with the ship’s memory core.” Tobias wanded down the man’s torso, moving slowly while the blue light between the pliers’ handles continued to crackle. “Download everything—flight path, passenger list, and transmissions. Although I doubt we’ll get the actual killer, we might get something useful.”

“I can do that.” Pulling my Smartphone from my short’s pocket, I stared at the cockpit. Black stained the passenger seat and floorboards. I carefully stepped over the body and walked closer. Ugh. I covered my nose and mouth so quickly, my cheeks and fingertips tingled.

What had the man eaten that could smell that bad?

A recycle bin icon materialized on the Smartphone’s screen, starting a new row. Oh yuck. Please tell me that isn’t an analysis of his stomach contents. Okay, I didn’t really expect the cell to answer but still…

“How is it going?” Tobias looked up from where he crouched by the legs.

“Fine. Just fine.” Can you remove the recycle bin if it contains the answer to my question about the smell? As I watched the icon faded away. Excellent. Now I just needed to teach the thing what rhetorical question meant but first things first. I inched closer and aimed the cell at the instrument panel.

“Give me all activity recorded in the space shuttle since it left the mothership.” The hair on my arms stood on end and a pins and needles sensation radiated from my fingers.

“Mothership?” Tobias snorted and scooted up the body toward the head.

“Well what do you call it then?” A cartoon figure of calendar materialized on the screen.

“Transport.”

I managed not to roll my eyes. Douche. Like transport was ever so different than mothership. I tapped the latest icon on my Smartphone and waited for the files to appear. “I think I’ve got it.”

“Same here.” The light between the handles of the pliers changed from blue to yellow. Tobias pushed the sleeves up what remained of the man’s arm. A serpent tattoo wobbled on the extraneous flesh. “I’ve only heard of these things, I’ve never actually seen one before.

“You’re not very observant.” I backed away from the plane and moved to his side. “I think everyone in my complex has a tattoo.”

“I know where yours is.” He turned toward me and smiled. His gaze traveled up my legs to settle just above my left hip. “Why did you choose sink or swim and a seagull?”

I smoothed the hem of my shirt. The tat was covered so how the heck had he known about it? “Don’t you think we should focus on the topic at hand?”

“Torunn doesn’t have a tattoo made from ink.” Tobias tapped the tips of the pliers on the asphalt and the arc between the handles disappeared. “His is made from light.”

With loops and swirls, it looked like a tattoo of an ancient Gaelic symbol to me. “I don’t understand.”

“Visible light is shot through a Gruseation tube and stopped. Data is coded on the sine wave; the light is returned to normal speed, and then etched onto the surface of the user’s choosing.” Tobias ran his index finger over the tattoo. “Most just make a dot, a freckle or a mole on their skin, clothing or pet and take it to the next place to have the light stopped again and the data removed.”

“He must have a lot of information for his tattoo to be that big.” At least, I thought the silver-dollar sized tat was big. Maybe it had just stretched out from the bloating and deflating action caused by the Scrambler. I eyed the three files open on my cell phone—contacts, addresses, and daily planner. Maybe I hadn’t gotten the information I’d requested after all.

“It’s not the size but the color.” Tobias flipped open his cell phone and held it over the tattoo. “The data bends the wavelength—the more data on the sine wave, the more the light gets bent.”

I nodded as if I understood what he was talking about. This steward job better not have a pop quizzes, at least none that weren’t open book. I’d need all the help I could get to remember the mumbo-jumbo he kept spewing. I touched the contact icon. “So blue means what exactly?”

“Lots of information—Terabytes by terabytes of it.”

At least, I knew a terabyte was bigger than a gigabyte. Nodding, I stared at the blank screen on my phone. Either my CeeBees weren’t all they were cracked up to be or the file was empty. I backed out of the screen. “And you have one of these Crustacean tubes disguised as a screwdriver in the glove box, right?”