Your Planet or Mine? (24 page)

Amusement played around Jared’s mouth. “That kind of diplomacy work much for you in office, Grandpa?”

The old man simply growled and wheeled out of the room.

T
HE REST OF THE AFTERNOON
was excruciating, spent waiting for General Mahoney to call back with his impression of the photos from Cavin’s crashed ship. Jana had informed her staff she’d be working from the ranch. If she was going to work from home, this was the day to do it. It was the Friday before Easter recess. By afternoon, most capitol staffers would have left to spend time with family. In the past she’d always put in a full day. But that was before she had a world to help save.

Tapping an ebony Montblanc pen against her lips, Jana paced in front of Cavin in her father’s office at the ranch. “Why isn’t Mahoney calling back? He has to have seen the photos by now.”

“It’s good news, I think. If he has any real experience with Coalition vessels, he’ll immediately see the authenticity of my ship. He’s contemplating what to do now, what steps to take next.”

As in what cage in the secret lab will best accommodate Cavin
. Jana bit the pen so hard she almost cracked a tooth. “And if he doesn’t call back, or he refuses to help, which we have to admit is a very likely possibility, we need a Plan B.”

Cavin grabbed her hand and pulled her close. She stood between his legs, her hands on his broad shoulders as she looked down at his handsome, upturned face. Despite everything going on, her body reacted to him. It remembered last night. Hell, it would remember last night for the rest of her life. “Plan B is your father’s phone call with the president,” he said.

“That’s if he gets his phone call. It’s Easter recess. The president’s vacationing at home in Fort Myers with her family.” Jana thought of the conversation she’d just completed with her father. He’d sounded so hopeful, so determined. She’d never loved him more than in that moment. In order to get anywhere near the president’s ear over vacation, he had to be making a huge stink, and a huge stink was the last thing her father needed in the wake of the insinuations about his campaign financing. “And if the president refuses to help or delays unnecessarily, we need a Plan C.”

“That’s simple. I go there myself. I locate the ship using my gauntlet, and activate it.”

No, you won’t
, she wanted to say,
you won’t sacrifice yourself for this,
but her brain wouldn’t disengage from its horror long enough to form the words. She gave her head a hard shake. “Uh-uh.” His lids fell halfway over his eyes, and he set his jaw in a stubborn angle she saw rarely but that she was sure those who’d served with Prime-major Far Star over the years had glimpsed often.

The phone rang and cut off their impending argument. She saw her high hopes echoed in Cavin’s eyes. But it wasn’t the secure line. It was Nona from work. Hopes dashed, Jana fell into the desk chair and answered.

“Stop moping,” Nona said. “It’s good news.”

“Good news? There’s actually good news for once?”

“Yes. Willa sent a memo. The governor granted your request for a private meeting.”

Jana made a fist and kissed it. Then she closed her eyes as relief flooded her. Maybe her luck and Cavin’s was finally beginning to turn. The governor wasn’t the key to the operation, but having him throw his support behind them would help their credibility tremendously. “I was sure he was going to put me off until after the break.”

“He just about did. He doesn’t want you until ten tonight.”

“Whoa. Late.” What was Schwarzkopf doing hanging around that long, and before a holiday? Getting last-minute business done, she guessed, like the rest of them. But this was one time she was glad to be included in the governor’s last-minute agenda.

She hung up. Her hands shook. Her pulse had turned to a roar in her ears. She swiveled her chair to face Cavin. “You said you needed a leader?” she said. “One California State Governor, coming up.”

R
EEF RODE A SERVICE
elevator up to the dwelling that Jana Jasper listed as her primary residence. He disarmed the lock by using first his see-through vision and then his gauntlet to manipulate the lock components. It was routine procedure he’d done countless times, but when he slipped inside and shut the door behind him, the nearly constant whine in his ears surged to a screech. He felt the wall hitting his back, wondered stupidly how it could be. When he opened his eyes, he realized it wasn’t the wall that had hit his back, but his back hitting the floor when he blacked out.

He climbed to his knees, stayed there until he stabilized physically. His head hung low. Shame filtered through him, at himself, his vulnerability, and out of the fear that someone had seen his display of weakness. The latter was even more repulsive to him than the former and drove him to his feet.

What was happening to him? A simple act of opening a lock had knocked him out cold. Had he been engaged in battle, he would have been defeated. No one had ever defeated him.

What was happening to his systems? If the malfunctions were due to the crash, he would have been healed by now, or nearly so. Instead, he was getting worse. He’d sorted through the possibilities for his breakdowns. Two topped the list.
Injuries caused by the crash: probability 88.2%. External initiation: 67.6%.
External initiation? Impossible. It meant someone outside his body was manipulating his systems. It could not be.
But did you not do the same to Far Star?
What if someone, perhaps even Far Star, was attempting to disable his systems?

But the Prime-major didn’t know Reef’s exact identity, only what he was—a REEF-O1A assassin—not who he was.
Those who hired you know who you are
. Reef’s pulse accelerated. His head began to ache with a rise in blood pressure. Reef controlled his human body’s physiological reaction and probed deeper, but slammed up against a brick wall when he tried to find out more information.

Focus on your task, assassin.

Weapons drawn, he turned in a slow circle. The noise in his ears had subsided some, making it easier to hear. The woman’s dwelling was cold, still. He tasted the air, listened, observed, using both his faltering robotic senses and the human ones upon which he’d grown increasingly more dependent over the past few days. One thing was certain: no one had been in this place for some time.

After finding no hints of Far Star’s presence, he departed. But he’d locate Jana Jasper. Yes, he would. Now he knew where she worked, where he was certain he’d find a wealth of information on her habits and schedule. And where she was, Far Star would be, or close enough. Then he’d be able to complete this frustrating mission and be on his way off this wretched rock.

“M
Y BRAIN IS KILLING ME
,” Jana groaned to Cavin as they stopped at a traffic light one block from the legislators-only parking garage at the capitol. Her hands were damp as she gripped the steering wheel. Her head throbbed from all the facts and figures she’d crammed in after hours of meeting with Cavin and her family, including her father on the secure house line to and from Washington, in preparation for her meeting with the governor. “I think I’ve memorized enough Winston Churchill quotes to write a book.”

“Simply tell him what you told your family yesterday after dinner and you’ll have no problem convincing the governor to support us in this.”

And that’s all they needed, really, a leader’s support, a vote of confidence that came from outside the immediate family. If they got one high-profile leader to sign on, others would follow. A multipronged assault was how Cavin had put it; it’s what they needed to convince the government to allow him access to the long-ago-crashed scout ship.

As they waited in anxious silence for the traffic light to change, Cavin kept a protective hand on the attaché case sitting between them. Inside were photos of the spaceship and Cavin’s gauntlet, but not of Cavin himself. There was also a legal pad filled with the results of an afternoon and evening brainstorming alternate plans to get access to Dreamland in case Mahoney fell through, none of which Jana liked, because all of them involved an uncomfortable level of public exposure for Cavin.

“I’m too impatient for this tonight.” He aimed his gauntlet at the lazy traffic light. It changed from red to green.

She rolled through the intersection. “You liked doing that, didn’t you?”

His smile was quietly smug. Then he rubbed the side of his head when he thought she wasn’t watching.

She touched his arm. “Hurting again?”

“I’ll recharge momentarily.”

Jana bit her lip. It was getting to the point where he couldn’t use his alien superpowers at all without making himself sick.

At the garage security booth, Jana showed her ID to the two CHP officers on duty. Cavin played his little card trick with Jared’s driver’s license that he’d borrowed for the night, substituting his image for Jared’s. It passed a cursory check from one guard while the other man checked the undercarriage of the car for bombs using a mirror on a long handle. “Mr. Jasper won’t be allowed upstairs, Senator,” one of the officers told her, referring to Cavin.

“I know. After hours, I don’t like coming in alone, so he’s going to wait for me. I have to run upstairs to the governor’s office for a few minutes.”

“I thought the gov went home already.”

“He may have, but he’s here now. We have a meeting.”

She and Cavin stood outside the car while the interior was inspected. When they got the okay, they parked. “Explain the layout of this place,” Cavin said, scanning the area with his soldier’s eyes.

“We’re in the basement of the building you saw the other day in the park. There are three elevator banks, and they go to all floors. The one over there on the south side is for senators only. There’s another on the north side for the assembly members. But everyone usually uses these central elevators because of convenience. The governor’s office is on the first floor. That’s where I’ll be after I grab some paperwork from my office on the third floor.”

Cavin nodded. His miss-nothing gaze took in the dozens of security cameras keeping watch. There were more upstairs in the hallways. She sat next to him in the car and clutched her attaché case. “This is it, baby. Are you going to wish me luck?”

He pulled her close for a kiss. It was hotter than she’d expected, and she melted into a sizzling pile of limp bones in his arms. “Wow,” she murmured against his jaw when they finally separated. “If that doesn’t bring me luck, I don’t know what will.”

“Your grandfather says luck is when preparation and opportunity come together.”

“Yep. That’s a favorite of his.” She smiled, shaking her head as she gazed into Cavin’s open, earnest face. “He really likes you. You’re the first guy of all the ones I’ve dated he’s more than tolerated. I should have brought home an alien a long time ago.”

“Only if it were me.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “This is the only alien for you.”

She smiled. “Damn right.”

“And I’m relieved to hear he likes me.” He skimmed a hand over her hair, not wanting to mess her carefully styled chignon. “Because when this is all over, when we are safe again, you’re going to be my mate, Squee.”

“On Earth the man usually asks the woman to marry him. Not tells her.”

His eyes turned a deeper shade of green. “Oh, I will ask. When the time and place suit.”

She hugged him close, breathing in his scent to take with her for good luck. Then she closed her eyes and planted a hard kiss on his lips before she stepped out of the warm, protective circle of his arms and then the car. “I won’t be long. Schwarzkopf’s either with us, or he’s not.” She gave Cavin one last lingering gaze then walked briskly through the doors to the building to catch an elevator.

Only one elevator was working. The others sported “out of service” signs. The doors slid open and she walked inside. The sight of a bored-looking young man sitting on a desk chair brought her up short: Joseph’s elevator-operator trainee from yesterday, now all checked out apparently. Startled, she took a spot opposite him in the small car. She tried to get her heartbeat slowed back down. But the elevator operator unnerved her. His eyes were mean, and his black leather gloves made him look more like a thug than an elevator operator. A silly thought. The meeting with Schwarzkopf had made her too jumpy. “I didn’t know you guys worked this late.”

“They pay me, I work,” he said in a thick Russian accent.

A recent immigrant, she thought and greeted him in his language.
“Dobryy vecher. Kak Vy pozhivaete?”

He answered her friendly “Good evening. How are you?” with little more than a mumble. “Three, please,” she said with a mental shrug. He hit the three. The doors closed. Just as the elevator started its hideously slow ascent, he lunged at her.

His gloved hand slammed over her face, cutting off her scream. His fingers dug into her face. It hurt like hell. His palm pressed over her mouth and nose. Hard to breathe. Fear blotted out much of the pain.

She struggled, but he jerked her roughly against a wiry body as if she was a beanbag doll, floppy and compliant. “Time to die, bitch.”

She made a sound in her throat that sounded like a whimper. She wasn’t a fighter, a tough chick. She was a geeky little intellectual, cerebral, not physical.

Then think your way out of this one, Jana.

But she didn’t know what to do, how to save her life. Her mind was scattered, couldn’t focus. Too afraid.

He was suffocating her. Her vision was going gray. Blood rang in her ears.

“They told me to be fast, not to make noise. You will die quietly, yes, little czarina?”

Czarina?
Viktor had called her that at the restaurant. Her mind spun with the implications, whirled in a panic-accelerated kaleidoscope of crazy cousins, daffodil neckties and illegal caviar.

The man was getting something out of his pocket now. What? A gun? A knife? He was going to kill her.

What about Cavin? What about Earth?
It hit her, then, hit hard, the realization of all she had to lose.