Alien-Under-Cover (20 page)

More aliens joined them and Julia absently rubbed her head and watched as they dished out a revolting slop. Zurian turned her head away from them. She glared at him.

“Is your head aching, Julia?” Natalie asked. “You’ve been rubbing it ever since you arrived. I have some tablets if you need them.”

“That’s okay, I’m all right.” Her head did ache, but she needed to be alert for whatever was coming next.

“I’ll give you some to take with you in case it gets worse.”

They had bigger problems than her headache. “Enough about me. We have to do something to help Sarah before it’s too late. And I think maybe Margaret--”

“They’ve got Margaret, too?” Natalie asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

“How could the reverend do things like that and call himself a man of God?”

“She’d been acting suspicious and I saw her a few times with the reverend. If he’s in league with the Raiders, and she’s giving him information--”

“Nothing good will come of that,” Natalie said. “She will find herself in a terrible position if she’s turned joiner.”

Julia shuddered. “She must realize that sooner or later, when she’s not useful anymore, they’ll turn on her.”

“Joiner?” Zurian asked.

Julia nearly jumped out of her skin. He’d been so quiet and she’d been so braced for action from him that him asking a question was anticlimactic.

“It’s what we call people who sell their own people to the Raiders,” Julia said.

“What if Margaret was taken too?” Natalie asked.

Julia turned to Zurian. “Please, can we send someone to check on her? I should’ve thought of it before.”

What kind of friend was she that she just assumed Margaret was a joiner?

Zurian grunted in his own language and then turned to her. “It is done. One of the warriors is going to her dwelling.”

Interesting that he did not ask where Margaret lived.

“Your uncle is still trying to call you,” Zurian said.

She would’ve just preferred to keep on ignoring him. “I suppose you’re going to force me to talk to him.”

“You will be safe.”

A bleeping sound came from all around her and she jumped.

“It is your uncle calling.”

“How’s he calling? I didn’t bring my TC.”

“We are routing it through our equipment,” Zurian said. “Our equipment is not that noisy.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Monitoring me now, are you?”

He stood next to her with his big silver boots planted wide apart and his arms crossed over his chest. “Yes. Remember, you do not tell him anything,” he said. “Audio only.”

“Uncle Jacob,” she said, not sure which direction to talk into.

“Hallo, Julia, you’ve been a naughty girl.” He sounded as if he was right in front of her but she saw no gadget.

She balled her hands and kept stubbornly quiet. She was not a child and she wouldn’t justify any of her actions to him.

“What happened to my enforcer?”

She’d thought he would threaten her, order her to come back. But she should’ve expected this question. “Your enforcer? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come now, surely you haven’t forgotten about John. After all you almost married him.”

She ignored the growl coming from Zurian’s corner. His eyes didn’t even turn red for her so why should he growl over another man who had wanted to marry her? It might take her a while to figure out how to get off this mountain, but she’d do it. No one locked her up in a house and treated her like their own little sex slave.

“I never had any plans to marry that creep. You know he was one of the reasons I had to run away.” She prayed he didn’t know the real reason.

“He was a good enforcer and I want to know what happened to him.”

“Was?”

Something cold and hard settled in her stomach. With everything that had happened, she hadn’t had time to wonder how Zurian knew to use John’s identity.

Uncle Jacob hesitated a moment and she suspected he weighed the merits of telling her what he knew. “We found his body. I want to know who killed my best enforcer.”

Zurian cut the connection. She turned to stare at him. He was a warrior, she got that. Killing in battle while you defended your people or yourself she could understand. Cold bloodedly killing a man for his identity. That she couldn’t accept.

“You killed John?”

“Yes.”

Julia staggered away from him and slapped his hand away when he tried to steady her. Something was wrong with her legs. They wouldn’t keep her steady.

A chilling silence settled over everyone in the cave. Zacar led Natalie away and the other aliens got very busy in another part of the cave all of a sudden.

When Zurian took her arm and led her out of the cave, she didn’t protest. She felt numb. Images of a man bloody and beaten, tied to a chair, kept flashing in front of her and she flinched as if someone had shone a bright light into her eyes. She remembered seeing that beaten and bloody man, the man with a vision for their country. She also remembered knowing, just knowing, that she had to get out. Get away from the ugliness and violence or her soul would be devoured.

They entered the house and he led her to the couch. Seated her with gentle care that made her stomach turn.

“You killed him for his identity?”

“Yes.”

His answer forced her to face it head on. Everything she’d run from, the principles she’d been determined to live by, meant nothing now. “How did you do it?”

“You do not need to know.”

Her laughter was shrilly hysterical. “Of course not.”

“You will be calm and I will forgive you for escaping.”

“Perfect. I’m held prisoner by a creep and on top of that I’m sleeping with him.” A cold blooded murderer whose eyes wouldn’t turn red for her.

“You are not held prisoner.”

“What would you call it? I’m not free to come and go.”

Her head ached. It was spreading down to her neck and into her body. She couldn’t do this now. Too much happened today that she needed to process.

“You are my breeder. A highly valued positon to be in.”

She opened her mouth to say, who knows what else, when her TC bleeped again. She jumped.

“It is another that called. You will answer,” Zurian said.

“Why not? With my luck today it’s probably Satan himself.”

A few moments later a tinny voice came over the TC.

“Who is this?” Julia asked and touched her aching head. She couldn’t cope with much more.

“I believe you would call me an agent. I have found the camp your Sarah is located in. I do not have the resources to rescue her.” The voice was tinny and obviously a disguise. Almost as if he read his words from a prepared script.

“I’ll get help and get her out. Give me the coordinates,” Julia said and leaned toward the sound of the tinny voice. If only she could recognize it.

“You could get it done?”

She heard anxiety through the voice synthesizer. “Who are you?” How did he know to contact her? “How did you know I’m looking for Sarah?”

“All you need to know is that she is at these co-ordinates. They plan to move her soon.”

The connection broke with a soft click.

Julia clasped her arms around her middle and stared up at Zurian. “Did you put up a notice for everyone to find me here?”

“No.”

Julia sighed. His inability to grasp sarcasm wasn’t endearing anymore. “Please, we have to go get her.”

“I will bring your Sarah to you,” Zurian said. “I go now.” He came forward, pulled her up, and tugged her into his arms, leaned his forehead against hers. Julia endured it. For Sarah she would endure anything--until she was safe.

She stood still with her hands hanging at her sides. Didn’t move when his hand caressed her back. When he kissed her.

“I am locking the door with a stronger encryption.”

“Are you sure it will keep me in?” she taunted.

“Yes.”

He turned and walked out, the door sliding close behind him.

Julia sank down on the couch and drew her knees up. She rested her cheek on her knees and sat staring at the wall. It blurred until she could barely see the silver color through her tears. Sobs racked her body. She’d trusted him. Believed under that stern exterior he had a caring heart.

How could he protect her, step in front of bullets for her? Make love to her for hours? How could the same man turn around and keep her prisoner? No not the same man--an alien. One incapable of human emotions. And she could never forget that.

Killing in battle she could accept. Killing the reverend was wrong, but after seeing what he did to the children in his basement, she was not shedding any tears for him. And if that made her a hypocrite, she didn’t care. But killing a man simply to take his identity? That she couldn’t live with.

Chapter 15

The agent stood in front of the grimy window in the small room serving as both living space and bedroom. She supposed she should clean it but what would be the point? The depressing little room she existed in for the last few weeks was built in the darkest shadows of the town. Soon she’d be gone from this hovel he forced her into.

No Name Town? The agent sneered. What a quant no name for this dirty stain on the Montana countryside. She’d known the day her father took the job as sheriff to this place, it would change her life and not for the better. She’d been devastated when they left New York and she had to say goodbye to her friends to come and stay in a small town with less than twenty thousand inhabitants. She still remembered that feeling of doom, the closer they got to this place. She’d been fourteen then, so very young. A part of her had known it would be the first of many goodbyes.

Those days, being sheriff meant something at least and they’d lived in a nice house. And she was one of the few kids in high school with a car. She’d been terrified when she learned on her eighteenth birthday that her father gave her over to his government friend Parnell to be trained. At first, it had been exciting and new going back to a big city. She’d been shocked to see how much the city had deteriorated in the five years she’d been gone. Or maybe when she lived there, before she’d gotten used to it and didn’t notice the decay. She soon realized Parnell was a monster. The worst kind, a monster with a cause. She glanced at the jewelry piled on the dusty dresser. It gleamed accusation at her. It was her bloody ticket to freedom. If she lived through the procedure, those jewels might free her from a lifetime of enslavement to Parnell.

She smiled, a cold smile, at odds with the face she now wore. At least she managed to thwart his plans for Julia. She might never be free of him but she’d make sure Julia would stay out of his clutches.

She turned so that she didn’t have to see the jewels. In the previous century, what some people had come to call the century of progress, a machine had been developed by the secret service. A machine that allowed their agents to undergo a procedure that changed not only their appearance but caused them to become the personality they needed for their undercover work. It worked fine, except it could not be used more than twice on the same person. Even twice was tricky.

Somehow Parnell had gotten his hands on the machine and she’d gone through the procedure twice. A third time would more than likely kill her or drive her insane. Parnell knew this and still he’d ordered her to undergo a third procedure. If she went through with it--and she didn’t have any choice--she’d end up either crazy or dead. So she’d stolen the jewels and made a deal with the man who operated the machine. As far as agent Parnell was concerned, she would die during the procedure. If she was one of the handful of lucky ones who survived a third procedure, she would walk out of there with a different face. Free for the first time in her life. The jewels would ensure that the technician operating the machine would give her an identity Parnell did not know about. A chance to escape his sadistic rule.

Only after she’d stolen the jewels, had made the deal, and paid half up front, had she found out that Sarah’s bitch of a mother had accused her of stealing the jewels and sold Sarah to the reverend. By the time, the agent found out the trail had gone cold. Her only hope was that Julia could find Sarah. If it would save Sarah, she’d give back the jewels right now and stay in bondage to that monster. But it would not free Sarah from whatever hell she lived in.

Gentle Sarah, out there in the hands of those animals. Because of her. If only she’d known what would happen when she stole the jewels.

She’d planned to kill the reverend before she left for either her death or eternal freedom. One last gift to her friends. Someone had beaten her to it and done the world a service. Now she only had one other monster to deal with before she kept that appointment.

Five years ago, as her first assignment, she was supposed to try to cultivate a relationship with one of the Benzonis. At first, she’d targeted the young daughter of their most vicious enforcer. She’d soon realized that Julia had a moral compass quite different from the rest of her family. She’d also known it would only be a question of time before it got Julia killed.

Julia’s desperation to escape had echoed her own need. For the first time ever, she had disobeyed orders. She’d helped Julia get away, convinced Parnell would find out and have her killed. When a year passed and nothing happened, she’d realized how she’d blown him out of proportion in her mind. He was not omnipotent, did not follow her every move. She had hope that she could escape the life she’d had to live.

She’d kept track of Julia and helped her where she could, leaving a trail for Parnell to follow to the other side of the country when Julia eventually settled in this town.

She’d thought it ironic that Julia would flee to the same town the agent had been so desperate to escape. Then Parnell had stationed her here to observe the reverend and she’d worried he’d played her. That he knew Julia was here. She’d waited for months for the order to kill Julia. Not knowing if she could do it. And not knowing if she was brave enough to refuse the order. Julia was convinced the agent that had assisted her had forgotten her. It was best that she kept that belief.