Chrystal Bones (Finding Home Book 1)

This book is dedicated to my wonderful mother,

Donna Mahaffey.

Without her support and encouragement I could not have written it. She spent hours listening to me talk about the world I created and read every word written and rewritten. I have woken her up in the middle of the night to get her opinion. She never once lost patience with me. Thank you mom. I love you.

I want to thank my cover artist Kerensa Wilhelm. She took my idea and made it a beautiful reality. She can be found on Facebook @Kerensa’s Kreation’s

A huge thanks to my very good friend, Yolanda Gamble for the hours of work she put into editing my master piece.

(She is not responsible for any mistakes found. I am.)

I also have to thank my husband for his patience. He too listened for many hours about fictional characters and kept the eye rolling to a minimum. He also put up with a dirty house and missed or late dinners because I forgot. And last but not least my mother-in-law and Facebook friends for their complete support. I love you ladies

Copyright @ September 2014 by Billie Jo Hanlin

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Kerensa Wilhelm @ Kerensa’a Kreations. The cover art is legally owned and all rights reserved by the author, Billie Jo Hanlin.

No part of this book my be shared or copied without the author’s permission.

This book is an original work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or places is entirely coincidental.

Chrystal Bones

Billie Jo Hanlin

Chrystal Bones Billie Jo Hanlin

Chapter 1

She stood on the edge of the cliff with the storm raging around her. Waves from the churning ocean slammed into the cliff walls spraying water into the air to mingle with the rain pouring on her upturned face. A fierce wind whipped at her hair and body but she stood tall and unbending. She raised her arms as if offering herself up to the storm gods. She soaked in the energy from the lightning flashing in the darkened sky.

It could have been hours or minutes that passed as she stood there. There was no sense of time, no sense of hurry, just pure joy and contentment in the moment.

Finally when the winds quieted and the rain turned to a gentle mist she lowered her arms and turned to walk away. If anyone had been watching they would have seen a faint icy blue glow emanating from her skin.

This time she stood in front of a wall of windows with a cup of hot coffee warming her hands. She sipped the coffee slowly as she stared out at the still churning ocean. Her name was Blue and she was restless, filled with a strange mixture of anticipation and dread. Something was coming and she knew it was coming soon. She also knew it would change everything about her life. She wasn’t sure she wanted or was ready for the changes. She was content at last living here on her isolated part of the Oregon Coast. She had the ocean and the cliffs and no close neighbors, so she was rarely bothered by visitors. She could walk the beach for miles and not come in contact with anyone but the animals who made their home here. That was the way she preferred it. She was not a people person. When you could feel the emotions of everyone around you and hear their thoughts with just a touch, you tended to know the worst about humanity.

Except for the little children, they were a delight for her. Their minds were so direct. If they were happy, sad or just plain mad you knew it. There was no subterfuge about them until they grew older and learned to lie.

Even though it was three in the morning she was not ready to go to sleep yet. She wasn’t ready to face the dream again. She had been having the same dream a couple times a month for as long as she could remember but for the last week she had been dreaming every time she closed her eyes.

For years it had always been the same. She was a little girl and she was flying through the stars. She was happy, that little girl, watching the stars fly past the clear bubble she curled up in. Then things would change. Flashes of light replaced the stars and loud crashing noises replaced the silence. The bubble started to shake and jerk around, throwing her small body violently against the walls before she felt hands pull her roughly from her bubble and hurry her down a long corridor. She was hugged tightly before being pushed gently into a small round room with a single window.

She watched as the door closed and she was left alone. She felt the room detach from the ship and watched as she fell away. In the dream she was so confused and scared. She was still watching the ship when it disappeared in a huge burst of light with a loud booming noise that hurt her ears. That was when she started screaming.

She always woke at that point with tears streaming down her face and a sense of despair so deep it physically hurt to breathe. Now the dream was changing, becoming more detailed. It had always been just her and faceless hands but now faces and voices raised in alarm had been added. Faces she cared for deeply.

There was one face that she knew she had loved with all of her little girl’s heart and that face was the one that hurt the most to remember. Because she knew that he had to be dead, killed in the explosion that had killed all of the other faces.

She heard the shuffling gait of her cat wandering into the room and reached out to scratch him behind his ears when he bumped his head into her stomach. “What’s the matter sweetie? Did the storm disturb you?” she asked him in a loving voice. Leo was a Bengal Tiger she had saved from a rich jerk who thought he was entitled to have whatever he wanted and he had wanted to collect expensive and rare treasures.

Leo was one of those treasures. Unfortunately the man was also a sadistic jerk who enjoyed torturing those who couldn’t fight back. Leo couldn’t fight back because he was kept drugged most of the time to keep him docile.

Blue was the private investigator along with her partner Riley, who had been hired by desperate parents to find their fifteen year old daughter. The girl had been missing for two weeks. She had disappeared during a big New Year’s Eve party held at the jerk’s penthouse in New York City.

There were no clues, nothing to point to where she could be or what had happened to her. She was seen on camera entering the penthouse but from there had just disappeared.

Blue and Riley specialized in finding missing children. They didn’t advertise and only a very select few in law enforcement even knew they existed. Fewer still knew how to contact them. It was one of those select few who had sent the parents to them.

In the process of finding the girl, Blue had also found the tiger. Both were being held in the basement of a private estate an hour outside of New York. The girl was surprisingly unharmed, just a few bruises and a split lip. She was chained to the wall in a room bare of furnishings with a blanket tossed on the floor her only comfort. She had been drugged at the party and taken to the estate to wait for transport overseas. There were plenty of rich jerks willing to pay a lot of money for a blond, blue eyed, fifteen year old virgin.

Leo on the other hand was severely malnourished and dehydrated. His back leg had been broken sometime in the past and not set, so it had healed wrong, leaving him with a pronounced limp. He was in a large room that at one time had probably been very nice, but neither it nor the tiger had been taken care of for awhile. Blue had always had the ability to communicate with animals and she was able to convince the tiger to come with her while Riley dealt with the locks holding the girl.

Blue got both the girl and tiger out while Riley had placed explosives throughout the house. She had waited with her charges just out of sight until Riley joined them. Then they had waited for the the jerk to show up and enter the house. Blue gave him a few minutes to get far enough into the house so there would be no chance for him to escape before she pushed the button on the remote detonator.

Nothing happened for a few seconds then the house blew up. Blue, Riley, a scared fifteen year old girl and a battered but determined tiger watched the house burn. When they heard the sirens of the approaching fire trucks they turned and walked away.

Blue had no regrets, one less bad guy in the world. He wasn’t her first and he wouldn’t be her last she thought as she continued to scratch the big cat behind the ears.

She had the house on the coast and twenty acres of it was already fenced in. All she had had to do was get the permits and she was free to keep Leo with her. He had lots of room to roam but with his bad leg he preferred to stay close to the house most of the time.

The vet she had consulted advised her to do nothing about Leo’s leg. He wasn’t in pain and there were no guarantees that anything he could do would make it better. He had also estimated his age to be around five or six years and with a little care he would be as good as new.

Surprisingly Leo loved the ocean and would play in the water for hours. His favorite game was chasing the waves. Every once in a while one would catch him and he would end up soaked.

On the few occasions both she and Riley had to be away for more than two days at the same time, the young vet from the nearby town of Waldport made the twenty mile drive to feed Leo through a small door in the fence. Despite his previous owner’s abuse Leo was very gentle and did not have a mean bone in his body. He really was a lover and not a fighter and he probably would not have survived long in the wild.

Leo gave a soft huff bringing her mind back to the present and as she looked into his eyes she saw that he was as uneasy as she was. Blue sank to the floor and gave him a hug before leaning against the couch. The big tiger laid down next to her and rested his head in her lap. They sat taking comfort in each other for a long time

before Blue’s eyes drifted closed and she slipped into sleep.

Chrystal Bones Billie Jo Hanlin

Chapter 2

The ship gave a violent shudder and the lights dimmed before going out for a few seconds.

“Jayden if we do not get out of here in the next two minutes we are going to be just so much debris spread across space,” Sparks said from his place at the helm. “We cannot take another direct hit.”

“Jos, we can really use hyper speed any time now,” Jayden yelled through the com at the ship’s engineer.

“You think I am down here playing with my toes?” Jos yelled back. “I have almost got it. We will be flying blind and I have no idea where we will end up, but powering up now.” The ship gave one last shudder as it was hit with a glancing blow just before it disappeared in a burst of light when it went into hyper speed.

Two hours later they were all gathered in the galley eating a late dinner and discussing what went wrong on what was supposed to be a simple mission. It was the first time they had a chance to talk since the Ragillians had ambushed them. Jayden looked at the men surrounding him and knew they had been lucky to escape the three ships that had been waiting for them.

He remarked, "I thought the new stealth field was working but the Ragillians had no problem finding us. In fact they were waiting for us.”

Vihan looked at him and quietly said, “It was working when we left Haldairia." Referring to Jayden’s home planet. "But now it is not. The frequency is off by a fraction. Someone led them right to us.”

Well Cachu,
Jayden thought. Aloud he said what everyone was thinking. "We have a traitor. The question is, did he work on the ship or is he back at headquarters? Only five people besides ourselves knew about this mission and I would trust all of them with our lives. So how did the Ragillians find out where we were going?"

Idris, the royal prince of the planet Shillidon and the reason they were on this mission spoke up, “It did not necessarily have to come from one of us. They could have been listening in on secure transmissions if they have managed to crack our codes. Or they could have gotten someone to plant listening devices in the meeting room where we planned this. Do not forget the reason we were sent on this mission is to find out who is selling our technology to the Ragillians and our informant said he would only meet with me face to face because he knew we had a traitor somewhere high up in the command structure.”

"There were all kinds of people in and out of the ship right up to the time we took off,” Vihan added. “Any one of them could have sabotaged the stealth system."

"Well before we can figure out who it is, we need to find out where we are and get back. Then I will personally rip the traitor’s head off his shoulders when we find him,” Jayden said seething with fury. His people had a bone deep sense of honor and the thought that one of them would betray them this way was abhorrent to him.

There was a moment of silence as each of the men tried to think of who the traitor could be. Jayden spoke again, "Since Dro is not here with us, I assume he is still working to get the computers online?"

"Yes, without the computers I can not figure out where we are,” Sparks said. "And it is not like we can go anywhere until Jos gets the engines fixed." He finished with a grin at the engineer.

"Bite me,” Jos said throwing a spanner at him which Sparks caught in mid air right before it would have hit him on the nose. Jos turned to Jayden and told him the bad news.

"It is going to take at least a couple of days to get the engines online. Until then we are just going to drift. Life support was not damaged and we have plenty of supplies. There was only one hull breach." Now it was his turn to grin at Sparks as the breach just happened to be in his quarters.