Ultimate Passage: New Beginnings: Box Set ( Books 1-4) (17 page)

He looked down. She held her breath.

He put a hand in her purse and pulled the phone out.

W
as
Marissa going to answer the phone? Had she charged it? Or turned it back on if she’d turned it off? He was well on his way to Houston, but he was worried about her. She still hadn’t texted or called to say where she was. He stared at the phone, wishing the words
Dialing
and
Ringing
would become a time indicator, showing that she’d answered.

The phone stopped showing the words, and changed to a timer indicator readout. The readout read 00:01.

She was silent on her end, but he could hear road noise.

“Marissa?” Why wasn’t she talking?

“She’s busy at the moment.”

Finn knew that voice.
Cursed be the shadows of ash.
His body flooded with the frost of fear. “Merck.”

“The very same. How are you, Finneas Ramont?”

“How is Marissa?”

“She’s... busy, but then you already know that. I am also sure that you already know she is pregnant.”

How the hell did Merck know that Marissa was pregnant?
“Don’t you dare harm her.”

Merck laughed softly at the other end. It was a small sound, but it was menacing.

“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you. I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

“Finn!” Marissa’s voice. She was alive.

“Marissa!” He yelled her name.

The line went dead. He looked at the screen on the phone. It read 00:31.

The worst thirty-one seconds of his life.

He was still hours and hours from Houston.

Kal’s instructions not to send emails by phone be damned. This was a crisis. An emergency. He kept one eye on the road while he composed an email on the phone’s screen.

Marissa has been taken by Merck. He did not let me talk to her. I’m concerned. Please respond immediately with information on the situation.

He pressed send.

T
he soldier backhanded
Marissa for yelling Finn’s name out. Blood trickled down the corner of her lip. She could feel it, even if she couldn’t see it or reach out to touch it. She squirmed against the discomfort of her handcuffed hands being jammed behind her while riding in the car. She hoped Finn had heard her, even said a short prayer, though she wasn’t the praying kind. He had to have heard her, unless they’d disconnected the call before that.

She knew the route the Asazi soldier was taking. It was the same route she and Finn had taken the night she met Parn and Kal. He was taking her toward the compound, or the ship, or whatever was out there.

She looked out the window, pissed, refusing to talk to him. He hadn’t let her talk to Finn, then he’d backhanded her. An hour or more later, the beautiful countryside wasn’t something she could enjoy. The soldier pulled onto a dirt road, passed over some cattle guards that made the car vibrate, and drove for at least a minute down the unpaved road, raising dust around them, then pulled into a grove of trees.

He parked the car, popped the trunk, then came around and opened her door.

“Please release my hands. I can’t feel most of them, and the part I can feel hurts from having my circulation cut off.”

That’s when she saw it: a knife with a blade that was at least eight inches long. “Oh no. Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt my child. Please don’t.”

He didn’t say a word.

Maybe a different tactic would work. “Finn will kill you if you hurt me.”

The soldier smirked, then swiveled her around, placed her legs on the ground, took the long knife out and sliced through the duct tape with one slash.

“Please, my hands.”

Without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. “Do not try to escape.”

“I won’t.” Marissa rose to her feet on shaky legs and turned around. “Please. They hurt so badly.”

He grabbed her arms, none too gently, and within seconds her hands were free. Marissa rubbed her wrists and tried to flex her fingers as feeling slowly returned.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I am not subject to emotions. I am Asazi. I do not hate you. I have a mission.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “What’s your mission?”

“I will not discuss my mission with you, Earth woman.”

Wow. The hostility with this one. “Okay, so, that’s fine. Can you at least tell me what you plan for me?”

“You will be traveling in the vessel. You are bound for Kormia.”

“What? Wait. Why?”

“I merely obey orders.”

“So what’s next?”

“We wait for my partner. Now, silence. I do not want to hear any more insipid words from your foolish human mouth.”

Bastard. She bit back her reply and any more questions.

She wondered why they would take her to Kormia. It had to be for whatever reason they had originally planned. Some sort of procedure. Would that risk the life of the baby? Was it some sort of surgery? She didn’t know if Finn would make it on time. He didn’t even know where she was. It wouldn’t be wise to assume he’d come here looking for her.

She looked at her Asazi guard. She had to escape him. But how? Kill him? That was the only choice she had. But could she kill another human?

To protect the life of her baby? She definitely could.

But how? He was leaning against a nearby tree, watching her. The knife was stuck in the tree that he was leaning against. Could she get to it before he got to her? She doubted it, which left only had one option: the pepper spray in her purse.

Marissa leaned back in the car seat, her feet still on the ground in front of her. With one hand behind her, she reached for her purse as slowly as she could. Quietly, she rummaged one-handed behind her back. A clink when she knocked one item into another inside her purse made her wince. She held her breath, frozen, eyes on the guard to see if he reacted to the tiny sound. Nothing. He kept his eyes focused on the road, glancing at her every now and then.

Eureka. She’d found it. She wrapped her hands around the canister. Feeling around, she aligned it to shoot. Now for a plan. But what plan?

She had to wing it. She could do this, couldn’t she? She knew how to make up stuff on the fly, didn’t she?

“Will you at least let me call my brother to tell him goodbye? I don’t know if I’ll make it back from your planet.” She pulled the lid off slowly, praying it didn’t make a popping sound. She coughed as the seal released, in case it did.

“Why would you want to contact him, when he called us?”

“He thought he was calling the police, didn’t he? It’s not like he knew he was calling a reptilian hybrid jerk.”

His Asazi skin darkened from a light peach color to a soft tangerine.

Marissa bit back a smile. She’d gotten under his skin.

“You must want to be handcuffed again.”

“Why? So you have a reason to put your hands on me? I doubt you rate too highly with Asazi women, what with that lizard skin and bad attitude.”

His color darkened to a deep orange. He stepped away from the tree, took a few paces in her direction.

“Oh, what? Is the big, bad lizard soldier going to threaten the little, pathetic human? Oooohh, color me scared. Oh, wait, you’re the one who changes colors, right? Not me. I’m the normal one.”

His skin deepened to an orange-red. With a bellow of pure rage, he lunged—and she blasted him in the face with the pepper spray.

Then she yanked her legs inside the car, slammed the door shut and scrambled over to the driver’s side. She locked the doors.

She expected him to be howling in pain—and she was shocked to see that the pepper spray hadn’t affected him. He smirked at her as if she’d gone crazy, dug in his pocket and took the car keys out, swinging them like a slow pendulum.

She read his lips more than she heard the words “Stupid human.”

He clicked the remote, and with a beep the car doors unlocked.

Marissa slapped the lock button again. He pulled on the handle. Nothing. He clicked the remote again, and this time he pulled on the door at the same time.

“Not as smart as you thought you were, are you?” He reached in for her.

She flung open the other door and was able to climb out halfway. He extracted his upper body, stood up, and looked at her over the top of the car, as if daring her to do something.

Marissa didn’t move. He stepped back and made like he was going to come around the back of the car. Marissa slipped back, closed the door, reached across, closed the other door, and slapped the lock button again.

He roared his frustration. He clicked the remote and opened the door right away. As quickly as he did that, she jumped out and ran toward the tree while he was getting out of the car. She clutched the knife, tugging twice, and pulled it free of the bark, then ran behind the next tree.

His heavy footsteps crunched pine needles and undergrowth, and his breathing was loud behind her. She kept the knife in front of her, tight to her body so he couldn’t see it.

She knew he was going to catch her. She wasn’t in the kind of shape that would allow her to get away from a trained soldier. She had to hope for the element of surprise.

When he grabbed her arm, she screamed the loudest, most shrill war cry she could and aimed the knife for his neck. She closed her eyes and slashed.

A grunt made her eyes fly open. Surely she’d missed. He was going to kill her.

Except he wasn’t. He was bleeding from the neck, a stunned look on his face.

She was certain her own face had the same stunned look, so surprised was she at the blood pouring out of his neck and making a trail of red down the front of his uniform.

Dear God, what had she done? She’d killed a man.

Okay, not a man, not exactly. But she who had never so much as harmed a mouse, who couldn’t even imagine using mouse traps that weren’t humane, had just slashed a man’s throat.

His eyes glowed with accusation and hatred.

“I’m sorry. Really.”

What could she do? He wanted to take her to Kormia. She’d had no choice.

No. What she had was no time to waste. If he was waiting for his partner, she had to get the hell out of there.

And go where?
Who knows, but the hell out of here.

Keys. She needed the keys. She looked at his hands. One had the keys in them; she could see the jagged key teeth peeking out from his clenched fist.

“Give me the keys.” She softened her tone. “Please. I’m sorry this happened. I didn’t have a choice.” She hoped he didn’t have a family, a wife and children. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes were open, but they were unfocused and glazing. He was gone. She reached to close them... and he jerked and opened them. She jumped back, unsure if that was a post-mortem thing or what. She didn’t want to find out. She threw the knife down next to him, jerked his hand open, grabbed the keys and ran to the car.

After a couple of fumbles, she managed to start it, then headed down the unpaved road, swerving and skidding on loose rocks. She slowed her speed down to keep from slipping off the road, but didn’t slow it by much. She had to get out of there.

A few moments later she was on the highway and bound for Houston. She had to get lost in the big city’s swarm of humanity. Get off the highway and find some rest.

And food.

And...

She looked at her hands. There was blood on them and splatters on her clothing. She’d have to change. And she’d have to do that without being noticed.

F
inn drove
a little above the speed limit, though he wanted to drive the car as if he’d stolen it. He’d waited for Kal to email him back. He’d waited patiently because he had quite a way to go before he arrived in Houston, but now he’d traveled for even more hours and was close, and he was impatient. He was in no way interested in waiting.

He would call the cell phone number he had for Kal. He didn’t know if Kal could answer it when he was on Kormia—he didn’t know how this technology stuff worked—but if he couldn’t get through by phone, he’d send Kal as many emails as possible. While he was doing that, he’d figure out a way to contact Kal’s father. As a Governor-Select, he would be able to help Finn out. The only problem was figuring out how to contact him.

He pressed on Kal’s contact icon and dialed out. The phone rang. That was a good sign, because if it had gone straight to voicemail...

Finn didn’t want to entertain that thought.

“Finn.” It was Kal’s voice.

“Marissa’s been kidnapped. Merck has her.”

“I know.”

“She’s alive— Wait. What do you mean, you know? What do you know? What is going on?”

“Merck’s partner contacted us. He said that Merck called him and told him he had Marissa.”

“Why do they have her? Is she okay? What do they plan for her?”

“Wait. There’s more. She killed Merck and escaped before his partner arrived.”

Finn breathed a sigh of relief, then disbelief took over. “Marissa’s not the type to kill anyone. Anyway, how could she kill an Asazi trained soldier?”

“That’s a good question. When Merck’s partner arrived on the scene, he saw that Merck’s throat had been cut, and the car was gone. Merck was dead. She’s wanted now. For murder.”

“What is that supposed to mean? She’s not on Kormia. Why did they want to bring her in, anyway?”

“I have not seen the first set of orders calling for her to be brought in, but I did see the ones accusing her of murder and calling for her to be detained and held for transfer.”

“Where is she now?”

“No one knows.”

“She’d better not be hurt. They’d better not hurt her.”

M
arissa had driven
for more than an hour before she decided she’d better change her clothes, in case someone saw her. She found an isolated rest stop, grabbed a change from the duffel bag, waited until all the other cars had pulled out, then ran into the restroom. She changed, washed her hands, stuffed the clothing in the barrel trashcan just outside the door and used a stick to push them under some fast food bags and water bottles and other trash. Then she went back inside and washed her face with the tepid, swampy-smelling water.

Now what? She had to contact Finn. She dug in her purse, but found no phone.

She scoured the front seat of the Asazi soldier’s car. No phone. Could he have pocketed it? She tried to remember, but couldn’t recall for sure. Maybe she could stop and call Finn from a payphone—but did payphones even exist anymore? She hadn’t seen one in years.

The one thing she wanted to do more than anything, she still hadn’t done. She would visit Dad. It might or might not yield any clarity or solution, but right about now, her soul needed healing more than her mind needed answers.

T
wo hours later
, she was pulling into the cemetery parking lot. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from her heart. In all the times she’d been here, and there were plenty, she’d never run into anyone. She felt completely safe in this tiny cemetery full of German immigrants from more than a century ago. Most of the ones buried here were relatives of local farmers. She didn’t know what had possessed her dad to pick this spot. One thing for sure, it was wonderfully isolated, very country-ish, and peaceful.

She turned the car off and ran to her father’s gravesite. The grass was trimmed, as it always was, but still, somehow, the marker seemed abandoned. She was sure Dan didn’t visit, and even if he did, she doubted her brother ever hand-pulled the weeds that tried to take over the marble headstone.

She knelt and grabbed the offensive greenery near the roots and yanked them out. But she couldn’t just leave them lying on the ground; she needed somewhere to discard the plants. She ran back to the car, opened the trunk and dug around until she found a shopping bag, then hastened back to her task of cleaning up his grave.

She didn’t have to talk out loud to her dad. She could talk in her head. She’d always felt like he could hear her thoughts when she talked to him, and she was too tired to speak it all aloud. Too tired to relive it all. She wiped the fall heat’s sweat from her forehead as she ran through everything in her mind, telling Dad all about it, catching him up. Well, she ran through everything except how hot it was to be with Finn. She kept her head-conversation with her father G-rated.

“So that’s it, Dad.” She resorted to talking out loud. “That’s the whole story. Pretty unbelievable, isn’t it?”

The swishing of the wind in the branches, the puffs of dust the wind had rustled up, the clouds passing above her head creating shadows all around her—all of that was as if her dad was there, listening, speaking to her.

“Now I don’t know what to do. I’m so tired.”

She couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired before. She was beat, weak, almost faint. It had to be the hormones from the pregnancy. She lay down on the grass, parallel to her father’s grave and made a pillow of her purse.

She closed her eyes. All she needed was to rest the grit of fatigue away for a short spell. She wouldn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep. There had been too much going on, and adrenaline was still pumping through her body.

A
sound woke her
. A sound she should know.

The sound of a shotgun being pumped.

She tried to regulate her breathing, but her pulse felt like it was revving up to a rate that would give her a heart attack. One tiny bit at a time, she cracked her eyes open.

A man, holding a shotgun on her. No, not a man, an Asazi. She knew who he was: the other guard from that night. But how had an Asazi found her out here?

“Get up slowly. No tricks. I will not hesitate to kill you. Not after what you did to my partner.”

There was no point in arguing with him or making him mad. She nodded and rose to her feet.

“Put these on.” He tossed a set of cuffs to her.

She’d had enough of cuffs, especially behind her back. She put them on, keeping her hands in front of her, not eager to have another face full of upholstery or making a long drive with her hands trapped behind her.

“Can I say goodbye to my father?”

“No. I didn’t say goodbye to my partner.”

“It was self-defense. Actually, it was an accident. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Proceed.” He gestured to the other car in the parking lot.

She picked up her purse and made her way to the car.