Between HeVan and Hell (24 page)

It turned out that Justyn was a really
good cook. The steaks and baked potatoes were delicious, as were
the grilled veggies. Grace leaned back in her chair and
stretched.

“That was great, Justyn; you can grill
for me anytime. Give me a minute and I’ll clean up,” she
said.

“You are not to lift a finger; Jett
and I will do the dishes. Go on into the living room and spend time
with Justyn. We’ve had you to ourselves most of the day,” said
Jalen.

On the drive back to the house, Grace
had told them of her concerns regarding surveillance. She knew that
someone could sit in a parked car or in the park across the street
and point a parabolic dish at the condo and hear everything going
on inside without planting a single device. Such things were
illegal to use, but that wouldn’t stop the Kadyrovs. Jalen had said
he could easily put up a jamming field. It was nice being able to
enjoy an evening at home without the fear of being
overheard.

Crossing the room from the dinette to
the living room, she said to them all, “I could get used to this
kind of treatment. Do you vacuum and do windows too?” she
asked.

“You forget our planet is Matriarchal;
this is not considered women’s work. And having lived so long
without a wife, we have developed a routine that works for us,”
said Jalen from the kitchen.

Justyn added, “I’m the best cook. I’ve
enjoyed experimenting with all these new foods. Jett, as you can
see, invents whatever machinery we need around the house. Our home
on HeVan is what you call a ‘smart house’. We have a central
computer to regulate the air temperature and humidity. The computer
also keeps track of the supplies that we use up, everything from
artichokes to zucchini,” he quipped, making her smile.

She snuggled up to him on the couch,
relaxing after the long day. She hadn’t really gotten any sleep the
night before and she was tired. Within a few moments, she’d fallen
asleep.

Jett came in to the room and Justyn
signaled to him before he could speak. He looked down at Grace
asleep in Justyn’s arms and smiled. A moment later, Jalen walked
in. He, too, didn’t speak when he saw Grace sleeping. The three of
them sat down and were content just to look at her. It wasn’t often
they got this chance. She was so energetic that usually she kept
them on their toes.

The summer sun was going down, the sky
turning dark, when she awoke. She was a little surprised to see the
three of them sitting there just watching her.

“What’s wrong? Do I have something on
my face?” she asked, running her hands over herself.

“You are perfect, as
always
Kasharra
.
We were just taking a moment to drink in your beauty and thank the
Goddess that you are here in our arms,” said Justyn.

“A moment? It’s been two hours,” she
said, looking at the clock. “Well, we’ve got about six hours to
kill before we have to download the surveillance from the nanos.
Let’s play a game.”

“A game? I thought we could make love
now,” said Justyn.

“Maybe it’s from working in a casino
for three days. I can’t go to bed without playing cards or
something, wait here. I’ll go get them. Did Addie teach you how to
play poker?” she asked.

“Yes, we are familiar with this game,”
said Jett.

“Great. Well, dealer chooses the game.
I’m going to deal first so I choose strip poker. The worst hand has
to take off a piece of clothing,” she said with a smile. Her Ankida
were then suddenly happy to go along with the plan. A few games
later, she realized that all of them had the ability to detect
lies, so bluffing didn’t work. She stuck with Texas Hold ‘em and
Indian Poker after that. Three against one, though, and soon she
was down to her panties. She didn’t mind at all when she lost
again. She was laughing when they carried her off to the bedroom.
She didn’t find out until the next morning that Jett and Jalen went
out alone to download the data and left her sleeping with
Justyn. 

Chapter
Fourteen

When Grace woke up, her front was
toasty warm, but her back was cold. She soon realized the reason;
she was lying on top of Justyn and had no covers over her back.
Jalen lay on her left with an arm thrown over her and Jett on her
right with his back to her and one of her arms over him.

When she started to wiggle, Justyn
woke up. His hands came up to hold on to her bottom
cheeks.

“Good morning
Kasharra,
how did you
sleep?” he asked.

“I slept fine; I’m cold, though,” she
answered.

“We can’t have that,” said a voice on
her left.

“That would be bad; she might get
sick,” said a voice on her right.

“Then I think we should do all in our
power to warm her up immediately,” said a voice over where her head
rested on a powerful chest.

They were as good as their word and
she was very quickly warm all over. A couple of hours later she was
washed, dressed, and feeling remarkably well.

“I’m a little upset that you went out
and got the download last night without me. This is my job, you
know,” said Grace, as they all sat down to a breakfast of scrambled
eggs, bacon, and homemade country potatoes. “We have to review the
data, see if anything on them is important enough for us to act
upon right away. And I don’t want to be cooped up in the house all
day, either. Captain Udaka said I was to show you around. We should
stay away from places near the condo. Everyone around here knows
me.”

“I plan to set up an algorithm that
will search the data for key words. There are hours and hours of
tape; we need to be able to skip to the important parts,” said
Jett.

“That’s a good place to start. But
every second of the tapes will have to be gone through. I think we
should divide them up into four parts and load them onto MP3
players. Then, we can listen in on an earplug as we go around
today. If we hear anything important, hit pause. If there’s nothing
happening, hit fast forward and it will jump in five-minute
intervals. Do you have any linguistic filters built in? What if
they aren’t speaking in English?” she asked.

“After Becky had us learn Greek and
Italian, I thought it best if we went ahead and loaded all the
other Earth languages into our database. So I loaded in Chechen and
all languages spoken in neighboring countries yesterday. It would
take weeks for our brains to learn all the languages. It’s easier
to have the nanos translate them into English for us,” said
Jett.

“Wait a minute; you can learn a
language in weeks?” she asked.

“If you only wish to learn one
language, then it should only take five to seven days,” answered
Jett. “We are still wearing the nano-patches that are teaching us
Greek and Italian. We haven’t had the need yet to use the new
languages, though. Is there a language you’d like to
learn?”

“Yes, I’m half Irish and half Spanish
and can’t speak either language. I’ve always wanted to learn them
both.”

“I’ll download the information and
transfer it to some nano-patches for you,” said Jett.

“And if these are the languages you
wish to speak, we will all learn them as well,” added Jalen, and
the others nodded.

“That would be so great! Hey, I know
where we’re going to go today. We’re going to Great America!” she
said.

“Great America? I thought we were
already in America,” said Justyn.

“Just wait, you’ll see. Let’s get a
move on. Jett, you’re in charge of getting the data split into four
six-hour segments. Give me Mr. Kadyrov; I don’t think I could
stomach listening to Anton for hours on end,” she said.

It took about an hour before they were
finally ready to leave. An hour after that, they were pulling into
the parking lot at Great America.

“What is this place, Grace?” asked
Justyn.

“This is where families go to have
fun. They have great food and fun rides. We should go to the water
park first. Then we’ll be nice and cool for the rest of the rides,”
she said. “One of us will have to stay with the evidence at all
times. We can’t leave it unattended because that would break our
chain of evidence and lose admissibility in court. I have this big
hobo bag and we’ll keep all the evidence in here.”

“We’ll be getting wet?” asked Jett and
Jalen gave him a swat while she rolled her eyes. She could see he
was trying to lighten the situation.

“Yes, that’s why I bought those swim
shorts for you all,” she said.

They started, as Grace suggested, with
the water rides. Once they arrived at Hurricane Harbor, they
quickly changed into their swimsuits and headed to the tallest
slides. She didn’t know if they’d need it, but she took her time
lathering them all with sunscreen anyway. Grace pretended not to
notice all the envious looks she was getting. While the guys played
in the water, she picked up a sunny spot to work on her tan while
listening to the evidence tapes and pretending to read fashion
magazines.

It had taken her a few tries to get
used to the equipment Jett had given her. He had adjusted a
Bluetooth to pick up her brain impulses, so all she had to do was
think about the data and she was scrolling through it. It was great
that she wasn’t being observed constantly adjusting the
MP3.

One of the guys was always with her;
they switched out every fifteen minutes or so, and that was
fine.

After a couple of hours, they were
ready to try something new. So they all dried off and took turns in
the changing rooms getting back into their regular clothes. Grace
had worn tan, khaki shorts and an olive green tank and moccasins.
Each of the guys wore a knitted polo shirt, Bermuda shorts and
Docksider loafers. Jalen wore navy over white; Jett had forest
green over tan and wild man Justyn was wearing a pale pink polo
over plaid shorts. Grace thought that they all looked hot. She was
fast changing her mind about the first impressions she’d had
regarding their personalities.

They spent the next three hours going
from ride to ride and Grace was pleased at their reactions. Jett
was fond of The Viper, the big wooden roller coaster. He said it
was unlike anything he’d ever experienced and he paid close
attention to how it was constructed. Jalen preferred the Raging
Bull roller coaster, which had bigger and more dramatic drops; and
somewhat to her surprise, quiet Justyn liked the Vertical Velocity
ride the best, the corkscrew upside down and way up in the air ride
they couldn’t get Grace to ride on. He laughed when he got off and
wanted to try it again. All three of them went on the Dare Devil
Dive more than once, too. They must have been like this when they
were little boys, she thought. I wish I could have known them
then.

“Do you have any home movies?” she
asked when they stopped for lunch.

“Home movies; what are those?” asked
Jalen.

“Video pictures of you when you were
younger. You’re having such a good time; I wondered what you were
like when you were children. Do you have images of yourselves back
then?”

“Yes, we have some memory savers of
when we were younger. We didn’t bring them on this trip, though. I
believe our parents have most of them at their home,” said
Jalen.

“Your parents are still alive?” she
said and then caught herself. Looking around to see if anyone was
listening she asked, “How long do you guys live anyway? Never mind,
you can tell me later. As to the home movies, I would like to see
them. What would you like to do next? You’ve been on all the rides
three times. And now that we’ve eaten, we should wait and let our
food settle before going on another ride. There are games of skill
or shows we could watch,” said Grace.

“Games of skill?” asked all three at
once.

Grace laughed. “I guess we’re going to
play some games. Remember these games are made to be difficult.
They want you to spend your money; it takes skill to win the
largest prizes.”

They finished their meal, Grace newly
amazed at how much they ate. So far they’d ingested burgers, fries,
pizza, and funnel cakes. The funnel cakes had been a big hit and
Justyn said he wanted to learn how to make them. They had large
frames to fill and they weren’t fat; she hoped they wouldn’t make
themselves sick from all the sweets and fried foods they weren’t
used to eating.