Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (4 page)

“Why should
I
be the one to leave?” I said again, leaning back in the squeaky chair. “I didn’t do anything! Why not go to that guy’s house, ask
him
to leave?”

“I doubt he’d listen to me,” Gantry said mildly.

I frowned at him, letting him know what I thought of that remark.

“So you didn’t do anything.” Gantry shrugged, his eyes unmoving. “So what? Since when do you stand on principle when it might get you killed?”

“I don’t want to leave, Gantry.”

“It would be temporary.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said, more frustrated now than angry, especially since I could tell this was Gantry being concerned. I could also tell I was confusing him, because frankly, he was right. I was usually more practical than this.

I didn’t care.

“...Temporary,” I said, my voice a mutter. “Just another eight months in purgatory, not working and waiting for the same guy to find me in Italy so he can blow me away along with my brother. No thanks. I’d rather deal with him here. Where I have back-up, at least.”

“And if I’m wrong?” Gantry said, raising an eyebrow. “...If it
is
military intelligence?”

I knew he was fishing, but I pretended not to catch it.

Instead, I threw up the hand not gripping my coffee mug.

“What in the hell would military intelligence want with me?” I said. “They’re not going to throw me in some terrorist interrogation center because I had the audacity to go missing for a few months, Gantry. I didn’t
do
anything, okay? Even the news story was a pure puff piece. I don’t even know how they got my name...”

Gantry frowned at that, too, then seemed to let it go.

“There are too many coincidences here, chica,” he said finally. “I don’t like it.”

“And you’re trained to be paranoid, Gantry,” I reminded him. “And to see coincidences and connections when there’s just a lot of random shit swirling around...muddying the water.”

Gantry seemed to concede my words without actually agreeing to any of them.

Instead he hesitated for a few beats, as if thinking, or maybe trying to read behind my expression. He raised the mug of high-octane coffee back to his lips.

I saw his eyes shift then, focusing on the opening for the kitchen door, where Nihkil had stood, only a few moments earlier. Feeling him look past that to where Nik likely dressed somewhere on the other side, my own frown deepened.

“He
didn’t do anything either, Gantry,” I said, my voice warning.

Gantry shrugged, wearing his ex-special forces face, even as he kept his voice businesslike.
 

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. But he was pretty banged up when you brought him here, is all I’m saying. According to Irene, you both were...but him, especially.”

“So? Does that automatically make him guilty of something?” I said.

I knew I sounded defensive again, but I didn’t care.

No way was I going to explain who Nik really was in front of
Jake,
of all people.

I was pretty leery of telling Gantry alone, to be honest.

In some ways, Gantry’s years of military service could make him unpredictable when it came to certain things. Like national security-type things. He might decide it was his duty, for example, to turn Nik in to some of his buddies in the Pentagon. Especially if he perceived Nik as a threat. Which, yeah, okay, from a certain “aliens who can shape shift and cross-breed with humans” perspective, Nihkil probably was a bit dangerous.

But Nik was a good guy.

Of that, I was completely certain.

Not
everyone
of his race would fall into that category, but Nik himself fell solidly in the plus column. The problem was, Gantry might fail to grasp that nuance in its entirety. Especially if he found out that Nik wasn’t the
only
shape-shifting alien I’d just set loose on Earth.

“...Nik helped me get out of a really bad place,” I said, fighting to subdue some of the defensiveness from my voice. “I don’t want to get into the details right now, Gantry, but trust me, okay? Nik’s all right. I don’t want him punished for helping me out.”

Gantry held up a calming hand.

“No one wants that, chica,” he assured me. “...I’m not gunning for the guy, I promise.”

“Then why don’t
you
take the contract?” I said. “Hold them off for awhile? Instead of sending me overseas with the wonder-gigolo?”

Jake laughed, but Gantry frowned.

Even so, I could tell from the look on his face that the idea had already occurred to him.

Tilting his head a little in a half-nod, he met my gaze.

“Yeah,” he said, confirming my guess. “I might do that.” Sighing, he gave me a harder look. “But it’ll only buy you and your new friend time...and that’s best-case. Also, I’ll need more information, before I put my neck out like that.”

“What kind of information?” I said, wary.

Gantry gave me a disbelieving look, leaning back in the chair hard enough that the chrome legs let out a loud squeak. “You mean besides where the hell you’ve been for the past eight or nine months, Dakota, while all of us half-killed ourselves looking for you?”

Gantry let out an irritated grunt. I flinched. I couldn’t help it. It was the first time he’d shown any anger towards me since I got back.
 

Even as I thought it, Gantry pointed through the kitchen door.
 

“...Or who the hell your new ‘friend’ in there really is? Because I’ve run his info, honey, and I got nada on the guy. And trust me, I was thorough.”

“You ‘ran his info’?” I said, fighting anger. “What ‘info’ was that, exactly?”

Gantry’s expression remained wholly unapologetic.
 

“I had Irene do it,” Gantry said, not bothering to be cagey. “And before you get all pissed off at her, she
defended
the guy. She thinks he’s all right, too...but she was worried about you. We gave you
three weeks
to tell us something, chica...and when you didn’t, I got curious. I asked Irene and she got me fingerprints while he was sleeping and took a picture of his face. Nothing crazy, okay? But I ran the basics, along with the fake name you gave her, and none of it came up. There’s no Nihkil Jamri listed anywhere...in any system I know of, for any country, at any spelling. The closest I got was some old guy in Prague, and that was Nikki Jemri, an octogenarian.”

I pressed my lips together, but didn’t answer.

Sort of funny that Gantry assumed I’d given Irene a fake name for Nik.

Ironically, I’d been so out of it, I’d given her Nik’s real name. If I’d thought to use a fake, I’m pretty sure I would have come up with something a lot less conspicuous...and a lot more likely to get a few thousand, if not million hits.

“Look,” Gantry said, pointing a finger at me. “Don’t give me that
look,
okay? I’m not your enemy, Dakota, and I never will be. I’m just saying, I’ve been hearing some weird stuff, and it makes me curious. Most of it came down the pipe right around the time when you showed up here again, with...”
 

He gestured towards the kitchen door.
 

“...this ‘Nik’ guy...whoever he is. Now there’s a contract out on my best friend for a live capture...a best friend I just spent half a year looking for, fearing the worst, who hasn’t told me
dick
in the three or so weeks she’s been back. I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it right now.” Leaning forward, Gantry gave me a harder look, fingering his coffee cup. “I know you. I know whose team you play for, Dakota. This guy, I don’t know. So I have to ask.”

“Well, trust
me
then,” I said, folding my arms. “Nik’s all right. I promise.”

Gantry shrugged, his expression openly noncommittal that time.

“I’ll do my best for both of you,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “But maybe you can enlighten me on a few things, first.”

“Like what?” I said again, already eyeing him warily.

That time, Gantry gave me an openly exasperated look.

“Like what?” he said, disbelieving. “Are you kidding me, Tonto?”

I winced. No one had called me that in long enough that it hit me pretty hard, somewhere in the heart region. It had been a bit of a joke between me and Gantry for ages, an off-hand reference to his half-Cherokee roots.

“...You’ve got a lot of nerve, asking me that,” Gantry said, dropping the pretend calm and letting me have it, which was almost a relief, truthfully. “What? You think my IQ magically dropped to twenty or thirty during your absence? You owe me more than that, Reyes. You owe a
hell
of a lot more, after what you put us through!”

Gantry trailed right as I was raising a hand to concede his point.
 

I saw his eyes harden as they trained behind me at the doorway again.

I didn’t have to turn to know who stood there.

When I was finally
did
turn my head, I was relieved to see that Nik wore pants that time, at least, and a black shirt thrown over his broad shoulders.

Gantry seemed to make up his mind, in those few seconds, not to censor himself around the new guy, either. I knew he was pretty danged ticked, too, because his accent came out more prominently, and a vein throbbed on his neck, right around where that tattooed jaguar’s own throat lived in precise, black ink.

“...How about you and your new
chico fantastico
explain to me your role in that incident on the golf course in Washington Park, while we’re at it?” Gantry said, louder. “...That whole ‘escaped zoo animals’ bullshit? You know? Rumors about that crap have been all over the back channels, but disappeared from the news entirely...along with all of the witnesses, incidentally, except the two of you,” Gantry added, still glaring at Nik as if he blamed him personally. “How about one of you dropping the secretive thing and telling me
who this asshole really is?
And what the hell
happened
that day you got back? Because I know you were involved in that whole mess, Daks. I know it...I feel it in my fucking bones.”

I swallowed a little, glancing at Nik, in spite of myself.

Nik’s eyes remained on Gantry, now a near-black in color.

I knew that color meant either anger, or danger, or possibly both.

Since Nik otherwise looked pretty calm, I figured he was trying to decide if he might have to fight Gantry. He was also probably trying to decide how and if he could win, in this form, at least, meaning in his human body.
 

But I knew Gantry. I knew it wouldn’t come to that.

I seriously hoped it wouldn’t, anyway.

Grunting in open annoyance at me and Nik’s silence, Gantry swiveled those intense blue eyes of his back towards me.

“Well?” he demanded. “You gonna talk to me or not? Because I’m a little hazy on all of the details. And like I said, I’ve been hearing things. Some are flat-out unbelievable. So I’d like a little clarity, before I stick my neck out for you...
again,
Dakota.”

Before I could think of a reply, Nik cleared his throat.

When I turned, he didn’t look at me, though.

He watched Gantry instead, and Gantry alone.

Something in his expression told me that Nihkil had made up his mind about him, in some sense, at least.

“I will explain it to you,” Nik said simply. “What you want to know.”

Staring up at him, I shut my mouth with a snap.

I think my whole body froze up, the instant I realized Nik meant it.

2

Kitchen Confessions and a Demonstration