Parallel Heat (25 page)

Hope drew in a breath, spreading her palms in front of her. She began her translation—it was too difficult to do so simultaneously, so each time she waited for the colonel to finish, then began speaking in Refarian.

Dillon sighed, then replied in his native language: ‘‘Not willing to answer.’’

It was a risk, but she decided to buck authority and shot back, ‘‘You speak English. You should talk to them.’’

She sensed him stiffen as a ripple of energy seemed to snake between them.

‘‘What did you just add, Ms. Harper?’’ Colonel Stevens demanded, his chair creaking as he turned to face her.

‘‘I forgot the part about what they’re planning,’’ she lied, covering her tracks. ‘‘Just tagging that on.’’

‘‘You lie,’’ Dillon observed in Refarian, laughing softly. ‘‘Amusing.’’

Not for me, you alien jerk,
she thought.

‘‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’’ he continued, and she lowered her gaze to her lap.

‘‘Harper,’’ the colonel insisted, ‘‘what is the man
saying
to you?’’

She pushed back from the table. ‘‘He’s starting to bait me. You better bring in one of the other linguists.’’

‘‘I like that—taking charge,’’ Dillon snickered, but she ignored him, rising from her seat.

Still, something about this alien—a man she could hardly see—felt painfully familiar. Knocked the breath from her lungs, now that he’d addressed her personally. That was the real reason she’d stepped away: So he wouldn’t see how badly she’d begun to shake when he asked what was wrong with her eyes.
It’s just the tapes,
she told herself.
You’ve been listening to his voice for
months
. He had a scratchy, husky voice and, when he spoke her own language, it had such a deep resonance to it that she’d often felt the hairs on her neck prickle while transcribing intercepts.
I know this man, somehow, somewhere . . .

The colonel pulled her aside, speaking in tones low enough that only she would hear. ‘‘Are you sure, Harper? You’ve made more headway with the subject than the others.’’

She glanced back at Dillon’s blurry form, trying to discern whether he’d desist from his provoking behavior. ‘‘If you’d give me more freedom, sir—the ability to question him less rigidly, get more of a conversation going—’’

‘‘That’s not protocol,’’ he reminded her simply, jangling the keys in his pocket. Then he made a kind of whistling noise between his teeth—he probably had a slight gap in front. ‘‘Not even close to protocol.’’

‘‘I realize that, Colonel, but I might be able to hit him with the same questions, just get better results.’’

‘‘Harper, you’ve used unconventional methods before.’’ She’d gotten in trouble for them, too—and won the highest award for a linguist within the FBI: Language Specialist of the Year. ‘‘I like those kinds of methods, and that’s why I tapped you for this project.’’

‘‘You tapped me?’’ She couldn’t hide her surprise. How did a colonel within the Air Force tap an FBI linguist for something like this?

‘‘This is a joint project, Harper,’’ he explained, jangling the keys again. ‘‘We’ve picked our team going in. Carefully.’’

‘‘I understand, sir.’’

The jangling sound stopped. ‘‘Give it a go,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re getting it all on tape, audio and video. Why not?’’

It was odd, but for the first time since she’d entered the holding facility, Hope breathed a bit easier.

 
Scott watched the translator as she spoke in hushed tones with the colonel who’d been questioning him for the past days. Heightening his hearing, he knew what she was suggesting: That she take charge of the interview even though she was just the linguist, not an officer or special agent. The woman had a good mastery of his language, and it had startled him when she’d first begun in that soft, feminine voice of hers to form the language of his home. To see a human mouth speaking the words of his youth and his adopted people.

For a second, he had even imagined the human woman an ally—and it was at that same moment that the strange, disconcerting images had washed through his mind. She was the woman from the visions he’d had in the mitres! It was the image of
her
that had given him comfort during his capture and his brutal beating at the hands of the Air Force soldiers. She, the same woman seated across from him now, with her gray eyes that wouldn’t quite look at him—yet that seemed to slice through him somehow. Was she some sort of gazer, like he was? Did humans possess gifts of seeing that his people didn’t yet understand?

‘‘I’m Hope Harper,’’ she began quietly, the full, sensual mouth hesitating briefly. She ran her tongue over her lower lip thoughtfully, then continued: ‘‘I work for the FBI and I have some questions for you, Lieutenant.’’

‘‘I already asked you my own,’’ he said softly, leaning forward toward her. He was fascinated with her haunting eyes, it was true—but he’d asked the question to disconcert her; the same reason he brought it up again now.

‘‘We aren’t here to talk about me,’’ she countered matter-of-factly, setting her jaw. She was a tiny woman, just a wisp of a thing—barely five feet tall, if that. The human was delicate and lovely; maybe that’s why her presence made some of his gnawing terror dissipate. She gave him comfort; he felt stronger and healed sitting near her. As if somewhere, somehow, this woman had . . . loved him. Deeply. With all her life force, until . . .

Until what?
He had a dark, cloudy sense, something terribly foreboding that he couldn’t quite understand. So he stared at her and began to gaze; she would never even know—that is, if his hunch about her eyesight were correct, she wouldn’t realize he was soul-gazing her.

Show me who you really are.
At first he saw dim fog; murky, blurry vision with dark spots covering pieces of the images. Then darker still. She was running through the woods, and reached back with her hand, taking his.
‘‘Come! Now!’’
she urged him in English.
‘‘They’re on the way. We have to go, Scott!’’

‘‘. . . listening to me?’’ came
this
Hope’s hard-edged question. ‘‘If you won’t cooperate, we have ways of making things less pleasant.’’

He blinked, painfully aware that his eyes were probably about to glow, and that wasn’t something the humans needed on tape. Closing them he replied, ‘‘I am ready. Ask all you want.’’

‘‘Why won’t you speak English? We know you’re fluent in our language.’’

He tapped his fingers on the table, but said nothing for a moment. Finally he arrived at the best and most honest answer possible: ‘‘Because it feels safer to me not to.’’

‘‘I might feel the same way if I were in your shoes,’’ Hope replied, smiling faintly. She had a lovely smile, with a full mouth he’d already noticed could assume a sulky expression or a beautiful one, depending on what he said. Her pale blond hair and light freckles finished out her appearance with a warm, innocent look that naturally made him want to confess far more than he should.
Human women,
he thought ruefully.
Why in hell did I ever develop that taste?

Watch yourself, man! Stay focused!
But then it hit him how perfectly these humans had orchestrated their interrogation, and he had to suppress a hysterical laugh. Whether intentional or not, they’d now pitted him against the one temptation he could never seem to resist: a blond, beautiful
human
woman.

He hadn’t a hope in hell of survival.

 
Hope watched as they shoved Scott into the far corner, wrestling him to the ground. Two medical staff worked at his arm, and seemed to be injecting some unknown substance into it. Hope cringed as Scott shouted, writhed, and resisted, and she heard the sickening thud of what was probably a rifle butt hitting him hard in the face. There was the unmistakable bright color of blood, and he yelped in obvious pain, crumpling into a heap on the floor. Then all his noises ceased, the room falling quiet except for the rapid breathing of the soldiers and medical personnel who had worked him over.

‘‘He’ll cooperate better now,’’ the colonel told her, nodding in satisfaction. ‘‘He can sleep on it.’’ He took her arm, urging her toward the door.

With a backward glance, she thought she saw blood pooling on the concrete floor. ‘‘He’s injured,’’ she objected quietly.

The colonel snorted. ‘‘Good. Those
creatures
took out ten of our aircraft in the past three months. Killed eight of our pilots. Let him bleed!’’

‘‘Yes, sir,’’ she said dutifully, pausing by the door for a new DNA test and biometric scan: In or out, they had to undergo the same procedure to verify their identity. Going in she understood, but it was odd to her that they had to take the same tests just to exit the holding room.

Probably because some of these aliens can change form, she thought with a backward glance and a shiver. She’d felt an odd connection with Dillon all afternoon, but it was easy to forget his kind were cold-blooded killers. Invaders. And that he could probably perpetrate countless deceptions; otherwise, there was no explaining the tests upon
exiting
the lockdown area.

‘‘Sir?’’ one of the security officers on the other side of the door buzzed through the speaker by the door. ‘‘We’re having trouble with Ms. Harper’s retinal scan.’’

The colonel hit the intercom and called back, ‘‘What sort of trouble?’’

‘‘Well, sir’’—the soldier hesitated, sounding confused—‘‘it’s saying she isn’t who she claims to be.’’

Beside her, she sensed the officer stiffen, stare at her, then turn back to the intercom. ‘‘I’ve been watching Ms. Harper the entire time,’’ he argued, but there was a trace of apprehension in his voice. As if he weren’t entirely certain she might not be an alien herself.

‘‘It’s the retinal scan, sir. It doesn’t match the pattern from four hours ago—or the one on record.’’

There was the sound of the colonel’s weapon being drawn and instantly Hope’s heart went into her throat. There was the loud flow of blood in her ears; she turned first one way, then another. ‘‘It’s a mistake!’’ she cried, hearing the door buzz open and the rushing entry of footsteps. ‘‘Please!’’ she insisted, ‘‘There’s a mistake. I’m FBI language specialist Hope Harper! I’m not an enemy! I’m one of us!’’

Suddenly, there was the sting of a bee in her arm . . . or a needle . . . and then just nothing at all.

 
Such a swimmy sensation in her body, tingling down to her fingertips and her toes; Hope tried to stir in the bed, but her stomach was huge and awkward. Tighter than a drum, the skin itching, and she kept scratching at the swollen melon in her twilight-sleep. But then she remembered: They’d only stopped to rest. Their enemies were all around them, surrounding their army like a pack of wild wolves. She struggled to sit up, always hard these days, and Scott’s worried face appeared in her line of vision.

‘‘You need to rest,’’ he scolded, his black eyebrows drawing into sharp creases. His familiar, handsome face. So clear, so easy to see.

I haven’t seen this well in a year,
Hope thought, trying to blink back the hazy, drug-induced sleep.
Where am I, really?

Even now, in the midst of so much bloodshed and ruin, Scott was breathtakingly beautiful to her. ‘‘Come here,’’ she whispered, waving him closer as she settled back onto the makeshift pallet he’d created for her in the tent. He crawled forward on his knees until he bent low to kiss her. She cupped his scratchy face between her palms—he had a three-day growth of beard going, a look she always loved on him. Too bad it was because they were being pursued to extinction. Slowly their lips met, brushing together; there was the familiar heat of his mouth, the sweet, salty alien taste of him.

He was the alien! The one she’d spent the morning interviewing.
Only, he’s no enemy of ours . . . somehow, in this world, he’s my husband.

He cupped her belly with his palm, the large roundness hard and unyielding beneath his hand, even though the tiny, precious girl no longer had room to kick and squirm inside Hope’s belly. Still, they felt her warm presence there, her occasional flutters and thrusts.

I’m not able to have children!
Only recently, the doctors had told her that the worsening state of her diabetes meant she would never carry a child.

Scott slowly lifted her sweater until the frigid night air met her warm human skin, and bent his dark head low, slowly kissing her belly. Kissing her—and kissing Leisa at the same time. That’s what they’d named her already. Leisa Dillon.

He leaned his cheek against her stomach, breathing out against her warm skin. ‘‘Stay there a while,’’ she said, twining her fingers through his thick black hair. He’d grown it longer in the past few months, while they’d been on the run; where once he’d kept it short and trimmed, now it fell loose about his collar. He’d never looked more handsome to her than he did in these, their final days. Their very last days.

Hope’s heart spasmed with grief. So unfair, to lose everything right when it had been handed to her.

But . . . I don’t know him,
Hope’s heart whispered back.
He’s a stranger to me, not my husband. Not the father of my child.

Bolting upright, he met her gaze blindingly, his eyes glowing as they only ever did when he soulgazed someone. She averted her own eyes, glancing away. ‘‘Hope, you have got to make them to listen to me,’’ he hissed. ‘‘If they don’t, then the Antousians will bring it all to this. What you see right now.’’

Hope’s contractions wrenched about her waistline like a cinch, causing her to tremble with pain once again. ‘‘There, there,’’ her husband cooed at her gently, rubbing her tummy, ‘‘you know this baby can’t come now.’’

‘‘H-how did we get pregnant?’’ she stammered, rubbing her eyes. She felt so heavy, droopy, like she was melting onto the ground beneath them. ‘‘I-I’m confused.’’

‘‘This isn’t our world, Hope,’’ he explained patiently, stroking her cheek. ‘‘It was
their
world. Another Hope and Scott’s world. Not yours and mine. We’re just seeing it together.’’