Whispers in the Dawn (16 page)

She had confronted Odessa as she’d eaten her sandwich, to ascertain whether the woman felt she was making the right choice for herself. So many females had that taken away from them once they arrived on Romaydia. Violette stood back in the shadows. The noise in the public area had increased to a painful level.

A plan had begun to form in her mind. It was risky, but it might work. As Harley and Odessa struggled to evade Pardua’s long hand, she would approach Pardua. Simply as a diversionary tactic. Nothing else. She would find Zorm and ask for his help. He was daring and young, and would welcome the opportunity to put a crimp into the Murrach’s orderly day.

The plan had holes as large as an interstellar spaceship in it, but she was determined she wouldn’t let the Murrach get away with murder again. Not this time.

Chapter Fifteen

“I don’t want to linger here any more than I have to,” Harley said.

Odessa watched as he checked the Ashtari’s wrist for a pulse.

“Nothing,” he said gruffly.

Odessa watched him search the room quietly and efficiently, pulling out drawers and rummaging through the small bathroom area. He grunted once before he said, so softly she barely heard him, “He won’t be creating an invisible shield or reading minds anymore.” He shook his head, and his shoulders drooped as if they bore the weight of the Romaydian station on them.

Odessa repressed a sniffle. The Ashtari had been genuinely kind when no one else had cared. She dared not look at the dead alien again, preferring to remember him as he had been when he was alive. Why would anyone want to kill such a harmless man?

Harley passed a hand over his brow and dislodged his helmet. They stood shoulder to shoulder. “We have to find another way to get off Romaydia.”

Slowly, Odessa removed her helmet. She couldn’t hide the tears streaming down her cheeks.

Harley held her tightly against his chest. “I wouldn’t have wished something evil on the poor Ashtari,” he whispered, “but we have to get out of here in case Pardua comes looking.”

“Where are we going to go?”

Gently, he smoothed her hair at the back of her head as he glanced around at the walls, as if he was searching for something. “Not here,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”

She clung to him, unwilling to release him and the comfort the close contact gave her. When had she started to feel he could give her solace?

She tucked her head under his chin, feeling the tiny bristles of his unshaven face on her scalp. “Don’t let me go,” she murmured. “I’m afraid.”

“I am, too,” he confessed.

Three months ago, she would have been appalled to think she could have said such a thing. Now, she had no alternative but to lean on him for survival. The thought rankled for a second before she huffed a miniature sigh. She didn’t have much choice, especially after having witnessed Eyani’s battered body. She had to trust Harley. He wouldn’t place her in jeopardy with a ‘client’, as Violette had put it. There were no other options if she wanted to get off Romaydia alive.

Harley’s thoughts spun. Somehow, there had always been a way out. Until Abby—and now Odessa. “I know of some understation tunnels where we can hide in safety until I find a way out of this mess. It’s not my first choice, since it’s hot and humid and if Pardua looks hard enough, he’ll find us. We can always stay one step ahead of him, though. Let’s go. There’s no telling if the perps who did this will return.”

She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes, her cheeks filmed with tears. His protective urges overwhelmed him. Even if it meant giving up his own life, he would save Odessa.

“Perps?” she asked, her lips curling at the edges in a saddened smile. She traced a finger down his cheek. “I thought only the FBI said that.”

“I watch a lot of videographs,” he said hastily, covering his tracks. He didn’t want her to know who he was. How had she become involved in Roland Baylon’s affairs?

He took her hand and silently urged her to put the black helmet back on.

She shuddered. “I can’t put this on again.” Her voice broke on a whimper.

“I don’t like wearing it either, but we don’t have much choice.” Reluctantly, he admitted to himself there was no secure place on Romaydia. He’d spent the last year sleeping with a gun tucked under his pillow to give him a semblance of safety, but it was no longer an assurance. He jammed his helmet on his head, hating the trapped feeling it gave him. He took small consolation that if someone fired at him, they couldn’t kill him by shooting his brains out like they had the poor Ashtari’s.

Grimacing, Odessa placed the helmet over her head. Once again, they strolled at a leisurely pace through the public area, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible. No one stopped them. Harley didn’t dare look over his shoulder to see if anyone was following. A drug-crazed idiot would never do that. The action would have given away his disguise.

 He wasn’t certain if the glazed look in Odessa’s eyes was faked, or if she was so afraid she was trying to repress her tears.

At the second spoke past the public area, he stopped Odessa. “We go through here,” he said, casting a hand towards the wall.

“There’s nothing there,” she countered, giving what appeared to be a solid wall a suspicious look. “Not unless we’ve suddenly developed the ability to walk through solid obstacles.”

Harley examined the area both for people and aliens, and for surveillance devices of any type. He wasn’t being spied upon. It was safe to go ahead and open the concealed doorway.

Odessa watched. The man was insane if he believed he could get through a wall without any tools. He slid his long fingers along the wall before he stopped and pressed down hard.

Astonishingly, the partition opened inwards. The space was hardly large enough for a muscular man to pass through. He beckoned to her to follow him into the darkness that almost swallowed him. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safer in here than out there.”

She hesitated, having always been afraid of the dark and unseen, treacherous creatures—like spiders and earwigs and poisonous snakes.

“It’s all right,” Harley encouraged her, waving his hand at chest level. “They won’t get you here.”

Odessa stepped through the small door. Silently, it shut behind her. He fumbled in his pocket, fished out a short flashlight and thumbed the switch. A mediocre light illuminated a tunnel barely wide enough for two men to walk side by side. Harley was forced to stoop because of the low ceiling.

She slipped off her helmet due to the rising heat. “Where are we?” she whispered. “It’s awful hot in here.”

“In the underbelly, under the main power station.” Harley took off his helmet and threw it on the floor, where it rolled into a shadow. “That thing made me sweat like a pig.”

His scent was stronger than before—raw male and a pungent aftershave mingled together, teasing and tempting her in a way Roland’s outrageously expensive colognes never had. “In the underbelly? How can a space station have an underbelly?” she murmured, half out of her mind with wanting him, but trying to focus on his words.

“Every habitation humans or aliens live on must have a power source, and also a way of getting to problem areas in the habitation. It’s done in the underbelly of the station.”

“It’s spooky down here,” Odessa said, hugging her arms around her chest.

“Yeah, but it’s not too bad when you’re with someone,” came the gentle reply.

She said nothing. Grateful for his company, she followed him farther into the tunnel for several hundred feet, before he stopped at a pile of goods stashed on the floor.

“I never knew when I would need a hiding place, so I didn’t want to be caught with my pants down,” he said, wiping a hand over his eyes. “Man, it’s too hot.”

Now,
there
was an image. She could just see him, tanned and throbbing and naked. She was so aroused she could hardly concentrate on her daydream. His rod was stiffening, her clit wetter and wetter with longing, until she finally peeled off her clothes and persuaded him to make love to her. She wrapped her thighs around his and pushed her breasts against his hands. She needed all of him. However, she guided her thoughts back to the high temperature. “I’m not sure Eyani would have found it tolerable even though he liked the warmth.” She missed the friendly little alien.

“The only way this place will cool down is if someone completely shuts the station down. The heat reminds me of Texas.”

Is that where you’re from?”

He nodded, knelt and dug in the pile, retrieved a grey army blanket and spread it on the slippery floor. “All we have to pray for is that no one blows up the place.”

Sounds of metal clanking against metal and distant laughter, made her shiver. “Blow up the place? Why would anyone want to do that?”

“On a space station, you have different kinds of people espousing different causes. Some are in favour, some are against, and many never make an issue, but there are others who take exception to beliefs different from their own and kill indiscriminately. It’s mostly the innocent who die.”

That got her mind away from wanting him. “So much for peace and harmony throughout the galaxy.”

“That’s an old wives’ tale. Pardua wouldn’t hesitate to kill en masse, if he could gain something by doing it. He plays the victim whenever he can. There’s no way to win against a man who claims he’s the injured party.”

Odessa shook her head. “I don’t understand.” She cocked her head to one side, listening to a sound much like that of heartbeats echoing off the wall.

He stopped and faced her. “That’s a normal sound. The station humming, is how I like to think of it. Anyway, it works like this. Say you cry foul, that your purse was snatched by a common thief who’s done it a hundred times before, but everyone knows he needs the money from your purse to feed his ten hungry kids. Do you think you’ll get your money back?”

“I see. Everyone perceives him as a victim, but they would look at me funny if I demanded my money back, knowing his kids were going hungry but I could afford to lose a few dollars.”

Harley grunted in the affirmative, knelt on the blanket and rummaged in the pile of stashed goods until he came up with a container. “Right. So you see, once a man claims he’s a victim, no matter where in the galaxy you are, society is conditioned to feel pity for him.

“How sad.” Odessa wanted to reach out and touch Harley, to console him, but he projected such sudden aloofness that she hesitated. He obviously didn’t want contact. Uncle Peter had projected the same detached demeanour from time to time, but then she’d simply left him alone until he came out of what was a rare mood for him.

“You’re like my Uncle Peter,” she blurted out, sliding her back down the wall and sitting on the floor so she could take the weight off her feet. She pulled off her heels, grateful the leather was no longer pinching against her baby toes. She hated the helmets for restricting her freedom.

“That’s a compliment if I’ve ever heard one.” He opened the container and offered it to her. Inside, there appeared to be small chunks of bright orange and dull yellow dried fruit.

“Dehydrated fruit?”

He nodded, helping himself to a darker chunk, perhaps a fig.

Hardly making a sound, he sat beside her to watch her rub her foot.

“I wish you could get to know him,” she said, homesick again and missing her brothers’ companionship and her uncle’s sure-fire witticisms. “He’s an interesting man, full of life, even though life has knocked him down more times than he cares to admit.” She bit into the yellow fruit she had selected, and was pleasantly surprised to find it tasted like banana.

“Sounds like a man who’s worth getting to know.”

“After Aunt Gem died when I was barely out of diapers, he was really torn up. He would hold me in his lap and cry and cry. I cried along with him, which saddened him even more, before he came up with the idea he could tell me fairytales to cheer me up.” She reached for the container at the same time Harley did.

He motioned for her to continue. “Like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty?”

“He told me his versions, though. The Uncle Peter versions. He got Sleeping Beauty mixed up with Rumplestiltskin, and I didn’t even know until I got into kindergarten and thought to tell the teacher that her story was wrong. When I went home and told Uncle Peter the real version, you know what he said? ‘Well, lass, it ain’t but a tale about a wicked stepmother. No harm, no foul.’ I still remember him saying that. And that was years ago.” This time the dried fruit was tangy and red, like a strawberry.

“He sounds like one cool guy,” Harley said, looking wistful.

“He raised me and my twin brothers by himself. I don’t know how he kept us from tearing each other apart sometimes, but he did.”

“What happened to your parents?” He reached over into the stash and lifted a bottle of water, and offered the clear plastic to her.

“Water?” she asked, holding out her hand.

Harley raised his eyebrows, “Yeah. I don’t do poison.”

She ignored his statement.  She took a few sips and handed the bottle to him, trying to remember what her mother and father had looked like. “They ran off together one night. Told Uncle Peter they would be back after they went to the movies, but they never returned. Uncle Peter called the cops and they searched for them for days. They just up and disappeared into thin air, like they had never been born.”

“Did they ever show up?”

“No. Uncle Peter struggled with his sister’s desertion for a long while, especially since Aunt Gem had just died. He felt as if the whole world had begun to collapse on him.” Odessa smiled through her tears. He handed the water back to her. Their fingertips touched, igniting a flame of desire along her nerve endings. She drank again and surveyed him as he took another sip. A muscle in his right cheek twitched as he recapped the bottle and hid it under the stash.

Odessa went on. “He came to the conclusion he had lost three of his relatives, but he had also gained three—my brothers and me. Later, he admitted we were godsends who’d brought him out of his suicidal thoughts, because if he had done what he’d had half a mind to do, there would have been no one to take care of us.”