I turned on the water without looking in the mirror before I stripped off my dirty brown pants and the long sleeve shirt doubling as a jacket. We needed the scouts to bring more clothes. Diana was going to need a whole new set of everything soon. Her shoes…
The lukewarm spray hit me and I closed my eyes. It had been five years since I’d showered with Cooper or shared a bed with anyone other than a five-year-old who kicked hard in her sleep. Habit made me wash myself fast. When I was done, I could get out but I didn’t, deciding to luxuriate in a few extra minutes of just standing there.
I had much to be thankful for and I wasn’t going to let myself think otherwise. I’d had six guys who loved me completely, both when I had and hadn’t deserved them or their love. I had a daughter from that love. She was incredible, a survivor. If things weren’t going perfectly, they were happening well enough. Diana knew I loved her.
The group had made me leader. They trusted me, liked me, respected and protected us. I could be grateful for that. I hadn’t been raped when I’d been captured. Another reason for celebration. Winter meant there would be fewer troops looking on our part of the planet. I could actually smile when I contemplated easier months. If I just reminded myself of these things over and over, I’d survive. I had to. What choice did I have?
I turned off the water, forcing my lids open. Counting my good fortune wasn’t making me feel better. It was making everything feel harder. Tara was wrong. I didn’t need time to relax. I should stay very, very busy.
Forever.
I was redressing in my dirty clothes—we washed our small stash once a week and tomorrow was the day for it—when my wrist burned. I grabbed it, staring down at the chip I hadn’t thought about for years. Why was it acting up now? With a final jolt, it stopped. I stared at the device. The screen was blank. I wasn’t picking up any signals. We deliberately stayed away from the grid, away from networks and signals.
Maybe it was just the final death of the chip. I’m sure it had a shelf life. Wes would have known. I sat on the ground of the bathroom and cried, holding on to my wrist. I missed them and even though I wished them a good life filled with happiness, I hated that I’d never get to look into their eyes again and just breathe in their strength. I detested that Diana didn’t have their support. The chip was my final goodbye.
* * * *
We’d been hiking in the mountains for three days, with one more to go, when the first shots fired. Diana was already in my arms and I darted behind a large tree, calling over my shoulder. “Anyone got eyes on the shooter?”
I reached into my belt and pulled out my gun. Amazingly enough, we were back to what amounted to basically old Earth-quality weapons. The planet was rugged; it had few people before the reign of Olivia’s terror. We made do with what was available.
“No.” Leif, one of Tara’s husbands answered me fast. The shot had come from northwest of us. One ding and then it had stopped. If there were hoards of Olivia’s guards, we’d already be overrun. So we either had a local who was shooting at us or we had a lone guard who realized he’d made a big mistake. I took a deep breath.
“Baby.” I spoke into Diana’s ear as she shook in my arms. The poor darling had never taken to battle well. I hated this for her. I narrowed my eyes. There was movement in the distance. “I need you to go to Leif.”
My friend interrupted me. “It doesn’t have to be you.”
“It does.” I handed Diana to Leif. She clung to me for a second before she finally let go. “I’m Melissa Alexander, remember?” Even if that meant something very different now.
He laughed, which was ridiculous since we were under attack, but also awesome because that was just what we did. We kept pressing forward. “Hold everyone here.”
If something happened to me, they would protect my daughter like I would any of their children. Although I didn’t intend to die. The son-of-a-bitch had fired near my daughter.
I crouched low, moving from bush to tree, keeping cover as best I could, my weapon cocked and ready. The man was moving around a lot. Every time he did, a twig would break or a branch near a tree would move. He was worse than me when Nolan had taken me hunting.
And he was probably one of the guards. The locals knew better how to manage these woods. Someone had wandered off, gotten out here, and popped off a shot.
I was going to end this fast.
I darted forward in two strides and lunged into the area where the asshat waited. He gasped before I put two bullets between his eyes. He was a nameless nothing who had tried to harm us. I’d lost track of how many lives I’d ended.
Did it mean my soul was gone that I didn’t even blink anymore?
“We’re safe,” I called out to the group and then walked over to the guard. He would have stuff we could either trade or use. The dead had their uses and I wasn’t above taking what I needed from someone I killed. I’d done so before.
“Melissa,” Leif shouted. “There’s running water, a stream nearby. I’m going to let the kids get a drink and throw some rocks. Change the day.”
“Good call,” I yelled back. I’d really rather Diana not see the dead body. She’d witnessed enough.
I knelt down and had emptied two of his pockets before I felt the presence. My whole body went on alert. Nothing had particularly alerted me, not a sound, just a shifting in the wind. I reached to my waist where I’d holstered my gun.
“Don’t shoot me, M.”
I froze. The voice moved through me like a hot gale from the warmest part of the sun. I couldn’t breathe. Only one person had ever called me M and it was absolutely impossible for C.J. to be there right that second because I had sent him and my other husbands through a black hole I could never follow them through.
My hand shook but I moved it away from the gun. I’d clearly lost my mind. I couldn’t be trusted with firearms.
“M.” The voice spoke again. “Come on. Turn around.”
I’d never deny that voice anything. Even if it was a phantom here to torment me for all my past transgressions. I stood before I turned, needing to look whoever this imposter was straight in the eyes.
His hair had grown. C.J. had always kept it very short but it was long now, past his chin. He’d also grown a beard. Otherwise he appeared exactly the same. Christopher James Heideman. One of the loves of my life, complete with the scar on his left cheek given to him from an explosion when he was ten. C.J.
I could hardly draw air.
“How?” It was all I could manage. My knees threatened to buckle and C.J. darted forward, pulling me into his strong arms before I hit the ground.
“We’ll go over how,” he whispered in my ear and I was relieved to hear his voice shake. He wasn’t unaffected by this; I wasn’t freaking out alone. He smelled exactly the same. Warm. Safe. Home. “I can’t believe it…I thought, even when we got the signal it would be days. But then there you were. Shooting that man.”
“I…” I pressed my head closer into his chest. I’d crawl inside his power and security if I could. Had he said ‘we’? Did that mean the others were there? I needed to ask but first I had to breathe. It was all I could manage.
I’d known this man my entire life. I loved him. He was here. I pulled back to look at him, placing my hand on his bearded face. He looked so fierce with it.
“I’m hairy.” He laughed. “I haven’t had any reason to shave. I told myself when we found you, I would.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” This was ridiculous and yet it was real. We were talking about his facial hair.
“I…I wasn’t sure when I saw you if I would want to hug you or throttle you and then hug you. Eight years, M. Fuck.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Five.”
“Eight for us. Hanging out all that time while Wes broke us through the black hole. It messed with time. Less there by Earth, more here. In any case, it was eight.”
A small gasp caught my attention seconds before two impossibly strong hands shoved at C.J., p
utting herself between us while she kicked at him hard.
“Whoa.” He backed off, letting me go when he did. I grabbed Diana into my embrace.
“It’s okay, baby. This is Uncle C.J. Remember we talk about him a lot? This is him.”
“Holy shit.” His eyes widened and C.J. covered his mouth. “Sorry, oh bad word.”
“She’s heard it many times.” Diana stopped struggling as she shifted in my arms to take in C.J., who stared back at her with his mouth hanging open. The dead body caught my attention. “Let’s walk that way.”
I nodded toward the trees. Anywhere for my daughter to be away from where she was. “C.J. this is Diana.”
“Diana.” He laughed, a huge grin taking over his face. “We took bets. That was not one of them. I love it. Beautiful name. And oh wow, she looks like Geoff and you. How is that possible? The two of you look nothing alike.”
He was babbling which made me smile. I’d wanted them to meet her, for her to have them, and here we were. This moment was actually happening. We stopped further into the trees.
C.J. took a step toward us and touched her arm gently. “I’m Uncle C.J., D. I know you’ve never met me, but I love you. I’ve wanted to know you for so long.”
The silence stretched out as I realized I needed to explain. “She doesn’t speak.”
He blinked rapidly, meeting my eyes. “Ever?”
“She did for a while. Not anymore. Maybe she will again, someday when she’s ready. I can’t give up hope. Right, Diana? When you’re ready?”
She nodded before she turned away, burying her face in my shoulder, her safe place, as I’d come to think of it. What was I going to do when I couldn’t lift her anymore?
“I need to call the others. We’re all spread out over the planet. When we got the signal, all it gave us was a planet. We couldn’t even be systematic. Lucky we found you at all.”
My wrist. They’d been looking for me and…
I grabbed his hand before he could touch his wrist. “You clicked into my signal. That’s how you found me, which means they can find us, too.”
My heart sped up. “We have to get out of here, now. They’ll have made a determination someone down here has wireless and they’ll come looking. Shit. Leif,” I shouted. “We’ve got to run.” I grabbed C.J.’s hand. We had to make the day’s journey in under that, reach the woods and hide. Maybe they wouldn’t find us. Maybe we’d have to fight. “Come on. We have to go. Now.”
C.J. had always been good about knowing when it was time to question and time for action. That hadn’t changed. “Did we cause some kind of problem searching for you?”
I’d never be sad he found me. “Turn off your wireless. We have to go.”
“I’ll signal the others to shut theirs off.”
“No.” I grabbed his arm. “Come on. Turn off yours. If you signal them they’ll either track you here or track them from it. We have to get to safety and then we’ll figure out what to do.”
C.J. eyed Diana in my arms. “Can I take her? Can I help?”
Diana shook her head no wildly. “Not yet.” Maybe soon. I had to hope.
Chapter 7
Hide-Out
WE’D run for hours, stopping to feed the kids once, before picking up speed again. There was a chance we could be so out of sight that by the time the guards arrived, there would be no trace of us. The others had taken C.J.’s presence well. If they were shocked or surprised, we had no time for them to express it or for C.J. to ask any questions, of which I was sure he had many.
Diana fell asleep in my arms as the sun was setting and Tara was letting us know we had another two hours to go until we reached the cabins. My arm didn’t ache; it had gone numb many miles earlier.
“Can I take her now? She’s asleep.” C.J. spoke low next to me.
I handed her over gently and he placed her sleeping head on his shoulder. My arm burned with pins and needles as I was relieved of the weight. The sight, so close to what should have been normal, made tears well in my eyes. She was too little to run and too big to be carried. We had to devise a better system.
Until then, I’d do what I had to.
My mother had avoided C.J. like the plague. He must have seen her, hanging around the back of the group but he’d yet to comment.
“Okay to talk?” He stayed a step in front of me on the path and even in the darkening light had a natural way in the woods. C.J. had spent a lot more time camping than me when we were kids. His uncles had gotten off their ship as much as possible.
Give me a space station any day.
“Sure.” I touched his arm because he was there and I could.
“I need you to tell me what’s going on. I’ve turned off my wireless which is going to get the other five of them here in no time flat, by the way. They’ll start with where I turned it off and go from there.”
My heart fluttered with anticipation. All of them here…If this turned out to be a dream, I was going to be so pissed.
“After I sent you guys off…”
“Don’t start there.” He interrupted me. “We have to have many conversations about that. I don’t want to do it now. Start with what is happening right this very second.”
“This planet is pretty uninteresting to Olivia. That’s why we’re here. We don’t have ships anymore or even anywhere else to go. If they get us here, we’re done. We stay off her radar by never going into the networks, the radar, or even using any communication devices at all. We write letters and we run or walk. We winter in the hills. The snow is preferable to the dust in the valley. How did you get my chip on? I thought I’d disabled it.”
“Wes.” He really didn’t have to say any more. If there was a way to make a turned-off communicator remotely turn on, he’d know how.
“We didn’t know that. Why is she hunting you, specifically? Cooper is so blown away about what happened. For eight years he’s been obsessing about how he couldn’t have known. We saw Olivia’s transmissions. Your dad had a few, along with your message, which I think I’ve watched every night just to see your face.”
So much for not talking about then. My throat tightened and it was hard to talk. “I meant to see you very fast, to catch you in the black hole.”
“I know. It’s why I can’t really be mad.” He touched the back of Diana’s hair, gently. “The not talking?”
“She saw me get taken by Olivia’s men. We had confiscated a shuttle. I was trying to find supplies and I didn’t dare leave her behind. Or maybe I couldn’t bear it. A couple of us went. When I went down to the planet where they were supposed to sell me food, they captured me. The others saw it on the view screen. That meant I was as good as dead. Happened a little over a year ago. They had every reason to think I was gone forever. When I managed to escape and get back, I fell apart a little. She’d held it together until then, but watching me cry…it pushed her over an edge. She hasn’t spoken a word since.”
If only I had waited. If only I’d held it in. If only…
“She’ll know that she’s safe soon. Her dad will be with us soon and four other guys who are going to love her like they’re her father. Dane’s all genius-y. He’ll have some ideas. Or not. If she never says a word that’s fine. She’s ours. She—and you—will be safe now.”
I nodded. His words were beautiful and I could wish they were true, only that didn’t make them necessarily so. “If the guards come, they’ll overwhelm us with numbers. They’ll take all the women, including Di, and Olivia will bring us to Ochoa. She’ll do things to us. It would be better if we died.”
“Honey, I knew Leif briefly and some of the others. But none of them were us. Do you hear me? There isn’t a company of guards in the universe that is going to get between us and you again. We failed you. Got taken when you were out cold. I get why you thought you had to protect us. Trust me, the five of us who got taken beat ourselves up about that every second of every day and if we weren’t, Cooper did. That won’t happen again. We were complacent, got all exc
ited about the idea we’d gotten the bomb taken care of. It’ll never happen again. You don’t have to protect us. We do that for you.”
Well that at least answered my question about whether or not the bomb in my heart had ever been taken care of. “My mother had you unconscious in extended sleep machines. What exactly should I have done? Run after you? Believe me, I’ve thought it over and over again.”
I didn’t mean to snap. I’d certainly asked myself why I didn’t make a million different choices over the last five years. His words made my skin prickly, every way I’d beaten those memories to a pulp rearing back to life.
Diana shifted on C.J.’s shoulder, making a small noise in the back of her throat. He rubbed her back, gently settling her down. “Speaking of Rita.”
“Yes, she’s back there. She’s not herself anymore. The explosion that nearly killed us on The Bridge wrecked her both physically and mentally. She’s really a shell of her former self. Di loves her.”
A muscle ticked in C.J.’s jaw. “So what you’re saying is I don’t get to kill her?”
“Please don’t.”
“I need to hear the story, M. The whole one. The one I don’t want you to tell right now. When everyone gets here. From start to finish. You say you were nearly killed in an explosion and I want to pound on that tree over there.” He nodded toward a large fir tree in the distance.
“Not while you’re holding my daughter.” I touched his arm again. “Frankly, C.J., in a battle between you and the tree, I’m pretty sure the tree would win.”
He pinched my shoulder. “Think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“I have my moments.”
We were quiet for a few minutes, walking. Quiet murmurs of the others around us filled the evening. C.J. took my hand, squeezing my fingers. There was so much to say and no ability to discuss any of it while we trudged through the woods with my sleeping daughter in his arms.