I leaned against him, turning on his tablet at the same time. With a quick swipe of my fingertip to authorize the exchange, I sent his info to my own tablet. I’d learn the codes that night.
I rose onto my knees and scooted over to him. I straddled his back. He made an oomph sound that turned into a laugh.
His muscles were tight, and I rubbed them. “Thomas Sandler.”
“Ooh, she uses the full name. Am I in trouble? Will you do that to our children someday? Use their full names so they’ll know they did something wrong?”
I kissed the back of his neck. “These hypothetical children will be perfectly behaved and never get into trouble.”
“Oh, Paloma. You are going to be raising Sandler men. I’ve got news for you, they will be in trouble.”
I loved the idea. That we could get to a time where he could honestly talk about settling down and having children was so foreign I could barely fathom it. “Maybe it’ll be a Sandler woman.”
“That might be worse. Sorry, I interrupted you. You said, ‘Thomas Sandler.’ Go on.”
I rubbed his back a little harder. “I believe in you. That’s all I was going to say. I believe in this family. I trust in you, and I would follow you anywhere. If anyone could pull off taking Sandler planets from Garrison Sandler himself, it’s you.”
“I believe in you, too, Paloma. You make the universe move.”
I winced at the phrase. He couldn’t see me, so he wouldn’t know and that was best. I didn’t want him feeling bad. That was straight out of the Sisterhood of the Universe. Feel the universe move, Paloma. Hear it breathe. I was defunct. I never did. That all felt very far away from me now.
The Sandlers took up all the space in my soul. It was easier to push other things aside.
He lifted his head. “Time to go to war.”
“We’ve always been at war. It’s time to win it.”
If I was nothing else, I would be their cheerleader. I couldn’t kill anyone, unless they were directly threatening someone I loved, but I would make sure I made everything okay for my guys until this was over.
Ten months later
The base of the Resistance, Earth Standard Time
* * *
Clay had his arm around me as he walked me through the halls heading back to our room. He’d been talking, pretty much non-stop, since we’d left the viewing room. I couldn’t hear what he said. The world had gone silent for me.
I stopped moving which forced him to. “Clay, I am going to kill Garrison Sandler.”
I could lie, but that wasn’t what we did with one another. It might have been easier to say your father to him, but that humanized the monster that took away my loves.
“I get how you feel.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Can we talk about this in the room?”
“Sure.” Nothing was going to change about this. We could talk about it anywhere he wanted.
Our rooms were dark, and Keith still lay sleeping on the bed. His tablet dinged, but he clearly didn’t hear it the way Clay had. I walked over and turned off the notification. If it hadn’t woken him yet, it wasn’t going to, and I didn’t want to listen to it alert all night long.
I pointed at the bathroom. “Do you want to talk in there?”
“Not really, no.” He kept his voice even. “If Keith hasn’t woken up yet, he’s not going to. We can stand right here. Paloma, I want to kill my father, too. I want to kill him so badly I can taste it in my mouth. Like a bitter piece of food I want to spit out. I feel it in my pores. I want to kill him. That’s not what I’m going to do because I have to do what I can to make this right. I have to give us some semblance of a life. This is my fault, that Tommy and Quinn are gone. I can never fix that. I can barely live with it. I have to take you and Keith to find some kind of peace. We promised each other if something happened, we would all look out for you first. We love you like that. I won’t continue to let your life be hell.”
I ran my hand down his arm, feeling the hair there. When I reached his wrist his pulse pounded beneath my fingertips. I laced our fingers together. “If you don’t want to come with me, I’ll do it alone.”
“Paloma, you just saw that feed. With Rohan of all people. I like the super-soldiers, but they scare me a little bit, too. He could hear your heartbeat in the machine, warned Ari twice it was about to stop. None of us can exactly figure out his loyalty except that right now, he’s on our side. I would have watched it with you, just not tonight. You’re barely awake. The first day it happened, I wanted to rush in and kill my father, too. Give yourself a month.”
He wasn’t hearing me. “In a month, I will be wherever your father is, killing him.” Something he said banged around in my head. “What did you mean this is your fault?”
“I led the rebellion. If I had moved faster, the day before, or waited a day, maybe things would have been different. This is my fuck up.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember that day yet, but I can promise you I know you better than you do yourself. You never do anything without thinking it through. There is no way it’s your fault. This is your father’s fault. Completely his.”
Clay sighed and dropped his head. “Okay, we’ll continue this discussion in the morning.”
“If you want. I will not compromise on this. He cannot be allowed to continue to breathe air.” Did he want me to wait until I had fallen so deep into the pit of despair that I couldn’t manage it anymore? Tommy and Quinn had believed in revenge. Neither of them were pacifists, and for that matter, neither was Clay. What was going on here?
Keith groaned on the bed. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” I climbed into the bed next to him. I would stay this time. “Nothing that can’t wait until morning.”
Clay must have believed me. He followed my lead, and we were soon in the darkness again. Next to me, my lawyer husband shuddered. He swung his arm over his eyes. “If I lose you, too, I don’t think I can survive it. Keith won’t either. Keeping you alive, believing you could get through what should have killed you is all that has made the days pass. Please, you can’t do anything that might take you away.”
My heart clenched. “Clay…” I hadn’t thought about that at all. What was the matter with me? A sob wracked me, and then I was in his arms. “I’m not thinking. I’m not processing. I’m not okay.”
“I know. Sshh. I’m not either.” He rubbed my back, his lips on my forehead.
Keith pushed up on his elbow and scooted closer to me, too. “I feel as though I’ve missed something.”
“She found her way to a view screen and watched the footage.” Clay kissed me again. “Now she is going to kill Dad.”
Keith touched my chin, turning me to look at him. “Maybe we can do that.”
“What?” Clay shot up, reaching over me to smack Keith’s arm in the darkness. “Don’t tell her that. I’m not losing her to this. We go flying over there like three madmen in a ship, and we’re dead.”
My younger husband sighed. “Have you ever heard the old Earth expression: Revenge is a dish best served cold?”
I had not. But I liked the idea. “Tell me more.”
“In the morning.” Clay groaned. “Please. I can’t process. We just got her back. She was all but dead a month ago. I want to just be warm and sad with her and you. I want to try to go to sleep because I haven’t done so on a mattress in so long. I want to be able to do it without worrying you’re going to sneak out of the room and go do something else.” That last part was clearly directed at me.
He was right. Everything could wait. “I didn’t sneak. You just didn’t wake up. That being said, I won’t go anywhere. And, guys, thank you for saving my life. I don’t think I said that yet. This isn’t the world I would have wanted to wake up to. I am really glad to be here with the two of you. I love you so much.”
That must have been enough. They both held me so tightly I wasn’t sure I could breathe. I didn’t need air, but it turned out I did need sleep. It wasn’t so much that I f
ound my way to dreamland as my brain simply shut down.
I found myself in the crowd of people waiting to watch my husbands get shot. The feed started as they’d been lined up to be killed, but what had happened right before that? How had they been dragged out? What had they said? I desperately ran through the crowd. I could get to them. I could save Tommy and Quinn if only I was fast enough. Faster. Braver. Smarter. Something. Anything to reach them, I extended my arms. I saw them. They were just ahead, blindfolds on. I could reach them. I ran, the men wielding guns right ahead of me. My breath came in and out hard. I reached forward, and then… the guns went off.
I was too late. They were gone. I’d never reach them.
I woke up with my ears ringing and my breath caught in my chest. At the same time, my heart raced. How could all of that be true at the same time? I lay very still. It would stop if I just waited it out. I hadn’t had any anxiety medication in who knew how long, and I’d lost two of the four most important people in my life.
Light streamed through the window. It was weird to see the real thing. We’d been on spaceships since we’d left Earth. The last thing I could really remember was the shuttle. Fake light to keep our body rhythms correct even when we weren’t on a planet that had distinct day and nighttime hours.
But this was real.
I slipped out of bed. I was starving. The nausea was gone, and now it seemed my body was going to beg me to feed it. Usually, I couldn’t eat during stressful times. This was different. Keith lifted his head. “You okay?”
“Hungry. Point me in the direction of food.”
Clay took in a deep breath. “We’ll go with you.”
“I’m not going to steal a ship and go kill someone without you. You can trust me to find food alone.”
Keith swung his legs over the bed. “Can’t speak for Clay, but my reasoning is that I’d really just like to be with you today. All day. I’d like to know I spent the whole day together. Even if all we do is eat and sleep. I missed you.”
Clay raised his arm. “I second the motion.”
“All right then.” Even in the darkest of times, having their love meant I never had to be alone.
Quinn Sandler
I wasn’t great at reading emotional situations. I’d understood P pretty well, but mostly because I’d made a case study to do so. I’d turned a huge portion of my brain power into knowing what my girl thought, needed, and wanted. I tended to get things right when I did that. Like how we would not be locked in this dungeon if we’d not been betrayed.
My plan was right. I’d just once again not counted in the human factor. I wasn’t going to be making any more plans. If somehow we lived through this, and in some version of the universe where things were actually fair and Paloma was alive, I was going to see to it that I was no longer responsible for anything bad happening to anyone I loved ever again.
That being said, I was pretty sure the guard watching us was having a bad day. Maybe worse than that. He had been turned down on a wedding contract. How did I know? He had a ring in his pocket that wasn’t on the finger of a woman. He kept rubbing his eyes and pacing around. He hadn’t slept, and that ring hadn’t found its way to a woman the night before. People didn’t walk around with expensive jewelry in dungeons day after day. That was risky.
In fact, he hadn’t slept. Those were the same pants. I might not have had the energy to torment anyone, except this asshat had taken pleasure in telling me the world thought I was dead and my girl was likely not coming back.
I never did this. It was too much like my father, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I actually walked a line that kept me from becoming Garrison. I was tired, cold, dirty, and pissed off. Tommy’s cough had taken a serious turn for the worse. My personal boundaries collapsed. I was going to get us out of here—even if I had to make this man crazy to do so.
I scooted forward in my cell and tapped the window. The heartsick guard was short with red hair and freckles. Had he really thought that a mere guard would warrant a wife in Sandler space? “Have you ever asked yourself if life is fair? I mean, really thought about it? I do all the time. How the sheer accident of our birth can make things right or wrong? Hey, is that a red bird in the sky?”
In the cell next to me where he lay on the ground, Tommy groaned. “Fuck me that I have to listen to this for the next however long.”
Not long actually… because either I was getting us out of here or Tommy was leaving in a body bag. I chose option one. I’d put certain facets of my personality away after I’d found out what my father had used me for. It was time to take them out again. More than time. It might actually be fun.
4
Changes In Direction
Eight months ago, Earth Standard Time
Sandler Space
“Fire. Target eight, nine, and fifteen.” Tommy gave the instruction, and I nodded.
I wore small buds in my ear so I could hear the ship chatter without distracting Tommy. He needed to concentrate.
“Alpha-Omega, focus attention on Hoynes, Trebble, and Poised. Concentration immediately.”
The captains liked those orders. We’d taken out two moons on the outskirts of Sandler space. The people had seemed downright relieved when we’d chased the Sandler patrols out of there. Today’s objective was a space station that made a lot of the fuel Sandler used. It was the first target we’d taken that should get any attention from Garrison’s brigade. Since we weren’t leaving calling cards, there was no reason Garrison would think that it was his sons leading the charge.
The screen dinged, and Clay, who was sitting next to Tommy monitoring the statuses of the other ships, looked up. “It’s Keith.”
I hated that he wasn’t on the ship with us. But he’d installed the phase dampeners. He had to be on the one ship that was having trouble with them. I sighed. I wished that captain had just run away when I’d given him the chance. Captain Matthews was still making us nuts.
Keith was currently on his ship. Clay hit the button, and Keith’s face appeared. “I think I’ve figured out the problem. I’m not sure why this particular panel keeps draining energy. It doesn’t make any sense. But I replaced it. If you can dock me, I’ll come back around and rejoin.”
Tommy nodded without looking up. “Affirmative.”
Keith raised his eyebrows. “Does that mean affirmative you hear me or affirmative I can come back?”
“Come back.” Tommy raised his gaze to Keith.
Keith nodded and shut off the connection. I’d known Tommy would be different once the war started, and I wasn’t wrong. He had the ability to concentrate on one thing only, and it was the next move for them.
“Need a break?”
I waited for Tommy to answer, but he didn’t. I suspected he didn’t hear me at all. That was fine. There were much more important things going on than me. Clay spun around in his chair. “I want a break.”
I’d made some quick things for everyone to eat. They could just walk to the fridge in the kitchen and grab it. I wasn’t hungry; stress took away my appetite. But I grabbed Clay a small turkey sandwich. He took it from me, set it down, and pointed to his lips. I sighed before I kissed him.
“I didn’t necessarily mean you had to bring me food. That’s not exactly the kind of break I had in mind.”
I stroked my hand down the side of his face. “That’s the kind of time you have for a break.”
Clay pouted. “I know. But I swear when this is over, I am going to show you the Sandler planets, and you’ll see how beautiful they are, how they’re not really all just death and destruction. On one of those planets, they can grow roses like they used to be able to do on Earth before the bombs dropped. Without having to use synthetic anything. When we go there, that night, I’m going to spread the bed full of rose petals and make love to you again and again on them.”
“Better hope she’s not allergic to roses.” Tommy raised his head.
I laughed. Of all things for him to decide to listen to, it w
as Clay being a hopeless romantic?
I pressed my forehead to Clay’s. “It would be worth the allergy.”
Clay kissed my lips lightly. “Just for that, big brother, you can’t come.”
“That’s fine. You show her flowers. I’m taking her to the falls. Four waterfalls all meet up in one space. You’ve never seen anything like it and—” An alarm dinged, indicating a small shuttle approached. Tommy shut it off before he sat back in his chair. “Keith. So those falls are my favorite place on the planet. I used to go there when I was a teenager with Ari and two other friends. We’d get wasted and jump from the top.”
Clay rolled his eyes. “So you were a total idiot. Paloma isn’t jumping from the top.”
Keith walked into the room, set down his tool kit, and threw himself in his chair. “What did I miss?”
“Tommy and I are deciding where in Sandler land we’re taking Paloma. I’m going to the rose gardens.”
Keith pointed at Tommy. “You’re going to the falls.”
“See? My little brother knows where it’s at. Where are you going with her, Keith?”
He yawned. “On a shuttle out of Sandler planets and back to Earth. I hate this mess.”
He did? I turned to regard him. “Wait…”
Quinn banged the door as he walked into the room and interrupted me. His gaze remained fixed on the tablet he carried. “I had some thoughts. Welcome back, Keith.”
“Thanks. Let’s ask him. Quinn, where would you take Paloma in Sandler space?”
He raised his eyes from the tablet. “Home. I think she would like our childhood home. And the island Ari was raised on.” Then he set the tablet down in front of Tommy. “Take a look. I made some notes.”
And just like that our small moment was over. War took up almost all of our time, but if we could have small moments together then I knew we’d be okay. I wanted to see all those places, and I wanted to see Earth again with Keith. We’d spent most of our time in meetings, and I knew there were a million other stops to make before I could scratch the surface of saying I’d seen enough.