Chapter 11
Leigh
T’raat held me close on the car ride from the farm, muttering soothing words that I didn’t even register. He could’ve been speaking Xalanite for all I knew.
We rode in the front car of the caravan with Aunt Ann and a short human agent. Timber something. The agent kept glancing back at T’raat and me with a weird, almost sad expression on her face, but she didn’t say anything. I noticed a sparkling metal ring on her left ring finger, a strange substance that didn’t look like any Earth metal I’d ever seen, all iridescent and faceted in a way that caught every glint of light. Agent Timber kept touching the ring, as though it brought her comfort.
Since I apparently couldn’t be trusted alone with T’raat, Agent Timber served as my guard when we stopped for a bathroom break at a deserted rest area. Aunt Ann led T’raat to the men’s room while Timber guided me to the ladies’ room, standing outside my stall while I did my business. It was awkward, but at least she let me shut the door.
Her ring flashed in the fluorescent lights as I washed my hands, and I took the chance on trying to get her to talk a bit.
“Your ring … It’s Xalanite, isn’t it?”
She gave me a sad smile. “Yeah. Nothing gets past you, huh?”
“He’s not here with the rest of you though. Did Aunt Ann make him stay behind at the intake center?"
“We all thought it best he didn’t come. Your aunt was worried it might encourage you a bit too much to see an interspecies couple that was sanctioned by both governments.” Timber chuckled under her breath. “Guess it was too late to worry about encouraging you, though.”
“I really do care about him,” I said quietly.
Timber put a hand on my shoulder. “Believe me, I know. They have a way of growing on you, huh? Mine crash-landed on Wrigley Field, and at first he irritated me so much.” Her eyes glistened with tears, and her other hand moved to her belly.
“You’re the hybrid mom?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Yep. Well, more the hybrid’s mom. Not a hybrid myself.”
That explained her underlying sadness, then. My aunt had just about declared her pregnancy a goner right in front of everyone. That had to sting. “It’ll be okay. I trust T’raat when he says Xalanites are attracted to compatible mates.” I had to trust him in that, though; if I didn’t, it meant our future kids might not make it.
Was I really thinking about kids with him already?
“We’d better get back,” Timber said. “Don’t want your aunt to worry.”
I nodded and dried my hands on a paper towel.
When we got back outside, we were both surprised to see that Aunt Ann and T’raat hadn’t returned yet. We’d spent so long chatting that I assumed we’d be the last ones back.
Timber stiffened as we neared the empty car, and she grabbed my arm to stop me. “Stay behind me,” she hissed, releasing the safety on her gun with her other hand. “Something’s wrong.”
I froze and looked again at the car. Now that we were closer, I could see that all the doors hung open, and the contents of my suitcase had been strewn about the parking lot.
Fear seized my heart, and I let out a sob. Timber clamped her hand over my mouth to stifle me as she backed me down the sidewalk towards the bathroom. “Shh! They could still be around here somewhere.”
I didn’t ask, but somehow I knew “they” didn’t mean T’raat and Aunt Ann. “They” meant someone else, someone other.
“They” meant the person—or people—who had taken my aunt and my boyfriend.
Once we were back inside, Timber turned the bolt on the bathroom door and checked the stalls. Upon seeing that we were alone, she let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, well, at least they didn’t manage to slip in behind us. We’re safe enough in here until I can contact the rest of the motorcade and call HQ for reinforcements.”
While Timber made some calls, I huddled in a corner and cried. The last thing I’d expected was for T’raat to be kidnapped. And Aunt Ann! She was about the toughest woman I knew. How could she get caught?
The answer to that came when Timber got off the phone. Her expression was grim, and I feared the worst.
“Shit.”
“Wh-what is it?” I said between hiccupping sobs.
She sighed and holstered her weapon. “Help is on the way, but it’s worse than I thought. Two of the cars that were accompanying us have gone missing. I’d think they were all kidnapped, too, except kidnappers shouldn’t know how to turn off the GPS devices on the vehicles. Those buggers are hidden well, so my guess is that this is an inside job. We’ve got moles in the AARO.”
“T’raat … Aunt Ann … You don’t think these people would hurt them, do you?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. It all depends on what the kidnappers want. If they want information, they might hurt them to get it. If they want something physical, they might hold off on torture for a while.”
My vision swam, and my heart sank at the word “torture.” I put my head between my knees and tried not to hyperventilate.
Timber knelt next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. “Sorry. I’m not trying to scare you. Just being realistic. We have to face the fact that they might be hurt or even dead when we find them. And we will find them.”
T’raat—dead? No! I refused to think like that.
While I wallowed, my phone began to buzz. I tried to ignore it, but after a few vibrations it stopped, started again, then stopped, then started again . I wondered who the fuck could be texting me at nothing in the morning.
After the third round of buzzing, Timber held out her hand. “Come on. Give it.”
I dug my phone out of my pocket and handed it to her. She checked the screen and let out a bark of laughter. “I thought so! Your guy’s a smart one. That’s the Xalanite equivalent of Morse code. He’s letting us know they’re okay.”
“What?” I yanked the phone out of her hand and tried to read what the messages said, but it was all nonsense. “You can read this?”
She nodded. “I’ve got nanites, too. I can read Xalanite as well as speak it, and I know a few of their coded languages, too. The pattern of texts was in a military code that T’raat must’ve used, and the words there are Xalanite, or at least as close as he can probably spell them using English letters.” She pointed to the screen. “The buzzing was him saying he’s okay, and the messages say he’s with Director Hall in the other restroom. The car was trashed before they got back, so they did the same thing we did.”
“So, wait … No one was kidnapped?”
“I’ll have to check with the director, but from his short messages it sounds like the car was just ransacked. Although …” Timber took out her own cell phone again and dialed. After a brief wait, she said, “Hey, Director. Yeah, your niece is safe. We’re in the ladies’ room. We thought the two of you had gotten kidnapped or something, and I thought it best to get her to safety in case the perps were still around. Mm-hm. Mm-hm. No, you’re right. Something’s definitely up. HQ can’t find half the motorcade. Mm-hm. Yeah, you’ve got a point. We’ll be out in a sec.”
She hung up and helped me to my feet. “C’mon. We’re going to meet up with them and hightail it out of here before the reinforcements arrive.”
“Wait, why?”
“Because we don’t know who to trust. It’s safer to go it alone for now.”
To my horror, as soon as I was up, Timber snatched my phone and tossed it in the toilet, along with her own.
“Hey!”
“They can be tracked,” she said, her tone sharp and matter of fact. “Now, unless the perps have access to Xalanite tech, they won’t find us.”
“How will Xalanite tech help them find us?” I asked as Timber opened the door.
T’raat exploded into the bathroom and scooped me into his arms. His bear hug took the wind out of me for a moment, but I was grateful for his scaly touch. Those brief minutes I’d thought he could’ve been hurt or dead had been tortuous. I’d take a little bit of squeezing over that.
“Our nanites can be tracked, but not by any Earth methods,” T’raat said as he held me. His words were slightly muffled as he was nuzzling my neck the whole time, but I could understand him. “Your aunt was wise to wait. I, too, had feared the worst, but she insisted we hide and wait until the waterline was clear.”
“The coast, T’raat. We were waiting until the coast was clear.” Aunt Ann stepped into the room and gave Timber a curt nod.
“That is what I said,” T’raat complained.
I didn’t care about his mixed-up words. I was just so relieved to hear his voice again.
“Agent, go check the parking lot for a car that we can, um, borrow on behalf of the Department. Just keep out of sight.”
Timber rolled her eyes but nodded and slipped out the door. I guessed she knew how to hotwire a car, though I didn’t quite understand why we weren’t taking the one we already had. I asked Aunt Ann, and she explained it for me.
“Even if we turn off the tracker, that car’s too recognizable. I know for a fact that the agent is perfectly capable of securing another vehicle for us. Give her a few minutes, and then we’ll be on the road again before the AARO can get more agents here.”
I looked at the closed bathroom door, beyond which laid all my Earthly belongings. They had been scattered across the parking lot, but I kinda wanted to recover some of them.
When I asked Aunt Ann, she shook her head and shot me down. “No way. We’re not going back for a single thing. If we leave that mess exactly as it is, it’s likely the AARO reinforcements will draw the same conclusion that you and my agent did. They’ll even think you two were kidnapped as well. It’ll take some time for the news to reach the moles, and once the other side realizes we’re safe, we’ll be long gone. It’s too risky to go back out there, even for a single change of clothes.”
T’raat rubbed my back while we waited for Timber to return. I was sad about losing so much of my stuff, but I had to trust Aunt Ann. She had kept T’raat safe and alive, and for that I’d be forever grateful. She was the most experienced of us all, so I would defer to her until this was all straightened out.
One thing, though … “Aunt Ann?”
She stood at the bathroom door, gun drawn, watching for Timber to get back. “Yeah, sweetie?"
“Can you stop calling Timber ‘agent’? At least for a little while? It’s awkward, and she’s a person, too, y’know. She’s got a family that she’s worried about, same as us, and I doubt hearing herself referred to as ‘agent’ all the time is comforting. She’s about to be a mom, for fuck’s sake.”
Aunt Ann spared me a quick glance before nodding with a grunt. I figured it was the best agreement I’d get out of her in this situation, so I didn’t push it.
Timber showed up a moment later, flushed and out of breath. “Back of the building. I left it running, so we’d better book while the getting’s good.”
“Thank you, A—Thank you, Timber.”
The agent blinked in shock but quickly recovered. “Right. Better to use first names while we’re trying to avoid detection. Smart, Ann.”
I bit back a snicker. I hadn’t intended to get my aunt demoted with my request, but it was a little hilarious that it worked out that way.
T’raat kept a firm grip on my hand as we snuck around the building. Timber had stolen us a beat-up Dodge Ram extended cab. Plenty of room for us, and the bed had a camper top on it. I don’t know how we ended up that lucky, but if push came to shove, we could sleep in the bed in a pinch.
I climbed in back with T’raat, and Aunt Ann took the driver’s seat. We all buckled in, and she gunned the engine to get us up to interstate speed before the AARO reinforcements arrived. I turned in my seat and saw them farther back on the interstate, barely visible but distinct in their black SUV motorcade. They weren’t using lights or sirens—yet—but I wasn’t dumb enough to think it a coincidence, especially when they all turned down the rest area exit.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I leaned against T’raat’s shoulder. Aunt Ann caught my eye in the rearview and raised a warning brow at me.
“No funny business back there, you two. We’re on the run, so there won’t be a third date for quite some time. Get used to restraining yourselves. Timber and I both know that human-Xalanite attractions are amplified for some reason, but acting on those feelings will just endanger us all. Do you both understand me?”
“Yes, director.” T’raat said, just as I groaned out a “Yes, Aunt Ann.”
“And no more ‘director,’ T’raat. I’m giving you permission to call me Ann. Just Ann. We’ll have to make some adjustments for a few days, and it’ll take some getting used to for all of us.”
“Yes … Ann.”
His hesitation sounded suspicious even to my ears, but Aunt Ann just rubbed her temple with a sigh. “I guess that’ll do. Work on your delivery, though.”
I’d expected us to continue towards the intake center, but to my surprise Aunt Ann took a random exit a few miles ahead that led west rather than east. I wanted to ask her about it, but then I remembered that she didn’t yet know who the moles might be in her organization. For better or worse, the four of us were on our own. That meant doing unexpected things, like stealing a car or taking a weird route.
As we headed into Minnesota, I clutched T’raat’s hand for comfort. I had no idea how long we’d be on the road, where we were going, or when or if I’d be able to let Dad know I was safe.
I had thought I was living the adventurous life by sneaking around the farm with T’raat, but I had no idea what I’d be getting into. This was so beyond anything I could even imagine, and if we got out of this alive, it was gonna be one hell of a story to tell at the bar.