Chapter Three
Madelaine straightened her posture, reminding herself of who she was and what she was doing here. She’d worked very hard to get here. Deal with it. Don’t be soft. Think of what you had to do. Of why.
It was the standard pep talk she gave herself to promote focus instead of the anarchy that tried to run roughshod over her mind whenever things got tough.
Of course Jack was angry. He had every right to be.
She needed his help to begin her dire chore, such as it was. The very first task on the list likely could not be achieved without him. And she needed him for much longer than the twenty-four hours she’d paid for.
There were several things she was going to have to talk him into doing or risk derailing this whole endeavor from the get-go. He had to agree to her first problematic request and then a string of others if she hoped to succeed.
If he didn’t just walk out and leave her in the next few seconds, that is.
She had to try.
She would give it her best shot because the stakes were so very high. Failure was not only not an option, it wasn’t even in the top five list of difficult obligations she faced.
Madelaine took a deep breath. She had told her superior, Quell-don—who’d trained her for this mission under the auspices of the secret Paladin Cabal—what she would likely have to reveal to get the help she needed.
Quell-don, who must have known the difficulties she would face, had not been pleased.
He’d demanded she not give over any information to the uninitiated unless not doing so would compromise her mission.
She had agreed, knowing that Quell-don and the Paladin Cabal expected her to say absolutely nothing at all.
She thought it was foolish to share no information and expect those around her to comply with her every need, spoken or not. Especially the man she’d abandoned, even though it had not been her choice to do so. The consequences were unthinkable. So, forward she went, best as she could.
“Do you want me to tell you why I left five years ago? Or should I just get straight to the difficult favor I need from you?”
She watched Jack’s profile intently. He was as beautiful as he’d been the last time she’d seen him, when they’d said their temporary—or so they’d thought—goodbyes. More so.
How could he look better than she remembered? They’d been in college the last time she’d held him, made plans with him—
Stop it.
Jack had been Alpha tall and more filled out than many of the other males their age. Even so, he was clearly a man now. Taller. Heavier. He carried himself with assurance, not swagger. He was also more tempting than she had expected.
“Just get straight to it,” he muttered. Like he wanted their twenty-four-hour date to be over already.
She’d thought that if he wanted to know why she’d left him five years ago, it would mean he still cared about her.
She’d been willing to risk harsh punishment from the Paladin Cabal and Quell-don to give him what truth she could, willing to risk the problems it might cause her when she returned to Alpha-Prime and her duty. Apparently, he didn’t care.
She swallowed bitter regret.
“I have been tasked with a very important—” she paused, gathering her inner warrior-girl strength “—errand is what I’ll call this for now.”
“Errand?” he scoffed, as if he disliked her word choice. Sure. He would probably dislike everything she said from this day forward.
“Yes. Errand. There is more than one step to this errand, but I won’t know what those might be until the first task is completed.”
“Fine, I’ll play along. What is the first task for your errand?”
“It’s something I’m hoping you specifically can help me with, starting tonight. I need you to accompany me on a short trip.”
That made him turn his head and look at her. “A short trip? Tonight? How short?” His furrowed gaze said the trip better be less than twenty-four hours.
“I need you to accompany me to Suspicion, Minnesota, and help me get an appointment with the Secret Keeper as soon as possible. Time is of the essence.”
Jack tilted his head back and laughed out loud, sounding genuinely amused.
“You have got to be kidding me. Beyond the fact you shouldn’t even know about Suspicion, Minnesota, or the Secret Keeper, what makes you think I can get you in to see him after taking a ‘short trip’ there?
Which, trust me, would not be at all short. ”
“I know your brother, Diesel Grey, the Fearless Leader of the Big Bang Truck Stop, has a relationship with the Secret Keeper. I know that you and your brothers all take turns going up to meet with the Secret Keeper regularly, since you found out about Suspicion, Minnesota, and the Lost Colony.”
Jack looked surprised that she seemed to know so much information that was largely restricted to Diesel’s inner circle. His expression flattened. “And how do you know all that?”
She shrugged. “Can’t say.”
His gaze narrowed. “Can’t or won’t?”
She pushed out an exasperated sigh. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if I’m doing any favors for you—and that’s debatable—I want to know what the overall plan is. I want to know in advance about all the nitty-gritty details regarding this errand you have in store for me before I decide whether to help you or not.”
Whether he’d help her or not?
He had to help her. He just had to.
Madelaine closed her eyes to think. She could not outline her entire plan to him.
She didn’t yet know all of the tasks she faced.
Quell-don had given her an old envelope with a message written on parchment that said she had to go to Earth—specifically, Alienn, Arkansas—and find a way to get in to see the Secret Keeper in Suspicion, Minnesota.
He’d told her little else before handing her the keys to a ship called the Paladin Seeker and sending her on her way.
This mission was partly a madman’s scavenger hunt, where she had to go to the first place to find or receive a package that would lead her to the next package and so on until she’d acquired all of the pieces.
In fact, a madman had set this entire scheme up when he stole something vitally important, broke it into pieces and scattered them across at least three galaxies so he could force a ransom from Alpha-Prime and other powerful planets.
While the horrible person who had done this terrible thing had been caught, he had not given over all the information needed to piece together the universe-saving device it was her mission to reassemble.
He had been uncooperative, delivering the vital information in dribs and drabs over the past decade, hoping to get himself a better deal.
She thought he should spend the rest of his life in a gulag, but no one asked her.
The elaborate search-and-recover operation Madelaine had been tasked with was the Paladin Cabal’s best idea to keep anyone else from stealing the important device. The theory was that if the pieces were kept scattered until needed, no one person could hold the device for ransom again.
Part of her job involved figuring some things out as she went along. She hoped she was up to the task.
No one told her how many pieces there were, but Quell-don believed there were fewer than ten.
That was her only guidance.
Once she’d gathered all the pieces, she would find out where she had to take them for assembly and, ultimately, where she needed to be to stop something catastrophic from happening. That was all she knew about her dire errand.
Madelaine’s quest started with a visit to Suspicion to meet with the Secret Keeper, a man she’d never heard of until her last briefing.
Jack, apparently annoyed by the time she’d stood there with her eyes closed, mulling what she could tell him about the mission, snapped, “Tick-tock!”
Her lids popped open. “All right. I’ll tell you what I can but I can’t share every detail. At least not yet.”
He frowned as she took a step in his direction. “I promise to tell you all I know, but as I said, even I don’t know everything. Yet. When I find out, I’ll tell you. It’s the best I can do.”
Madelaine took one more step closer. His familiar, tantalizing scent hit her like a brick to the face, shattering the very essence of her soul.
She sucked in a deep breath, did her best to ignore how great he smelled, and said, “The only thing I know for certain at this point is that I must get a meeting with the Secret Keeper as soon as possible. In theory, I’ll receive something that will lead me to the next task I need to complete and so on. ”
“That’s quite an interesting errand,” he said, sounding grudgingly intrigued.
“Yes.” Don’t I know it.
Jack turned his whole body to face her, and she was glad to see his anger seemed to be fading. “Look, I don’t know if I can get you in to see the Secret Keeper, even if we could get to Suspicion and back in twenty-four hours, which we can’t. It’s a sixteen-hour drive up there one way.”
“We can’t fly?”
“Nope.” His sardonic look said he thought she should know that.
Madelaine shook her head. She’d been away from Earth too long. She’d forgotten the basics. Right.
The Alphas living on Earth were all hiding in plain sight from the human inhabitants.
Any kind of flight in a non-human craft was risky business and typically not ever allowed without yards of paperwork.
She was certain this would not qualify, even if she was interested in seeking permission from the powers that operated the Big Bang Truck Stop.
She was not. They were not even supposed to know she was in Alienn.
Driving was the only sanctioned mode of transportation on Earth for Alphas. And even for a drive, she should seek special dispensation from the belowstairs security folks in the Big Bang Truck Stop. She was not going to ask.
Quell-don told her she had special privileges as a member of the Paladin Cabal that meant she could circumvent the local leadership, if need be. She couldn’t take the chance that they wouldn’t respect the secrecy of what she was doing. She hoped Jack wouldn’t tell them.
“But you could get me up there within our twenty-four-hour time limit, right?”
“In theory.”
“Okay. That’s good enough for me.”
“Except that I haven’t agreed to this crazy plan of yours yet. And it would be unlikely that I could get a special meeting with the Secret Keeper.”
“Why? Don’t you have regularly scheduled meetings?”
“Yes. And the regular meeting happened a week ago. The next one won’t be for another month.”
Madelaine internally slumped. She needed that meeting with the Secret Keeper. Couldn’t go any further without it. She also couldn’t wait a month. She looked deeply into Jack’s eyes. “Are you certain the meeting was a week ago?”
He met her gaze but seemed less impacted by their shared stare. “Yes. Because I was the one who went up there.”
Madelaine closed the distance between them until she almost touched him. He didn’t move a muscle. “What would it take?”
“What?”
“What do I need to promise, ensure, or spend in order for you to take me up there to meet with the Secret Keeper as soon as possible?” Her time was critically limited, according to the Paladin Cabal.
A clock was ticking somewhere and she couldn’t let that alarm go off before she gathered all the pieces, had them assembled and delivered to the final destination. She just couldn’t.
While twenty-four hours wasn’t truly her time limit, she did have one. And time was running out.
“Fine,” Jack said. “I’ll help you get to Suspicion. I’ll do my best to get you in to see the Secret Keeper, but keep in mind that it won’t be up to me. It’ll be up to him.”
Relief filled her right up. She almost sagged against him. “Thank you,” she said, her tone soft and squishy. Stop it. Don’t be soft. Think of what you had to do to get here.
“Oh, don’t thank me yet,” Jack said. “At best, I’m a reluctant participant, and at worst, I’m an adversarial combatant you’ll have to deal with every single minute we’re together.”
Madelaine nodded and stuck her hand out, ready to make their unholy deal. Jack took her fingers in his.
The moment they touched, she was transported back five years.
Before she’d been summoned.
Before she’d left him.
Before she realized what was going to be required of her with an unwanted “opportunity” thrust upon her by right of birth and the unlucky death of a distant cousin she’d never even met.
Madelaine savored the familiarity of his hand in hers as her heart pounded hard in her chest. Maybe it had been a bad idea to touch him.
At least she didn’t seem to be alone in whatever was happening.
Jack seemed equally taken aback by their sudden physical contact.
His body had straightened the moment they touched.
She should have released him, but found she couldn’t let him go. Not yet. I just want a few seconds to remember the way we were.
Surprisingly, he didn’t jerk away from her.
Jack’s gaze found hers as their hands remained connected. His expression seemed to intensify as he stared into her face, her eyes. Madelaine was lost in him, in their connection, in the love she had for him, even though she wasn’t allowed to love him anymore.
Fate had decreed a path she was destined to follow. A path that didn’t include Jack. But for now, she soaked up the warmth and love she felt for this extraordinary man.
Jack Grey. The one. Her one.