Malfunction, page 24
He’d said he loved her.
That was huge. She got the impression that speaking those particular words was a first for him. That made two of them. But it had seemed like the right thing to say at the time. Because it was true. When she’d said it, though, she’d thought they had only a limited time left. Now there was the possibility of a new home. The chance that they weren’t going to die imminently.
Did that change things?
She snorted. Hell, it changed everything.
Would she have to live on only to see Logan grow old and die? Would she even get to see it? Even if they survived this, Logan was a serving soldier. He’d probably not be allowed to go where he liked or do what he liked. They’d probably end up on different planets, and she’d never see him again. Her insides tied up in knots at the thought.
Suddenly, he straightened, his eyes widening. He came across and stood in front of her. “I remembered what was bothering me.”
“And that is…?”
“Layla told me she had no family. This was shortly after I was woken. She said she was an orphan like me.”
Katia stopped her pacing. She tried to wrap her brain around the implications. “So she already knew her family was not on board the Trakis Three.” It wasn’t proof, but it was enough to convince her they’d found their killer. Right beside them all along. Mad bitch. And she’d seemed so nice. “We need to get that proof.”
“As soon as we reach the Trakis One.”
“If she doesn’t blow us up first.”
Dylan popped his head over the seat in front. “We’re not going to blow up. I’ve checked. No bombs. Systems are all good. Nothing is going to happen.”
“Good. Make sure it doesn’t.” She sighed. “So talk to me. We’ve found a new home. That’s pretty momentous. What do you think happens next?”
He squeezed her shoulder. “I was talking to Callum about it while you disappeared to put your panties back on.”
She jabbed him in the ribs. “And?”
“Well, apparently, they’re still awaiting the results to confirm a match, but it all looks positive. They’ve sent out probes that should get there a few hours ahead of us, and once the readings come back from those, we’re good to go.”
“But go where?”
“There are at least twenty planets in the system. The idea is that each ship will land on a different planet. I suppose in case we meet hostile aliens on some of them, or poisonous gases, or man-eating plants or…”
“Okay, enough. I get the picture. So we’ll be on different planets.”
“You could stay on the Trakis One.”
It just wasn’t possible. While she wouldn’t say they were her people, on the Trakis Two at least they understood what she was. She didn’t have to hide her true nature all the time as she would if she chose a life among humans.
“Or you could come back to the Trakis Two,” she suggested.
He sighed. “I’d have to go AWOL. They’d probably come and get me. Besides, you’re…” He trailed off as if unsure how to continue without offending her. Then he shook his head. “You know, all I ever wanted, for as long as I can remember, was to fit in. To belong somewhere.”
And he clearly didn’t think he belonged with her. And could she blame him? “I don’t want to lose you,” she said.
“You’ll lose me anyway. You said it yourself. You’ll live a long time and I won’t.” He pulled her closer against him. “Let’s not think about it right now. Let’s get this done with and then we’ll see what the options are, whether we have any. I won’t let you go without a fight.”
But maybe it was a fight they’d lost before they started.
“Take your seats,” Dylan said. “We’re about to dock on the Trakis One. And we’re all still alive.”
“Super.”
…
The shuttle landed, and the engine sound died to nothing.
Two rides without a catastrophe.
Logan concentrated on that. Otherwise, he didn’t know what he was thinking. Everything was all muddled up. He didn’t want to lose Katia but couldn’t see how he could keep her. He’d told her he wouldn’t go AWOL. But maybe he’d been lying. Maybe with Rico’s help, he could disappear. But why would the vampire help him? He was only still alive because Katia had made Rico promise not to kill him.
At that moment, a voice came over the comm unit.
“Please keep your seats until you are given permission to leave the shuttle.”
That was new. He sank back down again. What the hell was going on?
“This doesn’t look good,” Adam said.
Logan got up and crossed the small space to stand beside Adam’s chair. The other man waved a hand at the screen, which showed a view of the docking bay.
“Balls,” Logan muttered. A group of around fifteen men were heading toward the shuttle. What the hell was going on?
“What is it?” Katia asked, peering around him. “Are they soldiers?”
“Obviously.” The men were in uniform. Not dress uniform like Logan but combat ready. And they were all armed. He recognized them—they’d trained together before they left Earth—though they weren’t in his unit. They must have been woken up. But why? As they drew closer, they fanned out around the shuttle, drawing their weapons. Behind them, he caught sight of Major Pryce and Captain Stevens and, behind them, Layla.
Shit.
Could she be working with someone?
The comm crackled to life again. “We would like you to remove any weapons you may be carrying and leave the shuttle in single file with your hands in the air.”
“Not going to happen,” Dylan muttered. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“Well, nice of you to wait until now to share that little insight,” Katia snapped. “What do we do? Can we turn around and fly away?”
“Not a chance. The doors closed behind us. They have to be opened by ship’s controls.”
“Can we shoot our way out?” she asked. “Don’t these things have blasters or something?”
“Ballsy,” Dylan said. “I like it. But unfortunately no—we don’t have blasters.”
“How many weapons do we have between us?”
Was she crazy? Was she seriously contemplating fighting their way out? They didn’t even know what was going on. This might merely be a precaution. Though he couldn’t see why. It made no sense. Nothing since he’d woken up made any sense.
He was getting a bad feeling about this. But it wasn’t like they had a choice.
“Come out in the next minute or the shuttle will be gassed. On your feet or carried out. It’s up to you.”
Adam made to draw his weapon, but Dylan shook his head. “We’re not going to win this one. Crap, Rico is going to be pissed.” He stood up and unbuckled the weapons belt at his waist and dropped it onto the chair behind him. Adam did the same. Logan wasn’t armed. Neither was Katia—not a lot of places to hide a weapon with a dress like that.
Logan leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. “Whatever you do, don’t piss them off.”
“Ha. He knows her so well,” Dylan muttered.
Katia scowled but didn’t respond.
“They’re likely to shoot first and ask questions later. We’ll get this sorted.” He kissed her again because he did have a bad feeling, and he wasn’t so sure they would get this sorted. There was a good chance Layla was way ahead of them.
He put his hand on Katia’s waist and ushered her toward the door. She resisted for a second then gave in to the gentle pressure.
As she stood in the doorway, she raised her hands then made her way slowly down the ramp. Logan stood for a second, gazing down into the docking bay. The place was crowded. All the men had their weapons trained on them. He glanced down and saw a red dot on his chest. Shit, they meant business. His skin prickled as he walked slowly down the ramp, expecting to feel the bite of a bullet any moment, all his senses trained on Katia in front of him. There was no reason to hurt her, but every cell was screaming to protect her. And there was nothing he could do. Yet. Except maybe talk his way out of this.
He came to a halt at the bottom of the ramp. Katia was a couple of feet away to his left, Dylan and Adam to his right.
He searched the group, but Layla had disappeared.
Pryce came through the armed men and stopped in front of them. Should he talk to Pryce now? But what if he was working with Layla? There was definitely something going on between the two of them.
“What’s this about, sir?” Logan asked.
Pryce looked him up and down. His face was expressionless, but Logan had an idea the other man was enjoying himself. Bastard probably hadn’t had this much fun in decades.
“We have been given information that the terrorist survived the explosion on the Trakis Three and is now hiding out on the Trakis Two. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that the captain of the Trakis Two is in fact an impostor and is aiding and abetting the terrorist.”
“That’s bollocks,” Katia snapped.
He wished she’d keep quiet.
Pryce smiled now as he looked at her. “And we have further reason to believe that Detective Mendoza was sent here with the intent to sabotage the investigation and make sure the truth never came out.”
“And that’s total bollocks,” Katia yelled.
The captain spoke for the first time. “We’re not holding you responsible, son.” Christ, he hated it when officers called him son. It made him want to punch them on the fucking nose. “We understand you were duped by this woman, but at this point, with the end in sight, we can’t take any chances. You’ll be incarcerated until we have time to investigate fully and question the captain of the Trakis Two.”
“Good luck with that,” Dylan muttered.
“We have to be seen to be doing everything in our powers to keep the fleet safe and ensure the future of mankind. We are doing God’s work.”
Pompous ass. Logan looked around, searching for a way out of this. Once he was locked up, he couldn’t do anything.
A prickle ran down his spine. Something made him glance to the side, some sixth sense that had always held true in combat. He honed in on the soldier to the far right. The man’s finger was tightening on the trigger of his weapon. Logan saw the intent in his eyes. The gun wasn’t trained on him, but on Katia.
He didn’t even think. He was flying toward her. He knocked her to the floor as a searing pain punched him in the side. He went down, landed on top of her. Had one brief glimpse of her wide eyes staring up at him, filled with panic. He wanted to say something, but his vision was blurring, going dark at the outside, his mind numbing.
He tried to open his mouth, but the world was fading, and he wanted to stay.
And everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Okay, so he wasn’t dead.
Or maybe he was dead, and he was in hell. Suffering some sort of eternal punishment that would explain the pain pulsing through his head.
Someone slapped him across the face, and he growled.
“He’s coming around.” He recognized Adam’s voice.
“About fucking time,” Dylan said. Another slap, and Logan forced his eyes open. He blinked, trying to focus, but the room was swimming around him. Dylan appeared in front of him, coming in and out of focus. Hand raised.
“Slap me again and I’ll rip your fucking hand off,” Logan muttered.
“Ha. You could try.” He lowered his arm. “How do you feel?”
Christ, his brain hurt. “Like I’ve been hit over the head with something heavy.”
“You struck your head when you went down.”
It was becoming a habit. He’d gone down? He tried to force his brain to work, but it wasn’t cooperating. Closing his eyes to stop the swimming, he concentrated hard. It started to come back to him. He’d pushed Katia out of the way so they wouldn’t shoot her. He’d been shot instead. In the side. Except he couldn’t feel anything in his side, and every other time he’d been shot, it had hurt like hell.
He pushed himself up so he was sitting, a groan escaping him.
Looking around, he found Dylan and Adam, but no Katia. Pain gripped his chest, squeezing his heart. His head swam. Had they shot her after all? After he’d gone down? “Katia?” he forced the question out.
“Still alive as far as we know. They put her in the other cell. There are only two, so we got to share.”
Logan patted his hand over his body, trying to find where the bullet had hit, but there was nothing. “I was shot.”
“Tranquilizer dart. Meant for your girlfriend.”
“I thought…” He’d thought she was about to die, and he’d jumped in like an idiot. Just responded to an impulse to save her, whatever the cost.
“It was adorable, really. Though, for a moment, I thought we were all dead. Lot of trigger-happy soldiers out there.”
“Why were they taking out Katia?”
“Apparently, they’ve discovered some evidence that implicates her in the terrorist attack. She’s in league with the terrorist, who is now alive and well on the Trakis Two. With Rico.”
He remembered now. “Except there is no fucking terrorist.” He rubbed at the back of his neck where an impressive lump was forming. Another.
“Not according to the captain. He’s real and he’s in league with Satan and he’s hiding out on the Trakis Two. Katia was sent to mess up the investigation. And she did a great job of it. Apparently, she’s a modern day Mata Hari, using her delectable little body to lure the poor, susceptible soldier—that’s you, by the way—astray. And she could very well have the ability to blow us all up, which is why they were knocking her out.”
“Was she conscious?”
“Och aye,” Adam said. “She surrendered when you went down. She was quite distraught. There might have even been a few tears. Until they showed her that you were just taking a nap. Then she looked a wee bit pissed off. They searched her, handcuffed her, and threw her in the cell. She’ll be fine.”
No, none of them would be fine. He had a really bad feeling about this. Another bad feeling—something else that was becoming a habit. He was getting fed up with them, but he couldn’t shake the idea that Layla wasn’t finished. That right now she was in control. And—more than ever—he didn’t want to die.
That was a first. Not that he’d ever actively courted death, but neither had he looked to the future. Now he did. He wanted to live and go exploring this new world, and he wanted Katia beside him while he did it. For however long she would put up with him. Until he was too old and decrepit to keep up with her.
So they had a murderer to stop. Maybe more than one. Did Layla have an accomplice?
How the hell was he supposed to find out from inside a cell?
He closed his eyes and cleared his mind.
“Are you going to sleep again?” Dylan asked. “Because we have things to do.”
What things? They were locked in a cell. “Just give me a minute. I need to think.”
Layla had said that she sometimes visited the other ships.
She must have made a trip to the Trakis Three, hadn’t been able to resist going and taking a look at her children, and they hadn’t been there. How had she reacted? He could only imagine.
So she’d killed the interlopers.
And, after that, she’d dug a little deeper. Found out that other crew families had also been replaced. So she’d killed again and again. Maybe out of genuine outrage, but also to muddy the waters. So if the deaths did come to light, the finger wouldn’t be pointed directly at her.
She’d been on the shuttle before they had taken off for the Trakis Three the first time. She could have easily disabled the guidance systems and overridden the auto controls.
She’d nearly died with them when the Trakis Three had exploded. Except she would have known the timing. She might have even detonated the explosives from on board the shuttle. As she sat behind them, fiddling with her bag. Could she really be that ruthless? And still come across so nice? He could understand her killing the people who had taken her daughters’ lives. He could even understand the others. But to kill over ten thousand people?
If he was right, then she’d also tried to kill him and Katia with poisoned gas on the Trakis Two. She couldn’t have known he would go off in search of food. If he hadn’t, they would have both died that day. Had they been getting too close?
“You finished thinking yet?” Dylan asked.
He opened his eyes. “Yeah.” He had to talk to the captain. Because he was guessing Layla wasn’t finished.
Dylan was seated on the cot bed. Adam leaned against the wall by the door. They were both looking at him, speculation in their eyes and something else. “What?” he asked.
Dylan ran his hands through his hair, rose to his feet, took the few steps so he was standing over Logan. “There’s something we need to do.”
“What?” Was he going to die after all? Had that been their plan all along? Part of Rico’s orders. If that was the case, why hadn’t they finished him off while he was out cold? Whatever, he wasn’t going to take it sitting down. He pushed himself to his feet, staggered, balanced himself with a hand on the wall while his legs steadied under him. He glanced between the two men. Except they weren’t men. If they were, then he might have had a chance to take them down. But they were werewolves. Katia had told him that even in human form they were much faster and stronger than any human.
“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.
Dylan studied him for a moment then gave a small shrug. “That’s up to you.”
Well, that was a no-brainer. “Then I vote a no.”
Dylan laughed. “Not that easy, I’m afraid.”
Balls.
Suddenly, he was fed up with all the playing around. If he was going to die, then get it the fuck over with. Except he wasn’t just going to stand here. He might have no chance in a fight against two werewolves, but that didn’t mean he was going to roll over and let them kill him.
