Forest Whispers

( c ) Copyright by Kaitlyn O'Connor, July
2004

Cover Art by Jenny Dixon, ( c ) copyright
March 2014

ISBN
978-1-60394-592-9

Smashwords Edition

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters,
events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be
confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is
merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Protocol was such a royal pain in the ass,
Ranger Lana Eloy thought as she knelt and bowed to the monarch of
Ata Prime, in the Kilkain Galaxy. “Your highness, I am Ranger Lana
Eloy of the United Confederation of Planets’ Intergalactic Rangers.
I have tracked a killer to your world and seek permission to
apprehend the criminal on Ata Prime soil.”

Rex Pimetrius, an ancient with steel colored
hair and fierce eyes, studied her skeptically for several moments.
“A female killer?”

Lana’s lips tightened. She knew what was
coming. The patriarchal society of the barbarians of Ata Prime was
well known for their attitude toward women—which was why she’d been
ordered to stand down when she’d tracked the serial killer, Sadin
Quyz, to Ata Prime until another ranger could be sent—a male.

She wasn’t about to let the son-of-a-bitch
have the chance to slip through her fingers again, however—and she
sure as hell wasn’t letting someone else make her bust when she’d
been trailing this bastard for three years.

Resisting the urge to glare daggers at the
man for his condescending attitude, Lana kept her gaze trained on
the Rex Pimetrius’ hairy toes, left bare between the leggings and
the scandals he wore. “He is a murderer of women, sire,” she said
coolly.

“
Perhaps his woman displeased him,”
Rex Pimetrius responded, equally cool.

Rage boiled through Lana, suffusing her pale
skin and giving her anger away even as she fought to control it.
“Sadin Quyz is a predator. He has raped and killed more than a
hundred women—that we know of—on ten worlds. He will continue
killing—because he enjoys it—until he is stopped.”

“
He will not dare to harm one of our
women,” Pimetrius said confidently. “I cannot fathom why they would
send a female to do the work of a man if this Sadin Quyz is so
dangerous.”

He sounded genuinely curious, which was
almost as bad as when he was being deliberately insulting. She felt
like informing him that she’d been assigned the case because she
was the best ‘man’ they had, but not only did she doubt that he
would believe her, most likely he would be amused, and she wasn’t
certain her temper could handle much more of his superior male
attitude. She lifted a limpid blue gaze at him. “Because they had
no one else, sire,” she said, smiling with a tremendous effort.

His brows rose then his eyes narrowed on her
face. After a moment, he turned and lifted a finger, summoning
someone from the rear of the royal audience chamber.

A shadow fell over Lana that was so massive
she couldn’t prevent the instinctive glance she sent toward the
mountain of a man that had come to kneel beside her. Like all the
Ata Prime males she’d seen since she’d arrived a couple of hours
earlier, his skin pigmentation combined with their sun had produced
dark red flesh tones. Typically, they seemed to be dark haired.
This one’s hair was as dark as a black hole, glinting with silver
and bluish highlights in the light from the torches that lined the
chamber walls. Though his hair was darker than most, the style was
the same—plucked, or shaved, from all but the center of his head
and running from the front hairline to the base of his skull, but
allowed to grow long instead of trimmed to a spiky ridge as the
statesmen wore theirs.

He wore the armor typical of the Ata
warrior—the stiff but flexible hide of some armored type of
animal—which consisted of leggings, lower arm and elbow guards,
shoulder guards and a cod piece.

The specimen beside her was wearing a
shoulder guard and cod piece ‘trimmed’ with the teeth of one hell
of a beast and she wondered if the tattoo on the upper right of his
chest, which disappeared beneath one shoulder guard, was the same
that sported those wicked four to six inch teeth.

The cod piece was impressive enough without
the teeth—if the anaconda sleeping inside of it looked anything
like the rest of him ….

The muscles of his upper arms were
massive—certainly as big as and very likely bigger than her
thighs—his body was a mass of muscle, period.

Reluctantly, she conceded that Rex Pimetrius
might be right about the women of Ata being safe from Sadin Quyz.
He was insane, but he wasn’t stupid—she didn’t doubt in the least
that Quyz had headed for Ata primarily to get her off his tail.

Unless these monsters were in the habit of
allowing their women to roam unprotected—which she doubted—it
seemed unlikely Sadin would get the opportunity to snatch a female
here.

She hadn’t seen a female since she’d arrived
and had to wonder what the women looked like.

“
The captain of my guard, Corin
Thantos, is an excellent tracker. He will capture this criminal and
we will give him to the rangers when they come for him.” He waved a
hand at her. “You may go and tell your people.”

Lana ground her teeth at the dismissal and
sent a narrow eyed look at the man beside her.

A jolt of surprise went through her when she
discovered that he was looking directly at her now. His face had
the lean, chiseled look of the high testosterone male, made even
more fierce by the dark, predatory eyes and the red war paint that
covered the upper half of his face.

Despite the jolt of surprise, she met his
speculative glance steadily. “You are most gracious, your
highness,” she said, dismissing Corin Thantos after a moment and
returning her attention to the Rex. “I will report your suggestions
to my superior. I’m sure he will appreciate the fact that, as a
member planet of the United Confederation of Planets, which falls
within the jurisdiction of the Intergalactic Rangers, you have
graciously agreed to cooperate fully with the ranger assigned to
the case. As the ranger assigned to apprehend Sadin Quyz, I will
take possession of the prisoner—once I have captured him—and remove
him from Ata. I appreciate your offering Captain Thantos as a guide
since I’m not familiar with the terrain of Ata.”

Rising, Lana bowed once more and backed
across the chamber until she’d reached the point where it was
considered polite to turn her back on Rex Pimetrius.

The ‘mountain’ fell into step beside her as
she left the audience chamber.

Lana ignored him, stalking furiously down
the corridor toward the great room of the Rex Pimetrius’ palace.
Any hope she’d nurtured that she would lose him along the way was
dashed when they reached the great doors of the palace. He followed
her through.

She stopped once they’d put some distance
between themselves and the palace, planting her hands on her hips
as she turned to face him. “Look, I know you don’t want to be
bothered with my little problem—and the truth is, I work best
alone—so why don’t we see if we can’t come to an agreement that
makes us both happy?”

He looked her over speculatively. “You are
fortunate you are an outworlder and wear the badge of the
Intergalactic Ranger, otherwise you would be sitting in the dungeon
now. Are you a ranger?”

It was too much. Grinding her teeth, Lana
poked him in the chest with her index finger. “I am not just ‘a’
ranger. I happen to be chief detective in the homicide division,
Captain Thantos. I followed protocol as a courtesy to your
government, but I don’t take orders from men, no matter how damned
big they are! Got that? And you and I both know that the only
reason Rex Pimetrius offered me any courtesy at all was because he
didn’t want a war with the CPA.

“
I followed protocol. I introduced
myself, explained my mission—
now
, I’m going to complete my
mission.”

A bemused expression clouded his features as
he stared down at her. Slowly, a frown gathered between his brows.
“Rex Pimetrius has ordered me to find the man. There is no need for
you to endanger yourself, little one.”

Lana blushed to the roots of her hair, too
stunned at first even for anger to set in. Little one? She was five
nine and weighed a hundred sixty pounds, most of it muscle, and she
could go toe to toe with just about any man and come out on top.
Was the asshole calling her a child? She opened her mouth to
annihilate him, but just what did one say to a barbarian twice
their size who considered the fact that she wasn’t as big as he was
made her inadequate and/or incompetent? After a moment, she merely
turned and headed back to where she’d left her craft.

He didn’t follow her. That was a relief, at
least.

Having gathered what she needed, Lana
secured the craft and checked her tracker. She’d had the good
fortune to gather a sample of Sadin’s DNA from one of the more
recent crime scenes, which was the only reason she’d managed to
stay on his tail for the past six months. Unfortunately, the
device, a newly developed crime tool, didn’t have much of a range.
It could pick up his DNA signature if he’d been in the general
vicinity within the past sixty to seventy two hours, but that was
about all it was good for—telling her where he’d been, not where he
was.

She wasn’t knocking it. Whatever her fellow
rangers thought of the tracker, it had not only saved her a lot of
wasted time, it had kept her so hot on Sadin’s tail he hadn’t had
the chance to snatch a woman in months. She’d come within a hair’s
breadth of catching him twice since she’d gotten it. This time, she
would.

He hadn’t made a kill in months. He was
bound to be on edge, desperate to find another woman—which meant he
was going to slip up. This time, on this world, he was going to
make a mistake, and, when he did, she was going to nail his ass to
the wall.

She had a mountain of hard evidence on the
bastard. All she had to do was catch him and the court system would
see to it that he paid for every life he’d taken.

Which was one of the main reasons she hadn’t
wanted the barbarian giant along with her. She knew the brute
mentality that typically went with that much brawn. If he caught up
to Sadin, likely all she’d get was a stinking carcass.

She wanted to watch Sadin squirm when he was
led to his execution. She wanted him to have time to think about
the fact that he was going to die as horribly as those he’d
murdered.

An eye for an eye. It might be gruesome as
hell, but it sure made killers think twice about torturing their
victims—most of them anyway.

Shaking her thoughts, Lana swept the area
with the tracker. The strongest signature was coming from the
narrow trail that led from the landing field into the forest.

Lana felt her nerves jump. He was on the
hunt already—looking for a likely victim in an out of the way place
where he could torture her at his leisure.

“
Shit!”

Lana took the trail at a jog. Ground
transport would’ve been helpful, but somehow she doubted Rex
Pimetrius would furnish anything for her. According to the
computer, Sadin had landed two days before. She tapped the button
in her ear jack. “Computer—call me up a map of this area.”

“
Working.”

The computer was silent for several minutes.
“The most current map of this area of Ata Prime is ten years
old.”

“
Well, shit!” Lana exclaimed in
disgust. “That’s really helpful.”

“
Shall I try to communicate with the
local computer?”