Laura Jo Phillips (7 page)

It was obvious that the room had been cleaned, the bed linens changed and the floors washed, but the room still smelled of their Arima, particularly on the small, narrow bed.  There was the scent of several males in the room, and another female, but they could have been anyone.  Cleaning personnel, stewards and officers searching for the missing woman, perhaps even guests Saige had invited in during her occupancy of the compartment.  They had no way of knowing.  Other than the tantalizing scent of lilacs and rain, there was nothing left for them to find. 

When they were certain they had seen and scented the small area thoroughly, Faron opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

“Captain, may we see the compartment used by the other missing female please?”

“Yes yes, of course, right this way,” Captain Graey replied.  “Its just a few doors down actually.  Here it is, here it is.”  Faron watched as Captain Graey typed in a code to open the door, noting that the man sounded and smelled even more nervous than he had earlier.  Faron sighed inwardly.  He and his brothers had no doubt scared the man half out of his wits.

The door slid open and this time Captain Graey stepped aside for the Lobos to enter alone.  They only spent a few moments in the compartment, noting that it had been thoroughly cleaned, just as Saige Taylor’s had been.  Again they found nothing other than the scent of the woman who had occupied the compartment, and the scents of other people, several of them matching the scents in Saige’s compartment, though none seemed remarkable.  The matching scents were probably crew members searching for both women, and the cleaning personnel. 

When they exited the compartment Faron turned to Captain Graey.  “I would ask that we have the use of a vid terminal for a few moments, if that is acceptable,” he said.

Captain Graey nodded.  “Certainly certainly, right this way, you can use the one in my quarters,” he said before hurrying back up the hall. 

A few minutes later he opened the door to his quarters and ushered the Lobos inside.  The three of them were so large that they took up all of the available space in the cramped room, but Certus didn’t mind.  He had offered the use of his personal vid so that he could hear whatever Faron had to say.  Not to mention that he didn’t want his crew to learn any more than necessary about the situation.

Faron activated the vid unit and rapidly entered Jackson Bearen’s vox code.  He didn’t know Bearen’s vid code and didn’t want to take the time to look it up.  The ship’s vid unit would interface with the planetary vox network and allow him to speak ship to surface.  The connection went through within seconds.

“Yes,” Jackson answered.

“Jackson, is Saige Taylor safe?” Faron asked abruptly.

“Yes, of course,” Jackson replied.  “She is currently sleeping in the sitting room off of my office.  Why?”

“She is our Arima,” Faron announced.

There was a long silence.  “Are you certain?” Jackson asked.

“Unless we were shown the wrong compartment, yes.”  Faron hesitated a moment.  “Does she smell like lilacs?”

He heard the sound of Jackson’s sudden indrawn breath.  “And rain,” Jackson said in a low voice.

Faron looked at his brothers and saw that their eyes were blazing with emotion, as he knew his own were.

“Is everything ready for our trip to the ranch?” he asked.

“Almost.  We are preparing a different ground-car for you.  It’s large enough for your
guests
to ride in the trunk and allow Miss Taylor to sleep comfortably if she wishes,” Jackson replied.  “Don’t worry my friend,” he added.  “You have my word as a warrior that we will guard your Arima for you with our very lives.”

“Thank you,” Faron replied with relief.  “Your assurance is of great help to us.  We found nothing of use here, other than the knowledge that Saige Taylor was not the only woman taken from this vessel.”

“What?” Jackson demanded.  “Why were we not informed of that before?”

Faron looked up at Captain Graey.  “I don’t know yet.  We will gather what information is available on the other woman before we head back to Jasan.”

“Until then,” Jackson said.

Jackson disconnected the call and looked up, meeting Clark’s eyes.  “You are not going to believe this one,” he said with a grin.

For a long moment Clark just stared as he repeated the half of the conversation he had heard through his mind.  His mouth fell open in surprise.  “No,” he said.  “Seriously?”

Jackson nodded.  “Damn, lucky Lobos,” Clark said, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Saige.

“Now that’s just not fair,” Rob said from the doorway where he was standing in order to keep an eye on Willy and Frank.  They were currently lying on the floor in the hall, bound in the same manner Saige had been.  “That’s the second Arima that we saw first.” 

Jackson chuckled.  “Don’t worry, I have a feeling our turn will come,” he said. 

“What’s the bad news?” Clark asked. 

“There was another woman missing from that same vessel,” he said, losing his grin.  “Faron’s getting the information on her.”

“Its hard enough to imagine how one woman could go missing from a passenger liner in deep space, but two of them?  And no matter what the Captain’s reason, it makes no sense that we were not told of the second woman when we inquired about Saige.  Its not exactly an ordinary event,” Clark pointed out. 

“Would it even be possible for a vessel like that to be boarded in deep space without half the crew being aware of it?” Rob asked.

Jackson shook his head.  He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure.  They sat in silence for awhile as Jackson pondered the problem from all directions, considering as many possibilities as he could come up with. 

“We need more information,” he said finally.  “Clark, call Ternin and give him a quick run-down on the situation,” he said.  He didn’t like dragging the council into this, but it was beginning to look like he was going to need planet security’s help.  “Ask him to run some checks for us.  We need all missing person reports for the past year, as well as all passenger manifests and visas from vessels that reported passengers missing.  Ask him to focus on females.  If he’s got dossiers on the captains and senior officers for those ships, get them as well.  Starting with the Captain of the vessel Saige was on.”

“Right away,” Clark replied.

“I have a feeling something big is going on here, something more than one or two women going missing,” Jackson continued.  “I think this may be what we’ve been looking for.”

“You think this is what Barc Landon was into?” Rob asked.

“Yes,” Jackson replied.  “The more I think about it, the more it fits.  He worked security, so he had keys to everything while on duty, and always asked for the night shifts with the sole exception being the week Lariah arrived.  He had five private bank accounts with a total of nearly one million credits.  We know damn well he didn’t earn that money working spaceport security.”

“You think he was turning his back while women got smuggled through the cargo bays?” Clark asked.

“For the kind of money he had, I think he took a more active role than simply turning his back,” Jackson said.  “I wonder how many women have actually gone missing and unreported during the last year.”

“Damn!” Clark swore suddenly.

Jackson frowned at his brother and waited.

“When you did the system search for Saige’s luggage, it indicated her things were in Unclaimed Locker 32, correct?”

Jackson nodded. 

“That bothered me at the time but I got sidetracked with our friends in the hall and forgot about it until now,” Clark said with frustration.  “Two years ago I helped with a clean out of the Unclaimed Lockers while looking for contraband.  We found luggage that was up to ten years old.  We got rid of everything that was older than one year.  When we started there were 34 lockers full of unclaimed luggage.  When we finished there were two.”

 “Are you telling me that it took ten years to fill 34 lockers, and only two years to fill 30?” Jackson asked, stunned by this new information. 

“Yes, that is exactly what I am telling you,” Clark replied, feeling sick at the implications of what he was saying.  “How much was in the locker you got Saige’s luggage from, Rob?”

“Ten cubic meters.  Crammed full,” Rob replied. 

“Has someone been abducting women from incoming ships all of this time and we never noticed it?” Jackson asked, staggered by the thought.  “How is this possible?”

Certus Graey waited until the Lobos left his vessel and he had been granted clearance by the skyport to shove off before returning to his quarters.  He sat down at his vid terminal and pulled up the Jasani System Navigation and Communication Regulations and Protocols, scrolling quickly until he found what he wanted.  He swore softly, shook his head and began running some calculations on his electronic pad.  When he was finished he circled a number at the bottom of the pad, checked his watch and sat back to wait.

According to their Regulations and Protocols, the Jasani monitored all vid calls within one light minute of their home planet for security reasons.  At his vessel’s current rate of speed, he would not reach that distance for two hours, fourteen minutes.  Only then would it be safe for him to make the vid call that he knew he now had to make.

Chapter
  5

Saige awoke slowly and reluctantly to the sound of male voices.  For one panicky moment she feared she was back in her compartment on the ship, unable to move, surrounded by strange men.  Then she recognized Jackson Bearen’s voice and relaxed.

As soon as the panic subsided, she realized she was feeling…something.  Something different.  She lay still with her eyes closed as she tried to focus on the strangeness.  It was as though she were feeling the presence of another person.  No, that wasn’t right.  It was more than one person.  Two?  No, three.  Yes, three people.  Men.  Men who were thinking very hard about her. 

Saige frowned.  Outside of her dreams, in the real world, men did not think about her.  If they did, she was certainly unaware of it.  Since she did not think about men, that suited her just fine. 

As she lay motionless trying to figure out what it was she was feeling and why, an intense wave of arousal swept through her body.  Arousal in her dreams with her dream guardians was normal.  But she had never felt arousal while fully awake.  This was so sudden, so unexpected and inexplicable, that she gasped and sat straight up on the sofa.  She crossed her arms in front of her in an unconscious protective gesture that caused her to gasp once more, this time in pain.  She immediately jerked her arms away from her breasts and gasped yet again at the burning ache in her shoulders caused by the sudden movement.

The tell-tale reddish tinge appeared at the edges of her vision, warning her of an impending seizure.  She immediately focused on her deep breathing exercises in an effort to calm herself.  She was aware that there were now several men in the room gathered around the sofa, and that they were talking to her, asking her questions, but she absolutely could not break her focus at the moment.  She had chosen a spot on her lap and she did not move her eyes from it for long minutes.  Finally, the red faded back into nothingness and she was able to take a long, deep relieved breath. 

She closed her eyes for a moment to center herself before opening them to face the men crowded around her.  There was a part of her that wondered why she did not feel nervous at being the focus of so many huge, strong, intense men, especially once she realized that three of the six were complete strangers.  But she did not feel scared, or even worried.  She felt safe and protected.  What was really interesting was that the sense of safety and protection was not coming from the Bearen brothers as she expected.  After all, they had already rescued her, so that would have made sense.  Instead, it was coming from the three strangers. 

“Are you all right Saige?” Jackson asked.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she replied.  “I’m sorry, I just had a bad moment and I needed some time to calm myself.”  Saige was trying to keep her voice normal and even, but there was something about the three strangers that made it hard for her to concentrate on what she was saying.  She hadn’t even really looked at them yet.  She knew they were there, and that they were staring at her, but she could not seem to make her eyes look directly at their faces.  She didn’t understand herself, though she was certain that she had nothing to fear from them.

“There is no need to apologize,” Jackson said.  He cleared his throat and Saige had the oddest feeling that he was nervous.  She couldn’t imagine what would make a man like Jackson Bearen nervous.

“Saige Taylor,” he said, his voice dropping an octave as it took on a more formal tone, “I would present to you the Lobo brothers, Faron, Davon, and Banon.” 

A strange, disorienting sensation swept through Saige, and suddenly she knew not only which of the men was which, but she actually
felt
them bow to her as their names were spoken.  When the introductions were done, she released a long breath, knowing that now she could look at them.  She raised her eyes and tried hard not to gasp.

Saige could hardly believe that the men standing before her were real.  They were taller, stronger and, like the Bearens, somehow just more
male
than the men she was used to seeing back home on Earth.  They were all lean, hard muscle covered with deeply tanned skin that looked so smooth and velvety she had a sudden urge to run her fingers along their arms to see if it felt the way it looked.  Their faces were strongly masculine with bold, straight noses, strong jaws and high cheekbones.  Their eyes were all the same pale shade of blue surrounded by thick, dark lashes.  The only difference between the three of them was the color of their hair.  Faron’s was a deep dark blue, Davon’s was a lighter, medium blue, and Banon’s was light blue, just a shade or two darker than their eyes.