Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 (14 page)

Roan snapped his fingers and looked grim. “Miles Gordon. That’s where I’d heard the name before. I remember when that happened. At least a dozen men were killed. I had no idea any of them had been married, though.”

“At least two were. But why would you know?”

Roan shrugged. “It’s part of my job. My official job,” he amended with a wry look at Sonja. “I manage the miners’ effects when they get released or when something happens to them that forces them to be returned to Gaia, like a serious injury. Or death, as in this case.”

“So why would they tell you about the men’s wives?”

“When a miner dies, his body and belongings are sent to his family back in Gaia. His wife and children go as well.”

“You mean his family is considered a belonging?” Sonja couldn’t help the anger in her voice.

Roan waved his hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. As I said, wives and children don’t officially exist in the prison, so when something happens to the men, they can’t be kept here in the prison quarters. As a result, we send them home to Gaia.”

“But Gaia isn’t Suna’s home,” Sonja said. “Maybe his family didn’t want her. Or maybe he didn’t have a family back on Gaia.”

Sulla looked troubled. “Or maybe his family wasn’t told about her.”

A frown took over Roan’s face. “It was my job to tell them if he was married. That wasn’t in the file I was given. The family would always want to at least meet the wife, and if there wasn’t any family, the dead man would have had savings the wife would inherit. We’d send her to Gaia under any circumstances, though. But the point is I know I didn’t process any wives from that accident, and I should have if they existed.”

Sulla’s worried expression deepened, and even though there was no one but them there, her voice lowered. “I’ve been wanting to talk to someone about this but didn’t know who. You never know who to trust, and I guess it didn’t matter that much to me until it happened to Suna.”

Sonja reached out her hand and patted her sister’s hand. “You can tell us. What’s going on?”

“It’s something that’s been happening for the past two or three years. Everyone notices, but no one says anything about it. There have been so many accidents, and those who are known to speak their minds often are among the dead.” She took a deep breath and stared at them. “When a married man dies here in Delta Residence, and he and his wife haven’t had children, his wife often disappears.”

Roan shook his head. “As I said, they are sent home.”

A bitter smile came over Sulla’s face. “Perhaps they are. But then why do they come back six months later and married to someone else?” she said dryly.

For a moment Roan stared at her, then he looked appalled. “Sweet Gaia. Do you know what you’re saying?”

She nodded. “Yes I do. If the woman wasn’t Gaian, and most of us aren’t, then the widow disappears for six months and reappears with another man. For some women it’s happened more than once.”

Sonja stared at the pair of them. “What is going on?”

Roan shook his head in disbelief. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible. It sounds like they are recycling widows.”

“What?”

He took a deep breath. “The company makes a lot of money bringing in women for the marriage meets. So much that they don’t care about where those women come from.”

Sonja laughed bitterly. “You knew all this already.”

“But what I didn’t know is that they aren’t telling anyone when one of those wives loses a husband. Instead of telling me she exists so I can arrange for her to be sent to Gaia, they just keep her somewhere until she can be attached to again and then put her back into one of the marriage meets.”

Sonja stared at him. “You’re angry.”

Roan jumped to his feet and started to pace the room. “Of course I’m angry. That’s a violation of everything we hold sacred about marriage. Our society is based on the couple, and both man and wife are equal. A woman isn’t just an object to be sold away over and over. If something happened to me I would expect my wife and child to be sent home.” He gave Sonja an intense look that told her he still considered her his wife.

Sulla looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that’s why you weren’t told about Suna. They probably do send the women with children to the man’s family. None of the remarried widows were women with children.”

She stared at her sleeping daughter in Sonja’s arms. “Again, no one talks about it, but many couples decide to have children just in case something happens in the mines. She and Miles had been trying but she hadn’t had a baby yet.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Sonja asked.

“The night Miles was killed. She lived here in Delta in one of the buildings nearby, and I went to her apartment when I heard about the accident and they posted the casualty list.” Tears welled up in Sulla’s eyes. “She and Miles were so in love, I knew she’d be devastated. While I was there some company men came and asked her to come with them. I offered to go with her, but they said I couldn’t. Besides I had Alice with me.” She pointed to her daughter in Sonja’s arms.

“I went home and tried to contact her later that night, but she wasn’t there and she hasn’t been back since. The last time I went to her apartment someone else was living in it, and none of her or Miles’s things were there. I guessed then that she was probably being held someplace and they weren’t letting her talk to anyone. She’d never let me worry this way.”

Roan stopped his pacing and stood very still for a long moment. Sonja saw that he was angry but couldn’t tell what he was thinking, only that he was thinking very hard. Finally though he shook his head as if to clear it and turned to her, his face grim.

“Little wife of mine,” he said softly, “it looks like you were right. We are going to need to perform a rescue after all.”

Sonja’s heart soared. “You’ll help me get Suna out of here?”

He nodded. “I owe it to everything I believe about being Gaian to do so. This is beyond anything I can stomach. Someone in the company is taking advantage of personal tragedy to make a profit, and that’s just wrong.”

Taking another deep breath, he touched her cheek gently. “A Gaian wife is not something anyone can sell.”

Chapter Twelve

Roan directed Sonja out of her sister’s apartment and back to the shuttle stop. After his announcement he would help her find and rescue her youngest sister, he knew they’d need to work quickly. That meant getting back to his apartment and finding Allan so they could use his computer skills to locate her sister.

Tearfully his wife had kissed the sleeping Alice and said goodbye to her sister, promising to see her again in the next couple of days before she left. His own feelings he kept to himself, wishing he could change the way things were.

But he couldn’t.

He had thought that the day he’d been sentenced to the mines was the worst day of his life, when he’d faced his parents for the last time, knowing how he’d disappointed them. Today was very nearly worse.

He knew Sonja would have to leave him. They were going to have to get Suna out of the colony, and she wouldn’t let her sister go alone. There was no hope of keeping her here, and worse, he was going to have to help her leave.

It was an impossible situation, but the man he was wouldn’t accept anything else. He wanted to keep Sonja with every fiber of his being, but he needed to make it possible for her to go. There was no other choice.

The man he was also needed to keep her safe. Once again, he was reminded of how dangerous some of the residences could be, and he knew Delta was one of the worst. As he’d said, it was rare that women and children were targeted, but mistakes happened.

He was vigilant as they headed for the shuttle station. Again as they passed through the overgrown part of the path, he felt a prickling at the back of his neck, his instinct telling him that someone waited in the bushes. This time, though, it was stronger, and he knew there was danger in front of them.

For a moment he considered returning the way they’d come, but a sound from behind told him they were surrounded.

Roan pulled Sonja closer and whispered in her ear. “I think we’re about to have company. If you see an opportunity, run to where this path meets the main one and get to where there are people.”

Sonja stiffened, and she glanced at him. A small smile played around her lips, but she nodded. “Don’t worry, I know what to do.”

Roan slipped his hand into his pocket and found his switchblade. He hadn’t carried it last night into the marriage meet, one of the few times he’d followed the rules about weapons in the bubbles. Of course that meant it was also one of the few times he’d been injured in several years. He pushed Sonja ahead of him, hoping that when the time came she’d run.

It was rare ambushers would hurt a woman when all they wanted was a man’s credit wand, but he didn’t want Sonja caught between him and an attacker.

She moved down the path as he’d hoped, giving him plenty of room.

Their attackers didn’t make them wait long. From the bushes came two men, one moving in front of him, the other behind, trapping Roan between them. Both stood threatening with drawn knives. A third man entered down the path, stopping Sonja with a hand on her arm. He held a stunner on her and his expression meant business. “If you don’t want her having a headache for the rest of the day, I’d suggest you give us what we want.”

Three of them, two knives and a stunner, and he armed only with a switchblade. Roan resisted the urge to groan at the unfair odds.

For a moment Roan wished he’d kept one of Sonja’s weapons. Her stunner would have come in real handy right now. Roan considered his options and reached his hand into the pocket where he stored his credit wands. He had one he kept as a decoy with a miniscule balance for just this purpose. He didn’t want Sonja panicking with a man holding a stunner on her.

Fortunately, Sonja didn’t look even close to panic. She still had that strange half smile on her face. Instead of pulling away she even leaned slightly towards him, her free hand sliding down her leg…

And then things happened almost too quickly to keep track of. Sonja’s free hand jerked up, hitting the man’s arm hard. The man didn’t lose his grip on the stunner, but he did lose focus. At the same time she hit his hand, her knee came up, hitting him in the stomach and driving the breath from him.

As the man doubled over, his face etched in agony, Sonja’s hand shot forward and now there was a knife in it, short-bladed but shiny.

The two men next to Roan dropped their jaws and stared at Sonja, giving him plenty of time to get his own knife out and blade extended. They took one look at the six-inch knife in his hand, glanced back at Sonja who was now kicking the feet out from under their disabled leader and scrambled back down the path and out of sight.

Sonja’s opponent rolled onto his knees, gasping for breath. Sonja kicked the stunner from his hand, and it slid down the path towards Roan. He grabbed it and aimed it at the man. “Okay, honey. You can let go of him now.”

His little wife stepped back, knife held at the ready in one hand, a huge grin on her pixie-like face and sheer delight in her ice-blue eyes.

Roan had never seen her look happier.

He turned his attention to the man on the ground. “I would suggest finding another way to earn extra credits. This one doesn’t seem too safe.”

Stepping past him, he took Sonja’s arm, and they headed swiftly down the path, only stopping when they heard someone approaching. Roan saw the olive-green uniforms of the prison guards and pocketed the stunner he’d taken from their attacker before the officials could see it. When he looked at Sonja, one leg was bent at the knee and he saw her knife disappear into the top of her boot.

Eyes wide, she looked believably frightened as the guards came closer, even gasping for breath as if she’d been running in a panic. “There were three men. They attacked us. They had knives—so we ran!” She pointed back the way they’d come and Roan saw her hand shake as if with fear.

He wanted to applaud her acting but put a look of worry on his face instead. The men exchanged looks and nodded. “Okay, we’ll take care of it.” They headed down the path and Roan and Sonja continued on. When they reached the main road to the shuttle, Roan took Sonja’s arm and pulled her close.

“Little wife, you are a far more interesting person than I ever expected.”

All she did was grin at him. “Oh, Roan. You have no idea.”

Roan watched as Sonja entertained Allan with her version of the ambush in Delta Residence. They’d arrived back at his apartment to find that his friend had once again broken through his security and had made himself at home, ostensibly to use Roan’s superior computer linkage to discover the whereabouts of Sonja’s missing sister. Roan also noticed Allan had helped himself to a couple of beers.

Roan shook his head and used the commlink to order dinner from one of the Beta Residence eateries that delivered. Once it arrived, the three of them sat around his table and ate heartily, Sonja only making a couple of comments about how she could do better.

After what she’d made for breakfast, Roan believed her. Perhaps he should get some food into the house.

He didn’t begrudge his friend joining them, although he would have liked to eat dinner alone with his wife. Maybe he’d manage a meal with her tomorrow.