MoonRush (18 page)

Jarod glanced over at one of the many cocktail waitresses hovering about. This one had wavy auburn hair that swirled around her face in a very sexy way.
A b
it too thin for his taste, but…Maybe he’d been barking up the wrong tree this entire time. With a bar that was open 24-7, one of these ladies had to be getting off soon. And speaking of…The waitress Jarod was watching gazed back at him and gave a coy little smile. Bingo.

“That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about,” Cleo commented
.

Jarod pivoted his head around to face Cleo with reluctance. “What?”

“Well, you can’t have missed the fact that Rob’s getting…older, right?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what kids usually do.” Jarod went back to his perusal of the server. The girl kept sneaking peeks at Jarod from under her hair. He was practically a shoo-in here.

“Jarod.” Cleo passed her hand back and forth in front of Jarod’s face, “C’mon. Focus.”

Jarod heaved a deep sigh.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you are highly irritating.” Cleo pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. Jarod relented. “Fine. What?”

He glance
d
back in the server’s direction. The girl was on the far side of the bar, close to the kitchen. He caught her eye once more. The waitress, distracted, bumped into something behind the counter. A strange beeping started. Perhaps a countdown until they could be together? She looked around for the source, but he caught her eye again. She blushed. Jarod grinned. The game was afoot.

Cleo snapped her fingers in his face. “Hello
?
Honestly
!
Having a conversation with you is like herding cats.”

Jarod ignored her. Sometimes if he ignored Cleo long enough,
M
omma
B
ear would go away. Go back to her cave and practice her disapproving looks.

“Sex,” she said.

His head spun back around. “What?”

Cleo put her hand on her hip. “I had to get your attention somehow
,
and how better than with your favorite subject
?
”

“Really? You and me are going to talk about coitus?”

Glaring
,
Cleo answered. “No. But we are going to talk about how you are setting a bad example for Rob.”

“Not
this
again,” Jarod
said,
sigh
ing and
wondering where the tiger necklace chick had
gone
.

“Yes, Jarod, we are going to have this conversation. You bedding every
—
”

“And what?” Jarod asked. “You’re setting a better one by going in the opposite direction? Your track record since Chuck hasn’t exactly been
—
”

An explosion at the far end of the bar ripped the words out of Jarod’s throat.

CHAPTER 7

Interstellar Space Station

March 28, 2049

1437 hours, Space Standard Time (SST)

The bar was a dizzying mix of fire and blood for Cleo. The shape of the room had completely changed in mere seconds, and now groaning patrons were sprawled amongst the shattered remains of the establishment. Shouldn’t it be louder
,
though? With the exception of falling debris
,
it was far too quiet. Shouldn’t there be alarms going off, or at least a blanket of fire containment pellets showering down on top of them? The lack of any automated response added to her disorientation.

Cleo shook her head to clear it as Jarod sprang to his feet
. He was
the first one up
,
as per usual. Which made her number two. Fire spewed from two locations, back toward the kitchen and on the other side of the long bar counter. Twisted metal and large beams had fallen from the industrial-looking ceiling. Décor or no, those beams looked heavy.

“Everyone okay?” Jarod yelled out.

Cleo heard the faintest cry. While everyone else was hightailing
it
out of the bar, she made her way over to the demolished bar. Underneath, she found who she thought was the same waitress Jarod had been eyeing. The girl was bleeding from a cut near her temple. Cleo’s guess was that the cut wasn’t too serious…head injuries always bled a lot…but she should be checked for a concussion. The waitress was trapped underneath one of those metal bars. Cleo couldn’t lift it herself.

“Jarod!”

Jarod rushed over, grabbing a fire sucker along the way. He pointed the device toward the kitchen flame
,
demonstrating how the extinguisher had gotten its name. Once the fire whooshed into the device, neutralizing the flame, Jarod put his back into lifting the beam. Even with his well
-
developed biceps, the damn thing wouldn’t budge.

“We need some help.” Cleo watched as Jarod searched the bar, but the patrons were leaving
en masse
, some screaming at the top of their lungs.

No help there.

Cleo found the nearest vid
-
screen and waved her hand over the panel to activate it. Maybe if she could get some official on the line, they could send over personnel. But either the screen was locked for employees only, or the communications
were
disabled. Cleo felt a buzzing in her skull that was usually a precursor to an unforeseen danger. Something was definitely not right.

As she started looking for another screen, someone diverted her attention… actually, two someones… swimming upstream against the current of the fleeing patrons. Cleo picked out the dark skin tones of Buton’s skin, as well as his tweed attire. He may look out of place here, but Cleo was certainly glad to lay eyes on him.

Rob’s head bobbed along behind him. Cleo hadn’t noticed how tall Rob had grown. He came just inches short of Buton, and Buton was not short. Buton’s concerned gaze turned her back to the situation at hand.

Rob scanned the wreckage. “Hey, Uncle Jare, how’d you manage to blow up the bar so fast?”

“How about you stop talking and start helping, little man
?
” Jarod said as he tossed the fire sucker down with a clank. “We’ve got a women trapped under a beam.”

“Oh, and you needed a real man to get her out for you?” Rob’s tone was light, but he was already moving toward the problem, looking for a way to be of help. He might be a bundle of teenage hormones at times, but it was in these moments that Cleo could see the man he would become. Cleo leaned in to take a look at the girl’s pupils
.
Both
were reactive. Good sign.

Buton
,
however
,
did not seem as helpful as he tossed trashed equipment off to the side. Cleo waved to try to get his attention. “Buton, over here!” She got a wave as a response. Then Buton surfaced from the debris
,
carrying a long bit of what looked like heavy rebar. A lever. Cleo should’ve known better. Buton jogged over to the fallen beam and wedged the makeshift lever under the obstruction.

As the beam began to lift off the girl, Cleo watched Jarod’s realization of whom it was they were rescuing. His face blanched as he leaned in and whispered to Cleo, “Is she gonna be okay?”

The softer side of Jarod. Too bad
that
he felt he had to whisper so word didn’t get out.

“I’m not positive. We have to get her out from under that thing before I can really assess, but it doesn’t look like she’s concussed.” Jarod breathed out a sigh of what looked
like
relief and headed over to the explosion site, Rob trailing in his wake.
Boys.
Once the initial job was done
,
they wanted to go look at the dangerous stuff. Cleo turned her attention to the girl. Now that she was out from under the beam, they could get her to the infirmary.

From the other side of the bar, Jarod’s voice sang with suppressed tension. “Rob, get back.
Now
.”

Cleo did not want to know what was wrong. However
,
she knew that if
Jarod
was urging caution, it must be bad.

Really
bad.

* * *

“Uh…Buton, you better take a look at this,” Jarod said.

Buton moved away from the injured young woman, knowing that Cleo had the situation well in hand. He had heard the strain in Jarod’s voice and moved toward his fellow Rogue.

That was a less
-
than
-
encouraging sign. Jarod was many things, but humble was not one of them. Asking for help was an indication that things had gone from bad to worse. Buton stepped up to Jarod and followed his gaze. There was a roughly globular hole
.
T
here in the center, a red light blinking malevolently like the winking eye of a rodent, was a bomb.

Fascinating.

And this was not just any bomb. Buton made several circuits around the device, observing it from all angles, wanting to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. It was every bit as bad as Jarod thought…and more.

The bomb was large, but not the largest Buton had ever seen. It was of an unusual design, based
on
a geodesic pattern. The intersecting circles on the surface bisected one another, forming a network of triangular shapes, each one designed to become the equivalent of a bullet. Worse than a bullet. A speeding arrowhead. This was a bomb that was intended to harm and damage as much…and as many…as possible.

Looking at the top of the rough sphere, a section looked to have been melted, which explained the earlier explosion. That first incident had more than likely been an accident, probably from someone bumping into it
,
or even just getting too close. At least, it was if this bomb was what Buton thought it was. And Buton saw it at about a 97 percent probability.

While Buton had taught at MIT, he had been sought out many times for many special assignments. About four years into his tenure process, he had been brought in on a top
-
secret think tank. The request for the think tank
’s origins
had been hidden in
the
shadow
s
, which Buton had found intriguing, but not particularly unusual. It was MIT, after all. This was simply par for the course.