The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (51 page)

21

THREE
connecting suites had been reserved for them—one for the girls, one
for the guys, and one for Vera all to herself.  Each suite was made up of
a living space, a full kitchen and dining area, and three bedrooms each with
its own bathroom.  The furnishings were lavish, the décor
post-ultra-modern.  A water feature, surrounded by very convincing plastic
shrubs and trees stretching toward the high ceiling, gurgled in the corner of
each living area.  All in all the accommodations were impeccable.

Other than the
armed men in the hallway preventing anyone from leaving.  Several others
patrolled the hotel grounds, just in case.  Their luggage, which Vera’s
crew had transported to the hotel for them, was confiscated somewhere—their
extra clothes, mobiles, uniforms, weapons, everything.  They had been
confined to their rooms with literally nothing besides what they were wearing.

Jill found
Dizzie
out on their suite’s balcony.  Courtyards and
outdoor cafes bordered the hotel eight stories below, but
Dizzie’s
eyes were on the western horizon.  “My first real sunset,” she mused as
the flaming orb sunk beneath the distant forested hilltops, “and I can’t even
enjoy it.”

Jill stood next
to her and watched.  The beauty was undeniable.

So was their
predicament.

Dizzie
wrinkled her nose.  “This sucks.  All my
life I’ve wanted to visit the Home Planet.  I finally get the chance, and
I’m here for, what, five minutes before I get kidnapped?”

“I’m pretty sure
those were USP Officers,
Diz
, and the port is
officially USP territory.  We’re arrested, not kidnapped.”

“Whatever.”

“We didn’t
expect this to be easy.”

Dizzie
reluctantly shook her head.  “Keep reminding me
I’m not a tourist, okay?”

“You’re not a
tourist.  You’re the glue that holds our team together.”

Dizzie
smiled in spite of herself.  “Right,” she said,
looking at Jill, “and you’re the one we’re all depending on to save the
department again.  Yeah, I overheard what Momma Ginny told you.  She
was right, Jill.  Maybe I’m the ‘glue.’  Maybe Corey’s the leader,
but when push comes to shove we’ll be looking to you to pull us through.”

“Well, thanks
for more unnecessary pressure.”

“You’re totally
welcome.”

Amber appeared
at the sliding door behind them.  “The boys want to talk.”

“SHE’LL
sing like a canary,” Bradley said with his usual bluntness.

“Can someone
tell me what he means?”
Dizzie
asked.

“Ambassador Park
will spill the beans when they question her,” answered Jerry G.  “You
do
know what spill the beans means?  She’ll tell them we’re not really
interns and that she illegally sneaked us—”

“Okay, okay, I
get it.”

They huddled in
the living area of the girls’ suite, a room of polished black surfaces and
burgundy leather sofas.  Light came from beneath the water in the blue
decorative pool in the corner and from a few hanging lamps with reddish
shades.  Beyond the windows and the sliding door to the balcony, the last
remnant of daylight was fading fast.

“Do you think
they already know who we really are?” Amber wondered aloud.

“If they don’t
know yet, it’s just a matter of time,” Corey supposed.

“Ambassador Park
may have been the one who alerted them in the first place,” suggested Jill.

“But she’s been
arrested along with the rest of us,” said
Dizzie
.

“She’d want it
to seem like that, wouldn’t she?” said Bradley.  “Vera knows we have
powerful friends.  She wouldn’t want them to come after her.”

“Why would she
give us away?” Corey asked.  “What would she have to gain by it?”

“It’s what she’d
lose by
not
doing it,” said Jill.  “She doesn’t know what we’re up
to, but she knows it’s something shady.  If she was to get caught aiding
us...”

“So maybe our
play wasn’t as intimidating as we thought it was,” put in
Dizzie
. 
“She’s afraid of what the ‘Guardian Angels’ might do to her, but she’s more
afraid of what the run-of-the-mill authorities might do.”

“Maybe,” said
Corey.  “This is all speculation.  We don’t know how much they know,
or why.”

“So what’s our
next move?” asked Jerry G.

Silence.

Corey
sighed.  “We wait and see what happens.  We have no idea what they’re
planning to do with us.”

“Nothing good!”
blurted Amber.

“No sense
sitting around until we figure out what flavor the poison will be,” said
Bradley.

“You’re assuming
the worst,” countered Corey.  “We don’t know that they want to harm us.”

“
Someone
wants to,” said
Dizzie
.  “
Someone
sent an
assassin to blow up HQ, remember that little detail?  And Riley warned
Director Holiday not to be in contact with the USP about any of this, or else
that
someone
would hear about it.  Well, now the USP has come to us
instead.”

“Which means the
assassins might not be far behind them,” Jerry G concluded gravely.

“Let’s face it,
Corey,” said Bradley. “Our only choice is to try to escape.”

“What did you
have in mind?”

“Have you never
even seen one movie?  We tie the bed sheets together and climb down from
the balcony rail.”

Jill stared at
him.  “You’re not completely kidding, are you?”

“They have men
guarding the ground below our rooms too, Bradley,” Amber noted.

“Okay, then
we...I don’t know.  I just hate this waiting around business!”

“Don’t we all,”
said Jerry G.  “But Corey’s right.  If we bide our time, maybe an
opportunity—”

Jill signaled
for silence.

They heard
footsteps in the hall.  The footsteps slowed and stopped near the door to
their suite.  A few words were exchanged in low voices.

“Who could it
be?” Amber asked softly.

“The guy who’s
here to decide our fate,” Corey speculated.

“If the
assassins don’t find us first,”
Dizzie
moaned.

The voices
quieted, and the door to the next suite down—Vera’s—was opened.  Then
closed.  Her voice and the deep voice of the newcomer were muffled as they
spoke in her rooms.

“What could they
be saying?” Amber voiced what they were all wondering.

“She’s being
questioned,” said Jerry.

Corey stepped
quietly toward the door adjoining their suite and Vera’s and tried to open it a
crack.   He shook his head.  “She locked it from her side.”

“Duh,” said
Dizzie
.

“Just had to
check.”

Jerry
grimaced.  “If we could hear their plans...”

“It might help
us make ours,” Bradley finished with a nod.

“Maybe Vera left
her window open,” said Jill, moving toward their suite’s sliding glass door.

They all slipped
out onto the balcony, and peered toward Vera’s balcony several meters
away.  The balcony door did appear to be opened slightly, but the voices
were still too muffled to pick out any words.  There was no ledge or crack
along the wall they could use to reach the other balcony.

“No dice,”
muttered Jerry.

“Now what?”
Amber asked anxiously.

Jill’s eyes met
Dizzie’s
. 
When push comes to shove...

“A tree,” said
Jill.

Bradley gave her
a look.  “A...tree?”

“A tree!”
exclaimed Corey, rushing back inside.  He took hold of the tallest plastic
imitation tree next to the glowing pool of water.  With Jerry’s help he
was able to “uproot” it from its bed of fake moss and drag it out onto the
balcony.

“Ah,” said
Dizzie
, “a
tree
.”

“Should be long
enough,” Bradley observed.

“But sturdy
enough?” Amber wondered.

“One way to find
out,” Jill said with a shrug.

Jerry G started
trying to talk her out of it even though he knew it would be no use.

Half a minute
later Jill was crouching outside Vera Park’s balcony door.  The blinds
were drawn nearly all the way, leaving a small line of visibility where the
door was cracked open.  At the far end of the room, Vera sat across from a
tall, spindly man with thinning gray hair and thick glasses.  The man was
dressed like the other armed USP representatives who had accosted them.

“...been
directed to continue holding them here,” he was telling the ambassador
now.  “Someone will be along to deal with them shortly.”

“Who are these
Guardian Angels?” Vera asked him.  “A criminal association?  A
government agency?”

The man
shrugged.  “Way above my pay grade.  I’m just here to follow
orders.  My guess is they’re just another collection of vigilantes. 
Plenty of those to go around on
Anterra
. 
Whoever they are, they’re dangerous.  You did the right thing contacting
us about them, Ambassador Park, and we won’t fail to show our gratitude.”

Jill winced,
wondering how Vera had slipped past
Dizzie’s
surveillance to make contact with the USP.

“What will be
done with them?” the ambassador asked.

Her visitor
shrugged again.  “It’s not a USP man coming for them.  Some other
nation or entity in a cooperating investigation.  Again, way above my pay
grade.”

Jill had heard
enough.  She turned to work her way back across the plastic tree suspended
between the balconies.

That’s when the
gust of wind arrived.

THE
nearest of the USP officers patrolling the hotel grounds squawked
embarrassingly when a plastic tree smacked onto the path right next him. 
His eyes darted upward.

He saw nothing
suspicious.

He reported to
his cohorts on the eighth floor.  “Something’s going on up there.”

“Okay, we’ll look
into it.”

BRADLEY
answered the impatient knock at the door to their suite. 
“Yeah?”

The officer
frowned at him, fingering his holstered weapon.  “What’s going on in
here?”

Bradley
blinked.  “What do you mean?”

The man pushed
his way inside.  Corey appeared to be napping on one of the sofas. 
Jerry G watched a con movie on TV and ate pretzels from an industrial sized
bag.

“By the way,”
Bradley said, “when do we get our luggage back?”

“Or our
mobiles,” Jerry added with his mouth full.

“You’ll get it
when you get it,” the man muttered, moving about the room and examining
everything.

“What are you
looking for, anyway?” Bradley asked him.

“Just keep your
mouth shut, kid.”

“Whoa, no need
to be so testy.”

“Pretzel?” Jerry
offered.

DIZZIE
had answered a similar knock at the girls’ suite door.  “You here to bring
us our toothbrushes?”

“
Gotta
check things out in here,” the officer said, stepping
inside.

Amber looked up
from a magazine she was reading at the kitchen table.  “What’s going on?”

“Maybe you can
tell me that,” the officer said gruffly.

Dizzie
and Amber exchanged a puzzled look.

“Where’s the
other one?” the man asked.

Amber gestured
toward the closed bathroom door.

The officer
grunted and began looking around the living area.  His eyes rested on the
empty bed of fake moss next to the pool.  “What happened to the tree?”

“The what?”

“There was a
tree right there.  What happened to it?”

“I don’t
remember any tree,” said Amber.  “
Diz
, do you
remember seeing a tree there?”

“I don’t
remember any tree,” said
Dizzie
.

The man eyed
them suspiciously.  He crossed the room toward the bathroom door.

Dizzie
was at his heels.  “Hey, what’s the idea?”

“Give a lady her
privacy, buddy!” Amber demanded, right behind
Dizzie
.

“She’s not in
there, is she?”

“Where do you
think she went?”
Dizzie
asked, throwing her arms
up.  “Over the balcony?”

“So she’s in
there?”

“Of course she
is!”

“So if I knock,
she can at least answer, right?”

Dizzie
and Amber shared a third brief look.

“Okay,” Amber
assented.

“Rude!”
Dizzie
muttered.

The man turned
to rap his knuckles on the door.

Amber’s
roundhouse kick knocked his face into it first.

THE
officer in the guys’ suite got out his mobile.  “Nothing in
here, Stephens.  How’s the ladies suite look?”

“Looks just fine,”
Dizzie’s
voice crackled over his speaker.

Bradley raised
an eyebrow.  Corey half-smiled.  Jerry kept watching his movie and
stuffing his face.

The officer
gripped his mobile.  “Who is this?” he bellowed.

“Who is
this?”
Dizzie’s
voice answered.

The officer
glared.  “How’d Stephens manage to let you swipe his mobile?”

“That’s not all
we swiped.”  This time
Dizzie’s
voice didn’t
come from his mobile speaker.  It came from the open door linking the
guys’ and girls’ suites. 

Amber stood next
to her, leveling Stephens’ gun.

22

“VERY
impressive,” the officer sniveled, hands held grudgingly above his head. 
He’d dropped his mobile.  Corey had relieved him of his weapon.  “But
useless,” he added.  “You won’t get away with this.”

Bradley glanced
down at the fallen mobile.  Something blinked on the screen. 
“Uh-oh.”

Jerry grabbed
the mobile.  “He triggered some sort of alert.  I’m guessing his
friends are on their way.”

“WE
have a problem,” said the man in Vera’s room, looking at his mobile.

Vera stood anxiously. 
“What is it?”

“Not
sure.”  He reached for his gun.  “I’d better check the others’
rooms.”

The tackle came
so swiftly his glasses were momentarily suspended in the air where his face had
been.

Vera’s mouth dropped
open in a scream that somehow wouldn’t come.

“WE
could use another hostage,” Amber said over the raised weapon.

“Someone more
important,” Bradley added.

The officer
glared at them.

They led him
through the girls’ rooms to the door that joined this suite to Vera’s. 
Corey fired a couple shots into the locking mechanism and kicked the door open.

Vera Park sat in
a chair facing them.  At her feet lay an unconscious man.  At her
temple was the barrel of the man’s gun.  At the trigger end of the man’s gun
was Jill.

“Company’s on
the way,” said Corey.

“Figured,” said
Jill.

“Hey,” said
Dizzie
, peering through Vera’s open bedroom door, “is
that...?”

“Our luggage,”
Amber confirmed.

ALL
five of the officers who had been patrolling the hotel grounds were on the
elevator.  The doors opened, and they filed into the eighth floor hallway.

“Alert came from
in here,” the lead man said as they arrived at the guys’ suite.  The door
was open.

The suite was
empty.

“Ladies’ room
next,” he instructed, approaching the door that linked the guys’ suite with the
girls’.  “Two of you come with me.  Two of you use the door from the
hall.”

They opened both
doors at the same time.

The only light
came from the living area’s overhead lamp.  Stephens lay resting
peacefully against the bathroom door.  There was no one else in
sight.  “Take a look around,” the leader instructed.

They started to
spread out.

They didn’t see
a hand reaching out from behind an easy chair in the corner.  The hand
touched the switch on the wall.

The overhead
lamp went off.

Gunfire exploded
from the darkness, seeming to come from every direction.  It lasted for
about three seconds and ceased abruptly.

“Okay,
Diz
,” a distorted voice said.

Dizzie
switched on the living area’s overhead lights. 
Stephens was now joined by five other unconscious officers sprawled about the
room.

Jill’s visor had
switched from night vision to standard the instant the lights had come back on,
but she removed her helmet anyway.  It seemed ridiculous to be wearing it
with the embassy intern’s clothes instead of the armored uniform that belonged
with it.

Corey, Amber,
and Bradley removed their visors as well.  Smoke still drifted from their
weapons.

Jerry G appeared
from one of the bedroom doors.  “The ambassador is secure.”

“Let’s get going,”
Jill said urgently.  “Who knows how much time we have.  I overheard
the guy telling the ambassador that someone was coming.”

“The assassins,”
said Bradley.  “It’s got to be—”

They could hear
a single set of footsteps approaching in the hallway.

Four guns were
instinctively aimed at the suite’s doorway.

The footsteps
got closer.  A man stepped into the doorway...and paused.  Cool blue
eyes took in the room, the unconscious officers, and the team of six young
agents who were responsible for the unconsciousness of the officers and now had
their weapons trained on him.

If the man was
intimidated in the least by the sight, he didn’t show it.  He seemed a
little amused, if anything.

“Who are you?”
Corey asked.

Jill noticed
Corey’s voice had a slight quiver.  She didn’t blame him.  The man he
addressed radiated impressiveness.  They had all felt it the moment he
appeared.  He wasn’t particularly tall or muscular, and didn’t appear to
be armed, yet carried himself as though he were utterly in charge of the
room—of any room he happened to walk into.  Long, dark hair, streaked
sagely with gray, hung below the shoulders of his tailored indigo suit.  A
perfectly trimmed dark beard, sprinkled with that same distinguished gray,
completed his thoroughly regal appearance.

When the man
spoke it was just the sort of voice they expected, deep baritone and
commanding:  “J.D. Oaks, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”  His
accent was American.  He flashed a badge.  “I’ve come with a
directive for the United Space Programs officers to release you.  But I
see you’ve already arranged for your own release.”  There was still a
glint of amusement in his eyes, though the rest of his expression was deadly
serious.  “I won’t ask you to lower your weapons; you’d be foolish to
oblige, under the circumstances.  I only ask that you listen and listen
carefully.  There isn’t much time.”

“What’s the
rush?” Corey asked.

“You know that
as well as I do, Agent Stone.”

Corey
unconsciously took a small step back.

“We’re
listening,” said Jill.

The man nodded
gratefully to her, locking her in his cool, blue gaze.  “Along with the
United Space Programs, I’m part of the cooperative investigation of a criminal
ring known as
Pautina
. 
That’s the
Russian term for ‘spider web.’  Chief Home Planet Liaison Riley has been
my USP contact.  You are concerned that, as we speak, one of
Pautina’s
operatives has traced your location and
could be arriving at any moment.  You’re probably correct, which means we
should leave immediately.  I’ve arranged other rooms for you tonight,
somewhere you won’t get caught.  Our plane leaves in the morning.”

“
Our
plane?”
Dizzie
repeated.

“That’s
right.  For Moscow.  There lies the key to discovering all that’s
known about
Pautina
...
assuming you know
how to get it.”

“And you do?” asked
Jill.

Oaks smiled
slightly as he looked at her.  “In fact, yes, Agent...Branch, isn’t
it?  With the bureau’s intelligence and resources, I have a plan which I
am confident will obtain the information.”

“What makes you
think we’re interested in learning anything more about this
Pautina
?”
asked Jerry G.

The blue eyes
had darted to Jerry the moment he began to speak.  “How else will you
trace the one who hired them to destroy The Nexus?” Agent Oaks asked him.

Jill had already
lowered her gun.  Now Amber followed suit.

The others
didn’t.

“Why should we
trust you?” Bradley asked coldly.

“I know far too
much about you for you to risk
not
trusting me, Agent Park—about you,
about your department, about your stepmother…whom you presumably have bound and
gagged back there in the bedroom.”

Jerry glanced
sheepishly toward the bedroom before he caught himself. 
Dizzie’s
mouth didn’t say anything, but the glare she shot
at him said,
Seriously
?

“Don’t worry,”
Agent Oaks said. “Someone will be along shortly to take care of the ambassador,
as well as...these other unfortunate individuals.”

Corey looked
thoughtfully at Agent Oaks, nodded slowly, and holstered his gun.

Only Bradley
kept his weapon raised.  “Why do you need us?” he asked.  “Why
recruit a bunch of young
Anterrans
instead of your
veteran FBI buddies?  Aren’t they trained well enough for this sort of
thing?”

“Certainly they
are.  But they’re missing something that you and you alone bring to the
table.”

“And that is?”

Oaks smiled.
 “Desperation.  To the bureau, this is one case among many.  If
I put my own fellow agents on the job with me, that’s precisely what it would
be: their job.  But for you, it’s much more.”

Jill thought
Oaks spoke as though he shared a bit of that desperation, as though this was
more than a job for him as well.  An obsession, maybe.  The nemesis
he must defeat if he wanted to look at himself in the mirror.  Or
something even more.

“For you,” he
went on, “this is not just another mission to check off your list.  These
are not mug shots in a dossier; they’re the very people who have attacked you
and the ones you care about.  Nothing could better fuel a fire to track
them down at any cost.”

Jill’s heart
pounded.  She hadn’t meant to let his words get to her, but something
about him—the way he spoke, the way he looked at them, the way he carried
himself...

Amber was
meeting Oaks gaze for gaze by the end of his speech.  “Put the gun down,
Bradley,” she said unwaveringly.  “We’re going with him.”