Desire Disguised Read online

  “Nothing like that. Nothing Mat or I did. Our father was a hated man, and people have held on to grudges. That’s all.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes as he studied her. She sounded weary and ready to confess something. He lowered himself to a seat on a chair near her so he could watch her face for any signs of hesitation. “Where is he, your father?”

  “Dead. Long ago. When Mat was a baby. That’s when we began hiding.” She wiped her hands together and lifted her gaze from the rug to look at him, her greenish blue eyes unwavering. Her brother appeared about twelve years old. That’s what his official information had said, but Ben knew everything he’d discovered on their datpads was certainly a lie. She might be lying now, but he didn’t sense deception, only fear and exhaustion. Again, he pushed away the unexpected urge to ease his questioning, to reassure her in some way.

  “What’s Soren’s role in this?” Ben moved down his list of questions even as he considered the sort of people who would seek revenge on a dead man’s children. Had their father been a criminal kingpin and made far too many enemies? Did this mean that boy sleeping in the other room never had a stable home?

  “He protects us. Guides us to safe places. Keeps us hidden.” Her short answers had the ring of truth. She wasn’t spinning out a well-practiced narrative designed to distract the listener. Now, he began to wonder about Soren and what sort of man he must be to possess that sort of loyalty to a hated man.

  “He’s been with you the whole time you’ve been on the run?”

  Cara nodded.

  “Anyone else helping you?”

  “There were two others. He’s the last one.” She clenched her jaw and blinked a few times as her shoulders tightened. Bad memories there. With the old man out of commission for the next few days, she was now on her own. No wonder she looked as if she faced an executioner.

  Ben paused his thoughts to consider how he felt. He’d grown less and less suspicious of her and more and more curious about her situation with every grudging answer she gave. He believed her as far as what she’d said, but he knew there was so much more she’d left out. She could be a criminal, but he was having trouble believing an old man, a young woman, and a boy sneaking around the galaxy on a fourth-rate ship were evil masterminds.

  “How many close calls have you and your brother had?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What do you consider a close call? They managed to kill Rutun on Weave, and Los on Station Twenty-one, so that’s two. Those were assassins. We’ve been fired on four, no, five times by amateurs. Is that enough?”

  Enough for what? Ben observed her through his investigative lens and saw rapid breathing, tense limbs, and a flush of emotion on her pale cheeks. He had a feeling she was hitting back with rapid-fire answers to keep her own fear and frustration in check. “What about your mother?”

  Cara blinked and shook her head at his abrupt change of topic. It was a good technique to rattle a witness, not that she was on trial.

  “Dead. Before my father.”

  “Any other relatives?” Ben already knew the answer. If there were any, she and Mat would be with them right now and not marooned on soggy Gamaliel.

  “Any I knew of are long dead.” The brutal answer seemed to shake her. She clenched her hands against the cushion of the sofa seat. “Have I given you enough in return for the help you gave us today?”

  Her armor was back up, and he marveled she was able to muster the energy for it. Ben suddenly decided he was too tired to continue this strange interrogation. She’d been through enough and so had he. He rose from his seat and waited for her to join him before he walked to her door. “We’ll talk again in the morning.”

  “I won’t be able to sleep just from the anticipation.”

  Sarcasm again. Ben fought back the smile and tease he wanted to throw her way. “I’m across the hall. Message me if you have any problems, and I’ll be here in seconds.”

  She stopped walking and stared at him. “Convenient.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” He was pleased to see her blink rapidly as she took in his returned sarcasm.

  Chapter 3

  The pilot’s funeral was a tricky thing to undertake. The man’s will indicated he didn’t want to be buried on any particular planet but rather settled under the earth of the nearest convenient place. Cremation or jettisoning would have been much more convenient. Gamaliel’s uniquely peat-like composition made it probable his coffin would float to the surface in a few years, so a very deep shaft needed to be dug and pumped free of water before the service. Hopefully, suction would keep his remains underground.

  Ben stood apart from the crowd around the burbling pit. Nearly everyone in the settlement had turned out for the ceremony, partly from a sense of duty and partly because of morbid curiosity. The two restaurants in town were offering competing free buffets afterward, and the thought of complimentary food was a motivator as well.

  One of the original Pearlians possessed some theological training and had traded his field clothes for a pressed suit. Ben didn’t listen to the sermon; instead, he scanned the crowd and tried not to look at Cara Belasco too often. This was difficult since she seemed to draw his attention like a magnet to a ball bearing. She wore another greenish utilitarian outfit that seemed to have come from one of the facilities branch’s castoffs. Her brother, Mat, stood close to her and listened to the words of the man conducting the service with an intent expression.

  People often glanced at the two of them, naturally curious about the survivors of the crash which claimed the life of the man being lowered into a wet hole. He wondered how anxious the siblings were feeling now. For two young people who’d been avoiding notice for as long as she’d claimed, the lack of anonymity of a small settlement had to be wearing on them. Today, Cara had her reddish brown hair pulled up and on top of her head in some sort of knot. He’d seen it down when she’d been pulled from the wreckage, but it had been wet and snarled then. Now it was shiny and full of soft-looking waves—

  “Keeping an eye on those two are you?” Myltin Tarl’s officious voice needled into Ben’s ear, and he turned to the thin man standing a few meters away. How had he gotten so close without Ben sensing his approach? Staring at Cara Belasco, that’s how.

  “No more than anyone else.”

  “Of course, of course.” Myltin shuffled closer and squinted at the crowd. “Haven’t heard or seen much of either of them. You’d think they’d want to be enjoying the fresh air after such horrible accident. But no one’s seen them out and about, and I don’t believe they’ve met anyone in the settlement. It’s very strange.”

  His suspicious tone put Ben on alert.

  “Still shaken up probably. Sore.”

  Myltin tilted his head and edged closer, glancing over at the burial party. Ben wondered why he wasn’t in the thick of it, gathering gossip. Probably hoping to gain a confidential nugget of something scandalous from the planetary security chief. As if that would ever happen.

  “The boy looks weak, too thin and pale. But the woman, she’s another thing altogether. Prime stuff if a bit on the shy side. The men are sniffing around her already.”

  The nosy man gestured at the crowd, and Ben indulged in another perusal of Cara—in a purely professional capacity, of course. It appeared the ceremony had concluded since people were streaming away toward the restaurants while a few remained to talk with her and Mat, probably to offer condolences. She seemed to be limiting her conversations and had slid an arm around her brother’s shoulders. Soloman approached them, and Ben watched as the younger man seemed to re-introduce himself, judging by his wide grin and hand gestures. He wore his security uniform, his broad shoulders glittering with all his service pips. The younger man kept talking, and Ben wished he were closer so he could overhear some of what they were saying. Cara was actually talking, and Mat was nodding as Soloman smiled and waved his hands around in imitation of a flivver’s mating flight or a complicated flyer maneuver.

  “Look who’s broken her ice.
” Myltin’s tone was pure satisfaction as he added a new factoid to his catalog of the personal lives of Pearl’s variegated inhabitants. Ben squinted and saw Cara was smiling with a big, genuine curve of her lips. Damn it, what was Soloman up to? “Maybe she’s not the cut above like everyone was thinking.”

  Ben shot a repressive glance at the man. Myltin Tarl was probably the only person on the planet who had thought much about their two newest residents. Other than him. He’d spent far too much time thinking about them and what was really going on.

  “If you’ll excuse me.” Ben didn’t wait to hear any meaningless pleasantries as he strode toward the diminishing crowd at the small cemetery. He was intent on reaching his subordinate. He halted at the young man’s side, and Cara’s gaze immediately shifted to him. Her smile faded, and she tightened her arm around Mat. Soloman nattered about some sort of flyer maneuver much to the boy’s interest. Mat nodded along with some recitation about airflow and differential manifold adjustments.

  “Lt. Erdem.”

  The younger officer jumped and snapped to attention as he turned Ben’s way. “Sir! I didn’t see you there.”

  “Citizens Belasco.” Ben looked at Mat and then Cara as they nodded silent greetings. Irritation buzzed through his nerves, all the more annoying because he had no cause to harbor it. “Are you ready to head back?”

  Cara glanced at her brother as Soloman spoke up. “Yes, sir, excellent idea considering how long we’ve been standing here in the sun. I was just going to ask if I could—”

  “Escort them to the barracks? I believe I’ll take over that duty. I’d like to talk with them.” Ben didn’t regret cutting off Soloman or causing the narrowing of Cara’s eyes as she regarded him with a cool stare.

  “Oh, well, in that case, it was a pleasure to meet you both again. Mat, anytime you want to see the station flyers, let me know, and I’ll arrange a tour. With your sister’s permission of course.” Soloman let his gaze linger too long on Cara’s face as he shook her hand, and Ben repressed the urge peel the younger man’s fingers from her skin and shove him over a grave marker. Cara gave him a sweet smile as he departed, distracting the lieutenant enough that he nearly stumbled into the pile of peat a couple of maintbots threw into the hole containing ill-fated Falk.

  Cara tightened her grip on her brother’s narrow shoulder. “Is this an official interrogation? If it is, I want to get Mat back to his room—”

  “No. I’m walking you both back and leaving you there. We’ll talk on the way.”

  She swallowed and walked ahead of him out of the cemetery. Pearl’s first settlers had wedged this final resting place into a clearing in the cocker forest at the end of a narrow alley, and she soon strode along the main thoroughfare of Pearl, Mat at her side. She hadn’t looked back to see if he was following, and he couldn’t decide if she was ignoring him or trying to avoid having any more encounters with well-meaning and curious citizens by getting back to their rooms as quickly as possible.

  Ben shook his head. He should have stayed on the sidelines and let Soloman chat with her. She needed to interact with people, and the young officer was a perfectly decent fellow. Maybe she’d have wanted to take a walk afterward, get some fresh air, allow Mat some exercise. He’d succumbed to some sort of primitive urge to round her up and hide her away, and that wasn’t fair to her or her brother.

  “Citizen Belasco, wait. Stop.” She halted and turned around, mucky ground squelching under her used boots. Mat also paused and gave him a considering look as he stood next to his sister.

  Ben took a deep breath. “Would you like to explore Pearl before you headed back?” He gestured at the low, tattered buildings which lined the mucky street. Not exactly a sophisticated metropolis abounding in shopping and entertainment, but the confines of their rooms had to be wearing on them.

  “You ordered us to go back.”

  “I didn’t order.” He had, but he was allowed to reconsider. Apparently Cara didn’t think so.

  “Right. As if I’m going to risk angering you.”

  Ben felt his eyebrows pull together. “What do you mean?”

  She took a step closer to him and lowered her voice, her eyes never wavering from his. “Because you could make our stay here very unpleasant. Turn us in whenever you want.”

  “Turn you in for what? To who?”

  “You know our secrets. I never should have told you so much.” Now the full mouth that had smiled for Soloman turned down at the edges, and she clenched her jaw. Mat shifted his feet and glanced back and forth between them, seeming ready to run at the first signal from his sister.

  “I don’t know why I babbled like that.” Cara shook her head in confusion and rubbed her hand across her forehead as if she wanted to erase her memory.

  “You hardly babbled.” Ben tried to regroup. She seemed frightened of him. At the very least she was defensive and upset. He hadn’t planned to question her in any formal way and now it was out of the question. “Let’s go for a walk. Mat, would you like to see some of the forest?”

  The boy’s eyes lit up, and he nodded after a quick glance at his sister who was staring at the wet ground around her feet. He heard her sniffle. Galaxies blest, was she crying?

  “Come on then, we’ll go on the path I use for runs.” Ben gestured back the way they’d come. He and Mat started to walk, leaving Cara to follow behind and pull herself together.

  Cara half listened as the security chief told Mat about the creatures of the forest. She was disgusted with herself for getting upset, for allowing Chief Zashi to disrupt her control. He’d frightened her when he’d ordered them in for questioning. She’d apparently misunderstood his intentions, and she still fought back the panic that gripped her when he’d come upon them at the funeral. He’d looked angry, and it had scared her. She’d been caught up in a horrible daydream about how she could have been watching Mat’s coffin lowered into the ground if the crash had been slightly worse, and her mood had been unsteady. An intimidating man scowling at her only made her more insecure. Remembering how much she’d told him, how vulnerable she’d made both of them by revealing a few secrets frightened her. Bendix Zashi seemed able to peer into her soul.

  The safety chief stopped on the path to point out to Mat some sort of creature crawling up the trunk of a tree. Or was it a leg of the tree? She was still trying to understand how these tree-animals worked. Some sort of symbiotic relationship between a sponge-like organism and a shell builder. One used a phyto mechanism to manufacture energy, while the other provided the structure to colonize. She’d been reading as much as she could gather about Gamaliel. There wasn’t much since this planet hadn’t interested too many people until the recent influx of extractors determined to capitalize on the mysterious cortiglow compound, and most of the published material focused on that process.

  The slender creature stopped moving and pink and red ruffs bloomed along what she thought was the back. Mat hopped once with excitement and turned to look at her and make sure she hadn’t missed the show. The security officer gave her an impossible to interpret glance, and she fought the urge to glance away, because whenever she met his gaze, her belly fluttered and her mouth went dry. In what she hoped was a not too-obvious maneuver, she pretended to notice lacy green frills emerging from a crease in a nearby trunk-leg. They seemed to be waving at her.

  Now, Zashi pointed at a path which veered off, and both he and Mat looked at her with matching expressions of inquiry. She’d missed something. “What?”

  “There’s a pond down there. I want to see. May I?” Mat used his best wheedling tone as he shifted his feet, and Cara fought back her automatic denial. There were no other humans in the vicinity, and a man trained in combat was with them. Hopefully he’d feel obligated to protect them even if he thought they were unsavory characters. Knowing he might think so badly of her and Mat made her flush hot with shame.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  Zashi shook his head. “Nothing carnivorous large enough to pose a
threat to a human, even one as skinny as Mat. The path is clear and stops at the water’s edge.”

  “We’ll follow you, Mat. Go ahead and run.” Her brother grinned at her acquiescence and jogged away. Cara longed to dash after him, the tug of responsibility for his welfare growing stronger the farther he was from her sight. She walked down the side path, not paying attention to Zashi’s presence as she caught glimpses of Mat’s blue shirt through the thick tree trunk legs. A shimmering glint of water reflected sunlight ahead.

  “Slow down. He’s fine.”

  Cara turned back to see Zashi shaking his head as he walked to her side. “Nothing is going to happen to him out here.”

  She wanted to argue, she wanted to go grab Mat’s arm and haul him back to their rooms and lock the door behind them. Instead, she stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. He was right. This forest was quiet and unthreatening, but it was so difficult to relax her guard.

  “Wait a minute here. Give him some time alone and we can talk.”

  “So you did want to question me.”

  Zashi shook his head and tightened his mouth as he stared at her. “No. I said talk. Like I did at the cemetery. You assume the worst.”

  “I don’t have much of a choice.”

  He didn’t reply, just watched her with an intensity that made her want to hide behind a tree. Her throat felt tight and nervous tremors clenched in her belly.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you here.”

  Cara just nodded. She knew she was safer in this jungle on this half-forgotten planet than she ever had been anywhere else. How could she ease her vigilance after so many years?

  “How is Soren?”

  “Still unconscious but more responsive. The doctor told me everything is healing, but slowly.” No medical person was predicting how long it would take someone Soren’s age to recover from a crushed spine, snapped hip, detached retinas, and extensive pulmonary embolisms. “So you’ll be here longer,” the chief said.

  Cara agreed and edged further down the path. If she craned her head, she could see the edge of the pond and Mat crouched down, poking at something with a stick.