“Rogue alien.”
“Fine. Whatever.” His energy level?
Fifty-three percent below optimum.
Fifty-three percent below, and he was still trucking forward on those bars? The man was more determined than she’d realized. She sighed.
Perform a perimeter check.
A pause. All is clear.
Good. The home sat in the center of a heavily wooded, government-owned forest. Not many people knew of its location, but those who did wouldn’t mind storming inside for a surprise peek at her progress. Bastards.
Her gaze circled the spacious room, trying to view it as Jaxon might. Faux wood floor, scuffed but polished to a glossy shine. Dark brown syn-leather couch and loveseat, both scratched in various places. Walls painted a stark white.
Not wonderful, but not terrible, either.
“What’s your home like?” she asked him.
He didn’t glance in her direction, just kept plowing ahead. Finally he reached the end. Slow and easy, he turned to beat a pain-filled path back to the start.
“Well?”
“I’m sure you already know.”
Yes. She’d seen pictures of the enormous fortress his grandparents had given him. The green manicured lawn was edged by an intricately designed wrought-iron fence, which led to a large azure fountain. At night, when that water pulsed into the air every few minutes and tumbled back into the dappled base, the home itself looked like a glittering fairy tale of dream and starlight.
White stone seemed to stretch straight into the sky, wrapping around an acre of land like a glowing crescent moon. The stuff of storybook adventures, surely. What impressed her the most, however, was the RSS.
A robotic security system used artificial intelligence to systematically learn a home owner’s behavioral patterns and adjust itself without need for reprogramming. It armed and disarmed automatically, all the while making accommodations for those added into its memory bank.
For her to get inside, Jaxon would have to introduce her into the system or she’d blow the alarms by stepping a single foot onto the property. Not that she couldn’t get around that with time and effort. Perhaps one day, if she were ever allowed a vacation, she’d do so.
“Do you enjoy living in such a large place?” she asked.
“Has its perks.” He offered no more, no less. Polite, distant.
“And what do you consider a perk?”
“This and that.”
She pushed out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t like you like this.”
One of his brows arched. “Like what?”
“So reserved. I prefer you passionate and funny. We were married once. Remember?” She added the last as a joke. A sense of humor had never been something she cared to exhibit, but she was desperate to break through the man’s invisible wall of resistance.
Finally Jaxon ceased moving. His gaze lifted to hers, and the silver fire in his eyes pierced her. “What are you doing, Tabby?”
“Trying to make conversation.” Trying to know you better. Trying to smother the longing inside me.
“Well, you can stop. Unless you want to tell me how the Delenseans can zap themselves from one location to another in seconds, what they wanted with the Schön, who your boss is, and what you plan to do with any information I give you, we have nothing to say to each other.”
Her teeth once again ground together. “Most of that is not information I can share.”
“Most of what I know, I can’t share.”
Damn him!
“Tell me what you can share, at least,” he offered.
Fine. She’d give him a little. Hopefully, in return, he’d give her a lot. “Molecular transport is possible. But you knew that, right?”
He nodded. “I just didn’t know the Delenseans knew how. They’ve always seemed so…”
“Stupid?”
He gave another nod.
“A lot of them are, and the rest, well, they use it as a defense mechanism.”
“What did Thomas want with the Schön?”
Careful, careful. “The Schön destroyed the Delenseans’ planet and now some of the Delenseans want what anyone would want: revenge.”
A moment passed in silence. She said no more. Just waited.
He flicked her a glance, his expression hard. “That’s all you can tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Then, again, we have nothing to say to each other.”
“I gave you something, now you give me something.”
“Nothing to give.”
“You owe me information!”
“No, I don’t.”
That bastard! Totally not what she’d expected from him. Should have. Classic male behavior. She’d given, he’d reneged. No wonder she avoided relationships like most women avoided fat grams.
Part of her did understand, though. After everything she’d done to him, drugging him, trying to wipe his memory, she’d deserved that. And yet, for a woman who prided herself on being cold and hard, Le’Ace was amazed by the hurt mixed in with her anger and empathy.
She looked down to escape those probing eyes, eyes now watching her. Eyes that seemed to bore straight into her soul.
What a sight she must be. Her boots were caked with mud; she hadn’t bothered to clean them. She’d been too busy installing the stupid wooden rods for Jaxon so he could better regain his strength. Her hair, her real f**king hair that he’d wanted so badly to see but had not yet commented on, was probably windblown and tangled, her jeans and plain gray T-shirt wrinkled and dust-speckled.
“Le’Ace,” he said with a sigh.
Did he know he’d hurt her? Did he care?
“Look,” she said, “I’m glad we agree about something. Conversation is just another form of torture, so I won’t try and subject you to it anymore.” Thankfully, her voice was calm, unemotional. “Don’t try to escape, okay? The doors open with my ID scan, but we both know you’re capable of disabling the wires. Do it and wheel yourself out if you insist on being a jackass, but I’ll be right behind you and I’ll be pissed. You remember what happened to Thomas when he pissed me off, right?”
With that, she pivoted on her heel and strode from the room.
Jaxon cursed under his breath the moment he lost sight of her.
Le’Ace didn’t know it, but escape wasn’t on his to-do list. One, the wheelchair seriously slowed him down, but he was even slower without it. She’d catch him in a heartbeat. Two, he was determined to find out exactly who she was, whom she worked for, and what she wanted with the Schön.