Dangerously Hers by Deborah Pin (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

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Prologue

Taken: Year Two

 

Jessica Moore studied her once perfectly manicured nails in disgust. Just like her life, her nails were broken, splintered and dirty.

Her father Arthello let out a hoarse chuckle from beside her. In a raspy voice, he said, “You do know that staring at your nails won’t make them grow back any quicker?”

Unruly curls bounced on her shoulders as she shook her head. “Dad, I’m not worried about my nails.” Her nails were the least of her worries.

She tore her eyes away from her now calloused hands and scanned her surroundings.

The area was about one hundred square feet wide and fifty feet tall, with metallic walls, floor and ceiling. Lights encased in the ceiling shone bright continuously. For all she knew, it could have been the middle of the night or just as likely midday. Her circadian rhythms were long gone.

Rudimentary objects had been used to section off the space for various purposes—sleeping, dining, medical ward and meeting areas. For over two years she, like everyone here, had come to accept this place as home, but in reality they had no other choice.

We are trapped.

She along with over three thousand other people were crammed in what she assumed was the belly of a spaceship.

None of them had stood a chance after the Loconuist invaded Earth. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, poor or rich, it hadn’t mattered—the Loconuist didn’t discriminate as they hunted humans down, herding everyone to this place with no chance to escape.

Escape where? had been her question—everyone’s question.

Did she dare try to slip through the cargo doors to where the large scaly lizards were? No, she would stay as far away from the Loconuist as possible.

Besides, there was no going back home.

Life on Earth as she knew it had been destroyed. She’d been caught too early to see the destruction firsthand. But others who came after her described

the devastation in graphic details.

Jess turned to study her father. Once proud and strong, he now lay side by side with the other sick people in the small makeshift medical ward. It wasn’t a real medical ward. That would imply there was medicine, medical supplies or even medical equipment, which wasn’t the case.

Still, he was better off here with the handful of doctors and nurses than with her in the tent city on the other side of the makeshift wall.

Since he began coughing up blood, she hadn’t really had a choice but to move him here. He was now bedridden and a mere shell of the powerful man he had been on Earth. The sun-kissed California coloring she was used to was now pale and pasty. His hair, the same chestnut brown as hers, had long since lost its luster and turned white. The wrinkles in his face were far too many to count and made hard, deep lines in his skin.

“I was thinking about how much our lives have changed.” She nodded toward the massive doors. She didn’t know where those alien bastards were but as long as they weren’t around, everyone was safe, for now. “They’ve taken us from everything. Home and the company you worked so hard to build are gone.”

His cold, bony hand closed around hers. She held on tight, sandwiching it and rubbing. She hoped to generate enough friction to return some of its warmth.

He shrugged. “Eh, it’s gone. Not the way I envisioned my retirement, but…” Her father glanced around as if he’d just noticed his meager and dire straits and then smiled up at her. “I’m not worried about any of that, honey.”

The middle-aged man on the pallet next to them rolled to his side as painful cries racked his body. He had been visiting Santa Monica, California on a business trip when he got captured. Unfortunately his family, including his wife and three small children, were in Michigan when the Loconuist invaded. He was alone, and not knowing what happened to his family was too much for him to bear.

Her father gave her hand a light squeeze. “What matters most—”

“Is that we’re together and we have each other,” she said, repeating what he had spoken over and over again for the past two years. Art nodded as if affirming her words.

She stared at their hands, trying not to turn his way. She didn’t want to look into his eyes. To do so would only make her face the hard facts.

Her dad was dying.

His health had declined ever since being captured. It was very apparent that without medical care he wasn’t going to get better.

“I love you,” he said.

She raised her chin, trying to force back the tears. “I know. You don’t need to tell me.” He’d always been a good, doting father, teaching her how to be self-sufficient and independent.

He shook his head. The small amount of movement made him cough violently. Acting fast, she pulled him to his side and held the cloth up to his mouth. He coughed more and spit out blood-tinged sputum.

Finally catching his breath, he pushed the dirty cloth away. “My only regret is that I never told you enough.” He rolled onto his back, laboring as he did.

“That was my mistake. I should have told you every day.”

She fidgeted with his blanket, tucking it in around his frail body and smoothing out the wrinkles. “I didn’t need for you to tell me every day, Dad.”

He reached for her hand and stilled it underneath his. “Your mother, she would have told you every day.” He chuckled softly and rubbed a thumb over her knuckles. “She would have told you every morning. She would have kissed you every minute of every day.”

The tears she’d tried to hide now spilled liberally down her cheeks. In all her twenty-seven years, she could count on both hands the number of times he had talked about her deceased mother, who had chosen to give birth to her over chemotherapy.

Art began to cough again. When she brought the soiled cloth up to his mouth, he brushed her away. “I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t.” She pushed his hand away and cleaned the blood trickling down the side of his mouth.

The first sign that something was off was when he began to wheeze and couldn’t catch his breath, and then the coughing had begun. Now, a year later, the blood had come. Even without an MRI or CT scan, they both knew what it was.

Lung cancer.

“You remind me so much of her.” Laugh lines etched into his face.

“Especially your brown eyes. They spark with so much energy when you get angry.”

He was right. Her temper had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count. She sighed. “You’ve been on the receiving end of my anger more

than you’ve deserved.”

His eyes twinkled with humor. “Ah, who’s to say I didn’t provoke you just so I could be reminded of her?”

“Then you got what you deserved,” she joked.

Inadvertently she stared at her legs. They had always reminded her of stork legs, long and skinny. Her anger wasn’t the only thing she had inherited. She’d seen enough pictures of her mother to know where she had gotten her height from as well.

“I wish I could have known her,” she said after a couple minutes of silence, voicing a thought that when she was younger kept her up at night until she cried herself to sleep.

“I wish so too.” His face fell. The laugh lines faded as he stared up toward the ceiling, his eyes far and distant. “I’ll be with my love again. I can feel her waiting for me, just as she promised.”

Jess’ heart beat with nervous energy. “Daddy, don’t say those things.”

“I’ve done as she asked. She wanted you so bad. She said you would be the best of both of us. You and your children would carry our love for generations to come.” He held her hand tighter. “I’ve done that. She would have been so proud of you.”

Her throat tightened around the lump that had formed there. “Daddy—”

“Jessica, we both know I’m dying.”

She caught her breath. Yes, she knew it but neither of them had actually said the words out loud. To say them would only acknowledge it.

“You have never been the type to ignore the facts,” he continued in a voice stronger than it had been in a long time.

“I…I need you. I can’t do this by myself,” she whispered, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Taking care of him had been the only thing keeping her sane. It was the only thing that made her want to wake up every day. It was the only thing that made her ignore this nightmare that had become their life.

“I remember your first day of kindergarten. There were kids crying, hanging on to their mothers’ legs. I thought for sure you would cry as well. But you didn’t. Do you remember what you told me?”

She didn’t actually remember that day but he had told the story so often she knew it by heart. “I turned to you and said, ‘Go, Daddy, you can’t stand over my shoulder forever ’.”

He laughed softly. “That’s right. Always my independent big girl, even at five.” He wiggled a finger in the air. “I knew, a father knows. You would grow up and run my company someday and you proved me right.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t get to run your company.” All the years she had devoted to someday taking over his company were now wasted. Those were years she could have devoted to a marriage…maybe even children.

“Oh, but given another two to three years, you would have put me out to pasture, made me retire.”

“You’re being silly.”

“No, you wouldn’t have made me. I would have left on my own. I was actually looking forward to retiring.”

“I never pictured you retired. I thought you would work until the day you…” She stopped and snapped her mouth shut. She wouldn’t say the word.

“Oh, I dreamed of retiring with nothing to do but spoil grandchildren.” He stopped to sigh. “I always wanted grandchildren. So many that I’d trip over them.”

“Fight this. I’ll give you plenty of them. I promise.” She hiccupped as she cried. The tears streamed faster than she could wipe them away.

“Daddy… please. Hang on. Maybe…maybe once we get to wherever they’re taking us, we can get you medicine or help.”

“Listen, I don’t know what these things have planned for us. But I don’t think they’ve gone through all this trouble of invading Earth and taking us away just to kill us.”

“I don’t know either but I know I’m not going on without you.”

“I hate to leave you all alone, sweetie,” he whispered. “I really do.”

She shook her head. “Then don’t.” He couldn’t leave her alone. Not here…

not now.

She expected him to say something, anything, but instead the air around her became still. Her breathing was the only sound she could hear over her thumping heart. She grasped her father ’s still hand, feeling for any sign of life.

No movement.

She brought his lifeless hand up and clenched it to her chest. “Daddy,” she pleaded.

The man from the pallet next to his rolled over. He placed a finger on her father ’s neck, feeling for a pulse. After a few seconds he pulled away. “I’m sorry, Jessica,” he said. “You’re alone like me.”

Her body shook as she rocked frantically.

This couldn’t be possible.

“Please don’t leave me here alone, please, Daddy. I was wrong. I’ll always need you to watch over my shoulder.”

Chapter One

Taken: Year Five

 

Jess stepped off the transporter and right into the bustle of alien activity around her.

What kind of fresh holy hell did I come to?

Alien races, some of which she recognized, others she didn’t, streamed up and down the walkways, coming and going. Transporters of various sizes occupied every available space of the four long rows of docking stations. She and JB had