Page 5 of Star Mates

CHAPTER TWO

Emmarie moaned as a sharp pain stabbed behind her eyes. A thick fog had rolled into her head and blanketed her brain, and she half-feared she was going to vomit.

“Hey there,” a deep voice whispered gently. “Are you waking up for me?”

Emmarie’s eyes fluttered several times before she managed to get them to stay open. The room swam into view. A blue emergency light illuminated the area around her and gave the man holding her a sinister edge. She stiffened and immediately tried pulling away. He tightened his grip and made soothing sounds in the back of his throat.

“My name is Logan Crusic,” he continued in a low tone. “I think we’ve been kidnapped. I’m trying to find us a way to get free.”

She lay on the floor, her head and shoulders cradled in Logan’s lap, and stared up at him. He gazed at her behind black rimmed glasses, his blue eyes showing concern. His hand absently soothed the hair on her head. As she took a breath to speak, the walls around them shook with force, throwing Logan off balance. He pitched and Emmarie ended up falling out of his lap, his body twisted oddly over hers.

“What was that?” she squealed, clutching him close.

“Maybe an earthquake or…we might be in an unsecured area,” he told her as he disentangled from her body and stood. He straightened his glasses firmly on his nose then held out a hand and helped her to her feet.

“What exactly does that mean?”

“You’ve been out for a while, so I’ve been thinking maybe our kidnapping is terrorist related.”

She blinked. “Are you serious?”

He shrugged. “Take a look around. Does any of this look familiar to you?”

Pipes ran overhead of various sizes, semi-transparent with black wires running through them. Several splits between them caused steam to vent. Around the end of the row of chambers, she could see the edge of a door. She went to it but the door, however, had no knob. A panel rested next to it and Emmarie assumed it had to be a sensor of some type littered with a smattering of odd symbols. She swiped her hand in front of the plate.

The door remained closed.

She banged her fist against it.

“I think we might be in a holding facility,” he said from behind her. “That’s why I mentioned terrorists. What’s your name?”

It took her a moment to answer him because she was trying not to panic. “Emmarie,” she finally answered. “Emmarie Tice.”

“Do you remember anything?”

She blinked. Her tongue darted out to coat her dry lips. “I was driving home and there was this triangle of lights, and a red light, and it was really hot. That’s all I remember.”

“Sounds like what happened to me. Where are you from, Emmarie?”

“Claring, Missouri. It’s about an hour south of St. Louis.”

“I was driving in Illinois,” he told her. “Maybe the strike zone is the Midwest. I think those lights were a type of targeting device and the red pointer was a hypnotic laser program. We’re victims, Emmarie, and we have to get out of here.”

A sickening unease crept down her spine. “Is it just the two of us?”

He hesitated for a second, but it was enough for her to step back. “No,” he admitted, giving a nod over her head. “They kept us in sedated in chambers.”

“Chambers?”

“In the other room.”

It was only after he gave a nod over his shoulder that she noticed an open doorway.

“I think this facility was bombed,” he continued as he ran a hand over his face. “The chambers we were in, yours and mine, were cracked open. But the others....”

“What happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I’m guessing when the power was cut the chambers’ oxygen supply was severed,” he shook his head. “They didn’t make it.”

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