Page 71 of Alien Rescue

Rose debated keeping him talking about why he hated her and her family this much, but they needed to know what he was doing on that submarine. “What were you doing inside the submarine? How did you know I would go there?”

He shrugged. “I delivered a message to—”

“What message?” she asked and could’ve kicked herself. She should’ve kept quiet and let him ramble on. He’d keep the information to himself out of sheer spite and even though he’d shot her, she really didn’t want to see Zanr cut off his fingers.

He smirked at her. “You think I won’t tell you, but who are you going to tell when you’re dead?”

Rose lifted her chin. Zanr stood beside her; Morgan might not see him, but Zanr would react long before Morgan could kill or hurt her. But what if he’d been following her a while and seen her with Zanr? Could he have prepared for that somehow? “Have you been following me?”

His laugh was mean and crazy. “I tried, you bitch, but I couldn’t find where you holed up. I have to give it to you. Didn’t think you had it in you to disappear like that.”

She smirked in his face. “Told you I had skills.”

His mouth turned down in an ugly sneer. “I also knew you’d be stupid enough to come back here. Desperate for Daddy’s attention.”

It hurt, knowing he was right. Especially knowing that the man she’d thought was her father all these years didn’t care about her. That he wouldn’t want to see her. “So, what was the message you took to the submarine? Who was it from?”

Morgan shrugged. “No idea who it’s from, but it said to unwrap the gifts as they were received, and that the Ace is off to talk to travellers.”

The gifts could be the bombs they were assembling. But who was the ace and what was a traveller? “What does it mean?”

Morgan shrugged. “Who knows? Probably about the little bombs they’re tinkering with all the time.” He took out a laser pistol. Pointed it at her. “I was going to kill you, but then I changed my mind. I will shoot you, but I won’t kill you. That way I get to hurt you every year.”

She resisted the urge to step back. She needed to stay still so that Zanr could move without having her underfoot if it became necessary. “You’re mad.”

“No, I’m angry. I’m going to enjoy knowing you dread the second of September, every day of your life, for however long you live—not knowing where I am, whether I’ve found you.”

“Why the second of September?”

“That is when your stinking family put her on drugs and killed her.”

“Her?” She could almost hear Zanr tell her not to feel sympathy, to be careful. But it was hard not to feel a little sympathy. She could see the grief in Morgan’s eyes.

Morgan scrubbed a hand over his face. “My fiancée, the only woman I will ever love.”

Rose stared at Morgan. “You joined Parnell to get at me because of her death? But why did you wait so long? It’s been years?”

He sneered at her. “Your family took the only woman I have ever loved from me. I had nothing left and all the time in the world to make you pay.” He smirked at her. “I enjoyed seeing you go into that hole week after week. I couldn’t believe you were stupid enough to think you were proving yourself. Parnell promised I could have you once he’d broken you.”

She still couldn’t think about Parnell’s betrayal without feeling a deep ache in her heart for the man she’d thought was like a father to her. Maybe she just wasn’t meant to have a father or even father figure in her life. “You believe she got some of the superman crack from my family; even if that’s true, I had nothing to do with it. Why come after me?”

“My plan was to hurt you and through you to hurt them. But imagine my surprise when I realized that your family don’t care if you live or die. In fact, I’d be doing them a favor. And I won’t do your family any kind of favor,” he spat, spittle shooting from his mouth.

Rose searched for the words that would reach him. His grief had obviously driven him crazy. She couldn’t help wondering if he’d had stalker tendencies before his fiancée died. “How did she die?” she asked quietly.

He spat at her feet and she forced herself not to step back. The alien boots would clean off anything that hit her. “Your stinking family advertised for people to join the final testing stage of a drug.”

A chill went down her spine. From what she’d seen on his TC, she’d suspected. But she knew she was going to hear something she’d never wanted to acknowledge—something she’d refused to see while she did her research in the hope of getting the superman crack case. “That isn’t unusual. Many companies do that.”

“Most companies ask for volunteers. Your family offered the kind of money Mary desperately needed.” He stared at the pistol in his hand.

“Did she die from the drugs?” Some people died almost immediately. They and their families were the lucky ones.

He looked briefly at her and then away. “She killed herself when she came off the high of the superman drugs,” he said.

Superman drugs. So it was true, her family had sunk that low. How could her father want to profit from something so heinous? The man who wasn’t her father.

She narrowed her eyes at Morgan who still wasn’t looking her in the eye. Something more was going on here. And suddenly she knew. “You wanted the money—that’s why you made her do the trial. Because you were too much of a coward to do it yourself.” He liked the things money could buy. She remembered him showing off expensive watches and bragging about the car he was going to buy.

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