Page 56 of Alien Mine

Juan hit Dyuvad full on, shoving them both into the door in a flurry of grunts and grappling. Rachel tried to clap a hand over her mouth, and instead hit herself with the phone still clutched in her hand. Pain shot through her lips, startling her out of the awful shock of being shot at, finding Georgette dead, and having a convicted felon turn up in her living room when he was supposed to be locked up, snug as a bug in a rug.

Her life had turned upside down during the past few weeks.

Outside, tires scratched against gravel. Engines shut down and car doors slammed while Rachel stood poised between the eerily quiet fight taking place between her ex-husband and her lover, and the threat posed by the people in her driveway.

Kelly burst into the room, her dark eyes round, her chest heaving under quick gasps. “Mama! What’s Daddy doing here?”

The desperate fear underscoring Kelly’s words shook Rachel into action in a way nothing else could. She jabbed a finger at the front door. “Lock that up tight, then go get Tiny and hide.”

Kelly nodded and sprang toward the door, her hands raised toward the lock. She clicked it into place a mere second before the knob twisted. Something heavy hit the door, rattling it in the frame, and she backed slowly away, her skin too pale under her summer tan.

“Go on now,” Rachel said, her voice firm, and nearly sagged under the weight of relief when Kelly swiveled on a bare foot andraced toward Tiny’s bedroom.

Rachel did her own racing then, to the open windows where hands were pulling at the screens. Couldn’t get them all closed in time, but she could by golly slow those folks down.

Behind her, a body thudded into a wall. The back door slammed shut, and Rachel whirled, her fingers still fumbling with one window’s lock. Dyuvad had Juan pinned to the wall beside the door with one forearm against Juan’s throat. With his other hand, he twisted the back door’s lock in place.

Juan’s palms slid across the chest plate of Dyuvad’s armor. “Let go,” he rasped out.

Dyuvad leaned into Juan and spat out a sharp phrase in a foreign language.

Rachel didn’t need two guesses to understand a man cursing another, alien tongue or not. She opened her mouth, fully intending to ask him not to kill Juan, and never got the first word out. The front door crashed open, spilling men into her living room, Miguel Ramirez in the lead. He grinned and raised his hand, aimed the gun he was holding at Dyuvad, and fired.

The bullet snapped into Dyuvad’s armored back. He sucked in a breath and reeled away from Juan, his face suddenly ashen, and Rachel’s heart twisted into a breathless knot.

“Dyuvad!” she screamed, and for just a moment, time slowed to a crawl, freezing the tableau in front of her. Dyuvad staggering backward. Juan sucking in air. Miguel grinning triumphantly, like a cat with some hapless canary safe in its gullet.

And superimposed over that, Dyuvad lying on her fence, his skin gleaming under the thin moonlight. Dyuvad rounding up the goats, his bare muscles flexing. Dyuvad sitting on the porch next to the girls, reading a book with them, or painting the house with Fate or…

A hundred images flooded into her mind, one after the other, rushing to be remembered, but the one she hung onto, the one that stopped her cold, was Dyuvad braced above her as he slid into her, slowly making love to her while she fell inexorably in love with him.

Dyuvad.

She clutched her fists over her heart, willing it to beat against the shock ricocheting through her. She was in love with Dyuvad, a man who’d been born on another planet and come here on a mission to protect Tiny from the very circumstance they found themselves in.

Her vision dimmed under the realizations pounding into her. Reflexively, she inhaled, breaking the time hold, and reality crashed down around her in full motion.

Juan sagged against the wall, one hand held to his bruised throat, and whispered, “Good riddance.”

Rachel shot a glare at him as she hurried toward Dyuvad. “What in tarnation were you thinking, Juan?”

Two of Ramirez’ men jogged across the living room and snagged her arms before she could reach Dyuvad, then dragged her away from him. She yanked her arms, trying to dislodge the iron grips each had on her, and screamed when they held tight.

Dyuvad dropped to a knee and slapped one hand against the floor. From her angle, she had a clear view of his armor and the bullet denting it into his broad, strong back. Dented, but not broken. She went limp, nearly taking down the two men holding her. He was ok. The bullet hadn’t pierced his armor. Thank God for small miracles.

Across the room, Juan pushed himself away from the wall and stared down at Dyuvad, one hand around his injured throat. When he spoke, his voice grated barely above a whisper. “Is that good enough?”

Miguel grunted. “Close enough. We’ll take it from here.”

Rachel glanced between the two, confused by the short exchange. “What are you talking about?”

Juan lifted his head, staring her straight in the eyes. “I told you I’d do what I had to.”

She shook her head. Yes, he had, but what did that have to do with anything?

“You and him,” Juan continued. “That was the price for my girls’ safety.”

Horror replaced the confusion. “You sold me out.”

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