Page 4 of Stalker
“I can’t tell you that. I am in enough trouble.”
“No one is going to hurt you. They will have to go through me, and I am not so easy to kill. Many have tried.” He paused, putting his arm behind her on the back of the couch. “Will you at least tell me your name?”
She took a breath, scowling at him. “Neely Albert.”
“Neely, I am a law enforcement ranger for the Civil Restoration Enclave, which governs the territory from the Appalachians west. I will help you any way I can, but I need to know what’s going on. Who were the rifles for?”
Neely pressed her lips together in a thin line, frowning at him for several moments. “Overlords Edmund Stone and Devlin White,” she said finally.
“One problem solved.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s dead. Captain Savage killed Edmund Burke yesterday.”
“What about Devlin White and his cyborgs? One of them gave me the order… Colton Price.”
“Then, he probably shouldn’t have shot down your flyer. He walked up to the site after we shot his flyer down, and he saw that you were the pilot he shot down.”
“What the hell did he do that for?”
“No clue. He just said you weren’t who he was after. We decided he was after us instead.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. He knows the electronic signature of my craft. Price doesn’t make that kind of mistake.”
“It doesn’t seem logical to me either. But until Price shot you down, we thought all three of you were after us. Then we shot him and the drone down. Give me a minute while I check his records.
“He is a converted natural from devastating injuries in the war, which I expected. His wife Tessa was taken while he was recovering and sold at an illegal human trafficking auction. Colton went berserk after he found out, and he was discharged back to Earth just before the war ended.”
“Well, that would explain why he is such an asshole,” she muttered.
“How so?”
“Moody and angry. Other times he doesn’t seem to give a crap. But he goes out of his way to cater to all the Overlords.”
“Since the overlords are behind most human trafficking, that’s a logical move. He’s trying to find her by infiltrating the Overlords’ operations.”
“I still don’t understand why he would shoot me down.”
“Maybe to slow us down to find out what we were doing at Overlord White’s compound.
“What were you doing?”
“Recon. People were kidnapped from the villages out west, and we were trying to find out who was doing it.”
“They are all involved….”
“And technically, we are not supposed to enter their territory. The Overlords have a treaty with the Enclave, but they broke it first, taking people we are sworn to protect.”
The Overlords took over like feudal monarchs after the Mesaarkans bombed Earth. Their regimes started with gangs gathering all the remaining resources in the cities and rationing them. Gangers were their enforcers and laborers. The Overlords became tyrannical dictators. Alexander Berke, had connections in the Federation High Council, someone influential enough to limit the Enclave's reach east of the Appalachians.
However, the Overlords had no qualms about covertly raiding Enclave territories to kidnap people and steal whatever they desired.
Chapter Three
“What good is a treaty if both sides are breaking it?” Neely asked, trying to inch away from him as he moved closer to her. His unique scent filled her nostrils, a subtle spicy musk that was intoxicating. The flutter between her thighs startled her, something that rarely happened.
Stalker leaned toward her, and she leaned away but had nowhere to go because she was sitting against the armrest. His face was only inches from hers, and he was staring at her lips. She started to lean toward him but turned her head and jumped up off the sofa.
