9.
MADDIE
Maddie tried to lift her hand, but nothing happened.
A woman she’d never seen before stood in front of her, a bowl of candy in her hand.
At least, Maddie didn’t think she’d ever seen the woman before. She thought back to her years on the compound, her years of scouring the Net, and nothing rang a bell.
But there was something familiar about her.
“You can only have one,” the woman said, holding down the bowl of candy so it was at Maddie’s eye level. It wasn’t until now that Maddie realized how tall the woman was. Maddie barely came up past her knee.
Maddie, without having told her body to move, reached out and grabbed two wrapped candies from the bowl. She felt her mouth grin, even though she hadn’t told it to.
“I said one,” the woman said, shaking her head, but smiling not frowning. “That means none tomorrow, you know!”
“But, mom.”
Maddie’s mind recoiled at the words which had just left her mouth, but her body didn’t move. It was a memory, she realized. She was remembering her mom.
She’d never been able to remember anything about her mom, even though she’d been nearly six when the accident happened.
She wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold her hand and give her a hug, but she had no control of the small body she was in. She just had to watch it play out.
“But nothing. You know the deal. One candy a night after you’ve eaten your vegetables.”
There was a knock on the door. “That must be your dad,” her mom said, fluffing her a hair a little and walking toward the door. “His work emergency must have been shorter than he thought it was going to be.”
Maddie recognized the man on the other side of the door, though.
It was the man she’d thought was like her dad for years.
“Hi,” Maddie’s mom said, sounding confused. “Can I help?”
Damien stuck out a hand. “I’m Joseph Kerr,” he said. “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time.”
That was wrong. Damien had said he was friends with her parents, so why was he calling himself a different name and acting like they’d never even met before?
Her mom’s face broke out into a grin. “Oh, Joseph. It’s wonderful to finally meet you,” she replied, shaking Damien’s hand with enthusiasm. “Please, come in.”
He stepped over the threshold and two bodyguards followed behind him.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked, flitting about the kitchen.
Damien nodded, his face relaxed in a pleasant smile.
A shiver ran up her spine, though, when her mom turned around to open the fridge and she saw his face change in an instant to a focused, dark look.
He wasn’t a friend.
Her mom kept talking, not expecting anything. “When do you think you’ll hear back about the application to the school?” she asked. “I still can’t believe you’re doing this for us. It means so much. She’s special, I know it.”
"I'm sure I should hear back tomorrow. It was a last-minute application and the term starts soon. That's what I came to ask you about, actually. I'm certain that the application will be successful. I thought that maybe you'd want to go shopping for some things for her, when she starts school. There's no obligation, of course—"
"Oh, you don't have to do that," her mom said, over the top of Damien. "You've already done so much for us."
"I just want someone as talented as your daughter to succeed."
"Thank you."
There was a lull in the conversation. Her mom carried a tray of juice to Damien and his guards, and Maddie continued to stand by the dinner table. Her posture was stiff, as if she knew something was wrong.
As if she'd known what was coming.
"Is your husband not home?"
"He stayed late today. Some malfunction meant a whole batch was produced incorrectly and he has to stay and fix it.”
Damien frowned, and Maddie thought it looked real. “That is a shame.”
He ran a hand through his hair, and then nodded to his guards. “Do it anyway.”
“What—”
The guards had moved without hesitation, and Maddie was whisked up from the floor. She kicked and screamed, but even now she would have had no strength to fight a huge man like the one grabbing her, never mind at age six.
Her mom had a better chance, though. The second the bodyguards moved, so did she, throwing the glass of juice she’d been holding at the man’s head. It smashed, but didn’t seem to deter him much. He continued stalking after her as she stumbled backward, hands scrabbling for anything she could use as a weapon on the countertop.
Maddie was still struggling, to no avail, unable to tear her eyes away from her mom’s panicked face.
Eventually her mom’s back hit a wall, and there was nowhere left to go.
She scrambled at her coat which hung on the hook behind her and pulled something out. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” she screamed. “Let my daughter go!”
Maddie had no idea whether the gun was real, but the bodyguard wasn’t prepared to take the risk. With superior reflexes, he pulled his own weapon from his belt and fired a shot toward her mom.
She crumpled in a heap with a small gasp.
And that was it.
The drama was over.
Maddie had stopped struggling in her captor’s arms. Her heart was shallow in her chest, and she stared with silent tears as her mom’s blood began to seep across the floor from beneath her body.
Damien just shook his head, lip curled. “Was that really necessary?”
“She had a weapon,” the bodyguard replied, without inflection.
Damien moved over to her mom’s dead body and kicked the weapon away from her hands. “It’s a fake,” he said easily. “You didn’t need to kill her. This is going to get more attention than I wanted now.” He turned to Maddie, and ruffled her hair. “You’re not going to remember this, don’t worry. We’re going to make a lot of money together.”
There was pressure on her shoulder then, even though Damien hadn’t touched her.
Something brushed against her cheek and she flinched, pulling back. Six-year-old Maddie’s body didn’t move, though, and the scene continued. Damien was talking, but she could no longer hear him.
Maddie’s memory fell away, and she was accosted by painful stinging in her back. “Oh, shit,” she groaned, squinting against the light even though it was just a slight yellow glow from a small bedside lamp.
“Are you okay?” A voice demanded, the hand gripping her shoulder tightening. “Maddie, are you okay?”
“Redek?” His name was foreign on her tongue for a moment, as though she knew it was his name but didn’t know how she’d acquired that knowledge. “What’s going on? I remembered. I remembered my mom. Damien.” The pain in her back increased, and she felt the need to touch it, even though it would have made it more painful.
Redek took hold of her hand, stopping her. “Don’t touch,” he warned.
“It hurts.” Her voice broke.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” she asked again.
“You had a tracking device in your back. I had to cut it out. Do you not remember?”
It all came rushing back at once, and she fought the urge to throw up. “I remember.”
“Do you want some water?”
It was only now when she tried to move that she realized he’d laid her on her front to avoid hurting her back, and he helped her sit up. Her eyes adjusted now, and she could look at Redek properly.
His forehead was creased with worry, his hand too tight on the water bottle that he passed to her. “Here.”
She didn’t take the bottle from him, though. She stared into his bare, open face and fought back tears. He’d been so guarded the entire time she’d known him. He’d spent it all wearing no emotions on his face, so she had to try and pick up which little tick went which emotion. Now, he was showing it all.
All the fear and affection, it was all over his perfect face.
She ignored the bottle and shuffled to the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around him tightly. She fisted her hands in his shirt and buried her face in his neck, breathing deeply. “Thank you,” she murmured, lips brushing his bare skin. “You saved my life.”
Redek hugged her back like she was made from a thin sheet of glass, his fingertips barely touching her lower back as he avoided touching her wound.
“I’m not going to break,” she said.
“You scared me.”
Tears stung in her eyes. “I remembered what happened to my parents. Well, parent—I saw what happened to my mom.” She flinched into Redek, nails digging into his back. He was here. She was touching him. He was real. “He killed her. Damien killed her.”
He finally tightened his grip, thumb rubbing back and forth against her skin, just below her shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“I was so sure he was my friend. That he’d rescued me. He was like my dad.”
There was a long pause, and Maddie assumed Redek was trying to think of something to say. He didn’t need to say anything, though. Him holding her was enough. He kissed her hair and wrapped her up in the cocoon of his arms and she knew she’d found the safety she thought Damien had been giving her.
“Thank you,” she said again.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything.”
They stayed like that for what she knew was a long time, but it didn’t seem like enough.
Eventually, she had to face her demons instead of letting Redek stroke her hair and ignoring everything that had just happened.
“Where are we going now?”
“We changed course. We’re heading to Lyskar. It’s not very safe, but we shouldn’t need to stay there long.”
“Do you think he’ll find us?”
“I don’t know.”
Her lip quirked as he ran fingers over her shoulders, hand dipped beneath her shirt. “I’m glad you don’t lie to me, even to try and make me feel better. I don’t want any more dishonesty.”
That didn’t mean she couldn’t skirt around issues that they needed to be honest about, though.
She had no idea where their relationship was going. Redek had said that being in a relationship was nothing compared to running away from Damien, but that didn’t mean it was smooth sailing, or even that he hadn’t just said it in the moment. She was terrified he was going to end up resenting her.
He’d given it all up for her.
When they were safe and the adrenaline had gone, it would just be them with no jobs and no money and nowhere to go. How could they make that work?
There were more immediate things to think of. The fact she was considering when she was safe was presumptuous.
"Do you know someone in the IU?" she asked, curling further into a ball on Redek's lap and drawing fingers on his bicep. "Someone you can contact? Or trust? Damien has a lot of power. I'm still worried about people being on his side. There's corruption everywhere."
"I don't know someone," he admitted. "But I know people who might. The IU criminal division deals with a lot of powerful people, and powerful people are always followed by bodyguards."
"Do you have a lot of friends at work?" she asked.
"Friends is pushing it. We work hectic schedules without much time off. I had friends at the academy, but you inevitably drift apart."
She nodded. "Do you think we'll be able to find a laptop or a phone or tablet or something at the next planet we're going to? Lord, we have no money at all. This was so poorly thought through."
"I have money. I have been working for the past fifteen years," he teased. "And I haven't had anything to spend it on until now."
"Damien might be technologically impaired, but his staff isn’t. Someone might be monitoring your accounts."
"It's a risk we'll have to take. There's no way we can do this without money. We have to refuel. We have to eat."
"So we can get a laptop?"
"We can."
"I'll be a much bigger help if I've got some tech, and I'm too scared to turn my phone and laptop back on. Damien could track them."
"I'll do what I can."
"So do bodyguards never settle down? Don't you keep working until you're old and then retire?"
"Normally we work the intense jobs until we meet someone, they we take a more relaxed post with a stable client that normally lasts a lot of years, stays in the same place, and has more time off. Guarding a politician of a planet who has lots of bodyguards on rotation, for example. That way we can settle down and have a family without putting ourselves in too much danger." He kissed the top of her head. "I've known lots of people who are still bodyguards and very happy like that."
"You're old," she teased. "You never found anyone to settle down with?"
"Not until now, and I'm not sure settling down is going to be quite as easy for us."
Her smile was weak. "Yeah."
"I made my own decisions. You need to stop feeling guilty about that."
"It's not that simple."
"It should be."
"You're going to end up hating me."
"I could never hate you."
"Of course you could." She turned in his grip, straddling his thighs and pressing her palms to his cheeks. "How can you not hate me when I've taken everything?"
"You took away self-obsessed bosses who have never valued me as more than a block of muscle and gave me someone who cares about me genuinely, who makes me happy. How is that even a competition?" He tucked her hair behind her ears and gave her a peck on the lips. "You have nothing to worry about. At least, not in that department. Everything else that's going on is quite worrying."
She hugged him tightly again, and knew she was never going to get tired of having his arms around her. "Okay. I believe you."
"Good."
"You should get some rest," she said, pulling back and finally seeing the exhaustion all over his face. He'd been awake for hours, dealing with the stress of Damien and removing the tracking device from her back.
"I'm not going to risk sleeping now. Damien could find us any minute." His back stiffened and he scrubbed at his eyes. "I'm fine."
"If Damien finds us then we're already fucked. You need to sleep."
"My body can handle more than yours. It'll be fine."
"Please?" she asked, linking their fingers together. "It might be fine now, but you might not have another chance to sleep properly for days."
"I'm prepared for that."
"You're so stubborn," she complained. She got off his lap and gestured to the small bed. "Well, if you're not going to sleep, you're going to lay down and let me stroke your hair and you can try and stay awake through it."
His resolve wavered, and his body slumped with exhaustion. "That does sound really good."
She grinned and tried to figure out how they were both going to fit on the tiny bed without hurting her back. She lay down, her head on the pillow, and Redek lay beside her, lower down so that his face was buried in her boobs and she had access to his hair to run her fingers through. His legs were curled so they didn't fall off the end of the bed, and she knew it couldn't have been comfortable, but he didn't seem to mind.
He sighed into her chest and she saw the corners of his mouth lift into a smile.
Despite everything, she smiled too.
Their situation should have been too crazy to have a moment of peace, but Maddie had never felt so content.