Match Forged, page 12
part #0.50 of Mudden Men Series
Her apartment felt different. Empty. At the palace, there’d been people around all the time. She would finally get some privacy. Was that even something she cared about? She looked around the room. There was nothing there that she’d missed. She stood by the window, looking out at the Tarkin City skyline. One hundred and fifty million people out there, and not one of them someone she cared about. She wondered what Rex was doing, if he’d made it back to the ship by now, and what he was thinking.
She was his only chance at love, and he’d let her go because he wanted to do the right thing by the people he loved. She admired that. She’d never had someone put her happiness ahead of theirs before. Didn’t he deserve the same thing from her? Wasn’t a single second with Rex more exciting than a lifetime of career success? Wasn’t he worth the effort?
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d been given something she didn’t even know she was missing. But now that she’d found him, how could she ever live without him? She felt a weight on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She quickly activated her comm and sent Rex a short message.
Come back!
He couldn’t have left Harcan yet. And even if he had, his comm would be operational for another week at least.
Her doorbell rang. She turned toward it with a jump.
Rex’s face showed up on the viewscreen. The weight lifted from her chest and she sighed with relief. She wrenched the door open. He stood there looking at her with concern on his face.
“I couldn’t leav—” She jumped on him, burying her face in his neck, breathing in his scent, letting it relax every muscle in her body. “I love you,” she said.
Rex put his hand on her cheek and turned her head to face him, his stare, no longer cold when looking at her, warming her heart.
“I love you,” she repeated.
His mouth took hers in a tender yet possessive kiss. When she pulled back to breathe, he looked her in the eyes. “Do you want to clean the dust that’s gathered in the last three months or can I throw you on the bed now?”
She laughed. “Let’s just wait until we’re back on the ship.”
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “You want to go back to Mudden with me?” The raw hope in his voice pulled at her heart. She wondered if he’d been ready to stay here with her. But no, she couldn’t ask him to do that. He had a family, and she felt a sudden desire—a need—to make things better for him and not make his life any harder.
“I’m going wherever you are,” she said, kissing his cheek, then his neck. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to wait to be on the ship after all.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “If we told Devon your surgery didn’t work, he would have no reason to keep us on Mudden.”
“What do you mean?”
“The whole point of the kidnappings is to ensure the survival of our planet through reproduction. If we tell him we can’t have children, then he’ll have no reason not to give me my job back. Fertility is something a recruiter is supposed to test for before matching a woman to a Mudden man. He might feel so guilty for marrying me to someone who can’t have children and so grateful to you for saving his sons’ lives, that he’d be willing to let you join me on my missions.”
The idea of traveling around the system with Rex sounded almost too good to be true.
“But don’t you want children?”
He shrugged. “Honestly, I’d resolved myself to the fact that I wouldn’t have any a long time ago. Besides, my brother is doing a good enough job making sure the family line survives.” Elizabeth smiled.
“But most importantly, I’d rather be on my ship, with you.”
“What about the fact that Devon is a self-centered, selfish, power-hungry jerk, and that taking his ship means having to do his dirty work.”
“Ah, that…He’s also soon to be the most powerful man on Mudden. Sometimes the best way to change the system is to make changes from within.”
She thought about that. He wasn’t wrong. Once Devon ascended to the leadership of the Mudden clan, they would have more power to change things for the better at his side than hiding out at Rex’s mother’s house.
“What do you say Elizabeth? Want to go on an adventure with me?”
Electric excitement coursed through her veins. He smiled his self-satisfied smile at her. He already knew her answer.
She looked into his eyes, suddenly very serious. “Forever!”
* * *
I hope you enjoyed reading Match Forged, the prequel to my new Mudden Men series. Please consider leaving a review and spreading the word, it really does help. What was Rex’s reaction to first finding out Elizabeth was his match? Find out in this bonus scene told from Rex’s point of view. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you’ll like it. (Click the link above or type “www.lettiejones.com/forgedbonus” into your internet browser.)
Mudden Men Series:
0. Match Forged (Prequel)
1. Match Found (Book 1)
2. Match Foiled (Book 2) - Coming in September
Continue reading for a preview chapter of Match Found.
Match Found - Chapter One
Bright light burned her eyes, and she squeezed them shut. Ow. Laying flat on her back, Kay moved her hand to her pounding head. What had she drunk last night?
“Mwa…”
Kay froze. Someone was in the room with her.
“Who’s there?” she asked, her voice a hoarse croak.
No answer.
Her heart beat faster. Had she spent the night with someone? Was he in the bed with her? She pushed herself up to sit, feeling cold hard floor under her palm. That wasn’t her bed. Her heart pounding so hard it threatened to jump out of her ribcage, she placed one hand over her brow, shielding her from the light, and slowly opened her burning eyes.
She sat on a floor made of some gray rubbery surface. Not her apartment. Where was she? Kay was not a big drinker. She’d only woken up with missing memories once in university after a night of too much partying. She hadn’t liked the experience and had never repeated it. She tried to remember last night but came up blank. She wouldn’t have gone drinking when she was supposed to be starting a new job in the morning.
She heard someone moving around again. A shiver ran down her back.
A voice, young and female, spoke, “Where am I?”
Kay’s stomach relaxed—a little. She hadn’t gone home with some strange man after all; that, at least, was a relief.
She opened her eyes further, fighting through the pain. Gray walls surrounded her. A woman lay a foot away from her. She was the one moaning. Another stood against the wall looking back at her with panic in her wide eyes. The girl didn’t look a day over twenty. The terror in her eyes sent Kay into protector mode.
“It’s alright,” Kay said. “Everything is going to be fine.” The girl nodded but the fear didn’t leave her face.
Kay pushed herself up to stand, slowly to give her legs time to adjust, and put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from throwing up as a wave of nausea hit her. Something unfamiliar moved on her arm when she lifted her hand. She brought her wrist close to her face for inspection. A hard metal bracelet circled it. It was too tight to remove over her hand, and the closure was impossible to undo. On the flat part, it read Glaerus 1. She had no idea what that could mean.
She looked around the room. It was smaller than the bathroom in her apartment. It had no furniture in it, no windows, and no doors. Her stomach reeled again but this time from her rising panic as thoughts of kidnapping, rape, and forced prostitution entered her head. There weren’t a hundred different reasons to lock women up in a room against their will.
Kay tried to control her imagination. Unfortunately, after years of studying women’s rights law, her brain didn’t lack inspiration as horror stories flooded her mind. She’d finally graduated, and her first experience as a newly minted attorney was becoming a victim herself.
She quickly wiped away the tear that escaped her eye as she heard the girl crying. Someone had to be strong. But she had no comforting words, so she continued her inspection of the room instead.
One of the walls of their cell had to contain a door. As she made her way around the room feeling the walls for any signs of an escape route, she tried once more to remember the night before.
She remembered getting ready for a doctor’s appointment in the morning, but the rest was a complete blank. Her finger felt a bump in the wall. Leaning back she saw the outline of an opening, but no handle or any visible controls to open it.
“Where are we?” The woman who’d been moaning on the floor had gotten up and was inspecting the door by rubbing her hand on the side of it.
“I don’t know,” Kay answered.
“We’re on a spaceship,” the third girl said, her voice quivering between light sobs.
Kay bounced lightly on her toes and then had to bend over to fight off another wave of nausea. She was right. Most of her discomfort was probably caused by whatever drug they’d given her, but a part was also from the change in her weight from the artificial gravity. Plus, it explained the gray walls and lack of windows, as well as the industrial light that still stung her eyes.
“Why?” said the one who was now inspecting the wall as if looking for something.
“Probably to transport us somewhere far from our world,” Kay said, once again remembering the worst cases she’d read on human trafficking.
“It doesn’t look like there ever was a wall control on this side. We would need to cut through the wall to get to any electrical wiring.”
“You know about electrical stuff?” asked Kay.
“I’m an electrical engineer. I work for Fartech.”
Kay took a closer look at her. Dressed in a casual jumpsuit and hair cut short in the latest style, she did not look dirty, or underfed, or poor like the majority of human trafficking victims. But then again, neither did Kay.
“I’m Kay,” she said, extending out her hand. “I’m a women’s rights attorney.”
“I’m Jane,” She answered, firmly shaking Kay’s hand. “I guess I’ll know who to call when I want to sue whoever is holding us here.” Jane laughed nervously at her own joke.
“It’s strange though,” Kay said. “Human traffickers usually target poor, vulnerable women. Orphans or runaways.”
“I’m an orphan,” Jane said.
“I ran away.” The girl had come to join them near the door. “I never knew my dad and left my mom five years ago.”
An orphan and a runaway definitely fit the kidnap victim profile better, but Kay had a loving family. She had parents that loved her. And she had a younger sister, Thalia, who was also her best friend, despite all of their differences.
But since she and Jane were both working professionals, maybe this had nothing to do with prostitution, maybe these kidnappers needed specialists for something.
“What’s your job?” she asked, turning toward the younger girl.
“I’m looking for work right now, but I worked in the kitchens on a cruise ship after I ran away,” she said.
Well, that blew her second theory out of the water. If she worked in the kitchen, she had no special skills that would make her worth kidnapping. Though honestly, nor could she think of any reason why anyone would kidnap an attorney fresh out of law school either.
“I’m Sarah,” the girl said.
Kay and Jane introduced themselves again.
“I guess there is nothing to do but wait,” Jane said. “They’ve got to feed us some time.”
Kay did not like waiting, nor doing nothing. Instead she began brainstorming ways to get them out of there.
* * *
They decided to jump on the first person to walk into their room. They could be up against someone with a weapon, but at least they would have the element of surprise on their side. Kay had liked Jane’s idea of electronically jigging the door, but unfortunately the room was devoid of anything that could be used as tools or weapons. So, instead, they sat on each side of the door waiting to pounce the instant someone came through. If they aimed for the legs, they could trip the person and overpower even someone bigger and stronger than them.
Kay had no idea how long they waited. The kidnappers had stripped them of everything but their clothes. They’d even removed the comms from behind their ears. Kay could feel the outside of the implant that had been surgically inserted into the back of her head as a child, but the attachment that allowed her to access the Interplanetary Net had been removed. Not only were they cut off from the outside world, they had no method of telling time. Whoever had taken them had also placed bracelets on the other two girls’ wrists. They read Glaerus 2 and Glaerus 3.
Kay had assumed it was morning because she had woken up feeling hungover. But if she’d been drugged instead, it could have been evening or a week later for all she knew. The others had no better recollection of what had happened to them. Jane remembered being at work, and Sarah only remembered going to bed the night before. Also, it turned out they weren’t even from the same planet. Jane had lived her whole life on Harcan, which explained the jumpsuit she wore. That planet had very harsh winds that made any other types of clothing impractical. Sarah was originally from New Terra. She’d run away from home and had been residing on one of the vacation moons of Minas—Kay’s home planet—when she was taken.
Kay leaned her head against the wall, trying not to fall asleep, when she heard a sound on the other side of the door. She jumped to alertness and made eye contact with the others, mouthing “ready?” They nodded.
“MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOOR AND SIT BY THE BACK WALL.”
The female voice wasn’t coming through the walls but from an intercom somewhere on the ceiling. Kay looked up at the light fixtures. They were huge and could easily be hiding an intercom, as well as a microphone and camera.
“They’re watching us!”
Reluctantly, they got up and went to sit by the far wall.
The door opened and a man stepped through. Kay immediately realized their plan wouldn’t have worked anyway. There was no way they could have overpowered him. Not only was he a head taller than them, but he also had arms larger than Kay’s legs. He looked to be in his fifties with a nasty scar over one eye, and not an inch of fat on his body. He fixed the three girls with a look that sent chills down Kay’s back.
“Stay where you are and don’t move,” he said, his voice as icy as his stare.
It took all her willpower not to let her brain go into full panic mode. Behind him a woman entered the room carrying a large bag.
“Dr. Wells,” Kay said, with sudden relief.
Unthinking, she stood up and took a step forward. The man’s eyes narrowed and fixed on her, he didn’t move any other muscles but Kay immediately sat back down, disgusted with herself for being so easily manipulated.
Dr. Wells placed a hand on the man’s arm as if to reassure him. Kay’s excitement at seeing her died instantly as she realized that she was probably the one who’d sedated her when she’d gone for her appointment. Was it yesterday?
“What are we doing here?” Kay asked, surprised by the coldness in her voice.
“How are you feeling, Kay?” Dr. Wells asked, completely ignoring her question.
“I’ve been better,” Kay said. “I’ve got a splitting headache from whatever drug you gave me.”
Dr. Wells nodded sympathetically but did not deny Kay’s accusations. “The headache will go away in a few hours.” She took out a medical device and approached Sarah. Sarah shied away from her, squeezing herself further into Kay’s side.
Kay moved in front of Sarah, blocking Dr. Wells’ access. “What are we doing here?” she repeated.
“I need to check your vital signs,” Dr. Wells said as if it was a valid answer to Kay’s question. “I need to make sure you are not suffering any side effects from the drug.”
Kay recoiled at the idea of letting Dr. Wells near her with that device, she glanced at the goon still standing by the door, watching like a hawk ready to attack if they made a wrong move. She didn’t have much choice.
“Check me first,” she said, offering her arm.
The doctor placed the device on Kay’s finger. She felt the small familiar pinch as the machine drew a small drop of blood. Kay had gone through this process every time she’d gone to the doctor’s office. The device filled up with a bunch of numbers that meant nothing to Kay. Dr. Wells nodded her head with satisfaction and approached Jane who had her hand outstretched and ready. Sarah was still reluctant, but Kay patted her on the back and told her everything would be alright.
When the doctor was satisfied with their results, she packed her machine back in its case.
“Where are you taking us?” Kay asked.
Dr. Wells stood up. “You didn’t like your old life, Kay. None of you did. You always complained that you didn’t feel like you belonged.”
“So you’re kidnapping us for our own good?” Kay looked at her in shock. She might have mentioned to her once that she didn’t get along well with her classmates in law school, who tended to care more about money and prestige than helping people, but she certainly hadn’t meant it as a complaint about her life in general.
“All will be explained to you,” Dr. Wells said. “Just be patient.”
Kay could almost convince herself that she heard sympathy in her voice, but she put it off as residual feelings from when Dr. Wells had been her doctor. She’d been a nice and compassionate doctor, which was not something Kay was accustomed to. Her past doctors had usually been too busy to even learn her name. But Dr. Wells had been curious and taken an interest in her. Evidently, it’d been some sort of ploy. But, for what purpose?
The doctor left the room without so much as a goodbye. Her goon left behind her, grabbed something from the other side of the door, and came back in. He carried three bottles of water and three nutrition bars in his hands. The bars had no wrappers and no containers.
