Eternal Nights Read online

  Just in case, she eyed the distance to her desk. Her route there was shorter than George’s, but he was moving faster.

  The lieutenant didn’t give up easily. He called the doctor’s name and hurried after him. Kendall picked up her pace. Not enough to be noticeable, but every second counted. She rounded the corner of her desk and resumed her seat as George the Jerk blasted the man a second time.

  With a few clicks, she closed the telltale file and pulled up the database in which she was supposed to be working.

  But she couldn’t breathe easy yet.

  Now she had to unobtrusively get rid of the paper she was holding. That was as damning as the info on her screen had been. Her hands fumbled as she tried to pick up a memo about adhering to scheduled break times. It started to flutter to the floor, but she caught it in time, crumpling one side with her grip.

  George was one row away.

  With as much casualness as possible, she put the memo on top of her printout and rested both on the left corner of her desk, opposite the side the archeologist was approaching from. Relief flooded through her body, and she slumped back in her seat.

  Dr. George stopped at her desk and cleared his throat. Kendall quickly sat upright as a new shot of adrenaline surged through her.

  Before she could say anything, a sheaf of papers dropped onto the station in front of her. For a moment, she frowned, and then she recognized the report she’d written on the crystals of the Old City. This method of returning it to her could only mean one thing—she was about to receive a scathing commentary on her effort. She had a moment to wonder how George had gotten his hands on it. Kendall had turned her paper in to Dr. Hudson, the head honcho on the archeological project team.

  “Miss Thomas, would you care to explain why you thought you could waste Dr. Hudson’s time on that?” His twang grated on her nerves, though that same Texas accent sounded appealing—all right, let’s be honest, sexy—coming from Wyatt.

  “Captain Thomas,” Kendall corrected stiffly. Not that her rank would impress him, but she had to behave normally and she never let him call her Miss without straightening him out.

  “Perhaps you believed you were writing for some half-baked New Age Web site,” he continued, raising his voice so everyone in the room could hear him lambaste her. “This, however, is a scholarly endeavor, one comprised of the brightest minds in the Western Alliance. If you want to invent stories about irrational things like the energetic meaning of crystals, I suggest you join a commune.”

  Her face went hot. Thank goodness she hadn’t put her more controversial speculation on the crystals in the document. It took effort to keep her voice even. “If you had read my report carefully instead of jumping to conclusions, you’d know that I was theorizing about what the people who lived in the Old City believed about the gemstones, not what I believed.”

  She met Dr. George’s angry stare without flinching. If he reported her, and he might, she knew Colonel McNamara would be understanding. It was no secret that the commander of Jarved Nine didn’t like this pompous windbag either. Besides, if Kendall was right and he was involved in the smuggling of antiquities, her lack of respect would be the least of his worries.

  “The curriculum of Introduction to Anthropology must be much more rigorous than I recall from my days as an undergraduate,” he said. “In the near future, we must arrange for you to pass along your vast store of knowledge to the doctors on this team. After all, it’s not every day we have an opportunity to receive instruction from a cheerleader.”

  Her hands clenched in her lap, and she pressed her lips together to contain the torrent of words. Four years in the army had taught her to be silent, but she didn’t like it.

  “Nothing to say?” George’s smile was smug, contemptuous. “What a pity when we could have gleaned so much from you.”

  She fisted her hands tighter, struggling to remain quiet, until with a nod of superiority, Dr. George walked away.

  When he left, Kendall slowly relaxed her grip. There were red indentations where her nails had pressed into her skin, and she rubbed one hand with the other as she looked around. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on their jobs, but she knew that wasn’t true.

  A rhythmic flash brought her attention back to the screen, and after pushing a loose tress off her face, she entered the correction with shaking hands. Once the program resumed its comparison scanning, she retrieved her drawing, and putting it on her lap, slid closer to her desk. Quietly, she folded it into a small square and slipped it inside her pocket.

  Taking a shaky breath, she resumed her job. She’d barely processed the first scan when about a dozen wrist alarms went off, startling her. End of duty shift, she realized, and tried to calm her racing heart.

  Kendall picked up her report and looked ruefully at it for a moment as she took some deep breaths. She’d written it in the hope that Dr. Hudson would be impressed enough to offer her a field assistant’s job. What a mistake. She grabbed her bag out of her lower drawer, jammed the paper into it, and headed for her house.

  Jarved Nine was a planet light years from Earth, but this place felt more like home to her than anywhere she’d lived in the U.S. Kendall wished she knew why this world had been abandoned. It seemed as if the residents had just walked away and could return any minute. The lack of deterioration had a good deal to do with this perception—the field of energy encapsulating the city had preserved everything perfectly—but according to the tests the archeologists had done, the walled compound had been deserted nearly three thousand years ago.

  The stone buildings lining the streets seemed to glow in the early evening sun, and as she walked, it relaxed her. Kendall was almost home when she was blinded by a beam of sunlight reflecting off the capstone of the pyramid at the center of the Old City. She brought up a hand to block the glare before memory slammed into her.

  Damn. She’d forgotten. Forgotten the dream had awoken her again in the dead of night. Forgotten how frightened she’d been as she’d curled up in the middle of her bed and tried not to fall back asleep. Forgotten the way her heart had pounded and her lungs had strained for air. Kendall hated the dream.

  Despite everything she’d tried, she couldn’t remember what it was about, no more than a few stray details—like the shaft of light hitting her eyes in almost this exact manner.

  And the blood. So much blood.

  If she could recall what happened, she could look up the elements in her dream dictionary and analyze them. Her mom had always told her that every vision had a message, and considering how many times Kendall had replayed this nightmare lately, it must be a pretty important one.

  God, she wished Wyatt were here. Not that she’d tell him about her night terrors, but somehow they didn’t feel as horrific after she saw him. Shaking her head, she started walking again.

  She wished he were here for another reason. As much as she liked Catfish, she wanted Wyatt working with her on the thefts. Kendall turned another corner, and the light was blocked. She lowered her hand and bit her lip.

  What if the dream was a warning not to involve him in her investigation? She’d never been precognitive, but the nightmare had started four months ago, immediately after she’d met Wyatt. That had to mean something, right? What if he got hurt because he was helping her? Kendall sucked in a sharp breath and turned onto her street.

  What if he got killed helping her?

  She dropped her head back and blinked hard a couple of times. He’d already known something was bothering her before he left the city. Since she’d only been maybe ten percent sure at that point that something more than a memory lapse was going on, she hadn’t felt she could say anything. Now, however, she was ninety percent sure, and she had to tell him as soon as he returned. If she didn’t, Catfish sure as hell would.

  Feeling as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders, Kendall climbed the two stone steps to her front porch. As she passed her wind chime, she put out her index finger and set the rectangles of patterned
glass dancing.

  Instead of entering her quarters, she sank onto one of the chairs she kept outside, leaned back and listened. The tinkling tones soothed her, but it was more than that. The chime was one of the most beautiful things Kendall had ever seen, and the instant she’d laid eyes on it, she’d known she had to buy it.

  Growing up, she hadn’t had much, and as an adult, Kendall still didn’t accumulate things. But she’d taken this wind chime with her to every post she’d been assigned to for the last four years.

  With no breeze, the music didn’t last long. Too lazy to get up, she turned her gaze to what she could view from her seat. Since the temple was not only the biggest, but also the tallest structure in the Old City, she could see it over the roofs of the other buildings. Before she’d arrived on J Nine, the teams had performed about a gazillion different measurements and learned it was larger than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Much larger.

  It didn’t make sense to her. Why build such an enormous pyramid and put only a few rooms in it? But she’d perused the data on the temple more carefully than any other structure in the Old City, and according to everything she’d read, the interior was solid stone. That felt wrong.

  The capstone continued to shine. With a loud exhale, she put aside her thoughts and checked her watch. A few more minutes, then most people would be at mess and she could make it to the pyramid without worrying too much about being spotted. Kendall bit her lower lip. Maybe she should look for Catfish and ask him to go with her. Except she had no clue where he was. She could waste hours searching for him, hours she didn’t have, since she needed to have her mission accomplished before dinner ended.

  Besides, once she got to the temple, she’d probably be safe. Almost everyone avoided it as if there were DANGER: KEEP OUT signs surrounding it. They all spoke of feeling as if someone had walked over their graves while they were inside, usually adding an embarrassed smile at their foolishness. She’d never had that sense. To her, it was peaceful. Perfect. Hers.

  Kendall reached for the fasteners keeping her hair up and yanked them free. She opened a pocket on the front of her bag and stowed the clips, then went inside to retrieve her digicam. It was time.

  Once she reemerged, she took a careful look around, and when she didn’t see anyone, set off. Her nerves strung tighter as she hurried through neighborhood after neighborhood of alien houses. Time seemed to stand still, but she was taking a roundabout path to the pyramid to improve the odds that she wouldn’t see anyone.

  Her luck ran out in a side plaza filled with shops. Kendall couldn’t stop the gasp of dismay as she saw a man striding toward her at full speed. She didn’t recognize him until he was about twenty yards away from where she was standing. Colonel Sullivan.

  Maybe she should tell him right now what was going on and bring him to the temple with her. She wouldn’t have to worry whether she was spotted if he were accompanying her—no one would mess with the colonel.

  She waited for him to reach her, but he didn’t pause, didn’t even acknowledge her despite her salute. Kendall watched his back for a minute, then gathered her courage and chased after him. “Colonel Sullivan,” she said as she pulled even with him, “I need to talk to you.”

  He glared at her. “Not now.”

  “But sir, it’s important.” She was practically running to keep up with his long strides.

  “Captain, I said not now. Which word was over your head?”

  Her bravery was flooding away from her but she grasped one small portion of it and said, “Sir, please—”

  “Make an appointment, Captain, and that’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said quietly and drew to a halt. He left her behind and she was sure he’d already forgotten her existence. Well, she’d planned to go to the pyramid alone anyway; she’d just return to her original idea and hunt him down later.

  Once she had proof, he wouldn’t brusquely blow her off.

  *** *** ***

  Alex was pissed.

  Damned kids. These officers seemed to get younger every day and they had less common sense than ever. Any fool could see that now wasn’t a good time to bother him, but had that stopped the girl? Hell, no. She’d hounded him like a reporter after a disgraced politician. Shit. He put her out of his mind. Alex had more important things to worry about than some idiot captain.

  In the time there’d been army personnel on Jarved Nine, he’d never had to deal with a major crime. A few fights, some petty larceny, nothing too big. Now it looked as if he’d be facing his first huge problem.

  Murder.

  He hoped to God the MPs who’d found the body were wrong, that it was some kind of accident, but he was too pragmatic to believe that. He’d known it was only a matter of time until something like this happened. A small post where people ran into the same faces day after day—sooner or later someone was bound to enrage another person enough to want them dead.

  Or maybe it was a crime of passion. Stacey and Ravyn would both rip him up one side and down the other if he were stupid enough to say it aloud, but having women stationed here was asking for trouble. The troops had started pairing off almost from the beginning and the affairs didn’t always end cleanly. At least if this were the case, it would be fairly easy to find the guilty party and McNamara would have his—or her—ass confined so fast, he’d have imprints from the bars on his backside.

  McNamara. He’d been butting heads with the woman from day one; she’d be all over him to solve this thing ASAP. Like he wouldn’t be working as hard as he could to come up with answers. He forced his fists to unclench as he reached the square where the body had been found. At first, he didn’t see anyone; then a head popped up.

  Oh, this was great. His MP was puking his guts out. But the sarcasm covered fear. Three years ago, there had been no one on this planet except a Colonization Assessment Team and nineteen of the twenty members had been slaughtered by an alien ritual killer. The Special Operations team that responded to the emergency signal hadn’t fared much better, losing six out of seven men to the same murderer. Alex had led the rescue team from Earth and he could still remember the sick feeling that had swamped him when he’d seen the mutilated bodies.

  “Where?” Alex asked, raising his voice to be heard over the dry heaving. The MP attempted to stand, gave it up as another spasm went through him, and settled for saluting while bent over. Alex bit back a curse and repeated himself. “Where?”

  The kid managed to point, and Alex left him to see firsthand what was going on. What a mess. Too many people on his military police force didn’t have real seasoning and hadn’t acquired any while on Jarved Nine. He had his Spec Ops soldiers—no one could say they were green—but now half of them had been ordered to return to Earth. If this body had anything close to the type of wounds he’d found on the CAT, there was no way in hell he was letting Special Forces get on that transport.

  Alex located the second MP and was relieved to see the woman noting details about the crime scene. Thank God for sergeants who had a few years under their belts.

  The noncom met him at the mouth of the alley and went through the formalities before filling him in. She was thorough, but Alex was impatient to see the victim. “Why don’t you keep talking while I take a closer look,” he suggested.

  “Sir...”

  “What, Sergeant?” he prompted when the woman didn’t immediately spit it out.

  “He’s one of ours.”

  Alex didn’t wait to hear more. He went down the alley and took a look for himself. As he stood, gazing down at one of his men, he decided there was good news and bad news.

  The good news was that the murder was definitely committed by a human and not some alien. It was a simple knife across the throat. Ugly—the puking kid said it all—but not as gruesome as what he’d seen when he’d come to J Nine on that rescue mission.

  The bad news, however, went beyond the fact that he’d lost a man. First, the victim was a Special Operations officer, one of Alex’s best. That
someone had managed to take him out meant they had a serious threat inside the Old City. Second, it wasn’t going to be an easy crime to solve. Not when no likely motive sprang to mind.

  Captain James Hunter didn’t drink, didn’t get into brawls, didn’t gamble, and since he was still mourning the death of his wife, he didn’t play around. He was quiet and easygoing, making it unlikely that he’d just plain pissed someone off.

  So with all the simple reasons gone, why the hell had anyone murdered Catfish?

  Chapter Two

  Wyatt pulled his olive T-shirt over his head and reached for his jungle camo fatigue pants. He tucked, then zipped before taking one last look in the mirror. Bug would know immediately that he’d showered and shaved before seeing her, but maybe she’d assume it was because he was ripe from three weeks in the field. It wasn’t true, but if she jumped to that conclusion, he wouldn’t straighten her out. As skittish as she was, it would set him back a few steps if she thought he’d spiffed up for her, especially since they’d nearly kissed.

  For that same reason, he wasn’t going to her quarters. Instead, he planned to casually bump into her in the mess hall. It would be natural then to join her for supper and maybe spend some time together afterward.

  The thought made him smile and he left the bathing chamber—he couldn’t think of the elaborate marble expanse as a bathroom—and tugged on his socks and boots. This alien house was a bit ornate for his taste, but he liked the privacy it afforded over the prefab barracks. Of course, it helped that he was one of the small number of people who could turn on the water and lights. It took some practice to learn to draw energy from the planet and aim it with his mind to manipulate basic household functions, but it was kind of cool once he got the hang of it. Bug was the one who’d shared the secret of how to manage the power.

  And maybe now she’d be ready to share more with him. Like what the hell had been bothering her before he’d left the Old City. If not, he’d hunt down Catfish after he escorted Bug home and find out if anything had gone down while he’d been away.