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Chapter One
Jessie
New Terra
After stashing the handheld, I hurried next door to get James. My elderly neighbor, Adele Abercrombie, had been kind enough to watch my cat while I went on the ill-fated Star Cross space cruise.
“Oh dear!” Mrs. Abercrombie’s forehead scrunched with concern. “What happened? Why are you home? Did you miss the spaceship?” she asked.
I’d been gone about two months—but only a couple of days in New Terran time.
“No. Remember I explained how the ship would go through a wormhole, which would shorten the time I’d be gone?”
“Yes…” she hedged, still not understanding how the space-time continuum worked. If the ten-day cruise had been legit, I would have gotten home even sooner. But the prize vacation in outer space had been a ruse to lure unsuspecting humans off the planet so we could be abducted by the Copan-Cerulean Cartel.
Thanks to an alien king, we’d been rescued, but I hadn’t been able to get home straightaway.
“So, you went on the space cruise after all?” Mrs. Abercrombie asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you get lots of pictures?”
Everything I’d packed had been lost; the traffickers didn’t bother transferring our luggage when they captured us. I’d returned home with little more than the clothes on my back—given to me by the Arasetans on planet Nomoru. “Unfortunately, I lost my camera. It got accidentally ejected from the ship,” I lied.
“My word! You have nothing to chronicle your memories of the trip?”
Only a contraband alien communication device, which would soon be turned over to the authorities.
Before I headed to the Jericho Conner New Terran Alliance complex and dropped my bombshell, I wanted to hug James, take a real shower, and put on my own clothes. The afternoon would be soon enough to set the world on fire with my announcement.
“I’m a bit tired after traveling,” I said. Mrs. Abercrombie was as sweet as the delicious cookies she baked, but she could talk the ear off the hearing impaired. “Could I have James, please?”
“Of course, dear! Come in; he’s right here.” She widened her door, and I followed her into her living room.
James Bond, my black-and-white tuxedo cat, perched on a windowsill watching hovercraft zoom past the fifth floor of the apartment tower. He didn’t even acknowledge me. His moods could swing from demanding to aloof. I scooped up the temperamental fluff ball and hugged him tight. “Did you miss me?”
“He pined for you,” Mrs. Abercrombie lied with a sweet smile. She had to be at least seventy-five, maybe eighty, but she didn’t look a day over sixty-five. She appeared to be a nice lady, but I sometimes wondered. Retired for decades now, she’d worked in “logistics” for the government, but whenever I asked about her old job, her answers were cagey, as if she’d been something other than the mid-level civil servant she claimed to be.
Well, we all had our secrets.
I was about to blow the lid off a whopper.
“Thank you, again.” I headed for the door. “I really appreciate it.”
“No problem, dear. I’m always happy to watch him. If I’d realized you were coming home so soon, I would have fixed you a casserole.”
“You’re too good to me.”
“Not that good. There’s no casserole,” she replied.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said with a laugh, although thoughts of a casserole made my mouth water. Like her cookies and muffins, Mrs. Abercrombie’s casseroles were to die for, and for months, I’d been eating alien food—some of it disgusting slop fed to us by the slavers.
Hugging my cat to my chest, I punched the twelve-digit password into the electronic keypad and let myself into my apartment. James leaped out of my arms, scratching me in the process, and hightailed it into the bedroom.
“Good to see you, too!” I rubbed my abdomen where his back claws had caught me, leaned against the door, and surveyed my domain. Home, safe and sound.
I snorted. I was home but far from safe. None of us were. We were all in danger.
