Daughter of the Alien Warrior - Honey Phillips Page 0,3
she apparently couldn’t resist her daughter’s cries, and she too offered a bottle. Heather didn’t seem concerned about whether the formula was organic, sucking greedily.
Jade turned back to the alien, her suspicions confirmed.
“Listen… what’s your name?”
He looked oddly shy. “I am Kwaret.”
“Listen, Kwaret, I knew there had to have been others. You took my daughter. I have to find her.”
His eyes widened. “Your daughter? Why do you think I took her?”
“I don’t mean you personally,” she said. “Your… people. One of your ships was here a year ago.”
Kwaret closed his eyes briefly, then admitted, “It is possible that a Vedeckian ship has been here before.”
“I’m sure of it. How else could she have disappeared so completely? Do you know where she is?”
“I am not aware of any human children that are not with a family,” he said slowly.
“What do you mean by family?” She gestured over at Naomi and Ashley, both now sitting and feeding their children. “Do you mean they’re with their mothers?”
He looked oddly thoughtful. “Are biological ties required to form a family?”
“You know what I mean,” she snapped. “Did you sell human children to an alien family?”
The thought of her sweet daughter being sold like some type of pet made her throat close up.
He cast another look over his shoulder and closed his mouth.
Although Kwaret refused to answer any more questions, he told them how to use the clear plastic containers. They turned out to be a high-tech version of a crib. Not only did they provide a place for the babies to rest, but their padding also absorbed their waste and cleansed them. There was a small bathroom at the rear of the room for the women to use.
After he left, the three of them sat and stared at each other.
“Who are you?” Naomi asked again. “Were you jogging in the park?”
“No, I was following you.”
“Why were you following us?” Ashley edged a little closer to Naomi. “Are you with them?”
A bitter laugh escaped. “No, but I was looking for them. It just never occurred to me that they would be aliens.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My daughter disappeared from the same place a year ago. They killed my husband and they took her.”
“Killed him?” Ashley’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you tell us that we were in danger?”
“His death was in all the papers.”
It had been a one-week wonder in the press, but longer for her when she fell under suspicion because she hadn’t been with him. Instead, she had been foolishly clinging to a vestige of her pre-pregnancy life. At Nathan’s insistence, she had been on a conference call with her Board of Directors when he was killed. It had been the only way he would consent to taking Hana for her walk and, in the vain hope that it might awaken some spark of fatherly feeling, she had agreed to his condition. She had lived with the guilt ever since.
“I assumed you knew about it.” She tapped her empty holster ruefully. “And I thought I was capable of protecting you. I didn’t count on aliens.”
“You were using us as bait, weren’t you?” Naomi’s eyes narrowed.
She battled against another wave of guilt. “Not exactly. I go to the park every morning.” She didn’t mention that she had thought Ashley and Naomi were her best hopes of drawing out whoever had kidnapped her daughter.
“I don’t understand. Why would Bob let me go somewhere where a murder was committed?” Ashley looked truly distressed.
Naomi only shrugged. “Because he wants you thin and fit?”
“Is that why Stefan let you go?”
“If it didn’t affect the stock market, I doubt he even knew about it.” Naomi shrugged again. “I knew what I was getting into when I married him. Didn’t you know what Bob was like?”
“He’s not like that!” Ashley cried as Naomi and Jade exchanged a disbelieving look.
Jade too had been married to a wealthy man whose main interest was his financial affairs, and as they had gotten older, she saw a number of first wives being traded in for younger models. She suspected that the only reason that Nathan hadn’t done the same thing was because she owned a controlling interest in the company.
Naomi sighed and patted Ashley’s back. “All right, sugar. If you say he’s not like that, I’ll believe you.” She turned and looked at Jade. “So what do we do now?”
“We figure out how to get out of the cell and make these bastards take you and your children back to Earth.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not going anywhere without my