over. He killed the engine and got out his license and registration as he’d done any number of times before everyone on Earth knew his name. Before he was a married man. Before he was a goddamn prince.
Gripping the steering wheel, he sat still in the pocket of silence before the officers reached him. Ahead was the turnoff for Heavenly. He’d racked up a lot of hours there and at a number of other ski resorts this past winter. Did the planet he was going to have snow? He wasn’t sure how he’d survive without snowboarding. Or sports. College basketball, March Madness. The Super Bowl. Where did people go when they wanted a drink? They obviously didn’t celebrate Christmas or the Fourth of July. All were things he’d likely have to give up…so everyone on Earth could continue to have them.
“Sir?”
Jared rolled down the window. He had the feeling the cop had tried to get his attention several times. “Yeah. Hey. Here.”
The officer scrutinized him for a moment. Looking for signs of drunkenness? Or wondering at his marked sense of surrender? “So, how are we feeling today?”
“How am I feeling?” Jared rubbed a hand across his chin. “Like a fatally wounded fox evading the hounds, knowing the end is in evitable but you still want that end run.” He glanced up at the cop. “You know what I mean?”
The officer gave him a slightly longer perusal before leaving with his license. “I guess not,” Jared muttered, settling in to wait.
A few moments later, the officer returned with his partner and Jared’s license. “Mr. Jasper. Sir. I didn’t realize it was you.” The cop handed back his license. “You ought to be a little more careful on the road. Maybe not so fast.”
“How fast was I going?”
“Eighty-one,” his partner said. “That’s suicide in a truck. Please be more careful. Can we help you out with anything? Anything we can do?”
“You’re not going to give me a ticket?”
“Are you kidding? I’d like your autograph.” He thrust a notepad at him. “For my boy.”
Sometime later, after waving away offers of a police escort back down to the Sacramento Valley, Jared remained parked on the side of the road. He took out his cell and called Jana’s burner phone. She and Cavin were “somewhere in Nevada” again.
“Jared,” she said, emotion thickening her voice the moment she answered.
“I’m in,” he interrupted before she said anything that would get his own emotions going. Frankly, he wasn’t sure what would come out, rage or grief, so it was better not to feel anything. “And I have a few requests.” The cornered killer, making his last demands before the feds closed in on the standoff—that was what he felt like.
“Anything…”
“No brain implant.” Cavin and the REEF had a brain implant to assist with memory. He suspected the Coalition might want to plant one in his head to speed his understanding of their language. “I’ll learn Queen’s Tongue on my own. I’m fluent in French, Spanish and German. It won’t take long.”
Cavin came on the phone. “I’ll help you learn.”
“Whatever it takes. Just no surgery.”
“They requested what you know here on Earth as a DNA sample. It’s needed to make a personalized medical composite.”
“No body parts, either. I’m keeping everything I have.”
“Just a cheek swipe—like here on Earth. It’ll be used to predict all the diseases you might develop over the course of your life, and to design the treatments to cure them, specifically tailored to you. Life spans on most Coalition worlds are two hundred years or more.”
“Two hundred?” he coughed out. Two hundred years with the diva. Wonderful.
“In standard Coalition years. In Earth years, only approximately one-fifty.”
Only? Not only would his compliance assure peace between the planets, Earth would benefit from the advanced technology. He’d make sure Earth got everything available. Knowing cancer patients might be cured and accident victims might walk again was something he could focus on when the reality of his personal sacrifice threatened to get to him. But how would they exchange medical and science technology without the Coalition finding out Earth had no actual spaceships and that the marriage of their queen to Jared was a total sham? One hundred and fifty years was going to be a long time to carry a lie. No one said this was going to be easy.
No, no one had.
Jared drove to the ranch. He arrived at the front door with arms full of groceries to make dinner. His parents were in town for the weekend,