had once been the fastest ship in the Xanthian fleet.
He felt the heat, the inherent power, rise up within him, his body quivering as he sought to maintain the high level of energy required to reduce the pile of rubble to ashes. He knew a moment of regret as he destroyed all that was left of the sleek craft that had been his home in space for the last six years.
Projecting the amount of force needed to disintegrate the ship's debris drained his strength, and for a moment he stood there with his head bowed, his whole body trembling with fatigue.
He was walking toward the hill that led to the road where Lainey was waiting when he heard a faint rustling in the darkness off to his left. Pausing, he cocked his head to one side, listening, but all was still once more.
With a shake of his head, he started walking again. He hadn't gone far when a brilliant light illuminated the area. For a moment, he thought Pergith had found him, and then he heard a voice shout, "Take him!"
Micah spun on his heel, a soft oath escaping his lips as a sharp pain exploded in his chest.
With a grunt, he reeled backward, then sank to his knees as an overpowering numbness swept through him.
Breathing heavily, he stared up at the three men who surrounded him, and then he pitched headlong into a void as black and silent as the far reaches of space.
He'd been gone more than an hour. Fidgeting nervously, Lainey stared out the window, wondering for the tenth time in as many minutes what was keeping him.
Too jittery to sit in the car any longer, she got out and started walking up the road toward the mansion.
She heard the faint sound of voices as she neared the entrance to the Grayson place. Male voices. Excited voices.
Hiding behind a tall juniper, she peered down the driveway. A black van was parked alongside the house. The sweep of a flashlight made her dart backward. The voices were louder now. Two men dressed in black jumpsuits materialized from behind the house. A third followed.
He was carrying Micah over his shoulder.
One of the men opened the back door of the van and the other two dumped Micah's body inside, then jumped in and closed the doors; the third man climbed into the cab and started the engine.
Mind racing, Lainey ran back to her car, slid behind the wheel, and ducked down. A short time later, she heard the black van go by.
Feeling as though she were living one of her own mystery novels, she switched on the ignition and went in pursuit of the van, careful to stay well behind them.
They had Micah. The thought pounded in her brain, even as she wondered who "they" were, what they wanted him for, what they intended to do to him.
There had been no emblems or insignia of any kind on the van to signify if the men who had taken Micah belonged to a government organization. Were they from the Air Force? The Central Intelligence Agency? SETI? How had they known Micah survived the crash? That he would show up at the Grayson place tonight?
She scolded herself for letting him return to the mansion, for not realizing that some fanatical scientist with nothing better to do might still be in the area, waiting around in hopes that the alien, if he had indeed survived, might return to what was left of his ship.
She blamed Micah, too. Surely he had realized how dangerous it would be to return to his ship?
Micah. He could read her mind. She could read his. She concentrated on his face, willing him to hear her, needing his assurance that he was unhurt.
Please, she thought.Please hear me. Please answer me .
But there was only silence and an increasing sense of dread, an overwhelming fear that they had killed him and were taking his body to some secret laboratory to dissect and study.
Her imagination, always vivid and overly active, quickly went into overdrive, and she visualized a team of doctors and scientists standing around Micah's remains, examining the webbing on his hands, coldly removing his internal organs, measuring the size of his brain, testing his blood.
No! The denial screamed inside her head. He could not be dead.
Please, please, don't let him be dead. Quiet tears trickled down her cheeks as the unspoken prayer repeated itself in her mind.
She was so lost in thought, so steeped in despair, that she almost