“We will discuss this. But I think we all need some time to process it first. Leonard, get whatever equipment you can’t leave behind. I’ve arranged for a ship. Now that we have what we came here for, I think it’s best that we don’t linger.” He turned to Darren and smiled. “We should head back to the Maine. I’ll give you the coordinates for my safehouse. That’s where the lab we’ll use is.”
Aiden’s hackles rose. George was right. It would be easy for Marcus to find them here. Nyle was monitoring the surveillance from the Maine, but there were just too many people and too many ships.
Darren squeezed Aiden’s hand back. “I agree with George. We can talk and figure out what we are going to do when we are somewhere safer. Let’s head back.”
Within an hour, Leonard’s team had collected what they needed. While they loaded it onto the ship George had arranged, Aiden, Darren and Kristen purged the lab logs and erased any traces they’d been here.
“Ready to go?” George asked from the door. “Leonard just commed me—they are lifting off. They have the clear.”
Darren glanced at Kristen. The engineer keyed in a command and all the computers in the lab shut down. A few seconds later, the lights went off, too. “Ready.”
They left the darkness of the lab and headed back to the docks. The streets of the entertainment zone were even more crowded now, and when Aiden glanced at the time, he realized it was just past six, which meant that most of the station had just finished work for the day.
“Should we pick some food?” Darren said, pointing at a barbeque joint nestled between a supermarket and an alcohol store.
Aiden picked out the smell of grilled meat as if on cue. His stomach rumbled, very onboard with the idea. “Yeah. Barbeque sounds good,” he said, looking for the menu sign.
He found it to the left of the queue at the takeaway kiosk. Most of the people were smiling and chatting with each other in groups of threes and fours, or if not, were staring at their tablets or phones. They wore lab coats and uniforms apart from four men in suits who were smoking near a garbage can. They didn’t seem to be interested in the food, and one of them pulled out a phone as he looked in Aiden’s direction.
For a moment, their gazes clashed. Unease spread through Aiden, concentrating in his stomach and chasing his appetite away.
“Actually, maybe we can get something else,” he said, suddenly wanting to be off the station and as far away from it as he could. “I don’t feel like queuing. I’m sure Bea and Nyle will—”
Another man joined the four. He came out of the supermarket along with three bodyguards and stared right at Aiden with blue eyes ready to murder.
Aiden knew those eyes, he could never mistake them even if they were nothing like the warm amber that Claudia’s had been.
No, this couldn’t be happening!
“Darren, run!” he gasped, breaking into a sprint.
He grabbed Darren’s wrist and yanked so Darren would follow, his heart hammering against his chest as his lungs fought to get air. His ears rang and his legs burned, but he kept going, shouting through the earpiece for Bea to get the Maine ready.
“What’s going on, Kesley?”she said back, her voice worried.
“He’s here! Get the ship ready! Marcus and his men are on this station!”
