Guardian by Kaitlyn O'Connor (ebook e reader txt) 📗

She had a suspicious mind to go alongwith those brains, though, unless he was mistaken in his evaluationand he rarely was.

The sneaking suspicion that he hadaroused her suspicions—instead of sexually arousing her, which waswhat he really wanted to do—had grown since their encounter. Hewould have liked to think she was so nervous because she was soattracted to him, but he was not in to self deception. She mightbe. He thought there was interest in her eyes when she looked athim, but that did not account for her acute distress, he wasconvinced.

Not that he had had much in the way ofclose interactions with the natives to completely trust hisjudgment. He did not need his superiors to tell him that could bevery dangerous in a lot of ways.

First and foremost because Earthpeople had no clue of their existence and it was deemed imperativeto keep it that way since the Earth people were still very closelytied to their instincts—And those instincts inspired them to killanything they found strange, unusual, and potentiallythreatening.

And alien beings, no matter howadvanced the civilization they hailed from, fell into thatcategory.

Secondly, they had to be able to movewitnesses fast and place them in a safe place and they could notafford to get bogged down in the strangling politics of thisworld—and it was a stupefying tangle. He did not know how theycould figure it out. His people could not.

It was not his job, in any case, toform any sort of associations with the natives. His mission wassecret. His mission was to see to it that the witnesses under theprotection of the Galactic Alliance were seamlessly absorbed intothe population to prevent them from being tracked down and killedbefore they could testify against whatever culprit they had helpedto tie to a high crime.

Granted, he had been thoroughly pissedoff when he had not only been grounded over what he knew to be arighteous kill, but he had been banished to live among some prettydamned strange aliens—even if they did look a lot like them. And ontop of that, he had been charged with ‘babysitting’.

Marilyn had gone a long way towardreconciling him to his fate—punishment. At least enough that he hadcome to see that the place actually had a lot of potential and thejob was almost as rewarding as being in the field catching badguys.

It was still babysitting.

But it was rewarding when he managedto integrate a new citizen or family, and it was still his job tomake sure they behaved themselves and followed the laws of theland. If they didn’t, and they ran, he had to track them down andthey were either relocated or sent back to the home world to facecharges.

So really, he was doing his old joband just had a new job added on top of it and that seemed more likean atta boy for a job well done than punishment for a job fuckedup.

Which it actually was, however hepreferred to look at it.

But he knew he had been lucky and hedid not want to push it. If he fucked this up he was going to getbumped down from detective/babysitter to desk jockey. And he wastoo damned young to give up his career this early in thegame.

Besides which, he would have to leaveMarilyn—possibly before he had even had the chance to get to knowher as thoroughly as he wanted to.

The question was, he supposed, was ittotally reasonable and imperative to get closer to see just howmuch she’d figured out?

Or was that playing into his owndesires to get closer and would it turn out to be a mantrap he hadset for himself?

Chapter Four

Shaking his unaccustomed confusionafter a little while, Jarowd powered up TV and used the TV flipperstick to search through available documents until he found one thatappealed to him. It was a historical document from the quality ofthe piece, but seemed to suggest it was a future document. It wascalled Escape the Great City, though, and it was a cops andcriminal piece regarding a giant prison.

More importantly, he immediatelyidentified with the main character who almost seemed to have beenmodeled after him—super tough cop who had been wrongly convicted ofa crime and imprisoned.

That was why he felt so at home on this alien world.

Because it was so similar in so manyways to his home world.

And he could understand the aliens, orthought he could, because they had so much in common.

As deeply engrossed as he was, whenthe piece broke away from the main story so that they could try tosell something to him, he got up and retrieved the object he hadpalmed from pretty lady’s bag, turning it over several times beforehe crossed the room and placed it inside the object transporter.When he had sealed the door, he keyed in the coordinates and shotit off to be studied.

He had no idea what it was, but it didnot seem to belong with the other objects she carried around and hehad thought it worth palming it to check it out.

Which he still thought was a goodidea. Not so good, he was fairly certain Marilyn had noticed it wasmissing and that was what she had been hunting along the footwalk.

So much for thinking he might slip itback to her without her noticing once he had had itanalyzed.

* * * *

“You’re losing it,”Marilyn muttered. “Totally losing it.”

She’d only gotten a glimpse, she toldherself, wondering why she’d instantly jumped to the conclusionthat his eyes were alien.

She might have just imaginedit.

She spent most of her days marvelingover how strange he seemed to be.

She supposed that might have been whatinspired the notion that he was an alien, but why think thatinstead of assuming it was just another indication of how peculiarthe guy was? He was probably just wearing some of those weirdcontacts they made for people for dress up.

And he certainly had given her theimpression that he was ‘in’ to dress up.

Maybe he was an actor, she thoughtwith sudden enlightenment?

That would certainly explain whatseemed to be costume changes and character adaptations!

Or an aspiring actor?

Or an