Tagen leaned against the side of the groundcar to wait for her. He glanced behind him at Grendel, who had exhausted its attempts to grow opposing thumbs and open its own tins and who now lay contentedly on its side, watching him through the glass. “I command you to sleep,” he said sternly.

The cat closed its eyes.

Some were simply born to command.

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Chapter Thirty

Daria came out of the motel office with her head down and a beaten twist to her mouth. Looking at her, Tagen knew what he was going to hear. Still, he was not daunted. They had come a great distance in a short time (well, relatively. He had only the vaguest notion of how far they were now from Daria’s home, and an even vaguer impression of the time that had elapsed. He knew that, were this Jota, they could have crossed the span in one-tenth the time. He also knew that, were he still on foot, it would be a journey of so many days that he might see Earth’s miserable summer end before he had reached this place), but now their progress was being measured one motel, and one disappointment, after another.

“No luck,” Daria said, unnecessarily in light of her dispirited expression. She picked up her printed page, pulled a writing stylus from the groundcar’s small fore-compartment, and made a neat line through one of the listings. It was the fourteenth such marking, representing nearly half of the register.

“What is the time?” he asked as soon as she tucked her page away again.

She looked at the narrow band encircling her wrist. “Eleven fifteen,” she said, and sighed. “He’s up and gone by now, wherever he is.”

“Agreed.” Tagen tried to lean back and had to settle for rolling his shoulders instead in the tight confines of the groundcar’s interior. “And it is very hot, so he is likely to travel by day and hunt when it begins to cool.”

“Which will be eight or nine hours from now.” Daria shook her head, her palms rubbing restlessly at her knees. She did not look at him and she made no attempt to start the engine of the vehicle. “I could be wrong about this, Tagen. He might not even be on this road.”

In ordinary circumstances, Tagen Pahnee was a man prone to the contagious effects of pessimism, but not this time. His gut told him they were close. Despite Daria’s obvious discouragement at having checked so many motels with so little to show for it, Tagen remained confidant.

“As I see it, the prisoner will proceed in one of two ways.” Tagen fetched out the printed page and ran his eye critically down the column of neatly-lettered alien words. “He may stay where he is. It seems that there has been a short lull after his larger hunts and the killings at the motel would certainly qualify. If not, he will move on, taking the first westward road he encounters, as has been his habit.”

“We think,” Daria interjected, stressing the second word.

“In either event, our course is clear. We must continue our inquiries until we find the place where either he has stayed or where he is staying even now. The road he takes next may depend greatly on which motel he has taken. Otherwise, we could simply drive on now and hope to overtake him.”

“How do you expect to know—” Daria interrupted herself with a yawn. “—when we’ve overtaken him? I mean, what if he stops early? He doesn’t do all his hunting when it’s cool.”

“No, that he does not. But these larger hunts have drawn swift attention. Your lawmen have come on his victims mere hours after he has passed. That being so, if we should pass by a great number of police vehicles…” He held out one hand to her, inviting conclusion.

“Yeah, I guess.” She looked around at the enclosing walls of forest. “Out here, it’s hardly likely they’d be busting the last of the big-time squirrel rustlers.” She turned to him, frowning and searching his face intently. “You’re putting a hell of a lot of faith in my slap-ass theory, you know that, right?”

“Had we known of this…circle he travels when he hunted Hillmark, I think that we would have him now,” he replied seriously. “In every suggestion you have made, there has been merit. I shall see you—”

He broke off sharply, then faced forward and stared away out the console window, making no attempt to complete the unfinished thought.

From the open hold in the rear of the groundcar came a sleepy cat-sound, and then Grendel’s head insinuated itself over Tagen’s shoulder. Words had not proved intriguing enough to rouse the animal from it’s incessant rest, but this silence had a prickly weight to it that anyone could feel. Tagen pulled the creature over the back of his seat and onto his lap in an attempt to disperse the awkwardness of the moment with interruption.

Daria waited for a short time, and then reached out and stilled the stroking movements of his hand on Grendel’s fur. “See me…?” she prompted, one brow raised.

He felt his lips stretching in a small smile, the humor of which utterly escaped him. “Recommended for commendation to our superiors,” he finished. He did not look at her.

Daria leaned back, and then faced forward as well. After a while, she said, “Daria Cleavon, intergalactic bounty hunter. Got a hell of nice ring to it.”

“Indeed.”

Silence, underscored by cat-growls of contentment.

Since the leave-taking of Daria’s home, Tagen had thought only of his prisoner. After so much stifling inaction, this day’s work left him with a renewal of purpose, even if it hadn’t delivered him E’Var in shackles. He knew with every cell of him that they were closing and he felt only the simmering excitement of pursuit nearing its end.

But now, all his thoughts went for the first time to that morning after, when he had his prisoner in custody or in ashes, and he stood again at his ship’s airlock, ready to leave Earth and all its inhabitants. All of them.

As hellish as this mission had been, as fervently as he hated this world, as much as he wished to be free of Heat…the thought of leaving still filled him with dark emotion. He couldn’t understand why. It was Daria at the heart of it, that much he knew, but it made the matter no clearer. He had taken many mates in his adult life and he had parted from each one when the time came without hesitation, just as they had done. The most emotion he had ever felt on leaving was a rueful wish for more time, spiced with good mating memories. This was not the same.

Tagen came slowly to the unpleasant realization that he didn’t want to leave Daria. It was even more than that; a part of him wanted very much to stay with her.

Impossible. He could never be safe on Earth. The tee-vee, and Daria herself, had made it clear that she could not protect him, and he did not doubt that if the fact of his arrival on this world were ever exposed, it would go very badly not only for him, but for her as well. It had been no less a thing than divinely-ordained chance that he had not been discovered already. He could not stay. Not one day longer than absolutely necessary. If the capture of E’Var were not so dreadfully important, he would have left already.

All of this was true and the truth was ugly. He couldn’t look at her now with these thoughts churning in his brain. There was no part of her he would not miss—the soft fall of her hair, her bi-colored eyes, the exotic lines and curves of her body, her voice and the amazing wisdoms it spoke so handily. Even her fat, smug cat. Life apart from that…felt hollow.

He didn’t know how many of these thoughts were shared by his human, but she was too quiet not to be aware of any of them. The quiet they made between them was suffocating, but for his life, he couldn’t think of a thing to say to break it. Not in N’Glish, not even in Jotan. After all the times he had seen humans in the tee-vee programs fumble over words at moments like this for comic effect, here he sat and it was not in the least funny.