Rising Bounty Read Free Page A

someone else did it, not ye.”
    Shy winked. “I bet someone set you up.”
    Isaac joined in. “We’ve got the wrong person, right?”
    “Assholes!” The perp swore at them as they laughed at her.
    Abe closed his eyes again when he heard the perp swear at them. She was a liar, like so many he had met before. This perp lied when she was caught smuggling drugs onto the planet. She lied to the judge about where she got her supply; she lied about just about everything on her bail bond application except for the color of her eyes. Some people lived on their lies. If there was one thing that Abe Connor hated, it was a liar.
    Funny enough, the first person who had ever lied to him was his own grandmother. His mother had been a troublesome human teenager from New Earth, who had gotten pregnant with a bazinoid baby. She wasn’t ready for motherhood, especially one that advanced so quickly because of his alien DNA. His mother had abandoned him dumping him on his human grandmother as soon as he had been born.
    His grandmother, Bridget, had been a force to be reckoned with. She came from old Earth’s Scotland. She didn’t hesitate to take him in and care for him and love him the best she could the first ten years of his life, but she didn’t know much about Bazinoids. The older he got, the more his characteristic alien traits developed — temper, size, aggression. To help control his rapidly changing demeanor, she reached out to a couple from the planet Bazin and asked them to foster him.
    He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but she told him that he could possibly get to meet his father if he went with the couple. It was a lie; she had no idea who his father was or how to get in contact with him. He knew right away it was a lie; something about his Bazinoid DNA helped him hear the truth or the lie. He loved his grandmother, but he couldn’t understand why she wanted him to live with strangers. As a young boy already abandoned by his birth mother, he felt like his grandmother was abandoning him too. She visited him several times a year when she had the money.
    His grandmother hadn’t been the last person to lie to him, but she was the only person he had ever forgiven for it. When he was a troublesome twelve year old, he overheard his foster parents talking about sending him back. That’s when he discovered that his grandmother had become sick with cancer. She petitioned the Bazin government to find him a foster home. She was worried that she would die and he wouldn’t have anyone to care for him.
    His attitude changed after that. He understood that his grandmother loved him enough to send him away to be protected.
    Once he turned fourteen, he got a part-time job and used his own money to pay for her visits until she was too sick to travel. By the age of sixteen, he was considered an adult on Bazin. Using his own money, he moved back to old Earth to be closer to where his grandmother was and took another job to help take care of her. He was glad that he had forgiven her before she breathed her last breath. Grams Bridgett had been one of a kind and he missed her every day..

 
     
    Chapter 3
     
     
    Roxanne wrapped her arms around herself to try to keep from shaking. When the alarm for the nightclub went off, it freaked her out out. She had panicked until she realized it was the club’s alarms. She reached for her phone and called the club’s owner, Lexi.
    Lexi would have to be the one to deal with the authority; she couldn’t talk to the police and risk that they discover her real identity. She woke up her mother and daughter and headed for a hotel. A few hours later, Lexi called her once the authorities were done investigating the premises and told her it was safe to return.
    Now she stood behind the bar with her pen and pad, taking inventory. “This doesn’t make any sense.” She shook her head, confused.
    “What’s that, beautiful?”
    She jumped in surprise at the male voice so close to her, too close. She turned