Part 31
Liz finally pulled back, smiled up at Max. He looked slightly dazed, like he couldn't quite believe that things were this good between them again. His eyes drifted momentarily to her lips, but then quickly looked away.
She felt her heart fall slightly. She knew it was too soon for anything beyond friends with them, but it didn't mean that being in such close proximity to him wasn't making her heart beat faster, wasn't making her remember when he used to be able to make her see stars - and then only with a simple kiss.
It was unfair, she knew, that the fact that he [I]hadn't[/I] slept with Tess was so important to her. She had not been alone since he had been gone, something he was going to have to deal with. But the whole Tess thing...it had made her feel like she had never even known Max at all. That everything he had ever said to her over their short time together - every [I]You're the one Liz, the [/I] only [I] one[/I], every [I]whether I die tomorrow or fifty years from now, my destiny is the same...it's [/I] you[I] Liz[/I] had been a lie. Now that she understood what had happened with Tess - really nothing at all - everything was different, just as she had known it would be.
He was suddenly [I]Max[/I] again - Max with no baggage whatsoever. Max, completely clean and innocent and only [I]hers[/I], but also mature and sexy and [I]still[/I] hers...and, oh God, just [I]Max[/I].
"So that's where we stand then," he was saying quietly, having taken a step back and still not looking at her. "Friends."
Liz smiled slightly to herself at the uncertain way he said it. It reminded her of that time in the Crashdown, when the whole [I]friends[/I] conversation had been merely a cover for what they both really wanted to admit - that the idea of [I]not[/I] touching each other was probably the worst they had ever been forced to contemplate.
"For now," Liz replied. "At least until I work things out with Dan."
"Right." He looked at her again, no longer the seventeen year old boy she remembered, but the mature and capable man he had become. "Which you're going to do how?"
Liz sighed. "I wish I knew. He's not going to take this easily." She saw Max frown slightly, knew what he was worrying about. "But he won't betray you Max. I know he won't. You were right about him. He'll be hurt, but he's not the kind of guy to lash out that way."
"He really took it well." Max shook his head in wonder. "I mean, it's not every day someone learns that aliens are real."
Liz looked at him closely, "Max, you [I]do[/I] trust Dan, don't you?" The way he had said that...it was like he had still been a bit uncertain about her fiancé.
"I trust you," he replied simply. "It's all I need to know."
She felt her heart begin to beat more quickly again. She had forgotten that tendency he had - had always had, even sometimes during the time that he had been sealed by his enemies - to be able to say exactly the right thing at the right time. She wondered if it was a remnant of being a king - that ability to warm people all over with only a simple stringing together of words. She loved it about him.
Liz realized that [I]she[/I] was now staring at [I]his[/I] lips - and he certainly noticed, because when she raised her gaze to meet his, she saw that they had darkened slightly, that he was breathing a bit more quickly.
"Okay, Dan!" She almost exclaimed it, trying to break the tension that had sprung up so suddenly again. "I guess I better head up there then."
"Right."
"Well, I'm going then." She blinked when she realized that she had taken a step closer to Max rather than away.
"I can see that." He sounded amused, but very serious at the same time.
[I]You're the one who wants to be friends you idiot![/I] She could hear the voice screaming at her in her head. [I]If you do this...it's going to change [/I] everything[I]...It's too soon![/I]
"I'm already gone." She knew that she was blushing as she turned away. When she realized that he wasn't following her, she turned slightly though. "Aren't you coming?"
"In a minute. I don't think Dan's going to be particularly happy to see me at the moment," he replied wryly.
"No," Liz agreed, sighing. "But it'll be okay."
"I know it will."
They stared at each other for a moment longer, in complete sync.
She barely managed to turn away.
She was halfway up the slope when she noticed him. She was amazed that she had caught sight of him at all. It was almost dark, but she caught a glimpse of the silvery colour of his hair against the darkened foliage, which made her turn her head just in time to see him disappear behind some bushes again.
"Ben?" She whispered his name, looking back to where she had left Max moments ago. He still hadn't emerged from the copse of trees, was obviously staying true to his word to give her and Dan a little time without him as part of the audience.
There was no movement.
She frowned slightly, picked her way gingerly across the slope. "Ben, it's me Liz. It's okay honey."
There was a long pause and then a sob, heavy with relief. "Liz?"
"What are you doing in here?" Liz dropped to her knees, poked her head into the bushes, her heart almost breaking at the sight of the little boy. She felt her eyes widen when she caught sight of Lexi, who was sitting behind Ben, talking quietly to herself in typical baby fashion.
Ben was sitting almost buried in the foliage, his knees up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, trying to make himself as small as possible. "Maria sent me out to find you and Dad." He said, his voice trembling. "We were in the basement, looking for some stuff...Lexi too." He cut himself off, began to cry in earnest.
"We were just down the hill honey." Liz crawled in towards him, flinching as a sharp twig scraped across her arm. She ignored it, did not pause until she had reached his side, could pull the boy awkwardly into her arms. "What's wrong?" Her heart was already beginning to beat double-time. She could see Lexi watching them now, her big eyes, the exact same colour as Max's Liz knew, glinting slightly in the approaching twilight.
Something was obviously [I]very[/I] wrong. Maria would never have sent Ben out on his own, especially with the baby - not when it was almost dark and not when there was a psycho alien after him.
"I couldn't find you." He was sniffling against her, obviously calming down slightly now that he had an adult to take on his problems again. "Maria gave me her watch." He lifted his small arm, showed Liz, although it was too dark for her really see it. "She told me that if I didn't find you in exactly five minutes, I had to hide - me and Lexi."
Liz briefly closed her eyes. It was bad. She knew it. She managed to keep her voice steady as she asked, "Why sweetie?"
"I don't know!" He almost wailed it, but then quickly dropped his voice. "She told me to whisper when I found you," he confided, sounding guilty.
"Okay, what exactly happened when you were with Maria in the basement?" Liz tried another tack.
"We were just messing around with some stuff. There's junk everywhere down there. I told her before you got back that Dad had been looking for something, so she said that maybe we should go look for it again. We were down there and we heard some cars come up. It was you and Kyle and that other man. I heard you talking to my dad and then you and Dad left and Michael and the other man had a fight." He looked at her guiltily. "I know I wasn't supposed to be listening, but Maria was too and she said it was for a good reason."
Liz rolled her eyes slightly, grimaced but focused on the important part of what Max's son had just said. "What kind of fight?" She had visions of Dan saying something insulting about Max, of Michael finally reaching the end of his tether, of actually blasting her erstwhile fiancé into the stratosphere.
"Just yelling," Ben replied. "He was saying mean things about my dad." The outrage was clear in his voice. "But they both stopped because another car came and Aunt Isabel was happy because it was her husband."
"Jesse?"
"Yeah. But Maria said that we had to still stay in the basement. She was really scared suddenly."
"She was?" Liz was a little confused by that. Wasn't Jesse's arrival a good thing?
"There was a lot of yelling and then Aunt Izzy was screaming about someone named Nicholas."
Liz closed her eyes, clutched Ben closer to her. She reached out with the other hand, beckoned to Lexi. The little girl crawled towards her, gurgling happily.
"Then what happened?" She whispered.
"Maria pushed a big sheet aside and showed me a tunnel," Ben continued, taking Liz's cue and speaking in a low voice. "She told me to take Lexi out to find you. I could hear someone coming down the stairs already."
"Why didn't she come with you?" Liz demanded, angry at her best friend for making the two children stumble out the secret tunnel alone.
"She told me that she needed to stay. To make the people coming think that Lexi and I hadn't been down there." Liz understood. Maria was going to play it that Max and Ben weren't even there at all anymore - that they were long gone, which Ben reinforced when he said, "That we were with Dad."
Max.
Liz turned her head, took in the trees about a hundred yards below them. She hadn't seen him come out yet. He had to still be there, completely unaware of what was going on up at the house. From Ben's explanation it sounded like Nicholas had somehow forced Jesse to bring him to them. And Max had absolutely no idea. He was staying where he was, waiting for some indication that Dan was not going to freak out completely, oblivious to the fact that everything had changed - that their enemies had arrived and they were unprepared...all because of Liz's stupid life.
She felt her heart thundering in her chest as she tried to gauge how quickly she could make it down that slope with Ben and Lexi.
Not fast enough. They were going to have to go around the long way if she took them with her.
She could leave the children here, relatively safe, and make a run for it herself, and then come back for them after she had told Max what was going on. But one glance at Ben's terrified expression and she knew that she couldn't do that either.
The long way it was then.
"Okay, listen to me sweetie. This is what we're going to do..."
**************************************************************
Max had folded his arms across his chest, was leaning back against a tree, reflecting on his lengthy conversation with Liz, wondering how long he should stay away from the house. He was trying to put himself in Dan's shoes, felt a pang of sympathy for the other man, but couldn't quite wipe the silly grin off his face as he remembered how truly close Liz had been to kissing [I]him[/I], when he suddenly just [I]knew[/I] that something was wrong. A chill ran down the length of his spine, making him jump immediately to attention.
Ben. He could almost feel the little boy's terror crashing down on him in waves. He had turned and was out of the trees before the feeling completely passed. He could still see Liz making her way up the slope, it was that soon after she had left. As he watched, she paused, turned her head and then made a direct bee-line for a stand of brush on the left-hand side of the slope.
Max frowned, wondered what the hell she was doing. He started after her, when his attention was suddenly caught by noise from up at the house. He could hear a car pulling away, obviously at a high rate of speed.
And he knew. They had been found.
He melted back into the trees, his heart pounding a mile a minute, guilt descending on him so quickly, it literally took his breath away. He had left Ben up there and his son's enemies had found them. How could he have been so careless?
Unless it was [I]Max's[/I] enemies of course - his good old brother-in-law and his friends at the Special Unit.
Max forced himself to push the guilt aside. Now wasn't the time for it. He needed to focus on what exactly he was going to do to fix this. And the first thing he needed to do was to get to Liz, who, thankfully, had not made it all the way back up to the house.
He stood just within the wind-break of trees, stared over at the bushes where Liz was still out of sight. He measured the distance with his eyes, could see that it was too far to make a break for it. But, as he watched, he caught a hint of movement. He saw a form that could only be Liz emerge and head off in the opposite direction.
And she wasn't alone. His relief was so great, he actually felt his knees weaken. She had Ben's hand firmly in hers and was clutching Lexi against her chest as she darted away from Max and into another clump of brush.
Max hurried to the far side of the windbreak. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was taking the long way around to bring the kids to him. Well, he was going to meet her half-way.
The next five minutes were the longest of Max's life. He didn't make it far before he realized that there wasn't much cover between the bushes Liz was now hiding in with his son and niece and the grouping of trees. The distance wasn't nearly as great as it had been on the slope, but it was still a good fifty yards.
He had missed the desert when he had been on Antar, had felt closed in by the lack of wide, empty spaces on his native planet, but at the moment he longed for the claustrophobia of it all. There just weren't enough damn hiding places when wide open spaces were involved.
Max wished that he could somehow get in touch with Liz, let her know that he knew where she was, that he was trying to get to her, but he couldn't take the risk of calling her on her cell. He didn't even know if she had it with her. He had his. He could feel it in the pocket of his jacket, taunting him because it was completely useless.
He felt helplessness forcing panic within him. He had not felt this afraid since his worst moments on Antar - not since the day he had finally come face to face with Khivar, the enemy that had been faceless for so long, but was suddenly just [I]there[/I].
Every single person he cared about was in danger. All because he had come back to them. Michael and Isabel and Maria and Kyle were up at the house, likely either in the control of Nicholas or the Special Unit. Liz and Ben and Lexi were so close, safe for the moment, and yet so far, they might as well have been on Antar.
He was going to have to make a break for it. He just couldn't leave them alone there any longer.
And it was in that instant that he heard her.
*~Max?*~
He blinked, then closed his eyes. Her voice was tentative, unsure, but it was definitely [I]her[/I].
She was in his head.
**Liz?** He knew that he probably sounded incredibly incredulous to her, but he couldn't help it. He knew that the connection was strong, was growing stronger now that they both knew the truth about their history, but he had never in a million years imagined that it would be [I]this[/I] powerful.
*~It's me.*~ He could almost hear her straining. *~Ben is helping me. This is all he can do. He tried mindwarping, but he's still too weak from a couple of nights ago.*~
Max just shook his head, forced his shock aside. **Are you all right?**
*~We're all fine. Max, Nicholas is up there. And Jesse. Ben hasn't been able to give me too many details, but Max...it sounds like they're working [I]together[/I]!*~ Her shock was apparent.
Max grimaced slightly. Of course Liz didn't know anything about Jesse. He had never had the chance to tell her. But the confirmation that his brother-in-law could not be trusted hit him like a truck. Isabel was going to be devastated.
**Hell.** It was a ridiculously simplistic response, but seemed to sum up the entire situation quite nicely.
*~Max, what are we going to do? I can't stay here with them forever. Ben is practically on the verge of a breakdown and Lexi is getting fussy. She's asking for Isabel.*~
**What else did Ben tell you?** Max asked quickly. He could almost feel Liz's fear now, coming through the connection. He tried to keep her focused on what they could do, needed to keep her calm. She was all that was standing between his son and disaster. He knew he could trust her, but it had been so long since she had dealt with anything like this. He had brought this down on her head again. Her life was in danger because of him.
Stop it! He ordered himself to forget the guilt for the moment. It was his constant companion, but it could not be allowed to distract him. Not right now. It was his guilt over this connection with Liz, this bond that was turning out to be even more extraordinary than even [I]he[/I] had been able to understand, that had put them all in this position in the first place. If he had been up at the house instead of pouting over his guilt about the connection, none of this would have happened.
They would have found who they were really looking for. He could have traded himself for his son's life. For the lives of all of his friends. It would have been so easy...
There had been a pause while Liz had spoken to Ben, perhaps clarifying some details about exactly what he knew was going on. *~It sounds like Maria might have been trying to convince them that you and I had already left with Ben and Lexi. Ben says that's what her plan was. I don't know what Michael or Isabel or...*~ There was a pause. *~Dan might have said upstairs.*~
Dan. God, he was up there too. And he was in no way connected to any of them besides Liz. He might talk just to protect Liz. She was the only one he cared about after all.
And Max knew exactly what he had to do. **Liz, there's only one thing to do.**
*~What Max?*~ He could hear the hope in her voice, her certainty that he would know how to fix this, that all of his years fighting a war on Antar could not have been in vain.
But all of his years on Antar had not involved everyone he loved. He had been incapable of remembering what love felt like through most of it, had only done what he knew he was [I]supposed[/I] to do.
None of those rules applied anymore.
**I'm going to give myself up.**
Liz finally pulled back, smiled up at Max. He looked slightly dazed, like he couldn't quite believe that things were this good between them again. His eyes drifted momentarily to her lips, but then quickly looked away.
She felt her heart fall slightly. She knew it was too soon for anything beyond friends with them, but it didn't mean that being in such close proximity to him wasn't making her heart beat faster, wasn't making her remember when he used to be able to make her see stars - and then only with a simple kiss.
It was unfair, she knew, that the fact that he [I]hadn't[/I] slept with Tess was so important to her. She had not been alone since he had been gone, something he was going to have to deal with. But the whole Tess thing...it had made her feel like she had never even known Max at all. That everything he had ever said to her over their short time together - every [I]You're the one Liz, the [/I] only [I] one[/I], every [I]whether I die tomorrow or fifty years from now, my destiny is the same...it's [/I] you[I] Liz[/I] had been a lie. Now that she understood what had happened with Tess - really nothing at all - everything was different, just as she had known it would be.
He was suddenly [I]Max[/I] again - Max with no baggage whatsoever. Max, completely clean and innocent and only [I]hers[/I], but also mature and sexy and [I]still[/I] hers...and, oh God, just [I]Max[/I].
"So that's where we stand then," he was saying quietly, having taken a step back and still not looking at her. "Friends."
Liz smiled slightly to herself at the uncertain way he said it. It reminded her of that time in the Crashdown, when the whole [I]friends[/I] conversation had been merely a cover for what they both really wanted to admit - that the idea of [I]not[/I] touching each other was probably the worst they had ever been forced to contemplate.
"For now," Liz replied. "At least until I work things out with Dan."
"Right." He looked at her again, no longer the seventeen year old boy she remembered, but the mature and capable man he had become. "Which you're going to do how?"
Liz sighed. "I wish I knew. He's not going to take this easily." She saw Max frown slightly, knew what he was worrying about. "But he won't betray you Max. I know he won't. You were right about him. He'll be hurt, but he's not the kind of guy to lash out that way."
"He really took it well." Max shook his head in wonder. "I mean, it's not every day someone learns that aliens are real."
Liz looked at him closely, "Max, you [I]do[/I] trust Dan, don't you?" The way he had said that...it was like he had still been a bit uncertain about her fiancé.
"I trust you," he replied simply. "It's all I need to know."
She felt her heart begin to beat more quickly again. She had forgotten that tendency he had - had always had, even sometimes during the time that he had been sealed by his enemies - to be able to say exactly the right thing at the right time. She wondered if it was a remnant of being a king - that ability to warm people all over with only a simple stringing together of words. She loved it about him.
Liz realized that [I]she[/I] was now staring at [I]his[/I] lips - and he certainly noticed, because when she raised her gaze to meet his, she saw that they had darkened slightly, that he was breathing a bit more quickly.
"Okay, Dan!" She almost exclaimed it, trying to break the tension that had sprung up so suddenly again. "I guess I better head up there then."
"Right."
"Well, I'm going then." She blinked when she realized that she had taken a step closer to Max rather than away.
"I can see that." He sounded amused, but very serious at the same time.
[I]You're the one who wants to be friends you idiot![/I] She could hear the voice screaming at her in her head. [I]If you do this...it's going to change [/I] everything[I]...It's too soon![/I]
"I'm already gone." She knew that she was blushing as she turned away. When she realized that he wasn't following her, she turned slightly though. "Aren't you coming?"
"In a minute. I don't think Dan's going to be particularly happy to see me at the moment," he replied wryly.
"No," Liz agreed, sighing. "But it'll be okay."
"I know it will."
They stared at each other for a moment longer, in complete sync.
She barely managed to turn away.
She was halfway up the slope when she noticed him. She was amazed that she had caught sight of him at all. It was almost dark, but she caught a glimpse of the silvery colour of his hair against the darkened foliage, which made her turn her head just in time to see him disappear behind some bushes again.
"Ben?" She whispered his name, looking back to where she had left Max moments ago. He still hadn't emerged from the copse of trees, was obviously staying true to his word to give her and Dan a little time without him as part of the audience.
There was no movement.
She frowned slightly, picked her way gingerly across the slope. "Ben, it's me Liz. It's okay honey."
There was a long pause and then a sob, heavy with relief. "Liz?"
"What are you doing in here?" Liz dropped to her knees, poked her head into the bushes, her heart almost breaking at the sight of the little boy. She felt her eyes widen when she caught sight of Lexi, who was sitting behind Ben, talking quietly to herself in typical baby fashion.
Ben was sitting almost buried in the foliage, his knees up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, trying to make himself as small as possible. "Maria sent me out to find you and Dad." He said, his voice trembling. "We were in the basement, looking for some stuff...Lexi too." He cut himself off, began to cry in earnest.
"We were just down the hill honey." Liz crawled in towards him, flinching as a sharp twig scraped across her arm. She ignored it, did not pause until she had reached his side, could pull the boy awkwardly into her arms. "What's wrong?" Her heart was already beginning to beat double-time. She could see Lexi watching them now, her big eyes, the exact same colour as Max's Liz knew, glinting slightly in the approaching twilight.
Something was obviously [I]very[/I] wrong. Maria would never have sent Ben out on his own, especially with the baby - not when it was almost dark and not when there was a psycho alien after him.
"I couldn't find you." He was sniffling against her, obviously calming down slightly now that he had an adult to take on his problems again. "Maria gave me her watch." He lifted his small arm, showed Liz, although it was too dark for her really see it. "She told me that if I didn't find you in exactly five minutes, I had to hide - me and Lexi."
Liz briefly closed her eyes. It was bad. She knew it. She managed to keep her voice steady as she asked, "Why sweetie?"
"I don't know!" He almost wailed it, but then quickly dropped his voice. "She told me to whisper when I found you," he confided, sounding guilty.
"Okay, what exactly happened when you were with Maria in the basement?" Liz tried another tack.
"We were just messing around with some stuff. There's junk everywhere down there. I told her before you got back that Dad had been looking for something, so she said that maybe we should go look for it again. We were down there and we heard some cars come up. It was you and Kyle and that other man. I heard you talking to my dad and then you and Dad left and Michael and the other man had a fight." He looked at her guiltily. "I know I wasn't supposed to be listening, but Maria was too and she said it was for a good reason."
Liz rolled her eyes slightly, grimaced but focused on the important part of what Max's son had just said. "What kind of fight?" She had visions of Dan saying something insulting about Max, of Michael finally reaching the end of his tether, of actually blasting her erstwhile fiancé into the stratosphere.
"Just yelling," Ben replied. "He was saying mean things about my dad." The outrage was clear in his voice. "But they both stopped because another car came and Aunt Isabel was happy because it was her husband."
"Jesse?"
"Yeah. But Maria said that we had to still stay in the basement. She was really scared suddenly."
"She was?" Liz was a little confused by that. Wasn't Jesse's arrival a good thing?
"There was a lot of yelling and then Aunt Izzy was screaming about someone named Nicholas."
Liz closed her eyes, clutched Ben closer to her. She reached out with the other hand, beckoned to Lexi. The little girl crawled towards her, gurgling happily.
"Then what happened?" She whispered.
"Maria pushed a big sheet aside and showed me a tunnel," Ben continued, taking Liz's cue and speaking in a low voice. "She told me to take Lexi out to find you. I could hear someone coming down the stairs already."
"Why didn't she come with you?" Liz demanded, angry at her best friend for making the two children stumble out the secret tunnel alone.
"She told me that she needed to stay. To make the people coming think that Lexi and I hadn't been down there." Liz understood. Maria was going to play it that Max and Ben weren't even there at all anymore - that they were long gone, which Ben reinforced when he said, "That we were with Dad."
Max.
Liz turned her head, took in the trees about a hundred yards below them. She hadn't seen him come out yet. He had to still be there, completely unaware of what was going on up at the house. From Ben's explanation it sounded like Nicholas had somehow forced Jesse to bring him to them. And Max had absolutely no idea. He was staying where he was, waiting for some indication that Dan was not going to freak out completely, oblivious to the fact that everything had changed - that their enemies had arrived and they were unprepared...all because of Liz's stupid life.
She felt her heart thundering in her chest as she tried to gauge how quickly she could make it down that slope with Ben and Lexi.
Not fast enough. They were going to have to go around the long way if she took them with her.
She could leave the children here, relatively safe, and make a run for it herself, and then come back for them after she had told Max what was going on. But one glance at Ben's terrified expression and she knew that she couldn't do that either.
The long way it was then.
"Okay, listen to me sweetie. This is what we're going to do..."
**************************************************************
Max had folded his arms across his chest, was leaning back against a tree, reflecting on his lengthy conversation with Liz, wondering how long he should stay away from the house. He was trying to put himself in Dan's shoes, felt a pang of sympathy for the other man, but couldn't quite wipe the silly grin off his face as he remembered how truly close Liz had been to kissing [I]him[/I], when he suddenly just [I]knew[/I] that something was wrong. A chill ran down the length of his spine, making him jump immediately to attention.
Ben. He could almost feel the little boy's terror crashing down on him in waves. He had turned and was out of the trees before the feeling completely passed. He could still see Liz making her way up the slope, it was that soon after she had left. As he watched, she paused, turned her head and then made a direct bee-line for a stand of brush on the left-hand side of the slope.
Max frowned, wondered what the hell she was doing. He started after her, when his attention was suddenly caught by noise from up at the house. He could hear a car pulling away, obviously at a high rate of speed.
And he knew. They had been found.
He melted back into the trees, his heart pounding a mile a minute, guilt descending on him so quickly, it literally took his breath away. He had left Ben up there and his son's enemies had found them. How could he have been so careless?
Unless it was [I]Max's[/I] enemies of course - his good old brother-in-law and his friends at the Special Unit.
Max forced himself to push the guilt aside. Now wasn't the time for it. He needed to focus on what exactly he was going to do to fix this. And the first thing he needed to do was to get to Liz, who, thankfully, had not made it all the way back up to the house.
He stood just within the wind-break of trees, stared over at the bushes where Liz was still out of sight. He measured the distance with his eyes, could see that it was too far to make a break for it. But, as he watched, he caught a hint of movement. He saw a form that could only be Liz emerge and head off in the opposite direction.
And she wasn't alone. His relief was so great, he actually felt his knees weaken. She had Ben's hand firmly in hers and was clutching Lexi against her chest as she darted away from Max and into another clump of brush.
Max hurried to the far side of the windbreak. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was taking the long way around to bring the kids to him. Well, he was going to meet her half-way.
The next five minutes were the longest of Max's life. He didn't make it far before he realized that there wasn't much cover between the bushes Liz was now hiding in with his son and niece and the grouping of trees. The distance wasn't nearly as great as it had been on the slope, but it was still a good fifty yards.
He had missed the desert when he had been on Antar, had felt closed in by the lack of wide, empty spaces on his native planet, but at the moment he longed for the claustrophobia of it all. There just weren't enough damn hiding places when wide open spaces were involved.
Max wished that he could somehow get in touch with Liz, let her know that he knew where she was, that he was trying to get to her, but he couldn't take the risk of calling her on her cell. He didn't even know if she had it with her. He had his. He could feel it in the pocket of his jacket, taunting him because it was completely useless.
He felt helplessness forcing panic within him. He had not felt this afraid since his worst moments on Antar - not since the day he had finally come face to face with Khivar, the enemy that had been faceless for so long, but was suddenly just [I]there[/I].
Every single person he cared about was in danger. All because he had come back to them. Michael and Isabel and Maria and Kyle were up at the house, likely either in the control of Nicholas or the Special Unit. Liz and Ben and Lexi were so close, safe for the moment, and yet so far, they might as well have been on Antar.
He was going to have to make a break for it. He just couldn't leave them alone there any longer.
And it was in that instant that he heard her.
*~Max?*~
He blinked, then closed his eyes. Her voice was tentative, unsure, but it was definitely [I]her[/I].
She was in his head.
**Liz?** He knew that he probably sounded incredibly incredulous to her, but he couldn't help it. He knew that the connection was strong, was growing stronger now that they both knew the truth about their history, but he had never in a million years imagined that it would be [I]this[/I] powerful.
*~It's me.*~ He could almost hear her straining. *~Ben is helping me. This is all he can do. He tried mindwarping, but he's still too weak from a couple of nights ago.*~
Max just shook his head, forced his shock aside. **Are you all right?**
*~We're all fine. Max, Nicholas is up there. And Jesse. Ben hasn't been able to give me too many details, but Max...it sounds like they're working [I]together[/I]!*~ Her shock was apparent.
Max grimaced slightly. Of course Liz didn't know anything about Jesse. He had never had the chance to tell her. But the confirmation that his brother-in-law could not be trusted hit him like a truck. Isabel was going to be devastated.
**Hell.** It was a ridiculously simplistic response, but seemed to sum up the entire situation quite nicely.
*~Max, what are we going to do? I can't stay here with them forever. Ben is practically on the verge of a breakdown and Lexi is getting fussy. She's asking for Isabel.*~
**What else did Ben tell you?** Max asked quickly. He could almost feel Liz's fear now, coming through the connection. He tried to keep her focused on what they could do, needed to keep her calm. She was all that was standing between his son and disaster. He knew he could trust her, but it had been so long since she had dealt with anything like this. He had brought this down on her head again. Her life was in danger because of him.
Stop it! He ordered himself to forget the guilt for the moment. It was his constant companion, but it could not be allowed to distract him. Not right now. It was his guilt over this connection with Liz, this bond that was turning out to be even more extraordinary than even [I]he[/I] had been able to understand, that had put them all in this position in the first place. If he had been up at the house instead of pouting over his guilt about the connection, none of this would have happened.
They would have found who they were really looking for. He could have traded himself for his son's life. For the lives of all of his friends. It would have been so easy...
There had been a pause while Liz had spoken to Ben, perhaps clarifying some details about exactly what he knew was going on. *~It sounds like Maria might have been trying to convince them that you and I had already left with Ben and Lexi. Ben says that's what her plan was. I don't know what Michael or Isabel or...*~ There was a pause. *~Dan might have said upstairs.*~
Dan. God, he was up there too. And he was in no way connected to any of them besides Liz. He might talk just to protect Liz. She was the only one he cared about after all.
And Max knew exactly what he had to do. **Liz, there's only one thing to do.**
*~What Max?*~ He could hear the hope in her voice, her certainty that he would know how to fix this, that all of his years fighting a war on Antar could not have been in vain.
But all of his years on Antar had not involved everyone he loved. He had been incapable of remembering what love felt like through most of it, had only done what he knew he was [I]supposed[/I] to do.
None of those rules applied anymore.
**I'm going to give myself up.**