Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Come on, Arland.

Beep.

“This is a ridiculous communicator,” Arland’s voice said into the phone.

I put him on speaker.

“What is with the swiping and the pushing? Why isn’t it simply voice activated?”

“The Ku will be in range in one minute and forty-five seconds,” I told him.

“Understood.” He hung up.

The phone might have been ridiculous, but it was safer than radio transmissions.

I dialed my sister. She picked up on the first ring.

“A minute and a half.”

“Got it.”

I drummed my fingers on the wooden floor of the truck’s back. It would work. It was a simple plan, and it relied on the thing vampires did best - hunting. Arland would apprehend the Ku, my sister would run interference against the cops, and we were the getaway drivers.

“Are you going to help the Hiru?” Sean asked.

“I want to.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“It would be a logistical nightmare. It would require me to be away from the inn, probably on short notice. The Draziri would invade in force, and I don’t think they care about being discreet. As an innkeeper, I’m supposed to avoid situations that put the inn at risk of exposure.”

“Mhm,” he said. “What’s the real reason?”

“Those are the real reasons.”

“I saw your face,” Sean said. “You almost cried when he told his story.”

So much for my inscrutable innkeeper face. “Just because I sympathize, doesn’t mean I can’t objectively evaluate the situation.”

He didn’t say anything.

On my left, in the distance, a dark dot appeared in the sky, quickly growing larger. The helicopter.

“Three… two…”

“One,” Sean said.

A white ball engulfed the helicopter. Maud had fired the white-out.

The ball expanded, turning gray and growing denser in mid-air. A second explosion flared, also blinding white and low on the road. The State Troopers had crossed the white-out anti-personnel mines we seeded minutes ago. The fleet of cop cars had just been blinded.

The explosion solidified, losing its brightness. The first pale ball from the white-out fell into it, pulled like iron to a magnet. The caravan of police vehicles would come to a gentle stop, with the helicopter softly landing somewhere, hopefully not on top of them. The sphere would hold them for up to six minutes, just long enough to knock out everyone within the cars, and then dissipate into empty air. The white-out tech was developed a few centuries ago by an enterprising galactic criminal cartel specializing in kidnappings. It cost an arm and a leg. I was watching two hundred thousand credits worth of ammunition in action. A good chunk of my peace summit profits. Two steps forward, one step back. But even so, I still came out ahead.

Here’s hoping the mines worked as advertised. Don’t get caught, Maud. Don’t get caught.

I jumped out of the truck, ran along the side, climbed into the cab, and pushed the off switch on the refrigerator-sized photon projector we had strapped to the truck’s cab. If someone had been watching us from the highway, they would see the Ryder truck suddenly pop into existence out of nowhere.

A lone rider shot into view on a monstrous-looking anti-gravity glider bike, pulling a net behind him. Arland, riding a cre-cycle and dragging the boost bike and the Ku behind him in a black net. He screeched to halt in front of me. “Bagged and delivered.”

Wing stared at me with terrified eyes.

Behind Arland, a second cre-cycle sped toward us. Maud. My heart hammered in my chest. She was in one piece. It was okay. Everything was okay.

Sean jumped to the ground, pulled out the retractable ramp, and lowered it to the pavement. Arland drove the cre-cycle into the truck, dragging the Ku behind him. I pulled a capsule out of my pocket.

“No!” Wing cried out.

“Yes. You’re in so much trouble.”

I stuck the capsule under his nose and broke it open. Green gas puffed and the Ku passed out.

“Nice,” Sean said. He and Arland grabbed the net containing Wing and the boost bike and heaved it into the truck.

“Sadly this doesn’t work on human anatomy.” Otherwise Officer Marais would’ve been much less of a problem.

Maud pulled up, the big white-out cannon slung over her shoulder, and drove into the Ryder truck, wedging her cre-cycle next to Arland’s. I handed her two more capsules. “If Wing stirs, drug him.”

She nodded.

Sean slammed the door closed. I dashed to the cabin, opened the door, climbed up, and punched in the code in the photon projector. The unit’s pale blue light blinked. I jumped down and took a few steps back, careful to walk in a straight line.

The Ryder truck vanished. If you looked very closely, you could see the slight wavy disturbance, but you had to be only a few feet away.

“Are we good?” invisible Sean asked.

“We’re good.” I walked straight back and almost jumped when the truck popped into existence eighteen inches in front of me. I climbed into the passenger seat. Sean eased the truck out of park and we crept across the grass onto the interstate. Sean picked up speed.

“How are we doing?” Sean asked.

I checked my phone. “Two more minutes before the mine effects dissipate. Twenty-three minutes before the photon projector runs out of charge.”

He stepped on it. The Ryder rocked and rolled. It was just me and him in the cabin. This whole thing wasn’t just risky, it was reckless. If we were caught, there would be hell to pay.