WrappedInThought by Viola Grace Page A

briskly through the gathered shoppers and when she brushed against the dark thoughts that she was looking for, she quickly searched the crowd for a guard.
    “Hervar!” She ran up to him and smiled.
    “Miss Egrar, what are you doing so far from your family?”
    She laughed lightly. “I believe that you were looking for something this morning when you passed our stall. I think I have found it.”
    He looked confused and smiled in an embarrassed manner. “I am sure that I don’t know what you are talking about.”
    She sighed. This was always the tricky part. She had no idea how to get it across to him that she knew what the bomber looked like and where he was going next.
    “There was a gentleman near our stall and I think he had the item that you were searching for.” She almost rolled her eyes when he finally seemed to understand what she was speaking about.
    “Do you know where it is?”
    She nodded. “I have to stop by my stall, but it is on the way.”
    He made his polite goodbyes to the very buxom lass at the fruit-juice booth and followed her to the garden stall. She jerked her head to her mother and her jacket came flying at her.
    “We had to get your jacket?”
    She scowled at the man who now seemed far more dense than attractive. “Yes. It’s a cold morning.”
    It was the last thing she felt like mentioning to him as she surreptitiously stroked her arm and thigh to keep the tracking of the bomber’s thoughts up to date. Aliiva moved swiftly through the crowds gathering at the far edge of the fair grounds. The Sector representatives as well as Citadel recruiters were under a huge canopy and the bomber was moving through the crowd with the support platform for the tent as his target.
    It became harder to keep her target’s thoughts in her focus as the thoughts of the crowd wrapped around her and clung. Ali kept the man in her line of sight and when he moved to the edge of the platform to plant the bomb, she looked around for her guard. He was nowhere to be seen.
    Cursing inwardly, she patted herself down quickly. Her mother had a tendency to load her coat with weapons, but all she had today was a long Naku squash. It would have to be enough.
    Ali crept up on the bomber. Their bodies were hidden from direct view by the panels of the pavilion. “Stop what you are doing.”
    It was a nervous attempt at trying to get him to cease, but he looked at her for only a moment before he kept going. “Be gone, farm girl. This does not concern you.”
    She tightened her lips, gripped the Naku and glided in behind him. She struck him at the back of the head and he crumpled without a sound.
    The timer on the bomb was already flashing.
    Hervar rushed up behind her. “Is that him?”
    She felt like being sarcastic, but there wasn’t time. “Yes it is, but he had time to start the bomb. Evacuate the pavilion.”
    He nodded and started to run.
    She sighed. He hadn’t even asked her if she was okay. Grimacing, she stroked her hands along the bomber and closed her fists to read the thoughts. Disarming the bomb would be tricky, but she could manage it if she wasn’t disturbed.
    She rolled his unconscious body to one side and started to work on the glowing object that was about to turn the platform under the delegates into a swirling vortex of acid.
    Ali pressed the code, twisted the wires and put pressure on the central plate. With a low groan of breath, she removed her hand from the device and sighed in relief as the lights turned off.
    When the bomber moved, she hit him with the squash again and then sat still waiting for the rest of the guard to come and make an arrest.
    She wished that she was surprised when they arrested her alongside the dazed bomber, but since there was no way for her to have known his identity otherwise, she went along with the men who were arresting them.
    They were marched past a group of men and women of a variety of species. One of the women stopped their march of shame and looked her in the