Next Exit, Dead Ahead

by CW Browning

  Alina moved out of the way as the customer turned to leave the bakery, turning her head slightly out of habit so the woman would only see her profile. She passed without a glance and Alina's sharp gaze followed her out of the store as she moved up to the counter. The woman behind the case set aside her order pad and smiled at Alina.

  “Can I help you?” she asked cheerfully in English.

  “Six whole-grain bagels, please,” Alina said, looking at the racks filled with fresh bread. She hesitated for a moment, then sighed imperceptibly. “And you'd better give me a loaf of white bread too. The country loaf is fine.”

  The woman nodded and turned to get the bread as Alina's cell phone started to vibrate against her thigh. She reached into her cargo pocket and pulled it out, glancing at the screen. She frowned slightly at the number she didn't recognize.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you buying me?” Hawk's voice was deep in her ear.

  “Worthless white bread,” Alina retorted, her lips twitching. “Where are you?”

  “Across the street,” he answered. “I'll meet you at your car.”

  Alina hung up, anticipation making her pulse skip. She paid the woman for the bread and bagels, and turned to leave, stepping out into the fall sun and dropping her sunglasses onto her nose with a sigh. Hawk was the only person who could make her pulse go from comatose to heart-attack with a few words. She rounded the corner of the building to find him leaning against the hood of her black Camaro, his arms crossed over his broad chest and sunglasses covering his eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a black tee-shirt and he smiled his slow smile when he saw her.

  “Good morning,” he murmured as she walked up. He uncrossed his arms and reached out to take the bag from her.

  Alina looked around, her eyes scanning the side street, looking for the green crossover. It was nowhere in sight.

  “Morning,” she answered, bringing her eyes back to him. He was looking in the bag.

  “You really did buy me worthless white bread!” Damon grinned at her. “You're too good to me.”

  “I know,” Alina retorted, “but don't get too excited. It won't become a habit.”

  “Of course not,” he murmured, leaning forward and pressing a kiss on her cheek. “But I'll take what I can get.”

  His voice was low and rolled over her like a caress. Alina swallowed and inhaled, drawing in the scent of musk and shower gel. Her pulse leapt in reaction and she moved back slightly.

  “It was that, or have you eat all my bagels like you did at the cabin in August,” she told him. “I opted for the least inconvenience to myself.”

  “Mmm.” Hawk straightened up, a smile playing about his lips. “Trust me. It's not your bagels I'm interested in.”

  Alina couldn't stop the rush of warmth that shot through her and her lips curved into a grin.

  “Then consider the bread a consolation prize,” she retorted tartly.

  Damon's grin was wicked.

  “I won't need one.”

  His assurance made Alina's heart start pounding and her breath come quickly. She could feel a blush stealing into her cheeks and was thankful for the bright sun behind her making it difficult for him to see her face.

  “We'll see,” Alina murmured, reaching out to take the bakery bag back from him. “In the meantime, this will be at the house.”

  She beeped the car unlocked and Damon watched her open the passenger's door, depositing the bag on the seat. She slammed the door shut and turned to face him, once again in control of her breathing and her pulse rate.

  “Why are you here, Hawk?” she asked softly.

  “You know why I'm here,” he answered just as softly, stepping close to her and removing her sunglasses gently. He set them on top of her head before pulling his own off. His dark blue eyes were glittering when they met hers. “We can't keep going on like this.”

  Alina stared at him with a curious mix of excitement and fear surging inside her. She knew he was right. They had been dancing around this attraction between them for months, years even, and they couldn't continue. It would start to affect their work, and that was something neither of them could afford. Even as she admitted this was something they had to deal with, something deep inside her shied away. Panic threatened and she frowned slightly in reaction.

  “I know,” she told him, her eyes locked onto his. She was being sucked into their sparkling depths, and Alina took a deep breath. “I'm not sure I'm ready for all this.”

  Damon's smile was slow and gentle. He cupped her face with his hands and lowered his head until his forehead was resting against hers.

  “I know,” he murmured simply.

  Alina's heart thumped and she felt as if a weight had been lifted from her with those two words. He knew. Of course he knew. There were times she thought Hawk might know her better than she knew herself. She didn't have to explain herself to him. He was already aware of her hesitation.

  She smiled into his eyes and his lips touched hers gently, undemanding. The kiss was over before it began and he was stepping back, putting his sunglasses back on. Alina dropped her own back onto her nose, her lips still tingling from the touch of his.

  “I have to run up to New York,” Damon told her. “I'll be back tonight.”

  “You know where you can find me,” she said, smiling slightly.

  Hawk grinned, turning to cross the street to where his motorcycle was parked facing the other way. Alina watched him get on and pull his black helmet over his head as she rounded the hood of her car to the driver's door. The motorcycle growled to life as she slid behind the wheel of her car, and they drove away in opposite directions.

  Chapter Four

  Stephanie rounded the corner of the Warden's House and walked toward the front of the prison. She had just finished going through the haunted walk again, this time looking for anything that would shed some light on the appearance of Rodrigo's arm inside the prison. Aside from discovering that Alina assaulted one of the actors last night, she had learned absolutely nothing. Stephanie decided against mentioning that she knew the mysterious woman who had repositioned the actor back into his cell with such efficiency. She got the distinct impression that he enjoyed the encounter a little too much.

  John was just coming down the front steps with another agent, giving him instructions as they walked, and she smiled slightly. He dwarfed the other man by at least half a foot, and his demeanor was intimidating. Stephanie knew he enjoyed hazing the newer agents. She tolerated it because it amused her, and she couldn't deny that it got results. John had zero tolerance for mistakes, and the new agents learned quickly not to make them. He terrorized them, but they learned a lot under him.

  Stephanie's mind wandered back to when she first found out that Alina's ex-fiancé was going to be her partner. She hadn't been thrilled, to say the least, but John turned out to be an excellent agent. He had grown on her over the year and a half they worked together, and they settled into a comfortable partnership. He looked over now, catching sight of her as he reached the brick pathway in front of the prison.

  “Lunch?” he called. “You can drive.”

  “Yes!” Stephanie replied, joining him as the junior agent went on his way. “I'm starving.”

  “Any luck with the maze in the back?”

  “Not a thing,” she informed him. “There's no access to the prison from the haunt unless you're one of the actors, and even then there are only two doorways into the prison. Because of the way the walk is set up, no visitor could get access to the lower prison door. The other door is at the top of some steps and kept locked.”

  John sighed as they walked down the path toward the road. The entire front of the prison yard was taped off and news crews were loitering on the sidewalk, looking for an interview. John ignored them as they walked toward Stephanie's brand new Mustang. When her car was blown-up two months before in Washington DC, she cheerfully used the opportunity to upgrade from a charred six year old Maxima to a maroon red, Mustang GT. It
was just over a month old, and Stephanie's pride and joy.

  “The museum is closed and locked during the haunt, so there's no access from the front either,” he muttered. “How the devil did they get in there?”

  “Karl says the prison is haunted,” Stephanie told him as they ducked under the caution tape. She beeped her car unlocked and they moved to it quickly as some of the press started toward them.

  “Agent Walker, is it true...”

  “There will be a press conference later,” Stephanie cut off the press agent as she crossed the sidewalk. “Until then, we have no comment.”

  “Can you confirm that a human limb was found in...”

  Stephanie and John got into the car, slamming the doors shut and cutting off the question. John glanced at her.

  “Of course the prison's haunted,” he said. “Aren't they all?”

  “Yeah, but Karl swears this one really is,” Stephanie replied, starting the engine. It came to life with a growl and she pulled away from the curb. “The motion detectors went off last night on the second floor.”

  “What?!” John exclaimed, looking at her. She nodded.

  “Yep.” Stephanie stopped at a red light on the next block and glanced at him. “Ask me what he did.”

  “Something tells me I'm not going to like it,” John muttered.

  “He turned off the alarm and looked at the surveillance monitor.” Stephanie hit the gas as the light turned green. “When he didn't see anything on the monitor, he didn't go up to look.”

  “Some guard.”

  “He says those particular motion detectors go off all the time on their own.” She looked at him. “It's common for them to get tripped and there's never anything there, so he didn't think anything of it last night.”

  “What time did it go off?” John asked.

  “Once around two-thirty and again around four.” Stephanie shook her head as she slowed for another red light. “Usually it doesn't happen twice in one night, so he went up and checked the second alarm, but nothing was there.”

  “Not even the arm?”

  “He didn't look,” she said disgustedly. “He said he checked the hallways and open cells, but didn't look in the Dungeon because it was locked.”

  John was silent for a long moment, absorbing the information. He stared out the window with a frown.

  “So, the arm was put there either at two-thirty or four,” he finally said slowly. “We don't know how they got in, how they got out, or how they unlocked the cell.”

  “Right.”

  Stephanie drove through downtown Mt. Holly and turned right at the end of High Street. They were both silent as she drove past the new prison and courthouse on the right, then past the run-down housing that characterized Mt. Holly. This town was comprised of a strange mix of historic elegance and depressed poverty. In an attempt to increase revenue, the town employed a lower sales tax rate than the rest of the state, but it didn't appear to help. It was a community struggling on the verge of collapse and, like most communities of that nature, the distinction between the Historical section and the rest of the town was startling. Where one block was well-kept and affluent, the next block was bordering on slums.

  “What does Karl think happened?” John finally broke the silence as they headed out of the town and toward the bypass. Stephanie glanced at him, her lips twitching.

  “Karl is a bit of a romantic, I think,” she murmured.

  “I told you he was a ladies’ man,” John said with a grin.

  “Oh, he is!” Stephanie agreed with a laugh. “He's a heart-breaker alright, but that's not what I meant by romantic. He believes in things that are not quite...realistic.”

  “He thinks a ghost put the arm there?” John demanded incredulously.

  “Let's just say that, according to Karl, it wouldn't be the first time physical items have appeared in places where they were never put.”

  “You've got to be kidding me,” John muttered. “So a ghost got hold of Rodrigo's forearm and placed it in the Dungeon?”

  “Halloween is in five days,” Stephanie reminded him with a grin. “Did you really expect anything less?”

  “Haunted prisons and disembodied limbs? You're right. I should have seen this coming,” John answered, shaking his head. “Where are we going for lunch?”

  “There's a Sonic on Rt. 38,” Stephanie said, turning left onto the bypass. “This is turning into a corn-dog kind of day.”

  “Forget corn-dogs,” John retorted. “If this keeps up, it's going to be a vodka kind of day!”

  Alina stared at the search results on her laptop thoughtfully and her eyes narrowed as she sipped her water. She had run the license plate on the putrid green crossover when curiosity got the better of her. The man loitering in Hawk's parking lot this morning could have been anyone, but she felt instinctively that he had been watching Damon. While she knew Hawk could take care of himself, Viper's hunting instinct had taken over.

  The search results, however, were not quite what she expected. The crossover was registered to a female. Her name was Jessica Nuñez, and a corresponding search pulled her alien registration photo.

  Alina was staring at the pan de muertos customer from the bakery.

  She frowned and set her water bottle down on the coffee table, picking up the laptop and sitting back on the couch. Her fingers moved swiftly over the keys as she pulled up several different databases and punched in Jessica's name. Within minutes, Viper had information coming in on Ms. Nuñez from several different sources. She had emigrated to the US eight years ago and settled in New Jersey after a short stint in Arizona. Her reason for moving to the Northeast was clear: her husband took a job with Rutgers University as a professor of Mexican History and Culture. They settled into a normal, quiet life and had no citations against them, not even for a parking ticket. The couple had a son aged seven, and a daughter aged four. Jessica worked with the Burlington County Board of Social Services and they volunteered at an animal shelter. The Nuñezes were the perfect residents.

  So how had her vehicle ended up in Hawk's parking lot?

  A loud beep sliced through the silence of the house and Viper's eyes shot up to the plasma above the mantle. Part of the front security quadrant, the entrance to the driveway out by the road, was flashing red. A black F150 turned into the trees from the road and Alina frowned, closing her laptop quickly. She pointed a remote to the plasma, turning it off, and stood up. Grabbing her laptop, she carried it into the front of the house and deposited it on the desk in the den. She glanced out the front window to the gravel driveway, waiting for the truck to come into view. A few moments later, it broke through the trees and rolled to a stop in front of the house. Alina watched as a tall, broad-shouldered man got out, looking around as he slammed the door closed. Shaking her head slightly, she went to the door.

  “Are you lost?” Alina called, stepping out onto the front porch.

  Michael O'Reilly looked every bit as handsome as he had two months ago in Washington, DC. His hair was a little darker, the red more pronounced, and his freckles were fading. His eyes, however, were just as sharp as they had been the last time she saw him, and his face creased into a grin when he saw her.

  “Apparently not,” he replied, walking toward her. “I thought I might be when the trees never seemed to end.”

  “You're not supposed to know where I am,” Alina told him, holding her hand out to him in greeting. He grasped it firmly.

  “It took some doing,” Michael admitted, his hazel-green eyes glinting down into hers warmly, “but never underestimate a determined Marine.”

  Alina's lips twitched despite herself.

  “I never do,” she told him. “Do you have GPS in that truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “You better pull it around back then,” Alina said. “No offense, but I'll have to reprogram it before your location can be tracked. Oh, and I'll need your phone too.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Michael asked. The look he received
made him grin. “Ok, ok! I'll pull around back. You don't have an interrogation hut back there, do you?”

  “Getting worried?” Alina asked, her eyes laughing at him.

  “With you? Always.”

  “Don't,” she advised, as she turned to go back into the house. “I won't hurt you until you tell me how you found me.”

  “Well, that's comforting,” Michael muttered as he went back to his truck. Her laughter followed him.

  “You're the one that hunted me down,” she retorted. “Welcome to the dark side.”

  Michael watched from his seat on the deck as Alina crossed the lawn from the driveway. She had settled him down with a Yuengling Lager before disappearing into his truck, armed with a small electronic notebook and a box-shaped device that looked suspiciously like a scrambler.

  “Do I want to know what you did?” he asked her as she joined him on the deck.

  Alina set the notebook and box down on the banister, sinking into the Adirondack chair next to him.

  “Probably not,” she answered. “Suffice it to say, there is now no evidence anywhere that you were ever here.”

  “So you could kill me...”

  “And no one would ever find the body,” Alina finished for him. Her brown eyes met his and she smiled. “It's good to see you again.”

  “You know, I'm not so sure how I feel about seeing you now,” Michael retorted, his grin belying his words.

  Alina laughed and stretched her legs out, leaning her head back against the chair.

  “I've been trained to be invisible,” she murmured, glancing at him from under her lashes. “By default, anyone who comes into my world must be as well.”