by Susan Grant
Cavin took her hand and they ran across the street. The pavement was cold, and her feet were freezing. A flick of his wrist and the Chevy’s door locks popped up. Jana slid behind a steering wheel molded to look like a thick, linked chain. The interior smelled like cigarettes. A statue of Mary sat on a square of red velvet on the dash. Save me. Jana crossed herself as Cavin started the motor. The Chevy roared to life with a deep rumbling that echoed down the quiet street. In seconds, shouting patrons swarmed out of the bar like angry bees.
All Jana saw was a blur of tattoos and black leather before she jammed her foot to the gas pedal so fast that Cavin had to grab hold of the dash to keep his balance. Up the entry ramp she raced, and onto the highway headed back to where they’d started.
“Left,” Cavin directed. As she veered onto the far left lane to go around a slower car, Jana thought of the Safeway near Evie’s house. Her Jeep waited for her there. Her little brown Jeep. The memory spurred a yearning so sharp that she almost burst into tears. But she needed to keep her wits about her. No crying. No falling apart. She was a respected politician, a state senator.
A state senator who had stolen three cars in one night.
Two involuntarily. One eagerly.
Heaven help her.
“No making headlines for anything but the bills you pass.”
Jana winced at the promises she’d given her grandfather. If this ended badly, how could she face him tomorrow? Or her father and brother for that matter?
She felt Cavin’s gaze on her. “You’re thinking,” he said.
“About my family. About my father fighting charges that he misreported the funds used to finance an election campaign. A lie, Cavin, a horrible lie. And I’m supposed to be helping by staying out of trouble. How am I doing, huh?”
He acted unhappy at the news. “I’ve seen your entire record of public accomplishments. You have achieved much. I am not surprised at all.”
“How do you know so much about me? My real name, my job?”
“The Coalition has collected data on Earth’s leadership. We know the identity of all leaders, and where to find them.”
The back of her neck prickled. “Even a state senator? A minor player in the grand scheme of things?”
“From tribal leaders to kings.”
Something told Jana the information wasn’t being gathered to put together a guest list for a tea party. The whole thing was starting to sound too much like War of the Worlds. Obviously, plans had been a long time in the making.
Maybe as long as twenty-three years ago. “You said your father was a scientist, that he brought you to Earth. What was he studying that he had to come all the way here?”
Cavin shifted in the seat. “His job was to investigate the suitability of your world for Coalition use,” he said a little awkwardly.
“Use,” she sneered. “Call it what it is—an invasion!”
“For what it’s worth, that’s the same thing I told my father.”
“How could you keep it from me? We played, we laughed together, and all the time you knew your people planned to invade Earth. Why did you let me believe you were magic?”
“Because I didn’t know a word of your language, Jana, and you didn’t know a word of mine. Why do you think I called you Squee?”
The soft and special way he said the word gave her a heart sensation she hadn’t felt since she was nine. “Where was your mother? Why didn’t she come?”
“She was dead.”
“Oh.” Jana slid lower in the seat. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember her. My father felt her absence more than I ever did. He buried himself in his work to compensate for her loss. I grew up independent, perhaps a little wild. I hated being cooped up so much on the long voyages that when we finally arrived at the next planet I’d stay outside as much as the conditions would allow. Then we came to one world populated by humans, and I saw an alien girl. She fascinated me.”
“Why?” she almost whispered.
“Because she was so full of life. She was so silent most of the time, then, when no one was around, she’d laugh. Laugh and dance.” He rotated his index finger. “Spinning around on her toes.”
Jana remembered that girl, too. She’d been gone a long time. With an unexpected sense of loss, she didn’t realize how much she’d missed her.
“I watched you for days while my father worked. One night I decided to fly up to the porthole of your dwelling to see where you went at night. I swooped in too low, tried to fly out of my error and got tangled in the tree.”
And the rest was history.
“I called you Peter,” she confessed. “After Peter Pan. He was a character in a children’s story. A magical boy who flew and never grew old.”
“I grew old.”
“Not to me. I look at you and I see Peter. I see someone I never forgot.”
“Never?” His mouth seemed to want to form a grin that he wouldn’t allow. The result was a boyishly charming half smirk. “That didn’t seem to be the case in the market, Jana. You ran from me.”
“You expected me to remember you on the spot after twenty-three years?”
“Yes.”
“And if I’d walked onto your spaceship, no notice, and said I needed to talk to you, you would have remembered me?”
“Yes,” he said with conviction.
Jana gave a little huff of disbelief.
“It is true. You grew up to be more beautiful than I could have imagined, but when I look at you, I still see the same girl that took my heart. You were beautiful then, and even more so now as a woman.”
A flush of heat burned her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered. Other men had called her beautiful, but their words hadn’t affected her this way.
“Believe me, Jana, when I say I didn’t fully understand my father’s line of work back then. The mission to your world was the turning point.”
“Yet it didn’t turn you into a pacifist. You grew up to be a soldier.”
“I came to see the reasons behind the Coalition’s methods, even if I didn’t agree with them all. The Drakken would change your mind, too.”
“They’re the bad guys, I take it.”
“Far worse than anything you have here on Earth.”
“I don’t know about that. We have some pretty evil characters on this rock.”
“Take them and what they do to the nth degree, and you have the Drakken.”
Jana was glad fog covered the stars tonight, so she couldn’t see them. She couldn’t help thinking of all the evenings she forgot to look at the stars because she was too busy, rushing here, rushing there. Tonight had changed that forever. Not only was there other life out there, other human life, there were battles and governments and decisions being made on a vast scale where Earth was nothing but an insignificant speck. Less than a lowly pawn in a chess game. She’d never look up in the sky and see the stars the same way again. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to look at the stars again. “Cavin, how is Earth going to keep the Drakken away? We can’t even keep the REEF away.”
“It’s the Coalition I have come to warn you about. The Drakken aren’t a threat here.”
“The Coalition? But the Coalition are your people.”
“Yes.”
She glanced sideways at him, but he’d blanked his face of emotion. “But doesn’t—doesn’t that…?”
“Doesn’t that make me a traitor? Believing Earth deserves the chance to defend itself? That the loss of use of one planet won’t make or break the Coalition? Yes, I suppose it does make me a traitor to have such unconventional views. I don’t intend for the Coalition to find out, however. Treason is a capital crime. I’d be executed, and not mercifully, either.”
“Cavin…”
“If the REEF doesn’t get to me first.”
“Cavin!” She took a few deep breaths to calm down. He risked his life to save hers, and everyone else on Earth. And now he expected her to be the one to sound the alarm. The sensation of
being swept out to sea in advance of an approaching tsunami consumed her. “All we have to do is talk. Mediate a compromise. Explain to the Coalition that we live here, and—”
“They won’t care.”
“The United Nations will get involved. It’s not a lost cause. Sides farther apart have reached agreement through diplomacy. We don’t have to go to war.”
“Earth can’t go to war. You don’t know how to fight the Coalition. You’ll lose.” His voice took on an edge. “Jana, I’d talk to my government personally if I thought negotiation would do any good.”
“No!” Engaging in direct communication with his people would end any question of him being seen as a traitor at home. It would confirm it. They’d know he was here and what he’d done. “You’re here to help us help ourselves, not to earn a death sentence. I won’t risk you being executed. I won’t.” She couldn’t bear the thought of Cavin being put to death. She’d never be able to live with it. “If we can’t fight them off, or talk our way out of this, what does that leave?”
“Bring me to Groom Lake in Nevada. An inert Coalition spacecraft is hidden there. I have a plan. It requires activating the ship to deter the invasion force. Powering up a spacecraft generates a single signal that Coalition sensors can detect. But if I take that signal and multiply it by a hundred, I can make it appear as if Earth possesses its own space fleet.”
“You want to find the Roswell saucer and hack into it.”
“That’s one way to describe it. Unlike modern craft, it has no safeguards. I will hack in to the shipboard computer. I have the codes.” He tapped his head. “Memorized.”
Her laugh sounded more than a little bit manic. “That’s urban legend. A rumor. There’s no flying saucer hidden there, or anywhere.”
“Correct. It is a scout vessel.”
“Oh, a scout vessel, that explains it.” She wiped sweat off her forehead. He wanted her to get him inside the most guarded and secret military base there was so he could hot-wire a spacecraft that wasn’t supposed to be there. Could it possibly get any worse? “That’s Area 51. Dreamland. It’s where they test top secret aircraft. You’d need a special clearance to get on base. Top secret, minimum.”
“That’s why you must take me to your leader. He will bring us there.”
“With no proof on your part other than a sincere smile and a few cool gadgets? I don’t think so. You look too human.”
“I am human. We’re all humans. Same DNA, different planets.”
“That’s not going to help your story. You have to be able to prove you’re an extraterrestrial, or people will think you’re lying.” Or crazy. Jana rubbed her forehead. Cavin would talk, but no one would listen. And she’d be laughed out of the capitol right behind him. Jana played out the scenario in her mind: “Oh, Governor Schwarzkopf, do you have a minute?”
“For you, always, Jana,” he’d say in his thick accent, holding his cigar high so as not to singe her hair when he pulled her into his usual bear hug.
That’s when she’d step back and introduce Cavin. The governor would wonder about the armor. “His name is Cavin, and I know he looks as human as you and me, but he’s an alien.”
“Illegal?”
“No, extraterrestrial.”
The governor would take a puff of his cigar then, and make eye contact with his security officers, just in case.
“He wanted me to bring you here, so he could tell you…well, I think Cavin can explain it all better than I can.” That’s when she’d wave Cavin forward. “Go on, honey, tell him about that spaceship you want to use at Area 51, you know, to phone home…”
Jana groaned. She felt a little like Paul Revere, famed for sounding the early warning that gave the American colonists the chance to fight off an invasion. But what if Revere had cried out, “The British are coming, the British are coming,” and they didn’t come? Without a doubt, it would have generated some credibility issues for ol’Paul. The last thing Jana needed was credibility issues. She couldn’t let fear blind her. She had to think this through. In light of the ethics scandal with her father, she owed it to her family not to act rashly.
“This was a long time in the making, Jana, my coming here. As soon as I learned of the planetary acquisition plans, I left my post without leave and came here. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, Squee, if I lost track of you.”
Emotion thickened his voice, but he quickly cleared his throat to erase the evidence and became Mr. Tough Guy again. “If wanting to save you makes me a traitor, I wear the title without shame.”
She bit her lip and forced her eyes to focus on the foggy road. Her Peter…her exotic, magical boy…He’d jettisoned his future for her. He was willing to die for her. She’d always dreamed of a hero, and here he was.
“Say something, Jana. Look at me.”
“I want to. Trust me, I do.” She sucked in another breath. “But I can’t, because the truth is, I’m having a vulnerable moment here, and until it passes, if I look at you, if I steal one tiny peek at those eyes of yours, I’m afraid I’ll agree to anything you want, because I love you, I never stopped, that’s why I can’t look at you. And now I have to drive—”
“No you don’t.”
Cavin grabbed the steering wheel at the same time he slid his fingers into her hair at the back of her head to pull her close. Before she could finish uttering, “What the hell are you doing?” he’d sealed his mouth over hers.
A shudder ran through her body, and she forgot all about the highway, and driving, and everything else normally hardwired to the basic instinct for survival.
Magic.
Yes, that’s what it was, magic, pure and consuming, what she’d searched for all her life and never found with anyone else. Jana took his face in both hands and kept him pressed to her lips. It was a full-on, openmouthed kiss, hungry and wet. Her heart pounded a deafening drumbeat in her ears. Not just any kind of drumbeat. The kind they played at primitive exotic ceremonies where you danced and got naked and had sex with people you didn’t know.
A horn blared. She and Cavin jumped apart.
“Gods,” he said hoarsely and jerked the wheel expertly to the right to avoid hitting the truck they’d veered toward and almost hit.
“I thought you said you’d drive!”
“I was driving! I, ah, got a little distracted at the end. But here, you drive.” He let go of the wheel. “And turn left.”
She was still so dazed by the kiss, the heart-stopping, head-spinning kiss of utter, unadulterated magic that she didn’t react. “You improved a bit since you were a kid.”
“So have you. Now, turn left, Jana!”
She swerved to the left in the fog. “You don’t have to yell.”
“If it keeps you alive, I do.”
She smelled him—the unique male scent of him; she could feel his body heat burning from across the car. It was terribly distracting. It was all she could do not to pull over and drag Cavin into a ditch and…
“Me, too,” he said huskily.
She blushed. “You can mind read?”
“No, but I was hoping my thoughts were the same as yours, based on the look on your face.” He reached across the seat to play with a lock of her hair. She felt him rubbing it between his gloved fingers. “You have a very expressive face. And an expressive mouth, or maybe expressive isn’t the best word to describe your mouth. I’ll need to consult my internal English thesaurus and find something better, like luscious, for instance, or succulent. Better yet, carnal.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over her knuckles, a feather touch that made her tremble. Magic.
She tugged her hand away and clamped it around the steering wheel. “No more of that, by the way.”
He threw her an are-you-crazy look of male shock. Then abruptly he sat back with a deep sigh. “Ah, Squee, I didn’t stop to think you might have a lover, someone important to you. I am sorry.” And he sounded it, too. “When I read your background data, I didn’t see anything abou
t a mate—a spouse—or a serious male interest.”
Great. Not only did people she’d never met know the sordid, depressing details of her social life, aliens she’d never met did, too. “I’m not seeing anyone. No boyfriends. No husbands, past or present.”
He made a sound of relief. “But if you were, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I would have been disappointed, yes, but I still would have come. I would have saved you, your family.”
“My family is under investigation, and I’ve made them and my career my focus. I can’t afford to get involved with anyone right now—even you, Cavin. And if you think that’s going to be easy with you hanging around, knowing how I feel about you, you’re crazy.”
“So, it will be hard to resist me.” He sounded more than a little pleased.
“Not as hard as you think. I’m highly motivated.”
She could talk the talk, but could she walk the walk?
The fog began to lift some as they sped east. Soon she was able to see without Cavin’s directions. Had she survived this unscathed? She was almost afraid to do it, but she let a little of the tension out of her aching shoulders. Just as she did so, the flash of police car lights illuminated the interior of the car. Her luck, it seemed, had finally run out.
Chapter Five
FLASHING LIGHTS illuminated the dark interior of the car. Earth law wardens, Cavin thought darkly. What more could go wrong? Could he and Jana not, in Earthling terms, catch a break? “Yenflarg,” he muttered, forming a fist on the dashboard.
Jana gave him a panicked look. “Please tell me your brain implant’s not malfunctioning.”
“Lorglor tessmassa,” he replied.
At the flash of fear in Jana’s eyes, Cavin said quickly, “Kidding, Squee. A bad joke. My translator’s fine.” She shoved at him. “A badly timed bad joke. I have no idea what a lorglor…whatever I said is, but yenflarg is a swearword in my language. Untranslatable, apparently.”
