She forced her mind to abort that train of thought before the damned song popped into her head.
Control, Zoey. Not the time or place for eighties pop.
“Where are you heading tonight, Miss Weston?” he asked.
“I’m making my way to a friend’s.”
“And where would that be?”
“Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa.”
“Quite a way to go,” he said flatly, shifting the flashlight’s beam to her face. Zoey squinted against the blinding glare. Ass. “Any passengers tonight, or are you making that trip all alone?”
He swept the light over the back seat again before moving it toward the passenger seat.
“Unless you can see my invisible friend,” Zoey said with a nervous chuckle, “I’d say I’m traveling all by my lonesome.”
He stared at her. At least she assumed he did, as his eyes were hidden. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary tonight, Miss Weston?”
“Out of the ordinary? What would be considered out of the ordinary, these days?” she asked, speaking a little faster than necessary. They really were looking for Rendash! “Whole bunch of helicopters zipping around, making a bunch of noise and shining searchlights everywhere. Don’t see that every day, right?” She grinned.
The officer’s face was as unmoving and cold as stone. After several uncomfortable seconds, he turned toward some of the other cops and signaled them. They began to direct traffic, albeit slowly, around Zoey’s car.
“I’m going to need you to shut off the engine, remove the key, and step out of the car, ma’am,” he said when he looked back at her.
The hair on the back of Zoey’s neck stood on end as fear slithered down her spine. A chill raced through her body. “Um, what is all this about, anyway, Officer…?”
He took a long step back from the door and dropped a hand to the pistol on his hip. “Out of the vehicle. Now.”
“Okay! Okay! I’m getting out.” She turned the key, pulled it from the ignition, and tossed it beside her purse. It was a struggle not to look at the back seat again; it’d be too obvious now. She opened the door and stepped out, keeping her hands up.
He waved his flashlight toward the hood of the car. “Move to the front of the vehicle and place both hands flat on the hood.”
Zoey did as she was told, despite the fearful tremors in her limbs. What had she done wrong? What would they do to her?
Once she was in position, the officer leaned into the open door for a moment, reaching down to pop the trunk. She felt him glare at her from behind his sunglasses before he walked to the back of the car. It shook slightly as he shifted around the contents — two suitcases of clothes and toiletries, the little photo album, her box of romance novels, and her favorite blanket.
After a minute or so, the officer slammed the trunk closed and walked back to the front of the car. Zoey peered up at him but was careful not to lift her hands off the hood.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Have you seen anything out of the ordinary tonight? Hitchhikers, cars stopped on the side of the road, anything? There is a very dangerous man at large, and your silence will make it that much harder for us to catch him.”
“I haven’t seen anything,” Zoey replied, fingers curling on top of the hood.
“Your behavior suggests otherwise.”
“What behavior?” she demanded. “I gave you my ID, answered your questions, and now you got me bent over my damn car like a criminal? I lost my fucking job today, got a notice that my landlord’s about to evict me, and found out my boyfriend was cheating on me. Please excuse me if my behavior is unusual, but I say I’m holding it together pretty damn well, all things considered.”
Zoey glared at the officer. Apparently, she’d straightened to stand with her fists clenched at her sides at some point during her blow up.
Whoops.
The cop’s jaw muscles bulged, and his hand drifted toward his gun again. He hesitated, tilting his head slightly as though listening to something. “Negative. She’s clear. Just got a nasty attitude.” Another pause. “Copy.”
Jerk.
“Back in your vehicle, Miss Weston,” he finally said. “Move along.”
Keeping her distance from Officer Asswipe, she got back into the car and slammed the door. She held a hand out the open window. “I need my wallet back. Please.”
Ignoring her extended hand, he tossed the wallet through the window to land in her lap. “Drive safe.” Before she could hit him with a scathing — and foolhardy — remark, he turned and walked toward the next car.
Zoey stuffed her wallet into her purse, grabbed her keys, and buckled up. She started the car and glared at the cop’s back as she rolled up her window. Throwing the shifter into drive, she promptly got the fuck out of there.
Once she’d passed the barricade and the police car lights were fading in the distance, Zoey was slapped in the face with the realization that they’d made it through. She released a shaky breath as relief flowed through her. “We did it.”
She lifted a hand to adjust the rearview mirror, angling it to see into the back seat. Her eyes widened as a dark form materialized there. Was she crazy? She wasn’t sure how to reconcile his appearing-disappearing act otherwise.
Rendash shifted to meet her gaze in the mirror. “You’ve kept your word thus far, human. I will keep mine.”
Zoey frowned. “Told you I would.”
A pang of guilt pierced her chest; for a single moment, she’d considered giving him up. Now that she was on the other side of the checkpoint, she was glad she hadn’t, but she could only hope the decision wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.
“What are the lights up ahead?” Rendash asked.
“A casino,” she replied. “The first of many. Welcome to Nevada.”
“I find myself more confused now than before I asked.”
“Oh.”
Despite his accent, he spoke English so well that she’d assumed he knew. Didn’t aliens spy on humans? Didn’t they abduct people in the middle of the night, stealing them away to flying saucers, to probe and prod and question? Aliens were supposed to be super smart.
Intelligence and knowledge are different things. This world is alien to him. Can’t expect him to know all about the convoluted things humans do.
“Nevada is a state. We just crossed into it from California. There are fifty states in the United States. They’re like…divisions of territory, I guess, and we might cross more of them depending on where you need me to take you. Um…where do you need me to take you, anyway?”
She felt his hand on her seat again, and he pulled himself into a hunched sitting position, placing his face between the two front seats.
“In the direction we are traveling,” he replied. Just as she was about to get annoyed at his vagueness, he continued. “I know only that there is a great distance to cross. I have no knowledge of your world to provide you with even a general location to aim for, only the direction.”
“All right. I…guess that’s better than nothing.”
“And what is a casino?” he asked.
“A casino is a place where people gamble.”
“Gamble their lives?”
Zoey glanced at him. A chill ran through her. While his two center eyes looked ahead, the leftmost one stared at her. She forced her gaze to the road.
Creepy. As. Fuck.
“Might as well be their lives,” she said. “But no. They gamble with money.”
“Money. That is an abstract means of assigning value to goods and services, is it not?”
“You say that like it’s a strange concept to you.”
“My people do not have such a thing.”
“Um, here, let me show you.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, she blindly reached over and dug her wallet out of her purse. She glanced down a couple times as she withdrew a dollar bill and her debit card, holding them up for him. “This is money. There are lots of different paper ones, and some that are metal, and each
has a certain value. The card is a…an electronic way of accessing the money we own that’s stored in a bank — not that you’re likely to have any idea of what that is, either.”
He plucked the dollar from her hold. “This paper has value? What use can it be put to?”
She caught a glimpse of the confused look on his face in the mirror; his brow was furrowed, and his lips turned down in a deep frown.
“We use it to buy things,” she said. “Food, clothes, our homes. Just about everything. If we don’t have money, we’d be homeless and starving.”
“So its only purpose is the procurement of other goods that actually have use? Does that not seem…foolish? Why not trade those goods directly?”
Zoey shrugged. “It’s just the way that it is. We work and slave away the hours to earn it, and most of us barely make enough to get by.”
“All aligarii serve their roles to ensure our society has all it needs,” he said, his tone implying it was madness to do things any other way. “Even the other species who live among us want for nothing, so long as they do their part.”
“I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that there’s one kind of alien, so I definitely don’t need to hear about any others right now.” She glanced at a passing sign. Thirty miles to Vegas. “Your society sounds much nicer than ours.”
“Perhaps. I have spent little time in true aligarii society.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am Aekhora, born into the Khorzar. I have trained for war since my youth and have fought on many different worlds.”
“Did you…” Her tongue slipped out to wet her suddenly dry lips. “Did you come here to start a war?”
He turned his head toward her, and reflected light made his eyes glow at the edge of her vision. Zoey tensed.
“Aligarii do not start wars. We finish them. We protect those unjustly attacked, protect worlds unable to defend themselves. My Umen’rak was simply passing through this system. We were unaware this planet bore any life.”
“Okay,” she sighed in relief. “No end of all human life as we know it anytime soon, then. Unless…you bring more of your kind back to take revenge for what was done to you.”
Rendash released a heavy breath. “What was done to me would be my responsibility to avenge,” he said. “I would not make your entire, primitive planet pay for a personal vendetta.”
Zoey’s muscles eased. “Thank you. Though I resent that remark about us being primitive.”
“You drive wheeled vehicles over the ground. How could that not be considered primitive?”
“We’re intelligent beings who have advanced quickly through the years. We are not primitive.”
“By your own standards.”
“And you’re just rude,” she shot back.
“Again, by your own standards.”
Zoey cracked a smile and shook her head. “I give up.”
“That you haven’t given up yet is the only reason I am not locked in a dark room, Zoey.” To her surprise, there seemed to be genuine gratitude in his voice.
Her smile faded as the weight of the situation settled atop her again. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”
What more would they have done to him if she’d given him over? Would they have shot him right in front of her eyes? The thought churned her stomach.
She swallowed back a sudden wave of bile and cleared her throat. “Are you thirsty? I have some water.”
“Yes.”
Zoey groped over the passenger seat until she found the water bottle and passed it to him. She watched in the rearview mirror as he twisted off the cap, leaned back, and drained the bottle in two gulps.
“We should probably grab some food and find a place to stop for the night. You can do that…disappearing act you did back there to hide.”
“Stop? We must continue. As I told you, we have a long way to travel.”
“I don’t know about you, but this primitive human needs sleep. Even if I hadn’t had a shitty day, I can’t drive all through the night. I need to rest. So, if you’re keeping me on as your personal chauffeur — that’s someone who drives people around, by the way — then you go at my speed.”
He was silent for a time. “Very well, human. Acquire lodging and sustenance for us.”
“My name is Zoey.”
She glanced in the mirror and caught a fleeting glimpse of his face; his mouth was quirked up at one corner.
“I know that, human,” he said as he lay back on the seat.
Zoey rolled her eyes. She had a feeling this was going to be one interesting road trip.
Chapter Five
Before the SUV came to a complete stop, Charles Stantz threw open the passenger door. He stormed across the pavement after the driver slammed on the brakes, resisting the urge to adjust his tie; he refused, even with the current situation, to display so much as the smallest sign of weakness in front of his men.
An unexpected event had occurred, an unfortunate event, but it was being handled. There was no reason for the sour churning in his gut.
He climbed the metal-grating steps and entered the command trailer, closing the door quietly behind him. Before he rounded the corner, he fished a roll of antacids from his inside jacket pocket, peeled back the foil, and dumped four into his mouth. The packaging declared Fruit Flavored!, but they tasted like shit.
Once the antacids were chewed to a paste, Stantz swallowed and walked around the corner.
Banks of monitors of varying sizes lined both walls, and a dozen technicians with headsets were at the controls. Currently, there were at least fifty camera feeds pulled up, including two for each patrolling chopper, more than ten from agents currently in the desert, numerous surveillance cameras from buildings in the search area, and first-person views from the agents operating the roadblock at the California-Nevada border.
The techs spoke in low, droning voices as they received and relayed information.
“Tell me we’ve got something,” Stantz called as he moved down the narrow walkway to the center of the trailer.
“A few impact spots in the dirt, and his shackles, cut into pieces,” Fairborough said, walking over to stand beside Stantz. His sleeves were rolled up and his headset was pulled back off one ear. “Trail’s cold after he crossed the mountains.”
Stantz growled. “How does a seven-foot-tall green alien vanish in a place with nowhere to hide?”
Fairborough didn’t answer; the man was smart enough to know it had been a rhetorical question.
One of the screens caught Stantz’s attention. He pointed at it. “What’s Branson got there?”
The camera feed showed a curvy woman standing near the front of her car. She looked pissed, with her fists balled and her eyebrows angled down over the bridge of her nose.
Stantz grabbed a free headset and pulled it on. “Patch me through to field comms.”
The closest tech nodded, and after a few quick clicks, audio crackled on in Stantz’s headset.
“…pretty damn well, all things considered,” the woman on the camera said.
The technician pulled up her info; Zoey Weston, age twenty-seven, most recently employed as a waitress in Santa Barbara, California. No criminal record.
“Agent Branson,” Stantz said, “does that civilian have information on the Fox?”
The codename — Fox — was at once fitting and frustrating; Specimen Ten was cunning and dangerous, as four dead operatives now evidenced, but the naming scheme seemed ridiculously cliché and unimaginative. If the Organization wanted to move into the future, it would need to shed the trappings of the past.
Branson’s camera angle tilted slightly.
“Negative. She’s clear. Just got a nasty attitude.”
“Then move her along. Our only concern is tracking down the Fox, understood?”
“Copy.”
Stantz tugged the headset down around his neck and returned his attention to Fairborough. “I want all lines of communication monitored.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, sir. I’ve already got people back at base combing social media and cell phone traffic. Anyone so much as mentions something weird, we’ll know about it.”
Stantz’s phone vibrated. He tugged it off his belt and glanced at the screen. “Shit,” he muttered.
He yanked off the headset, tossed it down, and hurried outside, pressing Accept as he descended the steps. He lifted the phone to his ear.
“Director,” he said, tongue suddenly like sandpaper.
“Charlie, tell me you have this under control.”
“We’re regaining control, sir.”
“Not good enough, damnit! Do you understand the resources we’re pulling to fix this fuck-up? We don’t need any elected officials asking questions, whether it’s about your Fox or our sudden upswing in expenditures. Those bastards only care about saving money if they feel like they had no say in spending it, and they sure as hell don’t have a say right now. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I’ll bring this to a quick resolution, sir.”
“The public cannot find out about this thing, Charlie. We have enough BS out there to muck up the water, but this one is too much. You do what you need to do to fix this. Even if that means putting your lost animal down.”
Stantz clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together. “Yes, sir.”
When the call disconnected, he stuffed his phone back into its case and paced over the hard pack in front of the trailer.
He’d busted his ass for fifteen years to get to his current position, and his work with the group of aliens who’d crash-landed on Earth had yielded real results that government researchers and scientists would eventually put to good use. One day, he’d be recognized as the man who’d enabled America to move into a new age through his dedication. Few of the others were as willing to get their hands dirty. He’d been doing that dirty work with these aliens for four years.
Stantz wasn’t about to let his life’s work be swept aside because of some short-sighted bureaucrat. Specimen Ten was the last of its kind on Earth, and Stantz would have it back. Budgets and politicians were of no importance; this was about uplifting the human race, about bringing them to the next level of evolution. Anyone who couldn’t see that was little more than an obstacle to be bypassed or destroyed.
Claimed by an Alien Warrior Page 5
