“Probably. Ginger invited me to the wedding, but I don’t really know her, and I’d feel weird going without a date. And Jeff said he absolutely wouldn’t go anyplace where he was expected to wear a tie, so…”
“I didn’t think they wore ties in L.A.,” Kara said absently.
“Well, at weddings.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
There was a short pause. Then Kiki asked, “Is everything okay? You sound a little weird.”
Kara’s response was automatic. “I’m fine. It’s been busy, so I’m tired. I was just about to get ready for bed when you called, since I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
Another hesitation. “Maybe you should cancel the tours this weekend. I mean, with them showing up again and all — ”
“I am not canceling. It’s two full tours. That’s too much money to throw away.” I’m not going to let those aliens chase me out of my own backyard. “Besides, both Michael and Lance are coming, so short of heading out there with a bunch of Army Rangers, I think I’m doing about the best I can.”
“Lance is coming? Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, I guess if Michael is there as a chaperone, you two kids should be safe enough.”
“Very funny.” Kara wouldn’t let herself think about how much that casual joke stung, about how much she would have liked to drive out somewhere under the stars and have Lance hold her as the warm night wind swirled around them. She cleared her throat. “Okay, Keeks, I’ve really got to get to bed. Call me at the shop tomorrow if you have a chance, but otherwise I’ll try you.”
“I’ll call you when I can. Jeff has a cellular jammer at his house, so calls can’t get in.”
Of course he does. “Well, all right, but if I don’t hear from you, I’m going to have no choice but to call Persephone to check up on you.”
“I’ll call, I’ll call!” Kiki exclaimed in mock-horror. “Even if I have to go out on the street corner to do it. One big sister breathing down my neck is enough.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Kara replied. “But okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
“’Bye.”
Kara heard the line go dead and replaced the handset in the receiver. It was silly to be worrying about Kiki — she had Seph and Paul with her, and they’d make sure she was fine. No doubt they’d be worrying about Kara if they knew she had a strange man sleeping in Kiki’s old bed.
Well, Kara hadn’t been lying about one thing. It really had been a very long day. She’d worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. It seemed as if she had plenty of people worrying for her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mornings were generally quiet at the store. Oh, sure, you had the diehards who were eager to hit the shopping trail as soon as they were done with breakfast, but most of the time the real crowds didn’t show up until after lunch, and often liked to linger until she shooed them out at closing time. She sympathized with their frustration over most of the shops closing by six, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be stuck at the store at all hours just because someone was used to shopping until nine back home. When in Rome…
At any rate, after the early birds had come and gone, Kara figured it was safe enough to try making a call to the Patriot Uniform Company. She’d already looked up their contact information on her laptop — no point in letting the snoops know what she was up to — so it was just a matter of timing.
No one had pulled up into the parking lot. She figured she’d have at least a couple of minutes free. Better to do it now.
She picked up her cell phone and dialed the number, reading it off the site she’d cached on her laptop.
A vaguely hostile female voice said, “Patriot Uniform Company.”
Since Kara had dealt with a lot worse over the years than snotty-sounding operators, she replied calmly, “Hi, I was wondering if you could provide me with some information on one of your products?”
“Would you like to talk to someone in our sales department?”
“Sure.” That seemed reasonable enough. After all, it was the salespeople who would probably know more about which items were sold to whom. She waited as the operator patched the call through.
An infinitely friendlier male voice came over the line. “Hi, this is Ben Parsons. Can I help you?”
“Hi, Ben. My name is Karen Sherman, and I’m with an outfit in Boulder, Colorado.” Kara knew better than to give the guy any real information, no matter how friendly he might sound. And her phone had all caller ID information blocked, so anyone on the other end of the line wouldn’t be able to figure out where she was calling from…unless the Patriot Uniform Company had far more sophisticated equipment than she thought.
“Sure, Karen. How can I help you?”
“We’re looking to purchase approximately one hundred jumpsuits. I was thinking black, with utility pockets on the legs. A friend recommended your company, and said he thought the ones numbered ‘23111056’ might be a good fit.”
“Let me check on that — we produce a large number of items, and I don’t have all the SKUs memorized.”
“No problem.” She shifted the cell phone from one hand to the other and looked over at the door when she noticed movement outside, then relaxed. Just someone using her parking lot as a throughway to the ATV rental place next door. At another time she might have mentally cursed them for using her lot as an auxiliary road, but right now she wasn’t going to worry about it.
“Ms. Sherman?” Suddenly Ben Parsons didn’t sound quite so friendly.
“Um, yes?”
“I don’t know where your friend got his information, but we’ve never manufactured a jumpsuit with that particular SKU.”
“Really?”
“I’m afraid so. Maybe he got the name of our company mixed up with someone else.”
“Oh, wow, I’m sorry. I’ll have to double-check with him. I apologize for wasting your time.”
“It’s no problem. You have a nice day.” And he hung up abruptly, as if he didn’t want to run the risk of her asking any more questions.
What the…? Kara didn’t pretend to be psychic, but she thought she was a pretty good judge of people, and though she didn’t know this Ben Parsons from Adam, she had the distinct impression he was lying. Why, she couldn’t begin to guess.
Unless Grayson really was involved in some sort of secret government test or project. I suppose if that were the case, this Mr. Ben Parsons would have plenty of reasons why he wouldn’t want to say who those jumpsuits had been sold to…or even admit that his company manufactures them at all.
Of course, that took her right back to the beginning. She’d already suspected Grayson might have been involved in some sort of covert operation, but if that were the case, she couldn’t understand why he’d been left to wander around in the desert. Lance had already filled her in on just how sophisticated the government’s scanning and surveillance equipment was; if some secret operation had lost a man out in the wastes between Sedona and the New Mexico border, you could be damn sure they’d be able to find him. Hell, according to Lance, they’d probably be able to pin a scorpion down to a single square yard, let alone a grown man.
Lance. She wished she could discuss Grayson with him, but that wasn’t going to happen — she could only imagine the lecture he’d give her for taking in a stranger and not reporting it to anyone. Not to mention the weird baggage between them, the baggage neither one of them wanted to acknowledge. After all, they were just friends.
Right.
At least Kara was able to admit to herself that she was attracted to Lance, wanted something more from him than friendship. He’d always maintained a neutral stance with her, but every once in a while she’d catch an odd look in his eyes, something that told her maybe he wasn’t quite as disinterested as he wanted her to believe. Or maybe she was just flattering herself.
One time, after Lance had just left the UFO Depot, Kiki remarked in overly dramatic tones, “I�
��m a rebel, Dottie…a loner.” Kara stared at her blankly for a moment until she realized her younger sister was quoting a line from a PeeWee Herman movie where PeeWee was trying to give the brush-off to a female friend who was just a little too interested in him. Trust Kiki to pull up some obscure bit of ’80s pop culture and apply it to Lance.
In a weird way, it did fit, though. Lance had done a pretty good job of cultivating his “lone wolf” persona. She knew he’d been in Special Forces before he was recruited for the army’s remote viewing project, but other than that, Lance had revealed squat about his past. Maybe he was hiding some deep, dark secret, something that kept them apart…or maybe he only maintained that pose because it made a good excuse for holding her at arm’s length.
Contrast that with Grayson, who seemed almost too giving, too open. Not that he had much to be open about, because right now his past was apparently a deep, dark hole, but at least she could tell he wasn’t hiding anything from her on purpose. And now that the jumpsuit was apparently a dead end, she didn’t have a clue as to where she should look next.
Well, that wasn’t precisely true. Even though Persephone was out of town, Kara knew she didn’t need a psychic to delve into Grayson’s past. Among her acquaintance were several hypnotherapists who’d probably be willing to lend a hand. It wouldn’t exactly be a past-life regression, since all she really wanted to know was who Grayson was and where he’d come from, but maybe a hypnosis session would help to get past that barrier, shine a little light into the dark that shrouded Grayson’s origins.
First, though, she had to get through the UFO tour tonight. She’d already explained to Grayson that she had to go out that evening, although he’d only raised an eyebrow when she tried to describe a UFO night tour to him. He was too polite to say anything, but she got the distinct impression he was thinking, Wow, people actually pay for that?
At least by now she knew she could leave him at her house with no negative repercussions, but something still felt wrong about it. Maybe it was only that she hadn’t left him there alone at night before this, or maybe she was beginning to pick up some of what Persephone referred to as her “spider sense.” Either way, it didn’t really matter. She wouldn’t cancel the tour, not when almost a grand was riding on it.
“Everything is going to be fine,” she said aloud to the empty store, although at the moment she couldn’t say whether she was trying to reassure the universe…or just herself.
* * *
Lance leaned against the side of his Jeep and tried not to scowl as he surveyed the group Kara had assembled for the night’s UFO-watching tour. Ten in all, which was probably why she had refused to cancel the trip. That was a serious chunk of change. Even now she stood in front of the motley assortment of tourists, holding the military-spec night-vision goggles she used for the tours and explaining how they worked.
One group of four appeared to be college-age kids, all of whom were trying to look serious but who couldn’t help but trade typical twenty-something side-eyes at each other as Kara described the various types of UFOs that had been spotted over Sedona and how to track them. Lance wondered what the hell they were doing on a UFO tour if they didn’t believe in the phenomenon to begin with. Maybe a dare. Or maybe they were already bored with Sedona’s limited nightlife and were looking for something unusual to do.
In addition to the kids, there were two married couples, one probably in their early thirties, the other somewhere in their mid-fifties. They all seemed pretty serious, listening intently as Kara gave her spiel. The last two were both women who looked to be in their late forties, with the sort of wide-eyed but also piercing gaze that Lance recognized all too well from countless MUFON meetings and UFO symposiums. These were true believers, come here to either reinforce some previous close encounters, or desperately trying to prove to themselves that what they believed wasn’t just smoke and fairytales.
It’s a lot of things, but fairytales it ain’t. Some days he wished it were all crap. Maybe then he could have some peace. But the aliens seemed to have returned from their sabbatical, and he had to stay on guard.
His gaze moved to Michael Lightfoot, who was a watchful shadow near the rear end of the UFO Night Tours van. Lance had driven Michael here, and they’d take Lance’s Jeep out to the site. Kara would drive the van. Luckily this group seemed okay with being driven to the site; sometimes people stubbornly insisted on taking their own vehicles, even if they weren’t suited for the terrain. The Night Tours van might look shabby on the outside — he still recalled Persephone’s crack about it being their “Scooby van” — but it had a beefed-up suspension and run-flat tires. Not true four-wheel drive, unlike his Jeep, but it could handle the ground at the sites Kara used, unlike some tourist’s rented Chevy Malibu.
“Everybody got it?” Kara asked, and the group responded with a variety of head nods and “uh-huh”s. They all piled into the van as she headed to the driver’s-side door.
He approached her and said, “Boynton, right?”
“Yep,” she replied. “I figured if the UFOs don’t want to come out and play, we have a better chance of seeing the orbs in that area than up on Schneebly.”
Her tone was casual, but something in her expression made him pause and give her a sharp look. It wasn’t worry — he would have understood that — but instead something close to preoccupation, as if her thoughts were someplace else. And that bothered him, because tonight she needed to be sharp. Chances were, nothing would happen, but if it did…
He asked, “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She shrugged, her hair slipping over her shoulders as she did so. Even in the uncertain light of the one street lamp in front of the shop, those long strands gleamed gold.
He’d always wondered what that hair would look like spread out on a pillow next to him.
Well, you’re not going to find out any time soon. “All right. We’re right behind you.”
A nod, and she turned away from him to climb into the driver’s seat of the van before slamming the door with a resounding thud. He didn’t know if the slam had been intentional or not. He got the distinct impression she wasn’t all that happy to have him and Michael along as babysitters. When it came down to it, Lance had a thing or ten he would rather have been doing tonight, too, but Kara’s safety overrode everything else. Frankly, he didn’t really give two shits about the tourists, although he supposed it would be bad for business and tourism in general if one of these trips went sideways and word got out.
He went back to the Jeep and slid behind the wheel. Michael was already waiting in the passenger seat.
“Hope you packed a flask, my friend,” Lance remarked, to which Michael only gave him a level stare and a small head shake.
Sometimes Lightfoot had absolutely no sense of humor.
* * *
Kara bounced the van along Boynton Pass Road, fingers gripped around the steering wheel. Luckily the tourists were busy talking amongst themselves and didn’t seem to notice her preoccupation. That is, the group of four college students were being almost too boisterous, chattering and laughing. Maybe they were feeling uneasy and were overcompensating. Didn’t really matter. Their commotion made it easy for her to avoid engaging any of the other passengers in conversation.
The road was paved, but it had been years since it had gotten anything more than a casual patch job, and it was giving the shocks a run for their money. She didn’t mind too much. It gave the impression that they really were going way off the beaten path, far from the restaurants and shops that lined 89A, the town’s main drag.
Out here was pure inky darkness. In a few hours a quarter moon would rise, but in the meantime there wasn’t anything to interfere with the view. She remembered the first time Grandpa had brought her and Kiki out here to see the stars. Of course Kiki had run around looking at everything but the sky, but Kara had been transfixed by the expanse of the Milky Way that revealed itself in the indigo-blue skies above the desert town. She’d never realized that m
any stars filled the heavens. She’d fallen in love.
It took her a few years more to realize not everything that glittered in the night sky was that beautiful.
She pulled off to the side of the road, at a spot where a trailhead dead-ended. They’d hike out into the juniper and mesquite from here. Not too many snakes in this area, thank God, not that they’d be much of a problem even on a warm night like this. The group actually ran more risk of startling some javelinas and having to scurry out of the way of the odd-looking boar-like creatures. They did tend to be pretty territorial.
“Okay, we’re here,” she called over her shoulder, and the chatter dropped in volume somewhat but didn’t stop altogether. Fine. With any luck the twenty-somethings would scare off any wild animals within a quarter-mile radius.
Everyone climbed out of the van and stood waiting in the gravelly sand at the road’s border. A few seconds later, Lance’s Jeep pulled in and parked a few yards away. The two men got out, Michael towering over Lance by half a head, although Lance was certainly not short. They paused a short distance away from the group, obviously waiting for Kara to give the rest of her little speech.
“I know you’re all eager to get out there, so I’ll make this quick,” she said, using the brisk, no-nonsense tones she found worked best for these tours. “We all need to stick together. No wandering off — it can get disorienting out here, especially if you’re not used to the wilderness. And there’s no moon yet to help guide you, so that goes double tonight.
“The binoculars I handed out back at the shop will do most of the work for you. It helps if you stay as still as possible as you’re watching the skies. And please, no playing jokes with camera flashes. You can temporarily blind someone.”
The twenty-somethings murmured amongst themselves, but Kara shot them a quelling look and they subsided.
“Remember, you’ll be able to tell the UFOs from other objects such as satellites or planes by their movements. UFOs are known to exhibit nonballistic movement, which means they can stop suddenly, shoot off at odd angles, disappear altogether. Believe me, you’ll know when you see one.”
sedona files - books one to three Page 30
