“Why would they do that?”
No one could be that obtuse. She refrained from snapping, It’s the economy, stupid, and instead replied, “We’re all competing for the same slice of the pie, you know? So maybe someone wanted to scare me off.”
The agents exchanged a glance. The taller one said, “You’d swear an affidavit to that effect?”
“No.”
Two sets of eyebrows lifted.
“I’m not going to swear to anything when I don’t have all the facts,” she told them. “I don’t know exactly what happened. It could have been little green men…or it could have been someone taking the opportunity to try to put me out of business. But which one do you two gentlemen think is more likely?”
“You tell us.”
She stared at both of them, certain that she couldn’t make a single misstep, or she’d be in a world of hurt. On the other hand, she was acutely aware of time passing. Grayson could be back at any moment — and she just couldn’t risk the two agents still being here when he arrived.
“Look, I run a business devoted to UFOs. You know that. But I think we also know it’s far more plausible that a competitor was trying to give me a scare. In fact, I’d love it if you could find out who it was. There has to be a law against that sort of thing, doesn’t there?”
For the first time they looked a little uncomfortable. The taller agent said,
“I’m afraid commerce isn’t our department, ma’am. But I’d say it was unscrupulous even if it wasn’t illegal.”
He didn’t exactly smile, but something in his face seemed to soften the slightest bit, and that’s when she knew they were both as human as she was, even if they were doing their best to toe the company line. It didn’t mean she was going to invite them over for dinner, but she also knew they were most likely just doing their best to plug a leak that had their superiors scrambling for plausible deniability. Her crazy little story about a competitor buzz-bombing the tour group was probably a welcome lifeline they could hold on to and take back with them.
She wished she could feel more relieved that at least they weren’t alien-infected humans or hybrids, but the knowledge didn’t change the fact that she still wanted them out of her house before Grayson came back. Somehow she managed a smile and replied, “Sounds like we’re on the same page here, then. I wish I could help you out more, but…”
“It’s no problem — ” the taller agent began, but his compatriot broke in, saying,
“Then you won’t mind if we take a quick look around?”
“Not at all,” she said at once, uttering a silent prayer that she’d had the presence of mind to stow her laptop under the placemats in the linen drawer. Technically, she could have demanded to see a warrant. That would have been a bad move, though — better to let them have their look-see and get out, rather than raise their suspicions once again by mentioning a warrant.
They nodded and went their separate ways, the tall agent going down the hall toward the bedrooms and her office, the shorter one looking around the dining room and then the kitchen. She held her breath, wondering if he was going to start pawing through the drawers, but it seemed he was content with just a cursory glance before heading out to the garage. Thank God Grayson was as neat about the workspace out there as he was with his bedroom; neither agent would find any real evidence of his presence in the house, unless they dug through the trash and found the bristles from his morning bout with Grandpa’s old electric razor.
Or the used condoms in her own bathroom trash can.
Heat rose in her cheeks, but she somehow managed to look on with mild interest as they continued their inspection. After about ten minutes they reconvened in the living room, each giving the other the smallest of head shakes.
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for, she thought, and bit back a chuckle. “Everything okay?”
The tall agent gave the slightest of nods, but the shorter one asked, “You live here alone?”
“Yes.”
“Lot of space for one person.”
“I inherited it from my grandfather. My sister lived here with me until about a year ago.” Which I’m sure you knew already…
He gave her a hard look out of those dark eyes, a look that seemed to say he thought she was up to something but couldn’t find enough evidence to press the issue. Then she saw just the slightest lift of the shoulders under the black suit, as if conceding her the point in this match.
“I think we’re done here, Ms. Swenson,” he said. “Sorry to take up your time. However, I’d advise you to stay local, just in case we need to ask you any more questions.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere. I’ve got a business to run.”
“So you’re going to reopen tomorrow?”
Damn. She’d forgotten about the sign on the door about the shop being closed for a family emergency. Smoothly she said, “That was the plan. After Thursday I needed to take a few days off, but I’d be stupid to miss out on the last few weeks of summer, you know?”
“Very good.” Another searching glance. “Then we know where to find you.”
And he nodded at the taller agent, who seemed almost embarrassed by his partner’s brusque behavior but knew better than to say anything. They went out and shut the door behind them without a goodbye.
Not that she cared. The important thing was that they were gone.
The relief that coursed over Kara was so intense she actually felt her hands begin to shake. She pulled out one of the chairs to the dinette set in the breakfast nook and sat down, staring out the window at the carefully arranged rocks and desert plants in her backyard without really seeing them.
God, what next?
* * *
When Lance’s cell phone started vibrating in his pocket, he had half a mind to ignore it. He’d come up to Airport Mesa after leaving Michael’s, hoping maybe the wind and the sky could clear the cobwebs in his head. True, the place was overrun with tourists, but he knew a couple of hard-to-get-to spots that only the most intrepid scenery-seeker would attempt. Actually, he was halfway surprised he even got cell phone service out here.
But he knew ignoring the call wasn’t really an option. Not that many people had his number, and almost any of them would have a damn good reason to be calling him.
He pulled out the phone and looked at the display. Kara.
Hers was about the last number he expected to see. Without thinking, he pressed “Accept” and held the phone up to his ear. “Kara?”
“Oh, hey, Lance.”
She sounded shaken, and icy fingers of worry started to trail down the back of his neck, despite the lingering heat of the day. “What’s the matter?”
A brittle little laugh that didn’t fool him for a second. “Guess who just paid me a visit?”
“Who?”
“A couple of MIBs.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Oh, they were very polite, but…they wanted to know about Thursday night. Don’t suppose you saw the YouTube video.”
If he didn’t know better, he would have thought she was getting some perverse pleasure out of piling on the shocks. “What video?”
“I guess one of my clients got around to uploading the footage off his phone earlier today. According to Kiki, it went viral. It’s down now — says ‘Video removed by user,’ but I’m guessing it wasn’t Travis who took it down.”
No, probably not. Lance stared out westward, roughly in the direction of the base in Secret Canyon, then said, “What did you tell them?”
“Not much. I hinted that I thought it was a rival tour owner out to scare off my customers by getting a friend with a helicopter to buzz me.”
“Nice.” Trust Kara to be able to think on her feet. He wouldn’t say that nothing fazed her, but she’d been hit with enough disasters in her life that she didn’t rattle too easily. “Do you think they bought it?”
“I think so. It’s times like this I really wish I were psychic like Persephone. But I
do think they were…like us. Regular people. Not…them.”
Interesting tidbit. Sounded like the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. Or, maybe more accurately, the right hand was going about its business while the feet were carrying the whole damn thing someplace that ol’ right hand really didn’t want to be.
“Are you okay?” he asked abruptly. He wanted her to say she wasn’t. He wanted her to say that she’d been shaken up by the whole experience and that she needed him to come over.
She hesitated. “Sure. They weren’t that scary, actually. One of them was almost nice.”
His tone flat, he repeated, “‘Nice.’”
“Okay, not nice nice, but…anyway, I’m fine. Of course they gave me the standard line about not leaving town. Stupid. I mean, where would I even go? I’ve had a few days to get my head together, and I need to get back to work tomorrow.”
He and Kara didn’t have the sort of relationship where he could feel comfortable asking about what she’d done with those few days. Besides, thanks to the intelligence he’d gotten from Felicia Martinez, it was pretty clear what Kara had been doing with at least part of that time. He really didn’t want to think about that, though.
She added, in an overly cheerful tone of voice that was probably intended to reassure him but in fact did just the opposite, “Well, we’ll certainly have a lot to tell Paul and Persephone when they get back in town. Hard to believe it’s only been four days!”
“You could put it that way.”
A pause. “Everything okay, Lance?”
“Everything’s great,” he rasped. He wasn’t about to tell her what was really bothering him. “I just don’t know if it’s such a great idea for you to be there by yourself.”
“I’m not by myself — I’ve got Gort to protect me.”
“Yeah, well, unless he can shoot laser beams out his eyes like the original Gort, I’m not sure how much good he’d be in an actual crisis.”
She actually laughed at that, and her laughter this time sounded genuine, with nothing of the forced cheeriness he’d heard from her just a minute ago. “That would be something. But no, you’re right. I love Gort, but he’s just a big pussycat. Good thing he looks fierce enough that most people don’t try to find out whether his bite is worse than his bark.”
Lance considered offering to stop by and then decided against it. Hovering wasn’t his style, and if he pressed the issue much more, Kara might begin to realize that his solicitude stemmed from something more than friendly concern. “Well, then, thanks for the update. I’ll let Michael know what’s going on, and once Paul and Persephone are back, we’ll try to set up a time we can all get together and discuss our next steps.”
Once again she hesitated, just for a fraction of a second, but enough so he noticed. “Yeah, sure, that sounds good. Let me know.”
“Will do. ’Bye.”
He ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket, then stared once more out toward the western horizon, where the sun was finally beginning to touch the edge of the Black Hills. The wind had started to pick up as sunset approached, and he lifted his face into it. Right now it was taking just about every ounce of determination he had not to go back to the Jeep, drive down the hill, and head over to Kara’s house. If the shit really was about to hit the fan, he wanted to be with her, watching out for her. He sure as hell didn’t want her relying on Mr. Muy Caliente, whoever he might be.
But in that direction, as they say, lay madness. He took a breath, then another, and forced himself to stay where he was.
* * *
Grayson came back almost an hour after the agents had left. After she’d ended her conversation with Lance, Kara roamed the house, unable to do much of anything constructive, although she did some general tidying-up as a way of expending her nervous energy. She’d opened her laptop, but when she saw sixty-seven unread messages in her inbox, she decided to put that off for another day. Probably most of the emails were from people who’d seen the video and now wanted their own extra-special close encounters.
Sometime tomorrow she’d have to update the store’s website to say there weren’t going to be any more tours in the immediate future, but she knew she couldn’t deal with that right now. Kiki had designed and built the website and put the whole thing in an open-source content-management system so it would be easy to update…theoretically. More than once Kara had blown up the whole thing, though, so she thought it better to avoid logging in until she felt a little more settled.
She’d just shoved the laptop back into its bag when she heard the automatic garage door open, followed by the deep rumble of the Indian. At once Gort got up and assumed his waiting position on the rag rug just inside the door to the garage.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure Grayson is going to want to go on a walk right away,” she warned. Still, she thought she knew how the dog felt. All this time she couldn’t help worrying about him, about the fact that he was out riding around alone in a town he didn’t know, on a motorcycle that didn’t belong to him, all the while with no driver’s license. She probably should have tried harder to keep him from going, but he was a grown man. There was only so much she could have done.
But when he entered the kitchen, he looked considerably more cheerful than when he had left. His hair was mussed from the helmet, and he grinned at her as he bent down to scratch Gort behind the ears.
“Beautiful country around here, isn’t it?”
Kara nodded. Not much argument with that. “Did any of it look familiar?”
“Not really. Not except for the part I saw yesterday, that is.”
She should have expected as much. Could she really fault him for getting out and trying to see things on his own, without someone else’s input to possibly skew how he was looking at the area around town?
Some part of her had wanted to be angry with him for being foolhardy, but as he looked at her with that melting smile, she knew she couldn’t hold on to that anger. There was something so open and joyous about him, so lacking any subtext, that she just couldn’t be upset with him for very long. He was so different from any of the other men she had known.
So different from Lance.
Kara pushed that thought aside. Maybe the brooding hero was a standard romance-novel archetype, but he was also sort of a pain in the ass to deal with on a daily basis. Grayson was so much easier to get along with.
She smiled back at him and stood, going to him so she could give him a hearty kiss. He immediately pulled her more tightly against him so she could feel the heat of his body, the strength of those arms as they folded around her. From somewhere she heard Gort give a discontented little whine, as if he knew all too well where this was heading.
Sure enough, Grayson scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the hallway to the bedroom. She couldn’t protest, not without sounding like a fool, because she knew she wanted him just as badly as he wanted her. At least she was pretty sure the MIBs had taken themselves off for the time being; she’d gone out front to pick up the neglected newspaper from her driveway as a pretext to do a brief scan of the neighborhood, and she hadn’t seen any cars she didn’t recognize. No, they’d probably dismissed her as harmless…for the time being.
So it was perfectly safe to let Grayson lay her down on the bed, to reach out and pull off his slightly sweaty T-shirt, to say the hell with the foreplay and wrap her legs around him and draw him into her, their bodies joining in a rush of heat and need. For now, she would just forget about everything in the world.
Except him.
* * *
The next day she dragged herself into the store, even though she would have happily continued her hiatus for a few more days. However, she couldn’t justify that, even to herself. And though Monday was usually one of her days off, she didn’t have Kiki to spell her, so she would be stuck there the whole day.
Grayson didn’t seem too put off by her declaration that she had to get back to work, but instead commented that he thou
ght the Indian was running a little rough, and so he planned to re-jet the carbs. She had no idea what the meant exactly, so she nodded and said that sounded like a great idea.
The deluge of emails she received after the video surfaced — albeit briefly — translated into an unaccustomed rush at the store when she opened the doors at ten. After explaining to approximately the twentieth person that she wasn’t going to be hosting any tours in the near future, she pulled out a Sharpie and composed a sign that read “All UFO tours suspended until further notice” and taped it to the front door. She still had to explain herself to the more stalwart diehards, but the looky-loo types read the sign and departed for greener pastures without ever coming inside. It was something, at least.
Even so, the day seemed interminable, and because Kiki was out of town and Michael unavailable, Kara couldn’t even take a break to go home for lunch. She’d prepped Grayson for this eventuality by pointing out some of the frozen dinners in the freezer and giving him a quick primer on how the microwave worked, but it still seemed wrong that she would be kept away all day.
The day improved slightly when she got a text from Persephone saying they were on their way home and should be getting into town around seven that evening. Kara forwarded the text to both Lance and Michael and suggested a meeting for Tuesday night, but Michael already had a workshop scheduled for that evening, so they made tentative plans for Wednesday instead.
In an impulse, Kara sent a follow-up text to Persephone. If you two aren’t too tired, could you come over for dinner on Tuesday around seven? There’s someone I’d really like you to meet.
The reply came back almost immediately. Sounds great. Do you need us to bring anything?
Just yourselves…and a bottle of wine, if you’d like.
Will do! See you then.
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