He’d agreed to meet me at five-thirty. As much as I’d wanted a drink after my little incident earlier in the day, I didn’t want to give the wrong impression. Bad enough that I had to spend most of the day cooling my heels, waiting until the time I could meet him. It got so bad that I went to a movie alone, something I never do. And now I sat at the one corner table that was available, sipping a Perrier with a slice of lime and trying not to look too anxious about scanning the entrance to the lounge every time somebody entered.
My own fault, really — I’d gotten here almost fifteen minutes early. That despite messing with my hair and makeup and changing about three times before I decided on a black riding-style blazer over my skinny jeans and black cowboy boots. Stupid, I know. This wasn’t a date. I doubted Martin Jones gave a rat’s ass what I looked like.
He entered finally (okay, exactly on time), paused for a moment to survey the tables in the bar and their occupants, then spotted me and headed straight for the corner where I was lurking. Of course he looked elegant as always, this time with a black wool scarf knotted around his throat in addition to the heavy black overcoat, making me glad that I’d pitched my usual long-sleeved T-shirts or baggy sweaters in favor of something a little more presentable.
“Kirsten,” he said, as he sat down across from me.
Having him this close was a little unnerving, and it probably didn’t help that my nerves were still rattled from the helicopter flight. “Hi, Agent Jones,” I responded, wondering if he would ask me to call him by his first name.
Of course he didn’t. “You sounded upset on the phone.”
“Did I? Here I thought I was being all cool and collected.”
His eyebrow went up, but he didn’t have a chance to reply, since a waiter appeared at that moment and asked what he’d like to drink. He shot a quick glance at my mineral water and said, “Perrier is fine.”
“No drinking on the job?” I asked after the waiter had left.
“It’s generally frowned on.” He unwrapped the scarf from his throat and unbuttoned his overcoat, but made no move to take it off. “Something happened today, didn’t it?”
I’d been incredibly vague on the phone. Maybe just more of Jeff’s paranoia rubbing off on me, but I hadn’t wanted to go into any details until Agent Jones and I could talk in person. I nodded, and sipped at my Perrier so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.
He sat there, apparently thinking. Or it could be that he was only waiting for the waiter to come back before he said anything. Luckily, our waiter was pretty fast, and returned and deposited the Perrier on our table before the silence could get too awful. Then Agent Jones said, not touching the mineral water, “Tell me about it.”
So I went into the whole story, explaining how Jeff wanted to go out in the helicopter even though I thought it was a spectacularly bad idea, and how the trip was cut short when I reacted so strongly to the aliens’ presence as we went deeper into Boynton Canyon.
Martin Jones was quiet during this entire recitation, although he did pick up his Perrier and take a drink before he said anything. “This feeling — is it similar to the sensation you experienced the night before last?”
I really didn’t want to think about it too closely, but I also knew that now was not the time to be squeamish. Folding my hands in my lap, I replied, “It was colder. Much colder. But sort of the same in that I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, as if there was some sort of pressure being exerted on my lungs. That wasn’t the worst of it, though.”
He waited. It was dim enough in there that I couldn’t see his eye color as clearly, although I noticed for the first time how heavy his eyelashes were, thick and dark like his hair.
Since there wasn’t any way to say it without sounding like a kook, I decided to just go for it. “The worst was the sensation of malice, of evil. You know how some people say they can feel it when they walk into a house where something terrible has happened? Well, I never claimed to have any abilities like that, but I’m guessing this was sort of the same. Except worse, because this didn’t feel like it was about something that had happened — it felt like something that was about to happen.”
For a minute he didn’t say anything. Then, finally, “You’re right. It is about something that’s going to happen…unless you stop it.”
“Unless I stop it?” I’d intended the retort to come out as an indignant rebuttal, but somehow it turned into more of an undignified squeak. Clearing my throat, I added, “What the heck am I supposed to do? I called you because I needed your help.”
“Against the wishes of your friends and family, no doubt.”
“Well, yes, but — ” I stopped short. “How would you know that?”
“I haven’t bugged your sister’s house, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His tone was amused. “I’d say it’s a fairly predictable reaction from a group of people who tend to operate on the fringes. Calling a government agent isn’t exactly their style, so to speak.”
That was more than true. I could only imagine Kara’s reaction when she found out I’d had a clandestine meeting with a Man in Black. Good thing I’d been living on my own for more than a year. Otherwise, she probably would have been sorely tempted to kick me out.
“Okay, yeah,” I admitted. “But this sort of thing is way over my head. I think it’s way over everybody’s heads. Obviously your organization has been monitoring the situation, or you wouldn’t be here. So a little help would be appreciated, you know?”
Something about my little speech seemed to make Agent Jones uncomfortable. He looked away, past the half-empty lounge area, to the wide windows that showed nothing beyond utter blackness. Clouds had gathered all afternoon and threatened snow once again, but so far the weather had held. After an awkward pause, he said, “I’m afraid I’m only here in an observational capacity.”
“You’re what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Yes. I’m under strict orders not to get directly involved.”
“So, what, coming into the UFO Depot and stirring the pot with me wasn’t getting directly involved?”
Even in the dim light I could see the tensing of his jawline. “No, that still falls in the area of information gathering.”
“And so even though you know the aliens are planning something, have a pretty good idea even of when they’re planning to do it, you’re still not going to do anything to help us?”
“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that — ”
“It seems pretty simple to me,” I retorted, and pushed my Perrier away from me. My heart was pounding in fury. No way I was going to sit here and listen to this. So much for all my hopes that he’d rustle up the MIB equivalent of a posse and ride into town to kick some alien ass. “Enjoy your observations, Agent Jones. I guess some of us have real work to do.”
And I pushed my chair back and stood, grabbing for my backpack at the same time. Luckily I was able to find my wallet without too much scrabbling, and I found a ten and threw it on the table even as Martin Jones was rising from his own seat.
“Kirsten — ”
I ignored him and marched out. That was something I’d never done before — turn my back on a person and walk away. I halfway expected him to get up and follow me, but he didn’t. A cold wind hit me the second I stepped outside, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason I was shaking. No, that had everything to do with anger.
Now we were really on our own.
* * *
Saturday I was stuck back at the UFO Depot, and it was just busy enough that I didn’t have much of a chance to work on my own projects, or even contemplate the alien threat hanging over our heads. Eight days and counting.
My cell phone rang, and I picked it up with almost pathetic haste. I’d been thinking — hoping, that is — that Martin Jones might have had time to rethink his policy of laissez-faire and maybe would call me to patch things up. But no. It was my friend Lindsey.
I almost didn’t answer, but a batch of customers h
ad just left, and I had the store to myself for the moment. Besides, if she was calling with another offer of shopping or something, I might as well take her up on it. Sitting around and brooding was only going to make me crabby.
“Hey, Miss Antisocial,” she said as soon as I pressed the “accept” button.
“That’s me,” I replied. I didn’t even have the energy to throw a similar epithet back at her. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is that my parents went down to Scottsdale for the weekend, so it’s party time over here tonight.”
A party was probably the last thing I needed. “I don’t know, Linds…”
“Oh, come on. Stop being such a drone. I mean, I guess you have to help out at the store, but it closes at five, so don’t use that excuse with me.”
She was right — the store did close hours earlier than any party she’d be having would start, and on Sundays we didn’t even open until noon. It wasn’t as if I wouldn’t have time to sleep off whatever partying I’d done the night before.
“And Dave Wallace has already offered to be the DD and chauffeur people around, so you still have no excuse.” She hesitated, then added, “And you can bring that friend of yours from L.A. if you want.”
“Jeff?” I said, and gave a small laugh. “Jeff is so not the party type. I can only imagine his reaction if I tried to drag him to a kegger.”
“It’s not a kegger. Well, okay, we’re going to have a keg, but you know.”
I did. Lindsey’s parties were sort of legendary.
And that decided it. I could sit in my apartment, alone on a Saturday night, and jump at every creak and rattle, or I could go out and try to be a real twenty-three-year-old. “Okay,” I said.
“Awesome. Dave will pick you up a little before eight, okay?”
“Got it.”
“See ya then.”
She ended the call then, and I dropped the phone back into my backpack, wondering if I’d just agreed to something really, really stupid.
* * *
Lindsey’s parents lived in the Village of Oak Creek, about five miles south from my apartment. I was the last person Dave picked up, since he’d started out in West Sedona and sort of wound his way down from there. Five passengers besides me were squished into his SUV. I knew a couple of them since we’d gone to high school together, but the others were strangers, obviously friends of friends or people Lindsey had met after we graduated.
They talked about sports or movies or concerts they’d gone to, while I sat shoved into a corner of the back seat and began to feel kind of like an alien myself. It seemed as if they didn’t have a care in the world, weren’t worried about anything in particular beyond their favorite team not making it to the playoffs or whatever. Whereas I…
Well, I had just a little bit more on my mind.
We pulled up into the driveway; obviously Lindsey had made sure no one would take that coveted spot, since Dave was doing her a favor by ferrying people around. There were already cars all up and down the street, and I guessed the neighbors probably weren’t too thrilled about the influx of vehicles. Oak Creek was even quieter than Sedona proper.
But the house itself was spectacular, built on multiple levels and with the property backing up to U.S. Forest Service lands, so there wasn’t anybody behind it. Her father was a dentist and her mother a real estate agent, so they did pretty well for themselves.
Music pounded around me as I entered the house a few paces behind the rest of my fellow passengers. Some auto-tuned crap, and I winced. Lindsey and I had never shared the same taste in music. Of course, that made her call me an old lady, but whatever. I told her she was the one with a hearing problem if she actually liked that stuff, but she just laughed it off. Nothing seemed to bother Lindsey too much.
She spotted me from across the living room. “Keeks!” she yelled, strident enough to cut through the quasi-hip hop that was blasting through the built-in Bose speakers, and ran over. I noticed she wasn’t so drunk yet that she didn’t hold on to her cup of beer carefully as she threaded her way through the crowd.
“Hey, Linds,” I said, not bothering to correct her on the whole Kirsten/Kiki thing. It wasn’t worth the effort.
“You look fab!” she burbled. “So glad you made the effort.” She looked past me and blinked. “No date?”
“I told you, Jeff is not the party type.”
“Shame on you for having such an antisocial boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
She blinked again. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
After pondering that for a second or two, she grinned. “Well, then, we have got to get you hooked up. What’s wrong with the boys in this town? I would’ve thought they’d be all over you after you and Brad broke up.”
I shrugged, wishing she hadn’t brought up Brad. Not that I was mooning over losing a love of the ages or anything, but it was actually the first time I’d been the dumpee and not the dumper, and the memory still smarted. Then again, Brad and I had been going out for almost four months when we split. It was coming time for us to break up, since I’d never been with anyone for longer than that. Just because Brad was seriously freaked after the whole Secret Canyon alien incident with Persephone and Paul and had taken a powder shortly afterward didn’t mean he’d ended anything serious.
Serious was not something I allowed in my relationships.
Neither was hooking up. I’d lost my virginity my senior year of high school because it seemed the thing to do, but the experience wasn’t really that great. It was easy enough after that to have a series of short-term relationships, always breaking it off before things got physical. At least that way no one could ever accuse me of being like my mother…
“No hookups,” I said sternly. “I’m here because I wanted to see you, and I thought it would be fun to get out. I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
She shot me a disbelieving look. “Come on — it’s been what, more than six months since you and Brad broke up? Don’t you think that’s kind of a long dry spell?”
Well, yes, it was, but I didn’t see anything appealing about the guys around me, most of whom were already in various states of drunkenness despite it being barely eight-thirty.
Maybe it’s because you’ve decided you have a thing for older men, my mind jeered at me, and I clamped down on that thought. He might be gorgeous, but Martin Jones was definitely on my shit list right now.
“Why don’t we just start with a drink?” I suggested. “Anything besides beer?”
Another one of those incredulous stares. “Like you have to ask. I even got some wine for you, old lady.”
“Sign me up for AARP.”
She laughed then and led me over the dining room table, which was covered with bottles of just about every kind of booze known to mankind, including some white wine in a small cooler on ice, and a couple of bottles of red, too. I chose the white just because I’d feel less guilty about spilling it on one of her parents’ prized Navajo rugs if someone jostled me or bumped into me.
After that she sort of abandoned me to go socialize with other people, which I totally understood. She was the hostess, after all. I talked with some acquaintances from high school — Tony Lopez, Angela McGuire. They’d both gone away to college, too, but were back for the holidays. Our conversation was kind of awkward, because I could tell both of them felt sort of sorry for me. I hadn’t gone to college. I was still here in Sedona, working at a store. It was clear they thought I’d done nothing with my life.
And I couldn’t say anything about what was really going on, what I was really involved in, because they’d just think I was crazy. I also didn’t really care about not going to college; Kara had made me apply, and I’d gotten in to both NAU and the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. In the end, though, I didn’t see the point. I loved Sedona. I didn’t want to leave, and what I wanted to do — play with computers — I could do on my own, and actually was. I had my own business, while my two c
onversation companions were still students. But I really didn’t feel like explaining any of that now.
Angela and Tony eventually drifted off, and I turned around, thinking I’d earned a refill on my wine after that conversation. My gaze fell on about the last person I wanted to see.
Brad.
Our eyes met, and I waited for him to look away first. I hoped he’d just go back into the crowd and lose himself again, but no, that wasn’t Brad’s style. He sent a fake smile at me and walked in my direction, and I knew I’d have to stand there and pretend to have a polite conversation with him.
“Hi, Kiki.”
“Hey, Brad.” I took a sip of wine and wished I hadn’t drunk so much of it while I was talking with Tony and Angela. I had less than an inch in the bottom of my cup.
“So what have you been up to?”
I shrugged. “The usual. You?”
“I got a job working at Off-Road Adventures.”
Well, that was one thing Brad had going for him — he was an excellent driver. And, if I tried to be objective about it, he was cute in a sort of sandy, all-American-boy kind of way. He probably got great tips from the female tourists.
“Congratulations,” I said, and wished I could find a way to gracefully get the hell away from him.
“Look, Kiki, things got weird, and — ”
“Yeah, I get it,” I cut in. “Things were very weird. I’m not blaming you for anything.”
“No?” he said, looking relieved. “Because I know you were pissed at me, and — ”
“It’s all right. Really. But I don’t see any need to rehash ancient history. So see you around, Brad.” And I pushed past him, intent on refilling my drink if it was the last thing I did.
He stared after me, astonishment clear in his expression, but at least he didn’t try to follow me.
I wasn’t about to tell him that the real reason I was pissed off at him wasn’t because he’d dumped me instead of the other way around. Rather, it was because I’d heard through the grapevine that he’d only put up with my UFO fascination for so long because he was determined to get into my pants, no matter what it took. “Thaw out the ice queen” was the charming way he’d put it, actually.
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