by Gini Koch
“Yes, in my purse.” He opened it.“That’s my handbag, however. Turn on the radio. Classic rock, KSLX or something.”
“Well, we have cash for bribes. If they’re really cheap cops. The radio why?”
“You want to survive? I need tunes.” He cursed again but turned it on. The owner was a kindred spirit, or God did love me. The deejay announced a twelve-song block, and Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” came on. “Turn it up.” He did.
I downshifted. In for a dime, in for a dollar, right? “They aren’t going to be a problem.” I floored it, ran a red light, and skidded us onto the 101 Freeway. This was one of Pueblo Caliente’s newer freeways, and the joke was that the speed limit was the same as the name. I intended to break that limit.
It wasn’t my car, but it was pretty good. We screamed down the highway, Screamin’ Steven Tyler and the rest of my boys providing our soundtrack, swerving in and out of traffic. It was eleven on a Friday night—there were still plenty of cars out. We outdistanced the police cars, but the Escalade was still with us, albeit farther back. My hair was out of luck, I could feel it streaming out behind me. Oh, well, the windblown look was in, right?
There was nothing like scary people trying to kill me to put things right into perspective. Stay alive, worry about relationships later. “I Stole Your Love” by Kiss was on now. Appropriate—I was sure whoever owned this car loved it.
I wanted to get to a men’s room at Saguaro International. We needed a gate, and we needed one that didn’t have to be calibrated. All bathroom gates recalibrated automatically after any use to the Crash Site Dome, the main gate hub. I couldn’t see a gate to calibrate it, but I knew where one gate was far too well.
However, I wanted to lose our company, too. There were a few ways to do it, but I was feeling reckless for some reason, so I took the option that was both crazy and would be hard for any big car to manage. I waited until we were by an appropriate on-ramp that had few cars merging onto the freeway. “Hold on.” I spun the wheel and headed down, dodging some cars coming toward us.
Close to the airport, excellent. Worked my way there off the main streets as much as possible. Went into the airport via the freight entrance. No one was following us anymore, so I slowed down to merely fast.
“I never want to drive with you again,” Chuckie said.
“Why not? We lost them, and we’re still alive.”
“I think I had a heart attack.”
“Keeps you on your toes.” I drove into the airport proper sedately—not only did the airport have cops, but there wasn’t anyplace much to go to escape said cops. Pulled into the Terminal Three parking garage, found a spot, and parked. Took the keys, just in case.
We got out and ran for the terminal. We passed the maintenance closet I remembered well. Tried not to look at it. Failed, but kept on moving.
We hit security, and the problems started. I wasn’t used to going through it anymore. With an A-C, you just went to hyperspeed, and no one was the wiser. But Chuckie wasn’t an A-C.
He pulled me aside, and we stared at the arrivals screens. “We don’t have boarding passes. This isn’t going to work.”
I pulled out my cell and dialed. “Girlfriend, where the hell are you?” Reader was shouting.
“Saguaro International. In a lot of trouble with no time. We can’t get through Security. I need a gate—where’s the closest one in Terminal Three that’s in the general areas?”
He cursed. “The only one like that’s in the old terminal, Two.” He described where it was.
“We’re doomed. Okay, hopefully you’ll see us soon.” I jerked my head, and Chuckie and I started off. We were probably better off on foot because we could get back inside if we had to.
“Who the hell is ‘us’?” Reader asked as Chuckie and I trotted.
“Chuck Reynolds.”
There was a pause. “Do you mean Charles Reynolds, the head of the government’s ET Division?” Chuckie was the head of the division? I considered his track record. Of course he was the head of it. Probably had been hired in the mailroom and worked up to top guy in about six months to a year. Freaked or not, being chased by deadly, horrible people or not, I was still proud of him. I’d spent a lot of years being proud of him, after all, and he’d never given me reason to stop.
“Yes, pretty sure, yes.”
“What are you doing with him?”
“Remember my friend, the one who was into UFO stuff, the one I checked with about Club 51 when we were heading to beautiful, deadly Florida?”
“Conspiracy Chuck? Oh, hell no!”
“I know everyone. So, anyway, Chuckie’s here, thankfully, since Shannon the Toothless Weasel is out and already tried to kill us. Tell Kevin. Whoever released him is working for Leventhal Reid.”
“Chuckie?”
Why was Reader asking? He’d heard me talk about Chuckie a lot over the past few months; if nothing else, he’d heard Martini whine about my still having a special ringtone for Chuckie and given me a pseudo-lecture about it. I decided I wasn’t the only one freaked out and let it pass. “It’s what I call him. Sort of like a pet name.” Why not? Chuckie snorted a laugh, grabbed my free hand, and kept us moving.
Another pause. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. He asked you to marry him.”
“You’re good.”
“You’re hot.”
“Why aren’t you straight?”
“It would make things too easy. Look, Jeff’s a mess, but I think Serene’s got everyone on the right track. Lorraine’s freaked out, since she gave him the bad juice.”
“She didn’t know. Tell her I can’t afford for her to lose it, she may have to come save our lives shortly.”
“Why don’t we come to you?”
“Because one member of Alpha out in danger’s enough.” I filled him in on Chuckie’s theory. By the time I was done, we were at the end of Terminal Three. We went outside and now had to get across traffic. Chuckie doubled us back, and we waited for the airport bus. I couldn’t speak for him, but I felt naked and exposed.
“Stay on the phone with me,” Reader said. “That’s an order from Christopher.”
“I’ll do my best.” I remembered that I hadn’t plugged it in to recharge since we’d gotten back from Florida— worry over what we were missing and Martini’s personality switch had been all-consuming. Oh, well, the batteries had that A-C extended life thing going for them, I probably had hours worth of phone life left.
The bus arrived, we boarded, sat in the back. Chuckie put his arm around me, and I tried not to pull away or enjoy it. I also tried not to give in to the desire to bury my face in his chest and pretend none of this was going on. Gave up, leaned against him, and let him hug me. Felt a little better. “So, we’ll get to the Dome and get back to where, Caliente or Home Base?”
“Caliente. I don’t think we can move Jeff.” There was something funny in Reader’s voice.
“Is Jeff alive?”
“Yes.” There was something about how he said that one syllable—something was wrong. More wrong than everything that was already wrong, that is.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Reader didn’t answer. “James, kind of stressed here, being pursued in evening dress by evil, horrible, ugly men who want to kill us. No time to be holding the horror back, okay?”
He sighed. “We don’t actually know where he is.”
“What?”
“Calm down! He’s here somewhere. We think.”
“How could you lose him? He’s kind of big.”
“We had him strapped into an isolation chamber. Claudia and Tim went to check on him, he was gone. Straps were broken.”
My turn to be silent. “You haven’t gotten the drug out of him, have you?”
“Takes a while to flush. We thought we’d gotten some of it. But if it’s affecting the brain and emotion areas Serene said, then. . . . ”
“Then he’s totally nuts, and stronger than normal.” I felt scared and guilty. I shou
ld have realized something was wrong and taken care of him. He was sick and I’d been with him two weeks and hadn’t figured it out.
“It’s not your fault. No one else figured it out either.” Reader’s voice sounded faint.
We got off the bus and ran into Terminal Two. I checked my phone. “James, I’m almost out of battery.” It figured. I didn’t even bother to curse my luck, I was so used to it working like this by now.
“Does your latest paramour have a phone?”
“We’re at the bathroom, hopefully it won’t matter.” Hopefully it wouldn’t, because my phone died. I dumped it back in my handbag which I hooked over my neck. Why let a good habit lie fallow?
We got into the men’s room, only one stall occupied. Of course the stall we needed. Chuckie banged on the door. “Open up!”
“It’s taken,” a man’s grumpy voice answered. “There’s plenty free.”
“We need this one,” Chuckie said.
“We? What do you mean, we?”
“Get off and get out,” I said.
“What, you two couldn’t get a room?”
I looked at Chuckie. “This is my life. I’m always in gross men’s bathrooms trying to get in or out of a stall.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have become a crack whore,” the man’s voice suggested.
“She’s not a crack whore,” Chuckie snarled.
“Sorry. Meth addict.”
“I’m not on drugs, you horrible man. I’m a federal agent.” I had a badge back in my hotel suite to prove it, too.
“Yeah, yeah, and I’m Tom Cruise, I just fly cheap because I’m thrifty.” The toilet finally flushed.
The stall door opened to expose a heavyset middle-aged man who looked both unimpressed to see us and rather disgusted. Chuckie grabbed the man and tossed him out of the stall. He ended up behind me. Chuckie grabbed my arm, but a man cleared his throat and Chuckie froze. “Oh, Mr. Reynolds, please don’t try anything.”
We both turned toward the door as this man walked closer to us. He was about six feet, slender, sort of attractive in a reptilian way. He was familiar—and he was holding a gun.
“What an interesting sight. So rare to see Centaurion teamed up with your group, Mr. Reynolds.”
I shrugged. “We have an exchange program, Mr. Reid.”
Leventhal Reid gave me a slow smile. “I’m looking forward to learning all about it, Miss Katt.”
“Look, I have nothing to do with these people,” the man behind me said. Reid moved the gun and shot him.
I would have screamed, but I was too busy body slamming Chuckie into the stall. Only one could go through at a time and he was closer. “Help them, help me, help Jeff.” I shoved again and he flew through and disappeared, shouting my name. For once, the bad guy wouldn’t have a man I cared about to use as a hostage.
Of course, the alternative was that Reid had me as a hostage. “Let’s go, please,” he said pleasantly. “I’m sure you don’t want to have to explain that man’s body to the police.”
“I’d love to see the police right about now.” Particularly the trigger-happy rookie from the first part of this adventure from hell. Sadly, he didn’t appear to be around.
Reid grabbed my upper arm, made sure it hurt, and then dragged me out. He slid the gun into his jacket pocket and took his hand out.
I spotted a Mazda3 sport wagon right in front of the sliding glass doors. Its driver was out of the car and the car was running. Stilettos are the greatest shoes in the world if you want to cause someone pain, and I did. I faked a stumble, slammed my heel into the tender part of Reid’s foot, and leaned all my weight on it. According to the research, since my stilettos were reinforced with metal rods and the heels transmitted such a large amount of force into a tiny area, this was the equivalent of an elephant jumping onto his foot.
He screamed, I wrenched my shoe out of his foot and my arm out of his grasp, and ran like hell for that car. Pulled out the Porsche keys and tossed them to the Mazda’s owner. “Federal agent, you’re trading up, Terminal Three, third floor!”
I leaped in, slammed and locked the door, and floored it. Reid was doing that running-hopping thing you do when one foot is hurt. He fired at me, but I was out of range.
Raced through the airport like a bat out of hell. The car had a full tank and handled almost as well as my Lexus. It also had Sirius. I turned on the radio, found the hard rock station, and tried to think.
My first reaction was to get to Caliente Base. But I had to figure Reid knew where it was by now. There was probably a tracking device on something in the jet, maybe even in our luggage. He was here, in Pueblo Caliente, so he had to know we were, too.
The police could easily be in his pocket. Not all, but it wouldn’t take many for me to be dead fast. I didn’t have a gun or even hairspray. I had a hundred dollars, a room key, my driver’s license, a dead cell phone, and a stolen car.
No way I was going to my parents’. Chuckie was hopefully safe in the Dome, but that was a state away, and I needed a gate to get there. I could try going back for my car, but the Princess was a one way in and out place, and getting trapped there would be too easy.
Bon Jovi’s “Lost Highway” came on. Well, why not? I had a full tank and Tucson had an airport.
CHAPTER 68
I GOT ONTO INTERSTATE 10 and put the pedal down. Easy enough drive, and I’d done it a lot. When I’d been a marketing manager, two of my big accounts had been in Tucson. Sometimes I drove, sometimes I flew. I knew the highway and the airport. I was good.
Had plenty of time to think, and a ton to think about. I wanted to focus on staying alive, but what I ended up coming back to was Martini. And now Chuckie. Brian hadn’t been a romantic issue. Even if I’d been interested in him, Martini and I had been a couple all of two weeks ago. Not being with him had seemed like an impossibility.
But something Serene had said about the way the drugs worked was gnawing at me. They enhanced feelings already there. So Martini suspected me of being unfaithful, and he was pretty angry about it. He had some reason, but there were only so many times I could apologize for the brief moment of lustful insanity between me and Christopher before it became a cancer. Maybe it already was.
Sped around the remainder of Pueblo Caliente’s late night drivers and mercifully hit an empty stretch of highway. I was still in shock from seeing Chuckie here and now, let alone from his proposal. In love with me since ninth grade. I’d had no clue. My mother’s comments about my density rang through my mind. The week we’d spent in Vegas had been great. Really, the best vacation I’d ever had, and not just because of the killer sex. At least, until Martini took me to Cabo.
Fortunately, I was on that empty stretch, was a good enough driver, and knew the road well so I could drive with tears running down my face. I wanted to ask the cosmos why Chuckie hadn’t come to get me seven months earlier. Of course, he couldn’t have told me the truth then about what he was really doing to pass the time between making more money appear like magic and traveling the world. And, just as he knew when I was lying, dense or not, I’d have known he was hiding something. Something that, seven months ago, he couldn’t have told me about. And that way lay badness.
And, maybe he hadn’t come these past few months because he’d known I was with Martini. So, did that mean he knew we’d broken up? Or was it more that he’d chosen this time to give it one last shot? He’d called my mother, and she loved him, so I had to vote for her having told him I was involved and helping him go for the last ditch effort. After all, he’d checked to see if I had a ring on, and reality said that if I was engaged, he’d be one of the first to know—and if he’d thought proposing at the reunion was romantic, perhaps he’d thought Martini would feel the same. But all that took at least some planning, so maybe it had just timed out right. If I could call the current situation “right” in any way, shape, or form.
Maybe he was supposed to show up right now, right when it was over with Martini, to say, “Here I am, the r
ight guy for you.” I considered the idea. Hard to do, but I forced myself to think about it—it was so much better than crying or thinking about what was going to happen if Reid caught me before I could get to a gate. And I wasn’t alone on the highway here, so thinking while getting around the various diesel trucks on this patch of road was going to be much wiser than sobbing.
I went for logical—assessment of pros and cons. It wasn’t too hard to run through my limited options here. Aside from Martini, of all the men I knew, the two I felt I’d be happiest with long-term were the two men who were my best friends—Reader and Chuckie. Reader being gay and apparently not going bi any time soon let him out of the realistic running, no matter how often we joked otherwise.
Chuckie wasn’t gay, and he also wasn’t an alien. There were no complications. No one would fight anything if we got married. Our families would be thrilled, religion wouldn’t be an issue, and neither would the internal makeup of our children. No worries about empaths or imageers or anything else. The only worry would be if we weren’t smart enough to keep up with our offspring. Somehow, Chuckie’s parents had managed, so I figured we would, too.
Honesty compelled me to look at my dating prior to Martini. I’d dated a lot. But the longest relationship had been Brian. Particularly after the Vegas trip with Chuckie. After that, no one had seemed right, and I hadn’t stuck around.
Which begged the obvious question—had I been waiting for Chuckie, without even realizing it? I had to admit I was dense enough that it was possible. I certainly judged other men against him and always had.
So, did this mean this had all happened so I’d realize Chuckie was the right guy? Or was it all just down to lucky timing? And, if so, would all this fall under divine plan or coincidence? Chuckie didn’t believe in coincidence, and, according to ACE, the divine plan was to let us handle it ourselves.
As I hit another stretch of open road, my mind shared that, waiting for Chuckie or not, judging others against him or not, the man I’d actually fallen deeply in love with was Martini. Who was God knew where, doing God knew what, though I had a suspicion that hating me was involved along the way there somewhere.
