KASEY
Prologue
Rosalie
“I’m not coming home. I told you, there’s something here, and I’m going to find it.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line.
“Are you on your meds, Rosie?”
I closed my eyes and tried not to lose my patience with my sister. She was always treating me like I was five years old just because I was bipolar. Being bipolar did not mean I couldn’t handle my own business. I was an adult. Thirty-five years old. Just because I’d done some stupid things in the past didn’t mean I was going to do them now. Wasn’t it enough that I was a middle-aged woman who’d never been married, never even had a steady boyfriend? I’d had a few lovers, but they were just that, lovers. Never anything serious. It was punishment for being damaged.
Wasn’t that punishment enough?
“No, I’m not on my meds. It interferes with my abilities.”
“Rosalie, you know that you need to stay on your meds,” Rita said, real panic in her voice. “You remember the last time you went off the meds, right? You were in the hospital for a month while they got you lined out again! Do you really want to have another psychotic break?”
“Of course not. And I won’t. I still have my pills and I’ll start taking them again when I’m done here.”
“And here is?”
“Smyer. It’s not far from Joshua Tree National Park.”
“San Diego? You’re in San Diego.”
“No. I’m outside of San Diego.”
“For crying out loud, Rosalie! You’re four states from home! How did you get there?”
“I got a ride with some friends.”
“What friends? You don’t have any friends.”
“I have plenty of friends!”
“Just those people in that stupid club you belong to. Why do you have to act like this?”
“I have a gift, Rita.” I shook my head. “You’ll never understand.”
“I do understand. I understand that you have an illness that needs to be treated and monitored. I understand that you need help.”
Tears filled my eyes. “You’ll never understand.”
“Rosa ... —!”
I disconnected the call and unplugged the phone from the wall. I didn’t trust cellphones, so I was only wiling to use landlines, but those were often hard to find these days. Only hotel rooms seemed to have landlines the public could use. There was no such thing as a payphone anymore and that made my life difficult. But, again, it also served as a good excuse not to keep in touch with my sister during a trip like this.
She would never get it. I had a gift and I had to use it.
The door of the room opened and I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face, despite the tears still pooling in my eyes, when bright light filled the room.
Rita might not understand, but there were those out there who did. And that had to be good enough.
Chapter 1
Kasey
Old southern families are a unique kind of dysfunctional. Especially old southern families that no longer have a patriarch to guide the way.
My family ... I wish I had the nerve to pack up and move to New York or London or ... hell, I wish I could pack up and move to the moon. I’m pretty sure that would be the only way to get out from under the thumb of my family.
My father died when I was three months old. And he, God bless his soul, was the last surviving male in a family of unique, and highly independent, Southern women. His mother, my grandmother, was the definition of Old South. She still believed the south lost the Civil War in a tragic miscarriage of justice. She continuously grieved for the ways of a generation of family she never met. Every time she said a prayer—of course, she was a good Baptist—she prayed for the country to be saved from the heathens in Washington.
Her sisters weren’t much better. My Aunts Roberta and Johnnie were the kind of crazy aunts who made every visit home an embarrassment that kept me from even considering taking a girl home for Thanksgiving. Not that I’d had a girl in my life lately I would have wanted to introduce to my family. Commitment was one of those things a man was cured of when he grew up in a houseful of crazy. Especially when that houseful of crazy remained less than three blocks from his home after he grew up
Leaving home is a rite of passage for any child. But when I packed my duffle bag for basic training, you’d think I’d just been shot in the gut and was dying right in front of their eyes. My grandmother actually swooned in the kitchen over breakfast and Aunt Johnnie fainted in the driveway! There was never any question that I’d come home. But they acted like it was the end of everything they’d ever known.
When I came back, I had plans to move to Dallas and start a sort of private investigation place with one of my buddies from the SEALs. But, once again, my crazy family pulled the guilt card, talking about how old my grandmother was and that she could die at any time—though at eighty, she was the healthiest, strongest woman I knew—and that they could hardly be expected to survive without a man around. When I outright refused to move back into the family home, my mother—, the one I’d always thought was the only sane one in the family—bought me a house three blocks over.
How was I supposed to say no to that?
I love my family. Really, I do. Even when they call me at two in the morning to fix a leaky faucet in the hall bath that no one ever uses anymore.
I love them. But distance would not be a bad thing.
I fell into the chair at my desk and lay my head down, my eyes instantly closing as sleep threatened to overwhelm me.
“Long night?” Rhett Dennings asked.
I peeked at her through a space between my arms. “You have no idea.”
“Was she blonde or redheaded?”
“Used to be blonde, but now it’s more silver.”
Rhett smiled devilishly. “Yeah? Your mom have you fixing things in the middle of the night again?”
“Unfortunately.”
She sat on the edge of my desk beside me, her hand ruffling my hair. “And here I thought we were about to share erotic stories about insatiable lovers.”
I groaned. “You’ve been insatiable since you started dating Xander. When are the two of you going to put the rest of us out of our misery and get married? At least then the all night sex sessions will end.”
“I doubt it. You don’t know Xander.”
“Nope. But I have enough married buddies to know what marriage does to your sex life. You’ll never find me falling for that little racket.”
“There’s a shocker. Kasey Thomasson is uninterested in commitment.”
“Hey, I’ll have you know, I’m great with commitment,” I said, sitting up to look her in the eye. “I own a house—”
“That your mother bought for you.”
“I have a car—”
“That the firm provides.”
“And I take care of my family.”
She conceded that one with a shrug of her shoulders. Rhett knew about my family issues because we’d gotten drunk one night months ago, not long after we both came to work for Dragon Security, and I’d gotten a call from my grandmother that she overheard. That led to a long discussion about family obligation during which she told me about her dead dad, her alcoholic mother, and her two baby sisters.
Rhett was one of a few people who knew the truth about my family. And she was one of a few whom I’d actually taken to that madhouse and introduced to the inmates.
She laid her hand on my shoulder and rubbed it a little.
“Take faith in the fact that they can’t live forever.”
“I’m beginning to wonder.”
I was never going to have a life of my own. I didn’t date, because I couldn’t take a woman home to my place. I don’t know how they knew it, but every time I had someone at my house, the aunts and my grandmother and mom would somehow show up just when things were getting interesting—even if it was two in the morning—with food they alwa
ys seemed to have lying around fresh and ready to eat, announcing that I didn’t eat nearly enough and needed sustenance if I planned on entertaining. More than one woman had gone directly out the front door the second they appeared. The few who remained often left once the baby stories began. One or two might make it to the cursing of General Grant and the worship of General Lee. But they all ended up leaving at some point.
Even Rhett.
“I have my own brand of crazy to deal with,” she’d told me then.
If I ever found a woman who could put up with my family, she would definitely be the one girl I would not allow to get away.
Rhett patted my shoulder again and walked away.
How I envied people who could do that, who could simply walk away from my private hell.
“Kasey!”
I turned just in time to see Hayden Dubois, the operations manager there at Dragon, step down into the pit. He navigated the maze of desks like a pro, brushing off Amelia Kelmeckis—another of the operatives here—as she attempted to ask him a question. He held up a file folder, waving it in the air before setting it in the center of my desk.
“I have an odd one for you, Kase,” he said.
I picked up the folder and opened it, a picture of a pretty brunette woman paper-clipped to the intake form all new cases were given.
“That is Rosalie Matthias, a thirty-five year old woman from Galveston. Her sister called late last night and said that Rosalie had been missing for over a month and that the cops are refusing to do anything about it.”
“She went missing from Galveston?”
“No. That’s the odd part.” Hayden crossed his enormous arms over his barrel chest. “Her sister says that Rosalie thinks of herself as a sort of medium. She believes she has the ability to communicate with aliens.”
“Like illegal aliens?”
“No.” Hayden gestured toward the ceiling. “Aliens from outer space.”
I groaned. Aunt Roberta had gone through a phase where she believed that aliens were trying to read her thoughts. She made me buy special sheetrock for the walls in her bedroom, remove the old stuff, install the new stuff, and repaint it a crimson color that she had read would repel aliens. I’d had enough of aliens then and that was nearly twenty years ago, when I was still in high school.
“I know it sounds a little crazy,” Hayden said. “And it is. The sister tells me that Rosalie is bipolar and that she admitted to going off her meds.”
Just like Aunt Roberta.
“Has she ever threatened or attempted suicide?”
Hayden shrugged. “The sisters says no, but Waverly’s background check shows that Rosalie was hospitalized multiple times fifteen years ago because she was a danger to herself.”
“She’s probably locked up somewhere, passing through a depressive phase of the disease.”
“The sister reports that she called her from a small town in California called Smyer, not far from San Diego and the Joshua Tree National Forest.”
“I know where it is. A group of buddies and I went up there when we were in Coronado, just before Hell Week began.”
I could see pride snap in Hayden’s eyes. We were both Navy SEALs, both trained with the elite of the elite, both given honorable discharges after serving valiantly in Afghanistan. He was just as proud of his service as I was of mine.
“Sister hasn’t heard from her since the twenty-ninth of last month. She says Rosalie was in Smyer checking out alien phenomenon. Apparently there have been multiple UFO sightings up there in the past six months or so and Rosalie is part of a large group of investigators and kooks who’ve turned the place into something of a tourist destination.”
I sat back and crossed my legs, studying Hayden as I found myself wondering how I might have responded in this situation. My aunt disappeared once for six months and no one knew where she was. When she came back, she willingly went into the mental hospital for three months, finally agreeing to not only take her meds, but to participate in therapy, too. Whatever she’d done or seen during her absence had frightened her into complacency. I knew what this woman’s sister was going through. I could only hope that we’d find the sister in one piece, ready to go back on her medication.
“You know that this won’t likely have the desired outcome the sister is looking for, right?”
Hayden inclined his head almost reluctantly.
“I think she’s aware of that. But this is still her sister.” Hayden tapped the top page of the report. “There’s a plane ticket in there. It leaves in a little over an hour, so you should probably be on your way. A car will be waiting at the airport. Read the file and make yourself familiar with the area and Rosalie’s habits.”
Hayden knew I knew what to do, but he couldn’t help but remind me—all of us—of protocol every time he sent us out into the field, especially when we were going multiple states away. It was one of his ways of protecting us all without saying as much.
“The code name for this one will be Wendingo.”
“Like the mythical creature from X-Files?”
Hayden shrugged. “I don’t chose them. I just assign them.”
I chuckled because, somehow, the code name seemed highly appropriate to the case. A mythical creature for a case about a woman who lived in a fantasy world filled with aliens, like the ones that supposedly kidnapped not only Agent Mulder’s sister, but his partner as well.
I stood and gathered my things as Hayden made his way back across the room, sidelined once again by Amelia.
“At least you’ll get some sleep.”
Rhett was smiling this gleeful smile as I passed her desk.
“I’m not even going to argue with that one.”
Chapter 2
Kasey
The town was clearly embracing its newfound popularity. There was a banner over the main street as you entered town that said Welcome UFO Hunters! And the little shops around the downtown area had stuffed alien dolls and plastic UFOs in their windows. It was like driving through a movie set. Or Roswell, New Mexico.
I checked into the only motel in town that had a vacancy, a small roadside place just off the highway on the outskirts of town that was run by an elderly couple who probably should have retired years ago. I could see just moments into my arrival that the employees were running roughshod over the owners, getting away with doing as little work as possible, which was probably not an issue before the influx of tourism, but which was painfully obvious now. My room had clearly not been cleaned since the last occupant—there were dirty towels in the bathtub and the trash was overflowing—but there were clean sheets on the bed, so I counted myself lucky. Hopefully I’d be out of here in just a day or two.
And it was hundreds of miles away from my personal crazy, so it was worth it.
I dropped my bag on the bed and settled in a chair to glance through the file Hayden had given me one more time.
Dragon Security wasn’t tops in the security game because of their participation in taking down a rogue CIA agent five years ago. They were tops in the game because they were thorough in their research, methodical in their investigations, and professional in their undercover operations. And Hayden—he was also a former Navy SEAL, which was part of why I chose Dragon when I was looking for work—made sure all his operatives had all they needed when out in the field. The report I’d already studied on the flight here was as thorough as it could be under the circumstances.
I knew where Rosalie Matthias went to elementary school. I knew every time she was admitted to a hospital, whether it was for a virus or a mental evaluation, and I knew how many times she’d pulled this sort of thing, disappearing on her family for whatever reason.
She was obsessed with aliens. She believed that aliens had impregnated her mother and her DNA not only caused the symptoms of her bipolar disorder, but allowed her the ability to communicate with aliens. For that reason, she traveled to places of high alien activity—such as Smyer, California—in order to talk to these creatures and figu
re out what they wanted with mankind. But this usually only happened when she was off her meds. When she was medicated, she was a kind and gentle librarian at the university level. However, she hadn’t held down a job in more than five years, not since a psychotic break caused her to trash some very old, very expensive books.
This woman sounded so familiar to me. I ached for the pain her family was going through—her sister, in particular—and the pain Rosalie must suffer when she was on the meds and she had to face up to what it is she’d done while she was out of control.
I knew this. I’d seen my aunt go through it my entire childhood.
I finally set the file aside, feeling like I knew it better than I knew my own name. Sliding the picture of Rosalie into my pocket, I headed out in search of someone who might have met her while she was here.
It wasn’t long before I met a few of the kooks who’d come here for the UFOs. I decided to walk, since the town was so small that I was less than a mile from downtown even though the motel was technically outside the city limits. There were people walking on the sidewalks outside the little shops, people crowding the small eating establishments, gaining sustenance before they went on their nightly hunts for aliens.
“Excuse me,” I said, approaching a group of what looked like college students, “Have you seen this woman?”
There was an expression of surprise on one woman’s face when she looked at the photo I held up. She started to speak, but another member of her group, a young man with an obscene amount of facial hair for his age, pulled her back. He brushed past me, leading the rest of the group with him. It was pretty clear he felt like sharing information with me would be a bad decision.
This happened with another group further down the sidewalk and with a couple coming out of a tourist gift shop with a bag stuffed with maps and grainy photos.
DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series Page 47
