* * *
“Okay,” Jeff grumped from the passenger seat, “You’ve even switched cars. I do still have my gun, in case you are wondering.”
She laughed, a musical sound that thrilled him, even though he was very much aware of what a foolish risk he had taken, coming to her. It disturbed him that five minutes with this woman had affected him more than an entire evening with Alicia.
“I told you,” she said, “It will be okay. I just wanted to be sure you didn’t have anyone following us. Once I’m sure of that, we’ll go to where I can show you the whole thing.”
“Show me?”
“Yeah.” She smiled at him again, and his gut twisted, with the conflict between wondering whether he could possibly be right, and the desire for this incredibly beautiful young woman.
“Don’t be afraid, Detective,” she smiled, shaming him into silence and increasing his internal conflict.
She drove around through an abandoned military base, and pulled the car into a parking lot by the water. The lights of the Golden Gate Bridge dominated the skyline.
“Switching cars again?” he asked as they got out, wondering if he should just pull out his gun.
“No, no,” Rachel laughed. “Now, we’re going to take a little walk. Come on!”
Grinding his teeth, but unwilling to show his fear in front of her, he walked with her as if nothing were wrong, back out of the lot, and down a hundred yards or so, to a marina. She walked straight to a gated dock, and entered a code that let them onto it. Partway down the dock, she climbed up onto a forty foot cabin cruiser, opened the cabin, and began prepping it for launch.
“Going for a cruise, are we?” he asked, dryly.
She smiled at him. “I’ll start talking as soon as we are clear of the harbor. Deal?”
He shrugged. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” He climbed aboard.
She beamed at him. “That’s the ticket!”
In thirty minutes, they were under the bridge, heading into the open ocean. She opened up the throttles.
“Okay,” he said, “enough of the games. You promised me some answers.”
“So I did,” she said, “but I don’t want either of us to die while I’m giving them to you, and it’s going to take a while. I want to make sure we are clear of those three vessels coming in. Then let me get the autopilot, navigation, and radar set, and we’ll go below, where it’s a lot warmer.” After a few more minutes, she cut the throttles back, and fiddled with the instruments.
Soon, they were in the main cabin, with the boat sealed up. The shore was now a couple of miles behind them.
“Okay,” she said, taking off her hoodie, “what do you want to know?”
“I think you know,” said Jeff, as he casually pulled out his gun. Jeff was not sure what had caused his bizarre speculation to gel into certainty, but somehow, in the last few minutes, it had. Maybe it was watching her skill and competence handling the large vessel. Where would a street hooker learn that?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. It made no sense, but a quote from Sherlock Holmes came to his mind. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. It was one of his favorite dictums. This was the only thing that made sense.
He just hoped being right wouldn’t cost him his life.
8 Life and Death
Rachel watched the gun carefully, as she said, “there’s no need for that.”
“I just think I should keep my distance from you,” Jeff said. “Bad things happen, when people get close to you.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What kind of bad things?”
“Well, there is the little matter of Mr. Stevens. You were with him when he died, were you not?”
She smiled, and said, “I guess you could say that.”
“In fact, you were lying on top of him in a coma when he died. Am I right?”
Her eyes widened, and she said, “My, you really are clever, Detective. May I call you Jeff?”
He shrugged. “The thing is, I think you were also at the window, there, just before Mr. Crane died.”
Her face froze for about five seconds, as she regarded him with inhuman stillness. Then she laughed, breaking the spell. “I’m sorry, but . . . who?”
He kept his gun steady on her. “Mr. Crane. That was you, wasn’t it? You somehow got that young man, Gilbert Stevens, to come to your apartment, and then you climbed out onto the ledge. When he tried to keep you from jumping off the ledge, though, you somehow jumped into him, didn’t you? I don’t know how, but you somehow took over his body, and your old body, that of Mr. Crane, fell to its death.”
She was looking at him with a blank yet unfriendly expression. “Speculative nonsense!” she snapped.
“Is it? The problem was that when you jump into a new body, it takes you something like a week to get used to your new surroundings. So, you lie in a coma, before coming awake. When you saw me in the hospital, you recognized me as a cop, and that scared you. By the time I got you downtown, though, you remembered that all you had to do was stall, and we had to let you out, eventually.
“Then, when we did let you go, you retrieved your IDs from wherever you had told the young man to stash them, and opened a bank account. You transferred money in, so you could have some cash to move around. You bought a car, rented a hunting cabin, and found a whore to go up there with you.
“How is my speculative nonsense doing, so far?”
She smiled, but it was a tight smile. “Pretty damned well, Detective. I knew you were clever, but you’ve managed to surprise me. No one would believe you, you know. It really is all speculation, even though it’s all true. You don’t have any proof at all, do you?”
He just looked at her, and she said, “I told you, I would tell you everything. You don’t have any proof, do you?”
He sighed, and said, “No. But it’s true, isn’t it? How old are you, and how many bodies have you lived in?”
She moved a bit toward him, and he raised the gun.
Rachel stopped and sighed. “Very well,” she said, “I promised.
“How old am I? That’s actually a very hard question to answer. In fact, I don’t think it can be answered, in human language, anyway. I can tell you how long I’ve been on this planet, living in humans.”
“How long?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” She was smiling at him.
“Yes!” Dammit, why does she have to be so attractive?
She smiled even more. “I’ve lived on this planet approximately sixty thousand years.”
He went rigid with shock, the gun dropping to his side. She stepped forward, and put her hand on his chest. He didn’t think to raise the gun, as she looked up at him, her chest touching his shirt. “Jeff, if I wanted to take you, I would have taken you already. I told you, I have no intention of harming you.”
She turned and moved back a couple of steps, and turned again to face him. “Now, why don’t you put that gun away, before I startle you again, and you do something we’ll both regret?”
Jeff blinked, then thought about what she said. From what he had seen, the old man on the ledge hadn’t been any closer to the young man before this whatever-it-was jumped bodies. She might still kill me, he thought, but if she does, there probably isn’t anything I can do about it.
He thought some more, then holstered his weapon.
She immediately relaxed, although he could tell she still had a lot of tension. “There,” she said, as she moved back into touching range. “That’s better, isn’t it? See? Nothing to fear.”
He started to reach for his weapon again, and she put her hand on his. “Please!” she said, urgently. “If you shoot me, I will continue to live, but I will suffer terribly, and both you and this young woman whose body I am inhabiting will die. I don’t want any of those things to happen–well, except that I do want to keep living.
“I was telling you the truth. I could have taken you from the moment you stepped i
nto the truck with me, and there would have been nothing you could have done to prevent it. Remember your promise. Don’t take action until you know all the facts, which I promised you I would give you!”
After a moment more of indecision, he nodded, and she stepped back again. He unstrapped the holster, and set it aside.
“Much better,” she said, a little bit unsteadily. “Would you like a drink, since we are talking matters of life and death? I could sure use one.”
He finally sighed, then noticed she was trembling, and laughed. “Yeah, I guess I could, at that.” I’m trembling too. Damn.
9 Rachel’s Story
She fixed them both drinks, then she sat next to him on the seat. He somehow found this young woman had managed to get under his arm, so his arm was about her shoulders, as she snuggled up to him. As he looked sharply at her, she said, “I’m cold!”
He got up with a snort, and said, “So put on some more clothes, Mr. CRANE.”
She just laughed, and got up and adjusted the thermostat, but she didn’t put her hoodie back on. When she turned back, she said, “I’ve actually spent much more time as a woman than as a man. Shall I tell my story? That is what you came for, isn’t it?”
“Very well,” he grumbled. His brain and his hormones were getting him very confused, and it was making him grumpy.
“First of all, Jeff, are you married? No? No kids? Okay, thanks. That’s a good thing.”
She gazed at his face for several more seconds, before she said, “Maybe a very good thing,” softly.
Then she started, shook herself, and continued. “Let’s see. As I said, I came here about sixty
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