Roswell's Secret

by Vannetta Chapman

  His voice was soft for one so big, so battered. His meaning left no room for doubt—it never wavered, so surely bent on murder.

  Lucy felt pierced by the contrast of the tone and the meaning of his voice.

  With that, the big guy was gone. Lucy turned on Dean with the fury of a tornado, but he was ready for her. He caught her, his hand over her mouth, his eyes inches from hers. Shaking his head in warning, he pulled his weapon out, flipped off the safety, and motioned for her to do the same.

  DEAN HIT THE BREEZEWAY seconds after Jerry. He would never have believed a man’s military training could come back that quickly, but maybe Jerry had never put it behind him. He stood looking up-and-down the street, but saw nothing. Like a ghost, Jerry had vanished.

  Motioning Lucy toward the building’s south side, he took the north, whispering, “I want to know if he’s alone. Meet me back by the river. If you see anything suspicious, do not engage.”

  Then he took off. His weapon drawn, his senses alert, he hoped he wouldn’t run into a housekeeper. The north side was clear, as was the parking area. Sweeping around to the river, he saw Lucy had arrived ahead of him. The maneuver hadn’t eased her temper, but then he figured few things did.

  “Do you mind telling me what we’re doing?” Her dark eyes were livid, and he found himself grateful she’d holstered her weapon.

  “I needed to know if he was alone.”

  “Of course, he was alone. Who do you expect would be with him? Did you see how many wounds he had? How exhausted he was? If he hadn’t been in shock I would have said he was terrified.”

  “Did he seem terrified to you, Lucy? Did he really?” Dean reached up for his cap, found he hadn’t put it on. “He seemed pretty calm to me for a man who supposedly hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. If you had been chased by the most advanced technological device in the western arsenal would you have been able to waltz into Josephine’s and give that spiel?”

  She continued to stare at him, then sank onto the burnt brown grass beside the river. “You are a piece of work, Dreiser. You don’t trust anyone. Do you?”

  “Listen to me. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he wasn’t. It’s not our problem.”

  The look she gave him could have frozen the Hondo River lazily slipping by in front of them, and he found himself wondering again why Martin had sent him a newbie. They fell for every pitiful story, which was why they needed to start with parking cars. Martin should have left Lucinda Brown in a lab somewhere.

  “The man lost his girlfriend,” she said. “Then he nearly gets killed, and you say it’s not our problem?”

  “It isn’t our problem, Agent. And you’d better learn not to trust every story that comes your way.” He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her eyes grew even colder.

  “Why did you give the coordinates back? Why didn’t you at least pass them on to Martin?”

  “I memorized the numbers on the sheet, Lucy. But I will not pass them on to Commander Martin. If Jerry’s a mole—”

  “You cannot believe Jerry had Angie killed.”

  “Listen to me. If Jerry’s a mole then the terrorists are trying to flush out who the undercover people are. They’ll plant different information or different coordinates. As the coordinates come in—and we know our communications are being intercepted, how else did they find us at Bitter Lake—they will know who turned them in.”

  He crouched in front of her, forcing her to look at him. “Lucy, it’s like a game of battleship. Plug in the numbers, and sink the ships.”

  She continued to stare at him as if he had no heart, and, in fact, some days he wondered if he did. This was turning into one of those days.

  “And what is the upside?” Dean sat beside her on the dry grass. “If the numbers are good, there’s little-to-no chance they’ll go back to the same place. So they have UAVs. With all the sightings, Martin has that information by now. We have a wall full of pins marking the sightings. I took a picture of them last night before we closed and sent it to him. I’m pretty sure he can figure out what to do with it.”

  Lucy stared out at the river. “I don’t believe Jerry’s one of them.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe. What matters is that you do your job.”

  She didn’t look at him, but he knew his words hit home by the way her body stiffened.

  “I don’t get any say in what that is?”

  “No, you don’t. I’m the agent in charge.”

  Her head dropped for a few seconds, but then her chin came up. When she stood, he knew that he’d hurt her, but he also knew she’d stick. He stood as well, forcing himself not to reach out.

  “I didn’t think you’d pull rank on me, Dreiser.”

  “Think again. Our job is to find the terrorists, find the weapon, and disarm it. You need to do your job.”

  “And is falling for you part of my job?”

  “Lucy—”

  Apparently satisfied she’d had the last word, she stormed back toward their rooms. He followed behind her, giving her a little space. She didn’t pause when she passed through his room.

  Ω

  Lucy arrived on-time for her shift at E.T.’s. Hopefully she looked the same, but she felt as if she’d aged a good ten years in the last three hours. She didn’t consider herself a naïve person when she’d started this job, but suddenly she felt ancient.

  So why had she signed on with USCIS? As she mindlessly filled orders, the question ricocheted through her mind. She considered and discarded several possibilities before she settled on the truth. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to what had happened at home. Until the summer she’d turned twenty-one, life had been a breeze. She was attending Yale on an academic scholarship. She’d always been the brains of the family—a fact her brother Marcos loved to tease her about.

  She wished she could talk to Marcos now. She needed to hear his laugh, see his easy smile. He had always been the one genuine person she knew, and she needed someone genuine right now. Someone who was what they appeared to be.

  “You all right?” Dean set the Heinekens on her tray and gave her a once over.

  She nodded, not bothering to answer as she moved off to deliver the drinks. She wasn’t punishing him, but her mind lingered on Marcos. Somehow, he held the key to all of this, because it had all started with him. The decisions she had made, the path that had led to this bar on a hot Tuesday night in August, had begun the summer between her junior and senior year in college.

  Marcos had gone off to serve, laughingly declaring Lucy could earn the bucks, and he’d provide the brawn for the family. He wasn’t scheduled to come home that summer. His tour wouldn’t end until December. So when they got the call in June, everyone knew it meant he’d been injured. It wasn’t a bullet or a grenade that had sent him home, it was much worse—a germ.

  Germ warfare—the one adversary you couldn’t see to fight.

  Ironically, they’d sent him into a village to rescue a group of nuns and children who were holed up in an orphanage. Somehow he’d landed in the middle of someone else’s battle. Marcos and his unit had liberated all of the people in the orphanage from the artillery attack. The terrorists had retreated as soon as someone started firing back.

  The medics didn’t realize until forty-eight hours later that a bio-agent had been used. Apparently, the orphanage was filled with undesirables. If they couldn’t be captured or killed with gunfire, the attacking unit had been instructed to use the experimental germ.

  The American soldiers had paid a high price, along with the sisters and children.

  The summer had been excruciating as Lucy had watched her parents sit beside Marcos’ bed, watched Marcos drop from one-hundred-and-eighty-five pounds to one-hundred-and-forty. Watched the life literally seep out of him as the doctors tried one treatment after another.

  In the end, a combination of new drugs had slowly brought his body back, but his spirit seemed hollowed out.

  Lucy thought she’d lost every thread of
naivety that summer Marcos had come home. Since that day, she’d been well aware life wasn’t fair. Her brother was the reason she’d chosen to pursue a doctorate in molecular biology. He was also why she chose to work for Uncle Sam instead of corporate America, even when big business would mean big bucks. She wanted to help the good guys win. She’d promised Marcos, sitting by his bed that stormy night they thought he’d die. She’d vowed to fight for him.

  Watching Dean across the busy bar, she fought the urge to put her head down and weep.

  She’d learned watching the doctors work on Marcos the value of working as a team. Her doctoral studies had confirmed that only by corroborating could progress be made. Now Dean insisted they had to do this alone. They couldn’t help Jerry, though her heart told her they should.

  Perhaps Dean had been undercover too long. She didn’t doubt his loyalty or dedication. Her heart confirmed the depth of both. But if it turned you into ice, what good was it?

  “Lucy, you going to hand me that cold one or drink it?” Billy asked politely.

  He and Bubba had been careful not to offend since the incident three nights before with Colton. As for Colton, he hadn’t shown at E.T.’s again.

  “Sorry, Billy. Guess my mind isn’t on my job.”

  “Maybe you should get out more.” Bubba cleared his throat.

  “Oh, I should? And where would I get out to?”

  “Ow!” Bubba stared at Billy. “What did you kick me for?”

  Billy rolled his eyes and gave up prompting his partner in crime, or whatever they had up their collective sleeves. “Bubba and I wanted to know if you’d like to go and watch the UFOs with us.”

  “Hmm. That actually does sound fun.” She set her tray down on their table. “I haven’t been away from E.T.’s in ages. Not since the night I went dancing with Angie.”

  Billy played with his beer, and Bubba cleared his throat again. Lucy glanced over at Sally who was waving at her to get back to work. She did need a few hours away from the job. She hadn’t made any progress on the files Commander Martin had sent her. Maybe if she got out, she’d think of something new.

  “Tell you what. I’m off in another hour. Why don’t you boys swing by and pick me up?”

  “Seriously?” Billy’s mouth fell open as if Lucy had said she’d take him home to meet Mama.

  Bubba recovered first. “Great. We’ll go ahead and fill up the truck. That way we don’t have to waste any time. It takes a while to get out to Bluewater Creek. That’s where the bulk of the sightings have been according to Dean’s map.”

  Lucy couldn’t help the grimace that came over her face at the mention of Dean’s name.

  “Uh, Lucy. Dean won’t kick our butts because you’re going out with us, will he?” Billy glanced in the direction of the bar, then angled his chair so his back faced it. “Not that I’m afraid of Dreiser or anything.”

  Lucy tossed back her hair and snatched up her tray. “Anything give you two the impression Dean owns me?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Bubba pulled out his wallet and started counting out enough money to pay their bill.

  “You boys think I need his permission to go somewhere?”

  “We’re going to fill the truck up now.” Billy finished the beer and pushed back his chair. “We’ll meet you out front at nine.”

  Lucy turned away from the table in time to catch Dean glaring at her. She stared right back. She hadn’t deeded her life over to him when she’d signed on. He might be the agent in charge, but that didn’t mean he owned her twenty-four hours a day.

  She stormed through the last hour of her shift. As she clocked out, Dean came up behind her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Tell me where you’re going, Lucy.”

  Lucy threw her apron into the laundry bin, and spun on him like a lion on its prey. “I’m going for a ride with Billy and Bubba. Is that okay with you, Dean? They wanted to show me the UFOs, and you know how I’m interested in flying objects.”

  Emily pushed past them to enter the storeroom. “I needed more cigarettes for the front register. Sorry. I won’t listen. You two can keep fighting.”

  Dean backed Lucy up until her shoulders pressed into the time clock. He hadn’t touched her since their talk by the river. They’d been polite and professional, nothing more. He’d given her space, but apparently that was coming to an end.

  Lucy wasn’t intimidated by men, and she sure wasn’t about to let Dean Dreiser make her squirm. She could maintain a professional distance even when he stood an inch from her, his eyes gazing into hers, his arms positioned on both sides of her body.

  He made her furious.

  Why did her hormones respond to him this way?

  Why did she care about him?

  “This isn’t over Lucy. We’ll talk tonight.” He hissed the words into her ear, sending a shiver down her spine, and then he left.

  She collected what she could find of her pride, and strode out of the storeroom, out of E.T.’s and into the night. She had UFOs to locate. With any luck, she wouldn’t have to take on Billy and Bubba in the process.

  DEAN THOUGHT ABOUT following them. He considered shooting them, but then he’d have to account for two more bodies. In all fairness, Bubba and Billy didn’t strike him as terrorists— though he refused to count anyone out at this point. Which was how he pissed off Lucy to begin with. He would never understand women. Until this point in his life, he’d managed to avoid trying.

  So why did it matter so much that she understand?

  If he were honest, it wasn’t so much that he worried she would get herself killed. He knew she had her shiny new Sig P229—she’d finally shown him the weapon. Given the marksmanship she’d demonstrated with the rifle, he had no doubt she could handle the Sig just fine. He didn’t doubt for a minute she knew how to use it either. Lucy could handle Bubba and Billy. He wasn’t even concerned she’d actually see a UAV.

  No, he wasn’t worried about her safety tonight, and that realization hit him harder than the bullet in his arm had.

  His fears weren’t professional.

  They were personal.

  He couldn’t afford a personal entanglement right now. He needed to stay focused.

  He’d spent the last two nights driving around trying to locate and photograph one of the birds himself, without any luck. Chaves County extended 6,075 square miles, and the likelihood of spotting a UAV wasn’t particularly good—though looking at the map filled with pins it would seem like everyone else had.

  He had ridden around each of those nights until dawn, after his full shift at E.T.’s. And he had done it alone. Lucy had opted to stay home and study the data Commander Martin had sent. She obviously did not relish a late night ride with him. Looking at his forlorn face in the mirror over the bar, he realized there was the rub.

  “Throw those bottles into that cooler any harder, you’re going to bust one. Then I’ll have to dock your pay.” Sally stood looking at him, hands on her hips. Fortunately, no cigarette hung from her lips, so at least she hadn’t passed an eight on her ten-point irritation scale.

  “Guess I might be slinging them a bit hard.”

  “A woman can rile a man like that.” Sally climbed on a stool, pulled out her pack of cigarettes, and began twirling it. When Dean pushed an ashtray toward her, she waved it away. “Don’t tempt me. So far, I’m happy playing with them.”

  “Just like a woman.” The words slipped out before Dean could call them back, while he was still puzzling over the ways a member of the fairer sex could make an otherwise content man crazy.

  Sally put her head back and laughed. It was the first time Dean had heard anything joyful come out of her mouth. The purity of it surprised them both.

  “Dreiser, you’re the only one who would ever say that to me. You and my old man, Travis. That may be what I miss most. He would stand up to me.”

  “I wish I had met him.”

  “Travis was a h
ealth nut.” Sally’s voice had dropped some, but the smile hadn’t left as the memory of her husband brightened.

  Dean waited, began wiping the glasses.

  “Played golf every day, even worked out at the gym.” She ran a finger down the cover of the cigarette pack until she reached the Surgeon General’s warning. “Wouldn’t be caught smoking one of these.”

  “What happened?”

  “Colon cancer. Died six weeks after he was diagnosed.”

  Sally stared past him, beyond the map with the pins marking the UFO sightings. Her fingers started twirling the pack of smokes once again.

  “We had our plans—worked all those years and had our plans. He’d retired ahead of me. I intended to train someone to take over the bar six months a year so we could travel. I was waiting for the right person to come along.”

  She twirled the pack once, twice, three more times. “Guess I waited too long.”

  Dean waited for her to break again. Waited for the cat to leap out of the bag and attack him like before.

  Instead she shrugged. “It happened three years ago. Some days it seems like yesterday.”

  Dean nodded, placed a glass of ice water in front of her.

  “Lucy’s young—too young for you, if you want my opinion. Which I realize you haven’t asked for. I’m guessing she’s the first one you’ve ever thought about this way.”

  Dean’s head snapped up. He had worked undercover for ten years. How had she been able to see through him? And what else had she seen?

  “It’s written on your face every time she walks by. You might as well purchase a t-shirt that says I Love Lucy.”

  Dean dropped the rag he’d been using to wipe the bar. By the time he’d picked it up and resumed cleaning, he’d found some of his equilibrium.

  “You going to deny it?”

  “She’s hard-headed. She’s stubborn. She won’t listen to reason.”

  Sally held up a hand to stop him. “Here’s the thing. You won’t be happy with anyone you can control. Travis used to say loving me reminded him of living in the middle of a hurricane. You never knew if each day would turn into a Category Five or not. But he also said once you’d lived with a hurricane, you couldn’t live without it. Life without it resembled a black and white collage—more like watching life than living it.”