She had a feeling she’d never find out the truth.
The room Grayson entered was filled with more packing crates and large metal boxes, all neatly stacked on one another, with perfectly straight aisles between them. He paused in the center of the room, looking upward as if to gauge the best spot to plant the explosives. Then he nodded, and pulled himself up on one of the stacks of crates so he could reach up and touch the ceiling. Moving quickly, he unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled it down so he could access the blocks of C4 that had been hidden under his clothing. Once they’d been removed, he drew the jumpsuit back on and zipped it. From one of his pockets he removed the detonator and the electric leads, and set it down by his feet before gathering up the C4 and flattening it in a largish semicircle against the ceiling. Once that was done, he retrieved the detonator and leads, inserted them into the explosives, and nodded.
The remote was a small black object that looked like something you’d use to open a garage door. For all Kara knew, that was exactly what it had been in another life; she’d never had the courage to question Lance too closely about his explosives knowledge, or exactly what items he had in possession. A whole lot of highly illegal somethings, based on what he’d managed to scrounge up for this operation.
She wanted to hold her breath as Grayson dropped lightly onto his feet from the stack of packing crates and moved back toward the door. Surely it couldn’t be this easy — slip in and slip out, heading through the service entrance and back down the ravine, to be safely away before he even pushed the button?
Maybe it would be. Maybe she’d been all doom and gloom for nothing. Maybe Grayson really would be around to see his child come into the world, to be a part of its life —
The door opened, but it wasn’t Grayson who had opened it. Four more hybrids entered the room, guns drawn. Their silence was more frightening than any barked commands could have been, but it was obvious enough what they wanted. They gestured for Grayson to put his hands up, and he did so, also without speaking, although a small smile played around his mouth. In that instant he looked like the man she thought she’d loved once…and she also knew what he was about to do.
Oh, no, Grayson.
No.
His hand closed around the black remote, and the world exploded in fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lance blanked out the vision as quickly as he could, but even so the shockwave seemed to ring in his ears. Neither Michael nor Persephone seemed willing at first to let go of his hands; finally Michael pulled his fingers away, and then Persephone did so as well.
From across the table came the sound of quiet sobbing, and Lance opened his eyes to see Kara with her face pressed into her hands, her shoulders shaking as she wept. Kiki already hovered behind her, expression an odd mixture of worry and awkwardness, as if she wasn’t quite sure what her reaction should be.
Good question. Lance really didn’t know, either. That explosion had to have knocked out the reactor and everything within at least a hundred-foot radius around it, but was it enough? Had Grayson’s sacrifice meant something, or would it turn out to be a hollow gesture, nothing more than the sting of a single bee?
Time to worry about that later. For now he could only force himself to rise, legs feeling as stiff as if he’d been sitting in that chair for seven or eight hours, and not the scant forty-five minutes that had actually passed. Everyone at the table watched him as he moved toward Kara, Persephone grave and white-faced, Jeff a little stunned, Kiki mute with worry. Only Michael seemed unperturbed, although his dark eyes held a sadness that Lance had never seen before. And then Persephone stood, murmuring that she needed to call Paul and tell him it was time to come home.
None of that seemed to matter. The only thing he could think of was the woman who still sat at the table with her head bowed, hair falling in a spill of gold over her shoulders. He wanted to reach out and touch her, pull her to him, but did he dare? Maybe she would hate him now, hate him for his role in Grayson’s death. Never mind that the hybrid had willingly walked down that path, as if he’d known this world had no place for him. If Kara blamed him for Grayson’s death, Lance knew he wouldn’t be angry. He would understand…and maybe someday she’d be able to forgive him.
He waited next to her chair, hands knotted into impotent fists at his sides. For a long moment he stood there, staring down at her, as Kiki hesitated a few paces away and no one else said anything.
Finally Kara lifted her head and stared up at him with blurred blue eyes. She said, “Oh, Lance,” and lifted her arms to him.
And he took her hands and pulled her against him, holding her, letting her spend her grief as she wept into his shoulder, knowing that he himself would have willingly died for her, and realizing with sudden wonder that somehow, for whatever reason, he had been spared so he could be with her.
* * *
It turned out that the earth tremor was felt for miles around, though everyone chalked it up as a minor earthquake. They didn’t have many of them in this part of the world, and so the quake was a topic of conversation for several days…until a particularly severe monsoon storm hit the town, flooding the streets for almost a day, and that became the star subject of discourse until yet another oddity came along to take its place. And so it went.
The numbness of grief was a weight in Kara’s heart, a grief she knew she couldn’t openly express. Oh, Persephone offered an understanding shoulder to cry on, and Lance had been more than patient with her. Maybe it was stupid, to feel such sadness over someone she’d only known for such a short time. Somehow Kara knew it was more than the loss of whatever had begun to blossom between them. It was the loss of a life that someday might have offered this world a great deal, if he’d only had the chance to do so.
And maybe it was guilt as well, at the quiet happiness of having Lance in her life as something more than the casual acquaintance he’d tried to be all these years. No more keeping up pretenses; the Jeep was parked in the driveway all night most of the time these days, and Lance only went back to the condo every couple of days or so to check on things and make it look as if the place wasn’t totally unoccupied. What exactly he planned to do with it, she didn’t know; they hadn’t discussed that yet, as they hadn’t discussed a lot of things. Well, time enough for that later. At least now she was fairly sure there would be a later.
Lance had attempted a remote viewing the day after the explosion, just to see what the aftermath was. This was no group effort, but simply him sitting back at his condo, focusing his mind on the base a few miles away. The image wouldn’t hold for very long — he claimed it was weariness, and that he usually didn’t try to do this sort of thing so quickly in succession — but he was startled by the destruction he saw before the vision blanked out again.
“Grayson didn’t say anything to me,” he told her, as they sat on the couch next to one another, still weary, still a little unsure around one another. “But I see now why he was so certain that he could do some serious damage to the base. I thought we’d take out the reactor, but that amount of C4 isn’t enough to level a regular building, let alone an underground base carved out of rock. I don’t know what was in some of those crates, but it had to be highly explosive. Far as I can tell, the back entrance is completely caved in, and the service area and several floors above it are destroyed as well. And it looks like the explosion went right up though the elevator shafts and caused a lot of collateral damage. They’re going to be digging that place out for months.”
Kara pushed herself a little closer to him, needing the reassuring warmth of his touch to help dispel some of the chill that seemed to find its away along every vein. “Did you see…them?”
“They’re not all dead, if that’s what you mean.” He shrugged, but carefully, so he wouldn’t shift her away from him. “But they sure seemed pissed.”
As well they should be. She could only hope that this additional blow would help convince them that Sedona and its environs really weren’t the most hospitable p
lace for their operation, and maybe they should move their base someplace a little friendlier…like to Antarctica, or the middle of the Gobi Desert.
She didn’t bother to say that, though. Lance knew how she felt…they all felt the same way. What was it that Kiki liked to say? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
If only it were that easy.
* * *
Days passed. Labor Day came and went, and with it a temporary lull in the tourist activity. Kara could almost feel the shift in the world around her, the change in the quality of the light outside the windows, the realization that autumn would be here soon, and after that winter.
Plans had to be made, because she’d felt the changes happening in her body, knew that she wouldn’t be able to conceal things for too much longer, not with the rapid pace at which the tiny being within her was developing. The R.N., Lola Montenegro, had made a trip to Sedona to check on Kara. Everything seemed to be progressing just fine, but Lola told Kara just before she left, “Don’t put it off until the last minute. I want you out of here and settled in Santa Fe before too much longer.”
It was Lance, aided and abetted by Paul, who’d come up with the idea. Kara let it be known that she’d been in the process of adopting a child from Croatia, and the approval had finally come through. This sort of thing often got hung up in paperwork and bureaucracy, so no one should think it strange that a trip which was only supposed to last a few weeks would end up stretching into several months. And at the end Kara would come home with her “adopted” child, and no one would be the wiser.
Unless, of course, said child came into the world an odd shade of gray or green. They didn’t have too many of those in Croatia.
Time to worry about that later. Lola said everything was fine, that none of the half-alien babies who’d been brought to term were anything except baby-colored, so Kara just had to make herself believe that.
She finished locking up the shop and turned, then barely bit back a little squeak of surprise. Standing directly in front of her was Martin Jones, the man in black…who’d been scarce the last few weeks. She’d thought he and his partner must have gone back to Washington or wherever MIB Central was located. That point was still hotly debated in conspiracy chat rooms and UFO forums across the nation.
“Sorry, we’re fresh out of ‘I had a close encounter in Sedona’ T-shirts,” she said, as she slipped the heavy ring of shop keys into her purse and withdrew the remote for her Prius.
“That’s too bad,” he replied, tone almost amused. “Tourist rush over?”
“Not really. This is just a breather before they start descending for autumn festivals and wine tastings and balloon rides. Before you know it, they’ll be putting up the lights at Tlaquepaque.”
“I wasn’t planning on sticking around that long.”
“Oh?”
It was barely a shrug…just the slightest lift of the broad shoulders under the black suit. “Looks like our tour in this part of the world is done for now.”
“Oh,” she said again. What was he expecting her to say? That they’d always have Paris? “Does this mean I’m no longer under surveillance?”
For a few seconds he didn’t reply, but only watched her carefully with a pair of gray-blue eyes that were just a little too keen. Kara had to resist the temptation to cross her arms across her stomach, to hide something that wasn’t even really showing yet. Well, not much. Her belly was pushing against her loosest jeans, telling her that their days were numbered, but even so that little bit could always be attributed to too much pizza and not enough time on the treadmill.
At last he said, “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”
“What’s that?”
“You and I are on the same side, Ms. Swenson.” And he pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket, set them on his nose, and sauntered off across the parking lot to his might-as-well-be-marked black sedan, then got inside and drove off.
She stared after him for a long minute, wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean. Did he know what had gone down at Secret Canyon? Was this his oblique way of thanking her?
Who knows? She shook her head, and got inside her own car.
* * *
On Saturday night it rained, not the sudden downpour of a monsoon storm, but an early autumn shower, unexpected and yet gentle and healing. Kara lay in bed, listening to the rain patter down outside, hearing beneath it the regular breaths of the man who slept beside her. She wanted to reach out to touch him, but instead she lay still, willing herself to be content simply with his presence. He did not fall asleep easily, and when he finally did slumber, it was often restless, as if he recalled things in his dreams that were far from pleasant. Since he slept so peacefully now, she didn’t want to disturb him.
It was all right. It was fine to simply know he was there, to recall the miracle of him loving her the way she had always loved him, to know that he had said he would be with her no matter what. She didn’t question him, or his love for her. If Lance said he would do something, it got done. Even if it was being father to the child of a dead half-alien soldier.
And that made her love him all the more.
When she went out the next morning to clean up some of the fallen leaves from her driveway and snip away the dead flowers from the bed that bordered the walkway, she saw she wasn’t the only one with a similar idea. Felicia Martinez was out in her yard as well, ubiquitous basket over one arm as she worked to deadhead her prized roses.
She smiled when she saw Kara, and gestured her over with a hand that held a pair of clippers. Kara wasn’t much in the mood for conversation — she’d managed to avoid any encounters with Felicia over the past few weeks, which was fine by her — but there was no way to avoid this one with being actively rude.
“Morning, Felicia.”
“Morning.” The older woman looked past Kara to where Lance’s Jeep sat in the driveway. “He’s been over a lot lately.”
Talk about nosy. But Kara couldn’t just brush Felicia off; she’d known the other woman for more than half her life, even if their acquaintance had never been close. “Yes, he has,” Kara agreed, somehow managing to keep her tone noncommittal.
“So what happened to the other one?”
“Grayson?” Kara’s throat tightened. She managed to reply, “Oh, he had to…go away. He was just visiting.”
“Oh.” Felicia was visibly disappointed. “Too bad. It was nice to see him riding around on Bill’s bike.”
You will not cry. Not here, not now. You’ve cried enough. Lifting her chin, Kara smiled a little, even though the expression made her face feel as if it was going to crack. “Yes. Yes, it was.”
At first Felicia didn’t reply. She raised her head a little, too, the fresh morning breeze ruffling the loose strands around her face, drifting away from the careless barrette she’d used to pull back her heavy gray-streaked hair. Finally she said, “Can you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. Change is coming.”
Kara knew Felicia was only referring to the shift of seasons, with the equinox less than ten days away. But in that moment Kara could feel it as well, in the currents of energy underfoot, in the feel of the wind, the angle of the sun. And within her own body as well, every day a little different as the life within her stirred and made its presence felt.
Once again she had to resist the urge to press her hands against her belly. Felicia’s eyes were too sharp, and already Kara was wondering how much she had begun to guess, after Kara had begun wearing her baggiest jeans every day and had likewise switched over to peasant-style tops instead of her usual close-fitting tees and tanks.
It was good that she was leaving soon. She needed to be away from here, away from anyone who might begin to guess, might begin to think something was definitely up with that Kara Swenson.
“Yes,” she said, and looked past Felicia, up to the red rocks that towered above the subdivision, strong and bright in
the morning sun. “Soon, everything will change.”
ANGEL FIRE
CHAPTER ONE
Jeff Makowski leaned over Grace’s bassinet, his expression more than a little dubious. “She doesn’t look like a half-alien baby to me.”
“Quarter alien,” I corrected him. “Or something like that, anyway. No one really knows if Grayson was actually half alien or a little more or a little less.”
“Still.”
I reached past Jeff to pick up Grace, who submitted to my less-than-expert handling with her usual equanimity. She cooed, blew a milk bubble, and reached out for a piece of my hair as it fell over my shoulder. I hastily scooped the stray lock out of the way. Now I understood why Kara had started wearing her hair in a ponytail most days. I’d just figured it was because she didn’t have time to do anything else with it.
Jeff continued to watch me with a sour expression on his face as I held Grace up against my shoulder and patted her back. Not that I was really surprised; Jeff generally tended to look as if he’d just smelled rancid two-week-old leftovers.
What had surprised me was his being here in Sedona at all. He’d emailed me just the day before, saying that he planned to come to Arizona for a little while, maybe a week, maybe more. Lance had offered to let him crash at his condo, since it was pretty much vacant now that Lance had moved in with Kara. Things weren’t really formal yet — they’d had a few more important things on their minds than planning a wedding — but there’d never been any question of them living separately. Not now.
Why Lance didn’t just sell the condo, I didn’t know, but maybe he figured the market was soft right now and so was waiting for a better opportunity. Not really my business, anyway. I was still trying to wrap my head around the way things had changed, how my sister was now a mother and practically a wife, and I was an aunt.
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