A determined search turned up my panties from under the foot of the bed, while my other clothes, including my bra, had somehow gotten strewn across one of the armchairs. I didn’t bother with anything except the panties, and went to retrieve one of the terrycloth robes from the closet.
I’d just finished tying it shut when a knock came at the door. Despite myself, my heart started pounding a little bit more quickly, but I told myself that was just silly. There was no way anyone could know where we were. Well, anyone who wished us harm, at any rate.
When I opened the door, I saw a valet standing there with one of those wheeled luggage carts, the type you can hang garment bags from. Only this one wasn’t carrying garment bags, but instead a series of plastic bags, each enclosing its own article of clothing. Below them was a set of matched Louis Vuitton luggage. Bettina Croft had apparently made good on her threat to make sure we were outfitted.
“The front desk said to send this up,” the valet offered.
I closed my mouth. “Oh — okay. Right. Um…just put it in the closet.”
He shrugged and did as I had instructed, then paused by the empty luggage cart. It took my brain a few seconds to realize he was waiting for his tip.
“Oh, right.” Thank God my purse was in plain sight on a side table; I hurried over to it and extracted a twenty from my wallet. I hoped that would be adequate. I didn’t have much experience with the tip scales in five-star hotels.
He seemed pleased enough with the twenty, though, and I barely held in a sigh of relief. I shut the door behind him, and went to inspect what Bettina Croft had sent over.
It looked as if she’d raided every boutique in Beverly Hills after dropping us off. I wasn’t sure why she thought I’d need a black cocktail dress for chasing aliens, but hey, I was not about to turn down free Prada. A little more digging revealed slightly more practical articles of clothing — jeans and shirts and sweaters, expensive underwear and shoes. Not to mention a small bag filled with toiletries, including the entire line of La Mer facial products, which alone must have set her back about a grand.
“Hey, Paul!” I called out. “Take a look — it’s like Christmas out here.”
He emerged from the bathroom, drying his hair with one towel, another wrapped around his waist. In the light from the bathroom, I could see bruises on his arms and legs and back that of course hadn’t been visible the night before as we made love in the darkness.
The extent of the damage made me wince inwardly, although I kept my tone light as I said, “Those guys weren’t fooling around, were they?”
For a second or two, he just stared at me quizzically, and then he glanced downward. “Oh, well. I probably got worse on the thirty-yard line during a home game back in high school.”
Paul had played football? I tilted my head and said, “I thought you were supposed to be a science nerd.”
“I was. But my high school was small enough that just about every guy taller than six feet ended up on the football team.”
I supposed that was part of the fun of getting to know someone — you never knew when you’d stumble across something new and exciting. “I was on the debate team.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
“Hey,” I began, then caught the twinkle in his eyes.
Was it supposed to be like this — feeling so comfortable with someone you’d only known for a few days? I guessed the movies and books said it was, but I’d never experienced anything remotely similar in any of my past relationships. Then again, none of those men had had the advantage of trying to bond with me while chasing down aliens and government conspiracies.
“Anyway,” I went on, “Bettina seems to have burned a hole in her platinum Visa for us, which is just as well, because I think those poor flats from Kohl’s have decided they’re not up for hazard duty. You done with the bathroom?”
He nodded, and I went on in. The air was still steamy and damp from his shower. I breathed in the moisture, then climbed into the shower and turned my face up to the hot water. Sometimes a hot shower was the only medicine you needed.
Eventually, I climbed out and wrapped myself in a towel, and twisted another one around my head. Paul was standing in the dressing area, scrunching his face this way and that as he shaved with a shiny new electric razor — another bonus from the Bettina Croft care package.
I watched him carefully for a moment, then said, “We’re going to have to do something about that.”
“About what?”
In answer, I pointed at the blue-black bruise surrounding his left eye. “About that. If you go out looking like you were just in a bar fight, you’re sure to attract attention…and that’s the last thing we need.”
“So what do you propose? A bag over my head?”
“Bettina the ever-resourceful thought of that, too.” I reached past him to the vanity top and pulled out a tube of Dermablend.
“Makeup?” he asked, sounding about as horrified as if I’d asked him to go outside wearing the Prada cocktail dress Bettina had gifted me.
“Well, technically, but it’s made for covering scars, that sort of thing. It’s not as if I’m proposing you put on lipstick and false eyelashes.”
Obviously, Paul was no metrosexual, because he continued to give me the side-eye. Still, he didn’t say no, so I unscrewed the cap from the concealer and squeezed a bit onto my index finger, then sidled up to him and began dabbing it around his eye. He endured these ministrations in stony silence, although I could actually feel his jaw clench as I moved lower and smoothed a bit along his jawline, where another contusion stood out in shades of dark red and purple.
I worked as quickly as I could, even though there was something intoxicating about standing that close to him, surrounded by his clean shower smell, feeling the heat radiating from his body. If we hadn’t spent a good chunk of the previous evening making love — and if we still didn’t have that pesky alien problem to deal with — who knows what I would have done next? What I really wanted to do was drop my towel and see what happened, but….
“There,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too breathless. “No more bar fights.”
He leaned closer to the mirror, inspecting my handiwork. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“It’s supposed to look natural, you know.”
In response, he gave the barest of nods, then went to the closet and ruffled through the items Bettina had sent over, selecting a button-down shirt in a dark green-gray that looked great with his eyes, along with a pair of jeans and some sturdy-looking lace-ups. I took the cue from him and also grabbed some jeans, and a cardigan and tank. Judging by the skies outside, it was going to be one of those days where the marine layer never lifted completely, and Los Angeles would be covered in a bank of thick gray clouds.
Since I wasn’t going to worry about impressing anybody, I kept the makeup to a minimum, and scrunched some frizz-taming serum into my hair so I could let it air-dry. I’d just finished zipping up a pair of flat ankle boots — I figured I could probably use the support in case I ended the day running away from commandos or clambering through a ravine — when the phone rang.
Paul and I both looked at each other.
“Did you order room service?” he asked.
“No.”
Another ring.
“Guess I’d better answer it,” I said. “It’s probably just Bettina checking in on us.”
“Probably.”
Still, my heart thumped a few times before I picked up the phone. After all, it was entirely possible the MIBs had somehow managed to track us down here. Then I told myself not to be silly, that if they’d really discovered where we were, they wouldn’t be calling politely.
I put the handset up to my ear. “Hello?”
“Persephone! It’s not too early, is it?”
It took me a couple of seconds to recognize Kara’s voice. “Hey — Kara. How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
Thank God. “And Lance and Michael? They
made it back okay?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. They had to dump the Suburban in a ravine and hike back into town, but they’re all right. We all went out for tequila shots at the Javelina Cantina afterward.”
And there Paul and I had both been worrying about them…not to mention being careful teetotalers last night, since we wanted to make sure we were as sharp as possible today.
“Well…that’s good. So what’s up?”
Kara’s tone became a bit more businesslike. “Oh, we’ve got contacts there in L.A. who’re ready to come over and pick you up, but we wanted to make sure you were up for it.”
“Contacts? Bettina?”
A short laugh. “No. Bettina’s a great facilitator, but she really doesn’t get out in the field and get her hands dirty, if you know what I mean. No, their names are Justin and Troy, and they can be there in about fifteen minutes if you’re ready.”
“Well, we haven’t eaten anything yet — ”
“Even better,” she said. “You guys can discuss the next stage over breakfast. I’ll send ’em on over. Just be out in front in fifteen.”
“But — ”
“Good luck!” And she hung up.
Feeling just a teensy bit blind-sided, I set the receiver back in the cradle and turned toward Paul. “We’re meeting Justin and Troy out in front in fifteen minutes.”
“Who?”
“Our L.A. contacts. But at least they’re buying us breakfast. I think.”
“Okay, good…I guess.”
“Come on,” I said, and went to retrieve my purse. “It’ll be an adventure.”
“Haven’t we had enough of those?”
In response to that question, I could only shrug.
Somehow, the names Justin and Troy had conjured the image of a couple of surfer dudes who would pull up in a grungy ’70s van, but my instincts in that case proved dead wrong. A Lexus SUV waited for us at the curb, and a thin-faced man in his forties peered out the passenger window.
“Dr. Oliver — and Ms. O’Brien?”
I resolved then and there that at some point I’d have to take Paul to a psychic convention just so he could be the one tagging along with the rock star for once. Oh, who was I kidding? Not that many people knew about me; I guessed “psychic to film editors and studio accountants” didn’t have quite the same ring as “psychic to the stars.”
“That’s us,” I said, in resigned tones. “Troy?”
“Justin, actually. Justin Cole. Come on in.”
Paul opened the door for me, and I got in on the passenger side behind Justin while Paul went around the back so he could take the seat behind the driver, a tall black man, also in his forties, who presumably was Troy.
“We thought we’d take you over to the Coastside Café for brunch,” Justin said. “Plan our strategy.”
“About that,” Paul said. “We don’t really know what the strategy should be. We’ve pretty much been winging it this whole time.”
“All the more reason we should have a planning session,” Troy put in. “Kara filled us in a little bit about the entertainment business angle in all this. That’s partly why she called me and Justin.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“I used to work in the distribution arm at Universal. You need someone to help you track down where these tainted films and TV shows are being stored, right?”
“Right,” I said. Of course the logical thing would be to keep that material as far away from the public as possible. Then I added, “Used to?”
Justin grinned and patted Troy on the arm, and I realized in that moment their relationship was a little closer than just a couple of guys who teamed up to assist the UFO underground. “Troy played the Lotto for years. I always teased him about it. Last year, he won big — so now we’re living a life of leisure, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.”
I glanced sideways at Paul to see how much of that he’d absorbed, and I could tell by a brief lift of his eyebrows that he’d figured out the situation as well. I found myself holding my breath, wondering if my newfound soulmate was going to turn out to be a secret homophobe. But he just smiled a little, as if to himself, before commenting, “Well, that’s handy. I’m sure Kara, et al. appreciate having someone full-time on the ground here in Los Angeles.”
Troy practically beamed. “It’s been convenient, that’s for sure. Of course, we never had anything quite as hot as this before, right, Justin?”
“No, nothing.”
It would have been better if the situation weren’t quite so “hot,” in my humble opinion, but you had to play the hand you were dealt.
We pulled into a parking lot then, and Troy maneuvered the Lexus through the narrow aisles and past groups of pedestrians, finally finding an open space at the edge of the lot, almost back out on the street. I wondered about him bringing us someplace so public. Then again, sometimes having a lot of witnesses was a good thing.
I didn’t know if Troy or Justin had called ahead to get us a table or whether they were favored regulars, but either way, we were ushered to a table almost immediately, earning us some evil looks from the people waiting in the reception area. If I’d been in their position, I probably would have been irritated, too, but as it was, I was just happy at the prospect of tea and something a little more solid in my near future.
The waitress came and took our drink orders. We all waited until she was safely away.
Paul said, “So, do you have a plan?”
Troy nodded. I noticed he had diamond studs in both his ears. “As I said, the best thing to do is block the films and shows at the distributors. There’s no way we can get to everything — too many indies out there these days — but my guess is that our friends upstairs aren’t interested in the art-house stuff. No, they’re probably more interested in getting their signal on the latest blockbusters and new installments of reality programming.”
That made sense. Even narrowing the field, though, it seemed like a fairly daunting task. “What do we need to do?”
A pause as Troy frowned and looked over at Justin, whose own expression was far from sanguine. “Well, it’s going to be complicated. There are six major studios in town, each with its own subsidiaries. And sometimes the subsidiaries have subsidiaries. Added to that, some stuff’s digital, while some is still on film reels. The TV shows are mostly digital. That’s a whole hell of a lot of hard drives we have to crash. It’s not as if we can just drive to a central warehouse, throw in a couple of Molotov cocktails, and have done with it.”
Of course, the waiter had to show up right at that particular moment. I got the impression that he’d heard the Molotov cocktail remark, but luckily, all he did was set down our respective tea, coffee, and lattes, then ask in the most neutral tone possible if we were ready to order.
I hadn’t even opened the menu, but I grabbed it and gave it a quick once-over as Troy and Justin saved the day by placing their orders first. By the time the waiter got to me, I’d recovered enough to calmly ask for a Belgian waffle with fresh strawberries and a side of scrambled eggs.
He departed, and Paul said, “So I’m guessing this isn’t the sort of operation the four of us can pull off on — ” He stopped and gave Justin, who’d been staring at him with the oddest expression on his face, a quizzical look.
“What?”
“Dr. Oliver, are you wearing makeup?”
“He’s got a shiner the size of Rhode Island,” I said calmly, stirring milk into my tea. “I thought it better to cover it up.”
“Oh, right. Of course,” Justin returned, while Paul shot me a classic stink-eye. Well, I’d only been trying to help.
“As to the matter at hand,” Troy forged on, with the air of someone who’d spent a lot of time dealing with Justin’s digressions, “yes, it’s going to take a lot of people. We’ve got a decent-sized contingent here in Southern California, but — ”
“How many?” Paul asked.
“Twenty, thirty I can really trust. A lot more hangers-on,
people who like the excitement but who I wouldn’t want to rely on in a pinch, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Is Jeff Makowski one of your inner circle?”
Justin, who’d been pouring an extra dollop of milk into his latte, paused. “You know Jeff?”
Uh-oh.
“Yes,” Paul said evenly enough, but there was an edge to his tone that I’d begun to recognize. “Unfortunately, Jeff is compromised. Kara didn’t tell you that?”
“No. I don’t think she knew.” Justin set down the little ceramic pitcher of milk and frowned in my direction. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“I was a little pressed for time,” I replied, and wished my stomach hadn’t knotted itself quite so badly. “Look, I told them the basics. We needed to get going and rescue Paul. If I’d known Jeff’s involvement was so important, I would’ve said something.”
No one likes a fallible psychic, but even psychics were only human. We made mistakes. We didn’t know everything. If you met a psychic who said she had all the answers, she was lying. Yes, we had a better feel for the pulse of energy or knowledge or whatever you wanted to call it that drove human affairs. But even that heightened awareness didn’t allow us to make all the right decisions all the time.
Paul reached under the table and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. Just a quick touch, so fast I might have imagined it, but enough to let me know he was there, and he understood.
“Piling on Persephone isn’t going to help,” he said. “She’s done an amazing job so far. I’d be dead if it weren’t for her. So let’s focus, all right?”
“Right.” Troy glinted the briefest of sideways looks at his partner, as if to let Justin know it was time to back off. “Anyway, Jeff was the core of the network here. If he’s compromised, then there’s a good chance the conspiracists know the identity of everyone in the Los Angeles group.”
For a few seconds, everyone was silent. I swallowed some tea and said the words everyone was thinking and no one wanted to voice aloud. “Including you two.”
Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest Page 72