by Fall, Carly
He sat up on his elbow and watched her sleep. Her lips were slightly parted, her skin glowing in the late afternoon light filtering through the large picture window. He marveled at her beauty once again and silently laughed at her shirt that had revealed itself when her robe opened. It said, “I was abducted by aliens, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
If only she had a clue.
He kissed her exposed neck and she stirred.
“Wake up, beautiful,” he said quietly.
She groaned, flipped to her back, and turned her head into him, resting it on his chest, but she didn’t wake.
“Abby, if you keep sleeping, you’ll be up all night again.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and a desire hit his spine that nearly buckled his brain to incoherency.
He bent down and kissed her, and she responded by kissing him back. Then her hand crept slowly, tentatively, around his neck.
He loved kissing Abby. He loved her taste, the way her mouth moved, and . . . ah, yes . . . there was that tongue. He brought his hand to her cheek and ran it through her hair.
He wanted to devour her. Literally start at the top of her head and taste every inch of her. He longed to feel the taste of her breasts, her stomach, even her toes. But he felt the vibration in his body as he kissed her. He didn’t know if he was glowing or not, but he couldn’t let his SR44 form go. As pictures of the crime scene in Lovelock swam through is brain, his resolve hardened. He knew deep within him that Abby wasn’t just a body he wanted to know. After his beat-down on Hudson, he had realized that he did indeed have strong feelings for Abby. Feeling he shouldn’t have for her, feelings he couldn’t have for her.
He closed his eyes and held her close. He wanted to scream at the sheer torture of the two halves that warred within him. He liked being with Abby. He liked the way he felt when he was with her.
Yet, his warrior side couldn’t allow him to give in to the feeling. He had too much to do on this planet. Whether he went home or not was irrelevant.
But he felt such a peace, such a pleasure being with her.
There had to be a way to make it work with her. Had to be. A way that he could hold a small part of himself back so they could be together, and he could continue to hold on to his SR44 form.
He idly wondered again what Abby would think if she knew she had a being from another planet wrapped around her.
He looked out through the filmy curtains: he would have about an hour before his eyes began to glow. Frustration boiled within him, and the old self-hatred started to rage.
He clamped down on it and held Abby tighter.
“I like your shirt,” he whispered in her ear.
She looked down as if she were uncertain what shirt he was talking about. Then she laughed softly, but didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Do you think there are . . . others out there?”
Noah felt his heart stop for a second and reminded himself that she didn’t know what he was. He cleared his throat. Did he say yes and risk her thinking him a whack-job? Did he say no and negate his own race and all the other species he knew for a fact lived in this vast universe?
No, negative on both. He did what he did best. He answered her question with one of his own. “What do you think, Abby?”
She was silent for a few minutes, as if she was having her own internal debate on how to answer the question without sounding like she was two steps away from crazy. He remained quiet.
“Well,” she began hesitantly, “I think it would be very vain, very . . . ignorant, to think that us humans were the only ones in this universe.”
A smile crept to his lips that threatened to turn into a full shit-eating grin. He was glad she was facing away from him.
“I agree,” he said into her hair. “I agree.”
They lay in silence, watching the images of Rambo flicker on the TV. Apparently, Abby had put it on mute before falling asleep.
Noah watched the sun make its way down the sky at far too fast a pace for his liking.
When he knew he had about fifteen minutes before the glow in his eyes began, he started to get up.
“No,” Abby said, grabbing his hand and holding it to her waist. “Don’t leave yet.”
And the war raged on within him. Stay? You betcha. Just lie down, snuggle in close, and the hell with everything and everyone. Abby was all that mattered. When his eyes started glowing, he would tell her what he was, where he was from, what he was doing here. She would smile, say she was happy she had met someone from another species, and life would be puppy kisses and chocolate.
Get your ass off the couch, NOW, warrior! Yeah. Right. The Colonists. Revenge. Protecting the human race from his own people. His duty. His pride. His life. Right on it.
“Gotta go, baby,” he said while disengaging himself from her grasp.
When he was hovering above her on the couch, he met her big, brown eyes. She took his breath away, and he couldn’t move. At that point, he was lost. He would do just about anything Abby asked of him.
Her hair was a tangled mess, her under eyes slightly bruised from being tired and doing a lot of nothing all day long. Her robe was now fully open, revealing her nightshirt. He noticed the way it rode up to the top of her thighs.
She put her hands on each side of his face and gently pulled him down on top of her.
As he let his weight settle and his lips meet hers, he was pretty certain there wasn’t a better way to spend his time than being with Abby. He loved the feeling of her under him, and when her hands went to his back, then traced up his spine, his cock took on a whole new meaning of hard. When her hands went under his shirt and her skin met his, he knew he was in trouble. Big trouble. Time to disentangle and get moving, no matter how difficult. Honestly, he wondered if he had ever done anything more difficult in his life. He briefly thought of the boy in the ranch house in Texas. The decision not to kill the evil spawn had been difficult, but as far as “stuff-that’s-hard-to-do,” that had nothing on getting up and leaving Abby.
“Abby, I need to go,” he said, as he lifted himself off her. “As much as it fucking kills me, I need to go.”
He stood up and planted his feet on the floor. He glanced outside and guessed he had just under ten minutes before his eyes turned. Wasn’t he just as accurate as the world time clock.
“Is there someone else?” she asked quietly.
Noah turned to her, surprised by her question simply because there had literally been no other for two hundred and twelve years. She was sitting up on the couch, her brown eyes imploring him for the truth.
“Of course not,” he said, confused.
“Then why do you leave at night?”
Because my fucking eyes light up like someone stuck a blowtorch up my ass. Because I’m not from Earth. Because I know that if I stayed here with you, I would love nothing more than to make love to you, to explore every inch of your body, over and over again. To kiss your nipples, your lips, your neck. To run my hand down your naked hip to your thigh. To hear you call my name as you orgasm again and again. If I did that, I would become fully human and not be able to complete the mission I was sent here to do. I would lose the only thing I have left—my pride. I don’t have a home, I’m not among my own people, and I’m failing at my mission. I can’t allow myself to fail because I have my pride.
He went to the couch, got down on his knees, and took her hands. “Abby, I don’t want to leave, but I need to. I swear to you on my life that it’s just work stuff. There hasn’t been anyone but you in . . . a long time. It’s all you, honey.”
She searched his face, and he hoped he was conveying the honesty he meant. God knew he was telling the truth, but not why he needed to leave. He was terribly aware of the minutes ticking away, like Big Ben was knocking around in his brain.
After a moment, she nodded. “Okay,” she said, and she ran her hand over his cheek. “All I ask is for your honesty.”
He felt guilt wash through him, but did his best to hi
de it. “Always, Abby,” he whispered. He kissed her briefly, stood up, and reminded her to lock her door after he left.
Chapter 25
The Colonist watched as one of the Six Saviors left his next victim’s house. Well, one of his next victims. He had nothing to do but wander the streets and pick victims now that Abby had wronged him. He had three victims in the hopper right now that he was studying and observing. He was, as the police would say, escalating.
He wondered if dear Abby knew she was messing around with another being. Not just another body, but a being. He doubted it. He had always thought of her as stupid.
He watched the Warrior leave her house from the shadow of a tree across the street.
When he first noticed the Warrior a few hours ago through the big picture window with the sheer curtains, he had second thoughts on whether or not he should pursue her. But after mulling it over for a bit, he came to the conclusion that this kill could most likely be the most satisfying of his whole time here on Earth. He had watched them on the couch kissing and feeling each other’s bodies. He felt sick to his stomach watching them, but then decided that maybe he was missing something about Abby. He had never thought of her as attractive, but he decided he would do a little kissing and feeling before he killed her. He wanted to see what this Warrior got out of it, and what he was supposedly missing.
As he stood by the tree across the street watching her through the big picture window, he wanted nothing more than to kill her now. He would have to be patient, though. All of her neighbors were home. He would have to hunker down and wait until she came home from work for lunch like his original plan called for. She would be the only one home, and he could spend some time with her.
No, he couldn’t wait to see what was so special about all the kissing and feeling of Abby.
Chapter 26
After Noah left, Abby paced her apartment. Again. Why did he cause her to pace so much? Maybe because there were a few unanswered questions. When she was away from him, there were more than a few of those.
Like why she didn’t see him at night.
Why he didn’t talk about himself, but always steered the questions back to her. She went to the small kitchen and pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay, popped the cork, and poured herself a big glass.
She flopped back down on the couch, curled up under the blanket they’d shared earlier, and closed her eyes despite the rest she had gotten in the afternoon.
Noah was a puzzle.
She just couldn’t get past the way he dazzled her, blinding her when they were together, but left her eyesight clearer when she was alone, wondering who he was. She had remembered that feeling from their brief time six weeks ago. What did she really know about him? She knew he lived in Fernley, and that he was some type of murder investigator-profiler. She knew nothing about his family, where he was born, his past.
But when they were together, it seemed that none of it mattered because of the feeling she got when she was with him. As strange as it sounded, she felt like she was home. Like they were one in the same.
She barely remembered having a home when her mother was alive, but she did remember the feeling. It was a feeling a safety and belonging. Of being comfortable of who you were when you were there. A feeling of contentment. A certainty that she was okay, and Noah felt she was okay as well.
She took a long pull from her glass and stared at the floor, thinking about the first time she had met Noah, and how she had been so certain that she knew him from somewhere, but simply couldn’t place him.
She felt something coming up from her subconscious. Her heart began to pound, and she felt like her breathing had stopped. She did know him, and she finally knew from where.
She flew from the couch and ran to her room. She pulled out her box of unsolved murder files.
Shifting through them quickly, she finally found it. At the bottom of the box, she saw her mother’s murder file. She had slapped a couple hundred bucks down for a copy, but somehow the cop ended up giving her the original. She lifted it out with shaky hands. She hadn’t looked at the file in a long time.
She opened the yellowing folder and scanned the reports. She had been through this file a thousand times, maybe more.
Her mother had been found in the kitchen, her throat slit. It was as if everything in the room had been wiped down. There weren’t any fingerprints anywhere—not on the knobs of the kitchen cabinets, the old Formica counters, or any of the doors or windows. There hadn’t been any signs of forced entry, so the police had looked at everyone her mother knew, which was a lot of people. Her mother had loved everyone she met, loved to laugh and was very popular, but she had only dated every now and then.
She looked at the crime scene photos and felt her heart trying to make an escape out of her chest. She was certain she was about to discover something big. She skipped over the close-up pictures of her mother, but studied the other pictures of the murder scene. Her eyes wandered to the outside focal point of the pictures, looking at the people and things that made up the background. She scanned the faces of the people inside the house. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she continued to scrutinize everything.
The second-to-last photo was taken from the doorway to the house looking outside to the street. Again, she looked at the peripheral of the picture. Her heart skipped a beat, and she gasped. There stood Noah talking to one of the police officers. She was certain of it. He dressed a little differently, but it was a different time, a different era. The eighties weren’t kind to anyone. But there wasn’t mistaking his huge frame and dark hair. He didn’t look a day older than he did now. But that was impossible—that would put him at . . . what? If he was thirty, or thereabouts, and her mother had died when she was just shy of ten, which was about twenty years ago, that would put him at fifty today. There was no way that man was fifty. Simply no way.
She set the picture down and stared at the wall, trying to come up with an explanation. Could it be his father? Maybe an uncle? Older brother? She picked up the photo again, making sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.
No, she was certain of what she was seeing.
She threw down the picture, got up off the bed, and took another long swig of wine, her hand shaking. Thinking about Noah, her mother, and the feeling of being home had finally dislodged the answer of where she knew him.
Yes, she had questions about Noah, but now she was determined to get some answers. There had to be a reasonable explanation of why he was at her mother’s murder scene twenty years ago, not looking a day older than he did today. Maybe it was something simple, like he had a really good plastic surgeon or something.
She found her cell phone in the kitchen and dialed his number. When he answered, she asked if he could stop by sometime tomorrow afternoon. They agreed on 4:00 p.m.
Abby stood in the middle of her kitchen staring at the phone. She took another gulp of wine. A large clap of thunder boomed, and lightning lit up the night sky. She jumped and looked out the window. Lightning flashed again, and she swore she saw a man standing by a tree across the street looking at her. Fear iced her heart, and she froze in the kitchen, staring out the big picture window, but not seeing anything.
Another boom of thunder, and the power went out. Neptune began hissing out the window, then growling. Another clap of lightning, but this time she didn’t see anyone outside staring back at her.
She let out a long, slow breath as she tried to calm her nerves and downed the rest of her wine. Her feet were finally able to move, so she took a couple of steps and found the kitchen counter. She set her glass down and felt around until she found the drawer that contained the flashlight. Praying the batteries hadn’t gone bad, she flicked it on and swung the beam around her living room. She hurried to the front door to make sure it was locked.
The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, and goose bumps ran up her arms. For the first time since she had moved in, she wished she had thicker curtains on the huge window. Ac
tually, she wished she could just slap a big piece of plywood over the thing. She had never felt uneasy with the big window before, but the past couple of nights she really wished she lived in a place where she didn’t feel so exposed.
She made her way to the bedroom and crawled under the sheets. After a while Neptune joined her.
She thought of the man she saw standing outside. Or maybe she hadn’t seen a man at all. Maybe it was a trick with the lightning and shadows.
The storm finally died down, and she listened to the rain hit the street outside. She had a feeling she was in for another long night.
Chapter 27
Noah whistled as he drove to Abby’s place. He and Hudson had just come from a meeting in Carson City with the sheriff about the murder over there. After comparing the photographs from that murder with the ones from the murder in Lovelock, Noah was pretty certain it was the same killer. And he was certain it was a Colonist because of the ash footprint they had found. It bothered him that the murders were so close together time-wise, and he feared that the Colonist was escalating. This was good and bad. It was good because they had a better chance to get him simply because he would make mistakes. It was bad because more people would lose their lives.
He pushed that all into the back of his mind. He didn’t want to think about death. He wanted to think about wrapping his arms around Abby, feeling her soft curves, and kissing and touching her soft skin. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.
He had given a lot of thought the previous night to just how far he could physically go with Abby. He felt he could hold his SR44 form within him. Well, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure that happened. He would just take it slow.
Baby steps.
He pulled up to the house and jumped out of the Escalade. “I’ll call you when I’m ready for a pick-up,” he said to Hudson.
“No worries. I’m sure I’ll find something to do.” Noah had a feeling that something meant one of the many women Hudson kept in touch with.