“You’re from Houston?”
“I am.”
“How long have you lived there?”
“All my life.”
Interesting. I wonder if he ... unlikely. Stupid thought.
“I’ve heard of Dragon Security. They were the ones involved in that Edgar Olsen case a couple of years ago, right?”
“You’ve heard about that?”
“I’m a paranormal researcher, but I live in the real world.”
He smiled, his grin wide and charming. “Of course.”
“Wasn’t the owner’s brother held captive by Olsen for like a year or something?”
“Two years. Peter. He works with us now.”
“Interesting. I’d love to see the color of his aura.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. The man is expecting a child in a few months.”
I smiled, thinking about new life and how it had a way of renewing all the souls around it. Expecting a child was the best thing that could happen to someone who’d been through trauma like that. I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer, thanking the Goddess for his good fortune.
“Is Karma your real name?”
My eyes popped open and I studied his face. “Why? You don’t like it?”
He looked a little flustered for a moment, but then he shrugged. “Just curious.”
Becky arrived then with our meals, setting them carefully in front of each of us as though she’d never seen us a day in her life. “Enjoy,” she said curtly, walking away as quickly as she could.
“Doesn’t appreciate the new tourism?” Kasey asked as he watched her go.
I had to laugh. He had no idea what he was getting himself into.
***
After food, we walked down to the town center where most of the investigators met nightly to discuss the evening’s activities. It was almost always the same thing—we went into the woods near the national forest to look for signs of a UFO—but they felt the need to discuss it anyway, to make sure newcomers knew where they were allowed to be and where they needed to stay back from. I rarely went to those meetings. I preferred to work alone. But it was the best way for Kasey to get to meet everyone all at once.
“That’s Paul Cronie. He fancies himself in charge here.” I pointed into the crowd. “And his wife, Penelope. She and Rosalie didn’t like each other much.” I pointed in another direction. “That’s Willie Mae Watson. She has a similar gift to Rosalie’s, so they didn’t get along well, either.”
I introduced him to others, mostly people who knew Rosalie well from other investigations, people who either loved her or hated her, people who would have paid attention to what she was up to. With me, Kasey had some success in getting people to talk to him. I had them all convinced he was my new tech man. People believed it because Shane, my regular guy, had gone home three days ago to be with his wife while she gave birth to their third child.
“Rosalie went home,” one person told him.
“Rosalie moved on to the sightings in Albuquerque,” someone else said.
But then we talked to Susan Kyle.
“I don’t know where Rosalie went, but I know she was spending a lot of time with that Jake guy.”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t serious.”
“It seemed serious to me,” Susan insisted. “And I saw him go into her room her last night here.”
“Did you?” Kasey asked. “About what time?”
“It was after eleven, because I was trying to sleep and I heard her door slam. I got up and not five minutes later they came out together.”
“You saw them leave together?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure it was the night she disappeared?”
“She didn’t disappear. They went out into the woods to investigate like they’d done every other night.”
“Why weren’t you there that night?” I asked Susan.
She touched her chest. “Asthma was acting up. Damn alien dander!”
I could feel Kasey’s eyes rolling in his mind. He wasn’t terribly impressed with our way of life. Despite the fact, surprisingly enough, he kept an even expression on his face.
“You’re sure they went out to the woods?”
“I heard them talking about it. He was telling her that he had a new instrument he wanted to show her, something so new that no one else here had one like it. Not even Karma.” She gestured to me, a knowing look in her eyes.
“Did you hear them say anything else?”
Susan shrugged. “She told him that she was tired and not sure she wanted to keep investigating here. She was asking him about his home back in New Mexico.”
“She wanted to quit?”
I cleared my throat. “I think she was just tired.”
Kasey glanced at me, but he didn’t say anything. Susan looked at me, too, bright confusion in her eyes. But she inclined her head.
“She was tired. It’d been a long few weeks before that night.”
“How so?”
Susan glanced at me again.
“We had some unusual activities in the woods. Rosalie was feeling the effects of using her gifts so often.”
Kasey inclined his head slightly and thanked Susan. Susan happily moved away, going back to her group of researchers. Kasey grabbed my arm and pulled me back, tugging me to the edge of the park.
“Why do I have the distinct impression you haven’t told me everything?”
“I don’t believe I made any promises to you. I simply implied that I would help you get information from the others.”
“If you know where she is—”
“If I did, I wouldn’t allow you to make waves among these people. I’d simply take you to her.”
“Do you know who this Jake person is?”
I shrugged, not sure how much I was safe in telling him.
“He was new, someone who came in here with some equipment and ingratiated himself into Rosalie’s circle.”
“Does that include you?”
“No. I tend to work alone.”
“But you and Rosalie—”
“Rosalie is special. She works with everyone.”
He stepped back a little, his eyes surveying the people milling around the town center. Then he focused on me again.
“I have no choice but to trust you. But if I find out you’re lying to me ...”
“I wouldn’t do that. Karma is a bitch.”
“Referring to yourself?”
“Referring to the universe, Kasey. You should pay more attention to it.”
He did roll his eyes that time.
“I think if the universe had time to notice me, we’d all be in a shitload of trouble.”
Chapter 4
Hayden
“Someone compromised one of our operatives. I want to know who, how, and why.”
Silence fell over the room, my staff staring at everything but me. Except Waverly. Waverly stared at me like her eyes could bore through me and explain why I no longer chose to spend time in her bed. She wouldn’t ask. But she’d stare at me in meetings until the guilt that already rode me weighed my shoulders down until they ached. She deserved so much better, but I was not the man to give her that.
“One of our safe houses was overrun within hours of our operative arriving there. I want to know how someone could have possibly found out they were there when only a few of us knew.”
Still silence.
I looked right at Waverly as I spoke next. There was no avoiding it. Although I knew exactly how good she was at her job, it was her department that had been compromised, so I had to direct my concerns to her. No matter that everything within me was screaming that this was a betrayal of the highest order, after everything she’d given me without ever asking anything in return.
“I have reason to believe our computer systems were breached. That leads me to believe that someone in the tech department could be behind this.”
Waverly immediately stood up.
“I ran a ful
l diagnostics on the system. Nothing showed up.”
“Then you missed something.” I picked up a file folder I’d had in front of me from the moment I walked into this meeting. I passed it across the table to her. My gut clenched at the awareness of what I was about to do to her. “There was a virus in the system that allowed an outside figure access to our files. This is how our operative was compromised.”
Waverly shook her head, the color draining from her face as she read through the file.
“Kevin and his friend could have died that night, and that would have been on us,” I said quietly “We promised to protect him, to help him out of the situation he was in. Instead, we allowed the very criminals he was running from to find him and nearly assassinate him! This is not acceptable!”
“This is ... I don’t know what happened,” Waverly stuttered. “But I will find out.”
“No.” Megan spoke for the first time since the meeting began. “I’m sorry, Waverly, but we’re going to have to bring in an outside source to find out what happened. For the time being, you and your team will be asked to take a paid leave.”
Waverly’s eyes fell on me as Megan spoke. As the co-founder and owner of the business, Megan had every right to do whatever she thought was best. Security was of the upmost importance in a business like this one. It was the right call, however much it felt wrong
And Waverly clearly thought this was my doing.
“Hayden,” she said softly as one of the guards Megan had hired since someone decided to shoot up our lobby came and took her arm.
I couldn’t find any words to respond. To have apologized in front of everybody … yeah, I should have done it, even if I hadn’t made the final call. I should’ve stood up for her. And yet, I didn’t. I couldn’t help but see the disappointment and anger in her eyes.
I forced myself to turn away and to refocus on the others in the room. “All right. I want all of you to cooperate with the computer techs when they arrive and encourage your subordinates to do the same. If you notice anything suspicious, anything out of the usual, report it to either me or Megan. Understood?”
Each person around the conference table nodded in agreement. It was all the department heads, the people who—technically—reported only to Megan. But, as head of operations, I was often their first stop on the way up the ladder.
Megan touched my arm as the others began to file out. I glanced at her, but I didn’t like the emotion I saw in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Hayden.”
I didn’t argue with her about my relationship with Waverly. Megan was firmly convinced I was in love, and I’d given up on denying it, even though I knew it was a dead end road.
“I don’t think it was Waverly.”
“But you don’t know that,” Megan pointed out. “It’s not permanent, Hayden. Just until we figure out what actually happened.”
I studied Megan’s face for a moment. She was the only one who truly appreciated the loss I suffered when Sam died and who knew me almost as well as Sam had.
But that didn’t mean she knew everything.
I made my way back to my office and slammed the door, shutting myself off from everything. I needed a moment to forget what was happening around me.
Someone was targeting me. I couldn’t prove it, but I couldn’t deny it, either. And I couldn’t put the people closest to me in danger. Not again.
I pulled a photograph of Sam out of a drawer where it was hidden behind spare staples and extra pens. She was beautiful, my Sam. She dressed like a nun on vacation, but she had the most intense smile I’d ever seen. So much time wasted ...
If I’d simply gotten over myself and asked her out the first time I saw her, we would have had more than just a few weeks together. We would have been married, and maybe I would have known about her heart issues and could have found a way to keep her healthy. And maybe she wouldn’t have stepped in front of a bullet in a miscalculated attempt to save me.
Maybe she would be here.
Regrets ... I wasn’t going to have any more. I wasn’t going to fall for some girl, wasn’t going to put myself in a position to lose something that amazing again. And now that there was some insane person reenacting my parents’ deaths in the towns where I’d lived ... what happened when they made their way to Houston? What would happen to the people I cared about?
If there wasn’t anyone I cared about, there was no one to lose.
I touched Sam’s face, but it was Waverly’s I saw, along with the hurt and disappointment in her pretty eyes.
I’m sorry ...
Chapter 5
Kasey
I couldn’t believe how far these people took their beliefs. I stood out in the woods for hours, watching them set up computers and cameras and gadgets that looked like things out of an episode of Supernatural, attempting to find proof that aliens had actually visited our planet when no one could even prove that aliens exist. And the conversation? I felt as though I was standing in the middle of a rec room at a mental institution.
“You don’t have to believe to show respect,” Karma whispered near me multiple times.
I finally gave up around two o’clock. Hayden had no idea what he’d gotten me or he never would have sent me here.
I spent some time on my own computer, checking out local police department records, hoping to find a Jane Doe picked up on the side of the road somewhere. I checked as far away as San Francisco and Shasta County, but there was nothing.
Rosalie couldn’t have just walked off the face of the earth.
I pushed the computer away and climbed into the shower, needing to wash away the dirt of the day. I knew Karma knew more than she was telling me. Just her reactions to what people were telling me was enough to suggest she knew all about this Jake guy, that she knew what Rosalie had been up to in the hours before her disappearance, and that she could shed light on everything I didn’t know. But she was holding back.
Why?
The whole damn thing was frustrating, not just because I knew she was lying to me, but because I’d never met anyone quite like her. I didn’t want to like her. She was too much like the eccentrics who populated my extended family. I was pretty sure my grandmother had a distant cousin who dressed just like Karma. And there were a few people in the family who believed in ghosts and voodoo and all that nonsense. Karma would probably fit right in with them.
I didn’t need more crazy in my life. Yet, when I looked at Karma, I couldn’t help the direction of my thoughts. Despite the baggy clothes, the pink in her hair, and the obsession with the supernatural, she was a beautiful woman. And the way she looked at me, especially when she was talking about my aura ... it was sometimes difficult to remember why I was with her.
I got out of the shower and looked myself in the mirror. This was a job. I needed to concentrate on my purpose for being here. There was a missing girl who needed to go home and get back on her meds. That was the mission. I couldn’t afford any distractions.
But then there was a knock on the door and my mind went right back to where it shouldn’t have.
“It’s late,” I said through the crack the safety chain allowed.
“I remembered something I thought we should discuss.”
Her long pink hair was blowing in the slight breeze, Karma looked far more refreshed than she should have been less than an hour before dawn. She glanced over her shoulder, then moved closer to the door.
“Please. I think it might be important.”
I hesitated a second, but then released the chain and let her inside. She didn’t miss the fact that I was standing there in nothing but a towel, her eyes grazing my bulge with undisguised lust before she turned her back to me.
At least I knew the desire wasn’t one-sided.
I grabbed a pair of jeans from my bag and tugged them on, turning back to her as I snapped them closed.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“The scratch on her doorknob. I’ve seen it before.”
“Where?”
She shook her head, her eyes moving over the intricate tattoos on my chest. “Other doors. Other towns.”
“What do you think it means?”
She reluctantly raised her gaze to my face. “I always assumed it meant someone had attempted to break in. The marks ... they resemble the scratch marks someone would leave if they used a pick.”
“You think someone tried to pick Rosalie’s motel room door?”
She turned from me again, moving around the room, her fingers scraping over the table top. One fingertip pressed against the top of my computer before she moved to the bedside, her finger grazing the top of the motel room phone.
“I think Rosalie was a die-hard investigator. I think she honestly believed she had the power to sense and speak to aliens. And I think a lot of people loved her, but there were those who had their problems with her. Particularly people on the outside, people who didn’t understand what we do here.”
“You think someone hurt her.”
“I think I can’t find her on my own.”
This conversation had suddenly taken a turn I wasn’t quite sure I understood. I moved up behind her, blocking her from escaping my attention.
“Tell me the truth. Tell me what’s really going on here.”
She shook her head, her fingers still dancing across the furniture, touching the side table as she tried to avoid looking at me.
“You know what happened to her.”
“No.”
“You know that she didn’t just leave on her own.”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what you know.” I rested my hands on her shoulders, trying to show her I was a friend, not an enemy. “I just want to find her.”
“Rosalie talked about her sister a lot. She said that Rita often tried to stifle her gifts and that she tried to convince her that she was simply insane. She told her that their mother was crazy, too, that it ran in the family. Rita said that if Rosalie didn’t control her illness she would end up like their mother, committing suicide in front of her children like their peace of mind didn’t matter.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to handle a tough situation, but there wasn’t any untruth to it.
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