After pulling on a tank top, fresh underwear, and some yoga pants, I went back over to the bed and smiled at Grayson, who had pulled up the sheet to cover himself but who otherwise didn’t seem to have moved much.
“Did I wear you out?” I teased.
He appeared to consider my question seriously. “No, I don’t think so. But I think I might be hungry.”
“Well, we can fix that. But I really need to walk Gort. It sounds as if the rain is letting up.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
For a second or two, I considered it. Gort seemed to love Grayson, and I’d always wanted to share that intimacy with someone someday — to bond over the dog, to make it seem as if we were a family. But with Felicia Martinez doing her Gladys Kravitz impersonation next door, it would probably be better if I went on my own.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re just going to do a quickie around the block. But when I get back, we can order pizza, if that sounds good to you.”
“Sounds great.”
It sounded great to me, too. The afternoon in Jerome had been wonderful — magical, almost — but now I was home, I only wanted to cocoon and have someone bring the food to me.
“Back in a few,” I promised.
Gort was already waiting for me in the kitchen, his luxuriant tail beating on the Saltillo tile floor.
“Okay, Gort,” I told him, “but if the skies open up again, we’re running for home. So poop early and poop often, all right?”
A doggy smile, and he was on his feet, standing at attention as I got out his harness and fastened it around him. I detoured briefly to grab my cell phone out of my purse — I’d been completely distracted up in Jerome and hadn’t looked at it once, so I thought I’d better check to see if I’d gotten any messages. Then we were off.
The air always smelled wonderful after one of those rain showers, redolent of pungent juniper and sun-warmed rock. I breathed in deeply as Gort bounded ahead, pulling at the leash just enough that I had to quicken my pace to keep up with him. It was only when he stopped to sniff a promising patch of gravel in a neighbor’s front yard that I had time to pull the cell phone out of my pocket and take a look at it.
Three messages. Not too bad, all things considered. Briefly, I wondered if one of those messages might be from Lance, and then decided I really shouldn’t be going there right now. Not after what had just happened between Grayson and me.
However, when I looked at the “recents” screen on my iPhone, none of the numbers were Lance’s. One was an 800 number, which meant it was probably some kind of junk call; one had a Sedona prefix, though I didn’t recognize the number itself; and the third was from Kiki. She’d called a little after five-thirty, probably right around the time Grayson and I were getting pelted with rain on 89A.
After wedging the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could pick up Gort’s business with the plastic bag I’d brought along, I listened to Kiki’s message.
“Hey, Kara,” Kiki’s voice bubbled in my ear, “Jeff’s showing me all kinds of really great stuff. Seph and Paul just headed off to the wedding, so I’m not planning on hearing much from them for the rest of the night. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to stay here in L.A. for a few more days after they head home. Jeff already said he’d drive me back to Sedona — probably on Thursday or Friday.”
I permitted myself an eye roll as I followed Gort around the corner. He’d somehow gotten the vibe from me that I wanted to stay in the housing tract instead of heading out onto the wilderness paths as we often did, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try to maximize his walk. A quick glance upward told me the rain seemed to be holding off for the moment. Still, I could smell it on the air. This storm wasn’t done with us yet.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know what’s going on. I’ll let Seph and Paul know tomorrow — I have a feeling they’re going to be back late tonight. Hope everything’s going well over there, and I’ll try you again sometime in the morning. Hugs!”
The message ended, and I reeled Gort back in a bit. I’d just felt the first few raindrops hit my bare arms, so the time for leisurely sniffing was over. He gave a little shake but obediently moved in closer to me and pointed his nose toward home.
What was I supposed to think about Kiki extending her stay in Los Angeles? Not much, frankly, but in one way, I was almost relieved. I hadn’t really looked forward to Kiki intruding on my idyll with Grayson, to be perfectly honest. Maybe there was a way to explain the situation so it didn’t sound completely insane, but I hadn’t thought of it yet.
As for this possibly developing relationship with Jeff Makowski…well, I was less than thrilled about that, too. I didn’t care how brilliant he was. He didn’t seem like the right person for my sister. On top of that, Jeff Makowski was definitely not the sort of person you wanted pissed off at you. One bad breakup, and you could find yourself with a heinous credit report and a rash of unpaid parking tickets…or worse.
On the other hand, I mused, brightening slightly as Gort and I headed up the walk toward the front door, if Jeff Makowski screwed around with Kiki, Lance would probably break the computer hacker over his knee and bury him in some forgotten canyon somewhere. Lance could be a prickly sort — Persephone had more than once compared him to a cactus — but he was someone you could trust to have your back.
Not that it would come to that. One of these days, maybe I’d learn to stop borrowing trouble. Most likely what would happen was that Jeff would suffer some sort of unrequited angsty lust for Kiki, an attraction she wouldn’t reciprocate, and then he’d go off to brood over the latest conspiracy theory on his favorite website. Kiki was awfully good at getting guys to fall for her, but so far I had yet to see any deep involvement on her side. Sure, she cared for her boyfriends, but she never exhibited any of the signs of being crazy nuts in love. Maybe that was a good thing.
At least you couldn’t get your heart broken that way.
Grayson was dressed by the time I got back. Gort went bounding over to him, tail wagging, and Grayson bent down to give the dog a good scratching behind the ears.
“He feels a little wet.”
“Yeah — it’s trying to rain again. Good thing we decided to order in. So, what do you like on your pizza? Please don’t say anchovies.”
He got that puzzled look again on his face, the one that seemed to indicate he realized he was supposed to know the answer to a question but didn’t. “What’s an anchovy?”
“A horribly salty little fish thingy people put on pizza.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Good question.” I wandered into the kitchen and picked up the phone; I’d kept my grandfather’s land line more out of nostalgia than anything else. But conveniently, the phone had Moon Dog Pizza on speed dial, so I pressed #3 and waited. In the meantime, I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said, “I’ll get us some pepperoni. It’s hard to go wrong with that — and it’s pretty obvious you aren’t a vegetarian.”
A grin was Grayson’s only reply.
I placed the order and hung up, then asked, “Want to pop open that bottle of wine?”
“Sure.”
My bag was sitting on the kitchen table. I extricated the wine and dug through the utensil drawer, trying to locate a corkscrew, scolding myself for the umpteenth time about not putting the corkscrew in a separate drawer so it would be easier to find. At last, I dug it out and brandished it with an air of triumph.
“Do you want me to do that?” Grayson asked, having watched the previous procedure with an air of bemusement.
“Do you know how?”
After appearing to think it over for a few seconds, he replied, “I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’d rather have you experiment on something a little less special, if that’s okay.”
Even as I said the words, I realized maybe they sounded a little harsh. Maybe I should have just let him try. I didn’t want to offend him or make him think I didn’t have confidence in him. But he hadn’t sounded certain, unlike his conviction that he could ride a motorcycle just fine.
But he didn’t appear to have taken offense. “You’re probably right. I’d hate to break off a cork in there or something.”
I smiled. “Okay.” Wow, he really is that nice….
Soon afterward, the cork had been safely removed, and we relocated to the living room with the bottle and a couple of glasses in tow. I wasn’t sure what the proprietor of the wine tasting room would think about the two of us drinking his proprietary blend accompanied by pepperoni pizza rather than something a little more exalted, but then again, Moon Dog’s pizza wasn’t exactly supermarket frozen-case stuff, either.
We settled down on the couch with the wine. Outside, the rain began to beat down heavily once again. With it the temperature dropped, enough so the air conditioning clicked itself off. Too bad it hadn’t truly cooled down enough so I could start a fire in the hearth, but weather that accommodating wouldn’t be along for a few more months.
Still, it was cozy enough in here, with just the one lamp on its lowest setting and Gort curled up a few feet away on the rug. While we were still in the kitchen, it had seemed easier to keep Grayson at arm’s length, to act casual, as if nothing of any real import had happened between us, but now that he sat next to me on the couch, so close I thought I could smell the scent of shampoo in his damp hair and feel the heat coming off his body, it was a lot harder to act cool and collected.
“So,” I said, after allowing myself a bracing swallow of wine, “anything ‘click’ while we were out riding around?”
“‘Click’?” he repeated.
“You know…look familiar. Maybe on the road out toward Cottonwood?”
He appeared to mull over my question, tanned fingers wrapped around the stem of his wine glass. Then came a reluctant shake of the head. “No. Not really.”
Well, I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. “Then I think you should see my friend Janelle. She’s done some amazing stuff with helping people retrieve lost memories. It’s not all past-life regressions and telling people they were Napoleon or Cleopatra or something.”
By that point, I was used to the expression of confusion that would flit across Grayson’s features any time I brought up something he didn’t understand, but it still unnerved me a little. Could he really not remember famous historical figures like Cleopatra and Napoleon? How he could have lost such fundamental knowledge, yet still be able to maneuver a bike up a curvy canyon road as if he did so every day?
It was a puzzle I couldn’t begin to unravel. Maybe Janelle would have better luck.
“You can call her, if you want,” Grayson said. “I guess I keep hoping that my memories will start to come back on their own, but maybe that’s the wrong way to go about it. It’s been several days, and still nothing.”
I nodded. Janelle didn’t work on Saturday evenings, of course, but from time to time, she’d see a client on a Sunday if it was a special case. If we were lucky, she might even be able to work with Grayson the next day.
“Just a quick call,” I promised. “Let me get my wallet in case the guy with the pizza shows up while I’m on the phone.” If I’d been thinking, I would have brought it in with me already. At least it only took a short minute to retrieve the wallet from my purse and then, after thinking about it for a second, pull out a twenty and a five and leave them on the coffee table. “That’s enough to pay for the pizza and the tip.”
“Got it.”
That handled, I went back into the kitchen so I could make the call. Of course, Janelle wasn’t on speed dial, but the phone table drawer contained stacks of business cards, and the hypnotherapist’s was in there somewhere. After sorting through the cards for a minute, I located the one I was looking for and dialed the number. On a Saturday night, I expected to get Janelle’s voicemail, but the phone picked up on the second ring.
“Janelle Russo.”
“Oh — hey, Janelle, it’s Kara.” Since there wasn’t any way to put it without sounding like an imposition, I just plowed ahead. “I know it’s the weekend and everything, but I was wondering if there was any chance you could see a friend of mine tomorrow.”
“A friend?” Janelle paused. There were indistinct sounds of people talking all around her, so I guessed she must be someplace public — maybe a restaurant. It was almost seven on a Saturday night, after all. “My day’s pretty open, actually. We’d been thinking about going hiking, but with the weather so unsettled, we called it off. So sure. What’s the session for? Past-life?”
“Actually, no. I’ve got someone who’s experienced complete amnesia — he can’t remember his name or anything about his past. I was hoping you might be able to help.”
Janelle’s tone sharpened slightly. “Was it caused by some sort of trauma? Because if that’s the case, he really should be seeking medical attention.”
“There might have been trauma, but he doesn’t remember it. He looks fine now. “ Really fine, I added mentally, recalling just how amazing his body looked once there weren’t any clothes to conceal those muscles or that flat stomach.
“You’re sure.”
“As sure as I can be. Really, he’s got no bumps or bruises, nothing to show what — if anything — caused the memory loss.”
“Well, I’ll admit the case sounds a little intriguing. At least it’ll be a break from having people find out they were sixteenth-century Flemish peasants instead of Alexander the Great.”
I had to chuckle at that remark. “I hear you. So what time would be good for you?”
“How about eleven?”
“Great. We’ll be there.”
We exchanged a few more bits of chitchat before we said our goodbyes and hung up. One thing resolved, anyway. Or maybe not. Who knew what can of worms we were going to open up when Janelle put Grayson under?
The smell of pepperoni pizza greeted me as I returned to the living room. Gort had moved a few feet closer to the coffee table and was shifting his gaze from the unopened pizza box to Grayson and back again. The dog knew he wasn’t supposed to have pizza, but he probably was trying to figure out whether Grayson would be a softer touch than his mistress.
“Thanks for waiting,” I said, plopping myself back down on the sofa and reaching for the pizza. Good thing the delivery guy had left some paper plates along with the food, because I’d completely forgotten to get any plates while I was in the kitchen.
Grayson didn’t do the same, however. He remained where he was, looking at the pizza with an odd expression on his face. For a few seconds, he didn’t say anything. Then, finally, “I’m taking advantage of you.”
“What?” I replied. Actually, it came out more as “wha,” since my mouth was full. I swallowed, grabbed my glass of wine, and washed the taste of pepperoni from my mouth. “What are you talking about?”
He gestured toward the pizza. “This food. This whole day, really. You gave me a place to stay, tried to help me, and now you’re spending all this money — ”
So it had been bothering him. I set down my half-eaten slice of pizza and turned toward him, stared up into those eyes, which in the dimmer light of the living room looked like cloudy jade. “It’s okay, Grayson. It’s not as if I can’t afford it. Besides, you fixed Grandpa’s Indian. I’d say you’ve more than earned your keep, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“But — “
“But nothing. You don’t need to stress about it. If it bothers you so much, I’ll make you wash the dishes.”
“These dishes are made of paper.”
I grinned. “Okay, you got me. Guess I’ll have to take it out in trade.” And I leaned forward and kissed him, kissed him thoroughly enough that for a while, neither one of us thought about much of anything else.
Luckily, the pizza wasn’t quite cold by the time we got back to it.
Lance
He returned to his condo, not because he considered it any sort of particular refuge, but mostly because he couldn’t think of where else to go. Barhopping didn’t sound remotely appealing. What else was he supposed to do? Go to a movie by himself? Drop in on the wine and cheese mixer the local MUFON group was having down at Barbara’s house in the Village of Oak Creek?
Not bloody likely.
Instead, he found his thoughts drawn north and west, to the facility out in Secret Canyon that once had housed alien/human hybrid soldiers, alien-infected humans, and the men and women who were either too corrupt, too stupid, or too scared to do anything except what their alien overlords told them to do. Persephone had said she hadn’t picked up any vibes from the place since she’d blasted the whole kit and caboodle of them out of existence. Maybe so, but that UFO the other night hadn’t exactly acted as if it was out on some sort of pleasure cruise.
He didn’t like to talk about his time with Project Aurora, partly because describing his experiences there was like trying to describe the color blue to someone who’d been blind since birth, and partly because he just wanted to put that period of his life behind him. Most people — when they thought about it at all — didn’t believe such a thing as remote viewing was even possible, and thought the Army had been funneling money into a bogus program that was yet another spectacular waste of taxpayer dollars.
But it had been real. And he’d been good at it.
Too good, some people had thought. Well, maybe so. Because he’d seen things he wasn’t supposed to…and the base at Secret Canyon was one of them.
For all he knew, it could have been what brought him here to Sedona in the first place. Remote viewing wasn’t like looking at Google maps or something; just because he could visualize a place didn’t mean he knew exactly where it was located. But after he’d left the service, and after Natalie was dead, he’d drifted this way and that, moving westward, until one day he drove up Interstate 17, took the turn-off for Sedona, and saw the red rocks for the first time…and realized he’d come home.
The condo was a bank foreclosure, and he’d gotten a good deal on it. Money wasn’t a problem, as long as he didn’t get too extravagant. Maybe the Army looked on his generous pension as a leash, a way of keeping him quiet. Keep your mouth shut, keep collecting the checks.
Joke was on them. The NSA might have some damn good analysts and programmers, but Jeff Makowski could run rings around them in his sleep. So far, no one had yet figured out that some of the leaks of information the government would have preferred never saw the light of day had come straight from Lance, encrypted ten ways from Sunday, thanks to Jeff’s code-writing skills.
Now, though, Lance thought it might be time to bend his own thoughts toward Secret Canyon, to see if he could discover anything there. It would have been better to have Persephone here — the woman could be annoying sometimes, with her smart-aleck attitude, but she hadn’t steered them wrong the last time. Her instincts were good. Clairsentient rather than clairvoyant, was how she liked to put it. Meaning she knew things without knowing how she knew them, but she couldn’t necessarily always see them the way Lance did.
He’d always worked best seated in a chair, so he pulled out one of the hard-backed little jobs from his dinette set and placed it in the dead center of the living room carpet. Right then, he was just trying a little fact-finding; he wouldn’t bother with the notepad and pencil. Time for that later…if he had any success on this go-round.
Eyes shut, he placed his hands palm down on his knees and waited. Sometimes, it took a while to come to him, especially if he hadn’t attempted a viewing for weeks or even months. But he couldn’t be impatient. He couldn’t be anything except an empty vessel, waiting for the visions to come.
That wasn’t exactly the right way to think of the process, but it was close enough. Maybe it was more like slowly scanning across radio bands and waiting for one to come in clearly amidst all the static. The one thing he needed was to be completely blank, to shut out everything around him.
Including the unwelcome vision of Kara on the back of her grandfather’s Indian Chief, arms wrapped around some muscle-bound character in a tight-fitting black T-shirt. The guy was wearing a helmet, so Lance couldn’t see his face. Not that it mattered. Mrs. Martinez had already stated that the guy was muy caliente.
No. He couldn’t do anything about any of that. It was not his problem. Time to focus on something else.
The darkness and stillness in his mind were always the precursors to the viewings. He had to get to that headspace before anything else could happen. Somehow, he managed to get there, to let go of everything in and around him so he could do what needed to be done.
Outside, it was full dark, but levels below the ground, the base blazed with light. This was an easier viewing than many because he’d already been there; his mind filled in the details of that which was known and concentrated instead on what had changed.
You’d never know the place had been dead and quiet only a few weeks earlier. Now the corridors were filled with people, many of them the blank-faced hybrids Persephone thought she’d destroyed all those months ago.
Incongruously, a mangled version of the old slogan from a potato chip commercial surfaced in his mind. Kill all you want…we’ll just make more!
He gave the slightest of head shakes. Focus…he needed to focus, because even that stray thought had caused the scene in his mind to waver, like a television picture broken up with static.
It wasn’t just the hybrids, though. He also saw people who looked human but whose movements and expressions told him they’d been taken over by aliens. So maybe the grand plan to enslave a good chunk of the world’s population had failed, but obviously the aliens were still acquiring puppets as the need took them.
And then he saw…others. Aliens in their true forms, with no need to hide or dissemble, which meant that no actual humans existed at the base. And that meant….
Nothing good. Previously, there had been some sort of agreement between the aliens and certain corrupt members of the government, but if the base was all aliens, all the time, then most likely even the compromised humans were being kept in the dark.
What were the aliens plotting? He had no idea, could tell nothing from the shapes, both human and inhuman, walking to and fro within the base’s corridors. They moved quickly, as if intent on some purpose, but what that purpose was, he didn’t know.
Don’t get frustrated. Just observe.
Easy to say. Not so easy to do. He had to let the images come to him, couldn’t force them or try to make them go someplace else. It would have been better to see inside one of the labs, or even the motor pool. Any place but these interminable hallways.
But as he drew in a deep breath and tried to regain his ragged focus, it dissolved before his eyes. All he could see was the black behind his eyelids, and he knew he’d lost the vision.
“Well, shit,” he said aloud to the empty room, and opened his eyes.
He glanced down at his watch. Nine o’clock. So he’d been out of it for almost an hour and a half. His stomach grumbled, telling him it had been way too long since lunch.
Lance ignored the rumblings and headed instead to the cabinet in the kitchen where he kept his liquor. A shot of Jack went into a glass, and he took it quickly, gulping it down without really tasting it. Some booze was meant for savoring, but not ol’ J.D. That was for when you needed to get your head together real quick.
For a second, he contemplated calling Paul but realized that was a stupid idea. The Olivers were at a wedding in California; most likely, Paul had his phone shut off in order to avoid any uncomfortable interruptions. Besides, they were going to be back the day after tomorrow. The aliens looked busy, but Lance hadn’t gotten the impression that they were ramping up for a final push. There was probably plenty of time to plan a counter-strike before the shit really hit the fan.
Probably.