Bad Vibrations: Book 1 of the Sedona Files (5 page)

P
aul watched
in some bemusement as I met him at the cash register at the Kohl’s in La Verne. “How did you even know this place would be open?”

“My mother never met a sale she didn’t like. I’ve been dragged here more often than I’d like to say.” And thank God for the store’s late hours, and their perpetual discounts. I’d picked up a couple of pairs of jeans and a few tops, as well as a week’s worth of underwear and a pair of flats. No more running from the feds in heels, that was for sure.

I noticed that he’d done the same—that is, I spied some Levi’s and shirts and a couple packages of underwear and socks in the pile he was carrying. No shoes, but as he was already wearing some sturdy-looking lace-ups, he probably didn’t need new ones.

He smiled then. “You are proving to be a valuable resource, Persephone O’Brien.”

Valuable at getting you into trouble, I thought, but I only returned his smile. “And after this a stop at the drugstore for some toothbrushes, and then we should be set.”

A nod, but he didn’t say anything else, because it was his turn to go up to the register. I watched him count his money carefully as he pulled it out of his wallet, and wondered how much cash on hand he really had. The prepaid Visa was probably tied up with the deposit for the rental car, so I guessed he didn’t have enough money to be throwing it around. I hoped he wouldn’t put up too much argument when I tried to pay for the motel. It was the least I could do, considering he wouldn’t even be in this mess if it weren’t for me. That is, I assumed it was because of me, and my connection with Alex Hathaway, the guy with the alien-possessed girlfriend. If they’d really been after Paul and not me, they could have grabbed him at the Sheraton Universal any time they wanted

Luckily, he didn’t protest when I paid for two days in advance. The motel was pretty much as I had remembered it, even though more than fifteen years had passed since the last time I’d set foot in the place. Maybe they’d swapped out the ugly brown and orange bedspreads for marginally better-looking blue and green ones, but the muddy close-pile carpet appeared to be the same, as was the lingering ghost-scent of old cigarettes, even though the room was supposed to be nonsmoking. I’d also made a half-hearted attempt to get us separate rooms, but Paul had only said tersely, “It’s better if we don’t separate,” and I’d sighed and laid down the money for the one room.

When the clerk asked for our names, I’d briefly considered putting us down as Mulder and Scully, then decided that was a bit too obvious. So Harry and LeAnne Smith occupied Room 52, which was luckily at the back of the building and not facing out on Foothill Boulevard, which could get pretty noisy.

I set down my Kohl’s bag and the bag from the drugstore, which held toothbrushes and toothpaste and deodorant and all the other things I knew I couldn’t live without. My beloved Clinique facial products were out of the question, but I knew I could get by with Olay in a pinch. At least the room had two double beds. I didn’t think I was quite up to lying down next to Paul.

He immediately sat at the table by the window, and, after taking a quick peek outside and then drawing the curtains as tightly as he could, brought out the cell phone he’d bought. It must have been charged enough by then, because I saw him pull out the manual, enter a few codes, and then wait.

“Is it working?” I asked.

“Looks like it. I’m going to try texting my contact now.”

“Can’t you just call?”

“He doesn’t believe in phones.”

Lacking any kind of reply to that, I watched as he began tapping out a message with the kind of speed I’d previously only witnessed in preteens at bus stops. Those kids could text. I sidled up behind him and looked over his shoulder so I could see what he was typing.

Lunch tomorrow? What about Pad Thai—I know you liked #2.

What the hell?

“You’re making a lunch date?” I demanded. “That’s what all the secrecy is about?”

“No,” he replied, his tone brusque. “We’ve set up a series of codes. This message lets him know which key to use to decrypt any future ones.”

“Oh,” I said. What was this, the
Bourne Identity
?

Then again, Paul obviously knew a thing or two about flying under the radar, and if he and his “contact” wanted to play spy with their decoder rings, then God bless ’em. “I thought you said this phone couldn’t be traced.”

“Yes, but we don’t know anything about surveillance on his end.”

Once again I couldn’t come up with a coherent response, so I just shrugged and went on into the bathroom, taking the bag of drugstore goodies with me. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about retiring for the night in front of Paul with no makeup on, but I knew my skin would give me grief if I didn’t properly moisturize, so that was that. Reassuring myself that a man who spent his time chasing after little green men probably wouldn’t notice whether I had mascara on or not helped a little.

By the time I emerged from the bathroom, he’d apparently gotten another message. Since he didn’t even bother to look up at me, I felt a little more comfortable about leaning over his shoulder to read the text.

I shouldn’t have bothered. Yes, the letters were familiar, but that was about it. They certainly didn’t form any recognizable words. I saw a few numbers interspersed with the letters, again, in no discernable order.

“You know what that says,” I said, my tone flat.

“Yes, of course.”

“But how are you decrypting it without the key?”

“I do have the key.” Paul closed the phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then rose from his chair. His gaze didn’t flicker as he looked down at me, shiny face and all. I’d bought an oversized T-shirt off the clearance rack to sleep in, guessing that lingerie wasn’t really the order of the day.

At least he didn’t appear dismayed by my complete lack of cosmetics. “So where is it?” I asked, glancing down at the table. Its surface was noticeably clear of notebooks, cocktail napkins, or anything else that could have held such a code key.

“Here.” He tapped his temple.

I realized my mouth was hanging open and quickly shut it. Sure, my toothbrushing had made me minty fresh, but that was no reason for me to stand there and look like a fish dangling from a hook. “You memorized it?”

“Yes. Memorized them, actually. We have five different systems set up, just in case.”

Now, I had never thought of myself as anything less than intelligent. My entire school career had consisted of honors courses, and I’d finished my master’s in eighteen months instead of the standard two years. At the moment, however, I couldn’t help feeling more like one of the kids who always sat in the back of class and ended up taking summer school in order to graduate on time.

However, since making a comment about his intellect seemed as if it would be grossly inappropriate, I settled for remarking, “You two must have a lot of spare time on your hands.”

Another one of those half-smiles. “Enough.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it on the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. “Are you done with the bathroom?”

“Yes.” Maybe it was just my mind playing with me, but I got the distinct impression that he’d been a little dismayed by the length of time I’d spent attending to my nightly ablutions. That was nothing. He’d be in for a real shock if I decided to straighten my hair during any of our tenure together. “So what did it say? Your contact’s message, that is.”

“He’s agreed to meet us tomorrow at eleven. I got the impression that’s early for him.”

“Where?” I had visions of going to some hermit’s basement apartment, but somehow I doubted he’d be all that keen to have us over if he was as paranoid as all his actions so far seemed to suggest.

“Griffith Observatory.”

“Huh?” I crossed my arms and frowned, trying to see the logic in the plan. “Isn’t that awfully public?”

“Precisely.”

Common wisdom did seem to dictate that people were less likely to start shooting up public places. Then again, you’d think with all the cloak-and-dagger behavior, there wouldn’t be much chance of anyone even knowing we were meeting at Griffith Observatory in the first place.

“You do know how to get there, don’t you?” Paul asked, for the first time looking a little worried.

“Oh, sure,” I responded. Thank God his suspicious friend had set our meeting time for eleven; that way we might be able to avoid the worst of the traffic. “Piece of cake.”

“Good.”

And he went off to the bathroom, while I decided it was probably a good idea to climb into bed. I took the one farthest away from the window. If anyone did try to invade our room in the middle of the night, I figured Paul was better-equipped to fend them off than I.

I laid my head on the pillow and shut my eyes, trying very hard not to think about what one of those television investigative report ultraviolet cameras would probably reveal if it were run over the bed. Actually, the sheets did feel and smell clean. It could have been worse.

How, I wasn’t exactly sure. After all, here I was, on the run from some mysterious government agent, on the trail of what might or might not be an alien conspiracy, shacked up with a man I had just met…only not in a good way. No, we might as well have been Ricky and Lucy with our nicely separated double beds. No hanky-panky going on here, that’s for sure.

I heard Paul emerge from the bathroom and cracked an eyelid. Not that I’d really expected him to come waltzing out in his skivvies and nothing else, but you never know. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that I hadn’t noticed in the pile of clothing he’d purchased from Kohl’s. Still, even though he was perfectly covered up, the clothes showed what the sportcoat and khakis had hidden—a flat stomach, arms with a decent amount of muscle, although not the artificial, hyper-attenuated type you saw on guys who spent their entire waking lives at the gym. No, those arms had most likely come from driving fence posts and whatever else the family ranch had demanded of him.

A certain warmth started in my stomach and began to spread lower, and I closed my eyes. Ridiculous. He hadn’t shown the slightest bit of interest in me, and here I was getting all worked up because of the way his arms looked. And his stomach. And his ass, to be perfectly honest.

Oy
.

A creak of bedsprings, and then he said, “All right if I turn off the lights?”

“Fine,” I mumbled.

He seemed to hesitate, but then a few seconds later the room went dark. From a few feet away I heard the sound of sheets rustling as he apparently attempted to find a comfortable spot. “Good night, Persephone.”

“Good night, Paul,” I answered, and hoped I sounded reasonably normal.

A silence fell, only occasionally broken by the sound of the traffic from Foothill Boulevard. I wondered if he were listening, trying to gauge whether I was asleep or not. If only. As tired as I was, sleep seemed very far away at that moment. After all, what if he snored?

What if
I
snored?

His voice came to me, calm and reassuring in the darkness. “We’re perfectly safe here. The best thing we can do is get a good night’s sleep. After all, we don’t know what we’re going to face tomorrow.”

As comments went, it wasn’t the sort to exactly inspire restful sleep, but somehow I found I didn’t mind so much. I made a mumbled sound of affirmation and rolled over on my side. If the aliens or feds or whomever somehow did find us, I had a feeling Paul could handle it.

All I had to do was keep my libido in check and not blow it. So far, he seemed almost impressed by me. I wanted to keep it that way. The best thing to do now would be to follow his advice and fall asleep.

So I did.

T
o my surprise
, I actually overslept. Paul was already up and showered by the time I staggered out of bed. I guess the excitement of the previous day had taken more out of me than I’d thought. But we still had plenty of time to make our rendezvous, even with having to get breakfast before we set out for Griffith Park.

The day promised to be cooler than it had been earlier in the week, with lowering clouds and spotty drizzle, so I was glad I’d picked up a lightweight blazer from one of the sales racks at Kohl’s. I pulled it a little more tightly around me as we locked the motel room and headed down to the car. We’d already agreed to grab a bite at the Carrow’s down the street from the motel, and there didn’t seem to be much for either of us to say as Paul drove the half-mile to the restaurant.

He ordered coffee, and I ordered tea, and an uneasy little silence fell. I pretended to be absorbed in reading my menu, but I noticed him glancing at his watch and frowning.

“It’s all right,” I said then. “We’ll make it there in plenty of time. It’s actually better if we wait a bit so traffic has time to clear.”

“That’s not it,” he replied, and glanced out the window before focusing back on me. “I was supposed to be giving a lecture right now.”

Oh, damn. I’d almost forgotten that he was out here in Southern California in an official capacity, that he’d essentially bailed out on what had to have been an important gig. “I’m sure if you explained—”

“I already did. I sent the symposium chairman a text while you were in the shower, apologizing but saying that some important personal business had come up. Still, I don’t like reneging on my obligations.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. Probably he hadn’t meant to make me feel guilty, but I couldn’t help the wave of self-reproach that went over me just then. I should have left well enough alone, told Otto to go stuff himself. And just where the hell was Otto, anyway? Nice of him to get me into this mess and then take himself off to another plane of existence. I wished there were some Bureau of Spirit Guides where I could make a complaint and ask for a replacement case worker or something, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“Don’t beat yourself up.” Paul’s tone had gentled a little, as if he’d just realized he might have sounded a bit too harsh. “I wanted to know about this. It’s the timing that’s unfortunate.”

“That’s for sure.” And then I sat up a little straighter, as I suddenly remembered I had my own obligations to deal with. Not as pressing as Paul’s, but I did have two clients coming to see me this afternoon. Thank God it was only two. Fridays were always the lightest days for me.

The waitress showed up then with our drinks, and we placed our orders—steak and eggs for him, a vegetarian omelette for me. Not that I was a vegetarian, but I’d never been big on eating meat in the morning. Obviously Paul, raised on a ranch as he’d been, didn’t have the same scruples.

After she’d left I asked, “Can I borrow your phone?”

“Why?”

I explained about my clients. He listened and nodded, but said, “It’s probably better if you don’t use this phone to contact them. We have no idea whether they’re under surveillance.”

“You don’t think
all
of my clients are under surveillance, do you? That’s a bit much.”

For a second or two he didn’t say anything, but only worked away at customizing his coffee—two little containers of half and half, no sugar. He swirled the resulting toffee-colored liquid with a spoon, and replied, “Persephone, I’m afraid you don’t have a very good idea of what ‘they’re’ capable of.”

I didn’t much like the sound of that…but I also didn’t like his insinuation that I was some innocent who didn’t know what was going on in the world. “Hey, I’ve seen Oliver Stone movies, you know.”

He laughed then, and shook his head. “Not quite the same thing, but point taken. Anyway, I think it’s a better idea if you use a pay phone. They’ll still be able to trace the call back here if they really are tracking your clients, but we should be all right if we keep on the move.”

Oh, that was really reassuring. And a great idea, except in Southern California payphones were about as rare as the El Segundo Blue butterfly, what with everyone defecting to cell phones. But then the waitress came by again, ostensibly to refresh Paul’s coffee, although I got the impression she just wanted to ogle him a bit more. He hadn’t seemed to notice her giving him some serious sidelong glances under her heavily mascaraed lashes, but I sure had. Some territorial instinct made me want to slap the coffee pot right out of her hands, which was just silly. I didn’t have any claim on Paul.

But I managed to keep my tone level as I inquired whether there was a payphone, and it turned out there actually was one, down the hall by the bathrooms. So I excused myself—after the waitress was safely away—and made my calls.

Normally I would have been worried about getting an actual person on the line, but my Friday clients were skittish entertainment industry types who let everything go to voicemail. In the past that behavior had irritated me to no end, although I was certainly glad of it now. At any rate, it was simple enough to leave a message saying I’d had a family emergency come up and that I’d let them know about rescheduling when I could. Not that I expected them to take me up on the offer. Michael Horowitz had his entire life set by clockwork, and if he couldn’t see me at 3:45 sharp on Friday afternoon, well, then, he’d just wait until the next week. And Lindsay MacIlvey probably was so embroiled in meetings that she’d barely notice not being able to come in and see me. Knowing her, she’d simply schedule a few more meetings to fill the gap.

Hollywood types could be exhausting, but they did pay well.

The waitress was loitering at the table when I returned. I practically had to push past her so I could slide into the booth, so I sent her a sideways glare. She pretended not to notice and went on, “Oh, New Mexico? Like, where they have the Grand Canyon and everything?”

I saw Paul wince and guessed I didn’t have to worry about too much competition from the waitress. Not that I could claim to know him all that well, but what little I did know told me he probably didn’t have much patience for ignorance.

“Actually, that’s Arizona,” he said. He looked over at me and asked, “Were you able to make your calls?”

“Yes, thanks.” Some devilish impulse prompted me to add, “You really need to be more careful with your cell phone, dear. We’re not always lucky enough to be someplace where there’s a payphone.”

Both Paul and the waitress caught the “dear,” but whereas she scowled and then mumbled, “I’ll check on your order,” before stalking away, he only grinned and shook his head.

A little glint I hadn’t seen before flickered in his hazel eyes before he said, “Yes, dear,” and picked up his coffee.

I fought back a grin of my own as I reached for a packet of sugar. For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly didn’t feel quite so nervous about the day ahead.

Griffith Park, the site where the Observatory was located, already had cars and people swarming the place when we got there, even though we were a little early and the place wouldn’t officially open for ten more minutes. Still, we managed to snag one of the last parking spaces in the lot at the top of the hill, for which I breathed a secret sigh of relief. You could park farther away on one of the roads leading up to the Observatory, but from any of them it was quite a hike, and my feet were still tired from all the chasing around in heels I’d done the night before.

“So what does this guy look like?” I asked, after we’d locked the car and joined the throngs massing outside the front entrance in anticipation of the doors opening. I’d forgotten how busy the place could be, even on a weekday; schools regularly brought up busloads of students, and today was no exception. I winced a little at the noise emanating from one particularly boisterous group of fifth-graders and tried to remind myself that I’d been that young once.

“I have no idea.”

“What?”

His gaze swept the area briefly before returning to me. “We’ve only communicated through texts and a couple of forums online. I’ve never met him in person.”

“So how do you know he’s who he says he is?” I crossed my arms and made my own quick scan of the crowds around us. No one looked suspicious, or even like a government agent in disguise, but that didn’t mean much…although I guessed the man who had chased us through the parking structure at the Sheraton Universal probably hadn’t disguised himself as a harried elementary-school teacher.

“I suppose I don’t,” Paul replied, but he didn’t appear all that worried. “If this has all been an elaborate ruse to gain my confidence, however, I’ll be surprised.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Up until now, my movements have been very easy to track.” That glint was back in his eyes. “I don’t do much to conceal my activities. I speak at symposiums and conferences. I do book signings. Anyone who wanted to find me or communicate with me really wouldn’t have to go to the elaborate lengths my contact has gone.”

“You wrote a book?” I inquired, a little impressed despite myself.

“You mean you’ve never heard of
Investigating the Unknowable
?”

I shook my head.

“
Intersections of Belief
?”

I lifted my shoulders.

“Oh, well,” he said, in deprecating tones. “They’re quite popular in some circles. At any rate, within the UFO community, I’m fairly well-known. No need for cloak and dagger. A federal agent could have come along and picked me up at any time, which leads me to believe my unseen friend is most definitely not working for the government.”

“So if you’ve never met, how is he going to know who we are?”

“I assume from my book jacket photograph, or the photograph on my website, or—”

Raising my hands in mock surrender, I said, “Okay, okay, get it. You’re a big celebrity.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“Big enough. So where are we supposed to meet, exactly?”

Paul smiled then. A few of the women in our vicinity shot him admiring glances, but he appeared not to notice. If he had been one of the other men of my acquaintance, I probably would have said he affected not to notice, but he truly didn’t seem to realize the effect he had on the female half of the population. Too busy looking for aliens, probably.

He replied to me question by asking another one. “Where else but at the Cafe at the End of the Universe?”

It was far too soon after that omelette to even think of eating anything else, but I did get some iced tea, and Paul bought bottled water so as to justify our taking a table up against one of the bank of windows that gave the café a breathtaking panorama of Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles, and beyond. The overcast had lifted a little, but the breeze coming off the ocean was still brisk.

So soon after opening, the cafe was almost deserted. Later, after people had worked up a thirst from tromping up and down the Observatory’s innumerable stairs, the place would collect quite a crowd. Right then, however, except for a young woman with a laptop and an enormous cup of coffee, and another woman with improbable heels who was nursing a soda and rubbing the ball of a foot, we had the place to ourselves.

A minute ticked by, and then another. I glanced at my watch. The contact was almost ten minutes late.

“What if he doesn’t come?” I asked.

“Then I suppose I can take you to a planetarium show,” Paul replied imperturbably.

“Seriously.”

“I am being serious. I’ve heard they’re very good.”

If it had been anyone else, I probably would have given him a good dose of annoyed side-eye. But, despite having slept in the same room together, I didn’t feel as if I knew Paul well enough to do such a thing. I settled for scowling and sipping at my iced tea as I stared out at the L.A. skyline. Far away I thought I saw the faintest glimmer of gold as the clouds near the coast parted and allowed a few rays of sunlight to catch in the waves off Santa Monica.

“Who’s she?” came an unfamiliar voice, and I turned away from the window to see a scruffy-looking individual with a few days’ growth of beard and wearing an oversized military surplus jacket staring down at us.

“This is Ms. O’Brien, whom I mentioned in my message,” Paul said.

The young man—who was probably in his middle twenties at most, even with the beard—summoned up a scowl that put mine to shame. “I didn’t know you were going to bring her.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” I said, and stuck out a hand.

He recoiled as if I had hit him with a stun gun, and instead pulled out the table’s free chair so he could sit down. Pointedly ignoring me, he said to Paul, “How do you know she can be trusted?”

Of all the— “I’m right here, you know.”

“We wouldn’t know about any of this if it weren’t for her,” Paul pointed out. Although his voice still sounded level, a little twitch at the edge of his jaw line seemed to indicate he was just a bit irritated.

The stranger shrugged. “Okay, fine.” He swung the battered leather messenger bag he wore over one shoulder onto the table. I barely had time to get my iced tea out of the way. A second later, and it would have been splattered all over my front.

A few choice words rose to my lips, but I decided it was probably better for me to keep quiet and not provoke him. No wonder the guy hid out on message boards and forums and didn’t get out much—I’d seen better manners from a two-year-old.

He pulled a laptop out of the messenger bag, opened up the computer, and began typing in some rapid-fire commands. What exactly he was doing, I couldn’t tell, because the strings of characters that moved across the screen didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. Not that that necessarily meant much, since my level of computer skills allowed me to set up spreadsheets for my business and hack some basic CSS for my website, and that was about it.

“There’s been a lot of chatter,” he said. “You two stirred something up. Sounds like they’ve got people all over L.A. looking for you.”

Wonderful. So much for doing a little Nancy Drew work and then heading home at the end of the day. I knew that Ginger’s and my schedules didn’t always overlap, so most likely she probably hadn’t yet even realized that I hadn’t come home last night, but if I were absent too much longer, she’d notice I was missing. And since Ginger wasn’t the type to sit around and do nothing, she very likely would call the police.