Blue Dawn (8 page)

Before heading to Nate’s office, she looked around furtively. Good. Erik was nowhere in sight.

She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Despite what she’d said to Erik last week about the importance of love and trust in any relationship, she still felt an incomprehensibly powerful tug towards him.

And that humming. That damn humming. It was a constant refrain in her head, rising and falling with his presence, like an early warning system for some kind of missile. Even worse, sometimes when he was nearby she could swear she heard his voice inside her head telling her he just wanted to be friends. She wasn’t even safe at night, when her sleep was rife with embarrassingly erotic dreams starring herself and Erik, all of them overcast by an eerie shade of blue. She didn’t know whether she should run to the nearest shrink, or toss her emotions and judgment to the wind and waylay Erik for that sexual encounter her body was urging her towards.

She shook her head and continued across the busy newsroom to Nate’s office. She’d rebuffed Erik’s efforts to talk to her this week, telling herself he was just another smooth operator, a Cody-clone ready to step in where he’d left off.

She frowned. But something about that assessment didn’t ring true, and she was too honest to ignore it. Erik had appeared almost comically confused when his blunt approach to seduction had failed last week. And despite his stunning good looks, there was that aloofness, a detachment he seemed to use as a shield, a way of hiding what she suspected was a deep loneliness.

“Huh.” Allie sniffed. There she went again.

Seeing what she wanted to see. Imagining noble motives and sorry secrets.

She straightened as she crossed the last few yards to Nate’s office. It didn’t matter who Erik was, how lonely he might be, or what his motives were. She wasn’t ready to throw herself into a relationship with another man. She couldn’t trust another man. Worse, she couldn’t even trust her own judgment. Like a fool, she had given freely and foolishly with all her heart—only to have it used and abused.

It wouldn’t happen again. This time she was going to learn from her mistakes. She wasn’t going to let a man hurt her again. Not the way Cody had.

Never again.

Buoyed by her resolve, she breezed through Nate’s open door, then stopped, the greeting frozen on her lips.

Erik lounged against a narrow table along the wall to her left. The cool silver of his unwavering gaze caught her eye immediately, sending a wave of heat through her body. She dropped her gaze to his scuffed boots, to the worn jeans over his long legs, and the black T-shirt covering his muscled and tanned upper body, to the unyielding jaw and the sun-streaked hair. But it was no good. No matter where she looked his presence struck her like a physical blow, setting all her systems awry.

“Oh, hi Nate,” Allie gasped. In a struggle to recover her equilibrium, she focused on Nate. “Hi, Erik,” she added off-handedly.

She swallowed. “So what was it you wanted to see me about?”

“Sit down.” Nate nodded to a chair in front of his desk.

Allie sat, careful to keep her gaze away from Erik. The humming had started again, a low drone in the back of her head, along with that powerful awareness. For a second she shut her eyes, gathering her resolve to fight this unearthly attraction.

“Are you all right Allie?”

Allie’s eyes flew open.

“You’re looking a little tense,” Nate commented. “Is all this stuff about Cody getting you down?”

“Some,” Allie conceded. She suspected Nate had chosen her and her column to focus on her former fiancé’s disappearance to give the stories an emotional edge they might lack from an uninvolved stranger. Interviewing the Tiffanies and Janes and others she hadn’t known about who had filled Cody’s social calendar had hurt and shamed her more than she wanted anyone to know.

No, she didn’t enjoy the role she was playing in the investigation. But Cody was missing. And if there was any chance her columns would help find him, she’d swallow her pride and just do it.

Nate sat forward in his chair, his cherubic face glowing with child-like eagerness. “That interview yesterday with Cody’s mother was the best thing yet. You captured her worry and fears magnificently. I don’t think anyone’s ever—”

“Nate!” Allie glared at the elfin city editor, her exasperation momentarily blotting out her awareness of Erik. “Cody is
missing.
Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Of course it means something to me.” Nate sat back, miffed. “He was our best investigative reporter.”

“Not just that.” Allie’s voice rose. “He’s missing, Goddammit. Gone. Disappeared. He’s a human being. Not just some story. Don’t you feel for his mother? Don’t—”

It was Nate’s turn to interrupt. “Of course I do.

What do you think I am, some kind of monster? I shouldn’t have to tell you this is a newspaper, Allie. This is what we do. No matter how I feel about Cody, his disappearance is also a great story. It’s in all the papers, on every TV and radio broadcast. And more than anyone else, it’s our job to tell that story. Besides, the more we focus on it, the better chance of someone finding him or turning up some clue.”

Allie sighed. Nate was right. Cody’s disappearance was a great story. And an even better story because it had put
The Streeter
at the lead of every local newscast and on the front page of every paper for the past week. Not to mention her column. It would have been foolish not to milk Cody’s disappearance for everything it was worth.

But still. It seemed so cold, so inhumane. Yet another time when her own instincts conflicted with what a reporter was expected to do.

She shoved her reservations aside. She had to concentrate on what was important—and that was finding Cody. “So. What do you want me to do?”

“Atta girl.” Nate relaxed. The sparkle returned to his eyes, and along with it the excitement the news always seemed to incite in him.

“So far the police have nothing on Cody’s disappearance. Not a clue, not a fingerprint, not a sighting, nothing. If we don’t come up with something soon, the story will die, and likely our chances of finding Cody too. So I want you to go see a psychic.”

“Oh, come
on
, Nate. Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?”

“No.” Nate shook his head. “No, it’s perfect.

The disappearance is a mystery. Why not a psychic? And Madame Carabini has an excellent reputation for coming up with things that no one else has found.”

“Madame Carabini?” Allie rolled her eyes.

“Where’d you come up with her? She sounds like someone out of a comic book.”

“Well, she isn’t.” Nate nodded at Erik, who had remained silent throughout their interchange.

“And I want you to go with Erik. He’ll get the pictures of her mulling over Cody and his fate.”

“Erik? Why?” Allie blurted out in dismay.

Nate frowned. He looked from Erik to Allie. “Is there a problem?” He focused his attention on Allie. “Because those pictures Erik took of the abandoned car captured the eerie mood exactly.

There’s nobody here who does that kind of thing so well.”

“No, no, of course there’s no problem,” Allie gulped out. For a split second she shut her eyes, remembering Cody’s mother. For his mother’s sake, she told herself. She’d do it for his mother.

Nate stood up and smiled expansively. “In fact, I want the two of you to work together as long as this story keeps moving ahead. Your columns are a perfect fit with his photos. You two make a great team.”

The meeting was over. Allie stood up, conscious that Erik was also drawing his lean, muscled body to its full, imposing height by the far wall. She didn’t look at him.

“Sure,” she said faintly. Between the humming in her head and her failure to convince Nate to team her with another photographer, she felt ill and out-maneuvered.

She swallowed and turned to leave. “Sure,” she repeated. “Anything you say.”

Though his head missed the overhead steel beams by several inches, Erik instinctively ducked as he and Allie entered the low-ceilinged underground garage below
The Streeter
. With its cement walls and floors and cool, damp air, the garage reminded him of his own planet’s underground structures. He noted but did not question the fact that this reminder of home failed to provide any comfort.

“This way.” He grasped Allie’s elbow and steered her towards the far corner and his recently-acquired metallic blue Jaguar. It only began to approach the speed and handling of a Zalian vehicle, but he enjoyed driving it all the same. It was good to be in complete control, a state that had all but eluded him since his arrival on Earth.

“We can take my car,” Allie protested, jerking her elbow free. She started to turn in the opposite direction.

“No. Please.” The gentleness of his voice startled him. It obviously startled her too; she stopped and stared at him.

Erik swallowed, far too aware of her gaze on him. “The car is just new,” he said lamely. “I’d like you to see it.”

Allie stared at him, her brow creased. For a moment he thought she would turn him down, and the effort he’d spent both telepathically and verbally to convince Nate to make them a team would be for naught.

“Oh. All right.” With a shrug of her slim shoulders, she started back in the direction of his Jaguar.

Erik exhaled, more relieved than he wanted to admit. His plan was starting to succeed.

He unlocked the passenger door for Allie, and opened it. He strode to his side, slid into the driver’s seat and inserted the keys into the ignition. For a moment he merely breathed, appreciating the clean, new scent of the navy leather interior.

He didn’t start the car. Instead, he turned towards Allie, who sat eyes straight ahead to the cement block wall in front of them, her body turned away from him as if she were protecting herself from something fearsome.

Is she frightened of me?
he thought with a start.

He cursed his weak telepathic powers, and particularly his inability to consistently see into her mind. Fear was the last response in the universe he wanted to provoke in her —and the least helpful. An unfamiliar anxiety seized him.

“You’re acting as if you’re afraid of me,” he blurted out.

“What?” Allie turned sharply, her guarded expression giving her away more than anything she might have said. “Why would I be afraid of you?”

Why, indeed? Because I’m an alien? Because I
plan to take you millions of light years away to
another planet, another galaxy?
He swallowed. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Perhaps because, after last week, you don’t trust me.”

Allie opened her mouth to respond but he continued on in a rush to get out the words he found so hard to say. “I don’t want to hurt you, Allie. I just want to get to know you.”

“Why?”

Erik heard the doubt in her voice, and saw the cynicism shading her green eyes. He wondered fleetingly what it would take to cut through her defenses.

“Because I like you,” he heard himself say. And it was true, he realized with shock. It went far beyond the need to fulfill his destiny, beyond a mere fascination with the human species. It had everything to do with her. The smile he was starting to crave, the sense of humor, even the stubborn resistance that challenged him at every step. All things he’d never given much thought to before.

He cleared his throat. “I am sorry if I caused you distress last week.”

“Oh. That’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.”

She turned sharply, her auburn eyebrows raised questioningly. She looked at him as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

Finally she shook her head and a wry smile spread across her face. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not okay.” She raised her chin. “So what’re you going to do about it?”

The jaunty smile renewed his hope. A wonderful exhilaration coursed through him. He just managed to kill the smile that started to move his lips in response.

He cleared his throat again. “I’d like to be friends. I know we got off to a bad start, but I don’t see why that can’t change.” He’d heard that line on a TV show called
Friends
. If it could work for the character called Ross, he didn’t see why it couldn’t work for him.

“Friends, huh?” A hint of suspicion clouded Allie’s clear green eyes again.

Then, suddenly, she relaxed. She smiled. “All right,” she said. “But just friends. You understand? Nothing romantic. Strictly platonic.

Okay?”

“Okay.” Erik nodded solemnly. It wasn’t everything he wanted, but it was a start.

His expression blank, his actions measured, he turned the key in the ignition. But even a lifetime of Zalian self-discipline was unable to dampen the elation sending his spirits rocketing skyward.

Forty minutes later, after a surprisingly companionable drive along the North Shore, Erik guided the Jag to a smooth stop at the curb of a broad, tree-lined street in suburban Evanston.

Much to Allie’s relief during the drive, the dratted humming in her head and her extreme physical attraction to Erik had abated to nothing more than a pleasant awareness after their agreement to be friends, and friends only. She decided her former distraught state had to be the result of nerves and Cody’s disappearance, nothing more.

Allie got out and took her first look at the supposedly celebrated Madame Carabini’s home.

The aluminum siding and red brick home replicated its neighbors’ design. Only the door and trim, painted a bright turquoise, inserted a jarring note into the neighborhood’s subdued tones of brown, terra-cotta and ivory.

Allie shook her head. Had she expected a huge flashing crystal ball attached to the roof? Or perhaps ghosts gliding in and out of the windows?

With her purse over one shoulder and a plastic bag of carefully-chosen items, Allie walked up the winding cement path to the turquoise door. Erik followed.

As she raised her hand to knock, the door was opened by a small, plumpish, middle-aged woman.

She wore a tan skirt and sweater, and her hair was a nondescript brown. She looked, thought Allie, like a woman who’d be more at home behind the counter of a small-town bakery. Certainly not the far-out flake she’d imagined.