Trespassers: a science-fiction novel (26 page)

Everyone
’
s ears began to work again, and what they heard was a faint beep-beep .
.
. beep-beep .
.
. beep-beep.

“
Did everyone hear what I said?
”
Jin asked, slightly annoyed that his big moment had been overshadowed. Dexim and Lyntic
’
s heads rolled around the edges of their seats, their eyes fixing squarely on Jin.

Jin held up the monitor.
“
I found her.
”

“
Which way?
”
Dexim asked.

“
North.
”

Their hopeful wandering suddenly had purpose. Jin pointed the way, and Lyntic searched her map for the right roads to get them there.

“
I told you it worked,
”
Tobi gloated.

“
Remember,
”
Dexim said, as he turned onto a surface street,
“
she has no idea what
’
s going on. We have to approach her gently. We can
’
t give her too much information too fast.
”

“
I don
’
t see what
’
s wrong with just grabbing her, getting out of here, and explaining everything later,
”
Lyntic grumbled.

“
And that
’
s why you
’
re going to wait in the car,
”
Dexim snapped back.
“
I assume everyone else here knows what the word
gentle
means.
”

Tobi and Jin nodded. There was another reason Dexim didn
’
t want Lyntic to be part of their first contact with Sara. Frankly put, girls didn
’
t like Lyntic
—
at least not at first. She made a first impression that caused men to melt and women to fume. She would be best left in the car.

Web sat at the table against the wall in Room 215, with the prototype transmitter in front of him, still humming, still transmitting. His only mission now was to ensure that it kept doing this. With a soldering gun and a screwdriver he was strengthening some of the components. With a possible fish on the line, he would have to make any necessary adjustments on the fly. Even if the transmission was dropped for a few seconds, they would run the risk of Dexim
’
s team picking up the real heartbeat in a different direction, and that could put the whole mission at risk.

Stewart looked from Web to the iPad on the bed, which displayed live images from the surveillance cameras.

“
I can
’
t see anything in the elevator,
”
Stewart said.

New Guy left his position on the lobby sofa and walked into the elevator. He found a brown cat curled up in the corner, blocking the camera. When New Guy poked at him, the cat stretched, expecting to be petted. New Guy rolled his eyes as he scooped up the house pet and relocated him.
“
It
’
s all clear, now,
”
he said, after checking the broadcast feed on his iPhone to make sure the camera was working.

New Guy returned to his position on the sofa, where he had a good view of the lobby. From this vantage point, he could also see the utility closet where Michael-James and a cousin were hiding. He had a .45 filled with nonlethal prototype dart capsules called
dreamers
concealed in his waistband and one with deadly hollow points, just in case. The development of a tranquilizer round that could be fired from a standard .45 caliber handgun had been in the works for years. In fact, it was still in the works. The eight rounds loaded in New Guy
’
s gun were still in the beta phase and not released for commercial, military, or government use. Cutting-edge weaponry was just another perk of a top-secret agency such as the Limestone Deposit Survey Group.

As New Guy sat on the sofa, waiting for alien trespassers to step through the door, all he could think of was his biological father. New Guy didn
’
t reflect on his bio-father very often. It was as if he had forgotten the man. He had been too busy trying to live up to his stepfather
’
s marine code.

New Guy
’
s life had grown into a mission to impress his stepfather. His assignment to this top-level government agency would certainly do that.

But forgotten memories of his bio-father had been flowing back into his mind ever since his first alien encounter yesterday. He remembered holding his father
’
s hand, riding on his shoulders, sitting beside him in a dark movie theatre
—
things he never would have done with his marine stepfather. Why were so many buried memories suddenly flooding back to the surface?

Suddenly, it hit him: it was this job. He wanted to share these unbelievable experiences with someone .
.
. someone who would understand. They wouldn
’
t wash with the rigid marine. But he could have shared them with his biological father if he were still alive. New Guy felt like a little kid again, hungry for his father
’
s affection. Who would have thought alien encounters could have struck such an emotional blow to a hardened military specialist?

Looking for a distraction, he pulled a magazine off the coffee table:
Quilts from the Nineteenth Century
. It was going to be a long day.

Upstairs, Stewart was standing at the window, gazing out. He knew all the ways that this mission could go wrong, but he was trying to focus on the few ways it could go right. These trespassers were one huge question mark. He didn
’
t know who they were, where they came from, or whom they were tracking. But if this was as big as he hoped, they would probably stop at nothing to avoid capture. That made them dangerous.

Stewart felt an arm brush across his chest. It was Mindy, reaching for a muffin on the window sill. Her body was extremely close to his, and his immediate inclination was to move back. But out of curiosity he held his ground. She leaned against him as if he were an inviting tree, almost resting her weight on him as she rummaged through the basket of muffins that the hotel manager had provided for their stakeout.

She was in his space without asking, without saying
excuse me
, without mentioning it at all. Was he going to wake up one morning to find her underwear on his bathroom floor, coils of her hair clinging to his tub, and her toothbrush next to his? You
’
d think with an alien ambush unfolding, there would be better things for Stewart to concern himself with. But he had a right to keep an eye on any claims being made.

“
Yeah, you wrote it on the back of your card,
”
Mindy answered, as she pulled a muffin from the basket, responding to a question that Grizzly must have asked.

“
What did I put?
”
Grizzly asked.
“
Make sure I gave you the right one.
”

Stewart watched Mindy
’
s hand slide into his shirt pocket and drag out a business card. There it was again: familiarity.

Mindy read an e-mail address off the back of the card, and Grizzly nodded. Stewart didn
’
t remember taking Grizzly
’
s card, though. Mindy slid the mysterious card back into Stewart
’
s pocket, as if it were her own personal filing cabinet. A thought occurred to him: he never used his shirt pocket. He found shirt pockets useless. Anything he ever put into one had fallen out as a result of his tendency to be too active and the pocket
’
s tendency to be too loose. Suddenly, he got it. Grizzly had given the card to Mindy. She was indeed using him as a filing cabinet.

Karl Bruner stared up through the windshield, watching the red light that hung above his government-issue Ford Taurus. He was alone in the car, and that
’
s how he liked it. The only thing on his list at the moment was to find Stewart Faulkner of the Limestone Deposit Survey Group and ask him a few questions. Bruner had no idea what to expect. For all he knew, this Stewart could be a real hands-on geologist, with an Indiana Jones-style fedora. Or he could be an overweight Washington fat cat, wearing a cheap, white suit. Chances were good that he was neither of these.

Bruner already had Stewart
’
s location
—
the Juniper Hotel
—
and he was headed there now. Tracking down Stewart had been easy for him. Bruner was a darn good investigator, and if he couldn
’
t locate a government agent out on official business, he might as well hang it up. On this particular search, Bruner
’
s secretary had been able to do most of the work. Bruner had her perform a telephone feeler search for Stewart Faulkner. This was a simple, low-tech approach that always worked. It involved calling area hotels, restaurants, and stores, inquiring about the person in question
—
in this case, Stewart Faulkner. When Bruner had his secretary on the phone, he also asked whether that name meant anything to her. It didn
’
t.

It had taken only twenty minutes for Bruner to hear back from his secretary with the name
Juniper Hotel
. The desk clerk had said Stewart was there. Once again, a small amount of focused effort had paid off.

Red turned to green, and Bruner
’
s foot eased off the brake pedal. His hands played leapfrog on the top of the steering wheel as he guided the car into a left turn and pulled up behind a Ford Edge
—
the same Ford Edge driven by Dexim. Bruner was bumper to bumper with a car full of aliens. This wasn
’
t the first time he had been so close without knowing it. And it wouldn
’
t be the last. After a block of construction, the one-way street widened out into two lanes, and Bruner accelerated past. He would be the first to reach the bed-and-breakfast. To Dexim, the driver who had just passed was another face in the crowd
—
not a one-man alien search party.

“
We may not be able to approach her right away,
”
Dexim explained, keeping both eyes on the road.
“
If she
’
s with someone else, or if she
’
s in a public place, we may just have to wait and see. We need a situation that gives her an opportunity to trust us.
”

“
Graaaaabbbbb herrrr
,
”
Lyntic sang under her breath.

“
We
’
re not going to grab her,
”
Dexim countered,
“
unless it is a last, last, last resort. How we handle this is going to reflect on all of us. If we can
’
t win her over, we can
’
t get her memory back.
”

“
We can win her over,
”
Lyntic said.
“
I
can win her over.
”

“
I
’
m sure you can.
”

“
Right up there.
”
Jin
’
s finger darted between Dexim and Lyntic, pointing at the left side of the street.
“
It
’
s one of those buildings.
”
Jin watched the digital tracking arrow slowly adjust as Dexim rolled past the buildings. It swung ninety degrees to stay on the Juniper Hotel.
“
That one,
”
Jin announced.
“
That
’
s it.
”

Dexim made a U-turn and pulled along the curb. It was
exactly
what Dexim had hoped: a quiet hotel on a quiet street.

“
This must be where she
’
s living now,
”
Dexim theorized.
“
We
’
ll just go in and take a look. If anyone asks, we
’
re meeting a friend, and leave it at that.
”

Jin and Tobi nodded. Dexim could tell by the sour look on Lyntic
’
s face that she would follow his directive to stay in the car.