Universal Alien (16 page)

“During the second alien invasion we told you about,” Charles added. “The one Kitty calls Operation Destruction.”

“Gotcha. So, uh, I have a crazy question.”

“Go ahead,” Martini said. Charles nodded.

“Am I the only one who thinks that Jamie just basically told us that she's somehow involved with the Great Mommy Switch?”

But before either one of them could answer me, a different male voice echoed through the bathroom. “Excuse me, Mister Vice President, but the President is here to see how Missus Vice President is feeling. And he's not alone.”

“Who's with him, Walter?” Martini asked as he and Charles helped me up off the floor.

“The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Alien Affairs for the F.B.I., and the Head of Special Immigration Services for Homeland Security. And there are more reporters on the street than Pierre and I can count.”

A
PPARENTLY IT TOOK LONGER
to wake up from being chloroformed than from being kicked in the head. More new knowledge.

The delay was good, because the thing I was really noting was how slow everything and everyone was. Sure, no one in the room had hyperspeed in my universe. But we had the Elves and a wide variety of Field agents who were living to serve, and I'd gotten used to asking for a thing and having it right there by the time I was done with the words. Here, it was working at good old human slow.

But, Pierre got me set up with a chair, card table, and wireless laptop. Then he scurried off to join Dad, Aunt Carla, and Caroline, who had taken the kids upstairs. In addition to their assigned “come up with the weird” tasks, I had them keeping an eye on the street, just in case our assassins had backup coming. The kids seemed excited by this assignment, the adults less so.

Thankfully, my counterpart had that iPod I'd saved from the car, and it contained most of the same music I had. She even had the newest Neon Trees album, which seemed like the right choice for right now. Plugged the iPod into the computer and hit play. As “Love in the 21st Century” started, I relaxed. A little, at least. And, all things considered, a little was better than nothing.

“So, who are you looking for?” Reader asked. “We may know some of them.”

“People who are part of our team in my universe.” I was searching, but the realization that the names Timothy Crawford, Jerry Tucker, Matthew Hughes, Joseph Billings, and Randall Muir were really common was being shoved at me. Realized that I had no idea what Chip Walker's real first name was. What a great boss and friend I was.

And amazingly enough, not everyone had a picture on social media or similar, making identification close to impossible. Decided to try some educated guessing.

Leonard Parker was also a common name, but Kyle Constantine wasn't, at least, not as much. As the Neon Trees' “Living in Another World” came on, I found Kyle, and therefore found Len. “Wow. So they went pro.”

“Who?” Chuckie asked, looking over my shoulder. “What, you know some professional jocks in your world?”

Len was the incoming quarterback for the Jets, and Kyle was their new defensive end; they'd been acquired from Oakland in a trade that was considered the smartest move the Jets had made in recent years. They were both considered great players, and the Jets were touted as being Super Bowl bound for the upcoming season.

“Yeah, I do. They work for you, though, not the NFL. In my world.” Had a feeling I wasn't going to get anywhere trying to contact them—they were both popular players and their social media feeds were gigantic. I'd have to catch them in person, and that was probably going to be hard. Though, not as hard as it might be, since I could use hyperspeed. But creeping on public figures could backfire, in more ways than I could count.

“Right. As if I'd hire brainless jocks?”

“They're not brainless. They're both really smart, Len especially. They're good guys.” Got a lump in my throat as “I Love You, But I Hate Your Friends” came on. I missed my team. “Do we have any way of hacking into the Navy's records? Five of the guys I'm searching for are Navy pilots.”

“Sure,” Reader said, producing a laptop from somewhere, the Secret Armory presumably. “Give me their names and ranks.”

“Captain Jerry Tucker, Captain Matthew Hughes, Captain Randy Muir, Lieutenant Joseph Billings, Lieutenant Chip Walker.”

“Wait, I thought you said they were all pilots.”

“They are. Why?”

Reader shook his head. “In the Navy, the title of Captain is only given if you're commanding a ship.”

“It's not like that where I come from. They're all from Top Gun and they're all pilots. If they've been on a ship, it was a long time ago.”

Reader shook his head. “Bizarre.”

“Dude, I did mention that I'm in Bizarro World, right?”

Received a nice shot of the cover boy smile. “Right. Okay, that might be why you couldn't find them. They could have different ranks and even be in different branches of the service here.” He was intent for a few minutes while the Neon Trees shared that some things were “Unavoidable.”

While Reader searched for my flyboys, I looked for Hacker International. Proving that they were either dead or still the top hackers around, the only one I could find was Stryker, and only because of his
Taken Away
series. “Charles, is this Eddy?” I showed him a picture of a guy who—if I squinted and allowed that I was in an alternate universe—looked like a slimmer, well groomed, incredibly confident, and rather suave version of Stryker.

“Yes,” Chuckie confirmed. “He's a successful author.”

“Does he think aliens are around?”

“Like I told you earlier, no, Kitty, he doesn't.”

“Right. It's just . . . you're
sure
this is Stryker Dane?”

“As sure as I am that it's also Eddy Simms, yeah. Why?”

“No reason. He still has great hair.”

“So you've always said. My Kitty took him wardrobe shopping and for a makeover when he hit the New York Times Bestseller list. He's basically never looked back.”

“Nice to know he's still smart in this world.” My counterpart had managed this level of change in Stryker? She was amazing. I was proud of my other myself.

“He's actually in Australia right now. He'd planned his tour so we could spend time with him, then I got called back, so we'll miss him.”

As “Voices in the Hall” started, I heard Reader breathe in sharply and looked over at him. He seemed upset, but as he saw me look at him, he plastered on a bland expression. “Nope, sorry. Can't find them.” He closed his laptop and stood up.

“What is it? You found them, didn't you?”

Reader shook his head and I was prevented by following this up by the assassins starting to come to. Tabled for later, then. Turned off the music—no reason to make it remotely pleasant for them.

It was interesting to watch Chuckie and Reader do an interrogation. Reader played Good Cop and Chuckie took Bad Cop. Buchanan took the role of Looming Muscle Who Likes to Hurt Prisoners.

They scored names—after the usual “my name is Putin” or “Abraham Lincoln” crap. So, in addition to the two we knew, we felt confident we had Luis Sanchez and Julio Lopez. Maybe. Those were pretty common Cuban and Hispanic names, so there was no way to prove that they were telling the truth.

Decided this was going far too slowly. Walked over to Bernie and picked her up. By her throat. And I held her off the ground. “This is me calm. Imagine me seriously pissed. Then understand that I'm going to know when you're lying.”

Her eyes were wide. “What?” she gasped out.

“Leave her alone,” the man we'd identified at Raul snarled.

“Or you'll do what, exactly? Kill me and all the kids? Kill everyone in this house? Yeah, you've tried that already. You've failed.” Looked over at Raul while Bernie tried really hard to get free to no effect. She tried to hit and kick me. I hit her thigh, hard. She stopped trying. Superpowers rocked.

“What do you want from us?” he snarled.

“We want the obvious. Who hired you and why?”

“We don't ask why,” Sanchez said.

“Right.” Gave Bernie a little shake. “I happen to know this is your wife, Raul. I also happen to know you love her. A lot. What would you do if I killed her?”

“I'd find a way to kill you, ugly.”

I nodded and tossed Bernie down. Went over to Raul and punched him, hard, in the gut. He doubled over. “Guess what, asshole? I'm not going to give you that chance. You can tell us what we want to know and maybe we'll turn you over to the proper authorities, which would give you a fighting chance to get free, wouldn't it? Of course, not turning you over to the authorities and just taking our frustrations out on you is also appealing.”

Chuckie put his hand on my shoulder. “There's an easier way. Much easier.”

“Oh, tell me you have truth serum here!”

“We do.” Reader was tapping a hypodermic. “Who do you want to hit first.”

“Shoot up Bernie over there. I hate her a lot.”

“All I did was offer your children some candy,” she said peevishly. “Which you didn't let them take.”

Go Other Me, for not trusting strangers with candy. She was, apparently, smarter than me in a whole variety of ways. “Yeah? You did that so you could get up close and kill us very personally on a ‘play date.' I'm really against that kind of crap, Bernie.”

Bernie looked surprised, presumably that I knew her game plan. But she also looked a trifle smug. The thought occurred that she may have been trying to do to these kids exactly what she'd wanted to do with my Jamie—to kidnap them, not kill them.

Moved to where I could see all their expressions. “So,” I asked casually, “why did you decide to change from kidnapping the kids to killing them?”

Bernie's eyes opened a bit wider and Lopez jerked just a little, but that was confirmation as far as I was concerned. But none of them spoke.

“Time for the Sodium Pentothal,” Buchanan said.

Raul sneered. “That won't work on us.” Sanchez nodded and added his sneer to Raul's. But Bernie didn't look nearly as convinced, and neither did Lopez.

“You have a lot of that?” I asked Reader. He nodded. Took the syringe from him and put it at Raul's neck.

“Don't!” Bernie shouted. “You could kill him or paralyze him if you don't know what you're doing!”

“Ah, now there's the thing, isn't it? Do I know what I'm doing? I'm getting seriously pissed at the delay . . . I promise you, I can indeed ram this into your husband hard enough to kill him. And I don't want to bother untying him to find an arm vein. So . . . what's it going to be?”

“We work for the Corporation,” Bernie said.

I pressed the needle against Raul's skin. “He twitches, this probably goes in. No freaking duh, Bernie. We know you're assassins for the Cuban Mob. What we don't know is who, exactly and precisely, told you to go kill us. Or why. We want to know both. There are four of you. If I screw up shooting the truth serum into Raul's neck, I can just try again with you. And then your other boys here.”

“So,” Buchanan said, falling nicely into the role of Badder Cop, “I guess the question is, who wants to die first? Or last?”

“You'll just kill us?” Lopez asked.

“Sure. You're assassins. If you're not going to tell us what's going on, then you're not going to tell the F.B.I. or the C.I.A. or anyone else what's going on. Meaning you have absolutely no value to us as people to hand over to our superiors.”

“And the Corporation isn't going to want you back badly enough to make a deal with us,” Reader added, sounding a little regretful. Was pretty sure it was faked—he was trying to be Good Cop, after all. “And what we want they won't give us anyway.”

“So what?” Raul asked through gritted teeth. “You're just going to kill us anyway. Why should we make it easy for you?”

Of course, this was the issue. I knew without asking that Buchanan would kill all four of them if he was allowed to. For all I knew, Chuckie and Reader would, too. Frankly, so would I—I, more than the three men, really knew what these assassins were capable of.

Chuckie took the needle from me and grabbed Raul's arm. “Good point. You're the one in charge.” And with that he slammed the needle into Raul's neck.

R
AUL JERKED,
went rigid, and Chuckie dropped him to the floor, so that Raul was facing away from the others. Bernie screamed and Lopez jerked, big time. Sanchez kept his cool, but I could see him sweating.

Because I was enhanced, I could see things that were faster than the normal human eye could catch. Which was how I'd seen Chuckie switch the syringe with one that seemed like a prop—as far as I could tell, the needle didn't penetrate. However, Chuckie had squeezed a pressure point on Raul's arm at the same time he slammed the needle onto another pressure point in Raul's neck. Raul was still alive, but he was knocked out and temporarily paralyzed.

This wouldn't last long, but it didn't have to. Buchanan and Reader lifted Raul's deadweight and moved him into the wine cellar. I heard what sounded like something ripping and assumed they'd found some duct tape and were ensuring that Raul wouldn't be able to share when he woke up.

“Who's next?” Chuckie asked.

“The Corporation isn't run out of Cuba anymore,” Lopez said, sounding freaked out. Clearly he was the rookie in the group. Good. “We're run by an American politician.”

“Shut up,” Sanchez snarled.

Reader came back in. “I say we burn the bodies. Less mess and no one's going to be looking for them anyway.”

Lopez went pale. “Look, I don't wanna die. You let me cut a deal, I'll tell you everything.”

“You'll tell us everything now,” Chuckie said, “and then we'll decide if your information is worth us calling up our superiors.”

“Some of your superiors are dead, just as ours are,” Sanchez said.

I had him by the throat and up in the air in less than a second. Unlike Bernie, who was about my size, he was built more like Christopher. Did not matter. I had him up and off the floor. “
Now
I'm seriously pissed. Are you saying that you're the ones who killed my mother?” My voice was a growl, not even on purpose.

“No,” Bernie said, sounding freaked out. “No, we didn't. We wouldn't—”

Shut her up with an excellent side blade kick to her head. While still holding Sanchez off the floor. Well, at least this awesome move had witnesses. Not the ones that mattered, because Christopher would never believe it and Jeff probably wouldn't, either, but still, I had someone around to impress.

Not that I cared about that so much. What I cared about was getting some answers before I got so angry I ripped someone's throat out.

“One more chance,” I growled at Sanchez. “And then you join your buddy Raul in the deader pile and I see how good old Julio here likes talking.”

“I'll talk,” Sanchez choked out. “Just put me down. Please.”

“Wow, they teach the magic word in assassins school? I'm impressed.” Put him down, not nicely at all. “Spill it.”

He nodded. “When Señor Battle went to prison, control of the Corporation moved.”

“José Miguel Battle, Sr.,” Chuckie said quietly to me. “He worked with the C.I.A. originally during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and then he became the godfather of the Cuban Mob.”

“Fantastic. So, who did ownership pass to?”

Sanchez shook his head. “Doesn't matter. He was killed and then the next ones after him. Turf wars, you know how it is.”

“Yeah. I'd still like names.”

“I don't know the name of Señor Battle's first head man. But the one who took over was what Julio told you—an American politician from Florida.”

Had a funny feeling. “And his name?”

“Leventhal Reid.”

Managed not to totally freak out, though it took effort. “So, did you kill my mother on his order?”

“No. We didn't kill your mother. His right-hand man did that, in retribution for her shooting Reid. He's the one who hired us. He wanted everyone who ever worked with Angela Katt wiped off the face of the Earth. But he wanted her family to die last.”

“Why?” Reader asked.

Sanchez shrugged. “So he could enjoy it, I guess.”

“The government thinks the Corporation is basically shut down,” Chuckie said, voice tight. “Angela didn't believe it. We were investigating them, and had proof that Reid was involved, but we didn't know he was the man in charge.”

“So who is this ‘he,' Reid's right-hand man?”

Sanchez didn't look willing to share.

“Look, you give us a name, one that we can believe, or else this is all BS and you've just tossed out the name of a dead politician to try to fool us.” Put my hand on Sanchez's throat again. “And if that's the case . . .”

“We're not allowed to know his name,” Sanchez said. “Or see his face. He wears a mask when he gives orders.”

“Oh my God, pull the other one.” My hand tightened on his throat.

“It's true!” Lopez said. “He's loco, scary loco, but we don't get to see him.”

“I don't buy it. You don't run an entire criminal organization wearing a mask as if it's Halloween every day. I mean, sure, they do that in the comics, but in real life?”

“He wears a mask,” Sanchez insisted. “No one sees him.”

“Someone does,” Chuckie said. “Who?”

“His woman,” Lopez said with a nervous giggle. “She sees him.”

“And what's
her
name?” I asked, hoping it wouldn't be the name I was expecting and dreading at the same time.

Sanchez smirked. “Bernice.”

I tightened my hold on his throat. “You get to go bye-bye now, Mister Liar.” He struggled but I was stronger. Besides, Chuckie wasn't the only one who knew how to knock someone out. Sanchez passed out and I tossed him toward Reader and therefore away from Lopez, who was looking freaked out.

“That's two down,” I said as Reader dragged Sanchez off to be with Raul. “Let me be clear. I know that Raul was not the head man of the Corporation. I also know that you were trying to follow good old Luis' lead and try to lie to us.” Put my hand on his throat. “Do you really want to see if I'm strong enough to strangle you while I have you up in the air? I am, by the way. But if you're, heh, dying to find out . . .”

“No,” he choked out. “I don't want to die. I just don't want any of them to be able to say that I was the
hutia
.”

“The what?”

“Big Cuban rat,” Chuckie supplied. “Okay, fine, your only other witness is unconscious. Who's the man supposedly in the mask?”

“Not supposedly. Luis wasn't lying. He wears a mask, so no one can identify him. I think they're loco, both of them, but they're in charge. They have plans.” He shuddered. “Killing people for a reason, that I understand. Killing babies for revenge? That's wrong.”

“Oh, so good to know you have a moral standard. I note it didn't stop you from trying today, however. Tell us about his woman.”

“I don't know her real name. She's tall and blonde. Everyone calls her
Señora de Muerte
. But, really, they both wear masks. Just the kind that cover half the face, not like Halloween. But enough so they're hard to identify.”

Got a very bad feeling. I was far better with French than Spanish, but Lady of Death was a pretty close matchup to LaRue Demorte, languages-wise. “What's he look like? He's American, right?”

Lopez nodded. “Tall, built like him,” he jerked his head toward Chuckie. “Dresses well, they both do. But nothing that stands out.”

“And the dude's name? The new Head of the Corporation? What does he call himself?”

“
Papa Patrón
.” Lopez shrugged. “I know, it's a stupid name.”

The bad feeling cemented itself. Because this was easy to translate. “Father Boss.”