Chapter Twelve
Beryl snuck into the Supernova Supermarket through the stockroom, planning to sequester herself in her office. She pushed her office door closed with her hip, balancing her purse and the paper sack with the leftovers from the picnic in her hands.
The lingering distraction of Jake Jones’s smile was never far from her mind.
Which was ridiculous.
It had been one date.
One very nice, very unexpectedly comfortable, very dangerously promising date.
She dropped everything onto her desk and pressed her palms against the cool wood, letting out a slow breath.
“Get it together, Beryl,” she muttered. “You have a business to run.”
The Supernova Supermarket didn’t care that her heart had done something inconvenient over a picnic lunch with a human.
She pushed out another long sigh, placing her purse in her lower right office drawer and the leftovers in the picnic sack next to her desk. She would deal with them later.
Once seated in her comfy executive chair, she texted Jake her address for tomorrow night’s spontaneous dinner. As she typed, she took a moment to worry about him and who might be after him…and why.
To that end, she decided to contact law enforcement regarding what she’d heard.
Well, she’d only be able to tell Sheriff Campbell, since he was the only Alpha law enforcement she knew besides Sam Brody.
She certainly didn’t want to contact Sam about this.
Besides, Jake had mentioned a break-in at his house and that Wyatt was handling that.
She started to write a text to Wyatt to tell him what had happened, but paused, replaying the event in her mind one more time.
Maybe she’d been wrong.
Maybe she hadn’t heard what she thought she had from the muscle-bound man with the blue bandana covering his face. Mind-reading humans had never been her forte.
Then she remembered that as she heard the words from his mind, she saw the man lift the blue bandana up over his face. His lips had not been moving. She’d read his thoughts. Sigh.
Beryl put her phone down. No matter what had been intended, nothing had happened to either her or Jake. She was only guessing the man was thinking about Jake. She glanced down at her phone and swiped out of the text program.
No, she wasn’t ready to report something she wasn’t certain was true.
She made a mental note to review the incident with Jake tomorrow night and ensure they were on the same page. She didn’t want to get ahead of herself, but she wanted to be a good citizen and report what she witnessed if it was warranted.
She inhaled, held her breath and exhaled. She was falling for this man, no two ways about it. After a first date, she didn’t see how she could ever part with him.
A sharp knock on her door startled her back into her day. “Come in,” she called out.
The door opened and Francine leaned in, her expression clearly concerned. “Sorry to bother you, but I think you should come up to the front of the store.”
Never a good sign if the manager was needed and Francine wouldn’t bother her on a whim.
Great. Now what?
Beryl straightened up. “Is it a spill, a fight or a lawsuit?”
“Not yet,” Francine said. “But give it a minute.”
Beryl got up from her desk and grabbed her manager apron, placing the loop over her head and tying it into place and tucking her store’s electronic hand-held device in her front pocket as she made her way to the checkouts.
The problem seemed to be with all the self-checkouts.
The moment she and Francine stepped into the checkout area, Beryl knew something was really wrong.
The commotion wasn’t loud—not yet. She guessed the repair to the ice machine was still working, so she had that one good thing going for her.
But the air around her head, that…tight feeling. Like a storm about to break. She almost expected the smell of ozone, like right before rain here. But there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when she’d been out for lunch with Jake.
Instead, a line of customers had formed at the checkout lanes, and a chorus of exasperated voices rose just enough to carry.
“I scanned it three times.” The customer, clearly irate, was standing by the first self-checkout lane. “It keeps saying the same thing! My kid just wants his candy—”
Beryl slipped into manager mode like a second skin. “All right,” she said, clapping her hands once. “What’s going on?”
A woman waved a candy bar in the air. “Your self-checkout machine won’t let me buy this!”
Beryl stepped up to the terminal where the woman stood and said, “Let’s take a look.”
The screen flashed in bold, cheerful letters: Item rejected. Nutritional imbalance detected.
Beryl blinked. “Well,” she said. “That’s new.” She tried it one more time but got the same message.
“Kinda judgy, if you ask me,” one young female patron toward the end of the line said.
She had not asked and didn’t intend to poll the customers for their deep thoughts about grocery purchases and whether they were valid.
Beryl ignored the whispering in the line and shot Francine a look. “Did the system get an update that I didn’t hear about?”
“Not that I know of, unless it did it itself. Maybe it’s become self-aware,” Francine said with a teasing half-smile. They’d had more than one conversation about robots taking over the universe, but they’d been drinking at the time and not really serious.
“Not funny.”
Francine grinned. “It’s a little bit funny.”
Beryl exhaled slowly and tapped a few commands, overriding the system to help maybe clear out a glitch.
“All right, let’s try that again.” Instead of the candy bar, Beryl grabbed a different item from a nearby basket intended for return to stock, to see if it was just the candy bar that was a no-go or if everything was going to be a problem.
The scanner beeped and everything looked normal.
Then the screen flashed a new message: Item rejected. Unsafe for human consumption.
A ripple of whispers went through the line behind her. She looked at the pint of strawberries she held, thinking they looked pretty good to her. Unsafe for human consumption, my sweet patootie.
“Unsafe?” came a different voice from the line.
“You’re saying we can’t have candy bars or strawberries?” asked a red-faced man. “What’s unsafe about either of them? It’s not a chainsaw, for pity’s sake. What kind of place are you running here?”
Beryl forced a smile. “Let’s just move everyone over to Register Two. We’ll get you all checked out the old-fashioned way.”
Francine nodded and started redirecting customers, herding them with practiced ease toward Register Two, where Tanya waited to efficiently ring everybody up.
There was some grumbling, but everyone seemed to just want to ring up their items of choice, whether candy or fruit, and get on with their lives.
Beryl was all for that.
Tanya called over the intercom for another cashier to come to the front to help customers at Register Four, and the crowd slowed their annoyed whispers.
Beryl stepped aside, pulling her small tablet from her apron pocket. Accessing the store’s scanning system, she swiped a few screens to get to the settings. “System diagnostics,” she muttered as she saw the slow spiral of death circling, not booting up. “Come on.”
The diagnostics screen appeared and…it seemed normal. There was nothing odd, no matter what she checked. Inventory. The scanners. Everything read normal. Which meant it was something else. Great.
“Beryl.”
She looked up to see that Francine was no longer standing nearby. She had moved to stand over by a row of produce at the far end of the checkout area. And this time, she looked very concerned.
Beryl stomach tightened. “Please tell me the mini carrots aren’t attacking anyone.”
Francine rolled her eyes, but she didn’t smile. “Just come look.”
As Beryl approached, Francine pointed to a small table with several pints of strawberries stacked efficiently in a pyramid shape. They were just like the pint she’d tried to scan from the return basket at the checkout line.
Beryl didn’t see what Francine did. At least not at first. As she gazed at the strawberries, she realized what seemed off about them. They were absolutely perfect.
Too perfect.
All the strawberries in each clear pint container looked exactly the same. They were all the same size. They were all the same shape. They were all the same color.
Exactly. The. Same. Each and every strawberry in every clear pint box.
That meant they were clearly not of this world.
Space potatoes!
Jake got a visit from Wyatt later in the afternoon. Frederick knocked on the door to his workshop, where he’d sequestered himself to think about his day and try to get some work done.
It had been hit and miss as far as productivity went. He’d work for several minutes, but then his mind would wander back to the incident with the two bandanaed dudes wanting to grab someone now that the redhead was gone.
Try as he might, Jake couldn’t think of who else in the vicinity it could have been.
Jake was happy for the interruption. He wasn’t getting much done anyway.
“Heard you had another exciting day,” Wyatt said in lieu of a greeting when Jake walked into the retail area.
“Yep. That’s the only kind I seem to have of late.”
Wyatt nodded, a smile shaping his mouth. “Also, heard you were on a date with Beryl Ashcraft right before. Is that true?”
Jake’s gaze had been wandering around the shop until Wyatt said Beryl’s name.
“What?”
“You heard me. Gossip even makes it to the sheriff’s station in Skeeter Bite.”
Frederick grinned. “If you don’t need me, I will go pretend to take care of something in the back, well away from this conversation.”
“I don’t mean to tease you,” Wyatt said once Frederick was out of earshot. “I just so rarely hear gossip in the early stages. It’s new for me. Sorry to show off.”
“Who told you?”
Wyatt smiled. “Actually, the two dudes we picked up, still wearing their bandanas, at the edge of town. They almost made it to the Big Bang Truck Stop. Instead, they ran out of gas about 500 feet from the pumps.” He tsked. “So close. But such bad luck.”
Jake’s gaze narrowed. “You caught them?”
“Yep. Since I’m investigating a few incidents involving you, Alienn’s sheriff’s department didn’t mind me sitting in on the questioning.”
“And they told you about Beryl and me having a date?” Jake was incredulous. Tattled on by criminals? Unfathomable.
Wyatt grinned again and nodded. “Not right at first, but when we questioned them, it turned out they thought you were going to the park alone and they had to wait for you to separate from Beryl before they abducted you.”
“They admitted it?” Jake asked, stunned that they’d been so forthcoming.
“Well, I sort of led them around to it and tricked them into telling me. It wasn’t that difficult. I don’t believe we’re dealing with the sharpest crayons in the box, if you get my meaning.”
Jake squinted. Not the sharpest crayons in the box? What? Nope. He didn’t get it.
Wyatt tried again. “They aren’t very clever, is what I was trying to say.
Someone smarter than they are talked them into doing this foolish thing.
They were supposed to grab you and take you to an abandoned building out of town.
But the two banditos are insistent that they don’t know who it is or why this mysterious person wants you captured.
Only an anonymous text message from some burner phone with someone promising untold riches.
The instigator’s phone has already been discarded, no doubt.
We checked and the phone number is no longer in service. I’m afraid that avenue is a dead end.”
“Do I have to press charges against the two guys?” Jake asked. Neither one of the “banditos” had laid a hand on him. Beryl had grabbed him and pulled him out of the way before they could. “They didn’t actually grab me, you know.”
“No. You don’t have to press charges. There are several other citizens they managed to anger on their big escape out of town, driving like murderous marauders were after them instead of one patrol car.
” He rolled his eyes. “It’s nothing major, some minor vehicle damage.
There were no deaths or injuries, but they’ll both face misdemeanors and a trip to court for sure.
” Wyatt shook his head as if disappointed in the youth of Alienn.
“Okay. Any news on the break-in at my house?” Jake asked.
Wyatt nodded. “Oh, right. I almost forgot. This morning the report came back on the purple substance in your garage by the back door.”
“Oh? What was it?”
Wyatt’s eyebrows lifted. “The crime lab does not know. At least not yet. They said it was an organic material, but nothing they’ve been able to identify. At least not yet. They’ll keep at it, though. Don’t you worry.”
Jake smiled. “I’m trying not to worry, but the odd incidents in my life seem to be stacking up. My house being broken into and now roving banditos by the park trying to kidnap me for some mysterious person. I hardly know what to think.”
Wyatt nodded. “I have added an extra patrol car to watch the area around your house. They’ll drive by with greater frequency, so if anyone is overly interested in your property, they’ll get caught or at least won’t be as easily able to grab you.
Seeing a patrol car more frequently is a good deterrent. ”
Jake didn’t want to discount Wyatt’s plan, but worried that someone seemed to be after him. He wondered how far this person would go to get him. But he appreciated that the sheriff was taking steps to guard him. He said, “Good. Thanks for stopping by to let me know, Wyatt.”
“Sure thing. And so that you have full disclosure, Beryl Ashcraft is my wife’s cousin.” He grinned.
“Huh. Lots of cousins in Alienn.”
Wyatt said quietly, “Truth.”
“Are you going to give me a speech about decorum or question my intentions regarding your wife’s cousin?” Jake asked.
“Nope. Not my business. But I do like Beryl. And from the sound of it, she likes you, too. I wish only the best for the two of you, whatever happens.”
Jake nodded, then remembered something. “Does Beryl have any brothers?”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes. “She does. Three of them. Why?”
Jake shrugged. “No reason. A customer came in earlier who looked a little bit like her.”
“Okay. Well, good luck.” Wyatt was out the front door before Jake could ask why he needed good luck. He hoped Beryl’s brothers weren’t going to bypass decorum or a request of his intentions and simply beat the snot out of him for daring to date their sister.