Chapter Twenty-Two
Wyatt ducked through the side door of the Big Bang Truck Stop and headed straight for Diesel’s office in the underground facility.
It was very early in the morning. Normally, he would have just given Diesel a call, but the lengthy discussion he needed to have shouldn’t be voiced over cell phones, no matter how many of Cam Grey’s over-the-top security systems were in place to prevent eavesdropping by non-Alphas.
He’d called ahead to Diesel’s office to herald his arrival, especially since it was so early. Nova Greene, Diesel’s executive assistant, had said she could give him five minutes first thing.
“I’ll take them,” Wyatt told her. He figured once Diesel heard what he had to say, their discussion might well last much longer than five minutes.
Wyatt sat uncomfortably and rather fidgety in the chair across from Nova Greene’s desk.
“Do you want a coffee or water or anything?” Nova asked.
Wyatt could tell she didn’t really want to get up and get anything for him.
He understood. He wasn’t a morning person, either.
No matter how much he needed caffeine, he could wait.
He did not want to risk getting on the bad side of Diesel’s executive assistant.
“Oh, thank you, no. I’m fine, really,” he said.
Nova’s gaze narrowed, as if she couldn’t believe he would turn down coffee, and he wondered at his own idiocy. He did want some. To his relief, Diesel strode in, saving Wyatt from having to discuss any refreshments with Nova Greene.
“Morning,” Diesel said.
Wyatt stood up like somebody had jabbed him in the butt with an extra sharp hat pin. “Hi, Diesel. Thanks for fitting me into your morning.”
“Sure thing. Follow me.”
Wyatt did as he was told.
“Valene and the kids, okay?” the Fearless Leader asked casually, as if that might be why Wyatt was here.
“Yes. Really great. I’m a lucky man.” Wyatt’s unease lifted at the mental picture of his wife and kids, happily at home. He truly was a lucky man, and he knew it.
Once behind the closed door of Diesel’s office, Wyatt let his unease flow at will. “I understand you only have five minutes. Fair warning—I think you should plan on more,” Wyatt said.
Diesel sat in the big chair behind his desk and gestured for his brother-in-law to take a seat. “Noted. Tell me.”
Wyatt tried his best to tell a concise and unflowery account of what had happened the night before, from the point dispatch had alerted him that Beryl and Jett had seen Jake Jones snatched off the street.
“None of the doctors at the hospital could figure out why Jake was unconscious in the first place. Or why removing that wire woke him up.”
Wyatt, patting his chest pocket where the evidence bag currently resided, assured Diesel that he had that wire for someone in the basement to test. “I brought it with me. I didn’t know where else would be safe except on my person.”
“Good thinking,” Diesel said. “That is quite a story. Who else knows about the invisible being?”
“Me, Beryl and Jett. So far as I know.”
“What about Jake?”
“Luckily, he doesn’t remember anything except being snatched off the street and shoved in a trunk.
I was worried about Sheriff Hollister for a while there.
I ran in because I’m pretty sure I heard him scream.
When I went to see Hollister at the hospital, he was still pretty out of it.
His chest was burned by the bodycam when it got fried, which is the one bright spot—any recording was destroyed.
Hollister doesn’t remember anything that happened after he parked his cruiser outside the barn.
He says he thinks he must have been jumped from behind, though it’s more likely our bad guy zapped him. ”
“Hollister didn’t have a wire attached to him, right?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Not that I saw, and I can’t imagine there would’ve been time for that being to remove one before I heard the scream and ran in.” He shrugged, because he didn’t actually know the abilities of the invisible entity. “Which I realize sounds stupid or crazy or both.”
Diesel looked stunned, for lack of a better word. He pushed a button on the phone console next to his right hand. “Nova, I need you to cancel all my appointments this morning, maybe all day.”
“I really don’t think you want to do that, Diesel,” she said.
“Well, it turns out that it doesn’t matter what I want today. Please convey my apologies to anyone who gets riled up,” Diesel said, and pushed out a long sigh. “For now, just cancel the ones this morning. I’ll let you know about the afternoon later.”
Nova signed off with, “Okey-dokey, Smokey.”
“Sorry to ruin your day,” Wyatt said.
“That’s okay,” Diesel said. “It’s not your fault. I appreciate all that you did to keep things quiet.”
“One more thing: Sam Brody was one of the Old Coot deputies who responded to the scene. However, I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Good thinking, Wyatt. The fewer people who know about this, the better, even if they are Alphas.” He stood up. “Let’s take your evidence to Gage and see if he can figure out what it is.”
When they arrived at Gage’s lab, Mica Ashcraft was the only person there. “Hey, Mica,” Diesel said. “Where’s Gage?”
“He and Charlotte went off-planet a few days ago for vacation. Didn’t he tell you?”
Diesel heaved a sigh like the weight of the planet was on his shoulders. “He might’ve and I forgot with everything else going on. Nova would know. My next question is, what are you doing here?”
Mica grinned at his cousin. “He said I had free run of his lab while he was gone, if I promised not to destroy anything. So I promised.”
Diesel looked at Wyatt, who shrugged. Wyatt didn’t know Mica very well, though they had met at an impromptu family get-together soon after the Ashcraft cousins arrived in Alienn.
The ever-present rumor mill belowstairs said that Mica was the science nerd in the Ashcraft family. If Gage was gone, maybe Mica could help them.
Diesel appeared to be of the same mind. “Do you have a minute to help us out with something?”
“Sure thing,” Mica said, moving closer. “What can I do to help you?”
Wyatt thought they’d interrupted him doing something with what looked like a perfect pint of strawberries. Odd. But then again, Wyatt was in the basement of the Big Bang Truck Stop, where “odd” spent quite a lot of time.
Wyatt pulled the evidence bag out of his pocket and handed it to Mica. “Cool. What is it?” He held the bag up to the light, squinting and looking at it closely.
“That’s what we’d like for you to tell us,” Diesel said.
“Right. Where did you get it?” Mica asked, lowering it from the ceiling light, turning the clear bag over and over in his fingers as he studied the contents.
Diesel gave Wyatt the nod that it was okay to share.
“That wire was attached to a human named Jake Jones. He was unconscious until that wire was removed from behind his ear.”
At the mention of Jake’s name, Mica said, “Jake Jones—you mean Beryl’s guy?”
Wyatt nodded. “He was abducted by an alien last night. I don’t know if the alien is itself invisible or if it was using some kind of tech as camouflage.
When Beryl, Jett and I found Jake, it looked like the alien was trying to use that wire and some kind of portable device to do something to Jake, but we don’t know what. ”
Mica looked up with the eager smile of a kid who’d just been giving the latest cool toy. Wyatt and Diesel were not smiling.
“Interesting. Can I open the bag and get a closer look?”
“Yes. I want to keep from damaging it, if possible,” Wyatt said. “I don’t want to destroy something when we don’t yet know what its significance or value is.”
“No worries.” Mica strode to a nearby worktable, took the wire out of the bag and put one end on a clear plate under a microscope. He examined it for a good minute before adjusting the wire to examine the other end under the scope. “It looks like a transfer wire.”
“Transfer wire?” Diesel asked. “For what?”
Mica looked up from the microscope. “It’s a rather sophisticated version of a wire you’d plug into a computer to power it up or transfer information from one place to another.”
“How sophisticated?” Wyatt asked. It seemed to him that this wire had been attached pretty close to Jake’s brain.
Jake had recently suffered memory loss. Mica thought this wire might be of the sort that transferred information.
It was a wiggly way to connect the dots, but Wyatt’s intuition said there might be something there.
Mica shrugged. “State-of-the-art in some places.”
“What about here on Earth? Is that one of the places where it’s state-of-the-art?” Diesel asked.
His cousin nodded. “Indeed. It’s very valuable. I’d love to have one.” He looked with clear desire at the transfer wire under the scope.
Wyatt hoped he wouldn’t have to pry his evidence out of Mica’s fingers before he left the basement.
Darkfall returned to The Event Horizon Inn and sequestered himself in his room after an eventful visit to the hospital.
He’d spent all week reading Luca’s notes, retracing his steps and attempting to build a picture of his mission.
Six months of work involved a lot of notes, but Darkfall gathered that Luca had just found his target—an Alpha he’d only identified by the name of Smithers.
Luca discovered Smithers was the source of the leak about Alphas hiding in plain sight in Alienn, Arkansas, on the backwater planet of Earth.
Darkfall was as mystified as Luca had been as to why Smithers would do this terrible thing that he knew was illegal.
If he was found criminally culpable, it meant a one-way ticket back to Alpha-Prime and possibly a visit to a gulag, where bad things often happened.
Darkfall planned to scout out Smithers’ home to figure out his habits before paying him a visit to discuss his transgressions against Alpha-Prime. His surveillance was interrupted before it could begin when he’d heard on the police scanners that Luca—rather, Jake—had been abducted.
It had been the shock of his life to see Ivy when he went to the hospital to see how Jake was doing.
When she had sucked in a sharp breath of surprise and he saw her, he should have kept moving. He should not have stopped for a chat.
He was a fool.
Even knowing it was not a good idea, that it violated every rule and regulation he was supposed to follow, he had to speak to her.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Ivy said, her voice trembling.
“I have to tell you I am equally surprised to see you here. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m here with a friend. Her boyfriend was kidnapped. Luckily, they found him and it sounds like he’s going to be okay.”
“Good.” Darkfall was nodding his head as if what she said was the best news ever. Her story was the very opposite of good. Too many people knew about Luca being here. That was not good.
“Honestly, I never expected to see you ever again,” Ivy said, her voice soft. “I’m very glad you’re here.”
Darkfall felt a sad smile shape his lips. “But I’m not here. You know that, right?”
Ivy nodded and tried to smile back. He couldn’t help but notice the tears glistening on her lashes that said while she understood his constraints, she didn’t care for them. Just like he abhorred them. He took her hand, tucking her fingers gently into his palm.
“I know,” she said. A tear escaped down one silky, beautiful cheek.
“I wish things could be different. I wish I was here to see you. I wish a lot of things that unfortunately are not going to come true, but you should know my feelings for you have not changed. I’m just sorry I can’t act on them.”
“I know,” she repeated as another tear slipped free.
Darkfall desperately wanted to take Ivy in his arms, to kiss her passionately and tell her all the things he knew she wanted to hear. All the things he meant from the bottom of his soul that he wanted to tell her.
Instead, he mentally shook himself. He pressed his lips together to quell the urge to plant a soft kiss on her mouth and squeezed her fingers once, trying to convey his feelings in one simple gesture.
It was foolish, he knew. He had forbidden feelings for Ivy. Feelings he could not act on. He shouldn’t even be speaking to her. He was a fool.
He turned and walked away, forcing himself not to look back. If he did, he knew he would race across the room, grab her up into his arms and never let her go.
As he forced himself to return to his motel room, he thought about all that he had learned today.
The fact that Ivy was involved with Luca, or rather Jake Jones, and his girlfriend—a woman that Ironveil absolutely should not have in his life—made the situation even more problematic. It was becoming vastly more complicated.
The chain of command was not going to be happy. And the Alphas who lived on Earth were going to be very unhappy to find out an operation was going on beneath their noses in Alienn, Arkansas.
Darkfall feared things might be spiraling out of his control—even though he wasn’t completely sure what all the “things” in this mission were.
He’d have to send an emergency message to Goddard, who would ultimately pass it along to The Calderian, about what he’d learned about the situation here on Earth, which was chaotic at best.
Today, no one was going to be happy. Least of all him.