sedona files - books one to three Page 27

  Kara set the clothes down on the dresser but kept the sweatpants and T-shirt, along with one pair of underwear. When she emerged in the hallway, she noticed that the water had been turned off. Pausing outside in the hall, she gave a diffident tap on the door and said, “I’ve left some things for you on the floor out here. You can sleep in the room right across the hall. Okay?”

  For a few seconds there wasn’t any response. Then she heard him say, “Okay. Thank you.”

  “No problem,” she replied automatically, and turned away from the door.

  What a lie. She had a feeling this was all going to turn into the mother of all problems.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lance hadn’t gone home after the muted goodbyes the three men exchanged, right before Paul and Michael climbed into Paul’s truck and Lance got into his Jeep. They’d all been pretty quiet as they walked back to the vehicles — maybe it had been stupid to think the aliens wouldn’t come back sooner or later, but he’d found himself hoping as the weeks and then months had stretched on. No chatter about a renewal of activities out in Secret Canyon, though, so maybe the aliens had decided to switch their base of operations.

  Anyway, neither Michael nor Paul had seemed too interested in conversation, and Lance never liked to initiate a discussion if he didn’t have to. He guessed the two of them were coming up with their own worst-case scenarios. Well, maybe not Michael Lightfoot. He’d always been pretty zen. Most likely right now he was sitting on the banks of Oak Creek, meditating on the situation. The man’s house wasn’t much, but the location was spectacular — fifteen steps would take you out the back door and right down to the water.

  Paul of course would have gone straight home to Persephone after dropping off Michael. Lance didn’t even need to use remote viewing for that; those two might as well be joined at the hip. They sure as hell didn’t keep any secrets from one another, and especially not something of this magnitude.

  Fine. If that worked for them, great. But he’d known exactly where he wanted to go.

  Thanks to the Internet and sites like Yelp, even Sedona’s few remaining neighborhood bars could be overrun with tourists. But Lance liked the Sundowner because it was cheap and because Rose, the bartender, seemed to instinctively know when to just hand him a cold bottle of MGD and leave him alone.

  This was definitely one of those nights. He took the beer from her and laid a fiver on the bar, then grabbed a stool and surveyed the crowd. For a Wednesday night, the place was pretty full. It was the usual mix of locals and those tourists — mostly kids in their twenties — who were brave enough to get off 89A’s main drag and go prospecting. There were a few exceptions, though…

  The woman looked like she was probably in her mid-thirties, tanned and with hair a little too blonde to be natural. Great body, though, and in that clingy tank dress, she obviously didn’t mind showing it off. He noted the diamond studs in her ears, the gold bracelet draped over the Omega watch on her left wrist. No wedding ring. Either she was doing well for herself on her own, or she’d gotten the worst of some poor bastard in a divorce. Either way, he didn’t really care. It wasn’t as if he planned to settle down with her.

  She apparently noticed him looking and flashed him a smile. Great teeth, too.

  He didn’t exactly smile, but gave a little nod. That was about all the effort he was willing to put forth. If she came over and engaged, great. It had been a while, and after seeing the huge ship hovering over the desert, he was thinking it might be a good thing if he could distract himself, if only for an hour or two.

  It seemed to be enough. She moved toward him, and he caught a drift of perfume. Something familiar. Chanel, maybe.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he returned. “Don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”

  “No, it’s my first time in Sedona.”

  Her voice was higher-pitched than he liked, with a little bit of a nasal quality he instinctively associated with Southern California. The Valley, to be precise. Well, he really hadn’t planned to have a long, drawn-out conversation with her.

  “Liking it so far?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. The red rocks are so gorgeous!” It almost sounded as if she said “gah-jous,” and he tried not to wince.

  “Here alone?”

  “In the bar or in Sedona?”

  Maybe that was her version of trying to be cute. He took drink of MGD and replied, “Both.”

  “Alone here at the bar, but I’m visiting Sedona with my friend Lindsay. But she was pooped after going on one of those massive Pink Jeep tours today, so I came out alone tonight. I wanted to get a taste of the nightlife before we bailed.”

  “You’re not here for long?” This could be great. If she were leaving tomorrow, then he really wouldn’t have to worry about there being any strings to this encounter.

  “No, unfortunately. We’re sort of making the rounds. Tomorrow we’re going to a spa in Scottsdale, and then after that it’s back to Newport Beach. We’ve got a wedding to go to.”

  He would have preferred she not said the “W” word, but he just replied, “Oh.”

  “So…” she said.

  “So?”

  “You a native?”

  “You make it sound like I should be wearing a loincloth or something.”

  “Oh, you!” she exclaimed, and gave him what she most likely thought was a girlish slap on his arm. It stung a little bit more than she’d probably intended; it looked like Ms. Newport Beach had already had a few. “You know. You live in Sedona?”

  “For the past ten years. My condo’s just up the road.”

  There was no mistaking the gleam in her eyes. “Is it?”

  “Yes. It’s not all that much, but it works for me. And I have much better booze there.”

  “I’m dying for a martini. This Corona is okay, but…”

  Lance allowed himself a smile. “Gin or vodka?”

  * * *

  Kara awoke to the sound of the television drifting down the hall toward her bedroom. For a second or two she had the muddled thought that Kiki must have come over and plunked herself in front of the TV, as if trying to relive the Saturday mornings of her childhood and adolescence. However, these were more or less adult-sounding voices Kara heard now, not the kids’ fare Kiki used to watch.

  Then it came back to her. The stranger. He must be up already. Odd — you’d think with the shape he’d been in, he would have slept for at least twelve hours or more. She sat up in bed and realized that her madness of the night before sounded even crazier in the clear light of morning. Well, it couldn’t be helped now. Besides, if he’d intended to rob the place…or worse…he would have done the deed and taken off already. She doubted anyone intent on committing a crime would have paused to watch the Saturday morning newscast.

  Normally she would have just crawled out of bed as-is, in her tank top and underwear, but she thought that probably wasn’t a very good idea, given the circumstances. Instead, she pulled a pair of cropped yoga pants out of the bottom drawer of her dresser and put them on, then stopped in the bathroom to run the brush through her hair a few times. Probably lip gloss would be a bit too much, but she did give her lips a quick flick of some Burt’s Bees balm before she headed out to the living room.

  The stranger was sitting on the rug in front of the couch, much as he had the evening before. This morning, however, his eyes seemed bright enough, and Kara had to keep her mouth from dropping open in shock at how much he’d recovered in just a single night. She’d expected his skin to still be bright red and flaking from the repeated sunburns he’d obviously received, but now all she could see was a few reddish patches high on his cheekbones. Otherwise, his skin looked as bronzed and healthy as that of someone who’d paid a lot of money for tanning sessions, followed by heavy-duty moisturizing treatments.

  Despite the baggy T-shirt and high-water pants — he had several inches on her grandfather — he looked good. Okay, scratch that. He looked amazing. Last night she
would never have been able to guess he was even semi-attractive, let alone someone Kiki might refer to as “smokin’ hot.” Judging by his skin tone and the high cheekbones, Kara guessed he might have some Native American a generation or two back, something that was pretty common around these parts. Maybe he really was a local.

  She noticed that Gort again lay by the stranger’s side, getting his head scratched. Strange, as the dog really wasn’t a big fan of strangers, especially male strangers. Since Gort was a rescue dog, Kara had always assumed he must have been mistreated by a man at some point in the past. In fact, she usually exiled Gort to the backyard whenever she had male guests, since she could never be sure how he would react. But here he was, sitting there with his eyes half-closed, obviously in the doggy equivalent of nirvana.

  “Feeling better?” she asked, forcing herself to think of the matter at hand.

  The stranger nodded. She noticed that he had a Dixie cup of water on the table in front of him — carefully set down on one of her sandstone coasters. “Much. Did the television wake you?”

  “No. It was about time for me to get up.” A quick glance at the clock on the wall above the TV told her it was not quite seven-thirty. The shop didn’t open until ten.

  Oh, great, the shop. What the hell she was supposed to do about that? She couldn’t even call in Kiki for backup, since she was heading out to L.A. in a few hours. Kara hadn’t been that thrilled about the Los Angeles trip from the start, but now she was even less happy. What was she supposed to do with the stranger? Drag him along?

  That didn’t seem like much of an option, but neither did just leaving him here.

  He said, “You’re troubled.”

  Oh, God, please not another psychic. She shook her head. “No, it’s just — well, I have to go in to work in a few hours, and I’m not sure what I should do with you.”

  His gaze didn’t flicker. “I can leave. You’ve done enough already.”

  Any protests that he wasn’t well enough to do so would sound silly, considering he looked like he’d just spent a weekend getting expensive spa treatments instead of wandering around in the desert. Then again, just because he seemed okay didn’t mean he necessarily was. She cleared her throat. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You probably still need to get hydrated, and it’s supposed to be a hundred degrees today.” He still looked uncertain, and she added, “Besides, where would you go? Do you know anyone in town?”

  “I know you.”

  From anyone else, she would have said such a remark was disingenuous at best, but she could tell he spoke what he thought was the simple truth. That must have been some knock on the head he’d gotten, even though there was no longer any evidence of the injury. It couldn’t be simply sun exposure that had cooked the memories right out of his head.

  “Yes, you do,” she replied, in tones that sounded a little too hearty even to her. “Anyway, if you don’t mind hanging out here while I’m at work, then that’s cool. I can come home at lunch and check on you.”

  “All right.” His gaze shifted from her to the two talking heads on the television set. “I was hoping they might have some actual information to impart, but it doesn’t sound that way.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for watching the local news. Except it’s not even that local — all the stations are down in Phoenix, and they pretty much ignore what’s going on in this part of the state unless it’s something pretty spectacular.” And what had he been looking for, anyway? She’d heard of no accidents or plane crashes in the area within the past few weeks, and surely he couldn’t have been wandering around for much longer than that. It was a mystery, all right.

  An even bigger mystery was what she could feed him. She’d never been much of a breakfast person, but he looked like the sort of guy who could routinely eat large helpings of protein each morning. Well, he’d have to make do with the multigrain waffles she had in the freezer.

  “You like waffles?”

  He looked puzzled, then gave a half-hearted nod. “I — I don’t remember.”

  “Well, let’s find out.”

  * * *

  It felt odd to be at the shop, knowing her house was occupied by a stranger who at the moment could be cheerfully clearing the place of everything valuable it contained. Somehow she didn’t think that was the case, though. He’d offered to clean up the breakfast dishes so she could get ready, and when she left he was watching a broadcast of the BBC news on cable, a slight frown pulling at his dark brows. Nothing about him seemed to give the impression of someone who was just biding his time until he could call his friends to back a van up to the garage so he could take everything that wasn’t nailed down.

  In the end it was Gort’s behavior that decided things. To anyone else, that might have sounded stupid, but Kara implicitly trusted the dog’s instincts — one time she’d brought home a date who turned out to be a little too grabby, and Gort turned positively wolfish in his defense of her, scaring the guy into a hasty retreat and even taking Kara aback. She hadn’t thought her pet had it in him, since he usually was one of the sweetest-tempered dogs she’d ever met. So if Gort thought having the stranger around was okay, then it must be all right.

  At least tonight she didn’t have any UFO tours scheduled. Word had gotten out that UFO watching in Sedona wasn’t what it used to be, and although she missed the business, today especially she was glad that she could go home when the shop closed at six. Thank God in Sedona everyone except the restaurants and bars rolled up the sidewalks at around five or six.

  She’d just started restacking the T-shirts — a group of boisterous teenagers had played havoc with the neat piles, and then wandered out, with one of them buying a stupid two-dollar magnet after all that — when the bells on the front door jingled. Hands still full with T-shirts, she turned to give her customary greeting of “Welcome to the UFO Depot” — only to see it was Persephone Oliver who’d just entered.

  “I thought you’d be on the road by now,” Kara said.

  Persephone pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head and lifted a Walgreens bag by way of explanation. “Just getting some last-minute supplies. Apparently Paul’s allergies have no problem with the juniper around here, but the combination of ragweed and L.A. smog is just deadly.” She paused and gave Kara a searching glance. “Everything okay?”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?” Even though Kara realized that Persephone was not a mind reader per se, it was still tough to figure out what the other woman sensed and what she didn’t. For all Kara knew, Persephone could simply sniff out the fact that Kara had a strange man with no known origins currently camped out on her sofa.

  “I don’t know. Just…something.” Another hesitation, and Persephone frowned. “I mean, I know you’re not exactly thrilled about Kiki going along on this trip — ”

  “Not really. I’m glad you and Paul are sort of running interference, but I don’t really like Kiki’s sudden fascination with Jeff Makowski.”

  That was putting it mildly. Kara knew she had no right to butt into her sister’s personal life, and of course she’d known that Kiki’s relationship with her former boyfriend, Adam, wasn’t one for the ages. The girl was barely twenty-two, and Adam, though nice enough, had never seemed to have that certain something Kara knew her sister deserved. However, that didn’t mean she wanted Kiki to start showing an interest in Jeff, the hacker who’d assisted the group in defeating the alien forces out in Secret Canyon. Though forced to admit that he did have a certain brilliance, Kara also thought he was surly, insensitive, and rude, and in fact demonstrated the paranoia she associated with the worst of the tinfoil hat–wearers from the lower dregs of the conspiracy forums.

  But when Persephone told everyone that she and Paul were going to L.A. in August for her friend Ginger’s wedding, Kiki had piped up and asked if she could tag along, that she and Jeff had been corresponding online and talking through Skype, but there were certain things he wanted to show her that could only be done in person. From anyo
ne else, Kara would have thought such a suggestion was the lowest form of come-on, but although Jeff was many things, a lech he was not. Probably Kiki had more sordid things on her mind than he did.

  Even so, Kara had tried to dissuade her sister from going, saying that August, though not as busy as July, could still be pretty hectic, and that Kiki would be needed at the store. To these remarks Kiki had only shrugged and said that Kara could call in Michael if strictly necessary. After all, Kiki was trying to grow her computer consulting business in Sedona, and having a few of Jeff’s tricks under her sleeve could only help.

  Any further protests would have made Kara sound as if she didn’t want her sister’s business to succeed, so she’d shut up then. It was true that Michael had helped out on occasion when either Kara or Kiki was sick and things were busy. God knows she’d never ask Lance to come in and play shopkeeper.

  She must have frowned, because Persephone said, “I know you’re not happy about it, but we’ll keep an eye on her as best we can. At least Bettina Croft got us adjoining rooms at the Marmont, so there’s a limit to how much running around Kiki can do.”

  “I suppose.”

  Persephone’s expression softened. Despite Sedona’s fierce sun, she was still as pale as the day she’d walked into the store, looking for help rescuing Paul. “Kiki will be okay. She may not be on the path you wanted her to walk, but she’ll be fine.”

  “Is that a prediction?”

  “I’d say it’s more from my years as a family counselor than any psychic vision, but yes.” A shadow seemed to cross over her face then, and she shook her head. “Actually, it’s you I’m more worried about.”

  “Me?” Kara forced a laugh. “What’s to worry about? I’m Careful Kara, the one who always sits back and minds the store.”