“What do you think I’m doing?” she asked. She pulled her hands out from under mine and slid them up to my neck, raising up to her tiptoes.
I bent down to meet her, wrapping my arms around her back, resisting the urge to pick her up and carry her away somewhere safer. I wanted to shift time and space until we were back in my truck that first night, after the activities fair, when it was just us and so much simpler.
The familiar smell of her, lemons and the outdoors mixed with hotel soap and shampoo that I recognized from my own shower that morning, made my chest ache.
She brushed her lips across my cheek, near the corner of my mouth but not on it. “Please, get out of here,” she whispered. “Ford is right. I can’t split my attention.” She looked down, hesitating. “If you…if you love me, I’m asking you please to leave.”
Ariane kissed me, her mouth hard against mine. Then, before I could respond, she slipped out of my arms and eased past me.
I swallowed hard. “Ariane. Don’t, please.” But that was all I could do, words were all I had to offer. I couldn’t stop her, and she’d hate me forever even if I could.
“Wait,” Justine said sharply, loud enough to be a shout, startling me. I’d forgotten she was there.
Ariane froze.
Was this where Justine signaled her entourage of henchmen to grab Ariane?
I spun to face her and whoever was coming, ready to do whatever I could to fight them off. But I saw no sign of anyone but Justine and the now lessening crowd of coffee seekers.
Justine reached down and produced another file folder from her briefcase, this one red. “If you’re so keen on self-sacrifice, Tucker, maybe you should look at this first before you throw yourself off the nearest available cliff,” she said, holding it up.
Justine, who’d obviously been listening in to as much as she could hear of our conversation, certainly had a way with words.
And yet, when I glanced over my shoulder, Ariane had stopped.
A desperate kind of hope sprang up inside me. I wasn’t sure if it was what Justine had said or something Ariane had detected in her thoughts, but whatever it was, it worked.
For the moment.
Ariane turned slowly, with a frown. “What is that?” she asked, tipping her head toward the folder, suspicion written on her face.
“Why don’t you come and see? You were convinced I was hiding something.” Justine flapped the file at Ariane.
I glared at her. “And you were.” I wasn’t surprised, exactly—more annoyed that she’d waited until the last second to speak up.
“Sorry,” Justine said to me offhandedly. “This is need-to-know. And you didn’t need to know.”
Ariane edged closer, and Justine stretched across the table to hand her the folder.
She took it with obvious caution, still watching Justine as if expecting some kind of trap.
Looking over Ariane’s shoulder, I couldn’t see anything all that intriguing about the file. No seal, no official “top secret” stamp across the front. It looked just like a normal folder with maybe twenty sheets of paper inside. Which was, most likely, the intent. If you think about it, announcing something as top secret in inch-high letters in a screaming red font doesn’t do much for the whole “secret” part of it.
Ariane flipped open the folder front, revealing a thin stack of pages.
“Going old school?” I asked.
Justine shook her head. “Digital can be…slippery. Harder to contain.”
What they were trying to contain, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at.
The top few sheets appeared to be transcripts from a conversation. No, a series of conversations, on different dates and in different cities. Milwaukee, Chicago, Phoenix. And a few company names I recognized. American, United, Southwest.
“Air traffic control?” I asked with a frown.
“Talking to pilots,” Ariane murmured. She skimmed the pages, and I caught glimpses of phrases. “Can you please confirm identity of aircraft?” “Do you have traffic for us at two o’clock?” “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” “Negative.” “Holy shit.”
And then, blurry and indistinct images I recognized only from messing around with Google Earth. Satellite pictures. A grayish blur highlighted in each of the photos with red circle.
“These are reports of UFO sightings over Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; and Phoenix, Arizona,” Ariane said, sounding unimpressed. “Eyewitness accounts.”
“Surely you’ve heard of the Phoenix Lights,” Justine said with just a hint of condescension.
Ariane shrugged. “People have been seeing UFOs for years.” She pursed her lips in a tight smile. “Centuries, if you believe that guy with the big hair on TV.” She held the folder out to Justine.