Alien in the House

Chapter 53



WE STOPPED RUNNING.

“What the hell is that bird doing here?” Jeff managed to keep his voice down, for which I was proud. I hadn’t screamed when Bruno appeared out of thin air. I was proud of that, too.

“Guarding.”

“How did he get here?”

“He came with us in the car.”

“Really. Then why didn’t I see him?”

“He doesn’t trust Vance?” Bruno did a head bob, wing flap, scratched with his foot, then stared at me. “Ah, no, that’s not it. Vance seems okay. Bruno didn’t want you freaking out about him coming along, he knows the game is afoot and therefore needs to be with us at all times, and he feels that it’ll be easier for us, you in particular, if he’s incognito.”

Bruno nudged against me to share that I was indeed the most insightful of chicks, then disappeared.

“I’m never getting used to that. I’m just telling you now.”

“Hence why Bruno’s in Stealth Mode. He wants us being really cautious here, and quiet, and going very slowly.”

We walked by Juvonic’s office and Bruno’s concerns were explained—there were people in there. People who were about to have a shock, I was pretty sure, but not as big a one as me and Jeff appearing inside their offices out of nowhere would have been.

We walked on at human speeds down the rest of this hallway. We were passed by someone who I took to be a page—he was young, had an upset expression, and he was walking fast. I turned to watch him—yep, he went into Juvonic’s office.

After we passed the Bearer of Bad News we weren’t that far from the lobby. I ensured I leaned on Jeff and he had his arm around me and had the briefcase in his free hand. We definitely had the “not feeling awesome” look going. The issue was whether Irene would remember that Jeff hadn’t come in carrying anything or not.

There were paramedics here now, though not the ones from last night, so we had that going for us. There were also police, and not the K-9 squad. The people from Juvonic’s office came running in behind us. Which was nice, because they caused a small amount of chaos, which made it simple for Jeff to hand Reader the briefcase and ask him to hold it.

Reader having possession meant that as the Head of Field, he didn’t actually have to surrender anything to the police. He could if he wanted to play nicely, but if he didn’t so want to do, he didn’t so have to do.

Our absence was explained and the police were quite sympathetic to my reaction to seeing a man die in front of me. We were witnesses and Jeff was one of the people who’d brought the body inside, so the police wanted our statements, since they already had Reader’s and the boys’. We didn’t have a lot of information to give, and we were done quickly. No one mentioned the briefcase.

Irene was still basically a mess. I went to her and gave her a hug. “Thank you so much. We cleaned up, so I don’t think anyone will know I was upstairs barfing my guts out. Well, other than the police. But you know what I mean.”

She nodded. “Your clearance arrived. After the police,” she added. “I’m so sorry you had to witness this. If your husband’s clearances had been done right away, you all would have been upstairs.”

“That’s true.” I hugged her again. “But then you’d have had to go through that alone, so, even though I got sick, I’m glad we were here to help you.”

“You’re so sweet, thank you. Your young men have been so helpful, especially Vance.” Vance was with the Brewers and the boys. She gave him a little wave. He waved back and blew her a kiss.

Irene was younger than Mom but older than me for sure. I didn’t call her as Vance’s type. And she didn’t seem to be taking this sexually. True to his own hype, there appeared to be more to Vance than met the eye.

The paramedics declared the death a heart attack. No one mentioned anything about marks on the victim’s neck. The police told us all we were free to go. Which was good. Because I wanted to go. But I had one last question for Irene.

“Who finally cleared us to go up?”

“Oh, Representative Brewer solved it. He called someone in Homeland Security and they basically had a fit that you’d been waiting so long.”

“Cliff Goodman?”

“Yes! He was outraged you’d been kept waiting. I believe he’s going to be investigating what happened.”

“That’s nice.” It was. It hadn’t even occurred to me to call Cliff to see if he could help with this. Well, at least Brewer had had the foresight.

My phone rang. “Excuse me.” Pulled it out. “Hello?”

“Kitty, it’s Cliff. Are you and Jeff alright?”

“Yeah. Thanks for clearing us to get into our offices.”

“No problem, that was unreal, bureaucracy in action, but that’s not why I’m calling. Ed said that someone had been hurt.”

“No, someone’s dead. Representative Juvonic.”

“I don’t really know him, but that’s awful news.”

“We don’t know him either, and now we never will. The paramedics say he had a heart attack.”

Filled Cliff in on what had happened before I’d gotten “sick,” leaving out any mention of a potential sniper, me seeing Juvonic touch his neck right before he went down, my suspicions that Juvonic had been murdered, or the fact that Jeff and I had just rifled through a lot of other people’s offices. Chuckie trusted Cliff so I trusted Cliff, but there was no reason to bring anyone else into my theories right now, especially someone who might not like the idea that we’d gone through those offices without any official sanction.

However, the rest of it, including the number of times we were told we couldn’t go to Jeff’s office, I gave him in Technicolor detail. “So, now I don’t know what we should do.”

“You know, you have a couple hours before Jeff gets sworn in. Why don’t you guys just go somewhere and relax? The work can wait, and it’s not like Jeff’s going to get caught up today anyway. You’ve had a hell of a couple of days, Kitty. Take a break and get a breather.”

“The Brewers did want to go to lunch.”

“See? Do it.”

“You want to join us?”

“I’d love to. Unfortunately, I can’t. But I’ll see you at the ceremony.”

“Sounds good. And, Cliff, thanks. We’ll worry about Jeff’s office later.”

“Good plan.”

We hung up and I joined the others. “Cliff says we should stop trying to be responsible and just have lunch and hang out before the swearing-in ceremony.”

Nathalie nodded. “Just think, if I’d convinced you to play hooky earlier, you’d have missed all this.”

“We’ll never say no again,” Jeff said with a short laugh.

“We need somewhere we can seat a lot of people,” I added.

“Not to worry,” Nathalie said as she linked her arm through mine. “I know a perfect place.”