Alien in the House

Chapter 6



THE MAN IN THE CIRCLE who might be Clarence returned from the dead hadn’t caught me looking, at least I figured he hadn’t because he hadn’t disappeared. Wanted to be sure of what I was seeing before I alerted anyone, so I needed a better look.

I smiled at Ted. “So, you think we should search your truck, in case anything else for us turns up?”

He laughed. “You can come take a look if you want. My route’s almost done. Again.”

We chuckled together and I went down the walk with him to his truck. I didn’t care if we had ten more packages Ted had missed or nothing at all left in his van. This angle meant I’d have a clear enough look to be able to tell if I was seeing things or not.

Ted took me to the back of his truck and opened the doors. “Not much left, but I’ll triple check it if you want.”

“Sure, if you have the time.” I lounged against the back of the truck, so that I could look around while seeming to be not paying attention. While Ted rummaged, I observed.

It was hard to be sure if the man in the foliage was actually someone I knew and not just some random lurker. But considering one of the last times I’d seen Clarence had been when he was trying to lure the Gower girls into the trees by the Lincoln Memorial, I felt I was on the right track.

“I don’t see anything else for you,” Ted announced.

Turned to look inside the truck. It was in a decent state of disarray. “How do you find anything in here?”

“Normally? No problem. Today I must have turned a corner too fast or driven over a bump I didn’t notice, because about midday I get to a stop and bam, all my packages are on the floor or on top of each other.”

Our UPS man didn’t normally get involved in high speed car chases, and there was no way he could have gone over a bump big enough to toss everything on the floor without his knowing. Ted might be lying, but I doubted it. An A-C moving at hyperspeed would be invisible to the naked human eye, and I had a good bet an A-C had done this. A specific A-C, in fact. The one hiding at the Circle.

Why was the big question. I didn’t have a good answer. Yet.

Said good-bye to Ted and watched him drive off. No sign of anyone chasing him at hyperspeed. Of course, if this was Clarence, he was enhanced. Which might be how he’d survived.

Turned to face the Circle. This time, whoever it was seemed aware I was looking at him. He disappeared.

I didn’t stop to ponder—I took off running. At hyperspeed.

Christopher had been working with me a lot on control, so I didn’t slam my face into a tree. I reached the edge of the Circle and stopped. Then I trotted around at human level. I was quite proud of myself. Pity no one was around to see and rate this performance.

“What the hell are you doing, Missus Chief?”

Okay, someone was around. Point of fact, it was Malcolm Buchanan, aka the P.T.C.U. operative assigned by my mother to be my permanent shadow. Couldn’t complain—Buchanan had saved my life more than once already. He was also a big, tall, good-looking, muscular guy with deep blue eyes and brown hair. I never complained about that, either.

“Hey, Malcolm, I thought I saw—” Clarence, and I saw him again, about a block away. I wasn’t dressed for dinner, so I was in my usual jeans, today’s concert shirt featuring Van Halen, and my Converse. I was good to go.

I could grab Buchanan and take him with me, but hyperspeed was hard as hell on humans and even though I felt Buchanan possessed Dr. Strange powers, he wasn’t going to be up to a lot of hyperspeeding.

Took off and decided I’d beg forgiveness later.

Clarence saw me coming and he ran off as well. I wasn’t too far away, and was able to keep the distance apart fairly close. This meant Clarence wasn’t moving at the super-fast speeds Jeff and particularly Christopher could now hit, but he was still going at a good clip for an A-C. Whether this meant he couldn’t run that fast any more or was leading me somewhere I didn’t know. But I’d been a sprinter in high school and college and I’d been working on my stamina for the past few months, so he could run around all he wanted—he wasn’t going to lose me.

We went back and forth around the Embassy Row area. Clarence didn’t seem to have a destination in mind other than “away.” Could mean he was trying to tire me out or trap me, could mean he hadn’t expected to be seen, could mean something else.

Clarence ran across the Parkway. We both weaved in between the cars like they were standing still. He jumped off and crossed Rock Creek—we were both running fast enough that we splashed across the top of the water but didn’t go in—and headed for the Oak Hill Cemetery. It was an older, well-forested cemetery, and Clarence lost me quickly.

Stopped running and considered my options. They seemed slim and I had an important dinner to hostess, a stealth bodyguard to reassure and apologize to, and a daughter to pick up from daycare. And, as I realized it, a package still in my hands.

Took the moment to look at said package. It was addressed to me, but the return address was also the Embassy.

The chances of anyone at the Embassy sending a package to me via UPS rather than handing it to me were pretty slim, bordering on none. Meaning this was a package that was potentially dangerous.

Thought hard and quickly. Ted’s truck had been ransacked, most likely by an A-C. But if that was the case, was that A-C Clarence or someone else?

Decided to vote on it being Clarence. Sure, I’d seen him when I’d answered the door, but I didn’t normally answer our door, Pierre did. And he’d never seen Clarence except possibly at my wedding, and I doubted the memory would have been top of mind for Pierre, especially not today.

So, Clarence, or whoever was pulling his strings, wanted a package delivered to us today and was likely watching to ensure it was delivered. But why?

Looked at the box. We were having a freaking huge party tonight loaded with the political elite. How hard was it to guess why tonight? Get the package into the Embassy, and then release whatever the hell was in it.

This presented me with a new problem. What to do with the box.

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but this cat wasn’t stupid enough to figure the box was safe to open. I was more concerned with what kind of bomb it was, or if it maybe contained venomous spiders or something. I put nothing past The Bad Guys League.

I was, however, the least equipped person on staff to identify whatever it was, short of opening and therefore triggering the badness.

My phone, which I had in the back pocket of my jeans, chose this moment to ring. I put the box down, walked a couple steps away, and answered the phone, ready to run if this was the trigger for the bomb. “Hello?”

“Miss Katt?”

There weren’t a lot of people who called me Miss Katt anymore. And I recognized the voice. It was my “uncle,” Peter the Dingo, also known as the most dangerous and effective assassin alive.