Alien Diplomacy

I had to figure out what the other letters spelled.
    “Possibly. Do you believe Jack was a suicide?” Her voice sounded tense.
    I figured this was a test before she told me whatever the heck it was she’d been wanting to, which was hopefully a full indictment of Marling and Bryce. But as my father had always taught me and Darcy Lockwood had reinforced, when asked a question you don’t want to answer, shoot a question back as your reply. Plus I was distracted with doing anagrams in my mind. “What do you think?”
    She looked around and moved me farther away from where people were. We were by the stairs that led to the parking garage and something that called itself a disposal shaft, which I assumed meant it was the garbage chute. She stepped closer to me. “Jack Ryan didn’t kill himself, he was murdered.”
    Time was undoubtedly running out, so I just went for it. “Right, because he’d discovered there was going to be an assassination attempt at this event.” S-L-I-L-E-E were the letters left. Slyly? Yeah, but it was spelled wrong and made no sense. I flipped them around. L-E-E-S-L-I. That sounded kind of normal, but not quite.
    “No. Because he warned the wrong people to stay away.”
    “Okay, I’ll bite. Who shouldn’t he have warned? Bryce?”
    Leslie stepped closer. I noticed she had gray eyes. “Well, yeah, that was a mistake. But he made a bigger one.”
    “Oh? What?” As I asked this, my mind flung the remaining letters from Cybele Siler into a coherent word—they spelled Leslie. My mind was whirring, and it tossed the letters for Antony Marlingup onto my mental blackboard. “Who else did Jack talk to that he shouldn’t have?”
    She smiled, and the light near us gave her eyes a pearly sheen. “You.” She grabbed the handle nearest us and yanked it up as she shoved me, hard. The doors slammed open, and I fell backward, down the garbage chute.



CHAPTER 83
    A S I FELL TIME SLOWED WAY DOWN. My mind shared that Antony Marling could be arranged into Taylor Manning as I saw Leslie slam the chute doors back down.
    I’d have marveled at Marling’s ability to hide his children in plain sight, but I was too busy trying to come up with a plan for how to not crack my head open or break every bone in my body as I fell.
    I was actually grateful she’d picked the garbage chute—I’d already have smashed into something hard and unforgiving if she’d chosen the stairs. She’d hit awfully hard, though. I was used to A-Cs hitting with that amount of strength, but not humans.
    For whatever reason, I clutched at my purse, a little too tightly, and heard a disgruntled sound. Right, I had Poofs with me. Time to see what they could do with this situation. “Harlie, Poofikins, Kitty needs help!”
    There was a blur and a feeling of really fast movement, and then I landed. Onto a big ball of fur. I rolled off and hugged the two Poofs who’d gone Jeff-sized. “Good Poofies!”
    They purred. It was very loud when they were this size, but I didn’t care. It also sort of echoed up the garbage chute, but again I didn’t care. It was a much better sound than listening to all my bones break. “Wow, Poofies, what a wonderful smell we’ve discovered.”
    Poofikins picked me up gently in its jaws, and then we all jumped down off of the big garbage can piled high with food, wrappers, and other things I didn’t want to contemplate. Harlie had my once lovely wrap in its jaws and dropped it on the ground. It wasgross, but I shook it off and put it on. Who knew? I might need it. I hooked the clutch’s strap over my neck. It might not be my regular purse, but why mess with tradition?
    Once I was on my feet, the Poofs went back to small and disappeared. I checked my clutch. They were in it, grooming each other. I couldn’t blame them.
    Checked my phone—no bars. Not a surprise, since I was sure I was at least a couple of floors underground, and there was a lot of exposed metal down here. I felt reasonably steady and checked my dress. Black really did hide stains. Headed off to find an elevator or stairway so I could get back to everyone else.
    I was lost in moments, but I forged on, naturally ending up at a dead end. I heard a heavy step behind me and turned around slowly. I was expecting to see a human, Peter the Dingo Dog, Surly Vic, another person holding a gun. But it wasn’t a person standing there. It was a ten-foot-tall creature, encased in metal.
    It was sort of humanoid, in that it was standing on