Alien in the House

pajamas of white T-shirt and blue pajama bottoms, got my slippers, and rewrapped up in the robe. Washed my face with cold water and ran a brush through my hair.
    Through all of this Jeff remained asleep, but he was moving like he was dreaming, so I again concluded he was okay.
    Decided the other person who I’d run to, in fact the person I’d gotten very used to running to until we’d been moved here, was in the building. Sure he was probably still mad at me and my feelings were still hurt about it. But the game was afoot and that meant we needed to work together. Sent a text. Got a fast reply. Yay, he was up early, too.
    Went to the front door, opened it, and waited. Didn’t take long. The elevator arrived and Reader came out. He was dressed like me. “I didn’t think I’d woken you up,” I said softly.
    “You didn’t. I was awake. Just hadn’t gotten the drive up to shower.”
    “Me either.” We went into the living room. I settled on the couch, he took the closest comfy chair. “Why were you up?”
    Reader shrugged. “I got enough sleep.”
    Far be it for me to argue with that logic, since I had no better reason for being up to watch the sun rise. “I need to run a theory by you.”
    He flashed the cover boy grin. “Been a while since you’ve said that to me.” He stopped smiling. “But before you start, were you crying about something to do with Jeff, or were you crying about last night?”
    “Last night.”
    “Okay, that’s an understandable reason. Just wanted to make sure I didn’t need to intervene or provide marriage counseling.”
    “No, we’re good.” Well, Jeff and I were good. Possibly Reader and I were good, too. But I didn’t want to ask right now. “I need to get this out before I lose my train of thought.” He nodded and I went on. “I was talking to my dad before I texted you.”
    “So he got the tears?”
    “In bucket loads, yeah. But anyway, as we were winding up or down or whatever, he mentioned that the only time people are supposed to die by arsenic poisoning is during murder mystery novels.”
    “Nice sentiment. Sorry we failed at that.”
    “No, listen. It made me think—what if we’re looking at this the wrong way?”
    “How do you mean? I don’t even know that we’re looking at it in any way specifically.”
    “Yes, we are. Colonel Hamlin, Clarence or whoever, the Assassination Bureau, all of these things are making us focus on threats against
us
, against American Centaurion and Centaurion Division.”
    “Because these are all threats against us would be the reason why.”
    “Yes, okay, fine. But let’s, just for these few minutes, say that maybe Vance is on to something.”
    “Okay, since we’re in the realm of hypothesis.”
    “Vance didn’t come to us with a theory about how some anti-alien or purity-of-the-race group is attacking us. His theory relates to humans, regular people, who are doing specific jobs. He doesn’t think that Jeff is in danger because he’s an A-C. Vance said that Jeff was now in danger because he’s just become a representative in Congress.”
    Reader’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
    “So, let’s take away the extra ‘stuff’ that’s just our lives in general, which means we ignore whatever Hamlin told me, we stop thinking about the assassins and why they’re here, we don’t worry about Clarence and the mystery package.”
    “If we take the hypothesis that Hamlin’s correct, though, there’s a Mastermind, and that person would also be behind whatever Vance is talking about.”
    “Maybe, but who cares? When Sherlock Holmes solves a crime, it doesn’t matter if it originated with Professor Moriarty. Holmes has to solve the crime
first
, and then, once that’s done, then he can continue to trace the thread back to the evil Mastermind.”
    “Okay, then what do we focus on? You caught the person who committed last night’s crime, at least the first murder. If I’m following your thought process, Eugene was killed by an assassin trying to hit you, so his murder we should ignore.”
    “Yeah, at least right now. Because we know who killed Eugene—Raul—and we’re pretty sure of the why, which is that Raul was trying to kill me. The bottom line for last night, though, is that a representative was murdered. Supposedly the
wrong
rep, I might add. Eugene told me he was given instructions and was supposed to kill Brewer, not Santiago.”
    “He was lying to save himself, Kitty.”
    “Maybe, but he didn’t