Alien Tango

in a circle, and I brought them up to speed on the little we knew.
    “You’re sure Smith’s dead?” Gower asked.
    “Not for sure. Tim said Jeff’s dad was sending a team to check on him.”
    Martini got up and walked to the cockpit. He was back quickly. “Yeah, they found him, shot through the head twice.”
    “James and I heard two shots. And I know there were at least two people with him.” I tried not to let this freak me out. Without much success, if Martini rubbing my neck was any indication.
    “Could you identify their voices?” Christopher asked.
    “No, they were muffled. Did your father say anything about the attacks?” I asked Martini.
    “Nothing. He told me we had a potential unidentified ET at Kennedy. That was bad enough news.”
    I looked at Kevin. “Any suggestions?”
    He nodded. “I want to advise Angela of everything the moment we land. I have the authority to find out what’s really going on at Kennedy, but it’ll take some time.”
    “My dad is a cryptologist for NASA’s ET Division.” This had also been surprising news five months ago since I’d thought he was a history professor at ASU. It seemed I’d been the only one in my family not living a secret life. Now I suspected every relative of being in a covert operation of some kind, though my parents insisted this wasn’t the case.
    “Good, but that may just mean he’s a target,” Kevin looked more worried, not less. Wonderful. “I’ll mention it to Angela, though I’m sure she’s already on it.” I knew she was; she’d been protecting my father since they’d met in Tel Aviv. It was a romantic story—just them, anti-Jewish and anti-American terrorists, and a few hundred bullets.
    “My parents should be aware, but it never hurts to warn them.”
    Kevin sighed. “I’m a lot more worried about all of you, though. This team has to be careful—you’ve already been targeted once. Those lunatics would have been successful if you hadn’t figured it out.”
    “Okay, so no one goes anywhere alone,” Christopher said. “We’re used to that, we normally work in teams.”
    “I think you’d better be more than buddied up,” Kevin said. “I’d really suggest that there’s more safety in numbers. Including when you’re sleeping.”
    I had no intention of bunking with anyone other than Martini. He apparently felt the same way. “We can sleep at East Base if we have to. We have a small base outside of Kennedy, too.”
    “But are your own people trustworthy?”
    It was a good question. As we’d learned the hard way, the answer wasn’t always yes.
    Martini sighed, and I heard the resignation in his voice. “My parents can house all of us, including you,” he nodded to Kevin. “And, though being there might kill me, I’m pretty sure the rest of you will be safe.”

CHAPTER 22
    “I’M SURE WE DON’T WANT to impose!”I didn’t mean for it to come out as a shout, but I wasn’t always good with shocks to my system.
    Martini closed his eyes but kept rubbing my neck. “They live for impositions. It gives them more reasons to complain about me.”
    Christopher didn’t look any more excited about this than Martini did. “They do live the closest to Kennedy,” he said, as if he were admitting to having herpes.
    “My parents live in East Base,” Gower said. I heard the regret in his voice. “I’m sure we’ll have to stay closer to the Space Center than that.” East Base was in New York, and since we were apparently not allowed to use gates, there was no way we were staying there, no matter how much most of us were going to want to.
    I tried to remind myself that this was going to put a crimp in Reader and Gower’s love life, too, not to mention that Tim and Christopher weren’t going to have any shot of privacy, either. It didn’t make me feel any better. And lord knew how they were going to react to Kevin.
    “You sure?” Kevin asked. “I don’t want to put your family into danger.”
    “They’re A-Cs. From what little we know, every A-C’s in danger.” Martini rubbed his forehead. “Besides, our house is secured, and I have five older sisters, none of whom live at home any more. They have a huge house, and they haven’t converted any of the bedrooms—other than mine, which is now the grandchildren’s playroom.”
    News to me. I also heard the hurt in his voice, lurking just under the surface of the words. Martini wasn’t kidding; this was likely to be a grueling experience.
    Tim came