Alien Tango

will have a suggestion.”
    “Don’t stop to have sex?” he said with a grin.
    “Oh, shut up. We were napping. Only.” Martini seemed okay, and Lorraine had given him another A-C physical when we’d returned from the jet, so I wasn’t feeling overly worried.
    I felt a hand on my neck. It pulled me back and up against a body. “Mine, thanks.” Martini massaged my neck while Reader chuckled. “So, what were you two whispering about?”
    I put my arm around his waist, and I could feel him relax a bit. “Security issues. Mostly. Relax, Jeff. Stress isn’t good for you right now.”
    “Huh.” He kept his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned my head against him.
    We wandered through the Space Center. It looked very much like what I’d seen in movies, both fictional and documentaries in school. I tried to take it all in, but other than looking for snipers, I couldn’t. We were too rushed and in too much danger for me to pay attention to things that weren’t trying to kill us.
    “Are we going to see Paul’s brother?”
    “Probably.” Martini sighed. “Yeah, I know what you want. James, tell Paul where we’re headed and see if he wants to join us.”
    Reader nodded and closed his cell. “Already taken care of. He’s meeting us at the quarantine area.” He fell back and walked next to us. “We’ve got a handful of people with enough authority to have found your cell number. Kevin’s got some of the P.T.C.U. team running the cross-checks, and Paul has the gang at Home Base doing the same. We should know something soon.”
    “Where are our possible suspects?”
    “All personnel have been moved to the Mission Control Center. It’s the only place big enough to hold everyone where we don’t have to leave this main building.”
    I could get behind that. However, we weren’t headed to Mission Control yet. “Who’s riding herd on them?”
    “Kevin and the rest of that group are. Only Paul’s meeting us at quarantine.”
    “That means Paul will be alone.”
    “According to the men with them, all personnel are in the Control Center, other than those heading there with Kevin and our pal Turco.”
    “I don’t like it, but okay.” I didn’t like it. Karl Smith had been very clear right before he died—alone. “Where’s Smith’s body?”
    “Dad,” Martini called. “Where’s the corpse?”
    Alfred stopped and waited for us to reach him. “Near quarantine, why?”
    “I was the last person he spoke to before he died. I’d like to see him.” Not that I relished the idea of looking at a cadaver, but maybe he had a clue to what was going on somewhere on his person.
    Alfred gave me a look that said I was an odd girl. “Okay, we can see the body first, if you want.”
    “I don’t want Paul alone any longer than necessary.”
    “Tell us where he’s at, we’ll trot on ahead,” Jerry offered. “Me, Joe, Turco here, and Lorraine. That should be enough to keep Paul company.”
    My humans would have an A-C with them for fast exits, so that sounded like a workable plan. “Okay, be on the phone fast if you run into trouble.”
    “We will,” Lorraine said. “I wish I’d brought some walkies.”
    “Bringing medical and the boys was more important.”
    She laughed. “The boys were haunting me and Claudia in case you called. Not bringing them would have been a delay.”
    “As always, I like how you think.”
    We continued on down some corridors that started to make me wonder if we’d find a big piece of cheese at the end. Then we hit a T-intersection, and Jerry’s team went left while the rest of us went right.
    We came to a heavy door. Alfred unlocked it and ushered us inside. The room was dark and very cold. “We use this for the big mainframes,” he said. “It’s cold enough to keep a human body fresh. We didn’t have time to call for an ambulance.”
    “You had an hour or more.”
    “We didn’t have an answer for the police,” Alfred explained. “Security said they’d handle it but wanted the body here until they’d done whatever it is they do in this situation.” My impression of Turco went down another notch.
    He turned on the lights. I looked around the room. “Lots of big machines, lots of floor space. Strangely enough, no dead body, unless it’s hiding inside the big computer boxes.”

CHAPTER 27
    “WE PUT HIM HERE!” Alfred shouted as he pointed to a table devoid of anything corpselike on it. Nice to see that the bellowing ran in the family. Martini was still