Alien Tango

looked at Martini. “It could be related.”
    He shrugged. “Or not. But, yeah, let’s go find out. We’ll lock the doors and see if our latest corpse is here when we get back.”
    We put this plan into action and then followed Alfred to our next destination. We all stayed close together. Martini kept his arm around me, and I noted Randy doing the same with Claudia. Christopher had Reader right next to him, I assumed in case we had to run at hyperspeed.
    “Glad we all like each other.”
    Martini managed a chuckle. “Yeah. This is getting bizarre.”
    “I think we left bizarre hours ago. You think the cleaning woman interrupted them when they were stealing Karl’s body?”
    “Possibly. I’m more concerned with why there’s a fake computer down there.”
    “Maybe they use it a lot.”
    “Dad, why is there a fake computer in that room?”
    “No idea, Jeffrey. I don’t spend much time there, ever. Before today, I’d have told you we didn’t have homicidal maniacs running around, so my information’s not worth much. First time I’ve had to deal with two dead bodies in a day for a long time.”
    “Do the A-Cs go to that room a lot?” I was trying to come up with something, but my Agatha Christie didn’t appear to be working. I was a lot better with the motivations of parasitic superbeings and psychos, apparently. Then again, it seemed as though we had at least one, maybe many more, psychos running around here, so maybe I’d hit on something soon.
    “No. Most of us don’t work with the computers, at least not in terms of maintenance.”
    “Why do you have a key?”
    Alfred shot me a look over his shoulder. I saw Martini’s “you’re annoying but cute so I’ll answer” look. I’d been told that Martini looked like his father, but no one had mentioned the similar personalities. “I’m the highest ranking A-C at this facility. I have a key to everything.”
    Authority ran in the family, and I had to admit this wasn’t too much of a surprise—Martini had indicated his father was essentially the head of the scientific stuff. “So you were the target for the bomb.”
    “I don’t think so. It didn’t go off until you all arrived.”
    “No, it didn’t go off until Jeff arrived.” I clutched Target No. 2’s waist. “The bomb was closest to you two.” My mystery caller’s words rang in my head. “Oh, not again.”
    “Not again what?” Martini sounded confused.
    “We have two freaking plans going at the same damn time again.” Why couldn’t the homicidal psychopaths and world conquering megalomaniacs take turns?
    “Why so?”
    “The caller said they’d kill me and my boyfriend unless I left the state. But we’ve had two attacks that were trying to kill all of us, you and your father specifically in the last one. I wasn’t the target, you were.” Oh, I hated where this line of reasoning was taking me. “So, for whatever reason, those running Plan A want the Martini men dead.”
    “Fine, that seems at least a workable hypothesis.”
    “Why would they want to kill me and Jeffrey?” Alfred sounded far less convinced.
    “Maybe they think Jeff can do whatever it is you do here. Or that he will do whatever it is you would do here.” This sounded lamer said aloud than in my head.
    Strangely enough, my most confusing statements seemed to make the most sense to Alfred. He nodded his head. “Okay, that I could see.” Really? I hoped he’d explain it to me, I was confusing myself.
    “Great. So, Plan A is to get rid of the Martinis, and I’d guess that all the others on Alpha Team are targets, too. But Plan B isn’t the same thing. Whoever called me wants me to leave, and take Jeff with me, but they aren’t in on whatever Plan A is, because they didn’t say ‘leave or we kill all your friends’ or ‘leave or we kill all the A-Cs.’ ”
    “Who did you piss off, girlfriend?” Reader asked.
    “The list is so long,” Christopher said. “Really, do we have all day to go through potential suspects?”
    “I’m ignoring you.” Besides, I didn’t have a suitable comeback. “I think we need to figure out who wants to kill Alpha Team and Alfred, and why.” Something niggled. “Alfred? Do you know Leventhal Reid? He’s one of the House Representatives from Florida.”
    He nodded. “Somewhat. He’s not a particularly friendly man, but he’s been here before, always on House business of some kind.”
    “What does he look at? What kinds of questions does he