Alien Tango

from where we’d been. Brian and I both dropped to our hands and knees and started retching.
    “This sucks worse than being possessed,” Brian gasped out between gags.
    “Better than blowing up,” I managed to reply. I’d kept a hold of my phone somehow. It was still open, and I put it up to my ear. “Are you still on, psycho stalker person?”
    She was. Lucky me. “How did you survive that, you bitch?”
    I hit the speaker option so I could keep on retching while chatting with my favorite unknown loony. “Look, babe, I have no idea who you are or why you think committing felonies is the way to any man’s heart, let alone Brian’s, but I think I now speak for both of us in saying you are one truly whacked-out piece of work, and when we find you, we’re going to enjoy locking you up somewhere for good.” I was no longer amused, felt anything like pity for her, or considered this the lowest-level threat we had.
    “You’ll both pay for this.” She was crying. “How could you escape the bomb? You’re the devil, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve enticed him all these years!”
    “You religious at all, babe?”
    “Very, and I can spot a she-devil.”
    “Then, let me just say I’m gonna go all kinds of Old Testament on your ass whenever we finally meet up. That is, if you’re not too freaking scared of me to stop trying to blow me up and just settle this like women have through the ages.”
    “How’s that?” She actually sounded interested. I was so good with the psychopaths. What a fab skill.
    “Girl fight. You pick the spot, I’ll be there. Whoever wins gets to keep Brian.”
    She was quiet for a few moments, and I got to my feet with an assist from Martini. Michael helped Brian up as well, while Christopher carefully handed me the phone.
    “Fine,” she said finally. “The Lighthouse.”
    Michael shook his head violently.
    “It’s not close by and not in this building,” Martini whispered in my ear.
    “I was thinking somewhere closer and a whole lot sooner.”
    “I’ll be there, at dawn.”
    “What time, exactly, is dawn around here?”
    “I can’t believe he’s interested in someone so stupid. Dawn will be at five-forty-seven.”
    “Great.” I loathed mornings. “See you at o-dark-thirty. Looking forward to kicking your pseudoreligious ass to Kingdom Come.”
    “Come alone, or I’ll just kill you,” she added.
    “Oh, come on. I thought you’d at least want Brian along so he can see the action.”
    Another significant pause while all the men with me looked at me like I was crazy. “Fine, but only him.”
    “No worries, who else would want to see this?”
    “Tomorrow, dawn, the Lighthouse. You don’t come, I kill you both.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it before. See you then.” We both hung up, and I made sure my phone was really off.
    “Bri, Michael, do you recognize her voice?”
    They both shook their heads. “I think it was disguised, even though she was screaming,” Michael said.
    “The technology for that is pretty easy to come by,” Brian added.
    “Figures. I cannot freaking believe I have to fight this chick at freaking dawn.”
    “I can’t believe you think you’re going to, and alone at that,” Martini snapped.
    “I can’t believe you want me to go with you to watch,” Brian said. “I don’t want you to go, I want a SWAT team to go.”
    “How can she meet you anyway?” Michael asked. “You said everyone’s in lockdown.”
    I couldn’t help it, my eyes rolled. “Freak chick’s not in the building.” They all stared at me. “Dudes, how could she be? She’s not even aware the place is in lockdown, is she? She’s got some sort of visual going on, because she sure as hell knew where we were standing. Unless Turco’s so bad she just rigged every single part of the entire Space Center.”
    “No security is that bad,” Christopher said. “Besides, the entire place didn’t go up, just where we were standing.”
    “How could she do that if she wasn’t in the building?” Martini asked.
    I shrugged. “How would I know? I don’t make these plans up, I just have to foil them.”
    “How did she know you were here in the first place?” Michael asked. “I mean, my own brother showed up and I had no idea he was coming.”
    “You were in quarantine,” Gower reminded him.
    “But . . . that’s a really good question. I mean, she called me after the first bomb went off, the one trying to kill Jeff and his father.” My brain whirred,