Alien in the Family

“Why didn’t Kitty ask God to save Kitty before?”

“You mean when Reid was about to run me down in the desert with an Escalade and I was sure I was going to die?”

“Yes.”

“Because I knew God wouldn’t help me.”

“Kitty did not ask ACE for help. Kitty asked ACE to join Kitty with ACE, but not to save Kitty. Why?”

“I didn’t want to put you into a position where you’d have to say no.”

“James asked ACE to save Kitty then.”

I could cry harder. What a nice way to find out. “But you didn’t.” My brain kicked. He had—ACE had told Martini what to do in order to save me. “ACE, please, please, do something to save James, to bring him back the way he was.”

“ACE ca

“I . . . don’t know.”

I heard a ruckus from the medical bay. Gower and I detached and took a look. There was a lot of ru

Martini was right there. “What’s wrong?”

“Tell them to let Tito do whatever he wants.” I ran into the room. “Leave him alone, let him get to James!”

The woman in charge turned to me. “He wants to do something that’s likely to kill the patient.”

“The patient’s dead if I don’t,” Tito said urgently. He looked at me. “I know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Jeff . . . please.”

Martini took my hand. “Let him do what he wants.” It was an order.

The women backed away, unwillingly, but they did it. Tito started doing something that I couldn’t watch. I turned my face into Martini’s chest and I prayed. A lot. I heard Tito asking for things, giving orders, just generally sounding like a brain surgeon, at least from what I could figure out. I couldn’t pay attention—I could only think about Reader being okay.

It took forever; at least that was how it felt. But finally, I could feel the tension in the room go down. I risked a look over my shoulder—everyone was just standing there. Gower was by the bed, and he was crying. “Oh, no. Please, no.”

The Dazzler in charge looked at me. “I call it a miracle.” Martini and I went over to the bed. Reader’s breathing was normal. “Full brain function, all internal organs functioning properly, we’ve tested, no paralysis. He’s going to have a hell of a headache when he comes to, but he should be back in action within a week or so.” She turned to Tito. “I don’t know how you did it, Doctor, but thank you.”

Tito looked at me. “I’ll take the job.”

“Welcome to Alpha Team,” Martini said. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re really glad to have you on board.”

I tried to talk in my head, in the way I had with ACE before. Thank you, so much. More than I can really express.

ACE just showed Tito what Tito already knew how to do, ACE said in my head. Tito is a good person. Kitty has chosen well again.

Never better than choosing you, ACE.

ACE is here to protect. She is not. I knew who he meant. They are coming, and they are evil. ACE will have to help Kitty to fight.

Thank you.

This is ACE’s world, too. I felt warm and loved, which was ACE’s way of hugging my mind, then he slipped away.

Gower started to laugh. “Oh, hell.”

“Paul, are you okay?”

“He’s going to be pissed when he wakes up.” Gower was laughing as if there was really something fu

Martini let go of me and put his arm around Gower. “It’ll be fine. Come on, Paul, let’s get you resting.”

“Nah, I’m fine. Now.” Gower looked up at us. “Jamie’s really going to be pissed, though.”

“Um, why? I think being alive is going to make up for a lot.”

Gower gri

I looked. Sure enough, they’d shaved his head. I’d been too upset to notice. “He’s got a great head, I think, anyway. He’ll look fine.” It was Reader. There was pretty much no way he couldn’t look awesome.

“He’ll look hot,” Gower said. “But he thinks two baldies in a relationship is . . .” he started to laugh again, “. . . really gay.”

Tito and I looked at each other, and we both started to laugh, too. “I’m straight, for the record,” Tito gasped out. “But my older brother’s gay, and, you know, he’s got the same opinion.”

“What’s your brother do?”

Tito gri

“Protection runs in the family,” Martini said. “Good to know.”

“How long will James be out?” I asked when I finally stopped laughing.

“Less time than if he was in a human hospital,” Martini replied. “We have things we can do that speed up human recovery. Not as fast as an A-C, but faster than normal.”

“Good. We need to brief Tito and bring him up to speed on what’s going on. And I need to go kick some serious ass.”

“Already done.” Chuckie’s voice came from behind us. He looked deadly. “We have the information we need.”

“How?”

Christopher came in. “The C.I.A. has different methods than we do.” He didn’t look upset about it.

Chuckie looked over at Reader. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah. Luckily. Oh, Tito Hernandez, Charles Reynolds. He’s the head of the C.I.A.’s ET Division. Tito helped me and saved James’ life.”

“He on the team now?” Chuckie managed a small smile.

“Yeah, he is.”

“Good. We have a lot of pain heading toward us, and you’ll be particularly gratified to know, Kitty, that, true to form, there’s more than one plan active.”

“Oh, good. Routine.”

CHAPTER 21

GOWER AND I ACTUALLY DIDN’T WANT to leave Reader’s room. The medical staff didn’t want all of us in it. We compromised and stood in the hall.

“The assassin, and that’s what she is, isn’t with the Alpha Centaurion government,” Chuckie said without preamble. “She thought she was killing Jeff, by the way, so she’s not very bright.”

“No, it’s not that.” I thought about it. “James and I looked like a couple.”

“You want to explain that?” Martini asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Sure. He had his arm around my shoulders; I had mine around his waist. He held me, kissed my head, that sort of thing. We were talking about my wedding dress; he was picking out sexy clothes for me. I can see how she’d confuse it.”

“You have something you two were going to tell me and Paul later?” Martini sounded jealous. He looked jealous, too.

“Oh, Jeff, for God’s sake.”

Lorraine cleared her throat. “Jeff, it’s called pre-wedding jitters, okay?”

“What is?” He sounded confused.

“She’s scared, you idiot,” Claudia snapped. “And who can blame her? Your mother hates her, she’s the poster girl for interspecies marriage, we have your distant relatives descending on us to give her some horrible test we know nothing about. And instead of getting to do normal wedding things, she’s working on Alpha Team trying to save the world again. Of course James was holding her. He was probably keeping her from ru

Martini looked at me. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” He looked embarrassed but no longer jealous, so I took that as a win.

“So,” Chuckie said, “the assassin was able to mistake Reader for Martini.”

“Which means bad briefing. James is a head shorter than Jeff. And human, though she might not have bothered to check his heartbeats.” Another fact rose to the surface. “Hang on. She pretended to be Paul to lure James out of the shop, so she had to know he wasn’t Jeff.”

“How do you know?” Chuckie asked.

I related what the shop girl had said. “And why the hell did she kiss me?”

“She thinks you’re hot would be my guess,” Tito offered. Everyone looked at him. “What? I’m new, but Kitty didn’t say I couldn’t talk, and it seems really obvious.”