Your Planet or Mine? (14 page)

Jana pulled into the Sacramento Sky Towers parking garage, rode the elevator up to the lobby to transfer to the residence elevators.

Malvo, the doorman, greeted her and said, “Hello, Senator.”

“Hello, Malvo. What’s up?”

“The good news or the bad news first?”

“Why, I’ll take the bad news.” She always did when someone asked. She hated to ruin the good news. “What is it?”

“The police are waiting for you upstairs in your apartment.”

“T
HE POLICE ARE HERE
?” They’d found out about last night, Jana thought frantically, her eyes shifting back and forth. Where were the exits? Could she run away in time? She’d disappear, drive to Mexico and disappear: Fugitive Senator Flees Over The Border After Drunken Vodka Spree.

Her chin came up. You’re not a fugitive. You’ve done nothing wrong.

Ha!
Nothing like a conscience in denial. Besides, she promised Cavin she was coming back. Maybe they could escape to Mexico together. Someplace steamy. Rainy. With trees.

“Security was supposed to call you. Someone saw someone outside your door trying to break in.”

“Oh, good,” she said, relieved. Malvo gave her a funny glance.
I mean, good that I’m not about to be hauled away to jail
. She dug deep for a more alarmed reaction. “Oh, no. I’d better get up there.”

She ran into the elevator and rode it up to her floor. Only when the doors opened did she remember she never asked Malvo for the good news.

A couple of police officers hovered by her apartment. One of them was busy making out a report. The lock was broken, the door ajar. It was creepy, picturing someone stalking around at her place only hours after she’d left it.

She came forward, her arm outstretched. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m Jana Jasper. I understand someone tried to break into my apartment.”

“Not tried, did.” The officer pushed on the door, opening it. Someone had been inside. Someone out to get her. A malevolent presence hung in the air. She wasn’t sure how she sensed it, she just did. Her unease skyrocketed.

“We got an anonymous call from one of your neighbors,” the officer continued. “Unfortunately, they couldn’t get us a description.” He pocketed a pad he’d been writing on. “Well, file a report if anything is missing. We’ve got another call.”

“Wait.” Jana’s mouth had gone dry. “Can you come inside with me? Make sure no one’s there? I’m a little nervous about going in alone.”

“We checked for trespassers, ma’am.”

Nonalien ones, she thought frantically. She didn’t want to encounter the REEF behind her shower curtain. “Please?”

The busy cops shrugged. “For you, Senator, we will.”

Jana followed them inside. She blinked in the bright sunshine flooding the living room. It was airy and sparsely furnished in ultramodern decor: glass, maple, granite and steel, with hues of blue, gray and white dominating. All very different from Evie’s house. It was supposed to remind her of the sky, but she wondered if it had been an unconscious attempt to distill life down to the essentials of the magic she’d experienced and lost.

And now, found.

As the officers looked around, Jana placed her mother’s matryoshka on the shelf above the fireplace.
Love is the only constant
. She changed her mind and slipped the doll into her purse.

“Do you ever cook in here?” one of the officers called from her kitchen as he inspected the gleaming smoke-gray granite counters, pristine stainless steel appliances, her digital espresso machine, the cobalt-blue glass bowls of the blender and mixer that were as new now as they were when she took them out of the box.

“Sometimes.” Okay, rarely. Fine, maybe never. “I eat a lot of takeout.”

“That was my guess. It’s so model-perfect I wasn’t sure if you lived here full-time.”

Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure if she lived here, either. The apartment was a place she slept in when she wasn’t at work, nothing more. Maybe that was why she didn’t feel as violated by the break-in as she was frightened that someone had come looking for her, namely the REEF. She thought of the naked men found last night, and their description of someone dressed like Cavin. Where the incident occurred was not too far from downtown, an older section, but less than five miles away.

She shuddered, dialed Cavin. No answer. Then she dialed the number Evie had left for her pet sitter, Patti. “All circuits are busy,” droned an operator’s voice. Busy? How could they be busy? What was going on back at Evie’s house? Jana gulped. Probably nothing. It was a new area, lots of construction going on. They were probably doing work on the phone lines or cell towers. Or something.

It was the “or something” that bothered her.

The cops regrouped in the living room. “Senator, no one’s here.”

“Good,” she half whispered.

“Is anything missing?”

“I don’t think so.” That she wasn’t sure and didn’t care drove home how little in the apartment actually meant anything. There was her computer, her photos, some art she’d collected, and her favorite clothes and shoes. What few jewels she owned were safe in a vault at the ranch, taken out and worn to the occasional glam function.

Jana walked past her desk and stopped. The file cabinet door was ajar. Her heart turned over. “My files. I’m sure I didn’t leave them open.” What Jana opened, Jana closed; she was orderly that way. Maybe she’d left it open in her rush to get ready early this morning. Or, maybe she was just being paranoid. She thought of the REEF and shivered. Paranoid was good. Paranoid would keep her alive.

She gave the files a cursory check. “Nothing seems to be missing.” What could someone have wanted with what amounted to a bunch of old paperwork, anyway? Probably whoever broke in wanted information, not valuables.

No, they wanted you.

Jana began to sweat despite the chill in the apartment.

“Are you going to be okay, ma’am?”

Funny how many times she’d been asked that today. “As long as I know I’ve got the place to myself, yes.” She escorted the officers to the door and thanked them. Then she launched into action. After calling security to get them to work fixing the lock, she packed a suitcase with a week’s worth of clothes and traded her business suit for boots, jeans, a dove-gray cashmere sweater and brought along a vintage brown leather aviator jacket. She couldn’t wheel her suitcase out the door fast enough to make it home to Evie’s house.

What a difference a day made. This morning she couldn’t wait to flee Cavin. Now, she couldn’t wait to get back to him.

G
RANDPA FINALLY RETURNED
Jana’s earlier call as she drove up to the gates leading to Evie’s subdivision. She hooked up her cell phone earpiece and tried for the brightest voice she could manage. “Grandpa! Are you home now?”

“Hell no. They want to keep me overnight for observation.” He spat out “observation” with such contempt that she had to smile. “Said my blood pressure was too high this morning. Said I was overwrought. I’m fine. Your parents should be locked up next for imprisoning an old man.”

“Grandpa, you’re not old.”

“They tell me I am.”

“Don’t believe it. But I do want you to take care of yourself. Don’t worry. Be happy.” In her borderline hysteria, she hummed a few bars of the song.

“Are you okay, punkin?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen?”

“That’s how many times I’ve been asked that question today. An average of twice an hour. But back to you. How are you doing?”

“I’m angry I’m imprisoned in this hospital. I’m angry at the rumors and lies directed at my family. I’m goddamn angry at the thought of this affecting your reelection. But don’t tell your mother.”

She took a shuddering breath, wished she could tell him the truth, that her reelection was going to be affected, only not by rumors and lies.
It’s going to be affected by things beyond your worst nightmares, Grandpa, if what Cavin tells me is true
. She wanted to confide everything to him, but couldn’t. If lies about her father’s ethics and rumors about her mother’s ties to the Russian Mafia had sent him to the hospital, news that she was madly in love with an alien who’d brought warnings of an impending invasion after landing a spaceship at the Jasper ranch would likely put Grandpa in an irreversible vegetative coma.

Ahead, the street was blocked by trucks from Pacific Gas and Electric truck and Comcast Cable. A tow truck drove away in the opposite direction, pulling a car behind it. Jana slowed the Jeep. A wisp of unease coiled through her.

A muscle in her cheek twitched as she absorbed the sight of a couple of abandoned passenger cars with their hoods up. She pulled over to the curb and parked. And realized her grandfather was still talking. She hadn’t heard a thing he’d said. “I gotta go, Grandpa. Something’s come up.” She’d become the master of understatement. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Be good,” he told her before they said goodbye.

Be good. Such a simple request. One look at the scene in front of Evie’s house told her how futile it was.

Jaspers Bring Alien Menace To The Suburbs.

She pulled her keys from the ignition, grabbed her suitcase, a small bag of groceries she’d picked up and the doggie bag from lunch and ran to her sister’s house. Evie’s neighbor Cheryl waved at her from her front yard. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

Jana stopped, wheezing for air. “What happened?”

“First the cars started dying. The power came back a few hours ago, but no one has phones. Not even cell service.” She held out her wrist for Jana to see. “Eight fifty-four this morning. That’s when it happened. My watch stopped. Weird, huh?”

Jana cast a wild glance at Evie’s house. No one was on the roof. The house looked normal, if nothing else did.

“Did you see that movie
War of the Worlds?
”

Jana swerved a panicked glance back to Cheryl. “Why?”

“You know in the beginning when that lightning came down? It knocked out everything in the town. Even the watches.”

There was an EMP pulse, Jana thought with a start. Cheryl was right. The lightning bolts in the
War of the Worlds
movie were an electromagnetic pulse. The attack knocked out car starters, computers, interrupted everything. Then she remembered the security system Cavin had been working on before she left. “It emits a harmless pulse of energy,” he’d told her. Harmless, yes. Something no one would notice, no.

Cheryl laughed. “But we don’t have aliens here.”

Jana shook her head almost violently.

“So I’m blaming it on the cable company. By the way, cute boyfriend you got there. He’s a doll.”

Jana’s knees almost buckled. “You met Cavin?” She winced. She should have said he wasn’t her boyfriend. And why did she say his name? Not only that, what was he doing, talking to the neighbors? A drumbeat started up in Jana’s head: not erotic, I-want-to-get-naked-with-you drumbeats, but migraine drumbeats.
I’m going to kill you, Cavin
.
Slowly and with my bare hands
. But somehow the thought of putting her bare hands on Cavin didn’t have the effect she intended.

“We met him this morning,” Cheryl replied. “I introduced myself. He was in the driveway with a really cute sad face watching you drive away. Are you okay, Jana?”

Eighteen.
“Fine.”

“Well, got to get back inside and see what the kids are up to. No TV. No Nintendo. I don’t trust their alternative solutions for entertainment.” The woman ran up a few steps to her door and disappeared inside.

Yenflarg.
Jana squared her shoulders and marched to Evie’s front door.

“Y
ARP
,
YARP
!”
From the other side of the front door, Sadie barked. Jana hunted for her keys. Before she could unlock the door, Cavin let her in. From her scalp to her toes and everything in between, she reacted to being near him. No one could fill out black long johns and boots the way he could. His short hair looked damp and spiky, and he’d shaved. As if that wasn’t delicious enough, he smelled like the buttery vanilla soap Evie kept in all the bathrooms. Worse, he saw her reaction to him—one look at his pleased, almost mischievous smile told her that.

Woman Self-combusts. Raging Sexual Hormones Blamed On Toenail Polish. FDA To Issue Warning.

“Call me shallow and horny, but everything would be so much easier if you weren’t so hot.” She shoved the groceries and the doggie bag into his arms. “Turn it off.”

“Off?” He glanced down at his body with a look of confusion.

“Yes, off! Now. The security system. Your EMP thingies. Before someone finds out it’s coming from this house.”

She stormed past him into the kitchen, looking for evidence of a security array, fully intending to rip out anything that looked capable of knocking out the power, killing cars, or freezing watches. “If I get my hands on those darn balls—I mean those damn balls, I’m flushing them down the toilet.”

Evie’s ginger tomcat Pumpkin wisely fled Jana’s wrath and disappeared out the pet door.

Cavin put the bags on the counter next to the sink. “I already disabled the security array. I did it this morning after something set it off. One of the cats, I’m sure. Or maybe it was Sadie. The little creature wouldn’t confess, even after an extensive interrogation.”

“Yarp, yarp!” Sadie pranced around their feet, barking happily. Cavin appeared maddeningly unconcerned, as well.

“This is no joke.” Did he have any idea how close the REEF had come to finding her today? Jana threw down her keys. They skittered across the granite countertop and fell into the sink. “You said it was an electromagnetic pulse, I give you that, but for crying out loud, Cavin, it knocked out the phones, the power, everything. We’re supposed to be staying undercover, not attracting attention. Be more careful, Cavin. I couldn’t bear losing you. I couldn’t—”

“Hello.” He swept a hand behind her head and pulled her, stumbling, into a kiss, kissing her until she softened like butter and melted into the hard contours of his body. His hand slid around until he cupped her jaw, keeping her face at just the right angle to explore her deeply with his tongue. His hair was like coarse silk under her fingers, and his mouth, so sweet. Familiar and sweet. He tasted like chocolate, she realized. Her tirade was far from over, but his kiss was so intense, so tender, so luscious, that not even her gift of gab could fight back.

He released her, and she swayed on her feet. “That was quite a hello.”

“We have many hellos to catch up on, Jana. Twenty-three years’ worth.” She was unable to resist when he lowered his head to hers one more time. When she slipped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him back, he made a rumble of pleasure in his chest and his fingers splayed on the back of her head to hold her close. It didn’t feel as if he had quickie hello-kisses in mind. No, not at all. In fact, if he kept this up, they’d be in the guest bedroom for a different kind of quickie. Did she really want to be good?

No, but she had to. She couldn’t afford to delay bringing Cavin her news. Breathless, she broke off the embrace. “We have to talk, Cavin, or there’s a good chance our next kiss will be a goodbye kiss. Someone broke into my apartment today.”

Cavin went rigid. His focus was laser sharp. Hard eyes. A soldier’s stare. “More information,” he demanded.

“It happened while I was at work. No one saw who did it. Nothing was taken, but I think someone went through my personal files. It has to be the REEF.”

“He wouldn’t have searched and left. He would have retreated to a safe location, waited, and then followed you.” Cavin adjusted his wrist gauntlet, turning it on briefly to take a look. “He did not follow you here,” he said to her relief.

“There’s something else you should know. We made the news today. Front page.” How calm she sounded when she really wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She pulled a newspaper from the grocery bag. Cavin picked it up and held it to his eyes. He couldn’t read, but the pictures were loud and clear.

“There’s more. They found two men last night. Someone dumped them naked and unconscious in a trash bin near a warehouse. Their attacker was dressed like you. How do I know? Because the guy that stripped the men fits the description circulating of you in your armor at the supermarket. It has to be the REEF. He’s out there and, worse, Cavin, now he’s dressed like an Earthling.”

Cavin shook his head. “Not the REEF.”

“How can you be sure? We don’t know. Do we take the chance?”

“I’m not advocating taking chances, not with my life or yours. I have one goal while here, to save your world, and that includes saving you. My death would complicate things tremendously.”

“Ya think?” She pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off a headache. “How can you make a joke about dying?”

“It helps keep me sane,” he said, quieter.

Again, it choked her up what a sacrifice and huge risk Cavin had taken in coming here. She’d always considered the men in her family heroes, but Cavin defined the word. His government was suffering a huge loss if their policies alienated a man like him.

“Jana, I assure you, the REEF would have killed the men.”

“He almost did. It was cold last night. They almost died of exposure.”

“A REEF assassin knows how to kill. If he left them alive, it’s because he wanted to, either for tactical reasons, to flaunt his presence and perhaps flush me out of hiding or, as we’ve discussed before, he may be malfunctioning. I don’t know.”

There was a lot they didn’t know. But for the moment, they were safe. She tried to cling to that. “I’m starving, and I bet you are, too. What did you eat today, besides chocolate?”

“How do you know I ate chocolate?”

“Because in this house it’s everywhere, and I tasted it when you kissed me.” She turned away to finish unloading the groceries she’d bought to replenish what they might use of Evie’s, plus a bottle of pinot grigio and a container of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. She savored every second of doing something so mundane, so normal, in the midst of the chaos her life had become. “One hour, Cavin, just one hour of peace to eat a sit-down meal like civilized people, that’s all I ask. Then we can linger over after-dinner drinks and talk about assassination attempts, government betrayals, alien invasions, doing it against a tree…That’s what I love about us. We never seem to run out of things to talk about.”

Cavin slid his arms around her from behind and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Now it’s you who is joking about dying.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Sanity has suddenly become quite the commodity around here.”

She leaned backward as Cavin kissed the sensitive place under her ear. Smiling, she hunched her shoulders and shivered. One big hand slid down her rib cage to the line of bare skin exposed between the hem of her sweater and her jeans. He dragged his fingertips from her spine to her tummy and back again. His other hand was just as busy, smoothing up and down her ribs. It was warmer in the kitchen than before. Uh-oh. Warning sign.

“You keep me sane more than words do, Squee,” he whispered in her ear. With each upward caress, his thumb moved closer to the underside of her breast.

Breathe, Jana, breathe. You are a higher life-form than the sturgeon
. Or was she? All she knew was that survival and saving the world had dropped to a distant second place in the face of pure, unadulterated lust.

She snatched his wrist and put his hand where she wanted it: inside her sweater. Cavin’s fingers disappeared under the cashmere and slid upward until he found her bra. His breath hitched then he took advantage, molding her, caressing her. The sensation was exquisite, and seemed hardwired to the place between her legs that went
boom, boom, boom.

She flattened her hands on the cold granite countertop and moaned softly, unintentionally thrusting her butt into Cavin. Her jeans were thin enough to feel that he was hard, very hard and aroused. It made her knees go weak.

He moved her hair aside, nipped the back of her neck. His finger slid under the waistband of her jeans and scooted around to her fly. He was about to pop the top button when he froze. “Gods, you make it difficult to behave,” he whispered harshly. His hand slid out from under her sweater. The searing memory of his touch lingered like the afterimage of a flashbulb. He scooted his hips back and safely away, but kept his cheek pressed to hers for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I swore to you. My fault. I’m usually more disciplined than this. Something happens to me when I’m around you.”

He didn’t need to explain. The same thing happened to her also. Laughing, she let her head fall forward, using her elbows as support as she leaned over the counter. Or maybe it was because she’d lost the ability to stand on her own. “You started it, spaceman.”

“You facilitated it.”

She laughed. Turning, she linked her arms over his neck. “I guess I did.” Cavin fixed her rumpled sweater, pulling on the hem to smooth it, a gesture so casually tender she tingled all over with a surge of affection.

Her cell phone vibrated in her jeans pocket, and she jumped a mile. Was it nerves from the assassin lurking about, or guilt about things heating up with Cavin? She pulled out the phone to read the number. “It’s my father,” she said, her heart leaping. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, sweetheart. I’m glad I caught up with you.”

Knowing how much he was suffering caused her stomach to knot up. “Tell me what I can do to help. Isn’t there anything? Just say the word.”

“I need you to hold down the fort for me at the ranch. I’m not going to be able to make it home for Easter.”

“I understand, Dad.” But she didn’t understand. Not really. She didn’t understand how one person’s or a few people’s words could bring a man like her father to his knees.

“Your mother’s flying to DC Monday. She’ll spend the holiday here. Evie will stay at the ranch all week, looking after Grandpa.”

“Mrs. Salazar can’t make it?”

“You know him. He refuses to have what he calls a babysitter.”

Jana laughed. “I’m surprised she was willing to come back. He’s an incorrigible old coot when it comes to caregivers.”

“Keep an eye on him, Jana. Keep him steady. He listens to you. I’m concerned about the effect on him with these charges against me. Damn it. I’ll learn who did this, and who defamed the Porizkova side of the family. The Russian Mafia, can you believe it?” He made a sound of disgust. “On a more positive note, the accountants going over my finance records haven’t found a thing. It’s been a ray of light in a couple of very dark days. I taped a press conference earlier. Check the news.”

Jana found the remote control Evie kept in the kitchen and turned on a small TV mounted under the counter. She gave the remote to Cavin, who peered at it, turning the remote over and over in his hands with curiosity. His first lesson on blending in as an Earth man, she thought.

But he held it upside down. She smiled, spinning her finger until he caught on. She pointed to the down arrow, nodding, and then he was off and running.

The channel changed from a cooking show to ESPN. It was a college basketball game. Here he lingered before flipping through more channels to a SpongeBob cartoon. He squinted, his mouth set in a funny expression. One thing for certain, this man hadn’t spent a childhood watching Saturday-morning cartoons. But when he got to the news, Jana tugged on his sleeve to stop him.
That’s my father
, she mouthed.

Cavin observed Congressman Jasper with interest as Jana returned her attention to the call.

“I’ve got to go, Jana,” Dad was saying. “You keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Doing?” Jana gulped. Jana glanced at Cavin and bit her lip. Beleaguered Congressman’s Woes Go Galactic.

“Yes, upholding the Jasper name, being a model legislator. I know there’s extraordinary pressure on you right now, public and private, but you’ve risen to the occasion. You make me proud, Jana.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said weakly.

After they hung up, she let out a breath and sagged back against the counter. “So far no one’s been able to come up with any evidence of wrongdoing on my father’s part, which is no surprise. He seemed in good spirits about it.” And confident in her ability to stay out of trouble, which was exactly what she wasn’t doing.

She busied her hands putting leftovers from lunch in the microwave so she didn’t burst into tears.

“You don’t appear as happy as I thought you’d be upon hearing this promising news,” Cavin observed.

She handed him a plate of cold leftovers to bring to the table. “Because there’s a tremendous amount of pressure not to do anything that will put the family under more scrutiny. These people who went after my father, they’re hiding like cockroaches, waiting for another chance. I’ve seen these things happen before, but never to us. Never to the Jaspers. Maybe our days of being untouchable are over. I have to watch my step.” She gave a tense shrug and massaged the back of her neck.

Cavin removed her hand from her neck and took over, massaging her neck and shoulders. His thumbs pressed and rotated, working out the kinks in her muscles. She sighed. “It’s a heavy weight you carry on your shoulders as a member of your family,” he said low in her ear.

“It is, sometimes…” Of all the men she’d been with, Cavin was the first to acknowledge the driving force in her life, yet, he’d made the observation seemingly without effort. He got it. He
got her
.

She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment. So many emotions tumbled through her: the pressure of being under attack, of having someone to open up to about it, the relief of knowing she didn’t have to walk alone anymore, that she had someone now, like her father had her mother. “‘We Jaspers are public servants first and foremost. Our duty to others comes before our own interests and ambition.’ I was born, weaned, and raised on that rule. Back when I was nine, when we met, I almost didn’t come outside to see you that last night because my grandfather told me it wasn’t responsible to be out after dark and Jaspers needed to be responsible.”