Project Enterprise (2 page)

How had her personal stalker ended up dead in her backyard?

This had to be some kind of record for a bad day. First the FBI shows up at her door asking weird questions about her books, then they find a dead man in her backyard. Maybe not the worst day ever, but surely in the top ten?

She could tell the big guy thought she'd done it. Daniels just looked surprised. He'd called the police, but they were taking their time. She didn't know whether to be offended or relieved. The two men crouched by the body, talking. Fyn gestured, then got up and walked toward the tree line. Daniels seemed to hesitate, then he came back inside. She turned and sat at the table. She couldn't see the deck from the table. Daniels sat down opposite her, and she could see him trying to figure out what to say. She decided to help him out.

“Why are you really here?”

He studied her for what seemed like a long time. “You appear to have—come into possession of classified material.”

“What? What classified material?”

“I can't tell you that. It's classified.”

“You can't tell me what classified material you think I already have?”

“That's right.”

“And where is the evidence of this classified…” She stopped. “My books? You think my books contain classified material?”

“Have you been in contact with anyone in the government, ma'am?”

“Only the IRS. They're fans of my money since my books started selling well. I don't know if they read them.”

He actually smiled. A nice smile. Might have curled the toes in her shoes if he weren't
freaking crazy
.

“It's in your best interests to cooperate with us, ma'am.”

“Kind of hard to cooperate when I don't know what your problem is.” She huffed out a frustrated sigh, fought her way to calm. “I write
science fiction
. I
make it up
. How could making up stuff be classified?”

“That's a good question. But…”

“The answer is classified?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He was quiet for a minute. “What about experts who help you with technical stuff?”

“Experts? You mean experts in scientific advances that haven't been discovered yet? Or are fictional? Those kind of experts?”

He didn't blink. “Yes, ma'am.”

Jilly leaned forward, hissing through clenched teeth. “Aren't any. Don't exist. I make it all up.” She leaned back, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Have you read my books?”

“I read one of them, the first one.” He smiled again. “It was good.”

“But somehow classified.”

“Well, yes.”

He shifted, as if uncomfortable, but he didn't look uncomfortable.

“You know, your comedy routine would play better with your straight man here instead of patrolling my back yard like Sherlock Holmes.”

He grinned. His gaze seemed admiring, but that might have been part of the routine.

“Seems to be taking the cops a long time.” Had he even called anyone? Maybe they killed “Jusan”…

She heard an odd, thumping noise. What the…

Helicopters. Several of them.

She gave Daniels an ironic look. “I'm sure that's the HPD. They always arrive by chopper.”

H
e liked her
, Rick realized, more than he should. She had spunk and a good eye for bull. She'd seen right through them, even before the real
Men in Black
swarmed over her place like ants on cake. Though they also wore jeans, just more expensive ones.

She still sat at her kitchen table, her hands loosely clasping her bottle of water, staring at the wall in front of her. One or two times, Hitchens, the guy in charge of the team, had stopped to ask her a question. Each time, she'd turned her gaze toward him, stared at him for a full minute, then looked away without speaking.

She hadn't asked for a lawyer. Yet. He hoped she didn't, since she wasn't getting one.

Fyn emerged out of the woods at the back of her house and gestured for him. They met in the center of the backyard.

“Found something.”

Apparently he'd used up his allotment of full sentences. Rick signaled for a couple of the guys to come with them and followed Fyn into the woods. It was cooler under the trees but somehow more humid, which felt like it canceled out cool. The heat made the smell back here more pungent.

Fyn stopped and pointed to one of the trees. Rick stepped around, staring at the scorch mark on the tree, about chest high if the man was as short as the dead fan. They moved deeper into the wood and found more of the marks until they reached a small clearing. Fyn paced around, pointing out his finds. Some trampled flowers, a mix that clearly wasn't indigenous. More scorch marks. Tire tracks. Footprints. A dead ferret.

A ferret?

Rick crouched by the critter. No scorch marks on the visible side. He turned it over and realized it was still warm. Its heart was still beating. Okay, even in an odd situation, that was pretty strange.

He stood up, stepping out of the way of the photographs being taken.

“What if he just walked in on something?” If he'd been planning on an unscheduled visit with his favorite author, sneaking through the woods might seem logical, particularly to a guy dressed like Spock.

“See if you can find our victim's vehicle.”

Rick didn't wait to see the guy nod, just headed back toward the house. When Fyn joined him, Rick wasn't totally surprised to see him carrying the ferret, which was starting to wake up. He hoped they found an owner. Fyn appeared to be bonding with it. And Rick would probably get the blame when he wanted to take it home. Fyn's wife could kick some serious butt.

When they got back to the house, more show and tell.

The victim was one, Oscar Redding. According to his Texas driver's license he was taller and thinner than he looked. Couldn't fudge his age, which was forty-three. He was a card carrying member of the
Star Trek
Fan Club, the
Stargates
Fan Club, the
Star Wars
Fan Club, was president of the J.E. Smith Fan Club and had an ID badge for Consolidated Weapons Systems, Inc.

Crap.

CWS had provided some of the weapons systems for the
Enterprise Project
ships. Some of their people had helped with the repair and refit of the
Doolittle's
weapons arrays. It was hard to see where he fit in, but it was also hard to see an innocent connection when the man was dead—apparently shot with a Garradian type ray gun, if Fyn knew his stuff.

Rick had no doubt Fyn knew his stuff.

Rick phoned home. “I need to know what information Redding had access to and I need to know it yesterday.” He'd always wanted to say that. A bonus that he meant it and that it was true.

“Sir?” It was one of Hitchens' bright young men. “Mr. Hitchens was wondering if you could join him in the garage. With Ms. Smith.”

T
here was
a small Ford pickup truck parked to one side of the double garage, but that wasn't what had caught Hitchens' attention. No, it was definitely the workshop on the other side, complete with welding equipment. On the shelves, Rick could see all kinds of what appeared to be alien technology. On a workbench lay a ray gun. Did ET have a workshop?

Smith crossed her arms over her chest, her expression cool and closed.

“Can you explain this, ma'am?” Rick asked.

She stared at him for several seconds. “It's obviously my secret laboratory, Agent Daniels.”

“This isn't a joking matter, ma'am.”

Hitchens did sinister and threatening better than anyone Rick knew.

“Am I laughing—what was your name again? I don't think I caught it.”

No one said anything.

“Let me guess. Classified.”

Time to be good cop. Rick eased up next to her.

“Ma'am, if you could just explain? You have to admit, this is rather…odd.”

“You mean more odd than a bunch of Feds swarming my house and asking about my books?”

Seemed like a good time not to say anything.

Finally she sighed. “I like to—build some of the stuff I use in my novels. They're mock ups. Models, so I can picture it, describe it, visualize how it would be used if it were real. Which it's
not.
”

Rick stared at the ray gun. “So that's not real?”

“Of course not!” She picked it up, pointed it at the wall, and squeezed the trigger. A flash of light surged out of the tip, slamming into the wall. Flames flickered for a few seconds, before they went out.

Smith walked forward, looking just a bit dazed, and reached out to the big, black mark left on her wall. Before Rick could suggest she not do that, she pulled her hand back.

“It's—hot.” She looked at Rick. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it. “Do I need a lawyer?”

Rick sighed. “Tell me you checked that thing for prints before she picked it up?”

A tech nodded. “Been wiped clean, sir.”

Rick studied the room again, his gaze stopping on the door. He nodded toward it. “Have you checked the door?”

Hitchens nodded. “It leads out to the backyard.”

So, someone could have come in here while he and Fyn were talking to her. That didn't explain why someone would leave a piece of alien tech in her garage. Or the dead guy in her back yard.

It was clear that the clearing had something to do with the dead guy. But it didn't clear Smith of involvement in whatever was going on. Rick really wanted to clear her. “Was the door locked, ma'am?”

“Probably.” Her chin lifted.

He looked at the tech.

“There are scratches on the lock. It could have been picked. No way to tell when, sir.”

He took the ray gun from Smith, looked at it, and handed it off to Fyn. Fyn studied it carefully. Looked at Rick. Shook his head.

So it might have been made in the U.S.A. Or here in this garage. Could someone develop a working ray gun in a garage?

Was he even asking himself the right questions?

J
illy was back
at the table. The feeding frenzy seemed to have died down, but it didn't help her headache. How had her space gun mockup been replaced by one that actually worked? Who had killed “Jusan?” The two events had to be related, but thinking about it without full disclosure from these people just made her head ache more. She rubbed her temples, fighting back a feeling of falling that seemed to be a side effect of the headaches.

Bad cop Fyn intrigued her for some reason. She shifted in her seat to keep him in sight as he paced restlessly around her house, a ferret around his neck. She didn't remember him arriving with a ferret, but then she'd been more interested in good cop Daniels at the time. She got that odd, almost-shift in her vision and felt a longing to be at her computer. These were her most creative moments, when it seemed like her vision split between what was and the place where her novels happened.