Season of Strangers (18 page)

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ripping the thin silk caftan over her breasts, Julie stared at the front door Patrick had just closed behind him. She could hear his heavy footfalls on the stairs leading down to the street. Her chest hurt. Tears spilled over her lashes and trailed down her cheeks.

“Oh God, Patrick, what did I do?” But silence was her only answer. For the last eight years, she had harbored a secret physical desire for Patrick Donovan. She had fought it, defeated it, filed it safely away. But since his heart attack, things had changed.

It had been easy to refuse the selfish, hedonistic man he had been. But this new Patrick, this gentle, caring, concerned Patrick Donovan was a man she could not resist. She had been frightened of the risk she was taking, but it never occurred to her that Patrick might be having reservations, too. Or perhaps he had discovered he no longer wanted her the way he had believed.

Blinking back a fresh round of tears, Julie walked into the living room. She grabbed a tissue, her hands still shaking, dabbed at her cheeks and blew her nose, then sank wearily down on the sofa. Her heart still pounded. Her insides tingled. The ache of unspent desire throbbed through her veins.

What had just happened? What had she done? Julie clamped down on the urge to cry again. It never did any good and usually made her feel worse. Besides, she should have known something bad would happen. He was Patrick, after all. What had she expected?

Still, she hadn't been with a man for the past three years, not since she had ended her affair with Jeffrey Muller. Once she had made the decision to sleep with Patrick, she had wanted everything to be perfect. The time seemed right: a beautiful night, a full moon, the soothing sounds of the sea battering softly against the shore. She had wanted Patrick so very badly, and at first he had seemed to want her. She didn't know what had gone wrong or how she was ever going to face him again.

Her throat ached, and her stomach churned with embarrassment at Patrick's cold rejection. She rubbed her temple, hoping it wasn't the beginning of a headache, thinking that the way things had been going lately, she shouldn't be surprised by anything that occurred.

First the terrible migraines, then Laura's paranoia and outlandish claims. Now there was Patrick and the awful realization that nothing between them would ever be the same.

She thought of his behavior and her own erotic desires, felt her face go warm with humiliation. She stiffened her spine. The headaches were slowly getting better. She was sure in time they would disappear. Her sister needed her help—she would do what she could to take care of her.

As for Patrick…Patrick Donovan could go straight to hell.

 

Val paced the bedroom of his apartment, stopped and turned and paced the length of the room again, his shoes making a squeaking sound on the carpet with each of his long, agitated strides. Before he'd left for work that morning, he had completed his required communication with his superiors using a small, powerful device the size of a credit card he carried in his wallet.

As soon as he had returned home tonight, he had begun work on his journal, which lay open on the desk a few feet away, the pages overflowed with words he had written about what had happened at Julie's. Personal impressions he wasn't yet ready to share with his superiors aboard the ship.

He paused for a moment, thinking of the words he had written, thinking of the things he had experienced tonight. Though he had not actually completed the act of sex as he had intended, the passion he had experienced had given him an insight into feelings a Torillian could not fathom. For the first time he was beginning to understand the intense degree of emotion humans felt.

He paced the floor thinking of all he had learned, all he had yet to learn, thinking of Julie Ferris.

Wanting her still.

His body continued to throb with the ache she had stirred, still pulsed with the heat of his desire for her. He could feel the weight of her breasts in his hands, recall the erotic taste of her skin. He wanted her more than ever, craved to know the full extent of what he might discover from their joining. But now, because his body's needs had frightened him so badly, he had destroyed their growing bond, and the odds weren't good he would be given a second chance.

Val felt another sweep of emotion, this one tightening a hard knot in his chest. He wasn't sure what it was, a mixture of pain and something deeper, more intense.

He didn't know how to ease it, how to make it go away.

And part of him was afraid to find out.

 

Julie didn't see Patrick all the next day, which was the only stroke of good fortune she'd had. Laura had called early that morning. Dr. Heraldson had arranged for her to sit in with Peter Winter's abduction group at 7:00 p.m. that evening.

“I was kind of hoping you could come with me,” Laura had said over the phone.

Julie pondered that. “I would have to rearrange my evening appointment with the Harveys. They're supposed to sign the escrow papers on the condo they just bought, but I can probably meet with them tomorrow.” She still felt funny about steering them away from Patrick's condo project, but she had rarely seen him so adamant on a subject as he had been that day, and the condo the couple had finally purchased might turn out to be the better deal.

“I'd really like you to come,” Laura urged.

Julie heard the anxiety in her sister's voice. “Then I will. In fact, I'll pick you up. Where will you be? At home or at work?”

A long silent pause. “I'm not working at The Boutique anymore.”

An equally long pause on Julie's end. “Why not?”

“I didn't like working so late. I didn't like coming out of the building after it got so dark.”

Julie thought of her sister cowering in terror the night of the birthday dinner, and her heart went out to her. “I'm sure you'll find something else. In the meantime, this will give you plenty of time to work with Dr. Winters. I'll pick you up at six.”

She rang off, worked for a while on her escrow files, showed a big Palos Verdes estate to a friend of Owen's who was thinking of moving, then bought a couple of submarine sandwiches she and Laura could eat on the road, and set off for Venice Beach.

Dr. Winters's abduction group was meeting at a residence in Long Beach, not that far away. It turned out to be a lovely two-story home that backed up to one of the scenic canals. It wasn't what she would have expected. Neither was the group of people who had gathered to discuss their fears.

“I'm Robert Stringer.” The owner of the house waited for them on the porch and invited them in. “You must be Laura, and this must be your sister, Julie.”

“I'm Laura,” her sister corrected, since the man had reversed their names. “This is Julie.”

“Hello, Mr. Stringer,” Julie said, wondering if being shorter made her a more likely victim than her taller, more willowy sister.

“It's just Robert. We're all friends here.” He was a dignified man in his early forties, the head of Digital Associates, a big computer software company. The last person she could imagine believing in alien abduction.

As they walked into the foyer, a small man in jeans, penny loafers, and a long-sleeved white button-down shirt stepped forward. “Welcome. I'm Dr. Winters.”

Peter Winters led them forward and introduced them to the rest of the group seated in the living room. Carrie Newcomb, an attractive young woman in her late twenties, was a hairdresser who had moved to L.A. from Phoenix. Leslie Williams was African-American, tall and willowy with intelligent dark eyes and a warm, broad-lipped smile. She worked for Xerox in the sales and marketing division, driving up for the meetings each week from San Diego. Matthew Goldman, a thin, nervous man with a tic, was unemployed; and fiftyish Willis Small was the successful author of a dozen books on gardening.

An interesting mix, Julie thought, people without any apparent connection. The only one there with an obvious disorder was Goldman, the man with the tic, who in less than fifteen minutes proved to be either a fake or a schizophrenic. Julie wasn't sure which, but she was betting on the latter.

“Since the group is open to anyone who wants to come,” the doctor said, taking a chair at the head of the circle, “I'd like to open the discussion by turning the meeting over to whomever might have something they wish to say. How about you, Leslie?”

The cocoa-skinned woman smiled. “I'm happy to say it's been a good week for me, since I slept better than I usually do. I'm feeling stronger, less frightened since I've been coming here. I want you all to know how much I appreciate being a part of this group.”

Dr. Winters smiled. “Thank you, Leslie. We're glad to have you with us. Anyone else?” He turned to Robert Stringer. “Since we have a newcomer with us tonight, perhaps you wouldn't mind, Robert, repeating for us the story of your abduction.”

Julie didn't know why Robert Stringer had been singled out until she saw the way his story began to affect the others. Where all but Goldman had appeared calm before, now they had all begun to fidget in their seats. Perhaps for most of them, repeating the tale was like reliving it. The occurrence was just too traumatic.

“As most of you know, I was working in Denver at the time it happened…my first encounter with the Visitors. My oldest son, Tommy, loved to fish, so for the weekend, the two of us had traveled up to a small mountain lake near Crested Butte. It was such a pleasant summer day we had taken the top off the Jeep. It was nearly dusk when it happened. We had already caught our limit and were heading back to camp when we heard an odd sort of buzzing. It wasn't like anything either of us had ever heard before. It was rather unsettling, irritating you might say. It was sort of thick and heavy, and at first we couldn't decide where it was coming from.”

An prickle of uneasiness ran along Julie's nerves. She had heard a sound like that the day they were at the beach.

Robert Stringer shifted a little in his chair. “I pulled off the road when we realized it was coming from directly above us. The object we saw was disk-shaped, made of highly polished silver. It looked massive, hovering right over our heads. Both of us just sat there, staring at the object in awe. I remember little Tommy reaching out to grasp my hand.”

Leslie Williams started crying.

A chill raced down Julie's spine.

“What happened then, Robert?” Dr. Winters gently prodded.

“That's the last I recall until I woke up on the ship.”

“And once you were there?”

“They stripped off my clothes. I remember trying to fight them, but I couldn't move. I remember looking frantically for my son. I never saw him, but somehow I knew he was there.” Robert Stringer's throat moved up and down, but no sound came out. With obvious effort, he dragged himself under control

“Can you go on, Robert?”

He nodded, rubbed his palms on the sides of his pants. “They placed me on a cold metal table and bathed me in something…it was slimy and I remember it smelled a little like cheddar cheese. It was wet and colorless and it made me start to shiver. I was lying flat on my back. They lowered some sort of machine over my head and attached it to my forehead with what looked like some type of electrodes. It was reading something, my thoughts I think. It was learning everything about me. When they were finished, they inserted a metal probe down my throat and another into my rectum. They forced me to climax then took a semen sample. I remember I cried. I couldn't stand having them touch me.”

Julie swallowed against the dryness in her throat. Her hands were shaking. She glanced worriedly over at Laura, saw tears spilling onto her sister's cheeks. She wanted to go to her, comfort her, but she had to see this through. Julie bit down on her lip and forced herself not to move.

“What did they look like?” the doctor asked softly.

“There were several different types. Most of them were little, less than four feet tall. They had big heads and large dark eyes, and they were dressed exactly alike. At the time I remember thinking they were soldiers.” He moved restlessly now, crossing his legs, then straightening them out in front of him. “There were others there, too. Taller, thinner. They were the ones giving the orders, though I wasn't able to hear them.”