Arms full with the kind of food that would add ten pounds to my ass in a heartbeat, I headed across the cracked pavement as a county cruiser rolled in. It slowed down as it passed me, windows up and tinted.
I shivered in spite of the heat as I hurried to where Hunter was shutting the latch on the gas tank. “See the police car?”
He glanced over his shoulder as he unloaded half of my fattening goodies from my arms. “Yeah. What about it?”
Maybe I was being paranoid? I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just gave me the creeps. It was like I could feel him…watching me.”
Hunter opened my car door as he eyeballed the cruiser. With the leather pants and dark sunglasses, he looked pretty badass doing it.
I slid in as the police car door opened. A portly, older cop hauled himself out and headed into the convenience store without a backward glance in our direction.
Letting out the breath I was holding, I smiled up at Hunter. “I guess he was just staring at the junk food I was carrying.”
He smirked and then closed the door.
Back on the road, the creeped-out feeling vanished as we dug into the food. I also learned that Hunter only needed one hand to drive. I got real intimately familiar with the other hand. Hunter was…very talented.
A few times throughout the trip, he picked up on the passing presence of Luxen and Arum, but we didn’t have any problems. Though his alien senses were going off about a mile outside of Denver. As we traveled further on South Broadway, drawing closer to the post office, acid was chewing a hole through my stomach.
Hunter squeezed my knee. “You’re nervous.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.”
I shot him a look. “Too late now. We’re almost there , and who could we seriously trust to do this?”
“We need to be quick about this.” He coasted into the right lane. “Implants are everywhere, and with a huge community of Luxen nearby, I won’t be able to sense them until they are right on top of us.”
My heart turned over. “I know.”
Silence descended as the post office came into view, and I couldn’t help but ask myself if I was doing the smart thing. I wasn’t, but sometimes the smart thing wasn’t the same thing as the right thing.
Hunter parked the Porsche behind the post office, near a large delivery truck and loading dock. He looked over at me. “Let’s do this.”
Wishing I could sound and look half as ass-kick as he did, I fished the little key off the ring stashed in my purse and then opened the door. No more than a heartbeat later, he was beside me, taking my hand in his.
I expected a SWAT team consisting of DOD officers, Arum, and Luxen to descend on us as we hurried around the side of the building and through the automatic doors, but no one was around. The lobby and rows of post office boxes were empty.
“What number is hers?” he asked.
I glanced down at the key just to confirm what I already knew. “Eight-hundred and fifty-two.”
Hunter craned his neck and sighed, spying the rows in the back. I could tell he didn’t like this, but I headed forward, determined to get into that damn box. Hopefully this wasn’t for nothing and someone had canceled her box and all the mail had been removed.
With little difficulty, I found her PO box and after wiggling the key a couple of times, the metal door swung open. Envelopes of all colors and sizes, magazines, and junk mail spilled forth and onto the floor.
“Holy shit,” Hunter said.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Mel…well, she rarely checked her PO box and, when she did, she left stuff in it, and I’m sure a lot of this came after she…she died.”
“She didn’t die.” Hunter knelt down and began sorting through the mail on the floor. “She was murdered. There is a difference.”
He was right. There was a huge difference between the two. Throat thick, I reached inside the box and pulled out what was left. A lot was postmarked after she was murdered.
Tossing the junk back into the box, I tried my best not to get affected by seeing Mel’s name on every letter, or the overdue bills that was so her, or the half dozen animal cruelty organizations she belonged to.
It was almost too much going through these things.
Hunter stood and wrapped his hand around my arm, drawing my attention. Blinking back tears, I looked up and cleared my throat. “What?”
“Would you like me to go through them? Or we can take all of this out of here.”
The offer meant a lot to me, it really did, but I shook my head. “No. I can go through these, and I don’t want to take it with me.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but went back to thumbing through his pile. I stopped on an Adam and Eve catalog and then my breath caught. “Hunter, what is it?”
His head had jerked up, eyes narrowing, and then he turned, scanning the bits of the lobby we could see. “I sense another Arum. Close.”
Unease exploded in my stomach. “Would an Arum be working with the senator or any Luxen here?”
“Not likely.” He placed the mail back in the box. “But one could be working with the DOD. I’m going to check out the front. Whoever it is, they’re outside. Stay here.”
I nodded and Hunter started off, but then he spun around and clasped my cheeks.
Tilting my head back, his eyes locked with mine. “I’ll be right back.”
“I know.”
A half smile appeared and then he was gone in a stir of icy wind. Letting out a shaky breath, I turned back to the mail and lifted the catalog, revealing a hand-scribbled note on notebook paper.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, dropping the rest of the mail.
This was it. The freaking letter Mel had written herself. It was her handwriting, starting off with describing the Vanderson brothers as light bulbs. This was so it. I almost couldn’t believe it.
My hands shook as I scanned the letter quickly, and then I had to read it again because I couldn’t believe what I was reading or that Mel wouldn’t have remembered this when she spoke to me.
Or maybe she had been too scared to even speak it out loud because I almost wanted to be able to unread what I had seen. Not knowing…dear God, not knowing was almost better. There wasn’t anything new about Pennsylvania, but what was in here…
Project Eagle was in response to the government organization known as the Daedalus. What Mel had overheard really wouldn’t have made any sense to her, but it did to me knowing what I did.
Project Eagle was world domination.
It was a plan to contact the Luxen who hadn’t come to Earth yet—an honest to God invasion from within the Daedalus, using the origin. There was nothing explaining what the “origin” was, but those hundreds of thousands of Luxen Hunter had spoken about? Project Eagle was about bringing them here.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I,” said an unfamiliar voice. “But then again, seeing is believing.”
My stomach dropped as I whipped around, holding the letter close to my chest. A man stood at the entrance of the row Mel’s post office box was in. He was tall, dark haired, and had extraordinarily bright blue eyes. The faint light outlining his body gave away what he was.
A Luxen.
Air punched out of my lungs and I took a step back, bumping into the metal boxes behind me.
“Wondering how I’m here?” He spread his arms out to his sides. “We have eyes everywhere, sweetheart. That little podunk gas station in Kansas? Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where you were heading.”
That fucking cop! I knew it. I forced my tongue to work. If I could keep him talking, it would hopefully give Hunter enough time to get back, unless something happened—I cut myself off there before panic took root. I couldn’t afford to even think about that. “How did you find me here?”