“I’m so glad you’ve reconsidered,” Ostlund said. “Don’t worry. Every effort will be made to comply with your personal wishes.”

  Malena watched him leave. Somehow, she didn’t believe him.

  -32-

  Malena healed quickly. So quickly, in fact, she had to wonder about some of the strange instruments that were applied during her treatment. Within ten days, her cracked ribs no longer bothered her, and the scar where molten metal had burned into her shoulder was fading and white, rather than an angry red weal.

  She told her parents that she’d gotten a new, high-paying job—which was true. And that she’d bought a new car, which was also true. But she made up the part about wrecking it on the second day she owned it and having sustained a few injuries. They’d insisted on flying down to see her, of course.

  They began nosing around the moment they arrived. They were particularly suspicious of the nice hotel on Key Largo in which she’d been staying during her recovery, although they couldn’t fault the accommodations themselves. Her mother, Beth Marin, had been critical of Malena’s wounds, noticing they’d healed to scars already. She accused Malena of covering things up. She said the injuries must have been sustained much earlier. Her father had been more interested in the car, which had been immaculately repaired.

  Malena stuck to her cover story, which left her parents huffy. She could tell they weren’t buying it, but she maintained the fiction because she couldn’t tell them the truth. It would violate her contract to even tell them there was a contract. To distract them, she made a point of spending cash on them. This was partly to get them over the idea she was broke. Her father had resisted, wrestling with her over every restaurant check. He let her pay each one in the end, but kept grumbling about it the entire time.

  It took two days to chase them off to Virginia again. The moment they were on the plane she was finally able to relax. She could see now that being a field agent who couldn’t talk about her job at all was going to be difficult.

  Two weeks after the mission had ended, she found herself sunbathing on the private beach outside the hotel built atop XCU’s base. The beach really was a lovely, quiet place. At least Ostlund hadn’t misled her about that detail.

  Anthony called her cell again as she sunbathed. She let it ring twice before picking it up, not wanting to seem too anxious. He’d been talking about flying down to visit her. He knew she’d been injured, but not the extent of her injuries. Of course, he knew nothing about her mission, or what XCU did. That was well beyond his clearance level.

  “I’ve got a few days off, finally,” he told her a minute or two later, after inquiring about her health several times.

  “That’s great. But can you really afford to fly down just to see me?”

  “Sure, don’t worry about that. I’m looking forward to seeing you again on a more relaxed basis. I think we’ll both be happier going out when we aren’t working at the same place. That always puts an extra strain on things—don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I suppose it does. I mean, it did in our case.”

  Malena wasn’t sure how she felt about this visit. She thought it would be fun, but questioned the wisdom of starting something up with Anthony again. She didn’t want to lead him on.

  “You sure you’re feeling okay?” Anthony asked. “You never told me exactly what happened.”

  “No, I didn’t. It’s related to my new job. That’s all I can say.”

  “I understand. Injured right away…sounds like a training incident. I won’t ask anything else about it. But I know I can ask about you. Are you liking your new job?”

  Malena thought about Ostlund and Burke. There was plenty of bullshit between those two. As an agent in the field, she effectively had two bosses and they weren’t on the same page. She wasn’t overly fond of either of them. And then there was Tanner…she wasn’t sure how she felt about him.

  “Actually, it’s not too bad right now,” she said into her phone. “I’m sitting on the beach in the afternoon and getting paid for it. Hard to complain about that.”

  Anthony laughed. “Lucky! If I got hurt they’d make me take a laptop to the hospital.”

  Malena smiled. She looked around the beach. Really, she might have to reconsider her position on XCU. She’d wanted out badly by the end of her first mission. But now in retrospect, the whole thing looked more like a wild adventure. She hadn’t gone so far as to romanticize the events in Cuba yet, but she was remembering the positive more than the negative. Maybe that’s why they were being so nice to her. Perhaps they planned to buy her loyalty, to get her addicted to this lifestyle. She wasn’t sure.

  The beach was on the western side of Key Largo, and the sun was beginning to go down in front of her over the Gulf of Mexico. The foam on the waves had turned from white to molten gold over the last hour as the sunlight changed.

  Running her eyes over the waves and chatting with Anthony about his flight, she saw a figure rise up out of the water in front of her. It was an athletic man in a bathing suit. She could only see him in silhouette, due to the brilliant sun behind him and the shading effect of her sunglasses.

  The man slicked back his hair, looked around and seemed to spot her. He began wading closer.

  Anthony was saying something about rental cars when she tuned back into the conversation.

  “…uh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I can pick you up.”

  “Really? I thought your car was on its last legs.”

  “It was, but I bought a new one this week.”

  Anthony made an appreciative sound. “So, this new job pays? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “That’s classified.”

  The man coming out of the sea had reached the zone of wet, dark sand where the ocean waves ended and the white beach began. He lifted his hand and waved to her in recognition. Malena waved back tentatively. She still wasn’t sure who he was, or where he’d come from.

  “You sound distracted,” Anthony complained. “Maybe I should call later.”

  “No, no,” she began. “There’s someone here, that’s all.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not quite sure…”

  In that instant, she recognized the man who was approaching her. It was Tanner. She didn’t know how she hadn’t realized it before. Maybe it was his state of undress. She’d only seen him in bulky fatigues and spacesuits and the like. She’d always known he was athletic; he wouldn’t have made much of a field agent otherwise. But in a bathing suit, he certainly did have a nice shape to him.

  “Tanner?” she asked. She felt her lips part into a smile.

  “Who did you think it was?”

  Malena had been working on her sketchbook. She quickly flipped to an innocuous sketch. She didn’t want him to see the things she’d drawn. They were personal, and they haunted her dreams nightly. For all she knew, the images were forbidden by the small print on her contract.

  Tanner walked up and stood next to her. Water ran down his bronzed skin.

  “How come you never let me see your drawings?” he asked craning his neck to look over her shoulder.

  “They aren’t that good,” she said. Then she showed him the sketch of the beach she’d been working on among less happy works.

  He peered at it, shading his eyes. “That’s quite good!” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Suddenly, Malena realized that she’d let her phone slip from her ear. She lifted it and pressed it to her head again. “Hello? Anthony? I’m sorry! Could I call you back?”

  “Sure,” he said, and disconnected.

  Malena frowned for just a second at the phone. Had he hung up in annoyance? She couldn’t tell by his tone. She felt a pang of guilt. Then she looked back up at Tanner and her frown faded.

  “Hey,” she said. “Just where the hell did you come from?”

  “That’s classified,” he said, sitting down in the sand beside her. His body dripped seawater, and he gave his head a little shake. This action created a hundred brown lumps of wet sand on the beach around him. Some of the droplets hit her and cooled her hot skin.

  “I used to have a dog that did that,” Malena complained good-naturedly.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “A friend.”

  Tanner nodded and looked out to the sea. “Is this great or what? Ostlund promised you a private beach and he delivered, didn’t he?”

  “How did you know he told me about the beach?”

  “He sells it to every sucker he recruits.”

  Malena laughed. “What happened to the ship?” she asked, squinting at him. “And what about Haak? No one will tell me.”

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you either, but I will. The ship kept collapsing. It’s a mound of smoking rubble now. Once the reaction starts, it keeps going until it burns itself out.”

  “You mean the implosion?”

  “Yeah. That was a big chunk of X. It kept chewing on the ship for a long time. About Haak—well, he was deeper in the ship than we were when things went bad. I don’t think anyone could have survived that. Not even him.”

  Malena nodded, but she wasn’t so sure. That man was harder to kill than a New York rat.

  They watched the waves quietly for a few minutes. She had to admit to herself she was entertaining certain romantic thoughts about Bill Tanner. It would have been hard not to in this perfect environment. She recalled the kiss he’d given her back in the ship. They’d been close to death then. The entire mission seemed like a bad dream. Sitting here watching ocean waves crash on white sands, the smoky interior of an alien ship seemed far away indeed.

  She began hoping Tanner would ask her out. That led to an immediate guilty response from the more thoughtful parts of her mind. After all, she’d just been discussing a vacation visit with Anthony, who was obviously trying to rekindle with her. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the situation. She decided to let Tanner make the next move.

  When he finally spoke up, she was disappointed.

  “So, you ready for another mission?” Tanner asked suddenly. He had a bright smile, and his teeth were square and white.

  Malena’s face fell. She felt like she’d been misled.

  “That’s what this is about? You came out here to see if you could drag me on another mission? Is Ostlund watching on some security camera? Did he send you out here just for that?”

  Tanner was taken aback. “No, it’s not that. I mean—you do have a job, remember? This is a Wednesday…you knew that, right? You’re looking fit, and we could use your help. I wouldn’t have made it home from the last mission without you. I didn’t think that was too much to ask. The medics tell me your body is clear of X again. What I’m really inquiring about is your state of mind.”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Of course—I’m sorry. Sure, I can get back to work.”

  They spent a few more minutes on the beach, but the mood was gone for Malena. All thoughts of romance had faded.

  Tanner finally turned to her and smiled. “Love this place. Hey, you wouldn’t want to go get some dinner tonight, would you? I know a bar with the best grilled amber jack in the world.”

  “Amber jack?”

  “It’s a fish. Fantastic flavor.”

  She stared at him, shaking her head. She didn’t know quite what to think. She’d just set up a get-together with an ex. Then Tanner had asked her out immediately after prodding her to get back to work. He had to have the world’s worst timing.

  Tanner studied her face. She knew he was trying to read her expression and obviously failing at it. She’d always known he wasn’t the sensitive kind of guy, the kind of person who knew what you were thinking before you did. Instead, he was the type that just stood there looking confused when things didn’t work out.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked finally.

  “Nothing. Where’s the mission this time? Is it a hot site?”

  “The mission? Oh yeah, that’s the good part. Probably just a dig. It’s Roswell again.”

  Malena’s eyes widened in alarm. “Again?”

  “Yeah, there’s this recurrent problem out there. You may have heard something about it. We haven’t been able to keep it a hundred percent quiet.”

  “No kidding,” she said, picking up her sketchbook and towel. She began walking back toward the hotel which hid XCU’s headquarters.

  “Um,” he said, following her. “What about dinner? Just as friends.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “All right,” she said.

  The End

  From the Author: Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed ELEMENT-X. If you want to read more about Malena and XCU, please put up some stars and a review. Let new readers know what’s in store for them.

  -BVL

  More Books by B. V. Larson:

  STAR FORCE SERIES

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Rebellion

  Conquest

  Battle Station

  Empire

  UNSPEAKABLE THINGS SERIES

  Technomancer

  The Bone Triangle

  OTHER SF BOOKS

  Z-World

  Velocity

  Visit BVLarson.com for more information.

 

 

  B. V. Larson, Element-X

 

 

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