Page 14 of Alien Knight Blind Date Disaster

“Many times.”

“Well that one had green sludge for blood. So what kind of alien was he?”

“That narrows the choices to several dozen possibilities.”

“What? Please tell me that was just a bad joke.”

Before he could respond, a black SUV shut off its headlights and came up on her bumper. Close. Too close. “No. No. No.”

She downshifted and stomped on the gas pedal, putting distance between her car and the aggressive driver behind them, hoping the gut feeling she had was wrong. When a bullet shattered the back window, she cursed and turned a sharp right, the car’s wheels squealing on the pavement as she fought to recover from the spin.

“They’re shooting at us. With real bullets. The kind that kill people.” Why did she feel the need to state the obvious? But then he seemed completely calm. Maybe he hadn’t freaking noticed the glass shattering!

“Drive faster. Their vehicle is large and cumbersome. You should be able to outmaneuver them, even with this primitive machine.”

She took another turn, spinning the back end of the car in a semicircle to make the sharp cut onto the highway on-ramp. Accelerating with every ounce of speed she could pull from the car, she turned off the headlights and wove between traffic until she could hide in front of a large vehicle nearly identical to the one following them.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his hand clenched around the door handle.

“Hiding. And waiting.”

“For what?”

“This.” With the attacker’s SUV trailing too far back to see their small car’s movement from their angle, she crossed two lanes of traffic and took an exit at high speed. Racing to the bottom, she turned the corner and drove beneath the freeway’s overpass, pulled to the side of the nearly deserted industrial road and waited.

One full minute passed. Two. When five full minutes had gone by with no sign of pursuit, she turned the lights on and creeped onto a side street. She knew this area well, had been tracking black market dealers down here for a couple of months. She had even signed a lease on a studio loft nearby under a false name so she would have somewhere to hide her work and, more importantly, a place to lay low if her investigation became too dangerous. She knew every dark alley, deserted building and hiding place in this section of the city. But hiding wasn’t her goal, at least not tonight.

“I’ll take you back to your base now.” She’d take him home, get inside, shake him loose and have a look around the Caldorian base. She had to get to Sevron, tell him what she knew. Get some answers. But Sevron had stopped responding to her messages. He’d disappeared. The official word from the Caldorians was that nothing had happened. The explosions and sounds of battle, the fires a few weeks ago were nothing more than “training exercises.” She rolled her eyes. The military had been using that lie for decades. And her gut was telling her thatwasa lie. Beyond that, Sevron had left her very specific instructions.

Trustno onebut the king, Dagan.

As inNO ONE. Sevron had warned her that there was a traitor on the Caldorian base, someone on the inside, and he didn’t know who it was. Was this Falden the traitor? How had he known where she would be? And if he wasn’t the black market contact she’d been supposed to meet, as she very much suspected he wasnot,then who the hell was he and how did he get here?

With Sevron not responding to her messages, she’d tried to reach the king. But getting past the bureaucrats when she couldn’t tell them who she really was or what she really wanted had proved futile. Getting past the perimeter security? Impossible. She’d tried. More than once. The last time they caught her, they’d threatened to call the human authorities and ask that she be charged with trespassing with the intent to commit a terrorist act, and incarcerated.

What the Caldorians wanted, they got. Slap the terrorist label on her, and she’d rot somewhere until she was dead. And who knew how long that would be if the government—or the Caldorians—found out what she knew.

At the very least she would have disappeared down inside some dark spy dungeon, never to be seen again. And no one would have missed her. No one knew what she was working on. Even Jessica, sweet as her friend was, wouldn’t stand a chance of ever finding Isabella if that happened.

“No. We will not be returning to the base.”

“What do you mean, no?” Pulling into an alley, she turned the car’s lights off again but left the engine running, the parking brake locked so they wouldn’t go anywhere until she was good and ready. The sword, Storm Caller, had stopped glowing, although the semiliquid state seemed to be a permanent condition. She had no idea why she could still see it, but she itched to touch the alien weapon. See if it was warm or cold.

The spiral marking near Falden’s temple looked like he really liked diamonds and had decided to embed a few of them in his skin. Normal, right? Totally normal. At least it had stopped glowing. She sighed.

Too bad. He’d looked super sexy with the glowing tattoo. Like, lick-him-up-and-down hot. Or maybe that was the adrenaline talking. Her hands shook from it; her heart raced. She’d been shot at twice, and then she’d outrun a gunman in a car chase on a major freeway with an alien and a glowing sword next to her.

Not exactly a normal Friday night, even for her.

“You have been seen with me. They know where the base is located. Everyone knows. It will not be safe to return there tonight.”

Well, hell. He sounded adamant. And she couldn’t lose him now. “Well, I guess you can sleep on my sofa.”

“No. You will not return to your residence. They will have identified you by now.”

“No, they won’t. Trust me.” She’d been too careful. Fake name. Fake identity. Fake hair. Glasses with plain glass lenses. She’d even made a point of doing her makeup in a way that changed the shape of her face. God bless contour pallets and YouTube videos. Even she didn’t recognize herself when she looked in the mirror.

He turned to face her, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking back. When he lifted one hand to remove the glasses from her face, she let him do it. Why? No idea. It was like staring into his icy blue eyes paralyzed her or wiped her mind of all good sense.

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