Page 16 of Claimed by an Alien Warrior

Keeping her distance from Officer Asswipe, she got back into the car and slammed the door. She held a hand out the open window. “I need my wallet back.Please.”

Ignoring her extended hand, he tossed the wallet through the window to land in her lap. “Drive safe.” Before she could hit him with a scathing — and foolhardy — remark, he turned and walked toward the next car.

Zoey stuffed her wallet into her purse, grabbed her keys, and buckled up. She started the car and glared at the cop’s back as she rolled up her window. Throwing the shifter into drive, she promptly got the fuck out of there.

Once she’d passed the barricade and the police car lights were fading in the distance, Zoey was slapped in the face with the realization that they’d made it through. She released a shaky breath as relief flowed through her. “We did it.”

She lifted a hand to adjust the rearview mirror, angling it to see into the back seat. Her eyes widened as a dark form materialized there.Wasshe crazy? She wasn’t sure how to reconcile his appearing-disappearing act otherwise.

Rendash shifted to meet her gaze in the mirror. “You’ve kept your word thus far, human. I will keep mine.”

Zoey frowned. “Told you I would.”

A pang of guilt pierced her chest; for a single moment, she’d considered giving him up. Now that she was on the other side of the checkpoint, she was glad she hadn’t, but she could only hope the decision wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.

“What are the lights up ahead?” Rendash asked.

“A casino,” she replied. “The first of many. Welcome to Nevada.”

“I find myself more confused now than before I asked.”

“Oh.”

Despite his accent, he spoke English so well that she’d assumed he knew. Didn’t aliens spy on humans? Didn’t they abduct people in the middle of the night, stealing them away to flying saucers, to probe and prod and question? Aliens were supposed to be super smart.

Intelligence and knowledge are different things. This world is alien to him. Can’t expect him to know all about the convoluted things humans do.

“Nevada is a state. We just crossed into it from California. There are fifty states in the United States. They’re like…divisions of territory, I guess, and we might cross more of them depending on where you need me to take you. Um…wheredoyou need me to take you, anyway?”

She felt his hand on her seat again, and he pulled himself into a hunched sitting position, placing his face between the two front seats.

“In the direction we are traveling,” he replied. Just as she was about to get annoyed at his vagueness, he continued. “I know only that there is a great distance to cross. I have no knowledge of your world to provide you with even a general location to aim for, only the direction.”

“All right. I…guess that’s better than nothing.”

“And what is a casino?” he asked.

“A casino is a place where people gamble.”

“Gamble their lives?”

Zoey glanced at him. A chill ran through her. While his two center eyes looked ahead, the leftmost one stared at her. She forced her gaze to the road.

Creepy. As. Fuck.

“Might as well be their lives,” she said. “But no. They gamble with money.”

“Money. That is an abstract means of assigning value to goods and services, is it not?”

“You say that like it’s a strange concept to you.”

“My people do not have such a thing.”

“Um, here, let me show you.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, she blindly reached over and dug her wallet out of her purse. She glanced down a couple times as she withdrew a dollar bill and her debit card, holding them up for him. “This is money. There are lots of different paper ones, and some that are metal, and each has a certain value. The card is a…an electronic way of accessing the money we own that’s stored in a bank — not that you’re likely to have any idea of what that is, either.”

He plucked the dollar from her hold. “This paper has value? What use can it be put to?”

She caught a glimpse of the confused look on his face in the mirror; his brow was furrowed, and his lips turned down in a deep frown.

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