Ukiah - Alien Taste Part 12

She crossed her arms, c.o.c.king her head as she looked up at him. "Were you ever a Boy Scout?""Yeah." The scouting experience had ranged from horribly stilted interaction to great fun. It had taught him a lot more about people than the crafts and skills he was trying to learn. He supposed he also took the moral lessons a little more to heart than was recommended. "I gave it up to work with Max."

"So, why don't you want nosy FBI agents here?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"That's what I'm good at. So why the no-fed zone?"

He shook his head; she was persistent. "Look, I was never adopted officially. Until I became of legal age, my Mom Jo was afraid that the government might take me from her. It doesn't matter much now that I'm a legal adult. Old habits are hard to break, though."

"I see." She walked to the stone wall and sat down with her back to the house, looking out over the land. "Beautiful place. You know, your mom probably had nothing to worry about if she had consent letters from your birth mother."

"I was abandoned." He sat beside her. "Mom Jo found me in Oregon. She actually probably broke all sorts of laws bringing me across the country to Pittsburgh."

Agent Zheng shook her head wearily. "Yes, she did break the law. Several federal laws. Okay, Boy Scout, I see why you don't want FBI agents here. How old were you? An infant? One? Two? How did she know you were abandoned and not lost?"

Ukiah laughed. "I was about twelve, it was the middle of winter, I was naked, and I was eating the guts out of a dead rabbit when she first laid eyes on me. It was a pretty good bet that I hadn't gone missing over lunch."

"Rabbit guts?" She raised an eyebrow at him, open disbelief on that unreadable face.

He had to smile and push it, enjoying being able to read her at last. "Oh yeah. See, I was being raised by a pack of timber wolves, and we considered the guts the best part. It had been a hard winter, so a whole rabbit to myself was actually terrific."

She c.o.c.ked her head, trying to decide if he was telling the truth or not. "Do you tell a lot of people that story?"

"Actually-" he sobered, "I think you're only the second person. Max was the first."

She looked away. "I've been told your nickname is Wolf Boy and the police jokingly call you 'the boy raised by wolves.' It would seem you've told a lot of people that story."

"Oh, I tell them I was raised by wolves, but I've never told them about not having clothes on and eating the rabbit guts. You have to tell people something, sooner or later: why you don't know what it's like to be a normal kid with trick or treat, Christmas, birthday parties, school, proms, losing your baby teeth, getting your shots. Why you don't remember a cool kid's show that everyone your age watched when they were ten. Why you miss tons of culture references from old commercials, political scandals, world events-"

She turned her luminous eyes back to him. He stared into them, trying to find her again.

"If you just say, 'I don't remember,' they keep feeding you clues, like they can trigger the memory in you. When they find out you have a photographic memory, you can't even say, 'I don't remember,' because then they know you're lying, but they don't realize what part you're lying about. So you admit it, not as the first thing you say to them, but some time early on. I was raised by wolves, I ran with a pack of timber wolves, I don't know what it's like to be a normal child."

He fell silent. There was a slight softening about her eyes, as if she believed him. He'd have to be content with that, for now.

"So how did you end up working with Max?""Mom Jo hired him to see if he could find out who I was, and he couldn't. The first day he was here, though, doing background questioning, we took a walk and ran across a trail of a man setting traps on the farm. I tracked the man for over a mile at a trot to catch him at his truck. Max ran him off. About a week after my case panned out, Max was hired to find a little boy. John Libzer, sixteen months old, vanished from his yard, gone for two days without a clue."

"You found him?"

Ukiah nodded. "He followed a neighbor's cat across the street and into a wood lot. There was the bore hole for an oil well there, no more than this wide." He put his hands out to ill.u.s.trate. "You wouldn't have thought a kid could fit down it, but I could smell him."

"I know this case," she said softly. "I reviewed it when I came to Pittsburgh. I spoke to the agent who worked it. He said he'd been through that lot twice and never saw the hole. I don't remember hearing about you, though."

Ukiah shrugged. "Well, my moms weren't home when Max came out and asked me to help him.

He knew the FBI was involved and knew how Mom Jo felt about them, so as soon as I'd found Johnny, he called 911, gave Mr. Libzer his bill, and got me out of there. My moms were p.i.s.sed, but we watched the whole rescue, and they cried when the firemen got Johnny out alive. After that, I tracked with Max part-time, about once every two weeks. Then three years ago, Max asked me on full time."

"After the Joe Gary shooting."

"What do you know about that?"

"Mr. Bennett's past is about as interesting as yours. Veteran of the Gulf War. Military police.

College graduate via the veterans' college fund. Co-founder of a highly successful Internet software company, providing business savvy to his computer genius partner, being bought out at age thirty-two for more money than most people dream of making in a lifetime. Beautiful wife goes missing and police are suspicious of the husband, as always, but the husband was touring California at that time, doing speaking engagements on his success. Besides, everyone who knew them says they were madly in love, newly rich, and looking forward to starting a family. Three months later, the police still had turned up nothing, so Mr.

Bennett hired a private detective. A week later the car and missing wife were dredged up from Lake Arthur, where it's easy to slide a fast car off the road and into deep water. Mr. Bennett buried his wife, became a private detective, and devoted his life to finding lost souls. Very poetic."

At first he thought she was being sarcastic about Max, then realized that no, her eyes had deepened and her voice had softened. She had been touched by Max's desperate attempt to make his world right.

"You've done your homework."

"Besides the suspicion of his wife's disappearance, the only other blemish on Mr. Bennett's file is the manslaughter in self-defense of one Joseph Gary. The local police records seem almost purposely confused, like they helped cover up the fact that there was a second shooter, ident.i.ty unknown, using a .45.

If you go back and question paramedics on the scene, they tell you there were three wounded; a female hiker, a man with a serious concussion, and a boy who'd been shot with a rifle."

"Not one of our better days."

"A week later, your paper trail starts, and you're added as an official part owner of Bennett Detective Agency."

Ukiah looked at her, amazed. "I'm what?"

"He gave you half the company. It doesn't seem like much, until you read the a.s.set list: half-million dollar house, three luxury cars, and enough high-tech surveillance equipment and guns to keep a third world country happy. You saved his life that day, didn't you?"

Max had meant "partner" in a more literal meaning than Ukiah thought. He wondered if his momsknew. He wondered too if Max would ever regret the move. The Max of three years ago was more somber, less willing to look ahead then the Max of today.

Ukiah realized that Agent Zheng was still waiting for an answer, that she wasn't going to let him not answer it. "I don't understand why you're asking all these questions. Why does it matter if I saved Max's life three years ago?"

"I'm asking because I need to know how much I can trust you. Did you save Max's life like you saved mine?"

"I suppose so. I jumped into the way without thinking and got hit instead."

"You got hurt, but the other person would have died."

Ukiah nodded. "I guess. I don't know why you need to trust me. We're so off the case that we're talking about taking a vacation in California. We don't do this kind of stuff. We find people who've taken a wrong turn in their day-to-day life. Like Johnny Libzer, who fell down the well."

"Like Max's wife, who went off the road?"

Ukiah nodded and caught the sound of Cally creeping up behind them. He turned and she darted the last few feet to fling herself into his lap, burrowing her face into the crook of his arm. "Hey, hey, what's wrong."

"Mommy wanted me to come ask you who you were talking to, and see if they were staying for dinner."

"Oh. Well, this is-" "Agent Zheng" wouldn't sit well with his moms, he scanned back for her first name. Agent Indigo Zheng. "This is Indigo. Indigo, this is my little sister, Cally."

"h.e.l.lo, Cally."

Cally burrowed deeper into Ukiah's lap.

"What's wrong, pumpkin? Can't you say h.e.l.lo?"

She shook her head.

"Cally, what's wrong? Why are you scared?"

"Is she the girl that hurt you so you had to stay in the hospital?"

"No, no, pumpkin. That girl died. Indigo is a law officer. You remember what we've told you.

Police men and women are our friends-aren't they?" Mostly.

Cally peered out from the safety of Ukiah's arm, her eyes wide and serious. "Uh-huh."

"Okay, pumpkin. Can you go tell Mom that I'm talking to Indigo, and she's-" He glanced at Agent Zheng.

"-staying for dinner." Agent Zheng finished his sentence.

"Okay." And Cally bolted away.

Ukiah watched her still awkward baby running, wondering when kids made that leap to gracefulness. He looked back and found Agent Zheng-Indigo-studying him intently.

Dinner went well, perhaps because neither Ukiah nor Indigo mentioned that she was an FBI agent.

She was good at asking a question and listening to the answer, speaking only to nudge the person into talking more. Mom Jo and Mom Lara talked about female-on-female fertilization, gay marriages in the United States, and Mom Jo's wolf dogs. After dinner, Mom Jo took them back to the kennels, named the dogs, and explained how each had been rescued from an owner that didn't want the half-breed or a humaneshelter that mistrusted their wolf blood.

"We've got something viral circulating through the pack, though." Mom Jo ducked into the end cage to check on her most recent addition, a female crossed with a husky. "The newcomers are fine until they start fighting for a pack position. I think it might be blood transmitted."

Ukiah and Indigo left Mom Jo tending the sickly female, and walked out into the night-cloaked fields. He amazed Indigo with his knowledge of the stars.

"Mom Lara has a doctorate in astrophysics. She used to work at the Allegheny Observatory, but she gave it up to have Cally. I know how much she loved it-I'm always amazed at her sacrifice. She has a NASA grant to do special science projects at the local school."

"And Mom Jo?"

"A doctorate in biology. She's head of the Pittsburgh Zoo. I know stars and animals. The Big Dipper is really Ursa Major, which means big bear." As he hoped, she knew the Big Dipper. He used it to point out other constellations. Venus and Mercury had already set. Saturn was too faint to see easily. He guided her to the Gemini constellation and picked out the stars Pollux and Castor as pointers to Mars.

She gazed at the planet for a long time and finally murmured, "It's so small, so far away. It's amazing we've actually reached it. I wonder how the rover is doing."

He laughed. "I had almost forgotten that was going on."

"I can't," she murmured.

Why couldn't she, he wondered, but a streak of light distracted him. "Shooting star. Make a wish."

Her lips moved against the night sky. What had she asked for? What did she want? He wished he knew what she was thinking.

A memory triggered in his mind, and he smiled in the dark. "I bought something for you today."

"Something for me?"

He took the bag containing the wolf fetish from his pocket and handed it to her. "When I bought it, I wondered if I was ever going to see you again to give it to you."

He repeated what the storekeeper had told him.

She unwrapped it and held it up into the moonlight to inspect it. "And you bought it for me?"

The question confused him. Hadn't he just said that? Perhaps she thought he bought it because he liked it and was giving it to her to make it seem like he planned it all along.

"I like the fact that you can stay so focused on the here, the now," Ukiah said. "Most people I meet get so caught up in the what-was and what-might-be that they spend most of their time reacting to something other than the present."

He reached out to touch the statute in her hand, and their fingertips met. "This wolf has the look of one who is centered. It reminded me of you."

She gazed up at him in long silence, then whispered, "It's beautiful. Thank you."

They walked on along the sea of wheat. They were close, almost touching. Then she reached out to twine her hand in his. Her hand was warm and soft and felt right in his.

"So you're twenty-one."

"That's what we think. I seemed to be between thirteen and sixteen when Mom Jo found me. They picked thirteen to make up for the basic life foundation I missed out on and started to count from there.

That was eight years ago, January. I could be older, I could be younger.""You look like you could still be between fourteen and sixteen-well, not all the time. Most of the time you look about eighteen, and then you suddenly get this puppy-dog look and you're fourteen or sixteen."

"Thanks." They came to the great oak with his tree house. She climbed up and he followed. "How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-six."

"Older woman," Ukiah observed, laying back on the worn wood to stare up at her as she looked at him. What was she thinking?

"Robbing the cradle," she murmured and leaned down to kiss him. He had seen kissing on TV and always wondered why they did so much of it. Now he found himself almost whimpering with the pleasure of it. Her mouth was warm and sweet, and where her tongue touched him felt electric.

He closed his arms awkwardly around her, his right hand finding the curve of her bottom and his left tangling into the soft richness of her hair. Her body molded itself to his, and he felt all of it, the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the flatness of her stomach, the inside curve of her legs.

She tugged up his s.h.i.+rt, and he sat up to help her pull it off. She skinned out of hers and they pressed close again, feeling the warm skin on skin. He was amazed at the softness of her skin, the ripple of muscle under it.

"Have you ever done this before?" she whispered, her eyes filled with the moonlight.

"No," he admitted reluctantly. "Most girls I meet are suffering from hypothermia and are in borderline shock."

She gave her deep, rich laugh, running her hands over his chest. "Most of the guys I meet are trying too hard to be you."

"Me?"

"You're strong and silent by nature. They're putting on an act, so they can't keep their mouth shut when something cute hits them. You can get this dangerous look they couldn't get without Raybans."

He kissed her shoulders and neck and the top curve of her breast. "Is it important that I'm dangerous?"

She laughed into his hair. "I rarely get a second date from accountants."

"So I need to be able to walk beside you and not be afraid."