Read Online Closest Encounter by E.G. Wiser - Free Book Online Page A

remembered and imagined, began to replay in her head—and not always when she was asleep.
    She remembered drinking awful wine with him out of paper cups in her hotel room. Beth remembered watching his face as he drove in the night. The memory of his dark eyes alone were enough to make a shiver run through her. And the sound of his laugh, the kindness in his voice when he was warning alien-possessed fuckers that he was moving the car they were fucking against and he didn’t want them to fall into the street.
    Beth found herself smiling often. Then, as she remembered that this day, too, would be another day without seeing him again, the smile would fade.
    She was glad when she was cleared to get back to work and could bury herself in the job again—distract herself with whatever bit of the heavens would come crashing down to earth next.
    But the governor noticed the change in Beth and mentioned it one day when they had been left behind in a conference room after a presentation about a possible UFO sighting that sounded a great deal like yet another weather balloon.
    “You okay, Beth?” the governor asked, but not in her governor voice. This was Beth’s old college friend Alice talking now. “You seem a bit distracted lately.”
    “Maybe I’m just concerned about all these rogue weather balloons. What do they want? What are they up to?”
    “Seriously, Beth. Something has been different about you ever since that sphere.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “And that security guard.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And he wasn’t a security guard. He was an agent. You read the report…”
    “I read the report. Did that guy get under your skin somehow, Beth?”
    “I guess you could say that.”
    “You understand I am not speaking in double entendre right now, Beth. I mean, emotionally. Are you in love with this guy or something?”
    Beth looked Alice straight in the eye before speaking.
    “Something like that,” she said. “Is that dumb? Maybe it’s just a residual effect from the object.”
    “Or maybe you’re just in love with the guy. Dumber things have happened, you know, even to people like you. Have you told him?”
    “No. Haven’t seen him since we got back. You don’t happen to have the directory for the federal Department of Xeno-Cryptology, do you?”
    “Not on me.”
    “Okay.”
    “Or anywhere.”
    “I figured.”
    And that was that. There was nothing to be done about it. Beth left the conference room and the next day went to another reported crash site. It was a weather balloon.
    “I swear to Christ, I’m going to start arresting meteorologists in a second,” she told the governor over the phone.
    The governor said, “Never mind that, Beth. A car is going to be picking you up outside your apartment tomorrow morning at seven. You are on temporary loan to another agency. I think you could use a change of pace right now.”
    “Are you doing this as my boss or as my friend?”
    “A little of both,” the governor said.
    “All right,” Beth said. She considered arguing, but it would have been more from habit than feeling. Anyway, it would be nice to have some different scenery for a change. Maybe even some normal human interaction and something slightly more interesting than a deflated weather balloon to look at.
    “Pack an overnight bag,” was the last thing the governor told her.
     
    * * * *
     
    The car was outside her apartment building the next day at the appointed time. She opened the passenger door and her heart leaped inside her ribcage.
    Brad was behind the wheel. His grin was impossibly large and school boyish.
    “Where are we off too, Agent Henry?” she asked, in what she hoped was a calm, collected and thoroughly professional voice.
    He started the car, pulled into traffic.
    “Call me Brad, please. I would have called you sooner, you know, but my superiors ordered me not to.”
    “Good soldier, Brad.”
    “Oh come on. It’s not like you looked me up. And I’m on