Free Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch Page A

we get inside?” I managed to ask.
    Martini held my house keys in his hand. “I searched your purse. That thing is worse than I’d thought. Slowed us down a bit.”
    “I’ll make a note to buy something with more compartments when I feel like making it easy for you. I’m glad I’m not passing out like Reader said I would.”
    “I went slowly.” I got the impression he wasn’t lying.
    “That was slowly?”
    “Yes. Now, you going to change or what?”
    “You’re not watching, that’s what.”
    He grinned. “I know. I’m going to check out your fridge. Just to see if I like your frozen dinner selection.” He sauntered off like he owned the place.
    I decided to do what we’d come for. As I walked through my living room to the bedroom, I noted that nothing seemed amiss.
    My bedroom was the best part of the apartment—double doors leading to the living room, which were now closed to keep Martini out, huge window with a great view of the mountain preserve, a large walk-in closet, a vanity area with good lighting, and a full bathroom. The bedroom was why I’d taken this place—put together, the living room, dining room, kitchen and tiny utility area were about the same square footage as my bedroom.
    My bed was still a mess—I didn’t live by the make your bed every day rule. I had stuff all over the place, but it was my stuff, and it was pretty much where I’d left it. I dumped my suit in the bag I used for dry cleaning, hope managing to spring eternal. I washed my face, gave it a couple moments of thought, then pulled on my most comfortable pair of jeans. They were sort of clean, too. I had a feeling we’d be spending a lot of time in the heat, so I figured I should wear a T-shirt. Which one was a difficult choice, though. I didn’t want to wear something I loved, because the chances of it ending up like my suit were high. But I also didn’t want to wear something I hated, or something that didn’t look good on me, for a variety of reasons, all of them related to vanity.
    I finally settled on one of my Aerosmith T-shirts. I had several; this one was well-worn, and I’d feel better with Steven, Joe, and the rest of my boys backing me up, so to speak. I grabbed a hoodie, just in case, added socks and sneakers, and I was finally all set.
    I looked around. If Christopher had searched for something, he sure hadn’t disturbed anything.
    Except, I realized as I started to brush my hair, in one area. I didn’t use the vanity as intended, I’m not much for wearing makeup. I used it as a place to do my hair and display pictures. And they’d been moved.
    I put my hair into a ponytail, tossed my brush, a headband, a couple of extra scrunchies, and my spare hairspray into my purse. Then I examined the pictures.
    He’d moved them all, not much, but enough for me to notice, because I never dust. I could see fingerprints in the dust on the frames, as well as smudges in the dust on the counter, showing where a picture had been and now wasn’t quite on the spot any more.
    The pictures here were the ones that mattered most to me—my parent’s wedding picture, my senior picture from high school, my sorority composite picture, me and my parents with my car when it was brand new, a multi-picture collection of my closest friends from school, college, and work, another multi-picture set of our relatives and pets through my lifetime.
    But the ones that had the most dust removed from them were from my sixteenth birthday. Chuckie had been into photography at that point, and while he pretty much refused to have his picture taken, he’d gotten some awesome snaps of others. In one I was wearing a tiara and holding my cats, Oingo and Boingo, with my parents and Sheila and Amy around me, all of us grinning like idiots. In the other I was still in the tiara, but I was with my then-boyfriend, Brian. He and I were pretending to do the tango, we were both laughing, and he had me dipped, so that I was upside down in the shot with