“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I have Isabel and Max. We were all put in an orphanage together, but they got adopted and I didn’t.”
Maria looked at him quietly. His monotone voice, and the matter of fact way he laid out the facts bothered her. It was the wound that festered under the surface, but on top looked healed and normal.
“That’s just wrong. They split up twins?”
Michael just shrugged. “It didn’t matter. We didn’t even know we were twins, not until we were twenty-one. We started having these queer incestuous dreams, that wigged us both out when we were seventeen almost eighteen. But you know that dreams are rarely really what they seem, more symbolic. It wasn’t until we noticed that in all the dreams we were across from each other, and everything had an intense feeling of family. We only dreamed a few of those, but it was enough to almost break our relationship and friendship. It was just too queer. We did something that cleared everything up for us.”
“What?”
Michael stopped talking. He was revealing more than he wanted to. She saw into him, and though she didn’t ask, he knew she realized he was different. Alien.
“We did a sort of vision quest thing with our brother Max. It was intense. The three of us walked in this dream plane, and there was a symbol with interlocking spirals. While there Isabel and I found ourselves on this cliff, but we weren’t together romantically or anything, but standing back to back. And the world rushed around us in this fast circle like standing in the center of a merry-go-round. So fast that our bodies bled together, and it became hard to distinguish her from me. Above us was a star constellation. It was Gemini…the twins.”
“So these dreams, the incestuous ones, were kind of disturbing.”
Michael ate off her plate. “At first. They could have been interpreted one of two ways. One way was that we were meant to be together, as a couple. Another way was both our intense need to have family was sending up signals, albeit garbled ones. Iz and I were joined, and our brains just moved it around. We were siblings, but only inside, and the law didn’t see us as related at all. But if we were meant to be together it just felt like we’d feel more, feel this need to complete it, but instead it wigged us both out. I could never get past her being my sister, not for that. And in all these years neither could Isabel. So when we did the vision walk at twenty-one it cleared up all the confusion from those dreams. Twins, two faces of the same coin seen in different perspective.”
“That must have been a relief.”
“It was in some ways, and it wasn’t in others.” Maria waited for him to finish it. “Knowing that our twin bond was weakened by distance, that she was more Max’s sister than mine. All those years she felt like my sister, but she really was Max’s. They had a sibling bond that was strong, and it bled a little to include me, but most the time it was them against me. It hurt. Our bond should’ve been unbreakable.”
“Maybe that was what those strange dreams were about?”
Michael looked at Maria strangely. “What do you mean?”
Maria shrugged. “Maybe the strain on your natural twin bond was becoming so stretched that the dreams was more a reminder that you belonged together, that you were a pair meant to be with each other through thick or thin, that you were family. Maybe there was something unconsciously pulling on the strands that join you.”
“Me.” Michael said softly. “It was me. I almost left Roswell forever that spring. I was never coming back. I did end up staying another year, but by the time I graduated I felt like the anger was killing me, making it so I couldn’t breathe, and Isabel and Max were smothering me. They wanted me near, but their closeness kept kicking me in the teeth that I wasn’t part of them. Part of the perfect happy family.”
“So you left?”
“College. About two hundred miles away. Not that far, but far enough that I learned to take long deep breaths and learned to dream of a future that didn’t include incarceration.”
Maria laughed. Putting her plate on the bedside table, she moved up his body and straddled his hips. “Bad Boy?”
“The baddest ever known in this goat-fucking town.”
Maria laughed at that. “Yeah, I think I had my moments of notoriousness fading into obscurity. I think art wasn’t a natural choice for me. It was like a door was shut that suddenly opened. All my life it was music. But my type of music is so not the mainstream pop idol crap.”
Michael could see that. Nothing so ordinary for her. “Angry girl music?”
“Yeah, that and bleeding soul stuff. Emotional, intense and edgy.”
“That’s a risk. It can’t appeal to the musically tone deaf and immature.”
Maria laughed. “You have no idea. The best I could do was cover songs and then slide a few of my own in under the wire. I waited tables at a local pizzeria during high school for scratch, singing in a band on weekends.”
Michael noticed that she was talking about her life as if it was something she really remembered and understood, so he kept asking questions. It was much easier listening to her than to have her quiz him over his life. If she started that again he’d be forced to take action and distract her with sex again. Michael smirked at the thought.
“So your parents were okay with you singing in bars at night.”
“Not parents. Mother. I have a mother. She was cool. Sort of strict in a strange hippy way. Sort of the Hippy Free Spirit meets Carol Brady. She wanted to let me be free, but still be the parent. It was a whacked mixture most the time, but we survived without any major blowups.” Maria moved herself along his larger frame, lying down beside him. Lunch had been good. It involved eating in bed and sex, and her body felt heavy and relaxed. Satisfied. For now.
“So she was a single mom?”
“Yeah. Just her and me. She struggled for years to take care of me, worked for an art gallery until I was a senior in High School when she finally got brave and took out a small business loan geared toward women. Anyway she bought this rundown backstreet gallery off the mainstream and started working to build it into the best art gallery in town. She wanted to run talented locals that were virtual unknowns.”
“So that was how you got into art?”
“No, that was actually high school. I was forced to take another arts class, but other than music, so I decided on drawing. I sucked. Well, at the drawing portion. I liked the lines, the geometrical cleanness and even learning perspective, but it was all so dull - black and white. Then they gave me a paintbrush, a sable-tipped Grumbacher, and a palate of colors. It was the colors. The mixing. I always had this sort of whacked-out fashion sense, liking strange combinations of color and clothing, but once I stood there with a palate, and I began to mix the colors creating minute changes and new combinations, it was like a door in my brain opened. And I painted. I painted everything, anything, and all the time.”
“Your mother liked it?”
“She hated it. I left paint everywhere. But she came to my senior class art show, and the next thing I knew she was crying and hanging everything I did in her gallery. It took six months before someone bought one, but I kept the money in a special account. I called it my Ego. Everything artsy came out of that account until one day I had lots of money, enough to buy studio space. With the help of an art grant from the Dupree Foundation I went into business with my mom and finally took formal art classes at the local U. We built a new studio. Brand new from the ground up. Scouted out the location, lots of chrome and glass with a South wes tern stucco theme, and we ran my work and other local artists through. I was her silent partner, and it was worth it to see her living her dream. All those years she struggled to raise me alone, and it was so worth it.”
Michael watched as Maria stopped talking and he could feel a sense of shooting pain in her body. Awareness hit her. She’d been talking of her life, unaware of what she was remembering, but in a flash of insight she had remembered the most important thing. She remembered her mother.
Sitting up she looked at Michael and he watched as tears flooded her eyes. She shook her head, and a shroud of confusion moved across her face.
“I can’t even see her face. I can’t remember it, but I feel her. I feel what it feels like to be loved by her.” Maria grasped his arm hard. “I need to find her, find my life. She’s alone without me. I don’t remember much, more sensations than actual events, but I know she’ll come looking for me. She’ll never stop, not until she finds me, or finds them.”
Them again. No real name. No idea who they were, but an ominous feeling of fear and flight.
“Okay. Time to stop messing around then and find you.” Michael said in comfort. He had been pulled into a trap since early that morning. A trap where their whole existence was nothing more than both of them in a world of their own making, which included mind-blowing sex. They couldn’t hide forever.
“Where and how do we start?”
Michael looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve got a few ideas. First being that there wasn’t enough shit in your car. No baggage or suitcases of any type. The car was too expensive for you to be a traveler without something to change into. You’re too beautiful to live in the same clothes day after day, and your dress was expensive.”
“Are you suggesting I’m vain and a fashion horse?”
Michael looked at her wearing only his shirt. A ratty shirt left over from high school seven years ago. She looked incredibly doable, sexy, and hot.
“I’m suggesting that you’re uptown, and that usually means traveling accouterments.”
“So my trimmings have to be somewhere, right. Somewhere where the clientele isn’t tossed out at a moment's notice, the management doesn’t confiscate the bags, somewhere where privacy of the client is valued.”
“That means no roadside motel with complimentary cockroaches.”
Maria smiled. “Aw, I missed out on a nookie motel? Shocking!”
“So it's probably one of the more expensive places in town. What do you think you’d like?”
“Room service.” Maria suggested hopefully.
“In Roswell? Not likely. But some places with local restaurants nearby.” Michael thought about it for a second. “Holiday Inn. Best bet.”
“You sure they have no room service?” asked Maria.
“Do I look like I spend a lot of time in Roswell hotels?”
“I’m just asking. I mean I don’t know much about myself, but I am positive that room service or an on-site restaurant is going to be important.”
Michael sighed and reached for a phone book. It took a few moments, but he finally found one. “A Best Western. Sally Port Inn and Suites. They not only have suites and room service, but also valet service.”
“Bingo! That sounds like right up my alley.” Michael frowned. In the flash he got from the medallion the room was definitely not too pricey, actually it looked like a standard Motor Inn room with the door opening up to the outside. But the room seemed to be the man’s and not Maria’s place.
“Okay, we’ll try there first and then move down the list.”
Maria nodded. “How do we find out if I’m registered? Are you going to hack into their computer or something?”
“Hack? Computer? Only if I use an axe. Computers and me are not so friendly. Best I can do with technology is to destroy it or play a video game.”
“So…?” Maria asked quietly.
“So we go look at the register. They have to have physical records.”
Maria nodded. “If I was a guest there, and left my stuff, don’t you think they would’ve contacted the authorities when I never returned?”
“Good question. Another DeLuca mystery to solve. So lets get showered and head out.”
“Shoes?”
“Shoes...?” Michael echoed.
“I don't have any.”
“Damn. Okay, you get to go barefoot, and hopefully we’ll find your stuff and there’ll be shoes there.”
~~~
“There’s not enough stuff listed here, Jim.”
“What do you mean?” Jim looked over Amy’s shoulder standing real close reading the list of personal effects found in the burned out car.
“Maria wouldn’t travel without at least three bags. She was scheduled to stay in Colorado and paint for at least three weeks. That means she packed accordingly. Also my kid has a shoe fetish. She almost always carries one suitcase just for her shoes. And that's if she's roughing it. I took her camping once. Once. Never again. She bitched the entire time; brought the entire house including a real bed.”
“So her stuff has to be somewhere.”
“Exactly. So unless she stayed with someone, we’re talking hotel.”
“The credit card company is being a pain about releasing her records.”
Amy shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Maria would’ve paid cash. She can barely balance her checkbook, and so when credit card bills come in at fast rates she gets all confused and either underpays or overpays. She'll only use her credit card in an extreme emergency. Otherwise, it’s greenbacks, her ATM card, or a check.” Amy thought about it for a moment. “We should check with her bank. If she's using cash, then that means she's making ATM withdrawals.”
“Some hotels have ATM machines. We can check…”
“Room service.”
“Pardon?”
“Room service. Maria would stay someplace with room service. She loves it. Hates those cheap motels with ice machines and candy machines. It reminds her too much of her childhood. We spent too much time traveling and staying in cheap cockroach motels where you don’t want to sit on the bed or touch the floor barefoot. Now that she can afford it, she likes to be pampered. Room Service. And valet service. No sane human would let her do laundry.”
Jim nodded. He reached for his phone. They had taken up space in his office, and Amy was grimacing at the coffee. Amy DeLuca. She had changed, but something about her was still Amy.
“Amy, you know where Maria banks?”
“Same place I do. You better let me do the talking.”
Jim listened a little while and smiled as Amy harassed bank workers over the phone until she worked her way up to the bank manager. Leaving her to cut a swath of destruction and terror in her path, he went to find someone to get him a rundown on all hotels, motels and motor inns in and around Roswell with room service.
~~~
Maria followed Michael up to a suite in the hotel. It had only taken moments for Michael to find her registration card. That and a large distraction. Once everyone’s attention was diverted by the sudden implosion of a vase of flowers in the lobby, he easily went through the open registration cards for current guests. Maria was in the third row. She had checked in two nights before her accident, last Monday.
Maria looked around and frowned at Michael. “How are we going to get into the room? Did you get a key?” She was hoping he wasn’t going to set a fire or explode the place. She wanted her stuff in one piece, plus fire scared her.
“No. Electronic keys. I didn’t know how to make one.” Michael looked around. “But I can pop the lock if you can be my lookout.”
“Done.” They reached the door to her supposed room. Maria kept her back to Michael and kept an eye on the elevator down the hall. “Okay, all set. Do your magic genie thing, but be quick.”
“Just keep quiet and watch the hall.” Michael said in a sour whisper rolling his eyes. It wasn’t damn magic. He had to be careful or he’d blow the lock. Concentrating…
“Are you in yet?”
“Hold your water. I’m working here.”
Maria bounced on the balls of her bare feet looking up and down the hallway. Placing her hand on his back, she leaned into him a little. Michael closed his eyes and concentrated on the locking mechanism. Maria turned sharply when she heard a distinctive clicking noise, and the door was opened.
“About time. You need to polish your skills some.”
Michael just made a face. “Yeah right. Like I do this for a living.”
Maria ignored him and started searching the rooms. The sitting room was relatively clear of clutter, but the bedroom had three large bags and a garment bag. In the bathroom was a small toiletry bag, with shampoo and cosmetics laid out.
Leaning up against a wall were art supplies, special containers holding paints and brushes. Maria ran her hands over them like they were her children, unhatched eggs needing tending. She quickly straightened and placed them on the bed.
Michael searched the luggage. Nothing much. Some papers. Reservations for a resort in Colorado. Cash. A damn nice supply of ready cash. He looked over at the woman, busy mumbling to herself in amazement over the art supplies. Someone actually let her out of their care alone? Frickin’ unbelievable. She was an accident waiting to happen.
“I can’t find anything, but here's an address book and something that looks like a planner.”
Maria joined him, clutching her paints to her body. “Any numbers in there for this area? For…um, what town is this again?”
“Roswell. Roswell, New Mexico.”
“Aliens right?” Maria asked her eyes penetrating his.
“Yeah, famous crash of ’47, government conspiracy, weather balloons, and little green men with large unblinking black almond shaped eyes.”
Maria just snorted, and read silently over his shoulder. Nothing. No Roswell numbers, or even ones from the state of New Mexico.
“I must have been here for a reason. I mean how many people just come to Roswell?”
“You’d be surprised at the number of freaks we get. The local UFO Center runs conventions for the X-File crowd, and most of the town is geared towards alien-themed tourist traps.”
“Nice place to grow up, Spaceboy.”
Michael startled at the name, but Maria was too busy checking him out, that and the bed they were sitting on. She knew. Or a part of her knew, made a connection that he was different. Why didn’t she ask? Why didn’t she run away screaming?”
Maria gave a little bounce to the bed and then pushed him back on it suddenly forgetting her precious art supplies. Leaning across him, she kissed him, running her hands up under his shirt.
“Nice bed. You want to try it out?”
Michael actually considered the suggestion, but hesitated. They had figured it out. Figured out where her stuff was, so it was only a matter of time that the incredibly inane cops or Feds finally put it together.
“Next time. We need to look around, find you some shoes, and get.”
Maria reluctantly sat up, but looked around the room. “I don’t get it. This room must go for a nice tidy sum, so why didn’t they remove my stuff and rent it out to someone else?”
Michael piled things they might need on the bed as Maria grabbed another suitcase and started to open it. Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth rounded in an 'Oh' of surprise. Discreetly peeking at Michael she reached in and removed a pair of shoes and closed the suitcase, placing it on the bed as something they needed to take with them. Quickly pulling on the shoes, she winced as her feet stung a little bit, but the shoes felt familiar. Worn to her feet.
“I know. You checked in last Monday, and you were scheduled to check out on Wednesday no doubt so you could leave and make your reservation in Colorado. But for some reason you paid for a long stay. Another week. They didn’t inform the police you were missing or remove your stuff because you still own the suite. At least until Wednesday.”
Maria started gathering her stuff and picked up the phone. Michael reached over and put the receiver down.
“What are ya doing?”
“I’m calling the front desk to have a bellhop come up to take my stuff down.”
“Maria, we can’t. If your stuff is cleared out people will know you came back here. Right now they don’t know where you are. You could have hitched a ride across the border as far as anyone knows, but the daily maid will know that your stuff was here earlier today, and now it’s not. That means they will know you are in Roswell still, hiding. Besides, we're here on the sly, remember? No bellhops!”
“Oh. But…”
“Don’t worry. They’ll call the Sheriff’s office, and they'll come over and confiscate your stuff. Later you’ll get it back.”
Maria nodded. Okay, he was right. “Dammit, Michael. I must have called someone! I can’t see myself as a big alien groupie,” Maria said but continued in a softer voice, “...until now.”
“I can’t call down and ask the front desk if you made any calls for the same reason we can't use a bellhop.”
Maria clicked her tongue, and her eyes looked at the trash can next to the bed. If it looked empty the maid wouldn’t have emptied it. Grabbing it, she looked inside. Nothing. Dammit.
Michael took the trashcan from her. “What are you doing?”
“Any babysitter worth her salt knows that all the good information comes from the trash, but the maid already dumped it.”
Michael looked down into the empty trashcan, all that was there was a plastic bag. Shrugging, he lifted the plastic bag, and looked under it. There was a small piece of paper. A memo from the front desk, a message left with the room number on it. Maria moved closer as he opened it. There was a phone number.
“Think it’s from my stay or left over from another?”
“Hard to say.” Michael frowned at the number. “It’s a Roswell exchange.”
Maria picked up the phone again. Michael replaced it.
“What are you doing?” Dammit, she was making him repeat himself.
“Calling it. How else are we going to know whose number it is?”
“Not here! The hotel will have a record of all outgoing calls. I think they'll be suspicious of one made from the room of the missing girl.”
“Girl. Listen buddy, I think I’ve proved I’m hardly a girl. Show some respect for my obvious talents and age.”
“Uh huh. We need to go.” Maria got up and grabbed her art supplies and the other suitcase.
“What’s that? Maria, we shouldn’t take anything.”
“I need these things.” Maria clutched her bag of paintbrushes to her, that and the paints while holding the small suitcase.
“What’s in the case?”
“Essentials.”
“Maria.” Michael took the suitcase ignoring her cussing under her breath. style="mso-spacerun: yes"> “Shoes? You want to take an entire suitcase of shoes? Not anything else. Not clothes? Not bathroom stuff? Just shoes?”
“I need them! They get lonely, and…”
“You’re sick!” Michael left the suitcase behind and took the money, papers, a set of keys he found, and her daily planner. Maria kept her art supplies and gave him a looked that suggested that if he tried to force her to desert them like she was deserting her shoes, he was in for a re-enactment of the Alamo.
Michael shut the door behind them and quickly looked both ways. Marching her along with a firm hand under one arm, Maria bitterly protested.
“You wait, dammit! When we get home…I’m touching all your stuff!”
~~~
“Dad.” Jim looked up from where he and Amy were working. Kyle stood in the door holding a paper. “Here’s a rundown on all the hotels in the Roswell area that has room service and on-site restaurants.”
“Thanks, Kyle.” Amy took the piece of paper and started calling. He listened as she asked for Maria DeLuca’s room.
“Dad…um, Sheriff, can I see you for a moment.”
Jim nodded and left Amy calling. She seemed to have a knack at cutting through the red tape and getting people to tell her things.
“What is it, Kyle?”
“Burns. He was arraigned this morning, and bail was set at ten thousand. He was released on his own recognizance, about two hours ago.”
“That was quick. I didn’t know the Feds sent anyone down yet to spring him.”
Kyle looked over at Amy. “They didn’t. His immediate supervisor just showed up, an Agent Stevenson. He’s pretty pissed, and wants to know where his field operative is.”
Jim rubbed his jaw. “Who posted bail?”
“I’m looking into it, but it wasn’t a bail bondsman. He got it from an outside source.”
Jim cussed and leaned his head back trying to think. Somewhere outside the Bureau. The agent was fast to hit the scene, and hounded the crime scene and the case like a bull terri er. “Find out what you can about Special Agent Burns. Discreetly. You had a friend, right? The one you went to high school and college with? Quiet guy. Geekish. Liked computers. Didn’t he go into some high priced government job?”
“Yeah. I can call and see if he can help, but I’m not sure if he’s in a position to ask questions.”
“Push him. Tell him it’s important. He’s a computer guy, maybe he can transverse places we can’t.”
“You want him to hack the FBI?”
“I just want information. Ask him.”
Kyle nodded and thought about where he could find the phone number for his ex-college roommate. They were placed together during freshman year of college’s room lottery, but the next year Kyle had joined a fraternity. He sort of still kept tabs on his old friend, since he sort of knew him during high school.
“Jim?” Amy stood at the door looking at the two men. “I found her.”
“Maria?”
Amy shook her head. “No. I found her hotel room. She’s registered until Wednesday.”
Jim nodded. “Let’s go take a look. Kyle, you’ll get on that?”
Kyle smiled and offered Amy a look of sympathy. It would be too easy to find Maria DeLuca safe in her hotel room watching cable and ordering room service. But maybe the place would have clues about why she was in Roswell, and why someone wanted her dead.
Kyle watched his dad help Amy DeLuca into his police cruiser. Picking up his address book he flipped through it until he found a number, old and almost worn off the page. It had been years. He made the call. It took a few tries, and he was flipped around the main offices, and connected to a field unit. The man’s voice was pleasant, but held a touch of firmness to it as he answered the phone.
“ Alex ? It’s Kyle. Kyle Valenti. I need your help.”
~~~
Amy followed Jim into the hotel suite. It felt like Maria. Smiling she quickly entered, but the room was empty and her face fell. Amy could’ve sworn Maria was near. Her essence was in the air.
Jim watched her and frowned at her reaction. Hope was a terri ble thing to lose. If Kyle was missing or in danger, Jim wasn’t sure how he’d handle it. Kyle, Vicky and the boys were his world. They were everything. When Kyle was growing up, Jim had put things off, let his job be more important, and one day his son was gone. First to college, and then it appeared he was settling in Albuquerque, almost two hundred miles away. Fate, Vicky, and his two twin grandsons gave him back his son. Gave him a second chance, and that was everything since second chances didn’t come often. Jim had to hope life would give Amy that second chance.
Amy moved around the room, picked up her daughter’s hairbrush, the hair clips she had since high school, and laughed at her standard suitcase of shoes. Opening up her luggage, Amy pulled out a light sweater and hugged it.
“Jim, you’ve got to find my daughter. I need to know where she is, if she's alright, and if she’s not, I need you to make sure whoever harmed her is brought to justice.”
Jim took Amy’s hand and held it a moment. “I’ll never stop looking. I swear. You keep the faith, Amy DeLuca. It’s what you do best. Take heart and know your daughter is coming home, and I’ll make sure it happens.”
Amy smiled up at him and went back to searching the room. Nothing. No clue as to why her daughter made the journey to her childhood home. There was nothing here. Just her suitcases and her painting supplies. But something happened. Something made her add extra days to her stay and it happened the very day she was scheduled to leave.
Looking at the paint supplies in the corner, Amy frowned.
“Jim, something is wrong.”
Jim came to stand beside Amy. “What?”
“There's something missing. Actually two things. Maria doesn’t travel without her special brushes and a special container of paints. They’re not here.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. I was right about the room service, and her suitcase of shoes wasn’t I? I know my daughter. Her paintbrushes were a special present from me. I gave them to her as a graduation present and it cost me a lot. More than I could afford.”
“Hundreds?”
Amy looked at him. “Thousands. And the paints? She collected them herself. Some of them she created and mixed herself from cobalt and other elements. Not just the run of the mill paint supplies from an art shop. She has a thing for color.”
“Their cost?”
“To Maria? Priceless. There is only thing she loves more than painting and that's sculpting, but she's still new at it, so painting is her venue to self expression.”
“Okay, so someone came and stole her stuff?”
“No. It had to have been Maria. No one else would’ve found it that valuable. She was here. I know it.”
Jim took out his cell phone. “Hanson. I need a crime scene team sent to Best Western. Sally Port. Room 304.”
“What are you doing?” Amy was confused.
“I’m getting Kyle and Hanson on the job to confiscating all the telephone calls from this room. They'll bring a female officer, pack up Maria’s stuff, check the place for fingerprints, and release the room to the establishment. I think you and your daughter will want her things back eventually, true?”
Amy nodded. “But we know that Maria’s fingerprints will be all over the place. This is her room.”
“True. But I am more interested in who she came with to get her painting supplies. That will be the best lead we’ll have to discover where she is. It will also tell us who else has found her room before we did, if someone did.”
“The cleaning staff would’ve wiped away prints before today.”
Jim shrugged. “Not necessarily. Not if she obviously wasn’t in the room and using it.” Amy was frowning, but Jim tried to reassure her. “Amy, this is the best lead we’ve had to locating her. If she is with someone, I don’t think she's being harmed. If they brought her here for her paints and stuff, more than likely they're protecting her. And right now she's safer hidden than she is from whomever was shooting at her.”
“I hope you’re right.” Amy hold Maria’s sweater to her tightly. “You better be right, Jim Valenti, or there will be hell to pay.”
“Yes ma’am.”
~~~
“Why are we stopping?”
“I want to try that number from this pay phone.” Michael found a secluded phone away from the main Roswell business district. Staying in the car, he drove up close to the outside phone.
“Why can’t we just call when we get back home?” Michael noticed that was the second time she referred to his place as home.
“I don’t want to take a chance that anyone will trace it back to my place. Just calm down and wait.” Michael quickly dialed the number and Maria scooted as close to him as possible so she could listen into the receiver along with him.
“Meta-Chem, this is Teresa, how might I direct your call?” Michael hung up the phone.
“Meta-Chem?”
Michael nodded. He pulled away, re-entering traffic and heading home to Fraser Woods. Meta-Chem was a large company located in Roswell. It was noted for its research facilities and special programs. Michael remembered starting to investigate it for an article, but dropping it for a better topic.
“A special research company in Roswell. What exactly it is that they do I’m not certain. Maybe genetic testing and other things.” Michael paused. “Well, obviously they do other things. I guess I could dig out my notes and see what I had picked up on them.”
“I called them?” Maria sat back confused. That was just strange. “I don’t even think I liked school, so why the heck would I want to talk to a bunch of scientists? Or have anything to do with science?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a place to look into, and maybe a place to start.” Michael paused for a moment. “Actually it's something to put on the back burner. I think we need to start at the beginning. We can’t just call up Meta-Chem and ask if a Maria DeLuca ever called there. If people are looking for you, how do we know that isn’t where they’re coming from?”
“So where is the beginning? My birth? Damn well know I don’t remember that, and you say I used to live in Roswell. Well, that’s gone. I’m remembering certain things, almost unconsciously. But when I try, really try to think about my life, it’s this blank.”
“You’re trying too hard. When we were talking earlier you were telling me details, personal details about your life, your mom, and your art. It’s when you stop and try to pull up the details that you run into this brick wall.”
“I’m blocking.”
Michael looked at her as they drove into his home drive. That was obvious. “Yeah. It answers an important question. I wondered if the amnesia was caused by your accident. Now I’m almost positive that it's mental. Something happened that was so horrible your mind is protecting you from it, and in the process it took out your entire life.”
Maria sighed deeply. “Great. I’m a headcase. I was afraid of that. I mean, the painting I did. It scares me how comfortable I am with it, and I can’t remember painting it. But I do know it is one of the most powerful pieces I've ever done.”
“It’s austere and grave.” Michael got out and went to open her door for her. They entered the kitchen. “I suspected you were mentally challenged from the moment I set eyes on you.”
Maria stopped and leaned into him, playing with his buttons . “Is that a plus or a minus?”
Michael looked down at her hand, and finally at her eyes. “In your case, definitely a plus. I can handle a little bit crazed in my life right now.”
Maria smiled. “So what did you mean by starting at the beginning?”
“Tucson. I’m taking you home to Tucson.”
~~~
“Agent Burns.”
Burns looked at the man and for once didn’t correct him on the Special Agent part. “Sir?”
“You, no doubt, are probably wondering why I bothered to have you bailed out of the Roswell lockup. I can assure you it wasn’t my intention to do so, but on greater reflection I realized it was the only course of action open for me.”
“I just wanted to thank you, Sir.”
“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it for you. I did it for myself. Where are my files?”
Burns looked at the two large bodyguards surrounding the man, and he knew there was two more standing at the door. “I’ve been unable to find them, Sir, as of yet. I believe the DeLuca woman has them. She was the last one in contact with…”
“I don’t care about the DeLuca woman, or who was in contact with that traitorous bastard who took them from me. I paid you good money to keep the federal investigators off my doorstep. Not only has this situation compromised that, but you personally have made it a case for the FBI.
“If you could just give me a little bit more time. I am certain I can rectify the problem. It’s not totally out of control yet, and I’m positive…”
“So am I, Special Agent Burns, so am I.” The man nodded at one of the men at the door and he waited as his bodyguard followed him from the room.
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