night, she wore only a thin blouse, blue jeans, and sandals. ‘Nebula, nebulae; nebula, nebulae,’ she intoned. ‘You’re too young to be a scientist, aren’t you?’
‘Are you too young to be a burglar?’
‘Hey,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m not a burglar.’
‘Then why are you here in our house, late at night, without knocking?’
‘I lost the party,’ she said. ‘When you lose the party, you have to find something else. You have to look for an open door.’
‘Did you take something at the party?’
She sniffled, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tonight it’s Brigit Bardo. Like that old French actress.’
‘Are you an actress?’
She peered at him closely. ‘I’m not anything.’
‘Do you need some help?’
‘No,’ she laughed suddenly, ‘it’s easy.’
Daniel started to say something but she reached out and put a finger to his lips. ‘No more questions for awhile.’ She pressed harder with her finger. ‘All right?’
Daniel barely nodded.
She trailed her finger over his chin and throat and down his chest to the edge of the blanket that covered him.
‘What are you doing,’ Daniel asked uneasily.
‘Something you’ll never forget.’ She pushed the blankets down slowly. When she saw the knife, she reached over and folded the blade closed. Leaning down, she bit him lightly just below the ribs, then lifted back the blankets. When she took his cock in her mouth, Daniel shuddered and shut his eyes.
Her mouth was unbearably warm, infinitely slow. As Daniel passed through the Horsehead Nebula he learned there are things beyond imagining that exist anyway.
She left an hour later, locking the door behind her.
When Annalee returned home in the late afternoon, Daniel was waiting to open the door. They looked at each other and asked, ‘Are you all right?’ and then laughed.
‘You look like you didn’t get much sleep,’ Annalee told him.
‘And you look jumpy and exhausted,’ Daniel said.
‘You’d be jumpy, too, driving around with a bomb.’ Noticing the camping equipment piled on the living room floor, she pointed. ‘What’s this? We taking to the hills?’
‘That’s our cover. We’re going camping in Yosemite.’
‘There’s a small flaw, isn’t there? Like the fact that it’s February?’
Daniel reached into the pile and produced two pairs of snowshoes. ‘We’re going
Annalee listened distractedly to the elaborate cover story Daniel had concocted in case they were pulled over with the bomb in the car. How the bearded man had given him a package to deliver to his sister in Livermore, some sort of illegal cancer treatment from Mexico. The story was well conceived, but wouldn’t make any difference if they were busted on the way, which she was sure Daniel understood. When she finally saw the point, she shook her head.
‘Daniel, bless you, but there’s no way you can protect me if we get popped.’
‘I’m a juvenile. I wouldn’t go to jail.’
‘You’re a sweetheart. And I’d go to jail for contributing to your delinquency on top of possession of an explosive device.’
‘We could try it.’
Annalee didn’t want to argue. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but let’s hope we don’t have to.’
Daniel pointed at the ceiling. ‘Something else. The paper upstairs. I put the blanks and seals in the safe, but if anything happens and they search here, they’ll find them.’
‘Yeah, well, AMO will just have to eat it.’
‘I was thinking we could drop the incriminating stuff off at Jason’s. Tell him we decided to go camping and didn’t want to leave it around.’
‘But we’ve taken off before and just stashed it. He’ll know something’s weird. And we don’t have time.’
Daniel considered this a moment, then shrugged. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’
‘Las Postas Avenue in Livermore. An alley between a machine shop that just went out of business and an empty warehouse.’
‘I can’t cover both ends of an alley.’
