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"God," I whispered, "why do you hate me?" I knew that wasn't true. Or, at least, I was pretty sure it wasn't. I hadn't exactly been to church in awhile, but I didn't think that basic tenet had changed. Yet some days, it sure seemed like someone was out to get me, make me crack, break my spirit, suck my soul right out. And just then, when I probably would have put my head down on what was left of the counter and bawled my eyes out, I started to hear sounds, people moving, crying, trying to get out 18

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from under the debris. Guilt stabbed through me. I'd been so hung up on me that, for a moment, I'd forgotten there might be people out there far less fortunate than me. I started to move out from behind the counter.

"Don't," the Observer said, startling me. Though I never would have believed it possible, I'd actually forgotten he was there.

I turned back to stare at him, this alien, who had most likely saved my life by first trying to warn me and then pushing me to the ground. "There are people out there who need help." I started to walk away again.

His hand closed around my wrist, jerking me to a stop and pulling me around to face him. In the next instant, a shock, like touching the metal end of an electric plug still in the wall, ran through me. Then, the strangest sensation took over. I could feel his hand still clamped around my wrist, fingers pressing into my skin, but I could also feel someone's wrist in my hand, a pulse beating quickly beneath smooth skin and small bones lying defenseless in my grasp. But I wasn't touching anything. I tried to pull free, but I couldn't move. A buzzing began in my ears, growing louder until it filled my head. White specks danced and skittered across my field of vision until my sight was no better than the worst television reception. I panicked, tried to wrench myself backward, but nothing happened. I was trapped in my own body.

Then, through diminishing patches of clear vision, I saw the Observer take a deep breath, his face tightening in concentration like he was preparing to lift something heavy. Then his fingers opened slowly, as though against some great resistance, releasing my wrist. I fell backward, and his hand snapped forward again, snagging the collar on my shirt, his quick action the only thing that kept me from landing on my back in the debris. The weird insomeone-else's-body feeling disappeared. The buzzing faded, and 19

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my vision returned. Now, I could see the Observer staring at me and hear the sounds of sirens approaching.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"I didn't do anything. Now, let go of me," I said, my voice trembling. I didn't want to be afraid of him. I wanted to kick him out of what remained of the diner.

He stared at me. "We must go."

"What?" It was my turn to stare at him. But he didn't respond, just started dragging me off toward the kitchen and, I'm guessing, the back door.

I dug my heels in, but that only slowed him down a little. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't know you. And you're...one of
them
." This was as close to my nightmare as I hoped to ever be. I started to reach for his hand on my collar but stopped just before touching him, remembering what had happened when he'd touched me only moments ago. I tried twisting away from him, but his grip remained firm.

He paused and turned to look back at me, the silver in his eyes reflecting the dancing flames on the wall behind us. "If he finds he has not succeeded with this attempt, he will only try another way."

That stopped me mid-struggle. "What? Who? What are you talking about?"

"You are a threat to him, so he hired a human to kill you. The human detonated the charge meant to take your life–his mission was clear: eliminate you by whatever means necessary." He paused, eyes shifting to a point over my head, seeming to pull information from some other source. "The human sent here carries a picture of you in his coat, showing you as you are now, in clothes related to your occupation."

Jeans and a polo shirt? I thought in a bizarre moment of abstraction. That's what I was wearing, what I wore most days, but it wasn't like a nurse's uniform or anything. 20

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"He studied it often–he couldn't afford to make a mistake, not with an alien pulling the strings." His last words made no sense. He was an alien–why would he be referring to his own kind that way?

My heart thudded hard and fast. Nuttier than a fruitcake this one. Why did the crazy one have to show up near me? I didn't need him. I was crazy enough for the both of us. "Look, the sheriff must have hit you harder than I thought. I am the owner of whatever is left of the Silver Spoon Diner. The only threat around here is maybe getting Salmonella from Lucy's coleslaw." I stopped talking and looked at him to see if my words were having any effect. But he wasn't even looking at me. He was staring at where the picture window used to be.

I wasn't sure he'd heard me until he said, "There isn't time to explain now. Your sheriff is coming and–" That was all I needed to hear. I pulled forward hard and twisted at the same time, hearing a seam somewhere in my shirt give, but then I was free. The Observer reached for me, his hand closing on empty air an inch or so above my wrist. I stumbled back from him and ran like hell for the gaping hole in my front wall. "Over here, Sheriff Brigham," I shouted. I tripped over the debris, but I managed to stay on my feet and keep moving. I didn't look back to see if the Observer was following. I didn't want to know. I thought it might freeze me in place and leave me vulnerable, like a rabbit seeing the shadow of an owl overhead. That Observer was not going to kidnap me, not if I could help it, that was for damned sure. My nerves couldn't take it. I dreamed about aliens, I didn't get abducted by them. Though, hey, maybe that would explain a lot.

"Zara? That you in there?" With the sheriff's words, the glow of a flashlight appeared only feet away from what used to be the diner's door.

"Yeah, I'm here." I looked back to see how the Observer was taking the impending arrival of "my" sheriff, but he was gone. Thank God. The mother ship must have been calling. 21

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Chapter 3

"You okay over there, Zara?" Deputy Mike Packer's words pulled me from my thoughts.

I'd just spent the last four hours at the Sheriff's Office drinking scorched coffee and answering the same questions over and over again.

No, I didn't see anyone outside the diner.

Yes, the Observer spoke to me. He said the explosion was meant for me.

No, I don't know what he meant by that.

But I hadn't told the sheriff about that strange moment between the Observer and me. I didn't need him thinking I was crazier than he previously thought. But remembering that feeling of helplessness at the Observer's hands made me shiver again.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I gave Mike a weak smile. He nodded, never taking his eyes off the road. I'd known Mike Packer since grade school, though he was a couple of years younger than me. He was always intense and over-thinking everything, whether it was to have mashed potatoes instead of corn or how to get women to like him. Like right now, he was driving as if he expected an attack from all sides by an armored convoy of some kind. Though given what had happened at the diner earlier tonight, maybe I couldn't blame him.

"You really think that Observer blew up the diner? Killed Dewey and Mr. Johnson?" He asked me as he turned onto my street. Of the seven people in the diner at the time of the explosion, Deputy Dewey Blakemore and Earl Johnson, a trucker, had been the only casualties, which was both amazing and devastating at the same time. Amazing that more weren't killed, devastating in that no one should have died tonight at all, not like 22

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that.

"I don't know. But," I added begrudgingly, "like I told the sheriff, if you're blowing up a building, I'd think the last place you'd want to be is inside it." And why save me? Just me? Why save anyone at all? Why not just shout that the place was going to blow up and make everyone run away? The sheriff had been making fun of me when he mentioned the Observer making plans to take over the world, but freakier things have happened. I couldn't connect what happened tonight with any grander scheme beyond death and destruction on a relatively small scale, but who knows? I shook my head to clear it of all the questions I would never get answers to.

Mike gave a thoughtful "huh" in response, then went on. "But don't you think–"

I struggled to hang on to my last bit of patience like a drowning man wrestling with a slippery life raft. "Mike, I don't know what to think, okay? All I want to do now is go home and try to not worry about any of this for a few minutes." I yanked out my inhaler and sucked in another puff.

"All right, Zara. I get it. Jeez, you don't have to take my head off." He slouched in his seat a little, his broad-brimmed hat tipping forward.

When he pulled into my driveway, I jerked my door open before the car even reached a complete stop. "Thanks for the ride. I'll see you on..." I stopped myself. I wouldn't see Mike on Sunday because there was no longer a diner for him to have breakfast in while he eyed the church-going women. "I'll see you." I tried to make it sound like that was what I'd intended to say all along.

"Yeah, I'll see you, Zara," he responded. I slammed the door shut, then trudged toward my front door. No diner meant no Sunday scoping time for Mike, but it meant bigger problems for me.

I paused for a second, staring up at the dark, ranch-style 23

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house in front of me. Besides the diner, the house was the only thing of value my parents had left my brother and me, but it was still being paid for. So, no diner meant no money for the mortgage or Scott's tuition. We had insurance, but the payout wouldn't be enough to keep us going for the next three years while Scott finished school.

Thinking of Scott, my stomach twisted. I'd have to call him to tell him what had happened. And then he'd freak out and want to come home from college. It had been hard enough getting him to go out of state in the first place. After our parents died in a car accident, he'd become almost paranoid about my safety. My alien dream thing over the last couple of years hadn't helped. I sighed. Yeah, I'd have to call him, but maybe I could wait a few days until the insurance company came by and I got an estimate for repairs...

I am never going to get out of here, I thought. I kept moving toward the front door, but it suddenly felt like my legs were two large tree stumps instead, and I was getting too weary to lift them. I wanted to quit, just walk away. But that wasn't an option. I had no options. Unless I became willing to take up that Observer on his kidnap offer. Ha. I almost needed my inhaler again, just thinking about it.

"Hey, Zara." Mike's voice called out as I reached the front steps. "I'll wait until you get inside and turn on the lights, okay?" Irritation flashed through me. I didn't need Mike keeping an eye on me. I wasn't a child. It wasn't as if I'd handed the crazy Observer my address. But in a town this size and this gossipy, I guess my house wouldn't be that hard to find. Considering all that had happened tonight, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing for Mike to hang around for a couple extra minutes.

Biting back my temptation to shout for him to go ahead and go, I nodded to Mike and turned back around to climb the steps. I didn't have my keys–they were buried in the diner rubble 24

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somewhere–so I had to stand on my tiptoes to search for the extra key behind the porch light housing. My fingers located the familiar shape and got it down without dropping it. The key felt warm, almost hot, like the light had just been on. I frowned up at the dark porch light. Usually I left it on when I knew I'd be closing the diner. The light bulb must have blown. I let myself in, then locked the door behind me. You can never be too careful, especially after a night like this. I got about two steps into the house before I realized something was wrong. The floor beneath me crunched. I looked down, unable to see anything in the dark. I hadn't spilled anything this morning, had I? I took another step and fumbled for the light switch just inside the living room.

The light snapped on, Mike's engine revved, and I stared in disbelief. My house had been destroyed. In the living room, the couch was turned on its side, and the cushions were skinned like strange square-shaped animals, the white fluffy innards spread throughout the room. The bookcases were emptied. Books and my mother's porcelain collectibles lay scattered throughout the room. All the magazine and newspaper articles on the Observers that I'd collected and hidden in shoeboxes behind the bookcases were shredded and strewn in little confetti bits everywhere. My videotapes with news clips of the landing and every alien feature story I could find were torn out of their plastic cases and strung through the room like a giant plastic spider's web. Shards of glass from the little side window beside the door sparkled on the floor around my feet. In the darkness outside, I'd missed the fist-sized hole in the pane.

"No." I started to back out of the room on wobbly legs. If I could get to Mike before he pulled away...

A hand clamped over my mouth and pulled me back against something solid and warm.

Oh, God, the crazy Observer from the diner. I got over my 25

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fear of touching him long enough to tug at the hand over my mouth, but to no avail. I tried to scream, but only a muffled sound emerged, and the hand tightened. This was way worse than anything I'd ever cooked up in my mind.

"I apologize for the crudeness of my methods. But it is important that your law enforcement officials attribute your death to human causes–in this particular case, a burglary gone awry. Your thief became quite distraught when he found nothing of value. He decided to vandalize the premises, and you walked in at just the wrong moment." The voice didn't sound like the one from the diner. This guy sounded cultured, elegant, and not the least bit disturbed about discussing my death. The little bit of his sleeve I could see appeared to be part of a suit coat. The alien at the diner had been wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt.