“‘We’?”

“My comrades on the ship.” A veneer of triumphant smugness smoothed Clayborn’s aura. “The payment’s been made. You’ll be lucky to find where your friend Carmen will end up. Make it easy on yourself and forget trying to get her back.”

I punched his ugly face. “That’s not an option.”

Clayborn dropped to a knee.

A low hum echoed through the darkness. Clayborn struggled to his feet and his aura blazed with terror. He shrank toward the helicopter.

Jolie and Antoine gazed about. Their auras surged with confusion and alarm.

“I’ve heard that noise before.” My skin tingled with dread. “When another flying saucer came to take Odin’s body.”

“Flying saucer?” yelped Antoine. “Shit, first the power goes out on everything, then a flying saucer? Whenever one of those shows up in the movies, it’s never good news.”

“The last time they didn’t do anything to me,” I replied.

“Well pardon me if I don’t share your confidence.” Antoine’s aura and face lit up with distress.

Jolie pointed. “There it is.”

A black shape-a disk bisecting a spherical body-floated into view above the trees. This flying saucer was a smaller version of the one that had taken Odin’s body and the blaster.

Antoine backed away in the opposite direction. When his feet stepped off the sandy road and squished into the marsh, he bolted from us. His feet spanked the mud and his orange aura bounced over the saw grass like a burning ball.

Jolie shouted after him. “You goddamn coward, don’t you want to see what happens?”

“Post it on your blog.” Antoine’s voice ripped through the darkness.

The saucer glided close and hovered a hundred feet from us, right on the edge of the marsh. The hum felt like an electric tickle. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. My kundalini noir writhed in alarm.

Clayborn’s aura burned incandescent yellow with terror.

“They’re not here to rescue you, are they?”

Clayborn stood beside me, quiet as a condemned man.

I gave the leash a tug. “Didn’t think so.”

Three struts extended from the belly of the saucer. It settled into the marsh, the struts flattening the grass and sinking into the mud.

A hatch the size of a car door opened and a ramp extended to the ground.

Clayborn squirmed. Jolie took a step from me.

“Where are you going?” I whispered to her.

“No sense bunching up, in case they open fire.”

Clayborn tried stepping away.

“Not you.” I jerked the leash and put my arm around his shoulders. “Who are they?”

Tendrils of despair snaked from Clayborn’s aura. “I don’t know.”

“Then why are you so worried? Are they fellow crooks you cheated? Or are they the law?”

The tendrils twisted like burning snakes. Either way, Clayborn was in deep intergalactic doo-doo.

But before I gave Clayborn up, his captors would have to help me find Carmen.

A yellow aura filled the hatch of the saucer. One alien emerged, squatting through the hatch and climbing onto the ramp. He had a humanoid shape and unfolded his legs to walk upright down the ramp. A second alien followed him, then a third. Their auras signaled caution, and they each advanced with one arm extended and holding a blaster pistol.

They were identical triplets and looked exactly like Gilbert Odin: mustaches, short-sleeve shirts, and wrinkled khaki trousers-the kind of cheap clothes a civil servant like Odin would wear.

At the bottom of the ramp, the first alien tripped and fell splashing into the marsh. His aura blazed with surprise. The other two aliens rushed beside him, all three tromping in the mud and struggling to get the first alien to his feet.

“So much for an awe-inspiring close encounter,” Jolie whispered.

Finally, the three aliens marched toward us, the mudsplattered one leading. A clip-on tie dangled from his collar. His aura simmered with embarrassment. They halted ten feet from me.

The alien at the left nudged the leader. “Go on.”

Alien number one pointed his blaster at me. His aura brightened with confidence. “Surrender your prisoner.”

A glop of mud fell from the tip of the pistol barrel. Another wave of embarrassment surged through his aura.

Jolie coughed.

The auras of all three aliens flashed like camera bulbs. They whirled and aimed their blasters at her.

I coughed.

Another flash from their auras and they whirled toward me.

I raised my free hand. “Easy now, guys. Someone could get hurt. We don’t want trouble.”

Alien leader lowered his pistol. The other two took his cue and lowered theirs as well.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Deputies,” said the alien on the right.

“Marshals,” said the deputy on the left.

Alien leader flexed his jaw in irritation.

“You’re cops?” I asked.

Alien leader nodded. “Cops. From the Galactic Union.”

“You got any ID?”

“Yeah, sure.” Alien on the right reached into his back pocket.

More embarrassment flared through the leader’s aura. He elbowed the other alien. Leader raised his blaster. “Here’s all the ID I need. Now give us Fugitive 187.”

“Fugitive?” I gave the leash a tug. “I knew Clayborn here wasn’t on the up-and-up. You got a warrant?”

Leader steadied the blaster. “Don’t push it.”

Jolie took careful steps toward Clayborn and me. “What’s he wanted for?”

“Class 2 crimes against the Union Code of Order. Violation of the quarantine. Interplanetary racketeering. Smuggling exotic contraband. Social contamination of a primitive species.”

“What primitive species?” I asked.

“You.”

Jolie stood behind Clayborn. “Anything else?”

“Class 1 crimes. Murder. Conspiracy to commit murder. He’s been sentenced to death in absentia. We’re to bring him back, dead or alive.”

I patted Clayborn’s head. “Is there a reward?”

“Yes. We leave you two alone.” Alien leader swung his pistol from me to Jolie.

“How did you find him?” I asked.

“We were patrolling near your planet Neptune when we picked up the power surge of a transporter dematerializer orbiting Earth. By the time we got here…”

By the time they got here? How many millions of miles away was Neptune? The teleportation happened yesterday, so they must have hauled serious space ass to get here.

Leader continued, “…the ship with the transporter was gone. But we got a fix on Fugitive 187. I didn’t know how we’d get him from the compound on Hilton Head but when you escaped with 187 in the helicopter, it was easy as cake.”

“You mean pie,” Jolie corrected.

“Pie, cake, doughnut, whatever.”

“My friend was teleported,” Jolie said. “Where to? Is she okay? I need to get her.”

Alien leader raised an eyebrow. He fixed his attention on Clayborn. “So it’s abetting the illegal transport of a native species? That’s a Class 4 offense.”

“If we turn Clayborn over,” Jolie asked, “can you get him to tell us where my friend has gone?”

“There is no if.” The alien on the left motioned with his blaster at me. “Fugitive 187 must answer for the Class 1 crimes.”

Jolie circled her hands around Clayborn’s neck. Spots of intrigue formed and floated in her aura. “Then give us a day, a few hours, to get him to talk.”

The leader snorted. “Don’t bother. Show her, 187.”

Clayborn slowly raised a hand and splayed his tentacle fingers across his right eye. The tips of his fingers squeezed around the eyeball and entered the socket. He winced and the eyeball popped out with a wet slurp. A wire bundle, like an optic nerve, extended from the eyeball into the socket.

As a vampire, I’ve seen all kinds of creepy shit. This ranked near the top.

He offered the eye to Jolie. She shook her head.

“It’s a prosthetic,” the leader said. “Your Mr. Clayborn embezzled from his fellow gangsters. They kidnapped and tortured him to find out what he’d done with the money. Besides taking his eye, they roasted his wives and children in front of him. And still he wouldn’t talk.”