Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,35
he triggered the volume.
“Lana? Are you there?” The guardsman from the Wavercrest abode spoke in careful tones.
Lana leaned toward Sting’s wrist, although that was not necessary. “Yes, Thomas. I’m here. What’s up?”
“I tried to call your phone privately, but there was no answer.”
“I fried it again.” She grimaced. “Is everything okay?”
“We had a call from Mister Evens. The query system you set up through his shop had a contact.”
Lana straightened again. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad to know my idea is working. At least some people are finding us.” She hesitated. When he didn’t respond immediately. “Or are you saying this is another crackpot? We knew not everyone who saw the Wavercrest syndrome symptoms would be more long-lost Tritonans. There are a lot of people out there looking for answers to their problems, and voluntary alien abduction won’t always be the right answer.”
“No,” Thomas said slowly. “I believe this contact may be legitimate. In fact, she was so convinced that our listing was important to her that she came to Sunset Falls without waiting for a response. She’s staying downtown. But for some reason, Mister Evens requested that you meet with him first.”
Lana frowned down at the datpad. “I wonder why he’s being so mysterious?”
Thomas let out a short laugh. “I believe mysteries are one of his specialties along with everything else in his shop.”
Lana let out a similar sound, more tired than amused, Sting decided.
When the guardsman disconnected, Lana directed Sting to take a different route in return. “We’re going to stop in town,” she informed him. “And you need to stay in the car. No one can see you like…this.”
He gave her a steady look. “You are worn from our mission. We should go back so you can rest.”
She flicked one finger dismissively. “This is important. About the time Marisol realized no specialist was going to be able to identify her strange malady—other than to name it Wavercrest syndrome after her—she started seeking others who might be suffering the same. Now, of course, we know that we are all descendants from the Atlantyri exiles. But only Ridley and I actually responded to her message and followed through, but I’m sure there are more of us out there that she couldn’t reach.” Lana gazed out the vehicle window. “Not everyone has access to the medical services that Marisol worked with, and even those that did might have been turned away by doctors who didn’t know what they were seeing and had no answers. So I had an idea for finding other people who might carry enough Tritonan genetics to be messed up, like us.”
She directed him through the small village. At this hour, there were lights in some of the buildings but few Earthers on the streets. The Intergalactic Dating Agency always sited its outposts where alien mates could find each other without oblivious closed-worlders finding out they weren’t alone in the universe, but the quiet, secluded Sunset Falls seemed to pride itself on its isolation.
Lana pointed him down one of the darker alleys. “Mister Evens runs a curiosity shop—the kind of place that offers a little of this, a little of that, and a lot of nothing. It seems like there’s one in every little town, a place people go when a crystal or a sachet of herbs is the only thing that makes sense. I suggested to Thomas that along with Marisol’s official contacts, we set up a back channel where we might catch people who fall through the usual nets.”
“Don’t like nets.”
She gave him a sad little smile. “Yeah, living underwater, I can see how nets would be a bad thing. But where gravity matters, having something to catch you is nice.”
He nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
She directed him to pull up just beyond the spill of light from one glass-fronted building. “This is the place,” she said. “You wait here and I’ll be right back.”
She popped open the door on her side and put one foot out before pausing to look back at him. “I’m serious. Stay.”
Without waiting for his reply, she headed for the front door of the shop. If she’d waited a moment, he could’ve told her that underwater things rarely stayed where they were put.
The timing of this arrival of a stranger responding to Lana’s clandestine messages at the same time that he marked an unidentified ship in the vicinity made him suspicious. This had been intended to be a retrieval mission only, not a skirmish, and Coriolis had warned that