brilliant: using the legendary Roswell flying saucer to project false images of spacecraft out into space. Operation Phantom, they’d dubbed it. In the biggest ruse since the Trojan horse, Earth would come off looking like an interstellar superpower, and the Coalition Army would be tripping over themselves in their rush to make a galactic U-turn.
Problem was, at first no one had wanted to own up to the little ship’s existence. Only with the end of the world as they knew it staring them in the face had they allowed the secret guardian of the craft, a woman known only as “the Gatekeeper,” to let Cavin hack into the ship. Connick had met Cavin and Jana in the desert, leading them to an even more remote location from where they’d hiked it on foot to the farmhouse housing the Roswell saucer. Jared had figured they wouldn’t hear from Connick again until the aliens returned for Invasion, Round Two.
Had the Coalition figured out they’d been duped?
Jana put the phone on speaker. “Go ahead, Colonel.”
“The REEF,” he began. “We found him. And he’s alive.”
Chapter Five
Battlefield legend claimed that not even death ended a REEF’s desire to kill. Cavin had heard the stories many times during his career as a Coalition officer. Once, there was a REEF whose bloodied and broken human body continued to slither after its target after death, its inner components still whirring as they dragged the mutilated body toward the intended kill.
This REEF demonstrated the same single-minded determination. Unfortunately, his aim was to terminate himself. So far, an induced coma was the only way to keep him from doing it.
Lucky for him, the Gatekeeper and the Handyman were assigned suicide watch. For more than half a century, the older couple had been the guardians of the “Roswell saucer,” the ship Cavin had hacked into to turn away the Coalition fleet. Now they’d become the guardians of the only other living extraterrestrial. Surely they’d do just as good of a job keeping the REEF safe and sound.
“He’s in here. Hush now.” The Gatekeeper led Cavin into her home. A mass of curly red hair over whelmed her small body. She wore an apron tied around a floral dress. Flawless skin disguised the fact she was in her late sixties in Earth years. But her delicate appearance was deceiving. She was a covert government agent with license to kill anyone who threatened her ability to protect her secret hidden in the basement below the house—and now the one slumbering in a guest bedroom with a gaily patterned quilt pulled up to his chin.
Not how I ever imagined seeing the REEF, Cavin thought.
Sunshine brightened the room. From the kitchen down the hall in the simple farmhouse, the smell of baking perfumed the air. The atmosphere lent a cheery mood that the REEF had no intention of sharing—if the man’s expression was any indication.
Cavin raised a brow and the older woman stirred. “Has he been frowning like that the entire time?”
Nodding, she sighed. “When he hasn’t been gritting his teeth in pain, the poor thing.”
Poor thing? A REEF? Cavin took a seat next to the bed. “I need for you to rouse him.”
Tubing ran from a bottle suspended on a stick to the assassin’s arm, transporting a clear liquid into his bloodstream: nutrients and perhaps medication. For Terrans it was advanced technology. To Cavin, the items were relics of a far more primitive time.
The Gatekeeper adjusted one of the drips. Cavin got comfortable and waited for his former archenemy to come to.
The REEF groaned and swiped his knuckles across his forehead. Cavin guessed pain in the assassin’s raised hand drew his focus to his forearm, where he tracked a long scar running from the heel of his palm to his inner elbow. Shock flashed in eyes that Jana once described as blue ice. “My computer,” he rasped. “The command center for my entire system…The blasted Terrans have stolen it!”
“It was rigged to kill you. If we hadn’t surgically removed it, you and I wouldn’t be speaking right now.”
The REEF swerved his gaze to Cavin. He seemed to have trouble focusing, and at one point, Cavin thought he might pass out again. But he held on, growling, “Caydinn…”
A bulge in the assassin’s cheek told Cavin he was using his tongue to feel for the self-destruct device once buried in his molar.
“It’s gone,” Cavin said.
“Terminate me, then. You do it. I’m finished.”
“Quite the opposite. You have a chance at a new life. Whether you ultimately decide