Alien Skin Market by Lizzy Bequin

 

CHAPTER 1: MAUREEN

“Mo, it’s Saturday night. What the hell are you doing in the middle of a cow field?”

Bradley’s voice drawled out of the iPhone lying atop the scattered heaps of case files and crime scene photos strewn all over the passenger seat, and his warm, smooth Southern accent filled the interior of the car.

Behind the wheel, Special Agent Maureen McTaggart sighed and slouched deeper into the worn upholstery of the driver’s seat. She was dressed casually tonight—a loose plaid shirt worn open over a white tee, a pair of well-worn Levi’s, and a busted pair of Chuck Taylors that had once been white but now carried the pale brown color of creamed coffee. Her dark hair was pulled back in a simple, functional ponytail.

In spite of her casual attire, Maureen was still prepared for business. A leather belt cinched tightly around her trim waist held a high-powered LED flashlight, a .40 caliber polymer-frame semi-automatic pistol, and a spare fifteen-round magazine of ammunition.

“I’m not in the middle of the cow field, Bradley,” she said in a hushed voice. “I’m parked off to one side.”

Indeed, Maureen’s black Chevy Impala was situated at the very edge of the pasture, hidden within the shadows of the forest at the pasture’s southernmost boundary. It was a hot, cloudless July night, and the full moon was pouring its silvered glow all over the gently rolling hills of the pasture. In spite of the late hour, most of the cows were still up, lazily munching away on their midnight snack of damp grass.

Jesus, didn’t these animals ever sleep? Maureen had been watching them for hours now, and it seemed like all they ever did was eat and eat and eat!

Well…eat and shit, actually.

In order to keep from running the air conditioner, Maureen had rolled the car windows partway down. But rather than cooling things off, she had only succeeded in letting the pungent reek of cow poop into the car’s interior. The stink was so bad, Maureen could practically taste it in the back of her throat.

Yeah…gross.

Maureen reached into her shirt pocket where she had stashed an open pack of sunflower seeds. She fished a seed out, popped it into her mouth, and sucked on the hard outer shell, just letting the intense salty flavor saturate her tongue and erase the other unpleasant tastes.

On the other end of the phone, Bradley gave a playful chuckle. “Don’t try to distract me by arguing semantics, sugar. The point is you work too damn hard, and you know it.”

Bradley was right. She did work too hard. And she did know it too. Maureen was just wired that way. But there was no way she was going to admit that to Bradley.

“Hey,” she teased, “it’s not like I had anything better to do tonight.”

“Ouch. Mo, you wound me, sugar.”

Maureen gave a sexy little shiver. Even with the phone’s volume turned way down low, Bradley’s rich, masculine voice came through smooth and mellow as Tupelo honey. Bradley came from old Savannah money, and it showed in his refined Southern accent. With his family fortune, he could have easily enjoyed a life of lazy luxury, but instead he had opted for a job in the FBI. That made him Maureen’s colleague.

Colleague with benefits, to be precise.

Their relationship was a refreshingly simple one: sometimes they had sex and…that was it. No lovey-dovey bullshit, no plans for the future, no talk about taking things to the next stage. Just sex. Slow, easy, comfortable sex that was invariably followed by long sessions of shoptalk about whatever cases either of them happened to be working on at the moment.

For Maureen, those post-coital chats were almost as pleasurable as the sex itself. Oh sure, Bradley had a body to die for and a just-right cock that hit all of Maureen’s spots without causing any discomfort. But somehow Bradley’s voice was even better than either of those things. Listening to the man talk was just like getting licked between the legs by a skilled and honeyed tongue.

And the smooth bastard knew full well the effect his sexy voice had on Maureen. He knew how to use it to his advantage, and he could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.

“Come on, Mo, it’s late. Why don’t you call it a night and swing by my place? One of my world famous massages would do wonders for you. You carry too much tension in your shoulders.”

Maureen shifted the sunflower seed between her incisors and bit down, cracking the outer shell. Using her tongue, she extracted the soft, edible inner seed, then spit the shell pieces out the window.

“Bradley, something tells me it’s not my shoulders you’re interested in.”

“I’m interested in all of you, sugar.”

Warmth pulsed between Maureen’s thighs. Yeah, she was sure Bradley had plans for more than a massage. And truth be told, she was feeling tension in more places than just her shoulders tonight. Places only an experienced guy like Bradley could relieve. For half a second, Maureen nearly caved, but she held strong.

“Tempting, but…no can do. I’m working tonight.”

She popped another seed into her mouth, sucked away the salt, bit the shell, spit.

On the other end of the phone, Bradley sighed. “Mo, I admire your dedication. You know I do. But that crazy cow case is cold as ice.”

The case Bradley was referring to had been dubbed “The Great Cow Pasture Abduction” within the Bureau. Two years ago, in the very pasture Maureen was now staking out, two people had disappeared under very mysterious circumstances.

One of the missing persons had been an old man who had previously owned this farm. Not a trace had been found of him except a handful of spent shotguns shells strewn about the field. But the even weirder part had been the woman, a reporter named Bethany Smith. The only way anyone even knew she had been there that night was her truck. What was left of it, anyway. The cab and all its contents were still there, but the entire rear of the truck was gone, cut away with perfect laser precision.

Veryfreaking weird.

As an agent with the Atlanta field office of the FBI, Maureen had been assigned as the lead investigator on the case, and right from the start, she’d had difficulty finding promising leads.

It turned out the old farmer was running a moonshine still on the side, but it was just a small-time operation, and most of it was for personal use, which the farmer indulged in quite frequently, according to his neighbors. Maureen had organized search parties to scour the surrounding woods, thinking the old man had wandered off drunkenly into the forest and died somehow, but nothing turned up.

The reporter, Bethany, was even more interesting. Maureen had interviewed her boss, the editor-in-chief of a sleazy tabloid called The Global Probe. Apparently Bethany had been on assignment investigating cattle mutilations and abductions in the area. The editor was convinced she’d been taken by aliens. The poor guy even broke down crying in his office, and Maureen had to comfort him—something not included in her personal skill set.

But aliens? Really?

Yeah, that was too crazy to even think about.

Still, once all the other leads had dried up, Maureen started looking into the paranormal angle. As it turned out, there had been unexplained occurrences in the region for quite some time. Cows had gone missing or turned up weirdly mutilated, and farmers reported seeing strange lights in the sky at night.

Maureen had dug into the reporters notes, most of which had been conveniently left behind in the cab of the sundered pickup truck. After a bit of studying, a pattern had emerged. The events were cyclical, and based on the reporter’s maps and journal of events, Maureen calculated that another sighting was due to occur in this location soon.

That was the reason why, after putting in her hours on her other active cases, Maureen had spent every night for the past two weeks staking out this pasture. It was a long shot, and she had no idea what she thought she would find, but she wasn’t willing to give up on the case just yet.

“The case may be cold,” Maureen said. “But I’ve got a weird feeling about it. Something is going to turn up, Bradley. I just know it.”

Bradley chuckled again. “If you were anyone else, sugar, I’d tell you not to beat yourself up over this. But I know you’ve got a masochistic streak a mile wide.”

“Just because a girl enjoys a little light spanking now and then, that doesn’t make her a masochist, Bradley.”

“That’s not what I mean, sugar. And you know it.”

Oh. He was talking about that.

The thing with her parents. Once, after a particularly vigorous night of lovemaking, and one too many glasses of wine, Maureen had let her guard down and spilled the beans about her childhood and her motivation for joining the Bureau.

Every agent had a different reason for signing up. For some of them, it was just a job. For others, it was a hero complex or an almost pathological compulsion for solving puzzles. For an unfortunate few, it was a power trip.

But for Maureen, it was different.

For her, it was personal.

The reminder about why she was doing this job made her sit up a little straighter in the driver’s seat. She scanned her eyes over the pasture again, but nothing had changed. The moon was still beaming, the cows were still munching, the grass was still glistening with nocturnal dew.

But something felt different. Like a buzz or something. Not a sound exactly. A low-level vibration too quiet to be heard but just loud enough to be sensed in the marrow of the bones…

Probably just a side effect of sleep deprivation.

Maureen reached for the cupholder on the console where she had a can of sugar-free Red Bull. The can was almost empty, but there was a tiny bit left. She tilted it back, draining the last precious drops into her open mouth, then she dug into her shirt pocket to fish out a few more seeds, crinkling the plastic wrapper in the process.

“Mo, please tell me you’ve at least eaten something more substantial than that damn birdseed you’re always nibbling,” Bradley said.

“Jesus, Bradley, do you have superhuman hearing or something?”

Bradley chuckled. “I just know you, Mo.”

“Yeah? You been spying on me?” she teased. “After I get done tonight, I’m gonna sweep this car for bugs and cameras.”

“I’m telling you, I know how you operate, Mo. You get so focused on your work you forget to eat. But a woman can’t live on birdseed alone. Too bad you’re working tonight. I’d take great pleasure in feeding you.”

“Oh really? What did you have in mind?”

“How about that shrimp remoulade you like so much?”

Maureen almost moaned aloud at the mention of her favorite dish, which Bradley knew how to prepare to perfection. Tender steamed shrimp slathered in creamy remoulade sauce with just the right amount of bite to it. In addition to his other advantages, Bradley was an excellent cook. Sometimes Maureen really thought she must be insane for not taking their relationship more seriously.

But her work came first.

Still, the thought of Bradley preparing her a spicy shrimp dinner got her juices flowing, in more ways than one.

“And what about dessert?” she flirted.

“For dessert, sugar, I would tear off all your clothes, throw you down on the table, and lick you until you forgot your own name.”

Sweat broke out over Maureen’s skin. Between the temperature in the car and Bradley’s dirty talk, she was getting hot and bothered. A sizeable bead of moisture gathered on her chest and trickled down between her breasts, making her gasp and shiver. And another kind of wetness was developing between her thighs.

And then there was that weird thrumming vibration. Had it grown a little stronger over the past minute?

Maureen needed to end this phone call right now, otherwise she was liable to overheat. She grabbed the phone off the passenger seat and held it close to her face, intending to say a quick goodbye before hanging up.

“Listen Bradley,” she whispered, “that dessert sure sounds delicious, but I’m afraid I—”

Her voice trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“Mo?” Bradley asked. “You still there, sugar?”

Those words only registered distantly on Maureen’s consciousness. All of her attention had shifted to the pasture that lay on the other side of her windshield. The cows had all stopped eating and their blocky heads were now lifted skyward. They mooed in agitation as a huge, straight-edged shadow swept over the field.

Something was hovering overhead.

Something big.