Galaxy Girls

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Six years later

Hawk strode past windowless, locked gray metal doors marked Lab 1, Lab 2, Lab 3, Lab 4 and Lab 5. Footsteps hurried on the industrial carpet behind him.

“Hawk, wait for me. I’m coming, too.”

Hawk didn’t blink, didn’t slow his stride. Nelson panted up next to him. A half foot shorter than Hawk, his clothes hanging on his skinny frame, he beamed at Hawk beneath his Benjamin Franklin glasses. Hawk bit back a comment. He made it a practice not to kick rollicking puppies or shoot down fresh-faced geniuses. Anyone else was target practice.

They reached the elevator and Nelson spurted ahead to press the up button. The elevator dinged, the doors opened and they stepped inside, Hawk first, standing to the side to let Nelson poke the top third-floor button.

“Isn’t it cool about Gabby and Brad’s Arizona find?” Nelson asked.

Watching the lit number above the closed door change, Hawk shrugged. He would have been impressed if the find was live aliens and not crumbling, three-foot-tall skeletons. The lab nerds were all over the skeletal remains like teenage boys on teenage girls. But dead didn’t tell Hawk anything except aliens existed.

He knew aliens existed. He collected evidence and talked to shaking farmers, shaking teenagers, shaking professors, shaking cops, shaking skeptics, shaking believers. But before he worked for the Foundation, he’d done a little shaking himself, with a live alien. Contact of the first kind.

“Way cool,” he said.

Nelson beamed wider, not catching the dry edge of his voice. The elevator stopped and the door swished open. A dog barked before the door opened all the way. Hawk and Nelson stepped into the long, rectangular room. Light from three walls of windows washed over them, bathing them in sunshine.

In the center of the bath of sunshine, Baron Rutledge sat in a recliner, the butterscotch leather the same color and thickness as his skin, a sketchpad on his lap. A dog jumped on Hawk’s shins, distracting him. Bending, Hawk petted the floppy ear of a three-legged dachshund. The dog smiled happily, tongue out and tail whipping back and forth at 100 wags a minute.

“Hey, Spike, you big guard dog, you,” Hawk said.

Spike licked Hawk’s wrist before turning to Nelson to greet him. Hawk straightened and crossed the room to Rutledge, who set his pad and drawing pencil on the table next to him. An ebony desk dominated a far corner, but with Rutledge’s Terminator body and patched skin that made parents grab their children’s hands and scuttle in the opposite direction, he didn’t need the trappings of authority to demand respect.

Hawk stopped a few feet in front of the Foundation’s Director. For all he cared, Rutledge could prance down State Street in a tutu and still look like a bad dude.

Glancing at the table, Hawk saw a line drawing of a dog with sad eyes and no front feet. Above the dog was a thought bubble that said, “My feet are missing but my heart beats strong.”

“For the Foundation?” Hawk asked. The official name of the Foundation was Special Needs for Special Dogs. A real charity, not just a front for the covert organization that employed Hawk and nine other operatives to search for evidence of alien life.

Rutledge picked up the pad and pulled the cover over the drawing. “Yes.”

One word, subject closed. Hawk nodded. The Director was his kind of guy.

“Hello, Mr. Rutledge.” Nelson bounded next to Hawk. “You have a job for us?”

The “us” made Hawk wince, even as a snuffle from the side of the chair softened Rutledge’s granite expression to cookie dough. A one-eyed dog rose slowly, up, up and up, until its hammer-shaped head reached Hawk’s waist. Hawk couldn’t guess its heritage. For all he knew, it was a lost alien pet Rutledge had adopted. Or maybe an alien, hiding secrets behind her wise brown eyes.