Perfect Specimen by Kate Donovan Read Free Book Online Page B

bluntly, “Thanks a lot. What the hell are you doing up before noon anyway?”
    “I smelled turkey. My turkey to be exact. Mom left it for me .” The young man’s twinkling eyes contradicted his accusatory tone. “Then I saw that diary in its fancy case. It smelled like perfume. Which made me think it might have X-rated stuff in it. Not X- file stuff,” he added with a grin. Then his expression softened. “You’re unbelievable, Sara. I see why the Ra-ahli chose you. You’re a survivor. But it’s over now. I promise.”
    Her eyes filled with tears, knowing that Ga’rag would now kill this boy. It all seemed so hopeless. How many people would die before the experiment was over? Sara wanted to protect her babies, but at the cost of how many lives?
    “Sara?” Clay wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t cry, honey. I’m sorry this idiot read it, but—”
    “It’s okay. Just don’t listen to him, please? And Randy?” She reached out to touch the younger brother’s cheek. “You think you know the truth, but you don’t. The truth is uglier, but much less interesting. I just told the whole story—the real story—to Clay and Mark. What you read in my diary was fiction.”
    Forcing herself to take a breath, she resurrected the lie she had invented in the car during the drive over. Clay had promised not to read the journal, but if the worst had happened and he’d broken that promise, she had planned to salvage the situation by convincing him the diary was a fake. A work of fiction she intended to market.
    “I should be angry with you,” she told Randy quietly. “But if you’re really a geek who loves comic books and goes to science fiction conventions, you’re actually my target audience. And it sounds like you found the journal convincing, so I’m going to take it as a compliment.” She patted his cheek again. “Just promise me you won’t spill the beans before I get it published, okay? Don’t talk about it at all. If you do that for me, I’ll mention you in my dedication. How’s that?”
    “What the hell are you two talking about?” Clay asked again, his tone grumbly and complaining.
    “She’s trying to convince me the diary’s not true. Because she’s afraid the alien asshole will kill me if I know the truth.” Randy grinned. “Which means, you two don’t know. Unbelievable.” He gave Sara a wink. “Too bad I wasn’t the one who picked you up at the Finish Line last month. I would have figured this out by now and sent that guy flying back to his own planet. Courtesy of my foot. Plus, the sex would’ve been better.”
    “All right, that’s it,” Clay said, laughing. “Randy? Shut up. Sara? What’s he talking about?”
    She forced herself to smile as though the whole matter were a hilarious misunderstanding. “My diary isn’t really a diary. It’s a fictional account of a girl being abducted by little green men from outer space who want her eggs because their DNA is all screwed up so they need fresh genes. You’ll appreciate this next part, Mark,” she added in the psychologist’s direction. “I originally started this project on the advice of a therapist. He wanted me to keep a journal, but everything I wrote about my childhood sounded so melodramatic, it occurred to me that if I pulled out all the stops, I might be able to make it publishable. I knew what it felt like to have a stranger visiting my bedroom when I was a little girl, so I didn’t have to make that part up, unfortunately. Believe it or not, it wasn’t much of a jump to make it all about extraterrestrial geneticists. What began as a cathartic exercise became a real project. One I hope will make a lot of money for me and my children someday.”
    As Mark stared, Randy whispered, “She’s amazing, isn’t she? She had to learn to do this—to make up lies fast—to cover up the truth so he wouldn’t kill anyone else the way he killed her father and mother.”
    She wanted to jam her hand against the