The Grays by Whitley Strieber Read Free Book Online

marvelously.”
    She could see Wilkes nodding and smiling at her. “This is one hell of a sucker play,” she yelled. “False damn pretenses!” She got to her feet. Adam whizzed past so close she was forced to sit back down. She jumped up again. Same thing happened.
    “He likes you, Lauren,” Wilkes said.
    It felt a lot like getting a bat in her hair or something. How had Dad ever stood this, it was just way, way too weird.
    “So what are we doing with an alien?” she screeched. “How in the world did we capture an alien?”
    “We got two of them in a crash in New Mexico. They may have been given to us, we’re not sure.”
    Bzzzt! Whooosh!
    “Get away!”
    “He wants to touch you. Let him touch you.”
    She began waving her arms around her head. “No way, I’ll bleed out!”
    “Remember, that was an accident. He’s in an agony of grief, that’s why he’s like this. Now you settle down, young woman, and follow your orders.”
    Pictures of Dad kept flashing through her mind like photographs. With them came emotions of grief and the most acute regret. It was clear that they entered from the outside, although she could not say how she knew that. It was sort of like breathing a kind of emotional smoke.
    “Shh,” she whispered, “now, baby . . .” She looked toward the control room. “The buzzing stopped again.”
    Something brushed her cheek.
    “I think he just touched me. I know you’re sorry,” she whispered, “I know . . .” She looked again toward the figures in the control room. “What am I supposed to do now?”
    No response.
    So she comforted him. She went through her mind, seeking for the words of some song from childhood, some sort of comforting song. Dad had not been a big singer. Mom had her Elvis, but this did not appear to be your basic Elvis moment.
    Then a sort of hallucinatory flash took place. In it, the light in the room was deep red and there was a man at the table, sitting across from Adam. On the table, a bright green light like a laser that hopped up and down in the air. The man was her dad.
    It was so real, it was so good to see him again, that the tears were immediate. And then she heard inside her head,
oohhhhh
, and she knew that Adam had realized who she was.
    “Yeah,” she said, “yeah, he was my dad.”
    Ohhhhhh! Ohhhhh!
    “Oh, yeah,” she managed through her own tears, “I miss him, too, I miss him bad.”
    She saw next a glowingly beautiful woman, her face surrounded by a halo of golden light. It was, she knew, herself as Adam saw her.
    Empath. One who empathizes. Turned out it was in the blood. No training needed. Genetic thing, she supposed. Maybe their ancestors had been psychics or witches or something. Dad’s grandfather had come from Ireland, that was about all she knew of their bloodline.
    In the control room, Colonel Wilkes and Specialist Martin exchanged looks. “He’s got her wrapped around his little finger,” Wilkes said.
    “For sure, sir.”
    “He knows how to handle ’em, the little bastard. That is one smart piece of work in there.”
    They said no more. Lauren Glass had been captured. She would not escape, never, not until she followed her father and his predecessor, both of whom Adam had killed with a scratch.

PART TWO
    THE THREE THIEVES
     
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
— WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
“The Fairies”

THREE
     
    DAN CAME INTO THE KITCHEN while Katelyn was washing spinach and nuzzled her neck. She moved her head back, enjoying him. In their case, not even thirteen years of marriage had been enough of a honeymoon, and she was very far from being used to this guy of hers.
    They had met here at Bell, two days after he arrived. Bizarrely, it turned out that they’d both grown up in Madison, Wisconsin, just a few blocks from each other. He’d been crossing the campus in that aimless way he had, looking here and there, smiling even though there was no reason to smile.