Close Liaisons (The Krinar Chronicles 1)

On the bottom of the sleeve, a tiny chip was embedded in the fabric. It was the size of a small button, and it was sheer luck that Mia’s fingers had landed on it – otherwise, she would not have noticed it in a million years.

A light went on in her head. Korum had been wearing this sweater when he waved his arm and made the image disappear, Mia remembered with chills going down her spine. He had literally had a trick up his sleeve!

Nearly jumping in excitement, Mia examined the little computer – or at least, that’s what she presumed it was – with careful attention. The thing was tiny and had no obvious on or off button.

“On,” Mia ordered, wondering if it would respond to voice commands.

Nothing.

Mia tried again. “Turn on!”

There was no response this time either.

This was frustrating. Either the chip did not respond to voice commands, or it did not understand English. Then again, it could be programmed to respond only to Korum’s voice or his touch.

Maybe if she massaged it herself?

She tried it. Nothing.

Blowing in frustration at a curl that had fallen over her eye, Mia considered her options. If the thing responded to Korum’s touch, then it probably knew his DNA signature or something like that. In which case, she had no chance of getting it to work.

Discouraged, Mia sat down on the floor again. It seemed to help the last time she was stumped. If only there was some way she could test her theory – like a chunk of his hair or something . . .

Suddenly hopeful, Mia jumped up and ran to the bedroom to see if she could find any stray hairs. To her huge disappointment, the room was utterly hair-free, except for a coup

le of long curly strands that could only be her own. Korum was either a clean freak, or he simply didn’t shed his hair the way humans did.

Furiously thinking it through, Mia ran to the bathroom and grabbed his electric toothbrush. Maybe it had some traces of his saliva or gum tissue . . . She held up the toothbrush to the little device with bated breath.

The device blinked, powering up for a second, and then fizzled out again.

Mia nearly screamed in excitement.

She held the toothbrush even closer, nearly brushing the sweater with it, but the chip remained silent and dark.

Mia’s teeth snapped together in frustration. She was on the right path, but she needed a bigger chunk of his DNA. His clothes might have some, his shoes, the sheets on the bed . . . But those would likely be trace amounts, like those on the toothbrush.

The sheets on the bed! A big grin slowly appeared on Mia’s face. She knew exactly where to get that big chunk.

Going into the laundry room, she dug through the pile of towels and dirty linens that had piled up in the recent week. Korum tended to do his own laundry for some weird reason, and he usually did it on Mondays. Given that today was a Saturday, the room was chock-full of DNA tidbits, courtesy of their active sex life.

Mia pulled out a particularly stained pillowcase, blushing a little when she remembered how it got that way. Bringing it into the office, she held it up to the little device and waited, hardly daring to hope.

Without any sound, the chip blinked and turned on. A giant three-dimensional image appeared on the table surface. Her heart in her throat, Mia slowly hung the sweater back on the chair – which did not affect the image at all – and walked around the table, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

Chapter 10

Spread out before her was a giant three-dimensional map of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. It was like a much fancier, much more realistic version of Google Earth.

Slowly pacing around the table, Mia stared at the familiar landscape laid out in front of her. There was Central Park, right in the middle of the tall narrow island that was still the cultural and financial center of the United States of America. Much lower, all the way on the west side, Mia could see Korum’s luxury high-rise, outlined in perfect detail.

Fascinated, she stretched her hand toward the small building image, wondering if it had any substance to it. Her fingers passed right through it, but she felt a small electric pulse run through her palm. All of a sudden, reality shifted and adjusted . . . and Mia cried out in panic as she found herself standing on the street and looking directly at the building itself – not its image, but the real thing.

Gasping, she stumbled backwards, falling and catching herself with her hands.

There was no pain at the contact with rough surface of the sidewalk; in fact, the sidewalk felt like nothing at all. Everything seemed strangely muted and silent. There were no cars passing on the street and no pedestrians leisurely strolling by.

It had to be a dream, Mia realized with a shiver, or a really vivid hallucination. Maybe she was really dying from the contact with the alien technology, and this was her brain’s last hurrah. It didn’t feel like that, though – it just felt weird, like she had fallen into a reflective pool of something and the reflections turned out to be real.