“Cool. What’s your real last name?”
“Moon,” Riley said.
“Oh, I thought, ‘Moon,’ you know…” Xandy made a whistling noise and looked around. “There’s a lot of whackos here.”
Riley looked at the military insignia above Xandy’s pocket. It was an image of an alien wearing a lobster bib and holding a knife and fork with the words TO SERVE MAN above it. Yeah, Riley thought, a lot of whackos.
“So who are you?” Xandy asked Emerson.
“Emerson Knight.”
Xandy took her aviators off and focused her pale blue and bloodshot eyes on Emerson. “The Emerson Knight? Better known as Mr. Mysterioso?”
“Technically, I suppose, I am Mr. Mysterioso,” Emerson said.
“And you do the blog,” Xandy said. “That blog changed my life. Before I read it I was just an average dental hygienist. That blog gave me the courage to follow my bliss.”
Riley raised her eyebrows in question.
“Following UFOs, of course,” Xandy said. “Wait a minute, how do I know it’s really you?”
“You don’t,” Emerson replied.
“That is such a Mr. Mysterioso thing to say,” Xandy said, her voice dripping with admiration. “You know you’re wanted by the police, right?”
“Does that bother you?” Riley asked.
“Hell, no,” Xandy said. “I’ve got a few traffic tickets in my background too, if you know what I mean.”
“How does this diner stay in business?” Riley asked Xandy. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“A fair number of tourists and UFO trackers show up on weekends. There’s another diner down the road a ways that’s a famous UFOlogist watering hole. This place gets the overflow. If you’re trying to stay off the grid this is the place to hang.”
“We need to get to Groom Lake,” Emerson told Xandy.
“No problem,” Xandy said. “I’m your girl.”
The waitress returned with the food plus the apple pie and coffee that Xandy had left on the counter.
“Eat up and I’ll take you to the back gate,” Xandy said.
They left the GTO at the diner and took Xandy’s beat-up Volvo down a narrow road that wound through scrub desert. Xandy stopped at a black-and-white-striped gate that was bordered on either side by towering metal poles bristling with floodlights and video cameras. A sign said WARNING: MILITARY INSTALLATION. NO TRESPASSING. PHOTOGRAPHY OF THIS AREA IS PROHIBITED. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED. There was a guard shack with a Ford F-150 parked beside it, and armed sentries lounged against the shack, soaking up sun. A chain-link fence stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Intimidating,” Riley said. “How are we going to get through this?”
“We aren’t,” Xandy said. “I just wanted you to see it. We’re going to sneak in at night going over hill and dale where the Cammo Dudes can’t see us.”
“The Cammo Dudes are the guards?” Riley asked.
“You got it,” Xandy said. “Around here we call them the Cammo Dudes.” Xandy pulled a U-turn and headed away from the gate. “We can hang out at the inn and rendezvous at twenty-one hundred.”
“How are we going to get over the chain-link fence with the razor wire?” Riley asked.
“The fence stops at some point,” Xandy said. “You can just walk into the restricted area.”
“And no one’s going to shoot at us?”
“Hard to say,” Xandy said.