Page 5 of Love at First Sighting

She tumbles to the ground, and while it’s not possible to see it, there’s a harsh clang of metal on metal, followed by a muffled crash. The woman brings us closer.

“Toby,” I demand, “can you email me a link to this, any information you can find on who this girl is, and a few screenshots?”

As I continue to have an internal meltdown, I reach for my phone on my desk and swipe until I find what I’m looking for.

It’s an old photo, but the focal point is clear.

There’s a shimmering smear across the night sky, and it’d be nearly imperceptible if it weren’t for the small, piercing white and blue lights coming from both sides of the craft.

I snapped it on my first camera when I was ten, eagerly telling my dad I got a couple of bright stars.

No stars would make him respond the way he did. They wouldn’t make his face lose color or cause him to quickly drag me back to the car. Or sit me down once we were home, help me make a few copies of the picture, and tell me to keep it safe.

I don’t know the easiest way to tell Toby this girl saw the same exact thing I did before my dad died.

He slides a few pieces of paper my way with screenshots of the girl, the craft, the sky. “Name’s El Martin. She’s a model or something. Lives here in LA—”

“Thanks, Toby.” I’m already out of my chair.

The Los Angeles PIS station consists of a few private offices circling the bullpen of desks, like an old-fashioned police station, right down to the cheap white blinds and wooden half doors.

As chief agent, my uncle Marcus has his own office.

A corner office. While he isn’t a blood relative, he was my dad’s longtime PIS partner.

We lost my mom when I was too young to remember her, so after my dad was killed, Marcus was the one who took me in.

He made sure there was a roof over my head and that I had three meals a day at least three days a week.

I peer inside the windowed door to his office, where he’s wrapping up a phone call. Despite knowing him my whole life, I’m not always sure how to read him.

As he sets the phone on the receiver, I slip into his office.

“What’s up, kid?” he asks. His office smells like the sharp cigarette smoke that clings to his skin and breath. Growing up under his roof, I lived in fear of taking the smell with me, constantly popping mint gum and developing spectacular dental hygiene out of concern.

“I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”

He glances up warily. “Shut the door in case I have to resort to nepotism.”

I kick the door shut behind me and stand across from him over his desk.

Marcus and I have been the same height since I was sixteen, but he still towers over me in more ways than one.

He was the one I asked for permission to use the car, who I asked to sign my permission slips, who reluctantly agreed to let me join the Sector at eighteen to work part-time through college until graduation.

He’s the one who decides what assignments I do (or don’t) get.

He’s the one who’s keeping me employed despite my on-paper failures.

“Oh, Brad says the printer’s broken again,” he mumbles, hardly looking up from the papers on his desk.

“It’s not. It needed paper,” I say urgently. I don’t care about Brad’s technological impotence. “Look, this is important.”

Finally, he looks up. His slicked-back brown hair, coiling at the ends, could use a trim, and he’s a few days out from shaving. “Let’s hear it.”

Marcus holds out a hand and takes the papers I’ve brought with me. He spreads them out on his desk for us to look over.

“Something the new guy found,” I explain.

“Troy?”

“Toby.”

“Damn.”

“You’re getting closer,” I offer. Yesterday he thought Toby’s name was Josh.

Marcus’s desk is astonishingly sparse, and the most characteristic thing on it is the ashtray sitting on the corner.

He’s been single as long as I’ve known him, with no wife or kids, which meant no pseudo family for me after losing mine.

Even if he did have one, Marcus has never been the sappy type.

Sappy or not, he’s the closest thing I have to family.

My childhood went from movie nights and playing Secret Agent with my dad to quiet takeout dinners and uneventful Christmases and Thanksgivings.

I know there’s a part of Marcus that loves and cares for me, but he’s never been great at showing it.

If he didn’t care, there’s no way I’d have made it to twenty-four.

Besides, I know there’s nothing he’ll ever love as much as his job.

“Oh, this one,” he mumbles. He reaches into his desk and pulls out a cigarette. “She’s famous or something, so it keeps getting reposted.”

“Yeah, this one came from a fan account.”

“I also called in favors at a few outlets to run some hit pieces. I don’t think we have much to worry about. It’ll blow over by the time she posts her next bikini shot, right?”

Logistically, we can’t silence and discredit every sighting, but sightings with bigger names can cause problems. Those are the cases where intimidation doesn’t always work best. Censoring someone can say more than ignoring them or pivoting the narrative.

“I…”

Marcus sits back in his chair and raises his brows. “What? I know that look.”

“I’m not giving you a look.”

“Yes, you are. It’s the same look you gave me when you wanted to go to that party on the West Side—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” I grumble. You’re not really a teen until you have at least one bad run-in with jungle juice. “I think we’ve got to do more than just keep taking it down.”

“Sounds like there’s a suggestion buried in there somewhere.”

“I think you should let me look into this.”

It comes out faster than I can stop myself, even though I already know what the answer is going to be.

Marcus lets out a conflicted sigh and folds his hands behind his head.

This is the first time I’ve had any kind of tangible proof of what happened to my dad.

I’ve spent fifteen years waiting for a string of hope to grab on to for answers, and this one has fallen right into my lap.

Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.

“Carter, really? She’s just some model. You think she’s going to be that much of a problem? Or are you…you know…?”

I don’t know if he means that to be a weird sex thing, but I hope it’s not.

Marcus and I do not talk about sex things.

When I was fourteen, he brought home some weird brochure about how my body was supposed to change, slid it under the door, and we never spoke about it again.

I was fine, though. I had Urban Dictionary.

“Oh god, no ,” I scoff, leaning against his desk. “I’m on duty. I’m not desperate enough to use PIS to get myself dates.”

Marcus sighs, cracks the window behind him, and lights the cigarette. “Then what is it? This is probably some kid with a drone that freaked her out.”

I bite down on my molars as a waft of cigarette smoke hits my nose. “I just…I have a feeling about this one. I don’t think it’ll take too long. Toby’s doing well on his own, so I could make some time to look into it.”

“I think we all remember what happened last time.”

My first—and only—job had been confronting the host of a conspiracy theories podcast over an episode he did on a recent flap—what we call strings of connected UFO sightings—in Colorado that was getting a lot of traction.

It was my job to shut him up and get him to take the episode down.

He did not take it down and asked way too many questions.

I panicked and told him I had the wrong person, when clearly I didn’t.

“That was two years ago, Marcus. I’m not the same person I was then. I can handle this. Like you said—it could be nothing. I just…want to be sure.”

I understand why he’s hesitant. But I need this.

Marcus and I lock eyes across his desk. A sharp pain shoots up my arm and to the right side of my head.

I’m leaning too hard on the desk. Beneath my white button-down and suspenders, there are scars running up and down my arm, and on my face, a gash that’s long healed curving around my eye socket.

What I leave out of the conversation is the tie to my dad.

I’ve pushed before, and I know it’s one area Marcus refuses to budge on.

Dredging up the past about the partner he lost never goes well.

But Marcus doesn’t know about what I saw.

He doesn’t know about my photographic proof, and he doesn’t need to.

“Okay,” he begins. Before I let out a relieved sigh, Marcus holds up a hand. “I’ll let you look into it. I want you to report to me directly. Don’t tell anyone what you’re working on yet, just…do your digging.”

“Totally,” I spit out. “I’ll dig small. Like with a spoon. Nothing messy, nothing risky, just a little investigating.”

I say this, but I know I’m about to take a big fucking risk. El Martin—influencer, seller of Well water bottles and Spinx yoga pants, and the most gorgeous woman in the world—saw the same thing I did just before my dad and I were in a car crash that took him from me. It cannot be a coincidence.

“And, Carter?” he says. “Don’t fuck this one up.”

My body courses with adrenaline. I give him two thumbs up, nearly collide with the doorframe, and say, “I will try to do as little fucking as possible.”

By the time I reach my desk, Toby has made me a small fact sheet of everything I need to know about El Martin. Maybe he’s not a lost cause after all.

“Thanks, pal. I’m going to head out, but text me if you need any help.”

I pop my hat back on my head, make sure my suspenders are doing their suspending, and bolt out the door to my car.

While PIS issues cars to agents on the job, I was not issued one, but I saved an old Plymouth Volare from a one-way trip to the junkyard and fixed her up myself.

I like to call her Betty. I taught myself everything I know about fixing up old cars to keep her running.

She still, however, has crank windows, and the air-conditioning generally smells burnt.

I skim over the fact sheet Toby made me and begin to memorize details, then I hit up El’s socials.

I’m met with a perfectly curated grid of light pinks, blues, beiges, and whites, with El as the focal point of every photo.

I open her Stories and watch her drink smoothies, get manicures, share articles about recent UFO sightings, and then—bingo.

She checked in at the gym only twenty minutes ago.

By the time I arrive, she’ll likely be out of her workout class and I’ll find her there.

I spend the thirty-minute drive thinking over my plan.

I need to talk to her. I need to know what she saw and where she saw it.

A terrible thought buries itself in my brain.

My dad died after I saw the same thing. El could be in danger, too.

When I arrive at her deeply bougie gym, a small gaggle of photographers have assembled themselves out front. Whether it’s El or someone else, they have a target in mind, too.

I snatch my shoddy camera from the passenger seat and shimmy on up to the group, wiggling my way between two men with honest-to-god soul patches, and remove the lens cap.

While their cameras are decked out with the highest-quality lenses and flashes, I’ve been using and repairing the same old early digital camera since I was a kid—the same camera that took the fateful photo.

I only need to wait a few minutes before the luxury gym door swings open and a flutter of camera flashes erupts. Me, though, I’m too mesmerized to even take photos.

El Martin looks everything and nothing like her Instagram photos.

It’s the same auburn waves, and big brown eyes that see right through the screen, and little freckles, and a lopsided smile she’s always trying to even out for the cameras.

What the photos miss is the way she smells like fruity cucumber and the way the baby hairs at the back of her neck curl from her latest workout.

The photographers shout her name, asking her more about what she saw, about why she posted the video, if she plans to go to rehab.

El grimaces and mutters a faint “fuck this.” She shoves her way through the crowd of photographers, shielding her face with a hand and power walking away from them.

I need to follow her. El Martin is the closest thing I’ve had to answers in fifteen years.

She crosses the street into the parking garage and quickly dives into an open elevator, hitting the close door button a few times before it shuts. The most beautiful woman in the world vanishes behind an impenetrable steel door.

Weekly Blind Items Roundup

From: [email protected]

Subject: a little birdie told me

Anon pls. A certain topical influencer might be in some hot water with her girlies.

Rumor has it they’re not pleased with her latest antics and are already looking for someone to replace her in their squad.

One of her friends has been in the DMs of several former Bachelor Nation contestants to see if any are interested.

From: [email protected]

Subject: vanishing act

It looks like the influencer of the hour has not only lost her mind, but her boyfriend as well.

She’s deleted traces of the sequined ex from her IG, except a couple of promotional posts, and he’s done the same.

They still follow each other, but it wouldn’t shock me if he was trying to avoid her with a ten-foot magic wand, if you get what I mean.

From: [email protected]

Subject: not like other girls

re: the last blind. I’m friends with one of the starlet in question’s exes and he says her recent outburst isn’t surprising.

She’s always been the kind of girl who doesn’t play by the rules, according to him, but it tends to make her circle angry, and he wouldn’t be shocked if this finally does her in.

If she wants this lifestyle so bad, she can’t be doing this stuff, he says.