I walk around our tiny downtown for a little while, half to clear my head and half to keep an eye over my shoulder and see if I’ve got some kind of tail watching me while pretending to read a magazine or something. But there’s no one. At least not anybody I can see.

The card Agent Walker gave me gives me absolutely no info—it’s blank other than a phone number, which goes straight to voice mail when I call it from the only pay phone I know of in Paradise. I don’t leave a message. Instead, I pull up the “Aliens Anonymous” blog on my phone and message GUARD, telling him that I’ve had a really weird run-in with the FBI and that this is the contact number they gave me. GUARD is good with computers and stuff, so maybe he can use it to find some new information or something.

When I’m walking back to my truck, I run into Kevin, an offensive lineman from school. He’s a giant of a guy, with patches of red hair all over his face that almost make it look like he’s capable of growing an actual beard. Almost. A few of the younger members on the team are with him, but they hang back, letting him lead. I briefly wonder if that’s what I looked like when I was always running around town with my own posse.

“Duuuude,” he says when he sees me. We do an elaborate series of handshakes and fist bumps. “We were grabbing burgers and saw you talking with Sarah on the corner. Looked pretty intense. What’s going on with you two—you hitting that now that Bomberman is gone?”

Fire rages in me, and I can feel my face turning red with anger.

“Look, man,” one of the younger guys says. “He’s blushing.”

“Don’t talk about Sarah like that,” I say. My jaw is clenched.

The whole pack “Oooooooo”s as if they were a studio audience.

“Sorry, man, I didn’t realize you two were a thing again.”

“We’re not,” I say, trying to smile. “But I’m working on it.”

“Must be hard being sloppy seconds to a terrorist,” Kevin says with a smirk. “Gotta make you wonder what she saw in a dude like him.”

I move before I think. In a flash I’ve got Kevin up against a brick wall, holding him by the arms of his letter jacket. He may be a giant, but I’m fast, and after years of strength training and weight lifting, I’m not exactly a lightweight.