Crazy in Chicago by Norah-Jean Perkin Page B

that I would never be like him. I’ve tried to be the exact opposite of him in every way.”
    He grimaced and rolled his shoulders. “But look what’s happening now. I disappear. No one can explain it, not even the police. Suddenly, a year later, I can’t sleep. I feel sick. I see blue lights, haunting blue lights. Worse, I have this damn assignment on UFOs, one which puts me in touch with a lot of really strange people, people who remind me of my father. I don’t like it. I’m starting to think I’m turning into the one person I never wanted to be: My father. Either that or I’m slowly losing my mind.”
    The admission out, he picked up his mug and headed for the living room patio doors. He stared blindly outside. He’d voiced the fear he’d never told anyone, the fear gnawing at him more and more as each sleepless night and nauseous day passed. The fear intensified by the flashes of blue light and the comments of Madame Carabini. The fear fed by Roberta’s constant probing.
    He didn’t know how long he stood there, alone with his demons, trying to convince himself he’d never be like his father. Suddenly he felt the feather touch of Roberta’s hand on his arm. He turned to face her.
    She tilted her chin and looked up at him. Her beautiful, blue eyes brimmed with tenderness. “I don’t think you’re weird at all,” she whispered.
    When he said nothing, she repeated her statement. “I don’t think there’s anything weird about you. I see a man who’s searching. A man who’s strong enough and brave enough to look for the answers, and will face them when he finds them. There’s nothing weird about that.”
    He looked down at her, moved by the gentleness, by the conviction and belief he saw shining in her eyes. No one had looked at him like that, for a long time. No one had believed in him like that.
    He drank in the caring in her eyes, letting it seep inside and fill him with wonder. Silently, he moved to the sideboard and set down his mug. He needed to hold her in his arms, to—
    Â  His gaze lighted on a file lying on the sideboard and half-hidden by magazines. He started to move away when something drew him back. It was the bold label in black marker, a label reading, “Disappearances, Walker C.”
    Puzzled, he picked up the file folder. “What’s this?”
    In a flash Roberta crossed the room and reached for the folder. “Just a file,” she said.
    He dodged her. “It’s got my name on it.” He opened it and started to flip through the contents.
    â€œYes, but . . .”
    The file contained clippings on his disappearance, right from the original announcement through to his re-appearance. And they were originals, not the photocopies he’d given her to read the other day. She—or someone—had highlighted parts of the stories with yellow marker.
    â€œYou usually keep files on your neighbors?” Cody looked at her from under raised brows. His mouth twisted.
    She flushed. “No. I . . .”
    â€œThese aren’t copies. They’re originals. So you had them long before you’d ever met me.” He tossed the file back onto the sideboard. “What I want to know is why? And why you didn’t tell me the other day you already had them?”
    She fiddled with the chain around her neck, pulling it back and forth. Finally, without looking at him, she responded in a small voice. “Ever since I began working for SUFOW, I’ve kept my own files on unusual disappearances, ones for which there were no obvious explanations. I was looking for clues, for the possibility of—”
    â€œOf what?” He cut her off. “The possibility that I might have been abducted by aliens? Is that it?”
    Anger spurted up inside him, anger that he’d been used, anger that her sweet concern had all been a ruse. Anger that he’d been stupid enough to