Introductions

Many thoughts were lapping my head.

“Who is he?” the stranger asked.

“Don’t know.” I considered the dead man and holstered my gun. “He didn’t introduce himself. Speaking of that…” I cast a net over the short woman beside me. She’d walked up just after the other breathed his last. She was fortunate I didn’t shoot her.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Oh, my name. Nancy Sinatra, I’ve decided.”

“You decided.” She didn’t have a car. Numerous new questions joined my mental list.

The stranger chortled. “I’m an alien. Don’t have a human name. First time I’ve had a body like this. First time to Earth.”

Alien. Figured. I’d need to delve into that.

I shifted my victim to look at his face. Nice forehead shot, I congratulated myself. Been lucky to kill him. He’d had the most important element — surprise — but I was faster. “Can you help me with this body?” I’d decided to toss him over the nearby edge into the ravine below. Wasn’t nothing but starlight and a skinny moon’s cast for illumination but I knew the ravine was there. Sure wasn’t burying him. Figured it had to be done fast. Before others arrived.

She picked up the body. All five four of her hefting six feet plus something inches and a few hundred pounds, putting him over a shoulder like a light jacket.

“Geez,” I said. “Respect.”

She nodded. “Where to?”

I directed her, “Follow me.” I hope she wasn’t going to kick me over with my dead guy. “Be careful.”

“I will. I can see better than you.”

“Oh. I see.” Ha, ha. I use humor to cope. It’s not good humor.

“Why’d you kill him, Tate?”

“You know my name.”

We stopped and looked together into the dark valley at our feet. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. Not even breathing hard.

“Toss him,” I said.

She did.

We listened to his downward journey and the final silence. A warm wind licked my skin. A cricket began a lonely solo.

“You didn’t say why you killed him,” Nancy Sinatra said.

“Self defense. He tried to kill me when I arrived.”

“Ah. Prompts a difficult question, doesn’t it?”

“What?” I knew what but I was challenging and measuring. Figuring out who Nancy Sinatra was. Wondering why dead guy was alone.

“You came back in time. So how did he know you’d be here?”

The billion dollar question. “Same as you, I suppose.”

“Nope. You told me to be here. I didn’t tell anyone. So how did he know?”

That’s what worried me. Yet he was alone. “Yep. If I do it again, I’ll need to come back a little earlier. How are your shoes? They made for walking?”

“What?” Nancy Sinatra’s puzzlement carried like an echo across a canyon. “They’re shoes. What else would they be made for?”

I chuckled. “Forget it. Start walking. I’m going to teach you a song.”

I knew the song from my future. I wondered why she chose that name.