Doing her best to hide her trembling hands, unwilling to admit how much the extraordinary kiss had shaken her, she moved behind her desk. She gestured to one of the two chairs in front of her desk.
“Have a seat.” She sat down in her spiffy near-new office chair, produced a key from her pocket and unlocked the bottom right drawer of her desk, pulling the package out.
It was flat and rectangular and only an inch thick, about the size of a notebook with extra padding.
Ruby handed it to him. “Do you want me to leave so you can look at it in private?”
“No. You can stay. I’ll have to give you a response so you can get paid.”
“If you want to. I won’t make you.” She folded her arms and leaned forward, chewing her bottom lip in rampant anticipation of seeing what was in the sealed envelope. She truly wanted to unravel the mystery.
Max opened the package up, spreading the contents on her desk. Inside was a sealed envelope, a small thick card with what she presumed was a galactic address on it and an electronic device that looked like a keychain fob for a vehicle.
“Did you win a car?”
“What?”
She pointed at the electronic device. “Isn’t that a key fob for a vehicle?”
“No. It’s a disposable Alpha credit device with an amount that would have lasted me probably six months in Alienn, Arkansas, if I still lived there.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I guess. But the only place I’d be able to cash in and use the device on this planet is Alienn.”
“Maybe you could take a trip back there.”
“Maybe.” But he didn’t seem very interested in doing that.
Max studied the mark on the wax-sealed envelope.
“Do you recognize the mark? Is it someone you know?” she asked.
“Nope. Never seen it before.”
Ruby took out her phone. “Before you break the seal, let me take a picture. Then you’ll have it.” She snapped a couple of pictures and nodded for him to go ahead and open it.
“Thanks.” He cracked the thick hard seal in half. Inside were several sturdy pieces of paper the shade of gravestones folded into thirds.
Max separated them. There were three pages. “These look like the kind of paper used in Alpha important documents. The color gray usually signifies the highest priority.”
“Are they deeds to some properties? Certificates of ownership for expensive items? More credits, perhaps?”
He opened the tri-folded papers and glanced through them.
“It’s a letter addressed to me as Max.”
Ruby squinted. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but before I came here I was known as Ilian, not Max. I didn’t start using the name Max until I got to Earth. Curious.”
“Who’s it from?”
Max shuffled to the last page and his eyebrows rose. “Someone claiming to be my uncle Milo.”
“Claiming?”
“I don’t have any uncles that I know of.” Max noticed she was sitting as far forward in her chair as she could without falling face first onto her desk.
