by C. J. Box
“Haven’t seen her, either,” the man said, as if Kira couldn’t hear him.
“I’m Seth,” he said.
“Sheridan,” she replied, deadpan. She didn’t want this to go anywhere.
“I’ve been here most of the volunteer weekends, although I have to say our living situation kind of sucks now. We used to sleep indoors on bunks. I’m not much of a tent guy.”
Neither is Kira, Sheridan thought.
Kira, who was normally as pale as a blank sheet of white paper, looked almost translucent as she sat slumped, barely eating. Sleeping in the tent in a sleeping bag had apparently taken a lot out of her.
Seth asked, “Are you two, you know, together?”
“Not like that,” Sheridan said.
He warmed to the response. “So you’re . . .”
“No.”
“That was fast,” he said. A note of distaste entered his voice. “You know, we’re all here for the same thing. We’re here to further the cause. Sometimes, you know, people bond together.”
He chuckled, but his eyes weren’t laughing along. She realized she had answered so quickly she had offended him. She imagined that he enjoyed the bunks and the camaraderie. And whatever else he could get from girls like her.
“You kind of look like you’re not sure you’re into all of this,” he said, leaning forward.
“I’m keeping an open mind.”
“Good, that’s good,” he said. “You don’t want to be ‘Lindsey’d.’”
“Lindsey’d?”
“I’ll tell you later,” he said, looking around to see if he’d been overheard and keeping his voice low.
• • •
SHERIDAN TRIED not to be so judgmental about the other volunteers, but they looked like losers to her. They were made up of sixth-year seniors and off-campus lifers from colleges in Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming majoring in fields that ended with the word studies. Rather than complete their degrees, they lived in an alternate world of activism, conspiracy, and the elusive quest for social justice.
She realized as she stood there that she really wanted no part of them and she resented Kira for inviting her along because she had camping gear. And she was angry at herself for accepting.
The only bright spot, she decided, was listening to this guy Ibby. He was impressive: caring, impassioned, charismatic. He was a born leader, and he could inspire others to his cause, including her. She felt herself being swept up in his patriotic fervor.
Plus, he was a falconer. Just like Nate.
Still, though, she planned to leave at the first opportunity.
• • •
THE NIGHT BEFORE had been an adventure, but the feeling was wearing off fast.
They’d arrived at the Mustang Café on I-80 promptly at seven in the evening, as per the instructions Kira had received. One by one, other volunteers had arrived and Sheridan could tell from their interaction that they obviously knew one another. A bartender named Cooter poured draft Coors Lights and served deep-fried cheese and vegetables on plates. Potent marijuana smoke hung in the air. The guys who had brought it said they had just bought it legally across the border in Colorado.
Sheridan instantly regretted that she’d arrived wearing her day-to-day clothes: jeans, cowboy boots, hooded University of Wyoming sweatshirt. She stood out among the others who, like Kira, wore primarily black.
The volunteers had brought in their backpacks and duffel bags and stacked them in a pile near the door. They milled around the small dance floor, smoking and drinking and trading stories about what they’d done since they’d last seen each other.
Sheridan leaned in close to Kira and asked, “What happens now?”
Kira barely shrugged. She didn’t look back at Sheridan when she said, “We’ll find out, I guess.”
“I’m really not sure about this.”
“Come on. Don’t chicken out now.”
“Where are we going? Do we all drive somewhere in a pack?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did they bring all their gear in here?”
“Why do you keep asking me questions I can’t answer?” Kira said, annoyed. Sheridan got the impression Kira didn’t want to be perceived as anxious or uncool—like her friend in the University of Wyoming hoodie.
“Can I help?” came a female voice from behind them.
Sheridan had turned and was face-to-face with an attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties who had clever eyes and a sly smile. Although the woman was dressed in jeans, a fleece vest, and hiking boots, she looked out of place.
“I’m Jan,” the woman said. She thumbed through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard. “Which one of you is Kira?”
“I’m Kira,” her friend said.
Jan nodded, and said to Sheridan, “I’m sorry, but you have to go.”
“Why?” Sheridan asked. “Go where?”
“Wherever you came from,” Jan said. “You haven’t been vetted. We’ve got a strict policy about that.”
Even though Sheridan was having second thoughts, she felt embarrassed. Kira looked crestfallen.
“Look,” Kira said, “I asked online if she could come. Whoever was on the other end didn’t say no, so I thought it was cool.”
“It isn’t,” Jan said.
“She’s my friend,” Kira pleaded. “She’s my ride. I can vouch for her.”
She gestured to the outdoor gear. “This is all her stuff. I don’t have any of my own. I’m not an outdoors person. I don’t even drive. Come on, please?”
Kira was pitiful and looked to be near tears. She was also persuasive.
Jan stood there looking at them for a long moment. “I’ll make an exception only because we desperately need people and she’s vouching for you,” she finally said to Sheridan. “Several of our longtime volunteers got themselves in trouble at a protest in Boulder, so we’re shorthanded. I’ll need you to fill out an application. It has a confidentiality clause that says you can’t reveal the nature of our work or your part in it. Among other things.”
Sheridan was of two minds. She didn’t like to be singled out and rejected, but at the same time her enthusiasm for this experience had rapidly waned. But she couldn’t simply abandon Kira.
“I’ll do it,” Sheridan said. Kira was relieved.
After completing the form and grudgingly listing all of her personal information as well as agreeing to the confidentiality and legal liability release requirements, she handed it back to Jan.
Jan looked it over and was apparently okay with it. She read from the form and said, “Sheridan Pickett and Kira Harden. Both of you are first-timers, so welcome. As you can imagine, we’ve got to be careful how we do things. But first, I’d like to officially thank you both for coming. You don’t realize how much we appreciate your help.”
Sheridan nodded.
Jan looked at her wristwatch and said, “Now that it’s getting dark out, we’ll get started soon.”
“Doing what?” Sheridan asked tentatively. She felt Kira glare at her, but she didn’t look over.
“First, does anyone know you’re here or what you’re doing this weekend? Any friends, relatives, acquaintances?”
Sheridan and Kira both shook their heads.
“Good. Second, you’ll both have to leave your cell phones here. Don’t worry, they’ll be safe. Did you bring any other devices? Laptops, iPads, anything like that? Anything that can transmit or receive data?”
“No,” Sheridan said. Kira shook her head.
“No weapons or anything like that, either?” Jan said.
Sheridan handed over her pepper spray.
“And no intoxicants of any kind. We have a zero tolerance policy about that—for your own safety. You’ll be around heavy machinery and equipment and we don’t want anyone getting hurt.
I hope you understand.”
“What about the weed?” Sheridan asked, chinning over her shoulder toward the smokers.
“They know the rules. They’ll leave it here.”
“Kind of harsh,” Kira said. Sheridan knew that Kira liked to light up before breakfast every morning.
“Harsh but safe,” Jan said breezily. “If you can’t do it, you know where the door is.”
Kira looked down at her heavy boots and said, “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m cool with it.”
Jan continued. “In a few minutes, some of our team members will arrive from the desert. You’ll leave your car here and they’ll take you to our location. Can either of you drive a four-wheeler?”
Kira looked to Sheridan with a blank face.
“I can,” Sheridan said. “I learned to drive an ATV with my dad.”
“You look like you could,” Jan said with an appreciative smile. “You two can go together, then. Just don’t lose sight of the team leader out there in the desert. If you get lost, you might stay lost. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Sheridan said.
“Okay then,” Jan said, patting them both on their shoulders as she slid past them toward the other volunteers, who greeted her like a long-lost friend.
“What in the hell have you gotten me into?” Sheridan asked Kira.
Kira shrugged. Then: “Thank you for coming. You’re much cooler than I thought.”
Sheridan almost said, No, I’m much dumber than you thought.
• • •
SHERIDAN LOVED THE RIDE across the desert in the dark. The wind whipped her hair and the air smelled dry and foreign. Kira was behind her on the seat with her arms around Sheridan’s waist.
Once they left the café and the distant interstate, it was a dark and lonely world: no lights, no roads, no power lines or other signs of human encroachment. The ATV tires kicked up dust and at times Sheridan chose to hang back far enough so that she could see and breathe better. But she never lost sight of the twin taillights of the lead four-wheeler. Her roommate’s head was buried into Sheridan’s back, and at times Kira squeezed so hard Sheridan had trouble breathing.
An hour out, she was surprised to find that she was second in the pack and the other volunteers were behind her. She’d noticed before they’d left that a few of the “team members” who delivered the four-wheelers had stayed back at the café, presumably to help load gear and return to the “location” in the truck. And presumably to have a few beers with Cooter as well.
• • •
PUTTING UP THE TENTS in the dark produced a lot of grumbling. Sheridan had brought a headlamp and she used it to set up hers. Kira was worthless with that kind of chore. She simply stood there, shifting on her feet from side to side, holding her sleeping bag until the tent was tight. Once Kira was inside, Sheridan lent her lamp to a couple of volunteers who were still struggling with their tents.
When she climbed inside and zipped the flap closed, Kira was deep into her bag. Her voice was muffled when she said, “I’m covered in dust. My eyes are full of grit. I forgot my toothbrush.”
“You’ll live.”
“I know I won’t sleep. All I’ll think about is that I have to pee, and when I do, a wolf will eat me.”
“There are no wolves down here.”
“A bear, then.”
“There might be a bear,” Sheridan said.
“Oh, great. Did I ever tell you I fucking hate camping?”
“I would have guessed that.”
Sheridan fell asleep with a smirk on her lips.
• • •
BUT NOW, AS SHE LISTENED to the one named Ibby say that this should be the last weekend they would ever be needed and that by this time next week what they’d done would be known around the world, Sheridan briefly closed her eyes.
She didn’t want to be famous, and she didn’t want to get into trouble. She judged the nature of the work by the volunteers who were there to do it and it left a sour taste in her mouth.
Although she didn’t doubt Ibby’s sincerity for a moment, in her mind’s eye she kept seeing the disapproving squint of her dad’s face, and the voice of her mother asking her what was she thinking.
Sheridan didn’t like the idea of the government collecting metadata from innocent people. It was wrong, she thought. But she also knew that she’d never sent a text or email or said anything over her cell phone that could be construed as dangerous. Boring, yes. But not dangerous to anyone.
She wasn’t surprised that Seth had positioned himself next to her while Ibby talked. He eagerly turned his head to her when she leaned toward him.
“What does it mean to be ‘Lindsey’d’?” she asked in a whisper.
He looked around again and lowered his lips to her ear.
“Lindsey was a pain in the ass,” he said. “She got here and made all kinds of demands about the living conditions, and basically announced that if she wasn’t allowed to leave here, she’d blow the whistle on the whole project. She bitched and moaned about everything and she was a goddamned prima donna, and she should never have been preapproved to come here. She got on everyone’s nerves real fast.”
Sheridan nodded for him to go on.
“There’s this security guy named Saeed,” Seth said. “He said he’d take her back to her car so we could get back to work. We all stood up and applauded when he drove her away and we never saw her again. That’s the worst thing that can happen here, that you get Lindsey’d.”
“So did she keep quiet?” Sheridan asked.
Seth shrugged.
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said. “All I know is that when we got back to the Mustang Café two days later, her car was still there.”
Sheridan felt a cold chill tremble down her spine.
“So don’t get Lindsey’d,” Seth said.
—— PART SEVEN ——
UTAH DATA CENTER
This is the place!
—BRIGHAM YOUNG, 1847
25
“Is that a spring?” Jan Stalkup asked with a squint. She pointed to a distant smudge of blue-green beneath a rock formation to the southeast.
Joe raised his binoculars to his eyes and focused. Although he couldn’t see standing water or an outlet stream, the ground was churned up and dark. Mud.
“Yup,” he said. “Good eye.”
He’d obviously missed the spring that morning when he came through, but he’d been farther west and the angle would have been back and over his shoulder.
It was good timing, he thought, since they’d run out of water the hour before. He realized how desperate they were when he’d barked at Daisy for spilling too much. He still felt guilty for it.
“Just when we really, really need to find water, we find water,” Jan said, ebullient. She reached out and grasped his arm. “Maybe I need to spend more time with believers.”
• • •
JOE FILLED BOTH PLASTIC JUGS after filtering the water through his old camping pump filter. The spring wasn’t so much a spring as a seep. Tepid water filled a foot-wide depression and swirled like coffee and cream in smaller holes. He couldn’t remember the last time he changed out the filter unit and he hoped it was still functioning, even though he’d decided to drink the water either way. There was no choice.
The water was murky and warm and it tasked like alkali, but they didn’t complain. Jan drank her fill, followed by Joe and Daisy. Then Joe sank to his muddy knees again to replenish the jug.
While he pumped, he surveyed the ground around the spring. It told a story.
When he stood and capped the second full jug, he said, “He’s here, all right.”
Jan looked at him, puzzled.
“My friend Nate. Plus another falconer and a third unknown guy.”
“Looking around.”
“Looking around where?” she asked, puzzled.
He gestured toward the ground itself, which had been churned up by visiting wild horses, desert elk, and other wildlife. He identified the tracks of bobcat, fox, and a variety of birds.
“And look here,” he said, pointing out the boot prints in and outside of the muddy area and the tire tracks beyond them.
“Three men,” he said. “Two came from the south on foot, one arrived in a vehicle.”
Then he pointed out a large splash of what looked like white paint on the side of a deep hoofprint.
“That’s falcon excrement,” he said.
He walked out of the bog and pointed to a smaller splash among the two sets of boot prints. “And here is another one. So we’ve got a large bird and a smaller bird.”
“Where did they go?” Jan asked.
“Probably the same place we’re going,” he said.
• • •
“SO YOU’RE MARRIED,” she said.
They were walking side by side to the south. He almost welcomed the question, because it distracted him from the opening bars of “A Horse with No Name,” which had again entered his head.
“Yup. A lot of years.”
“But is it a happy marriage?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m often attracted to happily married men,” she said. “There aren’t many of them. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re so rare. Maybe it’s the challenge . . .”
She was baiting him and he refused to acknowledge it. Finally, she chuckled.
“You don’t like this topic?”
“No.”
“Then let’s change the subject. You’ve got three daughters, Sheridan being the oldest.”
He nodded.
“Really,” she said, “you probably don’t even realize it, but I can count on one hand the number of people I know who were raised in a family where the mom and dad liked each other, stayed married, and raised semi-normal kids. It’s a rarity.
