Winds of Change

by Christine Pope

  Probably, the scotch wasn’t helping, either, but one glass certainly wasn’t enough to cause any detectable impairment. And he needed the spurious sense of well-being it provided.

  What was it about the people in those sketches, especially the younger man and the woman? They’d both been wearing wedding bands, he was almost certain. Husband and wife?

  A possibility, but he couldn’t be sure. They hadn’t engaged in any public displays of affection, but then, why would they, when it was clear they were intent on rescuing Adara Grant and nothing else?

  Frowning, he stared down at the portraits again. These were new sketches he’d quickly traced out after he got home from the facility, focusing on their faces. They’d been wearing nondescript clothing, jeans and T-shirts, the older of the two men in a polo shirt and khakis. Because their clothes had been so ordinary, Lenz didn’t see the point in trying to analyze them. No, it was in their features that he hoped to find illumination.

  Once again, he got a flash of the woman bending over him, her expression worried, possibly even a little frightened. Unconsciously, Lenz winced as he waited for the inevitable burst of pain in his head that seemed to accompany such a glimpse, but it never came. Cushioned by the scotch, possibly?

  He didn’t know. Rather than try to analyze why the blinding migraine held off, he instead did his best to hold on to that image of the strange woman, to commit every detail to memory. Her wavy dark hair was pulled back from her face in that glimpse, rather than falling to her shoulders the way it had been when she came to rescue Adara Grant from her room at the facility. No T-shirt, either; she’d been wearing jeans, but she had on a sleeveless top of cotton or linen, with turquoise and silver drops hanging from her ears. Minimal makeup, he thought, only mascara on the thick lashes that surrounded her brilliantly green eyes and a touch of peach-hued gloss or sheer lipstick on her full mouth.

  In a way, he was startled at how much he could remember of her. And then, as if recalling those details awoke even more memories, he realized the man had been there, too — tall and dark-haired, with greenish eyes as well, although his were mixed with gray, subtler in hue but striking as well. Lenz didn’t know why he was so certain of the fact, but he somehow knew that they were indeed husband and wife.

  Connor and Angela.

  The names leapt out of nowhere, and he quickly wrote them down. Where they’d come from, he had no idea. Had they addressed one another while in his presence? Had someone else spoken to them, called them out by name?

  That piece of the memory didn’t want to surface. However, Lenz realized there had been other people in the room: an older woman with graying dark hair, and two more.

  Jake Wilcox and Adara Grant.

  You don’t know he’s Jake Wilcox, Lenz told himself. Dawson had only one hit on that name, and he was someone twice this man’s age.

  And yet…he somehow knew he was right. No matter what the evidence was trying to tell him, the man in question was definitely Jake Wilcox. He must have done something to obfuscate his true identity. Not so far-fetched a theory, not when they already knew their servers had been breached by an unknown hacker intent on hiding as much evidence about Adara Grant as possible.

  So, they’d all been there — Connor and Angela and Jake and Adara, along with the older woman. Eleanor? That felt halfway right, although he couldn’t be entirely certain. Lenz realized that the memories felt so odd and distorted because he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness, his body battered, aching. He’d lain on a sofa, although his first recollections of the scene seemed to have been from a vantage point lower down, as if he’d started out on the floor and then gotten moved to the couch later on.

  Yes. He’d confronted Adara, and she’d summoned a lightning bolt to strike him down. The pain had been searing, intense, far worse than anything he’d suffered in his life, including the time a car had struck him in a crosswalk when he was just in high school and broke both his legs and fractured his collarbone. No wonder he’d been such a mess for the past few weeks. While people could be struck by lightning and survive, there were often serious side effects that lingered for months or even years afterward.

  He couldn’t even be angry with her for what she’d done. In the same situation, he probably would also have used his native abilities to mount some kind of defense. Actually, he was more puzzled by the memory than anything else. All the data seemed to suggest that she didn’t have much control over her abilities, but it seemed clear enough to him that she’d been able to use lightning to make a single targeted strike. Now her success on the training field with Dr. Woodrow made a great deal more sense. His team had been pleased to see her progressing so quickly, but it seemed to him now that she’d been playing them for fools all along.

  He wanted to be irritated with her for her duplicity. Instead, he couldn’t quite hold back an unexpected surge of admiration.

  Another swallow of scotch, and Lenz stared down at the sketches again. What was the connection between all these people? Why had Jake sought out Adara in the first place? Memory had begun to return, but it wasn’t filling in all the details.

  Except he was now almost completely convinced that Connor and Adara must be siblings. How, he didn’t know.

  Was Connor also a Wilcox? Were he and Jake related in some way? They didn’t resemble one another all that much, except for the superficial similarities of being tall and dark-haired and well-built, but that theory made more sense than anything else he could come up with.

  Maybe…maybe they’d just discovered that Connor and Adara were related, and Jake had gone to seek her out in Kanab to make sure. Why Connor hadn’t undertaken such an errand himself, if Adara truly was his sister, Lenz didn’t know. In the end, it didn’t matter so much. What mattered was that she was clearly important to them, important enough that they’d undertaken a risky rescue in a secret government facility to ensure her safety.

  How had they managed such a thing? Lenz knew what he’d seen with his own eyes — the four of them disappearing into thin air before he could take a single step forward to prevent their departure. Which seemed to indicate that Connor had powers of his own, powers that made Adara’s seem almost insignificant.

  But why the presence of the woman Lenz believed was Connor’s wife, or the older man, the one who also seemed as if he must be related to Connor somehow? Did they also possess extraordinary powers? Were all of them required to be present in order to generate the teleportation power they’d used to get Adara away?

  Again, he couldn’t know for sure. However, he felt he was on the verge of discovering something big, something that would neatly put together all these scattered pieces and create a coherent picture to prove they truly were connected.

  For the moment, he needed to follow up on one thing. It was late, and Agent Dawson would be at home as well. However, he wanted her working on this, not Agent LaRue, who took over her duties during the overnight hours and who was competent but not as thorough or as insightful.

  Lenz got out his cell phone and typed a quick message. Check on Connor Wilcox. Wife possibly named Angela. Get back to me with any information you find.

  He sent the text to Dawson’s personal phone, knowing that even though she was technically off-duty, she would follow up as soon as she received it. As far as he could tell, she didn’t seem to have much of a personal life — no husband or significant other of any kind, no close family ties. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, she seemed to exist mainly for her position at the SED and not much else. Because of this, he had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t have the information he sought in the very near future.

  Maybe at last he’d be able to place the final pieces in the puzzle and then decide what to do next.

  Addie hadn’t wanted to go out to dinner, so Jake had Door Dash deliver from Brix, another of his favorite Flagstaff restaurants, one owned by the same people who operated Criollo. They would be missing out on the ambiance of Brix, which was located in a converted Craftsm
an house near the northeast edge of downtown, but the food would still be good, and at least he had a fairly decent wine stash on hand, so he wouldn’t have too difficult a time choosing something that complemented both their meals.

  Now they sat at the dining room table, the fixture that hung above them dimmed to provide a soft romantic light, candles flickering from the metal stands placed at the center of the table. Quiet music played in the background. Everything seemed perfectly in place for an intimate meal — well, except for Taffy perched on the floor directly between the two of them, ready to beg for scraps — and yet Jake had a feeling none of this was turning out the way he’d planned.

  “I can’t believe you want to help the guy,” he said, and Addie’s lips thinned.

  “Are we really going to go over this again?” she asked as she reached for her glass of zinfandel.

  He could feel his jaw clench, and did his best to relax. While he didn’t want to get into an argument, he also couldn’t help thinking that if she would just listen to him, she’d understand why her misplaced idealism was unwarranted in this situation.

  “Look,” he replied, “I suppose I can understand why you all would think Randall Lenz is deserving of some sort of consideration, but I don’t see the point in putting yourself out there for him when we still don’t know for sure that he’s even a warlock at all.”

  She lifted the wine glass and took a measured sip, then put it back down. However, even though the movement had been almost too precise, as if she’d done so as a way to keep a check on her emotions, Jake wanted to believe he’d detected a slight softening in her expression.

  “No, we don’t,” she said. “And believe me — I’d much rather walk away and let him stew in his own juices. But if there’s even the slightest chance that he could be one of us, then we have to do something. If nothing else, he could be a danger to himself and everyone around him if he’s got some kind of power that’s suddenly started to manifest and he can’t control it.”

  It figured she’d come up with the one argument that would make him pause and re-analyze the situation. He hadn’t even thought of that angle, mostly because it really wasn’t a problem when kids’ powers started to develop, since they always had adult witches and warlocks around to guide them. But if those powers suddenly appeared in an adult, and were therefore by extension much stronger, and the person in question didn’t know what in the hell was going on…

  …well, that was a recipe for disaster right there.

  “Okay,” he allowed. “Do you have any idea what kind of ability we’re talking about here?”

  That question made her frown slightly, her expression distracted. Jake had the feeling that she was mentally scanning through her more recent encounters with Randall Lenz and trying to determine if he’d done or said anything that might have provided a clue as to his supposed witchy talents.

  “No,” she said after a moment, expression dejected. She speared a piece of ribeye and took a bite, chewing meditatively. Once she’d swallowed, she added, “It can’t be anything too flashy, because otherwise, I should have seen some sign of it. I mean, there were no flashes of thunder or objects moving around. He wasn’t flinging balls of fire or reading my mind or doing anything that seemed like any of the talents I’ve heard of so far.” Another pause, and she asked, “How many different talents are there, anyway?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” he responded. “Hundreds, I guess. I mean, some are a lot more common than others — healing, working with plants, seeing the future, telekinesis. I’m not sure why, except it seems as if most of those have a survival component to them, so it makes sense that they would continue to pop up in each generation. But then you have people who can talk to ghosts, like Angela, or people who are good at making potions, or people who can find lost objects or create shields around themselves…there’s just lots of them to choose from. And not all of them are that obvious. I mean, Lucas has an amazing gift that’s helped him out a lot, but I’m not sure you’d be able to tell just from being around him that he was super lucky, unless you were playing cards with him or something.”

  At those words, Addie sat up a little straighter, her eyes widening. She set down her fork and stared at him for a moment. “Maybe that’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “Luck,” she replied. “Maybe that’s Randall Lenz’s talent as well. It would make sense — he said once to me that his hunches usually played out. What if those weren’t hunches at all, but his talent manifesting itself? That’s why my lightning bolt didn’t kill him outright…and that’s why he was always so close on my trail. His gift kept giving him the necessary guidance, pushing him so he’d be in the right place at the right time.”

  Her face had brightened as she spoke. While Jake had to admit to himself that some of what she said made sense, he still didn’t know whether she was on the right track.

  “If he’s so lucky, then why didn’t he catch you right away?” he asked. “All our maneuvering shouldn’t have even worked.”

  “‘Right away’ was before he was struck by lightning,” Addie pointed out. “We were able to get away from him in the beginning because his gift just wasn’t strong enough. Afterward…well, I can’t explain exactly why he didn’t catch me in Santa Fe, or why it took him a while to find me in Riverton.” She was quiet for a few seconds, fingers tapping against the base of her wine glass. “But tell me — is Lucas one hundred percent lucky in every single thing he does?”

  About all Jake could do was shrug. “It’s not like I hang out with him every second of every day, so I can’t say for sure. Probably not. It’s mostly the big stuff, the things that would change his life if his luck wasn’t guiding him in the right direction. Also, sometimes it seems as if he’s not particularly lucky in something — his love life was nothing to write home about until he met Margot — until you kind of step back and realize his luck was guiding him to where he was supposed to be.”

  “Like meeting her, even though she was a McAllister?”

  “Exactly,” Jake replied, a little surprised that Addie had been able to read between the lines on that one. After all, she hadn’t been around long enough to know much about Lucas’ history with Margot, although he supposed she must have done some quick math based on the age of Lucas and Margot’s daughter Mia and the time when Connor and Angela had broken the curse that had hung over the Wilcox primuses for more than a hundred years. After that singular accomplishment, everything began to change in the Wilcox clan. Jake scrubbed his hand through the hair at the back of his head and gave Addie a sideways look. “So…you’re saying that Randall Lenz’s talent was trying to guide him to a place where he’d be most likely to figure out what he actually was?”

  “Or have someone else tell him,” she said. “Which is where we are now.”

  “Sort of. It’s not as if any of us have come up with a concrete plan as to how we’re supposed to let him know that he might not be your ordinary government agent next door.”

  Not that the guy was even close to your run-of-the-mill agent. Jake actually knew a real-life FBI agent, because the father of a friend from college had worked for the agency for more than twenty years. David Whitaker seemed like a normal guy — maybe a little strict, but not too bad — while Jake really couldn’t imagine Randall Lenz relaxing at a backyard barbecue or showing up in the middle of the night to drive his drunk son home from a frat party. The guy seemed like the type who didn’t have any kind of a personal life at all.

  Addie let out a breath, her expression somber. Fingers still playing with the base of her wine glass, she said, “I know. I mean, I understand that Connor and Angela probably have the powers necessary to zap themselves right into Lenz’s house or something — ”

  “They do,” Jake broke in, grinning a little despite the seriousness of the topic. “I mean, they need to have a visual of where they’re going, but since Jeremy dug up photos of Lenz’s house online from when it was listed for sale, that would be easy enoug
h.”

  Her mouth pursed in amusement. “Why does that not surprise me? Anyway,” she went on without waiting for a response, “even though we have the means to get right to him if we want to, I kind of doubt he’d respond very well to that sort of an intrusion. But I know we’ll figure something out.”

  Jake watched her for a moment, marveling at how composed she seemed. After all, they were talking about the man who’d killed her mother, even if it might have been by accident. “I’m still kind of surprised that you’d want to do anything to help the guy.”

  “I suppose I realized I had a choice,” she said, her tone musing. Her gaze wasn’t directed toward him, but apparently fixed on something beyond the windows in the dining room, now not much more than dark rectangles looking out into the night. “I try not to be a bitter person — that’s something I learned from my mom. She always tried to see the best in people.”

  “I’m not sure Randall Lenz has a ‘best,’” Jake remarked as he reached for his glass of wine.

  “Everyone does. He just hasn’t found his yet.” A pause, and then she said, “He lost his father on 9/11. I think that really did a number on him. Ever since then, he’s been doing his best to feel as if he’s working to make the country safer.”

  “Up to and including kidnapping people with special abilities?”

  Jake had been half joking when he asked the question, but Addie appeared to take him seriously. “Yes. Because he thinks that people who have our kinds of powers can be recruited to be another line of defense against terrorists. I’m not saying what he’s doing is right or that I agree with him at all, but it’s also not as if he woke up one day and decided to be evil just because.”

  It took a few seconds for Jake to absorb all this. Honestly, he didn’t like hearing those details about Lenz’s father because it forced him to acknowledge that Randall Lenz was a person with a family and a past, and apparently his own share of tragedy. Much better to look at him as the embodiment of evil and go from there.