Her legs seemed reluctant to move, but she forced herself to take a few steps toward him, to stop and sit down on the creek’s bank next to him. At least it was dry enough. The air smelled of damp leaves and warm stone.
“Where’s Michael?” she asked. That seemed safe enough.
“Said he had to run over to Prescott for something.”
That was news. She wondered what could be in Prescott that would make Michael leave Grayson here all alone. No point in asking, though. They all kept their own secrets, apparently.
“Oh.”
At last Grayson did shift his position enough so he was looking more or less at her. Nothing about him seemed materially different, and yet there was a shadow to his eyes that hadn’t been there a few days ago. God knows what he’d been brooding over, sitting here alone.
“I don’t blame you,” he said.
She said nothing, but only waited. Maybe she’d come here for some sort of absolution, but now she wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear it.
“But I also don’t want you to talk me out of…whatever they end up planning.” His face tilted upward, and the fresh green of the cottonwood leaves reflected in his eyes.
“Grayson, I — ”
“Don’t.” To her surprise, he reached out and laid a hand on hers where it rested on the sandy shore. “This couldn’t have worked for us. I know that now. At least I know you won’t be alone when I’m gone.”
Her throat tightened. Had he already consigned himself to oblivion when he didn’t even know what the plan was, whether he would even be required to put himself in harm’s way? “Grayson, you don’t know it’s going to shake out like that.”
“Maybe not, but I can guess.” He let go of her hand and stood, fine chin lifted into the breeze.
Kara got to her feet as well. This conversation was difficult enough without him looming over her like that. In a small voice she said, “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know.” He turned toward her. To her surprise, he smiled. “Actually, you’ve made it easier for me.”
“I — what?”
“You have.” With one hand he made a sweeping gesture that seemed to take in the lacy, ruffling foliage of the cottonwoods, the solemn stillness of the pines, the bright sun-laced chatter of the creek. “I know now what I’m fighting for. The aliens made me, put some of themselves in me, but I know I’m human, too. You showed me how beautiful this world can be. Maybe I can’t have a place in it, but at least I can make damn sure it’s safe for the rest of you.”
The tears came then, and she knew she couldn’t stop them. It was too much. She knew there was nothing she could say to stop him, nothing to change the quiet determination in his voice. Head bowed, she felt him move closer and take her in his arms. There was nothing sexual in his embrace, and she felt no answering heat at his touch. But something seemed to pass between them then, some understanding. She would not try to argue with him anymore. If he wanted to do this thing, that was his decision. All she could do was let him know that someone in this world cared very much what happened to him.
Time passed. From somewhere far off she heard the crunch of car tires on gravel, and realized Michael must have come home. Grayson released her, but gently, as if trying to show that he was only doing so because he’d sensed in her the need to move away.
She reached up to wipe her cheeks and realized they were already dry. “It’s going to be a few days at least,” she told him. “Lance is having someone duplicate your jumpsuit, but that isn’t something that can happen overnight.”
He nodded, accepting the information without comment.
Slow, quiet footsteps came from the direction of the house. Michael Lightfoot stopped a few yards away and regarded them with no surprise. Then again, he would have seen her Prius parked in front of the house. It wasn’t as if she’d tried to hide it.
His dark features showed no anger, no irritation that she’d intruded on Grayson’s solitude. Maybe he understood better than she did her reasons for coming here.
“Kara,” Michael said.
“Hi, Michael.” So banal, but it was about all she could manage right now. “I was just filling Grayson in on some of our progress.”
“Ah,” was all he said, although she guessed he knew her conversation with Grayson had involved much more than that.
“Anyway,” she continued, a false brightness in her voice that she was sure fooled no one, “we’ll keep in touch. Lance said something about all of us getting together again tomorrow night.”
“Yes.”
There seemed to be nothing else to say, so she summoned a brittle smile, said her goodbyes to both men, and followed the path back up into Michael’s backyard and then on into the street. As she got into the car and leaned over to fasten her seatbelt, a sudden wave of nausea assailed her, and she had to shut her eyes and gulp down a few deep breaths before it passed.
What the hell?
But then it was gone as suddenly as it had come. She shook her head. That must have gotten to you more than you thought. She couldn’t seem to erase the image of Grayson’s sad eyes from her mind, the quiet resignation in his voice. It seemed he was already making his goodbyes.
Not if I have anything to say about it, she thought grimly, and pointed her car toward home.
* * *
As with all the other helicopter tour outfits in Sedona, Arizona Helicopter Adventures had its home base at the Sedona airport, high atop a mesa. Conveniently, there was a pretty decent restaurant with an even more decent bar located a stone’s throw from the tour company’s office.
Lance waited there, nursing an extremely dry martini and trying to think of the best way to explain to Brian Henderson that he needed him to steer his helicopter closer to Secret Canyon than most pilots dared. It wasn’t that they were scared of aliens…at least that they’d admit openly. No, most of them only said the air currents in that area were tricky, and besides, boxing yourself in a canyon wasn’t the best way to show off panoramic vistas of Sedona to tourists who were paying two hundred bucks an hour for the privilege. Henderson knew better, though. He wasn’t exactly active in the UFO group, but he also didn’t try to deny that there was a lot more going on in Sedona’s airspace than a bunch of general aviation flights and air tours.
About twenty minutes after he said he’d be there, Henderson sauntered into the restaurant. He exchanged a few words of greeting with the hostess — he was well-known in the place, after all — before walking up to the bar and taking a seat next to Lance.
“Hey, Lance.”
“Brian.”
Henderson waved the bartender over. “Luis. Soda water and some lime, okay?”
The bartender nodded and went off to fill the order.
“Got another flight?” Lance inquired. Henderson never met a martini he didn’t like, but he also never drank on the job.
“Yep,” the pilot replied, taking the glass of soda water from Luis. “Sunset flight. So I’ve got to cool my heels for a while.”
Well, that explained why Henderson had been willing to meet him at four-thirty in the afternoon. Most people would be almost done with their day by then, but he had to go out when the tour company told him to.
“So are you going to tell me something that’s going to make me wish this was a little stronger?”
“Maybe,” Lance said. “You seen much out around Secret Canyon lately?”
“Define ‘much.’”
Lance didn’t bother to say anything, but just lifted his shoulders.
Henderson let out what might have been a sigh and swigged at his soda water. “You know I stick around Boynton mainly.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Up until about five months ago there were black helicopters out that way. And they weren’t ours or from any of the other tours, if you know what I mean.”
The timing matched. It was in late March when Persephone blew out the base. Lance supposed the airspace around Secret Canyon had been pretty quiet since
then. He nodded.
“The past few weeks, though…” Henderson trailed off and looked regretfully into his half-empty glass of soda water as if he really wished it were a martini or possibly a gin and tonic. “Not that I’ve really seen anything, but…”
“But what?”
“It’s probably my eyes playing tricks on me. Just don’t tell anyone else I said that. I need this gig. But I’ve seen…something…like heat shimmers out of the corner of my eye. When I turn to really look, though, nothing’s there.”
Some kind of cloaking technology, Lance guessed, although he didn’t bother to voice his speculations aloud. Henderson was willing to go along with the whole UFO thing up to a point, but the minute Lance mentioned a cloaking device, he knew the other man would start making Star Trek cracks, and the whole conversation would only go downhill from there.
For a minute Lance didn’t say anything, but only drank his own martini, devoutly glad that Luis didn’t mix them weak. The past few weeks. So whatever the aliens were up to out in Secret Canyon, it hadn’t been going on for very long. That might be a bit of good news. Maybe the UFO hunters’ own particular monkey wrench — in the shape of Grayson, the perfect infiltration agent — could actually do some good. Still, shimmers where alien craft might or might not be didn’t help all that much. He needed to know if they were still using the old entrances to the base, or whether they’d done a bit of remodeling when they came back to take up residence.
“So if there really isn’t anything there, then it couldn’t hurt for you to get in a little closer.”
Henderson’s eyes narrowed. The guy was no fool. Unlike some of the kids they had piloting those aerial tourist traps, he knew what he was doing. He’d flown medevac in the first Gulf War, wasn’t someone to get easily rattled. “And how am I supposed to explain that to the tourists? From the air, Secret isn’t nearly as interesting as Boynton.”
“I’m pretty sure most of them won’t even notice the difference.”
“You’re probably right. Okay, I’ll do a short buzz-by and see if I can scope out anything. But I’m guessing it’s going to be a big fat zero.”
“Probably…but you never know.”
“You never do.”
And Lance slapped a twenty down on the bar for Luis to cover both his and Henderson’s drinks, then got up and left. He knew he didn’t have to extract any more promises from Henderson. The man would do as he’d offered. And then?
Well, Lance could only hope he’d actually get something out of it besides some wasted fuel and a couple of disgruntled tourists.
* * *
Kara hadn’t gone straight home, but spent an hour or so at Persephone’s house before finally pointing the Prius homeward. It had been good to sit down and talk — not about anything important, but about Ginger’s wedding and how L.A. already seemed so ungodly crowded, even though Persephone had moved away a scant four months ago. Just the sort of cheerful, inconsequential chatter any two friends would have, with nary an alien nor a government conspiracy in sight. When she left, Kara’s spirits felt considerably improved.
As she drove home, a series of emergency vehicles passed her on 89A, sirens blaring, lights flashing against the sunset sky. More than once she had to pull over, letting first an ambulance, then a pair of fire trucks, and finally a couple of police cars go screaming by. Pile-up out on the western edge of town? House fire? It had to be something major to get that sort of response.
Still, it wasn’t something she needed to be worried about. She pulled into the garage and got out of the car, patted Gort as he came bounding up to her the second she walked into the kitchen, and turned off the alarm. “Soon, Gort,” she promised.
No messages on the answering machine, which was a relief after everything that had been going on. But she hadn’t been in the house for more than five minutes when she heard the doorbell ring.
“What now?” she muttered to Gort, who cocked his head and wagged his tail doubtfully. “You think it’s Martin Jones, the semi-hot man in black?”
The dog whined, and she couldn’t help smiling slightly.
But it was not Martin Jones who waited outside, but Lance, looking positively grim.
“You hear the sirens?” he asked, moving past her into the entryway.
“Um, yes. Saw them, actually, as I was coming home from Persephone’s.”
He stopped in the middle of the living room and ran a distracted hand through his short-cropped hair. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him this agitated. “My fault,” he said.
She blinked at him. “Your fault? Was there a car accident or something? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I can’t say the same for Brian Henderson or the three tourists he had on board his helicopter when it went down.”
The words didn’t seem to make sense at first. She stared at him, at the obvious consternation on his features, and a second or two later it clicked into place. “He — he crashed? Oh, my God, Lance…”
“I’m sure that’s what they’ll call it. Mechanical failure or something plausible. Only I know that wasn’t it at all. He got too close.”
“Too close?”
“To Secret Canyon. To whatever it is that they’re doing out there. They wanted to make sure we got the message — and they didn’t care if it cost four innocent lives.”
Her heart began to pound at the thought of Brian Henderson’s helicopter dropping from the sky, only to smash on the red rocks below. There was no way he could have possibly defended himself. She swallowed, then asked, “A warning?”
“More like a ‘fuck you.’”
His eyes were narrowed, his jaw clenched. If any of the aliens had been around, he looked as if he could have reached out and wrung what passed for their necks. But of course they were all safely miles away, and she guessed they would have done something similarly lethal to Lance if he’d tried anything.
Kara wished she could have thought of something simultaneously bracing and soothing to tell him, but words seemed to have failed her. Somehow, though, she made herself say, “It’s not your fault, Lance.”
“It isn’t? I’m the one who sent him out there.”
“You couldn’t have possibly known — ”
“That’s not the point. I sent him into harm’s way, and now four people are dead because of me.”
Without replying, she went to him, put her arms around him, and pulled him close. At first he seemed to resist, but then she felt him tighten the embrace, crush her to him, as if he needed to feel her warmth, the life in her body, to know that she was here with him, was safe. They stood that way for several minutes, until she murmured,
“Those people aren’t dead because of you. They’re dead because of the aliens. It’s horrible. It’s a tragedy. But you can’t blame yourself. If the aliens are on hyper-alert for some reason, they would have gone after anybody. It could have been someone else flying too close to Secret Canyon.”
“But it wasn’t.”
She knew he’d never allow himself to cry, was channeling his hurt and sorrow into anger, into blame. That was all right; she could understand that.
“It’s horrible,” she said. “But this just means they’re up to something, something big. We’ve got to stop them.”
Lance grasped her by the upper arms and held her away from him, just far enough so he could study her face. Whatever he saw there seemed to steady him, because he nodded.
“I know.” His voice was hard now, hard and edged with steel. “I’m going to make sure Brian’s death means something.” He shifted, those hard gray eyes fixed on a point beyond her, gazing westward, toward the aliens’ base. “They’re going to be very sorry they ever tangled with us.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’m so sorry, Lance, but it’s going to be at least another three days,” Lucinda Torres said, and she did sound truly apologetic. “But my supplier is out of that cotton canvas I needed, and he’s waiting for his supplier to restock. From what he told
me, it sounds as if it’s sitting in a container at the Port of Los Angeles. Something about a dockworkers’ strike, I hear.”
He managed to refrain from swearing and even muttered something along the lines of, “I know it’s not your fault,” before he pushed the button to end the call and tossed the phone on the passenger seat of his Jeep.
A delay was the last thing he needed. What he really wanted to do was load up the 4x4 with every gun and incendiary device he owned, drive out to Secret Canyon, and stage a commando raid worthy of a 1980s Schwarzenegger film. However, all that would accomplish would be to kill him off in some kind of spectacular fashion, and, angry as he was, he sort of wanted to stick around for a while.
He finally had a reason to care about his existence. If he bought it now, the timing would not just be ironic; it would be cruel.
Kara had gotten him more or less calmed down, partly because he realized there wasn’t anything he could do at the moment, not until they were able to infiltrate the base and find out what was really going on. He’d attempted another remote viewing, but he was so agitated that nothing scanned. No images, just the darkness inside his skull.
And now any attempt at getting inside Secret Canyon was going to be put off for nearly a week, just because some dockworkers in L.A. didn’t think their pension was big enough or something. And what was with everything having to come from China, anyway? Did no one grow or make anything in the United States anymore?
Still fuming, he pulled up into the driveway of the Olivers’ house. Persephone had suggested a session with Grayson to see if she could extract any information.
“I had some hypnotherapy training when I was getting my master’s,” she’d explained. “It’s worth a try, since we obviously can’t run the risk of an outside therapist having access to this information. And maybe if I’m really lucky Otto will show up and give me some advice.”
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