Well, better that than confessing I really just wanted another peek at those baby blues of his.
Oy.
As I was giving myself a mental kick for being a complete dork, my cell phone rang. I picked it up and looked at the screen.
Jeff.
Okay, so maybe I’d have to settle for muddy hazel rather than baby blue.
“Hey, Jeff.”
“Can you meet me at the condo in fifteen?”
“Morning to you, too.”
He made a sound of disgust. “No time to bother with that. Can you be here in fifteen?”
Actually, I could, since I’d already showered and dressed and put on some makeup, just in case I decided to say “what the hell” and go shopping with Lindsay after all. “Can I ask why?”
“Don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Just come over.”
“Okay,” I said, figuring that I didn’t have anything better to do. Besides, hanging out with Jeff — whatever he had planned — would keep me from obsessing over whether or not to call Martin Jones.
“Fifteen,” Jeff warned, and hung up.
“Aspergers,” I muttered, as I got up to retrieve my backpack. “That’s got to be it.”
But I could reflect on Jeff’s foibles as I was driving. If he said fifteen minutes, he meant fifteen minutes. I ran the risk of him not being there at all if I shilly-shallied and got there later than I said I would.
It was a beautiful day, clear and cold and bright. I shoved my sunglasses on my nose as I hurried down the steps to the UFO Night Tours van, which looked particularly shabby in the white morning light. Maybe it was time for a new paint job.
Or maybe it’s time to buy yourself a real car, I thought, as I climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. The engine turned over, but grudgingly, and I wondered if I needed to add a new battery or alternator to that new coat of paint I was contemplating.
To be honest, it wasn’t that I couldn’t afford a new car. Grandpa had left me a chunk of change, since Kara had gotten the store and the house, and I really hadn’t touched that much of it. No, I guessed I could chalk up the whole not buying a car thing to yet another byproduct of my massive commitment issues.
Scowling, I pointed the van up Highway 179 and then swung through the roundabouts so I was heading west, toward Lance’s condo. Traffic could get pretty thick around here on a Friday, but it was still early enough that I knew I could make it out to West Sedona well within Jeff’s fifteen-minute deadline.
Sure enough, I pulled into the visitor parking lot of the condo complex with almost five minutes to spare. The van was the only vehicle in the parking area; a lot of the condos were owned by people who used them as vacation homes, and most of them wouldn’t be arriving until after Christmas.
If there was a Christmas this year, of course.
Okay, that was a little melodramatic, even for me. None of us really knew what the aliens were planning. However, I kind of got the feeling that they’d be much more likely to give the human race a big ol’ lump of coal than candy or toys.
I followed the path back to Lance’s condo — it was in the rear of the complex, naturally — and knocked on the door. Jeff opened it at once. He looked annoyed, almost as if he wished I had been a little late so he could give me some crap about it.
But he didn’t say anything, just stood aside slightly so I could push past him and go on into the living room. I’d been here once or twice before, which was why I didn’t need directions, but I’d forgotten how sparse Lance’s condo really was. No wonder he’d moved in with Kara so quickly once they’d stopped pussyfooting around their feelings for each other.
The carpet was beige, the walls your typical Navajo white. A black leather couch sat behind a glass and metal coffee table, and a matching entertainment center on the opposite wall held a flat-screen TV. The dinette set was pushed up against one wall and had two very uncomfortable-looking straight-backed chairs flanking it. Nowhere was there a single photograph, or piece of art, or even a book. The whole place was even more soulless than a hotel room.
Since Jeff’s house back in L.A. was almost equally sterile, I figured he probably felt pretty much at home here. The only evidence that he was even occupying the place was the laptop sitting on the dinette table and a black ceramic mug carefully placed a perfect six inches away.
“Okay, I’m here,” I said. “So what was so important that you couldn’t talk on the phone about it?”
“I thought it would be a good idea if we did a little recon.”
“Recon? If you think I’m driving back out to Boynton in a van — ”
“We’re not going to Boynton in the van.” He pulled out his phone and glanced at the time. “Come on, we need to get going.”
Mystified, but knowing I wasn’t going to get any more answers out of him, I followed him through a door off the condo’s one short hallway. This led into a cramped single-car garage, currently occupied by Jeff’s Astro van.
I squeezed past the rearview mirror and gingerly opened the door, then got in the passenger seat. Jeff backed the van out of the tiny garage with more skill than I had expected, although I winced a little when the mirror looked as if it was going to scrape on the garage door’s frame. But then we were out in the alley that ran between two of the condo buildings, and I couldn’t help letting out a little sigh of relief. Stupid, I know. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have much bigger things to worry about than a little scraped paint.
We headed east, then turned down Airport Road, taking the winding route up toward the mesa. Jeff’s comment about doing some “recon” bubbled up ominously in my thoughts, but even so I kept hoping that he’d meant something else. Surely he couldn’t be that crazy, could he?
Apparently he could. We passed the overlook area, drove past the Sky Ranch Lodge, and pulled into the parking lot designated for the airport or people using the various aerial tourist services — biplane rides, regular plane rides, helicopter rides…
Jeff started to march toward the Sedona Helicopter Adventures building, and I came to an abrupt stop.
“Are you nuts?” I demanded.
He halted, barely looking at me over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“I find it hard to believe that your short-term memory is so impaired that you forgot about how Lance’s friend got himself killed by the aliens because he went snooping where he wasn’t supposed to!”
Not even a blink. “Actually, you’re referring to my long-term memory, since that happened more than four months ago. Short-term memory is — ”
“I don’t give a shit what it is! If you think I’m going up in a helicopter after what happened to Brian Henderson — ”
“People have been taking helicopter tours all during those four months, and nothing bad has happened to any of them,” Jeff broke in, somehow managing to sound irritated and imperturbable at the same time. “Now, come on. I don’t want to be late.”
Muttering several choice words not fit for polite company under my breath, I followed him into the office. It was a fairly small room with spectacular aerial shots of Sedona and its environs covering the walls. Behind the desk sat a woman around Kara’s age. She wore a pullover with the company logo embroidered on the right side of the chest.
“Makowski. Reservation for eleven,” Jeff said without preamble, and she looked a little startled, but then put on a good customer-service smile. I’d worn too many of them myself not to recognize it for what it was.
“Great,” she said. “If you and your girlfriend would just sign these forms — ” And she pushed a clipboard containing some paperwork toward us, probably stuff protecting the company in the event we did suffer some sort of a fiery crash.
I thought about protesting the “girlfriend” comment and then decided to let it go. Choose your battles and all that.
Surprisingly, Jeff didn’t say anything about having to sign the forms, but only added his signature quickly, barely looking at the paperwork. I ha
d a feeling he’d already investigated all that online before he ever came here.
So I went ahead and signed as well, and then the gal at the counter asked us to take a seat while she let the pilot know we were here, and that it would just be a few minutes. She went out, and I turned a death stare on Jeff.
“I can’t believe you’re seriously considering — ”
“And I can’t believe how much you’re overreacting. I would have thought you’d jump at the chance to get some advance intel on these guys.”
“If we’re sticking to the tourist spots, I’m not sure how that’s going to help us,” I countered. “We all know it’s over in Secret Canyon where everything is happening, and we’re not going to get that close.”
“Relax,” Jeff said, looking bored.
There were few things I hated more than being told to relax, or to chill out. I crossed my arms and stared at an eye-popping shot of Cathedral Rock apparently taken while hovering about a hundred feet above the rock formation’s crown. For a second or two I contemplated just walking out and making my way down Airport Road to 89A. From there I could catch a bus back to Lance’s condo.
But I knew I’d be even more pissed off if Jeff actually picked up on something and I missed it, so I stayed where I was until a tall man in his forties wearing a leather flight jacket entered the office.
“Hi — I’m Darren Greene, your pilot today.”
Jeff and I both stood and mumbled a greeting.
Darren Greene didn’t seem too fazed by our lack of enthusiasm. “First time in a helicopter?” he asked.
I shook my head while Jeff nodded, then shot me a look of surprise. I didn’t know why that was such a revelation to him. After all, I’d spent almost my whole life in Sedona, and Grandpa had known all sorts of people who ran the local tourist businesses. I’d had my first helicopter ride when I was only ten years old.
“Okay, then some of this will be old news to you.” He went through a quick spiel about safety procedures, told us to make sure we kept our seatbelts and earphones on at all times, then led us to the helicopter.
Even though I’d been up in them three or four times, I didn’t know enough about the various types of flying machines to know which kind this one was, except that it had a lot of glass, probably to offer as much unimpeded viewing of the local sights as possible. Jeff and I both got in our seats and belted in, then settled the earphones on our heads.
The pilot got in his own seat and went through his preflight check with unhurried ease. The motors spun up, and even though I knew exactly what it would feel like, I still shivered a little as the vibrations made themselves felt in my bones.
What the hell am I doing? passed through my mind as we rose into the air and hovered above the mesa. I tried to tell myself it was no big deal, that we were just going to do the standard loop over Red Rock Crossing and then out to Boynton — but not close enough to Enchantment Resort to irritate the tourists paying $450 a night for some R&R, and not far enough off one of Boynton’s spurs that we’d be getting dangerously close to Secret Canyon. Probably thousands of people had made the same flight in the months since Brian Henderson’s death. We weren’t doing anything to attract attention, after all.
Right.
My fingers gripped the armrest as we flew west, following the path of Oak Creek. The cottonwoods and sycamores were bare, but the pines were still thick with needles, dark green against the red rock. Here and there patches of snow glinted in the sunlight. It really was a beautiful day, and I tried to force myself to relax a little.
Through the headphones I could hear Darren Greene giving a spiel that he’d probably repeated a thousand times by now. Since I already knew the landmarks, I only listened with half an ear, feeling myself tense again as we moved away from Oak Creek and to the north, crossing 89A, heading toward Boynton Canyon.
There was nothing here to worry about, of course. The ridge lines were thick with snow, and against the drifts bristled the dark spiky outlines of pine trees. Beneath us the red landscape flashed by, with Darren now launching into a short explanation of the area’s geology, how the forces of water had eroded the ground to expose the different strata, finally bringing to light the iron-rich earth that made Sedona’s landscape so distinctive.
Beside me Jeff was fiddling with some gadget he had attached to his iPhone. I had no idea what it was, and conversation was mostly impossible, since the only way to communicate was via the microphones attached to our headpieces, and anything we said would be heard by the pilot as well. I shot Jeff a quizzical look, and he shook his head. That could have meant anything from “there’s no point in explaining because you won’t understand” to “can’t talk now, dummy, the pilot will overhear,” so I just lifted my shoulders and turned to look back out the window.
That was when it hit me — a surge of malice so intense I doubled over in my seat, hands still clenched on the armrests. I let out a gasp, and Jeff glanced over at me, his expression of annoyance morphing quickly into something almost resembling worry.
“What is it?” he asked, apparently forgetting in his concern that anything he said the pilot would hear as well.
I only shook my head, speech deserting me for the moment. It was all I could do to hold onto my seat, to will myself not to pass out as wave after wave of cold hit me. I’d never been in the ocean, never come close to drowning, and yet that was all I could think of, that the evil emanating from Secret Canyon would fill my mouth and my lungs, drag me down into darkness, suffocate me.
Darren Greene’s voice crackled over the headphones. “She all right?”
“Motion sickness,” Jeff said hastily. “Maybe we’d better go back.”
Even in the depths of my misery, I mentally thanked him for his quick thinking. Because Darren turned the helicopter around almost at once, heading out and away from Boynton, back over West Sedona, back to the mesa where the heliport was located. And as we traveled I could feel that cold grip on my mind and heart slowly lessening, falling away until I could finally sit up and pull in a real breath, one that could go all the way to the bottom of my lungs and reassure me that I hadn’t actually drowned in the ocean of evil surrounding Secret Canyon.
Jeff’s eyes were filled with questions, but of course he kept his mouth shut as the helicopter approached the helipad and then landed so gently I could barely feel it. At once I pulled off my headphones and set them aside, although I waited until I felt the engines powering down before I undid the seatbelt.
Then Darren Greene leaned back and said, “All clear. You going to be okay, miss?”
I could only nod.
Next to me, Jeff unbuckled his own seatbelt. “She’ll live,” he said shortly.
I could tell he was more than a little pissed, but whether that was because we hadn’t been in the air long enough for him to get a reading on that gizmo he’d been fiddling with, or whether because I’d cut his $200-a-half-hour flight heinously short, I didn’t know. All that mattered to me then was getting out of the helicopter, being able to stand on firm ground again.
Maybe sensing my mood, Jeff climbed out and stood aside so I could move past him. Darren Greene got out as well and gave us a quizzical look. He was probably trying to figure out why someone who looked as sick as I did hadn’t just thrown up into one of the airsick bags they’d thoughtfully provided in the passenger section of the helicopter.
But now that I was back on terra firma, I was more or less okay. Well, okay as a person could be after feeling firsthand how much the aliens hated us, how much they wanted nothing more than our destruction. I gave the pilot a wan smile and headed back to the parking lot, Jeff a pace or two behind me. Even as he walked he was fiddling with his phone.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded at last, just as I stopped at the passenger door to his van.
“It was them,” I said, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jacket and wishing that I’d thrown some gloves in my backpack. Some clouds had begun to drift in, blurring the br
ight day, and the air on top of the mesa had a definite bite to it.
His scowl lessened a bit. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. Can we go? I’m cold.”
He shot me a look that seemed to indicate I was being a wimp for someone supposedly used to Sedona’s less than balmy winters, but he went ahead and unlocked the door. The interior of the van was blessedly warm from sitting in the sun, even though the temperature outside was probably in the low forties.
Once we were both inside and Jeff had the van moving back down the road to the main highway, he said, “So…what? Are you turning psychic all of a sudden or something?”
“No,” I said irritably. “I don’t know why it happened. Guess we were just getting too close.”
“I didn’t feel anything,” he pointed out.
“Maybe you were just too busy fiddling with that — what the hell is that thing on your phone, anyway?”
“Monitoring device. I thought if I got close enough I might be able to pick up some of their communications.”
“With an iPhone.”
“The iPhone is just an easy interface.”
“So did you?” I asked, glad to shift the focus of the conversation away from me.
“I got something. I don’t know if it’s a big enough sample to analyze or not. I’ll have to download the data I gathered to my laptop.”
My friend, the mad genius. Actually, I didn’t even know if Jeff was really what you could call a friend. He was…well, he was just Jeff.
“So I guess that’ll keep you pretty busy.”
“Yes,” he said shortly.
Good. Because after this latest encounter, I knew what I had to do. The hell with everyone’s concerns about dragging the government into all this. We couldn’t face an enemy like this alone. No way.
As soon as I got home, I was placing a call to Martin Jones.
CHAPTER FOUR
I asked Agent Jones to meet me in the bar at the Sedona Rouge hotel for two reasons — first off, it would have felt weird to have him come over to my apartment, and secondly, the Rouge was not the sort of place most people I knew would be hanging out. It’s very nice, but not really a locals kind of place. I figured there we could have some privacy.
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