Finally he nodded, because in one thing Sylvia was right: he did have a talent for finding things. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
***
Las Vegas at dusk lay like a pile of children’s gaudy toys, the fake Eiffel tower, the pyramids, Venetian canals; the flotsam and jetsam of the world’s rich cultures washed up here or were thrown down like the spoils of a thief’s rampage across the world.
Somehow that was fitting given the thieves who ran the city and the fact Landon was trying to find something stolen. He glanced at Sylvia next to him in the passenger seat of his rental Mazda. She looked pensive and withdrawn; her pale skin stained by the neon lights of the strip and stretched too taut on her skull. She looked out the window as if she couldn’t stand to look at him.
But that was probably just his old insecurities rising, because she had come to him with her problem. That spoke volumes about the men in her life. In fact it suggested she hadn’t anyone in her life right now.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked as he checked his GPS again and turned towards Sunset Park Lake. It probably wouldn’t be good to be in any park after dark, but he wanted to be away from the seething mass of people on the strip when he tried to locate Chloe.
“Too long.” Sylvia sighed and tried on a smile. It was sad. “You never realize how a place gets to you while it’s happening. It’s like a long slow slide down into oblivion and when you realize you’re in hell, it’s too late.” She shook her head. “I’m just realizing I hate the desert. I used to tell myself that I could appreciate the stark beauty, like the way the mountains turn lavender at sunset and the way they seem to glow in the moonlight. I even told myself that the neon was like a painting with light. Now it just seems tawdry and the mountains are barren and inhospitable—just like this whole city. There might be water for life, but nothing real lives here. What I thought was a dream, is really a nightmare.”
“We’ll get Chloe back,” he said as he turned into the parking lot. The lake sat south of the strip and was barely a pond by Seattle standards, but the park looked well used with paths through lawns leading down to the pond and park buildings crowded into the public space.
They climbed out and the heat off the pavement hit him through his moccasin soles, but so did a cooler breeze off the mountains. He walked over to the lawn and looked back at Sylvia. The breeze had loosened her hair and wrapped her light dress around her body.
“We can do it here, but I suggest we walk into the park a little farther. Maybe find a bench to sit on, so we look more natural.”
With her nod, they walked together into the park, finally stopping in a sheltered spot near a large, faux Easter Island head that doubled as garden art. They found a place to sit with their feet in the grass and Landon took off his shoes, placed his feet on the ground.
They sat that way a moment and then Sylvia broke the silence. “Do you remember how when we were in college we used to make a game of ‘reading’ people? We’d lie on the grass under the trees outside the library and watch people go by and you’d say: ‘He’s got it. He tastes of lemon meringue pie.’ And then I’d point to a girl and say: ‘She’s got it a little and smells of mint in a mud bog.’ Do you remember?” She shook her head as if she wouldn’t believe it if he could.
He nodded. The memory was so vivid it was like he was there. Green grass and the scent of Sylvia’s hair and sun-warmed shoulder as he dipped into the Gift before he even knew what it was. Sylvia had it, too, and was the one person he hadn’t reported to the AGS when the agency formed ten years ago and drew in every person with the Gift that they knew. Now the AGS was charged with protecting the American landscape from foreign terrorists and inadvertent changes caused by American Gifted or partially Gifted. When Gifted were identified, they were given a choice—join the AGS… or something far less pleasant.
But not Sylvia. Sylvia he’d saved from that because—well maybe because she was his and because he wanted to know she was free.
“I remember,” he said.
“You know, I always thought that you’d find a way to make use of that talent.” She looked at him enquiringly. “Have you, Landon?”
What could he say? That his entire life was taken up with things even stranger than the talent they shared together? Instead he shook his head. “I think I’d need someone like you to help me find a way. Now give me a moment and let me look for Chloe.”
He dug his toes into the grass and -reached-.
Cool green grass, the blades of which covered the park in the smallest carpet of sparks. The trees were candles and the shifting sparks were the park’s white bevy of ducks, currently looking for shoots along the grassy shore. He turned toward Sylvia and she was a glowing column of golden light compared to the smaller white auras that surrounded the unGifted people walking the park. Sylvia’s scent of apricot and sunshine filled his awareness.
“I need you to tell me about her scent, her feel,” he said.
“Like I said, she reminds me a little of you with a quiet reserve. She reminds me of walking in a California vineyard on a hot day when the grapes are ready for picking. It’s like walking through a wine vat, or swimming through grape juice, but heated with sunshine and flooded with flowers.”
He tried to imagine the scent, but before he had a chance to, she grabbed his arm. “Like this,” she whispered and a scent flooded into him so heady he could almost get drunk on its presence.
Her hand sent heat running up his arm and filled him with a need so sweet he almost turned and took her in his arms. Instead he gently picked her hand off his wrist and looked at her. Her need wasn’t for him; it was for her daughter.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve got it now.”
He shifted away from her on the bench and -reached- out with his mind.
With ten years of practice in the AGS, even without any agent prowess, he had become very proficient at seeking Gifted in the population. He could identify Gifted by their scent and tell their location by direction and distance, though an agent would be able to tell what street and house the person lived on. Still, he seemed to be able to read farther away than most agents.
He sifted through the seething masses of the Las Vegas strip and beyond to the acres of ticky-tacky houses where the locals lived. A few partially Gifted were scattered like gold nuggets in gravel, but there was no Chloe.
He shook his head and came back to himself. “She’s not in the City.”
Sylvia’s lips trembled, but she only nodded and dug her fingers into the tops of her thighs. “Then we have to look further.”
She fished in her purse and pulled out a folded map. Opened it and spread it on the bench between them. “This is Nevada.”
The map showed the city at the bottom of the map, with the extended blue finger of Lake Mead and the Colorado River along the border with Arizona and northward not much beyond open desert, ancient dried lakes and mountains until Highway 95, and far to the northwest, Reno.
Threads of Sylvia’s hair caught the wind and the last light of day like silver threads that tied his heart to her always. She glanced from the map up at him out of the tops of her eyes and almost caught his infatuation. “So?”
“Let me look.” He looked down at the map and -reached- again, this time letting his study of the map take him farther afield. The ley lines simmered deep underground, their faint scent of roses not enough to disturb his search. The silver flame of a coyote, the roving spark of a night owl, a sensation of ruffled black feathers, the small crawling things that came out in the desert cool, and here and there the small military bases and the small towns with their cluster of a few hundred souls, like pale Chinese lanterns on the landscape. He sped north and southward in a grid search, but nothing. No Chloe.
He was tempted to pull back and tell Sylvia there was no sign, but he didn’t want to accept failure. He started a second pass through the state. Chloe could be elsewhere—Arizona, Utah, California or even beyond—given the length of time she’
d been gone. But something—something told him she wasn’t. It was as if a flavor of her was here and yet wasn’t, and when he reached for her all he got was the musty sense of feathers, like the edge of a great black wing. He ran his finger over the map and opened himself to the sensations.
There. Northwestward from Las Vegas between Area 51 and the California border. The feather edge again. He pulled back and sat there thinking because the presence of Area 51 changed things. He looked up at Sylvia, half lost in the darkness of the evening. The park had emptied out and they were almost alone with the western sky streaked with the last shades of amber over the mountains.
“Is this a joke? Who put you up to this?” He felt sick to his stomach at the thought that she could do this.
“Do what? Put up what?” Her fine features were so serious he could almost believe her.
Instead he looked back at the map. Better to keep himself distant and safe than suffer what he had before.
“It’s like she’s there and yet she is not—near Area 51.” He cocked his head. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
There was no real surprise on Sylvia’s face. “Oh god.” She covered her eyes. “It is them. I knew it. I just knew it.”
Landon caught her hands and brought them down to her lap. “Perhaps you could tell me what you mean by that.”
A little nod and a swallow, but her voice was still choked. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t think you’d take it serious. Chloe had these friends. They were a little older. A couple of them had a feel like you did in university, like how you used to find people—so I thought they were okay—people who were safe for her like you were for me. They seemed really interested in Chloe and they were all about Area 51 and government secrets and UFOs and weird stuff. I thought it was just one of those things kids go through when they’re young. You and I used to talk about government plots against the people. Chloe went camping with them a couple of times and everything was okay, but then they started getting weirder, talking about secret installations and bunkers and weapons where they could wait out the end of the world and start their own society.”
Sylvia seemed to diminish into herself, her face lost in the darkness. “I told Chloe she wasn’t to see them again. That it wasn’t safe. That they could get her involved with stuff that might get her a record that could ruin her life. She could have gone off with them!”
Her stricken voice had the ring of truth and seemed to stab right into his heart. He squeezed her hands where he had forgotten to release them. “So we get her back.”
“B-b-but what if she doesn’t want to come back? What if she’s decided she never wants to see me again? She’s never been gone so long before, ever!”
Sylvia’s sobbing was pitiful after she had always been so strong. He pulled her into him and inhaled her apricot and sunshine like it was sustenance. Her fine bones seemed to shudder with her grief and he stroked her back, her hair until finally she sighed and relaxed into him.
“I’m sorry.” Her small hands clasped his shoulders. She pushed back slightly. “I shouldn’t have cried.”
He shrugged as if it was nothing.
“What would I do without you?” she said softly and leaned in to place the tenderest of kisses on his lips.
Instead of folding her into his arms and kissing her with everything he felt, he smiled. “You’re a strong woman. You would find her.”
And then the moment was gone into memory as she resettled herself beside him, and he wasn’t sure if he could ever get it back. “We need detailed maps of that area. We’ll have to wait for the land management office to open. We’ll leave right after.”
***
The heat lived like a thief in the desert. It stole sweat off the skin, sipped the moisture from eyes and nose. The sun’s glare from the cruel bowl of the sky left Landon cowering back into the shadows of the driver’s seat of his rental Jeep, his own car left behind in Las Vegas. The barren desert mountains slumped in the heat, the scrub brush and brown rocks stumbling out of the arroyos and down the mountainsides like so much sloughed skin.
Like his skin would do if he stepped out in the sun. After it burned painfully and blistered and peeled.
It could do all that in a matter of minutes and that was why he wore regrettably long heavy sleeves and trousers in the heat. A broad fedora and extra dark sunglasses completed his attire. Albino skin was not made for Nevada and he’d never have come here except for Sylvia.
She sat beside him in the front, dressed in Laura-Dern-in-Jurassic Park hiking boots, canvas shorts and a camp shirt over a sleeveless t-shirt that showed her small high breasts in a way Landon was far too conscious of. Spread on her lap was a map. The back seat was filled with bottled water, food and camping equipment in case they got stranded.
They’d left the main highway about thirty minutes ago and the narrow paved road had quickly diminished until it was a potholed route of jaw-grinding torture through a landscape of low brush and sand and rock.
“I guess it’s true what they say about the Nevada desert being the perfect place to lose somebody,” he said. Actually the saying was more about how many bodies were buried in the Nevada desert around Las Vegas, but he wouldn’t go there out of deference to Sylvia.
Sylvia nodded but was hunched over the two maps she had spread out. “I’m just not sure where this road leads. On this map it goes right off the map, but on the other it picks up on the other side of that ridge.” She lifted her chin at the distant ridge top that showed above the wavering streaks of a heat mirage.
“And where’s Area 51 from here?”
Her papers rustled in the wind through the passenger side window and he caught a whiff of her apricot overlaid with sweet female sweat. “Straight north, as far as I can tell, but we’re mighty close to the Nellis Nuclear Test Range. Are you sure this is where we should be going?”
Landon -reached- and the brilliant daylight disappeared into an odd streaked fog that was shone through by the candlelight of the desert brush. The road was a dark line traversing it, but the odd sense of feathers flicking his skin was almost overpowering. This time it came with an aftertaste of wine.
Chloe. Far across the desert was a rapidly moving vehicle filled with the flares of two people. They were headed toward the Jeep. He switched back to ordinary sight and found himself scratching at the tickle of feathers on his arms.
“We’re definitely going in the right direction. You want your daughter back, we go here.” He squinted across the stark landscape and through the brilliant heat haze could just make out the rising dust ducktail of the other vehicle. He stepped on the gas and the shake-rattle-roll of their passage made talking almost impossible.
“We’ve got company, it seems.” He nodded to the northeast where the dust rose and could only imagine them being military. It would fit with a young Gifted disappearing.
“Hang on.” Suddenly feeling like a hero in a fedora escaping German forces, he tromped on the gas pedal and the Jeep skittered and leapt from pothole to pothole. All he needed was a bullwhip.
Dust rose in clouds behind them as he drove using the Gifted sight. The road was a straight dark path through the glitter of the sage brush. But the sense of feathers grew until he felt like he was face forward into a murder of crow wings.
“What’s ahead? What do the maps say?” He kept his focus on the road, struggling to keep control of the bucking vehicle.
Sylvia fought to hold on to the maps, smoothed them on her knees, but then shook her head.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. It’s like the maps don’t quite match up. There’s a piece of the landscape missing.”
He frowned and barely managed to steer around a large rock in the road. The vehicle shook so badly it was hard to hold onto the steering wheel. “That doesn’t make sense. Those are USGS maps—the most up to date going. I made sure when I went to the land office.”
“Well, they don’t meet. That ridge over there is right at the edge of this map,
but this map doesn’t show it. It shows this huge open area, but I don’t think it’s all of it.”
“Let me see.” He grabbed the maps from her and drove one-handed as he considered the features she pointed out.
She was wrong—sort of. The one map of western Nevada showed the ridge she’d mentioned and then a small bit of the flats they were on. The second map showed the flat pan they crossed but the dimensions were all wrong. Yes, the surrounding ridges all were in the correct places. The road—if you could call it that—was even marked, but the map showed a narrow flat pan of desert between the two ridges and that just didn’t fit with his sense of distance, nor with his Gifted sense that something was out there.
The other Jeep came closer, its ducktail now more of a shark fin over the brush and heat haze. Let them come. He’d beat them to wherever it was they were going and if Chloe was there, he’d confront them. He was, after all, a government agent in an ultra-secret government agency.
His moccasined foot plunged the gas pedal a little farther and the Jeep leapt under them.
Ahead the sun glare and heat haze made it impossible to see, but his Gifted sight still showed the darkened road. His skin crawled with the sense of feathers—
Not feathers. More like the edge of something torn. Something fluttered like the edge of torn cloth in the wind and he was driving right into it. Then his ordinary vision went black and Sylvia screamed.
Landon slammed on the brake and the Jeep skidded to a stop and stalled. He blinked. Blinked again as the pursuing Jeep ran right past their fender, but the damned Jeep and its driver were as translucent as ghosts and then were gone. Blue sky overhead, moist air up his nose when heat and dust should have been pouring in through the windows from the ducktail they’d thrown up.
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