Storm Born

by Christine Pope

  Which made all this feel like an exercise in futility.

  The only bright spot was the report Agent Dawson had sent over before going home for the evening. It was a list of all the Jeep Gladiators sold to men named Jake or Jacob in the United States since the beginning of the year. Since the vehicle was new and hadn’t yet begun to roll out in huge numbers, the list wasn’t very long, just forty-seven individuals in all.

  For the time being, Lenz figured it was safe to focus on those individuals in the western half of the United States. He supposed it was possible that Jake had traveled from the East Coast to “rescue” Adara Grant, but he thought it far more likely that he hadn’t driven nearly so far, had come from California or Arizona or possibly Utah itself. How he’d known to show up on her doorstep was an entirely different conundrum, but Lenz decided to leave that question aside for the moment. Where Jake had come from was far more important than why he’d done what he’d done.

  He picked up his club sandwich and took a bite as he perused the list. As he did so, he waited for the prickle of intuition that would tell him if any of these felt like a likely candidate.

  Jacob Andrews, Elko, Nevada.

  Jake Ortega, Mesa, Arizona.

  Jake Reynolds, Rancho Cucamonga, California.

  Jake Wilcox, Flagstaff, Arizona.

  Jacob Day, Fresno, California.

  Jake Giles, San Diego, California.

  Jacob Delray, Anaheim, California.

  The names started to glaze in front of his eyes, and Lenz set down the phone and rubbed his forehead for a moment. None of them seemed any likelier than the others, and he scowled. So much for his intuition.

  Well, the next thing to do would be to have Agent Dawson scour the records of the dealerships where the vehicles in question had been purchased and pull up the relevant paperwork. Those files would include scans of the driver’s licenses of the men who’d bought those Jeep Gladiators, and that way, he should be able to make a positive visual I.D. of the particular Jake he was looking for. He probably should have asked for that information from the outset, except he’d known it would be more time-consuming, and he’d hoped he’d be able to locate his quarry with some good old-fashioned legwork.

  That didn’t seem to be the case here, though. As he’d worried previously, there was always the chance that Adara and Jake hadn’t come through Las Vegas at all, or, if they had, only stopped there for food and gas before continuing to…wherever it was they were headed.

  He glanced at the time on his phone. Almost ten o’clock, meaning it was nearly 1 a.m. in D.C. Agent Dawson would be long gone. Of course, the agency had people working around the clock, but Agent LaRue, the man who worked as Dawson’s replacement during the overnight hours, was neither as meticulous nor as quick.

  Still, he could at least get started. With any luck, he would have the records in question collated and ready for perusal by the time Lenz was up and ready to go the next morning. Much as he hated to admit it, he knew the couple he sought were probably already long gone. Might as well keep working steadily in the hope that he’d catch up to them when the time was right.

  Because, as his father had often told him, slow and steady won the race.

  13

  Even a good three hours of shopping didn’t make a huge dent in the wad of cash the Wilcox clan had given me, mostly because I’d spent my whole life shopping the sale racks and didn’t see any need to change that behavior just because my fortunes had shifted. Still, after hitting the Dillard’s and the JC Penney at the mall, and the Kohl’s on the opposite side of town closer to the college, I had enough new clothes to see me through a week, along with shoes and sandals and a purse to store the wallet and iPhone Laurel had provided. By the time we were done, I was starving, and all too glad to stop at the Greek restaurant in Woodland Village by the Kohl’s and load up on Mediterranean takeout.

  Laurel drove me to a neighborhood about five minutes away from the restaurant, closer to Flagstaff’s downtown. There, she pulled up in front of a cute two-story clapboard house that fronted on a park. I spotted Jake’s big Jeep Gladiator in the driveway and said, “Trident Enterprises?”

  “You got it,” Laurel replied. “Let’s just leave your stuff in the trunk — you can transfer it to Jake’s truck whenever you guys are done here.”

  “Okay,” I said, and unbuckled my seatbelt. I was a little unnerved by the way she just seemed to assume I would be doing everything with Jake, but then again, he was sort of my guide and mentor. Who else was going to chauffeur me around until I was able to get my own car?

  And actually, the thought of buying a car made me feel almost cheerful. I’d never had a car of my own — we just couldn’t afford it. My mother and I had shared, and most of the time the arrangement worked out okay. Still, even though I wished I could change what had happened, could go back and prevent Agent Lenz from firing that fateful bullet, I couldn’t help but be just the teeniest bit excited at the prospect of having my very own car.

  I followed Laurel down the front walk and in through the door of Trident Enterprises, each of us carrying bags of takeout. As soon as we were inside, she called out, “Beware of geeks bearing gifts!”

  Jake’s head appeared in the entrance to the room beyond the front office. His expression was a little pained at his cousin’s pun, but he smiled as soon as he caught sight of me. “Go ahead and take it back into the kitchen. We’ll be there in a sec.”

  “Got it.”

  We went down a short hall into the kitchen, which had been nicely updated with white cabinets and quartz countertops, although I saw no sign of anyone ever preparing anything more elaborate in there than a cup of coffee. The space was big enough that there was a square table with four chairs off to one side; Laurel deposited the bags of food on the table, then went to the cupboard and got out some melamine plates.

  “Grab some napkins from the holder over on the counter there, would you?” she asked, and I hurried over to the little antique bronze napkin holder and extracted four.

  By the time we had the place settings out and the various food containers extracted from the bag, Jake and his brother Jeremy walked into the kitchen. At least, I assumed the guy with Jake was his younger brother — he looked to be around my age, and, like his brother, he had dark hair and eyes and was very good-looking, although his features were a little rounder, not quite as chiseled.

  “Addie, this is Jeremy,” Jake said, and Jeremy raised a hand in greeting but immediately took a seat at the table and reached for one of the bags.

  “Nice manners, Jeremy,” Laurel remarked, and he flashed her a white-toothed grin.

  “I’m hungry. All this braining uses up a lot of calories.”

  “Sure,” she shot back, but she didn’t bother to chide him further, only sat down as well in the chair opposite his.

  Which left Jake and me to take the two seats remaining. I settled in the chair across from him, and tried not to blush as his gaze met mine. The three of them were easy and relaxed around each other the way only people who’d known one another all their lives could be, and I felt more than ever like an outsider. Yes, I supposedly shared their blood, but would I ever feel as though I fit in here?

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever fit in anywhere.

  Either ignoring my awkwardness — or maybe not noticing it in the first place — Laurel popped open the containers of food, revealing plates of souvlaki, gyros, special french fries with feta and some sort of yummy mayo-based sauce, along with salad and a stack of pitas. We all fell to, silence reigning for a few minutes as we sated our hunger. Eventually, though, we slowed down enough to pick up the conversation.

  “Looks like Agent Lenz is still stuck in Vegas,” Jake remarked, and I paused with a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth.

  “That’s good, right?” I asked.

  “For now,” Jeremy said, ignoring the withering glance his brother sent him. “We can’t really expect him to stay there for too long. If the guy was able to
figure out that you went to Las Vegas, then sooner or later, he’s probably going to follow the trail all the way here to Flagstaff.”

  The food I’d eaten suddenly felt like a big lump of glue in my stomach. “If that happens…what then?”

  Jake smiled, looking as if he thought being tracked down by a murderous federal agent was no big deal. “We’ll handle it.”

  “Handle it how?”

  Laurel’s eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything, Jake replied, “It’ll be taken care of.”

  “What my brother is trying to so obliquely say,” Jeremy remarked as he slid some souvlaki off a skewer, “is that Agent Lenz is going to find himself disappeared if he sets foot in Wilcox territory.”

  “‘Disappeared’?” I echoed, pretty sure I could guess what he meant, even if I didn’t want to believe such a thing. “You mean…?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Laurel interposed. A small frown was pulling at her well-arched brows, although I couldn’t tell whether she was troubled because she couldn’t believe Jeremy had stated the situation so baldly…or because she knew that was exactly what would happen if Agent Lenz somehow showed up in town. “Nobody’s getting disappeared.”

  “They’re not?” I asked. I wanted to believe her, but even though I definitely didn’t know much Wilcox family history, I already had the impression that some of my distant ancestors hadn’t exactly been angels.

  “No,” she said firmly. Before either Jake or Jeremy could comment, she went on, “I’m not saying we won’t take care of him. But that just means we’ll scoop him up, mess with his memories a little, and then dump him someplace a hundred miles from here, like maybe back in Kanab.”

  That sounded like a much better solution to the problem. I let out a little breath of relief…although that relief was short-lived, because, undeterred, Jeremy spoke up.

  “That’s only a temporary solution to the problem. You think a guy like that doesn’t check in with his superiors and let them know where he’s going and what he’s doing?”

  “Well, then,” Laurel said sweetly, “I guess that’s where you, Mr. Computer Hacker, have to step in and make sure any records of those notes and conversations are destroyed.”

  His mouth lifted at one corner as he gave her a skeptical glance, but I noticed he also looked almost pleased, as if he was glad that she apparently had enough trust in his abilities to believe he could pull off such a feat. I had to say, from what I’d heard, it didn’t sound as though her confidence was misplaced. Any guy who could hack traffic cameras and scramble satellite surveillance footage obviously knew what he was doing.

  “If it even comes to that,” Jake said, his voice smooth and reassuring enough for a radio announcer. I got the impression that, as the oldest in this particular group, he tended to be the one who acted as peacemaker. “So far, there’s no evidence to suggest he’ll even make it to Flagstaff. For now, we have other things to focus on.” His gaze met mine, and I found myself glancing back down at my plate, pretending to be fascinated by the bits of gyro and salad that rested there. “When we’re done eating, Addie, you need to go meet Joanna.”

  “The weather-worker, right?” I asked, trying to sound casual. While I knew I needed to see Joanna and have her show me how to control my unwieldy “gift,” somewhere inside me anxiety awoke, roiling up fears that she wouldn’t be able to help me, either, that I’d lay waste to a large swath of Flagstaff before I fled the scene entirely.

  “Right,” he said with a smile. “She’s very good at what she does, and I think she’ll really be able to help you.”

  “I hope so,” I replied.

  “Me, too,” Jeremy put in. “Because I’d hate to have a tornado rip up downtown just because you were having a bad day.”

  Jake’s brown eyes might as well have been daggers, but his younger brother seemed completely unconcerned by the death glare that had just been shot in his direction. “Jeremy — ”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t want to rip up downtown, either — the little bit I’ve seen of it is really cute. And I have to be really upset for that sort of thing to happen, so….” I let the words trail off, hoping Jeremy would get the hint.

  Apparently, he did, because he leaned against the back of his chair, mouth twitching. “Oh, don’t worry. We’re all going to be super-nice to you, aren’t we, Laurel?”

  She tilted an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, some of us don’t have to work at it, dork.”

  Unperturbed, he dropped another mound of fries on his plate, picked one up, and took a bite. “I am the soul of charm, dear cousin.”

  That comment elicited a very unladylike snort. The sound was so incongruous coming from someone so pretty that I let out a snicker, and a moment later, we were all laughing. Maybe it was silly, but it also felt awfully good.

  Just the day before, I hadn’t been sure whether I’d ever laugh again.

  Once lunch was over, Jake showed me the rest of “Trident Enterprises.” I was definitely impressed by the operation they’d set up in that innocuous-looking house, and had to wonder how much money had been spent on all those fancy new computers — and the house itself, which still smelled of fresh paint. Clearly, they’d put a lot into modernizing the place and making sure it would be both a comfortable environment in which to work, not to mention adequate to their tech needs.

  “But enough of that,” Jake said after he brought me back downstairs — the upstairs bedrooms were being used for server space, storage, and a sort of flop area with a couple of twin beds, just in case someone wanted to crash there rather than go home for the night. “I need to get you over to Joanna’s house.”

  “She lives here in Flagstaff, too, right?” I asked.

  “Yes, but way on the east side, out past the mall. It’s going to take about twenty minutes to get over there.”

  So I followed him out to his Jeep truck — we’d already transferred all my parcels from Laurel’s little SUV — and we drove back along Route 66, past the old downtown section. It definitely looked fun, from the bit I could see, and I found myself wishing that was our destination.

  Jake must have followed my gaze, because he said, “You want to go tonight?”

  “Go where?”

  “Downtown. There’re some good restaurants, and places where there’s live music.”

  I smiled despite myself. “For our not-date?”

  “Exactly.”

  I thought I could deal with weather-working lessons if I knew I was going to have a chance to explore Flagstaff’s downtown with Jake Wilcox at my side. “Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “Great. I’ll figure out what we’re going to do while you’re working with Joanna.”

  That comment made me look at him with some alarm. “You’re not going to leave me there alone with her, are you?”

  “No,” he said, then grinned as he added, “It’s too far for me to want to go back and forth. But I’ll probably hang out in the house while you two work out back. Joanna’s house is on a lot of land.”

  I had a hard time visualizing that sort of setup, mostly because what I’d seen of Flagstaff so far made me think it was pretty settled, with lots about the same size as most of the neighborhoods in the various towns where I’d lived. However, once we were out past the mall and heading north, the road sloped down a little, and I noticed that the neighborhoods were farther flung, with places that looked like mini-ranches sitting on at least a couple of acres.

  It was by one of these that Jake turned off on a side road where the asphalt quickly turned to dirt, and the properties were separated by tidy, white-painted split-rail fences. Even though the road was unpaved, it looked fairly well-maintained, and so we didn’t bounce around too much. It would have taken a much rougher trail than that one to put Jake’s Jeep truck through its paces.

  When we got to the end of the street, it dead-ended at a property where you couldn’t even see the house, thanks to all the ponderosa pines and sycamores and elms that grew out front
. There was a solar-powered gate that opened automatically as we approached; no magic, just a motion sensor. We drove down a gravel-paved driveway, and then Jake turned to the left and the house finally came into view.

  It was tall, with a steeply pitched roof obviously meant to easily shed snow. Newish, as far as I could tell, the façade set off by river rock accents and a rock chimney. What caught my eye, though, was the large backyard with a smooth green lawn populated by…?

  I glanced over at Jake, startled by the long-necked animals I’d just spied. “Are those llamas?”

  “Alpacas, actually,” he said. I thought I caught a glint of amusement in his eyes, and had a feeling he’d purposely not mentioned the alpacas because he wanted to see how I would react to their presence. “Joanna has an online business selling yarn and loose wool.”

  “Is there any money in that?”

  His shoulders lifted, and he looked toward the house. “What do you think?”

  Well, I thought it looked as though Joanna was doing pretty well for herself. Then again, it was probably a lot easier to slide over into the “comfortable” zone when you were guaranteed an extra sixty grand every year.

  “Come on,” he said then. “She’s waiting for us.”

  With nervous fingers, I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and then got out of the truck. I’d gotten a stick of gum and applied some fresh lip gloss after lunch, but I found myself wishing we’d had time to stop at Jake’s house on the way over so I could have brushed my teeth. Lunch had been tasty but a little garlicky.

  But there wasn’t anything I could do about that now. About all I could do was hope I wouldn’t be too stinky…and also hope that at some point I wouldn’t feel so nervous about meeting yet another member of my extended family.