Earthquake Games
by
Bonnie Ramthun


EARTHQUAKE GAMES

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locations
is entirely coincidental.

G. P. Putnam's Sons Publishers Since 1838 a member of Penguin Putnam
Inc.
375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014

Copyright 2000 by Bonnie Ramthun

All rights reserved.  This book, or parts thereof, may not be
reproduced in any form without permission.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ramthun, Bonnie.

Earthquake games / Bonnie Ramthun.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-399-14666-0

1. Police--Colorado--Fiction.  2. Policewomen--Fiction.  3.
Earthquakes--Fiction.

4. Colorado--Fiction, I. Title.

PS3568.A4744 E27 2000 00-036991

813'.54--<lc21
Printed in the United States of America
13579 10 8642
Book design by Chris Welch

For my father.  Lee John Droege

Writing a book while raising three children and with one on the way was
a bit of an effort.  Sometimes I felt like I was trying to launch the
space shuttle with a '67 Chevy and a set of jumper cables.  This book
happened because of my friends and family, and I'd like to acknowledge
them here.

Marcy Zipke picked my first book.  Ground Zero, out of the slush pile
at Putnam.  She edited Ground Zero and now Earthquake Games with superb
skill.  In the past year, I have come to know her as an editor and as a
friend.  Stacy Creamer, senior editor at Putnam, generous and
brilliant, patiently explained every step of the publishing process to
me and guided Ground Zero and now Earthquake Games to a successful
launch.

She and Marcy are wise, witty, and honorable.  I'm lucky to know
them.

When my deadline for Earthquake Games loomed and I was falling behind,
my sister Roxanne offered to look after my boys and me at her house
while I wrote.  This was heaven for everyone, since her house is a
ranch in Wyoming.  My boys swam, trampolined, fished, hiked, walked 4-H
sheep (did you know they have to be walked like dogs?), and generally
had an incredible time.  I wrote every minute I could, and this helped
put me over the top.  Heartfelt thanks to my handsome and athletic
nephews Aaron, Eric, Brandon, and Jim Tomich for babysitting my little
ones with good cheer.  Also thanks to Andy Tomich, who did the daddy
bottle duty for my husband, who couldn't be there, and of course,
thanks to the incomparable Roxanne.

I'd also like to acknowledge the friends I made simply by having
siblings.

My brothers married smart, strong, gorgeous women.  Okay, I guess my
brothers are kind of cute and bright and all, but still, how did they
manage this?  My sisters-in-law Lara Long, Sharon Droege, Jan Droege,
Dawn Butler, and Jodi Butler have been an inspiration and a help.  My
brothers-in-law Michael Larson and Andy Tomich, on the flip side, are
kind, funny, super intelligent guys.  Thanks also to Kirn Goggin, my
terrific sister-in-law, and my in-laws Gary and Cindy Ramthun.

They are generous, kind, and wise.

Thanks to Megan Silva, friend and physician, who researched the medical
information in this book.  Any mistakes are mine, not hers.

I am frequently asked how I manage to find time to write.  I have a
high school girl come over twice a week after school.  She baby-sits
for two hours and I write like a maniac.  My first babysitter was
Duabhav Vue smart, kind, and lovely as a song.  When college classes
started to interfere with her baby-sitting, she found a friend, Kia
Lee, to help.  Kia is as terrific and lovely as Duabhav and now my boys
eagerly ask me if it is a "Kia" day.  The babysitters' help allows me
to leave the real world for a few hours every week, knowing that my
children are safe and happy.

If you've slogged through the acknowledgments this far, you must be
either a member of my family or a very dedicated reader.  This book is
not autobiographical, but in a sense it is a tribute to my father, Lee
John Droege.  It is a tribute to my foster parents, Dick and Judith
Butler.  It is a tribute to every human being that has ended up with
more than one set of parents, no matter how it happened.  I love my
parents with all my heart, and I am lucky to be their daughter.

Finally, thanks again to Bill, my husband.  He's the reason why.

Colorado Springs, Colorado

"I think about it a lot," Eileen said.

"That's only natural, I guess."

"What's it?"  Gerri Matthews asked, leaning back in her armchair.

"Shooting Teddy Shaw, or seeing what he did to Jeannie Bernowski?"

Gerri's clipboard rested comfortably on one knee but her pen dangled,
point up, in her relaxed hand.  Her relaxation was a ploy, Eileen
thought, just like the exquisitely shabby little room, like her kindly
face, like the delicious smell of the hot tea she served in thick
pottery mugs.  Gerri was the court-appointed psychologist for shooters.
Cops who killed.  Six years on the force, and Eileen Reed had finally
joined the ranks.

"What?"  she asked Gerri.

"Shooting Teddy, or seeing Jeannie?"  Gerri repeated patiently.

"Shooting him, of course," Eileen said.

"Okay," Gerri replied.  She was forty and looked a weathered twenty
five

Perhaps it was all the bike riding, she'd said during their
introductions.

Or perhaps because she and her husband didn't have children, and thus
she always got a good night's sleep.  This was said with a twinkle and
a chuckle as irresistible as a little girl's.  Gerri had sandy blonde
hair and dark blue eyes, and she dressed in clothes that looked so
comfortable they could be pajamas.  On a plump woman they would have
looked awful, but on Gerri's spare little frame, her baggy pants and
shapeless pullovers looked terrific.  Eileen wanted to like her
immediately, and felt her ears pull back like a horse about to bite.
Everything felt different since four days ago, when she'd shot Teddy
Shaw.

"Do you have dreams about Jeannie Bernowski?"  GerI asked calmly.

Eileen closed her eyes momentarily, and the death scene unrolled in
front of her.  The backs of her eyelids had developed a sort of
VCR-like capability, it seemed, and whenever she closed her eyes she
was treated to what was now the number-one movie in her head.

"No, I remember Teddy," she said.

summer night in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  The mild night air blew
through Eileen's open car window, carrying with it the scents of summer
roses, recently mowed lawns, and sun-heated pines.

The breeze felt good in her hair and against her face.  One thirty in
the morning on a Tuesday.  There was no one else on the roads.

Eileen was on her way home after filing a report on a homicide, an easy
one.  She'd stayed late so she could take off Friday and Monday, thus
giving her a four-day vacation.  She'd planned to spend it in the
mountains with Joe Tanner, her boyfriend.  There was a persistent rumor
that the Pike National Forest held the remains of an F-16 crash.  The
plane crashed twenty years ago and was seen only by the occasional
hiker, or so the story went.  No hiker had come forward admitting
they'd seen the wreck, but the story persisted.  The ghost of the pilot
was said to haunt the plane, since he had never been buried and was, it
was said, still strapped into his seat.  Since the plane was never
found, it was supposedly still full of equipment, including missiles
and ammo for the dead pilot's pistol.  It was the Flying Dutchmen of
mountain wrecks and a Juicy target.  The fact that the plane probably
didn't exist only fueled Eileen's desire to find the thing.  She was
excited about the adventure and happy to get away from the city.

Eileen was so wound up, in fact, she gave in to an impulse.  The city
seemed to be completely asleep and the night air was intoxicatingly
warm.  She turned off the main road and into the Briargate Subdivision,
a housing community with long, curving streets.  She clicked off her
headlights.

After a second or two of terrifying darkness, the night world sprang up
around her.  The houses were dark, and her car made little sound at
thirty miles per hour.  When she was seventeen this was one of the
favorite sports of the high-school ranch-kid crowd.  Driving at fifty
miles per hour down moonlit Wyoming highways, they would turn off the
headlights and laugh and yell their favorite lines from Star Wars.
Driving without lights was unearthly and scary and fun, and Eileen
hadn't done it for years.

"Teddy didn't hide from you," Gerri said.

"Yeah," Eileen said.

"I didn't exactly put that in my report, you know."

"Of course, and as you can see, I'm taking no notes," Gerri said.

"I'm a psychologist.  You can tell me anything, and it will go no
further than this room."

"You said that already."

"I'll say it until you believe me, chum," Gerri said comfortably.

"Now tell me what happened next.  You've set the scene.  I can see it
in my mind."

"I saw Teddy--a man--walking from a house carrying a large gym bag.  He
was walking very quickly and his van was running.  But the van was at
the curb and the driveway was empty, and there were no lights on in the
house.  That all added up to a robbery.  I had just turned the corner
in a long swooping curve.  I knew the street was a long, straight one,
so that was going to be my run at the Death Star ventilation tube."

Eileen looked sharply to see if Gerri was laughing, and she was.  But
there was nothing mocking in Geri's face.  She was just laughing.

"Use the force, Luke!"  she said.

"That's right," Eileen replied and couldn't help but smile.

"Keep on target!  All the great lines.  I swooped around the corner in
full Rebel Alliance mode and there's Teddy Shaw with little Alice
Gherkin in his bag--although I didn't know that then, of course."

"But you knew there was something going on."

"Oh, yes," Eileen said grimly.

Teddy didn't see Eileen at first, because he was very nearly at his
van.  He had almost made his snatch, and his whole focus was getting to
his vehicle.  Besides, she didn't have her lights on.  Teddy Shaw would
die with a petulant look on his face, the look of a little boy who was
beaten at a game where the other side hadn't played fair.

Eileen flipped her lights on and aimed her car at the burglar, her mood
changing in an eye blink from vacationing lover to police officer.
She expected him to run for his van, and perhaps even to have to chase
him down, but her perceptions were all wrong.  This was not a burglary.
The man dropped the bag--which fell to the ground and bulged in a funny
shape, a shape that was familiar and unidentifiable at the same time, a
shape that was somehow horrible--and drew an enormous contraption from
his long coat.  The contraption looked like a homemade bazooka, a
monster black muzzle with a tiny handle on the end.

Eileen stamped on the brakes and threw her car into a skid and ducked,
and the windshield blew out of her beloved Jeep Cherokee with a
coughing sound.  There was no boom of a gunshot.  At thirty miles per
hour, Eileen was stopped in four seconds of skid, four very long
seconds.

She had time to consider her choice of weapons.  She had a Sig Sauer
239 in a shoulder holster, 40 caliber with seven rounds in the
magazine, cocked and locked for quick firing.  She also carried a .38
Lady-smith in an ankle holster, a revolver with five shots.  She
decided on the Ladysmith since she was bent double underneath the
dashboard anyway.

The Sig Sauer was too hard to reach.

As her car stopped, she rolled out the door, keeping her Jeep between
the shooter and herself, dropped to the asphalt, and aimed at the feet
on the lawn from underneath her car.  A low slung car wouldn't have
given her line-of-sight, but her Jeep was fairly tall.

"Police!"  she shouted, and the Jeep's side window blew out.  There was
no time to do anything else.  Instinctively, she made sure the black
bag was not going to be hit by gunfire and pulled the trigger three
times.

The feet disappeared in a black burst of blood, black like an old movie
because there wasn't enough light for her eyes to register color.  The
man fell down as Eileen rolled to the back of her Jeep.  She leaped to
her feet and stepped out from behind her car, gun held steady, hoping
the man was clutching his ruined feet and not his gun.  The man still
had his weapon.  The bazooka Eileen had seen was an ordinary .357
revolver with a homemade silencer on the end, made of a perforated
cardboard tube stuffed with cotton.  The cotton was now on fire but the
man didn't seem to care.  He was trying to bring the gun up and aim it
at her, and in a microsecond more, he was going to get there.

Eileen fired the gun twice more--Tap!  Tap!--and she was out of
bullets.

A tiny black mark appeared in the man's forehead and another one
pinned itself on his chest.  Eileen dropped her Ladysmith to the grass
and pulled her Sig Sauer from her shoulder holster.  One click of the
safety and she was armed again.

The man leaned backward slowly, like a child's punching bag with a hole
in it.  The bazooka-like silencer continued to burn.  Teddy settled to
the grass, no longer looking much like a human being, no longer
alive.

Eileen stood blinking, suddenly aware of her racing heart, her lack of
breathing, the stink of gunfire, and the richer stink of blood.  She
gasped and her arms started to tremble.  Looking around, she saw
nothing, no one else.  The van still idled at the curb.  The back door
was open.

"This is the police!"  she shouted.

"Come out with your hands up!"

There was a response from the van.  A tiny, squealing sound, like a
rabbit when it is struck by a hawk or a fox.  Eileen sidled along the
side of her Jeep until she could get to the passenger-side door,
keeping the back door of the van and the very dead man in her sight.
She fumbled out her cell phone and called for backup.

"Then you decided!  to look in the van," Gerri said.

"I did," Eileen said.

"I should have waited, but there was that tiny little sound.  Maybe a
bullet had ricocheted and I was listening to someone dying.  I had to
see."

"Nobody came out of the house?  None of the neighbors?"

"A .38 makes a popping sound, not a big boom.  The .357 makes a
good-sized noise, but Teddy built that stupid half-ass silencer.  The
windshield made the most noise.  Lights started to come on in a few
houses, but my backup arrived before anyone came out of their houses.

Besides, the whole thing had taken maybe thirty seconds."

"So you looked in the van," Gerri said, and took a measured sip of her
tea.

Eileen took a sip of her own tea and sighed.  The tea was herbal, light
and sweet and dainty.  A little girl's drink.

"Yeah, I looked in the van.  And there was Jeannie Bernowski, whose
face had been on every telephone pole and in every supermarket in town
for a week.  I knew her instantly and I was just flat out amazed.  Do
you know how often we get a kid back alive?"

"Not very often," Gerri said.

"Statistically speaking, never.  I remember the whole Heather Dawn
Church search.  That little girl was snatched from her bedroom during
the early evening, and they had helicopters from Fort Carson combing
the Black Forest that very night.  Finally, a year later, they came
across her bones.  That's what everyone expected for poor little
Jeannie.  If a child isn't snatched by a parent, their chances are slim
and none.  And Slim left town," Eileen added.  She grinned a hard and
un mirthful little grin.

"And yet there she was," Gerri said.

ilene recounted taking a diving roll past the back doors of the van,
getting a nightmare glimpse of the horror within.  The van was running
and the interior light was on, which gave color to the blood.  There
was a little figure huddled against one wall, and some sacking and
other materials were puddled on the floor.  Nothing large enough to
hide a man or woman.  Eileen wasn't going to have to shoot anyone else.
She climbed to her feet.  The little figure looked vaguely human, but
her one flashing glimpse didn't give many details.

She walked to the doors and looked inside, gun still held at the ready,
and there was little Jeannie Bernowski.  There was no one else in the
van.

In the distance, sirens warbled briefly as her backup negotiated some
red lights.  Jeannie raised her head slowly, sensing someone, but her
eyes had no more sense than a gutted doe.  She was covered with bruises
and worse.  There was quite a bit of blood.  She was handcuffed to a
steel bar welded to the side of the van.  On the other side of the van,
another steel bar waited.

Eileen looked back toward the black bag.  She took two long steps away
from the van and bent over the bag.  She had time to marvel at the
warmth of the breeze, the stars, the beauty of the Colorado night. Then
the zipper came open with a long buzzing sound and a choking smell of
ether and there, duct tape firmly over mouth and eyes, was six-year-old
Alice Gherkin, unconscious.

"So why did you go back to the van?"

"I don't know," Eileen said.

"But that wasn't very popular with Captain Harben.  I crawled up in
that van like my brains had run right out my ass--that's what Captain
Harben told me, anyway--and wrapped the little girl up in my arms."

"Captain Harben didn't approve," Gerri said, and laughed.

"Captain Harben did not approve," Eileen said.

"He chewed me out good, he did.  Disturbing a crime scene.  Destroying
evidence.  Et cetera."

"But she was talking when the ambulance got there, that's what the
report said."

"She's a tough girl," Eileen said.

"He'd done a lot to her, but he hadn't killed her.  Inside, or
outside."

"Now you're a hero.  But you got that way by killing someone."

"Teddy Shaw," Eileen grimaced.

"I know.  So fix me, Gerri."

"I have no magic wand, Eileen."  Gerri smiled, glancing at her watch.

"And our session is over for today."

"I have to come back?"  Eileen asked in dismay.

"I thought this was just--you know."

"What, for show?"  Gerri asked.

"No way, lady.  You're mine for at least two months.  Maybe more.  Once
a week, my tea, your choice of flavors.

The sun was setting over Pikes Peak when Eileen walked outside.

Geri's office was in an old Victorian house, surrounded by gorgeous elm
trees and lilac bushes and stuffed full of psychologists and social
workers.  Eileen paused and took a deep breath, smelling the warm earth
and the flowers that grew in lovely hundred-year-old beds.  A woman
hurried up the walk past her, her head down and dark sunglasses failing
to cover the fading remains of a spectacular beating.  Eileen stood for
a few moments more, her hands in her pockets, listening to the door
open and close and the distant sound of voices.  Next week, same place,
same tea.  And eventually, if Eileen wasn't careful, Gerri was going to
figure out the places where she had lied.

chapter two

The Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Five days later, at dawn, Marcia Fowler found the body of the dead
girl.

At first she didn't know what she was looking at.  She walked across
the sand dunes, squinting in the near darkness of early morning, her
mind flipping through a series of mental images and discarding each one
as they did not fit.  What was that dark object?  A rock?  No, it was
too familiar-looking to be a rock.  Someone's discarded coat, blown
across the sand during the night?  No, it was too large.  A cougar
crouched down and waiting for her?

Marcia stopped walking, the last of her breath wisping away in a vapor
from her open mouth.  She was in the Great Sand Dunes in southwestern
Colorado.  There were cougars in this part of the state.

This could be a cougar.  It didn't move.  Marcia didn't move.  She'd
dropped into a steady hiking pace a half-hour ago, wanting to reach the
top of the first range of sand dunes before the glorious early fall
sunrise.

Now she stood, panting a little, wondering what to do.  There was a
campground full of people less than two miles away, most of them still
asleep.  It was cold in late August in this part of Colorado.

There was no steam of breath from the object.  Shouldn't a cougar
breathe?  The light was becoming clearer by the second as the sun
rushed to its rise above the range of mountains to the east.  The
mountains to the west suddenly flared with light from the rising sun.
The snow at the peaks turned an impossible rose color, delicate and
lovely.  This was called the alpcnglow and should have thrilled Marcia
to the bone.  She could see the dawn light from the corner of her eye
as the racing light swept down the mountainside across the valley.  The
prairie to the west lit up with amber grasses.  The line of light swept
out to the sand and took the grayish sand to gold.

Marcia's knees were trembling with fear and tension, in a face-off with
the unknown thing.  It was hard to stand still.  She was traveling to
the Great Sand Dunes to hear the famous Taos Hum, because she'd read
that the hum could be heard best of all in the huge expanse of
Colorado's version of the Sahara.  The dunes were made of fine ground
quartz with a great deal of iron, a material that some said was a
source of spiritual power.

Marcia believed in spiritual power.  She was a retired teacher of high
school biology.  She'd been married once, but the marriage didn't
last.

She had no children.  She was only fifty-five, having taken early
retirement, and she spent her free time exploring the paranormal.

This was the third trip she'd taken in the glorious freedom of
retirement.

There weren't enough years left for her to visit all the places she
wanted to visit.  This place was one she'd read about for years.  She
stood frozen in a waiting game with whatever-it-was, trying not to
think that this trip might be her last.  The light was almost bright
enough to see now.

Then the morning sun reached her discovery and illuminated it
brilliantly.

The light was not kind to the body, for a body it was.

Marcia's terror changed instantly to horror.  A young woman lay before
her, sprawled on her side.  Her nude body was ivory and pale like a
statue, as though every ounce of blood had been drained from her.  Her
eyes were open and filled with sand.  There were no footprints around
her.  She was laid on a sloping curve with tiny ripples of sand spread
all around her.  The ripples, formed by wind and dry days into a
crunchy plaster, were undisturbed around her body.

She was laid out like an offering to the gods, but not to the God that
Marcia worshipped.  Her shoulder and arm looked odd.  Marcia realized
she was seeing places where the girl's skin had been cut away.  She
turned away, the image burning in her eyes, and started to run toward
the entrance to the dunes.  Suddenly a hum filled the air, a low
moaning tone that invaded every inch of her body.  It was the Taos Hum,
at last, and it wasn't exciting at all.  It was more horrible than she
could have imagined, She staggered, flailed, lurched in the sand.  The
ground seemed to be heaving under her feet.  The ground was heaving
under her feet.  Marcia fell to her knees as the dunes quivered and
rolled in enormous waves.

She curled up on her side, her arms around her head.  Tons of sand
around her shifted and writhed, threatening to bury her like an ocean
wave of sand.  The moaning tone made her dental fillings ache fiercely
and vibrated in her head until she thought she would go mad.  The
rolling started to slow, then abruptly stopped.  Marcia heard a high,
piercing shriek that went on and on.  A while later she realized the
sound was coming from her, and she stopped it.

"Earthquake," she said to herself.  Her voice came out in a husky
whisper, cracked and broken.

She struggled to her feet.  The sand hadn't buried her.  Her ankle
didn't want to work properly and her daypack hung sloppily from one
shoulder.

She straightened her hair, brushed off her shorts, and adjusted her
backpack.  She looked back at the body of the girl and it was still
there.

She took a brief drink from her water bottle.  She tried out her
voice.

"Colorado has earthquakes," she said.

"They're very rare, though."

That was better.  The shaking was a normal event, though rare, just a
perfectly explainable natural phenomenon.  Just an earthquake.  What
the hum meant, she wasn't sure.  No time for that now.

She didn't have to look at the dead girl again.  It was no trick of the
light.  There was a dead body on the Great Sand Dunes, and Marcia had
to get the word to the park rangers before anyone else came along.

Earthquake or not, the poor girl needed to be taken care of.  Marcia
let her years of teaching stiffen her like a good brace.  She
straightened her shoulders and started limping toward the campgrounds
as fast as she could.

Westside, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Eileen Reed directed traffic.

There was nothing else to be done.  The ambulance had to get through
and the traffic lights were out.  Eileen stood in the intersection and
waved her arms.  She was in a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt.
Her shoulder holster was clearly visible, which was perhaps why she
was commanding respect from the alarmed Colorado Springs drivers.

The traffic streamed through the intersection.  The ambulance went
through slowly with lights flashing.  The ambulance drivers gave Eileen
a wave.  Their faces were still pale, but there were clear signs of
recovery.

They grinned at Detective Reed in her workout clothes, directing
traffic like a rookie cop.

Eileen grinned back.  A few more minutes and the traffic would sort
itself into a four-way stop, orderly streams of cars first going one
way and then the other.  Colorado Springs lost power quite often when
the famous summer thunderstorms came barreling down Pikes Peak.  The
cars wouldn't be in a snarl if people weren't so completely poleaxed by
this weird earthquake.  Eileen could hear the car radios, most tuned to
the KAL-in radio station.  An enterprising disc jockey at KAET had
called a disc jockey in California, who was now dispensing earthquake
advice over the Colorado airwaves with a casual and calming
nonchalance.

With a final wave, Eileen left the intersection and ran for her
apartment, two blocks from the stoplight.  During the earthquake,
Eileen had ended up on the lawn with the other residents, wearing bra
and panties and a towel that shrank to washcloth size as soon as the
earthquake was over.  She would have faced a lot worse than the very
real threat of a gas explosion to find some clothes.  She'd heard the
wailing of the siren from her bedroom as she started to get dressed.
She abandoned her attempt to put on work clothes and pulled on the
first things that came to hand.

The ambulance had to get through, and the intersection by her house was
a snarl of confused drivers--she had to help.

By the time she returned to her apartment, the building manager had
turned off the main valve, educated by the cheery California disc
jockey about the dangers of broken gas lines.  Just to be sure, the
manager had turned off the electric power as well.  Eileen finished
dressing quickly in her eerily quiet apartment.  With no running
refrigerator, fans, or clocks, her apartment seemed to be holding its
breath.

Betty, her cat, was stiff and outraged and silent underneath the bed.

The earthquake was completely Eileen Reed's fault, and Betty wasn't
going to forgive her any time soon.  She was an adopted alley cat,
ferociously independent, a bright and improbable orange, and would not
be coaxed out from under the bed when she was in a huff.  Eileen
didn't even try.  She left her an open can of cat food and a small
handful of cat treats, a sort of cat bouquet, as an apology.

Her cell phone began ringing as she reached her car.

"What took you so long?"  she said into the receiver.

"Uh, er, Detective Reed?"  a voice said.

"This is Cathy at dispatch."

"I'm on my way in, Cathy," Eileen said, starting the car.

"Thank you, ma'am," Cathy said, and broke the connection.  She sounded
frayed.  It was going to be a busy day at the police department.

Eileen figured she wouldn't be doing much detective work that day.

Today would be a day spent in the trenches, keeping citizens happy and
looters unhappy.

She started to speed dial Joe's number, just to check on him.  Joe was
a solid type.  If he wasn't beyond help, he wasn't going to do anything
stupid.

Eileen saw the first broken storefront window and the small crowd in
front and turned off her phone in mid-ring.  She pulled over to the
curb with a warning yelp of the tires and slammed the car door, hard.
The crowd dissolved as she strode up to the storefront, trying to look
about seven feet tall.  It was going to be a long day, she sighed to
herself.  A long day.

Scenic Viewing Site, San Luis Valley, Colorado

The sight of Blanca Peak nearly took Alan Baxter's breath away.  He'd
never been to the San Luis Valley before.  The peak sat at the end of
the Sangre de Christo Mountain range like an enormous post at the end
of a fence.  The top was a pure and blinding white in the early morning
sun.  He couldn't believe any amount of summer could reach the top of
that peak and melt the snow.  Across the valley he could see the San
Juan Mountains, another tall range of mountains with snow-capped
peaks.

The San Luis Valley lay in between, a peaceful patchwork of farmland
and grazing cattle.  In the distance, up the valley, he could see the
tan pelt of the Great Sand Dunes.  What a beautiful place.

Alan had pulled off at the viewing site and gotten out to stretch his
legs.  He stopped every two hours, because if he didn't, he had a
tendency to stiffen up.  He'd been driving since early morning and the
cold air was delicious.  There was no one else at the viewing site,
which was perched on the edge of an enormous drop-off and gave a
gorgeous view of Blanca Peak and the San Luis Valley.  The bathroom had
an out-of order sign, so Alan leisurely watered some wildflowers off
the side of the guardrail and zipped up.  He stretched and sighed and
grinned.  With luck, he'd be on the Rio Grande in the afternoon, seeing
what kind of bugs the fish were taking today.  He'd never fished the
Rio Grande.  He'd meant to get down here for years, but there always
seemed to be somewhere else to go.  The summer fishing in Yellowstone
and Montana were too good to pass up.  Then there was the Frying Pan,
or the Gunnison.

Alan just never made it down to southern Colorado.

Then Sam Williams ended up at his table at the bar in West Yellowstone,
Montana, earlier that winter.  They'd been warming up after a day of
bone-chilling fishing, and Sam had joined their table because he knew
Alan's friend Dietrich.  Dee introduced Sam to Alan, and the
conversation turned, as it always did, back to fishing.

Sam owned a small cattle ranch down in the San Luis Valley, it turned
out, and he talked up his Rio Grande like it was the best fishing since
the legendary Millionaire's Hole on the Henry's Fork.  The wild trout
intrigued Alan.  Sam Williams, from a ranching family that went four
generations back, loved company.  Like many ranchers, both he and his
wife liked visitors.  His wife Beth, particularly.  They'd love to have
Alan down for a month or so.  Hell, all summer if he'd like.

"I hear you're a computer type, too," Sam commented.

"Beth has a PC.  I think she'd have fun talking computers to you."
Dietrich rolled his eyes.  Alan's particular eccentricity was well
known among the fisherman.

His was fairly mild compared to some.  One fisherman carried around a
bag of ashes collected in small handfuls from every fire he'd ever sat
around.  The bag was getting kind of big; the man was nearly seventy.
He never explained his habit and wasn't required to.  He was, of
course, required to take a ribbing, just as Alan had to take jokes
about his little portable computer and his Internet.

"Alan likes them cybersex bulletin boards," Dietrich grinned.

"You know I read about them in Time," Jack mentioned from the next
booth over.

"Them girls are all fat and pimply and can't get dates, which is why
they's at home pretending to be sex queens on the Net."

"I thought you liked 'em like that.  Jack," Alan said mildly, and
there was general laughter.

Alan, in fact, did have a special friend on the Net, but he wasn't
about to let the boys know that.  Her name was Krista Lewis and she was
twenty-six.

Krista was supposed to be in the San Luis Valley this month, another
unspoken reason why Alan Baxter suddenly decided he had to fish the Rio
Grande.  She suggested they get together for dinner.  He couldn't pass
up the chance to meet her face to face, even though there was a whole
generation between them.  It was just dinner, after all.

Alan headed back to his Bronco.  First he had to find the Williams's
Ranch and catch about six hours of sleep.  That would put him on the
Rio Grande in the early evening, a good time for dry-fly fishing.

He put a hand on his car door handle and thought for a second that his
car engine was still running, though he was holding the keys in his
other hand.  The Bronco suddenly lurched away from him like something
alive.  The ground twisted and heaved under Alan's feet.  He shouted
something foolish, something that might have been "Hey!"

The guardrail where he'd stood moments before sagged outward and down.
A moment later there was a high, sharp sound, like a guitar string
breaking.  A section of guardrail twisted abruptly into the air.  Alan
left his Bronco and staggered toward the road, away from the edge of
the scenic drop-off.  He had time to regret his favorite fly rod, an
old eight footer he'd had for years.  He'd lose everything if the
Bronco went over the cliff.  But the only thing he could think of was
the faithful eight footer catcher of a thousand fish.  As he reached
the asphalt of the highway, he was thrown to his knees.  The shaking
abruptly stopped.  There was a roaring sound.  Alan looked up in dumb
wonder as an avalanche of rocks and dirt swept from the mountainside
over the far end of the diminished scenic viewing area.  A small
scattering of rocks bounced against the tires of his Bronco.  The
avalanche swept serenely over the restroom, lifting the wooden
structure and smashing it down the mountainside after the vanished
guardrail.

The roaring stopped.  Alan got slowly to his feet in a profound
silence.

The squirrels and the birds were silent.  The road was buckled in a few
places, but it looked like the Bronco could make it.  The Bronco itself
was completely untouched.  One half of the parking lot was somewhere
down below with pieces of the mountain on top of it.  If Alan had
parked six slots to the left, he'd be walking to Alamosa right now.  Or
he'd be dead.  Alan's knees felt watery for a moment.  It was too
unreal to be believed.  Who'd ever heard of earthquakes in Colorado?

The dust started to clear as he made a slow and careful way down into
the San Luis Valley.  After a while, he heard the birds begin to sing
again.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

When an earthquake happens in California, people know what to do.

They react instantly.  They drop what they're doing and run for bracing
doorways and away from deadly windows.  They do not, as the Coloradans
did, stand with wondering gaze and try to figure out what the hell is
going on.

Joe Tanner didn't know what was going on.  He was standing in his
living room eating a bagel and watching Fox news when the first tremor
hit.  The sun was up and the air was fresh and clear, with a coolness
that would dissolve into early summer heat by mid-morning.  Rush hour
hadn't quite started in Colorado Springs since it was only six a.m."
but half the city was up and getting ready to go.  Joe was in his
version of a business suit, a pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt.  As a
computer programmer, he could dress as he liked.  Like many
programmers, he liked comfortable clothes.  A rattle shook Joe's living
room panes and made his screen door quiver just a bit.  There was a
faint booming sound, as though a jet from the Air Force Academy had
broken the sound barrier too close to town.  He saw movement from the
corner of his eye and looked away from the television to see an amazing
sight outside his living room window.

There was a man in the street wearing nothing but a pair of white
Jockey shorts.  His face was covered with shaving cream, and he held a
cheap disposable razor in his left hand.  It was Ralph Morrison, Joe's
neighbor.  He had moved from California that year and seemed like a
nice man.  Joe had thought when he met him that he looked just like the
actor Danny Glover.  He was wearing blue socks too, Joe noted with
amazement.  Danny Glover in blue socks, elderly Jockey shorts, and
shaving cream, standing in the middle of the street.

"Quake," he bellowed in a huge voice.

"Quake!"

The earth quivered under Joe's feet.  Joe, who had never been in an
earthquake before in his life, felt the floor underneath him start
shaking like it was turned to gelatin.

The word Ralph Morrison was bellowing finally reached the proper slot
inside his brain.  Joe tried to run to the door but the ground was
heaving under his feet.  He staggered with bruising force into a
bookshelf and was flung into the doorway and through the screen.  He
rolled with the fall and crouched on the pads of his feet, vaguely
proud that the training his girlfriend Eileen had made him go through
seemed to be working.  So far the gun training had been useless, though
fun.  But the martial arts seemed to be coming in handy.  His house,
behind him, gave an awful and human-sounding groan.  Joe scrambled on
hands and knees away from his house, towards Ralph the California man.
The earth itself seemed to be screaming.  The asphalt of the street
writhed under him, a feeling so loathsome that he cried out in disgust
and tried to crawl away, back towards his house.  Ralph kept his feet,
bellowing, his shaver clutched in his hand.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.  Joe crouched on hands
and knees on the sidewalk, jeans stained with mud and grass.  He saw
other figures up and down the block, most in bathrobes, some clutching
wailing children.  Ralph looked up and down the block and held up his
shaver.  He waved it back and forth.

"Don't go in your houses!"  he bellowed.

"Gas pipes may be busted!"

"What can I do?"  Joe said, getting to his feet and stepping into the
street.  He balled his hands into fists to stop the shaking that wanted
to take hold of his body.  Ralph looked at him, startled, then nodded
sharply.

"Right," he said in his normal Ralph Morrison voice.

"You take this side of the street.  I'll take my side.  Tell people to
stay out.  I'll start turning the pipes off.  If you find anybody who's
in shape to help, send them to me."

"Okay," Joe said firmly.  Ralph peered at him closely then gave him a
startling, unexpected wink.

"We'll be fine, boy," he said.

"This was just a baby quake.  Sure don't feel so great though, does
it?"

"No shit," Joe said, and bit back a jagged laugh.

Ralph Morrison turned around without another word and marched to his
side of the street.  Joe started off in the other direction, on his
side.

"One other thing," Ralph shouted back at him.  Joe turned, to see
Ralph's grin as white as the shaving cream on his face.  He waved.

"If someone has a spare bathrobe, send it along."

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Jim Leetsdale knew he was going to die.  He'd known it since he made
the decision to unmask the project.  They were going to kill him and it
was going to be today, and he hadn't finished yet.  There was still so
much to package together, so many calls to make, and there was Krista
Lewis.  Krista was his conduit, the way he planned to break the news to
the mainstream.  With the array of data that Krista was gathering in
the Great Sand Dunes, he could present proof that could not be
denied.

Yet there they were, at the end of the hall, walking without any
particular hurry.  The earthquake hadn't slowed them down; the
earthquake had helped them by clearing the building and distracting the
guards.  The Air Force guards were just past being children anyway.
They couldn't face these men and win.  Who could?

There were two of them, lit intermittently by the hallway emergency
lights, heading toward Jim and his office and all the proof he had to
unmask the project that had killed his wife.  They looked ordinary but
tough.  One was gray-haired and wide, with a belly just starting to go
soft.  The other was younger and smaller, with merry black eyes and a
slight curve of smile.  They were Death come to collect him.

Jim turned and closed the door to his office.  It had only two locks
but was made of metal.  It would take a while.  He realized he was
shaking, and his breath was a pant in his own ears.

"Lori, babe, be waiting for me," he whispered, just in case it took a
while for the angels to collect her from wherever she was and get her
to the other end of the tunnel.  Lori was never late.  Even pregnant
and weary with morning sickness, she was on time and waiting to pick
him up when a Los Angeles earthquake dropped a cinderblock wall on her
and another person at the Burbank Airport.  Lori and their unborn baby
and a young, unemployed actor named Stephen Brill were killed, the
only three fatalities in the latest shake from the San Andreas.  Their
deaths didn't even make the national news.

He started copying files to disk as fast as he could, scattering
paperwork throughout his filing cabinets while each disk finished
loading up information.  Unless they burned his entire office, they
might miss something, and Krista might find it later.  He ignored the
tiny sounds coming from the office door, the little chittering sounds
that might be mice but were not.  He had shoved a sturdy Air Force
office chair against the door handle, but he knew that wouldn't be
enough.

He wrote Krista's name on a yellow Post-it note, and put the note in
his palm.  What to do with it?  He needed to leave her name in his
office but he didn't want the soldiers to find that, certainly.  They
would kill her, too.  Jim gave a hiccupy laugh, thinking how brave he
was trying to be while his whole body was shaking.  His body didn't
want to die.  His ancient brain, his lizard brain, was dumping
adrenaline into his system in preparation for a fight to the death.
Well, he was going to do that, he promised the lizard.  He was going to
try and take those bastards with him.  But he'd seen what they could
do, that one time in the dunes when they'd finished with Max O'Dell.
O'Dell had tried to quit, too, which branded him a traitor.  A traitor
just like him.

The door shuddered in its frame.  Jim spun toward the door, his breath
accelerating into a pant, his heart thundering in his chest.  Just a
few seconds now.  He looked at Krista Lewis's name on the Post-it and
breathed a prayer.  Then he reversed the note and stuck it quickly on
the underside of his desk.

"Go gettum, Krista," he said quietly, and pulled out a file cabinet
drawer.  Armed with this frail weapon, he waited as the door shuddered
again and then fell open.  Jim Leetsdale was no longer afraid.  He felt
a remote kind of calmness and thought again of Lori, waiting on the
other side.

"Coming, sweetheart," he whispered.

Great Falls, Virginia

"My life," wailed Lucy Giometti, "is over."

"No, it's not," Carolyn Giometti said.  Her voice was a deep maple
syrup tone that reminded Lucy of a nature film narrator.  In person,
Lucy's sister-in-law was short, round, and merry, with snapping black
eyes and hair so deeply curled it looked like black yarn.  Right now
her voice on the phone was all Lucy had, and she needed it.

"Hank didn't sleep much at all last night," Lucy said, trying to keep
the wail out of her voice.  Right now her darling son.  Henry Theodore
Giometti, one year old, ready to be weaned and showing no signs of
wanting to let go of Lucy's milk supply, lay sleeping against her
exposed breast.  His little mouth, so much like her husband's, so
beautiful, was smeared with milk.  His lashes lay against his rosy
cheek, like a cherub in a child's book.

"Think of this as World War Baby," Carolyn said.

"World War Baby?"  Lucy asked.  She wasn't sure she'd heard right.

Her eyes were grainy and her back ached.

"World War Baby," Carolyn said matter-of-factly.

"You get pregnant, you bear a child, for the next three years you're
fighting the equivalent of a war.  You're never relaxed, you're always
dirty and frazzled with exhaustion, you never get enough sleep."

"Oh, exactly," Lucy sighed.

"Right, and the war is first to keep this little creature alive, and
then

to turn it into a nice human being.  Housebroken, with a full set of
teeth, willing to share a toy and not bash another kid in the head with
it.  It's a war.  You may be at home, but you're not, really.  You're
in a foxhole in France somewhere with people shooting mortar rounds
past your head."

"I'd rather be in a foxhole in France," Lucy said, shifting a little in
her armchair.  Hank stirred but didn't wake.  He'd had an awful night
last night with teething pain.  The new tooth had caused his nose to
run, and he couldn't breathe well.  Lucy had given him acetaminophen
and rocked him half the night, nursing him until her breasts were sore,
and at dawn he'd finally fallen into a deep sleep.  She was in her
armchair in her office, her computer in front of her, and she never
felt less like working in her life.

"At least you have a stay-at-home job," Carolyn said.

"Although you don't have to work if you don't want to.  My brother can
take care of you."

"I know, but--" "Exactly," Carolyn interrupted.

"Without an outside interest, your brain would melt.  Look at me, for
example.  Now that my house is done, I'm trying to figure out what to
do."

Carolyn and her husband had bought an ancient Victorian house in
Chicago when her children were toddlers.  Now her youngest was twelve
and her gorgeous house was refinished from attic to basement, work that
Carolyn had done herself, by hand.

"Buy another house," Lucy suggested.

"I might," Carolyn said.

"I might not.  But I have the luxury of contemplation.

You, on the other hand, are surviving on basically no sleep.

How's the government research work going in the middle of all that?"

"Pretty good," Lucy admitted.

"I'm surprised that I can still accomplish anything, but research is
fun."  What Lucy had never told Carolyn was that she worked for the
Central Intelligence Agency.  She was an analyst, specializing in
computers, a tiny worker bee in a huge organization, and was as far
away from fieldwork as a person could be.

Well, sort of.  Lucy had ended up in the midst of an undeclared war
when she was six months pregnant with Hank, a nuclear conflict between
the United States and a terrorist group.  They'd launched a nuclear
missile from a captured missile silo in Uzbekistan and if Lucy hadn't
been in Colorado, the bomb might have taken out most of the Midwest.
Instead, she and a group of newfound friends had used the top-secret
missile defense program to shoot the bomb down.  This was all pretty
much an accident, but her analysis of the terrorist group and her
warning had arguably saved the world.  ;

This led her and Ted to a very private dinner at the White House and a
medal that she could show to no one.  Her one regret was that she had
to wear a pregnancy dress to the White House dinner.  The most exciting
., dinner of her life and she looked like a humpback whale wrapped in
black velvet.

All that happened before Hank's arrival.  When he was born, every^
thing changed for her.  She'd pushed for two hours before her doctor
;

delivered Hank's head, and then the rest of his little body slipped out
," painlessly.  She'd lain back in the birthing bed, exhausted with the
pain | and the effort, and the nurse had swept her gown aside and laid
Hank on her bare chest.  He was still attached to her by his umbilical
cord, and he was covered in blood and fluids--he was the most beautiful
thing she'd ever seen.  She held him and Ted held her and they'd both
cried, and Hank who was supposed to cry didn't wail at all.  He just
lay in her arms and looked at the two of them with his bright eyes.

When she gave her notice at the CIA, panic ensued.  The CIA hadn't had
many successes lately.  She was their golden girl of the moment, pretty
and young and brilliant, proving to the other bureaucracies, and most
of all to the White House, that the CIA had a purpose.

"They set up your office at home and everything," Carolyn
interrupted.

Lucy had to smile.  Steven Mills, her horrid boss, had talked her into
working at home.  Imagine that.  To a man like Steven Mills, working at
home must be the worst idea ever.  He was a fifties-style boss, a micro
manager and hated Lucy.  Her medal and her status didn't change his
loathing of her, but he was a smart horrible boss.  He was determined
to keep her.

He arranged a secure encrypted T1 phone link into her house and used
some newfound pull to get her basement office shielded
electronically.

She stepped through a strange doorway lined with brass plates to get to
her computer and her walls had an odd sort of cardboard look, but
Hank's playpen and diaper-changing table stood in the corner, and her
dog, Fancy, lay on Lucy's feet and snored while she worked.  Her work
wasn't at the highest levels, but it was still analysis.  If she really
needed some sensitive materials, she was still allowed to go to the CIA
building and look at them there.  It was better than no work at all.

Not that she was working right now.  She was talking to her
sister-inlaw and wondering if she could even focus on her computer
screen.

"I feel better just talking to you," she said.  Carolyn laughed.

"Hey, you know, you could write a book about child-raising.  You could
call it World War Baby.  Or you could get a job reading books-on-tape.
You have a great voice."

"That's my Lucy," Carolyn said warmly.

"Always trying to solve everyone else's problems.  Set down that nephew
of mine in his playpen and get just an hour or so of work in, then get
some sleep.  Teething doesn't last forever, it just feels that way."

Lucy sat for a few minutes, smiling at Hank, after Carolyn hung up.

She was so great to talk to.  Carolyn had been through it all.  She'd
survived the war.

Hank muttered somewhat when Lucy laid him in his playpen, but when she
tucked his blanket around him, he sighed and fell asleep again.

As soon as she sat down, her springer spaniel nudged her.

"Yes, darling," Lucy said, stroking her little dog's ears and head.

"Time for a little bit of Fancy.  Then work, and more Hank.  When Ted
gets home, I'll pay attention to him, and when he falls asleep Hank
will wake up."  Lucy bent her head over her dog's silky ears and cried
a few silly tears, tears of self-pity and tiredness.  She despised
herself for crying them, but she couldn't help herself.

Finally, she sat up and blew her nose briskly and put her hands on her
computer keyboard.  Time to work.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"I'm glad you're okay," Eileen said with a sigh.  She'd been trying to
get through to Joe all afternoon, and only just a few minutes ago
realized he was probably at work.

Joe Tanner worked at Schriever Air Force Base on a top-secret system
that Eileen shouldn't know about but did because of a murder there a
year ago.  He was a programmer in the missile defense system and Eileen
had learned all about the system that wasn't supposed to exist.  She'd
learned how the system worked firsthand, actually.  She still had
dreams about the nuclear missile arcing through the sky and heading
toward the United States, the missile that she and Joe and a few
friends had shot down.

Joe and Eileen had been together ever since.  Joe was smart and funny,
and his looks made her weak in the knees.  Best of all, he seemed to
feel no urge to turn her into a little homemaker who'd cook his meals
and darn his socks, if that's what homemakers did nowadays.  If a case
kept her out late, he simply woke up enough to make room for her in his
bed when she crawled in, with never a murmur of complaint.  He was just
about perfect, and she was entertaining serious thoughts about
permanence.

Not that she'd tell Joe that.  Some things a girl had to be
oldfashioned about.

"I'm fine.  I'm glad you're okay too," he said cheerfully.

"The systems out here came through with no problems.  I called once to
make sure you were in, but they told me you were busy so I didn't leave
a message.  I guess I should have."

"I should have figured you'd be out there," she said.

"I was stuck doing street-cop stuff all day long."  She was now at her
desk trying to wade through the paperwork she had to file on each
incident.  The office was boiling with noisy activity.  All the
off-duty police had been called in after the earthquake, and they were
all trying to catch up on paperwork and go home.  Captain Harben ran an
efficient department, even when his homicide detectives were working
street detail.

"Looters and lost children?"  Joe said, and the half-teasing, half
sympathetic tone of his voice sent a brief run of pleasurable
goosebumps down Eileen's spine.

"But no lost boyfriends, now," he added.

"What about dinner tonight?"

"Everyone in Colorado Springs will be going to dinner tonight."

"I'll pack some snack crackers for the wait in line."

"It's a deal," she said, laughing.

"Call me if something comes up."

Eileen held the button down on her phone, staring out the window at her
mountain, Cheyenne Mountain.  It didn't look any different than it had
before, but Eileen felt different, looking at it.  The ground wasn't
supposed to heave like that, to quiver and shake like loose mud.  Even
the huge Cheyenne Mountain had shaken with the quake, if reports were
true.  NORAD, the underground base in the mountain, had shut down its
outside power lines just like it was supposed to if a nuclear weapon
had gone off.  The drill, apparently, had worked perfectly and with the
exception of a small shower of rocks near the entrance, nothing was
changed.  That was the report from CNN, at least.  CNN had exhausted
the mystery of the Colorado quake a while ago and was now doing "human
interest" stories like Cheyenne Mountain.

"Hey, there's one good thing about this fucked-up day," Peter O'Brien
called out to her.  He was just sitting down at his desk.  His shirt
was damp and his forehead was beaded with drops of sweat.

"What is it, Pete?"  Eileen asked, smiling.

"You're old news now, hero," he smiled.  Eileen froze in her chair.

Had she really forgotten Teddy Shaw?  Had she spent an entire day
without thinking about killing a man?

"I forgot," she said, her voice small in her ears.  O'Brien grinned
even wider.

"So has everybody else," he said.

"Now Teddy can fertilize some trees and never kill any more kids and
you can go back to being Eileen Reed, that quiet, intelligent, pretty
detective that always solves her cases' Stop it, Pete," Eileen said,
blinking hard.  Damn Pete O'Brien.  If he found a weakness, what he
called a hot button, in another detective, he hammered it relentlessly
until the detective exploded like a stepped-on ketchup packet or got
over it.  Until now Eileen had escaped ribbing.

O'Brien figured out very early that Eileen didn't care about her looks,
one way or the other.  If some people thought she was pretty, that was
okay.  If they thought she was ugly, that didn't matter either.  But
now O'Brien had scented her concern about shooting Teddy Shaw, and he
was out for blood.

"That red-headed gal, the one who used to be a hot-shot Air Force
pilot, the expert interviewer who gets every suspect to spill their
guts-oops."

There was a brief silence.  O'Brien eyed Eileen and she glared back at
him.

"One way or another," O'Brien added with a charming small smile, and
Eileen couldn't help it.  She started laughing.  O'Brien stood up at
his desk and waved his fists around like a winner in the boxing ring,
revealing rings of sweat under his armpits like a slice of an ancient
tree and sending an enormous scent wave of Dial soap in Eileen's
direction.

"The champeeeon," O'Brien crowed.

Eileen, still laughing, waved at O'Brien like she was shooing a fly.

O'Brien was better than a thousand sessions with Gerri Matthews.

Besides, O'Brien would never try to find out what really happened in
the back of Teddy Shaw's van.  With luck, Eileen could keep Gerri from
finding out too.

The Great Sand Dunes, Colorado

The park ranger was much younger than Marcia Fowler and frightened half
to death by the earthquake.  Consequently, he was horribly rude, which
awoke a faint sense of amusement in Marcia and helped her regain her
calm.  This was no strong and capable Authority, but a tiny puffed
chest youngster barely on the edge of control.

After assigning another, even younger park ranger to keep anyone from
entering the dunes, he walked with Marcia out into the sand.  His
stride was heroic and his Smokey-Bear hat brim was suitably lowered, as
though glowering at the old lady tourist and her ridiculous vapors.
Marcia made no attempt to keep up with him, although without the
sprained ankle, she could have easily matched his pace.  Marcia was a
regular at her local fitness center and ran 10k races occasionally just
for fun.  She sometimes got whistles from her rear view.  She had
nothing to prove to Mr.  Puffy Chest.  Twice he stopped and waited for
her to catch up, then marched on ahead after a nice rest for him, no
rest for her.  Marcia plodded on a steady, ankle-saving pace and
ignored him.  Finally, he reluctantly dropped his pace back to hers.

"How far, ma'am?"  he asked brusquely, after ten minutes of silent
hiking together.

"About a half mile," Marcia said.  The dunes stretched behind them for
nearly a mile in almost pancake flatness.  The ripples of Medano Creek
rushed across the center of the flat stretch of sand.  Medano started
in the far Sangre de Christo Mountains and ran under the dunes.

The creek surfaced in bare sand and ran for a mile before vegetation
took over at the edge of the dunes.  The creek was bathwater
temperature in the summer and was no more than seven inches deep.
During a warm day, like yesterday, Marcia had seen hundreds of children
playing in the warm sandy water, splashing and shrieking with delight.
Marcia's rubber sandals were already dry after splashing through the
creek.  The ranger's boots were wet and likely to stay that way,
another source of amusement to her.  Why would you be a ranger at the
Great Sand Dunes and not have a pair of sandals to wear on the sand?
Because sandals didn't convey the proper profile of authority, she
answered herself.

After nearly a mile of flat sand, the dunes really began.  The first
few slopes, miniature foothills, took no more than fifteen minutes or
so to climb.  After the first hills of sand came mountains, then
mountains even larger still, until the tan of the sand met the sizzling
blue of the Colorado sky.  The sheer amount of sand was astonishing.
Marcia had gotten through the first set of foothills and was beginning
her first major climb when she'd found the body.  At dawn the sand had
been full of color, various shades of tan and blue and black.  Now the
sand was uniformly pale brown and featureless and radiated heat in
waves.  It smelled, too, a vague and faintly spicy scent that Marcia
couldn't define.

They crested the last of the foothills and Marcia saw the forlorn shape
of the girl.  Ranger Keith strode on, hat lowered.  She put a hand on
his arm and when he stopped she pointed mutely.  His face blanched, and
for a moment he looked very much like a bewildered, small boy.  Marcia
knew he'd convinced himself she was a fruitcake, probably one of those
UFO nuts, and he was in for a long walk in the sun for nothing.

"Oh," he said in a little voice.

"We'll have to cover her, and post a ranger to keep people away.  Then
you can send someone to town to fetch the sheriff," Marcia said
gently.

Ranger Keith nodded.  His face wore a floundering look, and she almost
felt sorry for him.

"I have to make sure she's dead," he said gruffly.

"Well, make sure of it," Marcia snapped.

"But she isn't wearing any clothes and she needs to be decently
covered.  I don't want people gaping at her."

Ranger Keith flushed bright red all the way to the brim of his
Smokey-Bear hat.  Marcia felt a brief flash of bitter hatred for the
creatures that had left this poor woman to be gawked at.  She felt
fairly certain the ones who'd done this were Grays.  In her long walk
back to the ranger station, she'd had time to think about the lack of
footprints in the sand and the mutilations.  The dead girl was tumbled
in the lee part of a dune and her body lay in a body-shaped outline.
There were no other footprints around her.  Some of her skin had been
removed in strips.

Marcia Fowler was not part of the UFO crowd that subscribed to the
belief that aliens were benign, kindly watchers of humankind.  She was
firmly in the camp of the believers in the malignancy of alien
visitations.

She'd read the stories of abductions, mutilations, missing time, and
men in black.  Never was a human body found.  There were continuing
rumors about the Air Force major found in the Nevada desert, skin
sliced off, anus cored away, genitals removed, just like the many
documented cow mutilations.  But other than the rumors and this was no
more than a rumor there were no cases of actual deaths.

This girl might be the first.  Marcia felt a brief excited trickle in
the pit of her stomach, thinking of the reaction in the UFO community.
Then her eyes focused on the blushing ranger.  Beyond him lay the
sprawled and mutilated form of the girl, and she felt ashamed.

"Let's go look at her," Marcia said firmly.

"Then we'll cover her and go back."

"Yes, ma'am," the ranger mumbled.  He took off his hat, revealing a
surprisingly pink and bald dome.  He wiped sweat off the top of his
head and put the hat back on.  With the hat off, he was a mild and
tender looking young man.  With the hat on, he immediately became
Ranger Keith, strong of jaw and with flashing manly eye.

They walked down the slope of the dune together, and there was the
girl, whoever she was, eyes blinded with sand, dead.  Marcia was a
biology teacher and dead things were nothing new to her.  As a young
girl, she'd hunted deer in South Dakota with her father.  The flies,
the pale skin, the beginning of bloat, didn't make an impression.
Marcia was looking at sharp laser cuts; skin sheared away at her
shoulder and down her arm, bruises about the nose and back of the neck.
There were bruises about the throat as well, faint marks.  One arm was
at an odd angle, without any swelling.  She'd been killed shortly after
her arm had been broken.

Ranger Keith was suddenly halfway up the dune, head down, hands on his
knees.  Marcia moved away reluctantly from the girl and walked back up
the slope.  The ranger hadn't thrown up, but it was a near thing.

Beads of clear perspiration stood out on his cheeks and neck.

"I need to call this in, before we go back," he said hoarsely.  His
hand was fumbling again and again at the catch to his radio, failing to
negotiate the small buckle.  Perhaps he'd seen dead bodies before, but
Marcia knew he'd never seen anything like this before.  Fair enough.
Neither had she.

"Right," Marcia said.  She took one last look back, trying to memorize
every detail, trying to get a picture in her mind that she could later
look at and examine.

Once the sheriff took her statement, Marcia was planning to make some
phone calls.  She would contact some people who would suddenly take an
intense interest in the San Luis Valley.  Maybe, just maybe, this would
be the case that would bring the UFO community into the mainstream.

If that would happen, Marcia was sure that humans could defeat the
Grays.  Humans were stronger and smarter and were losing only because
they didn't know they were in a war.  The girl, the dead girl, might
just unmask the war.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Dead body," Harben yelled.

"Peterson Air Force Base."

Eileen and Dave Rosen reached for their jackets.  The late August
weather had decided to pretend it was fall, with high gray clouds
scudding overhead and a chilly wind tearing at the leaves of the trees,
as though the weather was surprised at the earthquake, too.  Tomorrow
it could be eighty degrees without a cloud in the sky.  There could
even be surprise snowstorms in the glorious fall days of September and
October, and when those happened, hikers always died, wearing nothing
but sandals and light summer clothes and a surprised look.  Colorado
could be deadly to the unprepared.

"Great, another Air Force liaison job," Eileen grumbled to Rosen as
they walked to Harben's desk.

"You'll be working with Major Bandimere on this one," Harben said,
hanging up the phone.  " I know you hate the liaison job, Eileen, but
you two are just too damn good at it.  As you well know."

"Where do we go?"

"Government Building 12-E, but that's okay, Major Bandimere will be
waiting to guide you.  You don't have to find it on your own."

"Major Bandimere, oh boy," Eileen said dryly.  Rosen and Harben
exchanged deadpan looks.  Major Deanna Bandimere was very pretty and
wore a great deal of makeup.  She was just about five foot three, and
affected a little-girl, breathless Marilyn Monroe pout that put
Eileen's teeth on edge.  Eileen, who wore little makeup and didn't have
the slightest idea how to pout, had little affection for the diminutive
major.

"At least you don't have to have her hanging all over your every word,"
Rosen said under his breath.  Bandimere flirted with every male over
the age of twelve and Dave Rosen was an available target.

"You have any ideas on how to approach this one, boss?"

"Be careful," Harben said absently, his eyes already returning to his
computer screen.

"Keep your eyes open.  The major implied that it was a suicide, but I
want you to make sure."

"No problem," Eileen said.  At least this was a thankful change from
all the damn earthquake reports.  She and Rosen stood from their
chairs, and Harben turned back to his computer terminal.

"Tallyho," Rosen murmured.

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

The irritating Major Bandimere was waiting at the gate, pert and curly
and tiny behind the wheel of the large government truck.  She rolled
down the window with brisk little cranks as they pulled up.

"Hello," she said to Eileen.

"How are you, Ellie?  Nice to see you, Dave."

"Rosen," Rosen said frostily.

"We've got a suicide case out at 12-E," the little Major continued.

"Just follow me, we'll be there in just a sec."

"I hate people who say 'sec'," Rosen said as Bandimere wheeled her Jeep
around in a tight circle and headed back through the gate of Peterson
Air Force Base.  Eileen laughed out loud.

"Don't fret it," she said.

"I won't, Ellie," he said.  Eileen shuddered.

"Aren't we lucky," Rosen murmured.

"I'd almost rather be filing more earthquake reports," Eileen said,
then glanced over at Rosen.

"Almost," they said in unison.

There was a comfortable silence between them as they followed Major
Bandimere, the comfort of nearly a year of police work as partners.

Eileen liked Dave Rosen quite a bit.  She'd been worried Rosen would
try to take over the team, as many men naturally tried to do when their
senior partner was a female.  Eileen wasn't going to budge, not after
working as junior partner to Jim Erickson for three years.  But men
didn't go into police work if they were the passive type.  She smelled
trouble, but it didn't happen.

Rosen was so quiet she found herself thinking that the racist
stereotype of the silent Native American was true in his case.  Eileen
was almost positive that Rosen was Native American, but knew for sure
that he wasn't Sioux.  Eileen grew up in northeastern Wyoming; she knew
the distinctive characteristics of the Lakota Sioux.  Eileen thought
for a while he had to be Navaho, but she knew he'd transferred from New
York.

Whatever he was and wherever he came from, he was the most perfectly
balanced man she'd ever met.  He never tried to take the lead in their
investigations, yet worked as hard as she did.  He was a man of few
words, but the words he spoke were always sharp as knives.  Eileen
would talk and Rosen would listen and interject a comment or two, and
they would solve their case.

Best of all, there didn't seem to be an ounce of romantic chemistry
between them.  Dave Rosen was six feet tall with ink-black hair and
soulful black eyes and a handsome, chiseled face, and he didn't turn
Eileen's crank one bit and never had, even when Rosen was a rookie and
she was still working with Jim Erickson.  Rosen didn't seem to find her
attractive, either.  Eileen read an article on pheromones once, and the
theory of the researcher was that if two people were not genetically
compatible that is, if their offspring would be defective then the two
people would not be attracted to each other at all, no matter what they
looked like.

Eileen expressed this thought to Rosen one night on a very boring
stakeout, when they were sharing a messy twelve-inch meatball sub.  If
Eileen had been sharing a meatball sub with Joe Tanner, she would have
attacked him the first time he put his fingers in his mouth and sucked
off the thick chunks of spaghetti sauce, like Rosen was doing.  Joe,
not too physically different from Dave Rosen, drove her to distraction.
Everything he did was intensely arousing.  Joe was a fascinating man,
she explained to Rosen, licking her own fingers one by one.  It wasn't
that he was some sexual passion, some meathead that she liked to sleep
with.

She loved him.  He was just also incredibly sexually attractive.

"You two'll make pretty babies," Rosen said, typically brief.

"You and I would make three-headed monsters with big noses and hair all
over their bodies."

Eileen laughed so hard at this that she choked on a piece of sandwich,
then whacked her forehead on the dash while coughing it up.  Rosen
offered her a sip of her Coke with eyes glittering with laughter.

Major Bandimere swung the Jeep to a stop and hopped out.  She managed
to make her standard Air Force uniform look like an expensive
department store suit, something worn by a little mannequin with pertly
curled blonde hair.  Her triangle of blue skirt was tight and short and
her pale blue shirt was tailored to her pointed, high breasts.  A wave
of perfume enveloped Eileen as the major stepped out of her Jeep.

"We're pretty sure this is a suicide," she repeated, pulling out two
visitor passes from a leather folder.  The passes had clips to attach
to their shirts.

"Major Jim Leetsdale, found in the park by 12-E where he worked.
Gunshot wound, but nobody heard it.  It was either during the
earthquake, or maybe right after.  We don't know."  She handed a pass
to Eileen and stepped over to Rosen.  Ignoring his hand held out for
the badge, she stepped close to him and attached it to his shirt
pocket.

"There," she said, patting her little hands on Rosen's broad chest.

Eileen smothered a grin as she attached her own visitor's pass.
Peterson Air Force Base was a pleasant place, with trees and broad
avenues.  The buildings were twentieth-century cinder block affairs,
but an attempt had been made to make them pretty with bushy green
landscaping and groupings of trees.  The parking lot where Major
Bandimere led them was in front of 12-E.  The building's designation
was clearly painted in black letters nearly five feet tall.  Only a few
cars dotted the lot.  Beyond the parking lot was a pretty little green
space, a park, with a cannon on the rise of a hill.  A soldier stood
sentry near the cannon.

No, wait.  Eileen saw the edge of a blue tarp.  The soldier was
standing sentry next to the body.  Their body.  She felt the taste in
the back of her throat, the pleasant little taste like biting into
something tart and sweet at the same time.  She'd long ago gotten over
the guilt about feeling so good.  This is what she loved to do.

"Who found the body?"  she asked.

"Private Amy Szneski," Major Bandimere said.

"She's trying to get into Special Forces school so she's out running
every morning at dawn carrying a big pack filled with rocks.  At least
that's what she says.  We've got her in 12-E, in the break room."

"Okay," Eileen said, and sighed.  Deanna Bandimere was competent, at
least, if not any fun.

"Let's look at the body."

The major gestured, and they walked toward the cannon and the sentry.

"Anybody touch the body?"  Eileen asked.

"Just Szneski, feeling for a pulse.  And me, same thing.  I have a call
into Doctor Durland's office.  He'll have the crime scene team out here
in an hour or so."

The sentry was bored and cold.  The day was still threatening rain.

The wind was chilly and the soldier was dressed in summer camouflage.

He drew up and saluted Major Bandimere.

"Go get some food and pick up your jacket," she said.

"Be back in an hour."  The soldier dropped his salute and set off at a
run.

Eileen drew on a pair of latex gloves.  She kept a whole box of them in
her Jeep.  Rosen, too, silently put gloves on.  Bandimere had her own
set.

Eileen stepped forward and pulled the tarp back carefully.

There he was.  Major Jim Leetsdale, if Bandimere was correct.  The man
was very dead.  He was lying on the slope of the little hill that held
the cannon.  His eyes were partially open and glazed.  Some blood had
trickled from his nose, mouth, and ears.  His hands were at his sides,
his palms open and up, his feet together.  There were a few flies, made
sluggish by the cold, crawling around his mouth.  The gun was lying in
his right hand, his finger still through the trigger guard.  A single
black hole marked his face, in his left eyesocket.  The force of the
bullet had knocked the eye out of true but hadn't destroyed it.  The
eye gazed forlornly off to the side while the other one stared
indifferently at the sky.

Eileen felt her belly tighten.  She gave a careful sidelong glance at
Rosen and saw his tiny nod.  She turned back to the body.

There was an empty wine cooler in the grass.  A small puddle of a
purplish substance was still in the bottom of the bottle.

"We'll want that tested," Eileen murmured.

"When the crime scene crew gets here."

"If that's his," Rosen said.

"It's his," Eileen said, as Bandimere nodded.  Eileen explained to
Rosen.  She had been in the Air Force.  At every base, grounds cleanup
was meticulously thorough.  There were no cigarette butts, potato chip
wrappers, or paper cups on any military base.  As a recruit in basic
training, Eileen had worked on countless cleanup crews.  In a double
line, they would sweep across a parking lot or a field and pick up
every tiny piece of trash they would see.  If the sergeant found the
tiniest gum wrapper, there would be no weekend leave.  This tactic was
still used today and helped keep every base meticulously, even
spookily, clean.

"So," Eileen concluded, "an object as big as a wine cooler bottle
couldn't be left more than overnight."

"Seems like overkill," Rosen commented.

"I've got one word for you," Eileen grinned.

"Mines."

"Oh," Rosen said, blinking.

"These guys occasionally get deployed to lovely spots like Bosnia,"
Eileen said.

"Being meticulous is a good way to stay alive."

Rosen, economical with words as always, nodded.  Eileen could almost
see the busy librarian in Rosen's brain filing the information away,
categorizing it, and extrapolating it to fit any future situation.

Rosen was smart.  It was fun to teach him something new.

"Was there a suicide note?"  she asked Bandimere.

"Not that we found here," Bandimere replied.

"But there might be one in his office.  We sealed it off.  Didn't even
go in yet."

Eileen squatted down next to the body.  She put one finger on his
chest, a chest that was silent and still and flattened to the ground.
Then she really looked at him, looked past the beginnings of bloat and
the flies and the queerly aimed gaze.  This was Jim Leetsdale, a man,
perhaps a husband and father.  What was he like?  She saw the new lines
of sadness and care in his forehead and bracketing his mouth, lines of
sorrow so new they looked almost like cuts.  Behind that were smile
lines and fine crow tracks.  The crow tracks looked like they were made
squinting into wind or sun, tracks that spoke of boating or hikes or
hiking or some kind of good fun.  His teeth, seen through the slackness
of his mouth, were clean and straight, his arms were well muscled, his
belly slightly soft.  He had thinning blond hair that was cut short,
with no pretense of comb-over or other nonsense.

"Was he married?"

"Married, lost his wife last year," Bandimere read from her folder.

"Lori Leetsdale, killed in the Burbank earthquake.  A wall fell on her
and a couple other people.  She was pregnant."

There was a small silence.  Eileen, squatting by Leetsdale, looked up
at

Rosen.  He met her eyes and didn't need to shake his head for her to
understand the look.  She nodded and turned back to the body.

No comb-over of the hair, good looking, soft in the belly from desk
work but otherwise fit.  A well-loved man, before a disaster took his
family from him.

"Why a wine cooler?"  Rosen asked abruptly.

Eileen stood up and shook out her legs.  She had that thought too,
although she was unhappy to think about it.

"A fruity sweetish drink.  More like a girl's drink," she said, and
grimaced.

"Not that I really want to say that."

"Maybe the wine cooler has a drug in it," Bandimere said.

"Wine coolers are sweet and might mask a bitter taste.  So he could
work himself up to pull the trigger."

Eileen looked at Deanna Bandimere with new interest.  This was more
than she expected from the major.

"Hey!"  shouted someone from behind Eileen, making her flinch.  She
spun around, instantly angry at being surprised like that.  The man
coming up the slope of the hill behind her was in a business suit.  He
looked furious.  Bright pink burned across his cheekbones.  He had
thick brown hair and eyebrows and hazel eyes that were rimmed in red,
as though he'd spent a sleepless night or had recently been crying. His
skin was pitted with old acne scars, which gave him a rough, handsome
look.  He was tall and broad, a man who looked like he knew he was
handsome, or at least thought he did.  His hands were clenched into
white-knuckled fists.

"Hello," Rosen said mildly.

"Mr.  Mitchell," Bandimere squeaked.

"What is the meaning of this--travesty?"  Mr.  Mitchell's voice was
deep and powerful and very angry.  Bandimere nearly quailed, her little
form shrinking under Mitchell's angry gaze.  This made Eileen furious,
not just with Mitchell's tone of voice but with contempt at
Bandimere.

Women, of which she was one, should never, ever quail before men.

She backed her belief with self-defense training and two guns.  Eileen
tried to arm women at every opportunity, and she found it odd and
puzzling that most women, who got the best use out of guns and who
rarely put them to bad use, were so adamantly for gun control.  What,
so if there were no more guns men would stop using their fists, too?
Or they would abandon cotton pads soaked with ether and burglar's
tools, like Teddy Shaw?

All this flashed through Eileen's thoughts in an instant.

"So who the hell are you?"  she asked pleasantly, and was rewarded with
Mitchell's angry gaze.

"Jacob Mitchell, director of Ops, 12-E," the man said.

"Why aren't you taking care of this poor man?"

"We are, sir," Bandimere said in a voice so breathless and tiny she
sounded like a cartoon mouse.  Eileen could have kicked her.

"You call this taking care of Jim?  He's dead, he's killed himself, and
you're standing around him like a bunch of goddamned buzzards letting
the flies crawl over him!"  Mitchell turned his furious face to Rosen,
ignoring Eileen.

"You, who are you?  Are you in charge here?"  he asked.

"I'm in charge here," Eileen said tightly.

"Detective Reed.  This is Detective Rosen.  Colorado Springs homicide.
Let's step away from the crime scene, shall we?  I don't want you to
accidentally contaminate evidence."

"You're calling suicides crime scenes, now?  Don't you have anything
better to do, like some real crimes?"  Mitchell yelled.  A chilly,
gusty wind snapped the edge of the blue tarp and sent some stray leaves
over the top, making a sound like cornflakes rattling into a bowl.

"Let's just step away, sir," Eileen repeated.

"I want you to take care of my friend," Mitchell said.  His voice broke
on the word friend and his cheeks burned pinker in the gray
afternoon.

"We're sorry about your friend," Eileen said gently.

"But we have to follow certain procedures.  Let us take care of this,
all right?  Let's just step away, now."  Eileen made the mistake of
putting her hand on Mitchell's upper arm.  The muscles of his arm were
humming and writhing like a nest of cottonmouth snakes.  He threw her
hand off with a cry of disgust and stepped backward.  The slope of the
little hill made him lose his footing, and he nearly fell down.

"Major Bandimere, I want you to take care of this situation
immediately!"

he shouted, regaining his balance and shaking out his sleeves as though
he'd been burned by Eileen's touch.

"And you," he said, looking at Eileen, "I'll be placing a call to your
superior and I'll have your job."  Mitchell turned and walked toward
his car, a brand new torpedo of a sedan that snarled like a jungle cat
as he revved the motor.  He puffed some black smoke out of the tires as
he pulled into the street.

On the hill by the cannon, there was only the sound of the rattling
leaves on the tarp and Deanna Bandimere's anxious breathing.

"Well," Eileen said.

"That was unpleasant."

"He'd be terrible at your job," Rosen said, deadpan.

Eileen started laughing and then abruptly stopped as she saw Bandimere.
The little woman was pale-faced and wild-eyed and looked entirely
spooked, like a teacup poodle thrown into a pool.

"So who was that clown, Deanna?"  she asked.

"What's up with him?"

"Oh, no," Bandimere moaned, wringing her narrow hands.

"We really, really can't make Mr.  Mitchell upset.  He's really
important.  He's got power."

"Not over us," Rosen said calmly.

"Fill us in, Deanna," Eileen said.

"Don't forget, you can blame everything on us.  We're protected all the
way to Congress.  Remember, they passed that law about military bases
and capital crimes?"  Bandimere nodded miserably.

"No matter what Mitchell is at Peterson, he's got no power over us.  He
looks familiar but I can't place him.  So who is he?"

"He's a former state congressman.  Didn't you recognize him?  He made a
run for President a few years ago, but dropped out before the primaries
were over.  Now he's the project chief at 12-E," Bandimere said.

"You guys must not follow politics very much."  She sighed and blew a
strand of blonde hair off her forehead, but her expression lightened as
she looked from Rosen to Eileen.  She spread her hands wide.

"And before you ask me what that is, I'll have to tell you I don't have
the foggiest idea.  Something compartmentalized."

"What's compartmentalized mean?"  asked Rosen.

"Above top secret," Eileen said absently.

"Access only by special password.  So if you are working on a
compartmentalized project, you have a top-secret clearance and a
special access code, like 'doom," for example."

Eileen gulped and stopped abruptly.  She had "doom" access clearance,
clearance that she shouldn't have on a particularly dangerous piece of
American history.  Somehow the word just slipped out.  Her and her big
mouth.  Luckily, Rosen and Bandimere were nodding without
comprehension, as though she'd made up the word instead of spilling a
special-access password.  Damn secrets.  Eileen didn't like them and
didn't like keeping them.

"So Mitchell's on a special project," she said quickly.

"So what?"

"It's something very big and powerful and he pulls a lot of money to
the base, that's all I know," Bandimere said.

"He's a politician.  He really does have power.  Can't we hurry and
wrap this up, just to make him happy?  You guys would really be doing
me a favor."

Eileen glanced over at Rosen, whose shoulders raised a tiny
millimeter.

A whole conversation went between them in the arch of her eyebrow and
the shrug of his shoulders.  The gusty cold winds were getting fiercer
and the light was fading.  The day was tending toward real rain.

Eileen looked toward the Front Range.  The enormous bulk of Pikes Peak
should have been clearly visible, but it was shrouded in clouds.

"Deanna," she said.

"I would like to wrap this up, but we're going to have to do some
further investigation."

"On a suicide?"  Deanna wailed.

"Are you trying to kill my career, here?"

"On a homicide," Eileen said.

"This man didn't kill himself.  He was killed, and he was set here to
make it look like a suicide."

"Tarp," Rosen called.  Eileen leaped to grasp the other edge of the
tarp before a particularly heavy gust of wind tore it from the body.
She and Rosen struggled for a moment before they secured the tarp with
some of the loose rocks at the base of the cannon.

"When is Dr.  Durland going to get here?"  Eileen said as the first
pellets of cold rain rattled against the tarp.  She ducked her head as
a spray of icy droplets swept against her cheek.

"Crime scene crew should be here within the hour," Bandimere said in a
stunned, lost voice.

"You say he was killed?  You think he was killed?"

"He was killed," Eileen said, and Rosen nodded.

"They only missed a few things," he said.

"They almost fooled us."

"Oh my God," Bandimere said softly.  The rain plastered her blonde hair
against her cheeks, making her look even younger and smaller.

"Murder."

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Alan Baxter almost fell full across the bed, dirty and tired as he was,
and let sleep take him.  But he was sandy and dirty and this bed was
sweetly clean and white.  Beth Williams's guest room was a haven and he
couldn't bring himself to foul the sheets on his first night.

He wearily stripped his travelling clothes and kicked them into a
pile.

The guest bathroom was freshly scrubbed and spotlessly white.  The
scent of cleaner still hung faintly in the air.  Pale oak cabinets held
everything from untouched toothbrushes to an electric razor.  Thick
white towels, ridiculously fluffy, hung from long oak bars.  Beth
Williams was happy to have guests, Alan decided, turning on the water
in the shower.

The water was hot in moments and stayed that way, all the way through
his shower.  He stood under the water and let the pounding spray take
some of the ache out of his elderly muscles.

When he'd driven up to the gates of the Williams's Ranch, still elated
he'd survived the earthquake that had taken half the rest stop, he'd
found himself recruited immediately to help round up panicked and
stampeded cattle.  The ranch entrance was gated and locked, with a
doorbell button on a pole for easy access from a truck.  A small sign
on the gate modestly said "Williams."  Alan pressed the button and
waited for ten minutes before he saw a truck raising a plume of dust
down the ranch road.  The truck held Beth Williams, Sam's wife, who was
directing the salvage operation at the main house.  They had never met,
but Beth knew he was coming for a visit.  Sam Williams had already
been gone for hours, collecting his priceless scattered quarter horses
Beth unlocked the gate and waved Alan through with wide arcs of her
arm.  She desperately needed someone to drive out to pasture four with
water, coffee, and sandwiches.  Alan immediately offered his Bronco and
his services and fifteen minutes later found himself driving over bumpy
pastureland with an enormous cooler and a huge Thermos of coffee
strapped into the back.  He hadn't even gotten out of his Bronco.

He found pasture four easily; there were no signs but the area was a
milling, frantic mess of cattle and dogs and men in four-wheel-drive
trucks.  Four men were working with the cattle, although it seemed like
a hundred with the noise and the dust.  The men were using the dogs and
their trucks to cut injured cattle out of the herd.  Most were being
patched up in a makeshift corral, although there were two forlorn
corpses stacked neatly thirty yards away from the corral.  As Alan
drove by, he saw that each had been shot between the eyes.  He parked
next to the makeshift corral and wondered what to do next.

A man who seemed most obviously in charge came striding over with his
hat plastered to his eyebrows and an outlaw bandanna tied around nose
and chin.  Alan just had time to notice that the man's shirt seemed to
fit him rather oddly when the cowboy reached his Bronco and raised his
head.

"Tell me my mom sent you here with food," a woman's voice said from the
bandanna.

"In the back," Alan said, trying not to laugh out loud.  Now that he
could see her eyes and hear her voice, he wondered how he'd mistaken
her curves for a man.  Perhaps he should look into getting glasses.

"Well, get out and help me," the woman said, pulling her bandanna down
and glaring at him.

"We're dying out here.  It's been hours."

Alan jumped out quickly and opened up the back.  Within a few moments,
three out of the four cowboys were gathered around his Bronco, drinking
water from the plastic cups Beth Williams had thrown into the back.
Water dribbled down their chins and out the sides of their mouths and
cut clean streams through the dirt and grime that coated them.  Two of
the four dogs came trotting up and were given cups of their own.  They
were no neater than the cowboys, slobbering water out their muzzles as
they lapped frantically.  Alan found himself holding the cup for one
of the cow dogs, and was taken aback when the dog gave him a measured,
adult look before drinking from the cup he held.  He'd never seen such
intelligence in a dog's eyes.

The two dogs went back to the corral, and the other two cowboys came
trotting to the Bronco.  In the meantime, the remaining cowboys-cow
people?  Alan wondered, since the Williams's girl and one other were
both female--dug into the cooler with little yelps of joy.  The
Williams's girl dropped a thick sandwich into Alan's hands.

"Ate today?"  she said, her voice muffled by an enormous mouthful of
food.

"No," Alan said, unwrapping his sandwich.  His stomach woke up at the
sight of the thick meatloaf.  Homegrown lettuce was piled on top of the
meatloaf and the bread looked homemade.  He bit in.  It was, and so was
the meatloaf.  He didn't think he'd ever had a better sandwich.

"Angler?"  the girl asked, tilting her head towards Alan's Bronco.

"Yeth," Alan said through a mouthful of meatloaf.

"Friend of Dad's?"

This time he only nodded.

"Ever doctor cattle?"

"Not until today," Alan said after swallowing.  He gave the girl a
sunny grin and she grinned back.  She was perhaps thirty, nearly six
feet tall and with Sam Williams's round face and cheerful black eyes.
Crow'sfeet radiated from her eyes and her hair was damp with sweat. She
looked magnificent.

"We'd appreciate the help," Sam's daughter said, and dusted her palms
free of crumbs.  She held out a callused and filthy hand.

"Susan Williams."

"Alan Baxter," Alan said.

"Lead me to it."

That was twelve long hours ago.  It was midnight, and they'd finished
gutting and hanging the four cattle that were casualties of the
earthquake only an hour ago.  Beth Williams laid on a feast at the big
country kitchen, steaks and eggs and country gravy over biscuits and an
enormous spinach and lettuce salad with fresh cherry tomatoes and tiny
carrots and peas, all from her own garden and tasting like heaven.

"We'll salvage two for the ranch," Sam told the family at dinner.

"The others will go to Operation Relief.  I'm sure they'll appreciate
the donation."

"Operation Relief gives groceries to lower income families," Susan
explained to Alan in a murmur.

"Private, no governmental strings, just the way we like it."

"Thanks again, Alan," Sam said.

"I'm sure glad you happened by today."

"Me, too," Alan said, and meant it, even though he was filthy and more
tired than he had ever been since a summer working construction long
years ago.

"So where were you during the earthquake?"  asked Frank.  Frank, short
and dark, was from New Jersey, was emphatically Italian American and
had bought a one-way bus ticket to Wyoming the day he graduated from
high school.  He ended up as a cowhand on a ranch in Jackson Hole and
eventually found his way to the Williams's place.  He explained to Alan
that he always wanted to be a cowboy.  He was just born with the itch
and had it all his life.  Frank told Alan this while expertly stitching
a long gash in a heifer's haunch.  Alan was sitting on the cow's head
and holding her front feet, a position he found awkward and potentially
dangerous.  But Frank knew what he was doing.

He later explained to Alan about waking up in mid-Wyoming and looking
out the bus window at the bright and silent world of Sinclair, an
oil-refinery town.  He thought it was an amusement park, he told Alan,
because he couldn't imagine that around the town of Sinclair there were
hundreds of miles of nothing at all.  The bright lights, the towers,
and his exhaustion peopled the empty refinery structure with Ferris
wheels and roller coasters and miniature golf towers.  When he woke
again he was seeing the dawn rise over the Wind River Mountains, and he
knew he was in the land of his heart, his dreams, the West.

"I was at the rest stop coming down from La Veta Pass when the
earthquake hit," Alan explained at the supper table.

"But I wouldn't try to take a break there anytime soon.  Most of it's
at the bottom of the canyon."  He was happy to have a story to tell and
gratified at the stunned amazement of his hosts.

"We didn't think there was any damage," Beth said.

"I hope no one was killed."

"We should catch the news," Sam said.

"I'll catch up in the morning," Alan said.

"I need a shower and sleep more than I need to see the news right
now."

His shower over, Alan pulled on an ancient and most-beloved pair of
trout boxer shorts and a white T-shirt.  He pulled back the covers and
gingerly settled his body into the cool sheets and turned off the
lights.  He had a habit of thinking over his day while he settled into
sleep, but tonight he was asleep before he began.

Joni's Restaurant, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Tonight, I'll take every perk you can get us," Joe Tanner sighed.
Joni's Restaurant was roaring with people.  A crowd of waiting guests
stood in animated clumps in Joni's gardens.  Joni didn't allow smoking
so only the smells of her cooking wafted out the front of the old
Victorian house.

"I was right," Eileen said.

"Everyone in Colorado Springs has gone out to dinner tonight."

"Eileen!"  Joni called out.

"And your handsome Joe!  I was hoping you would arrive tonight.  I have
saved you a spot."

Joe put his nose in the air and pinned a smug smile on his face as they
were escorted past the crowd of waiting people.  Joni was tiny and
wizened and adorable in her checked apron.  Her thick white hair had
been cut recently and up swept in the latest style, held back by the
flowered headband she always wore.

"We can wait, Joni," Eileen protested.

"I don't want to impose."

"Nonsense!"  Joni said sharply.

"Look at my gardens.  These people are having a wonderful wait."

"True!"  Joe said cheerfully.  Joni's gardens were exquisite.  Park
benches and rattan chairs dotted the gardens and attentive waiters took
orders for drinks.  The late August evening was chilly but the
afternoon rain had blown away and it promised to be beautiful
tomorrow.

"Besides, if I know my Eileen, she has not stopped working today, am I
right?"  Joni said.

"Making sure everyone is okay after the earthquake and taking care of
people."

"More or less," Eileen mumbled, thinking of Jim Leetsdale in his silent
box at the morgue.

"Here is your table," Joni said, settling them in what was once the
dining room of the old house.  Their table was in the bay window and it
was arguably the best place in the house.

"Thank you, Joni," Joe said happily.  He waggled his eyebrows at Joni
and leaned forward for a kiss, puckering his lips extravagantly.  Joni
squealed in delight and stepped briskly away, making a slapping gesture
at him.

"Stop that, you're Eileen's," she said.  Eileen rolled her eyes.

"Only because you won't run away with me," Joe said mournfully.

"We'd better feed him before he gets any worse," Eileen remarked to
Joni.  Joni laughed and waggled her fingers at Eileen.

"We'll get you set right up," she said, and bustled away.

"So," Joe said, settling in his chair and taking one of Eileen's hands
in his own.

"Tell me about your day."

"A murder at Peterson Air Force Base," Eileen spoke in normal tones.
The restaurant was positively roaring with conversation and cutlery
clashing against plates as people brought every bit ofjoni's fabulous
food to their lips.  The earthquake was the only topic of conversation
as people spoke in bright, animated tones to one another.  There were
no reported fatalities, so the atmosphere had a tone of celebration.
The noise level was outrageous.

"Yikes, a drug case?"

"No," Eileen said reluctantly.  Homicides at the military bases in
Colorado Springs were usually drug-related.  The last big nondrug
homicide Eileen had worked was at Schriever Air Force Base, which had
led her to Joe and "doom" clearance and a friendship with a CIA agent
named Lucy

"This one is odd.  He was laid out to look like he killed himself, but
he was definitely murdered."

"How do you know?"

"Rolls!  Your supper will be out shortly.  Here's some iced tea for
you, my dear, and some iced coffee for my Joe."  Joni breezed away as
quickly as she had appeared, leaving behind steaming fresh rolls and a
small tub of butter along with their drinks.  The iced drinks were
beaded with moisture.

Eileen took her glass and drank gratefully.  She smiled at Joe as he
buttered her a roll.  Joe had a thing about feeding her.  He liked to
offer her bits of his food and make her take them from his hand, or
give her bites from his wedge of pizza.  Eileen found this little quirk
endearing.  It was almost as if by feeding her he was providing for
her, a modern version of killing an animal and laying it at her cave
door.  She accepted a bite from the roll.  It was loaded with
sun-dried tomatoes and basil and tasted heavenly.

"Oh, my," she said, putting a hand up to her mouth to catch the
crumbs.

"You should have a bite of that."

"So tell me how you knew he was killed," Joe asked again, and took a
big bite out of the roll.

"Well, he was laid out flat on his back with his arms and legs
straight," Eileen said, ticking the reasons off on her fingers.

"Nobody lands like that after they've put a bullet in their head.
Second, although he had powder burns on his hands, he had the gun in
his hand.  Most guns are thrown from the hand after the shot, when the
victim is falling.  They usually don't hang on to the gun.  Third,
there were blood trails from his mouth."

"Blood trails?"  Joe asked, buttering another roll.  His aunt was a
nurse and had lived with his family for years.  She shared tales of
work with Joe's mom, stories that Joe and his brothers had listened to
with fascination.

Joe had an iron stomach to be envied, another reason why Eileen enjoyed
his company.  She never had to edit what she said.

"Blood trails," Eileen smiled, and took another bite from Joe's roll.

"Going from his mouth to his chin.  And from his mouth to his ear.  And
going from his mouth up his cheekbone."

Joe considered this while chewing.

"Not possible," he said eventually.

"Unless the man rolled around after he'd shot himself."

"And then they would be spatters, not trickles," Eileen said in
satisfaction.

"Yes, the man was moved after death.  Blood trails don't run out of
someone in different directions.  And here's the last thing.  The man
had shot himself in the eye."

"In the eye?"  Joe grimaced.

"In the eye.  Do you know how many suicides shoot themselves in the eye
socket?"

"None?"  Joe guessed.

"None," Eileen said.

"Nobody shoots themselves in the eye.  Your eye is too fragile, too
sensitive, too " "Too icky," Joe offered solemnly.

"Too icky," Eileen laughed.

"All of this is circumstantial, but all of it tells me Jim Leetsdale
didn't kill himself.  I'm going to find out why someone wanted me to
think it was a suicide, then I'm going to nail the one who did it."

"Supper," Joni said, setting down plates and whisking away without
another word.  Joni picked their meals for them and they were always
her best dishes.

"Poor bastard," Joe commented, eyeing his plate with relish.

"Who, Leetsdale?"  Eileen asked.

"No," Joe smiled wolfishly.

"The one who's going to be behind bars in a week.  The bastard who
killed him."

Best Western Motel, Alamosa, Colorado

"The scene is completely sealed," Marcia repeated.  She had the makings
of a tremendous headache.  Why hadn't she taken pictures?  Her pity for
the poor dead girl had blinded her to the reality of getting actual
pictures of a human mutilation.

The motel room was steamy and warm.  Marcia had soaked her sprained
ankle, and the rest of her too, in the motel bathtub.  Drying off with
the regrettably thin towels the motel supplied, she'd prepared the
double bed just the way she liked it; all four pillows piled against
the headboard, extra blanket, television remote, glass of ice water,
her journal.

Dressing in her warm, clean sweatpants and a thick pullover, she
finally felt clean for the first time that whole exhausting day.  She'd
settled herself in the bed and started making phone calls.

"Don't feel bad, Marcia," Robert said in her ear.  Robert Carter was
the head of Colorado Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), and he was asking
questions she couldn't answer.  He'd called her back on his encrypted
line, because Robert never discussed anything unless he was on an
encrypted line.  What was the position of the body with regards to the
compass?  Was the woman burned?  Did anyone see any lights the night
before, as well as hearing the Taos Hum?

"I just can't believe I didn't take any pictures," Marcia wailed.  She
rubbed her temple fiercely, fighting a desire to weep.

"I'm sorry I've been pushing you.  I would have done the same thing,
really," Robert said.

"Particularly when we've just been through the first earthquake in
Colorado in who knows how long.  This is why we have such trouble with
proof.  By the time people are calm enough to do some scientific
research, the government has moved in and the scene is sterilized.

Your descriptions have been remarkably good."

"Thanks, Robert," Marcia said.  She still felt miserable.

"I just didn't think about taking pictures.  She was so pale and--oh,
young."

"Have they identified her body yet?"

"Not that I know.  She's at the morgue now, but no one has stepped
forward.  With any luck, the coroner's report will be made public."

"I'm sure it won't," Robert said grimly.

"An autopsy is going to reveal all the classic symptoms of abductee
mutilation--cooked tissue, missing organs, lack of blood.  They won't
print that."

"Alamosa is a pretty small place," Marcia said.

"Let me talk to some people and see what I can find out.  People talk,
you know."  She massaged her leg and flexed her ankle.

"Make it quick," Robert said.

"I'll see who we can send down from MUFON.  If we send the wrong types,
we'll shut the locals up like clams and we'll never find anything out.
Hopefully, the Rabble won't find out too quickly."

Marcia grimaced.  The Rabble was the serious UFO community's name for
the fringe elements.  The Rabble were people who believed they
themselves were space aliens, or who believed Nazi Germany colonized
Mars, or who believed the special effects in the Star Trek shows were
actual shots from the Galactic United Nation's ships.  The Rabble was
also heavily infected with government agents, disinformation agents who
did their best to discredit the entire organization.

"If we get Rabble down here," Marcia said, "we'll be in real
trouble."

"They'll come before a week's out," Robert said grimly.

"The government will send them in, to trample the truth and make sure
no one in Alamosa will ever talk to anyone."

"I'll see what I can find out before then," Marcia promised.

"Marcia," Robert said, then stopped and cleared his throat.

"What is it?"

"Well, just be careful.  You might get a visit from men in black.
Or-god help us--they might abduct more."

Robert always sounded apologetic when discussing actual danger, Marcia
thought numbly, realizing for the first time that she might actually be
in danger.

"I'll be careful.  Nobody even knows what I am," she promised.

"They think I'm just some retired schoolteacher who stumbled across the
body."

"Good," Robert said.

"Keep it that way.  And keep safe."

"You bet I will," Marcia said.

She sat for a few moments after hanging up the phone, absently
massaging her warm and flattened ear.  She'd been a teacher and a
researcher her whole life.  She observed, she didn't act.  Now she was
in the middle of an event an Event and it was hard to get her mind
around that, to swallow it and make it hers.  If she were foolish, she
might end up on the sand as dead and bloodless as that poor girl.

"And I wouldn't make nearly as pretty a corpse," she said to herself.

Marcia had to chuckle at that.  She reached for the remote and turned
on the television, settling back into the softness of the pillows and
brushing her clean hair back from her forehead.  She would cope.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Alan Baxter woke with a start.  For a moment, he couldn't remember
where he was.  Then he remembered.  The Williams's Ranch. Earthquake.

Cattle.  Bright sunshine poured through the guest room window that had
been a black square the night before.  The sunshine laid a bright band
across the bed, picking out the white sections of the quilt that
covered him.  The morning air was chilly, even though it was August, so
it must still have been early.

Alan stretched luxuriously under the covers, feeling his muscles give
little creaks and sighs.  He was a fit sixty-five, even if he was
sixty-five.  A fly fisherman has to have good balance and a lot of
strength to wade across swift-flowing streams.  If an angler was a
particularly good fisherman, he developed well-muscled arms from
fighting fish and bringing them to the net.  Alan hunted new streams
every year, and that often called for long hikes.  He would be a little
sore after spending a day working with cattle, but that would be all.

Rising, he dressed quickly and took time to shave and wet down his
unruly white hair.  He'd gone to bed with his hair still wet the night
before so now his head looked like Einstein's.  Time for another
haircut, he thought, and perhaps he should do that before he met
Krista.

Thinking of Krista sent a pleasurable tingle down his spine.  She was
such a fascinating woman.  Too bad there were so many years between
them.  Alan gave a last rueful glance at his own silly, infatuated
reflection and left the bathroom.  He swept the covers back and made
the bed quickly and neatly.  Years of fishing had left him a
well-behaved guest.

The better the fishing, the better he was as a guest.  A professor's
retirement salary didn't leave much money for motels, so Alan did his
best to make his hosts feel little pain.

Beth Williams was in the kitchen, dressed in a house robe and flipping
pancakes.  Beth was a handsome woman, large-boned, with enormous curves
that looked just right on her frame.  Her skin was as fresh and clear
as an apricot, and only showed her age in the lines of her neck and her
hands.  Her brown hair was clipped back in a ponytail with an enormous,
colorful elastic band that matched her robe.

"What a beautiful guest room," Alan said from the kitchen doorway.

The Williams's house had a country kitchen, a large room with a huge
table that could seat fifteen without a problem.  The floor was pine,
lacquered to a high gloss and easily cleaned of mud and grime, of which
there was always plenty on a ranch.  Beth turned at his voice and
beamed at him.  Her smile was as pretty as her skin.

"Why thank you, Alan," she said.

"I tried to make it nice for you.  Did you sleep well?  Here's some
coffee.  What do you take?"

"Cream only," Alan said, "and I can get it myself."

"Thanks," Beth said, returning to her pancakes.

"I'm trying to get a mess of these on the table, and some eggs too, for
the kids.  They're going to have a big day today, too."

Alan opened the cabinet above the coffee machine and found an entire
array of coffee mugs.  None of the mugs matched, and they were all from
tourist spots; Yellowstone, Disneyland, Grand Canyon, New York City.

Alan laughed and picked out a mug from Mount Rushmore.

"Do you like my collection?"  Beth smiled.

"I get one wherever I go.

And Todd, he's our oldest, he sends them to me in the mail whenever he
finds an interesting one."

"I'll send you one too," Alan promised, filling the mug with coffee and
pouring in a generous dollop of cream.  Beth finished with an enormous
stack of pancakes and put them in the oven to keep warm.  She started
cracking eggs into a big bowl with amazing speed.

"So before you volunteer to help today, don't," Beth said, smiling at
Alan.

"You didn't come here to smear ointment on cows.  We really appreciate
the help yesterday, but today we're in the mop-up stages."

"I will help," Alan said, sipping at his coffee and sighing in
pleasure.

Beth knew how to make coffee.

"I know you have a lot to do."

"Not so much," Beth said, whipping the eggs with a monster whisk.

"Sit down and have some coffee and look at the paper, and then I'll
throw a plate of cakes and eggs in front of you and we'll see what you
do with those."  She turned to her stove.  Alan shrugged and ambled
over to the table, feeling the glorious first rush of hot morning
caffeine.  He sat down at a sunny spot of the table and peeled off the
rubber band from the paper.  The smell of scrambled eggs began to
compete with coffee and pancakes, and Alan's stomach rumbled
pleasantly.

The headline, in huge type, declared, "Earthquake."  It was the story
under the fold that brought Alan's thoughts and his breath to a stop.

"Body Found in Great Sand Dunes," the title read.  The woman was as yet
unidentified but she was between twenty-five and thirty years of age
and had blond hair and blue eyes.  The type blurred as Alan's hands
began to tremble.  It couldn't be, could it?  How many young blond
women were there in the world, anyway?  Too many to count.  But Krista
had been investigating the recent high pollution levels in Medano
Creek, the odd stream that flowed under the Great Sand Dunes and
surfaced at the edge as a rippling shallow creek.  How many young blond
women were at the dunes this week?  Alan told himself he was just being
paranoid, thinking that Krista Lewis was dead right before they met.
Yet as Alan asked permission from Beth to use the phone, something in
the lowest part of his guts was already telling him that his fears were
true.

His gut was telling him that the dead girl was Krista.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"We'll do a complete search of his office today," Eileen said to Dave
Rosen.

"Then we wait for the coroner's report."  The morning office was
already at a dull roar.  The coffee machine barely finished filling the
pot when it was emptied and started again.  Someone had brought in a
couple dozen donuts and the empty boxes sat by the coffee machine.  An
occasional latecomer would stop to peer in the boxes, then sigh and
move on.

"You can finish up those earthquake reports while you're waiting,"
Captain Harben said dryly.  He was walking from the coffee machine
with a deep black cup of joe that could fell a horse in its tracks.

"And what is that?"

"This would be a latte, boss," Eileen said, giggling.  Captain Harben
was Eileen's idea of a perfect boss.  He was cynical and outwardly
morose but as nurturing as a mother duck.  He liked his people to
laugh.

"If you fail to solve this case in your customary week, I'm putting you
back on straight coffee," Harben said, eyeing Eileen's foamy drink.

He walked toward his office, stopping at every desk for a moment or
two.

"That's a super mocha, two shots of espresso, by the color," Rosen
observed, looking into her cup.  He had perched one haunch on her
cluttered desk.  His own desk was already pin neat.

"Joe has corrupted me," Eileen said mournfully, taking a long sip of
her drink.

"If Harben makes me stop drinking this, I'll have to drink eight cups
of coffee in the morning just to start my heart."

"Caffeine," snorted Rosen.  He sipped his distilled water and stood up
from her desk.

"Let's go see what Jim Leetsdale left in his office."

"We're going to a stage set," Eileen said, picking up her keys and her
latte.

"Someone wanted to make this a suicide.  Want to bet on a suicide
note?"

Rosen said nothing as he signed them out on the board, and they headed
for the stairs.  Only when they were in Eileen's Jeep and heading for
Peterson did Rosen speak.

"I bet lunch there's a note," he said thoughtfully.

"But I think there's going to be something else.  He died hard.  He
left us a message."

"Rache," Eileen murmured.  She was thinking of "A Study in Scarlet,"
the Sherlock Holmes story where a murderer leaves a mysterious word on
the wall.  The word, Rache, turns out to be German for "revenge."

"Revenge!"  Rosen said, making Eileen jump.

"Damn, is there anything you haven't read?"  she complained.

"Well, I've read Sherlock Holmes," Rosen said scornfully.

"Who hasn't?"

"Did you read the unedited versions?"  Eileen asked.

"The one where he's always getting down the cocaine bottle and the
needle at the end of the story?"

"Nope, my versions always had him smoking his pipe," Rosen said.

"I was an adult when I learned he was actually shooting up."

"I'll lend you my copy.  You'll have to read the real reason why
Jefferson Hope killed Enoch Drebber," Eileen said smugly.

"For love of a woman," Rosen said flatly.

"Who needs the details?"

"Love of a woman," Eileen said softly, looking out the windshield and
not really seeing the flow of traffic around them.  Lori Leetsdale was
dead a year when Jim Leetsdale was killed.  Who wanted to kill this
man?

And why did they try so hard to make it look like a suicide?  Or were
they wrong this time, and Jim Leetsdale killed himself?

Major Bandimere looked somewhat frazzled today.  She was waiting in her
government Jeep at the entrance to Peterson.  Her hair lay limply
against her cheeks as though it had refused the curling iron.  Her face
was paler than usual and her lipstick was dry around the edges.  Eileen
pulled up and parked her Jeep, and she and Rosen got out.

Yesterday's threatening weather had blown over toward Kansas.  Today
was fresh and beautiful.  The sky was blue and serene and the trees and
grass were a vibrant rain-washed green.  The precise lawns and pruned
bushes of the Air Force base looked great in the dazzling morning
sun.

"Good morning," the little major said, handing a badge to Eileen.

"I

hope Mr.  Mitchell doesn't show up today."

"If he gives me any crap today, Deanna, I'll throw his ass in jail,"
Eileen said comfortingly.

"And you can tell everyone how you tried to make me stop."

Bandimere giggled jaggedly and then bit the sound off with a hand to
the back of her lips.

"Sorry," she said.

"You don't know what I've been through today already."

"Explain," Rosen said economically, failing to evade her little hands
as she clipped his badge to his shirt.

"Let's talk while we're going through Major Leetsdale's office,"
Bandimere said.  She climbed back into her Jeep without another word.

Eileen looked over at Rosen with raised eyebrows when they were
seat-belted into her own Jeep.  Rosen gave a tiny shrug.

Building 12-E looked just the same, although there were more cars in
the parking lot.  The hill by the cannon was empty now, both of the
body and of the sentry.  Eileen drew a last deep breath of piney summer
air and followed Bandimere into the entrance of Government Building

12-E.

Leetsdale's office was cluttered and untidy.  The room was fairly
small

but was stuffed with filing cabinets as well as a battleship gray desk
and chair.  Papers spilled over the top of every available surface as
well as the floor.  A computer sat, screen dark, on Leetsdale's desk.

Eileen stood in the doorway and looked around, seeing Leetsdale's
personality in the shape and the focus of his room.  His desk faced
away from the door, where windows would be if there were any.  In a
classified building like this one, there were no windows.  His computer
keyboard was grubby and well used.  Some dandruff and hairs speckled
the back of the chair.  There were heel marks on the left side of the
desk surface.

Leetsdale liked to stretch back in his chair with his feet on the desk
and think, or type on his keyboard, or perhaps doze after lunch.

"Shall we go in?"  Bandimere said nervously.

"All right," Eileen murmured.  There was nothing obviously out of
place, but she expected that.  Whoever had killed Leetsdale had done a
careful job, just not careful enough.

Huerfano County Sheriff's Office, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Marcia Fowler was waiting patiently.  She was reading the local paper,
paying careful attention to the local police blotter and the social
columns.

A latte steamed at her side, sleeved into a cardboard ring that allowed
her to hold the hot drink without burning her fingers.  She hadn't even
tasted it yet, she'd merely sniffed it.  The local coffee shop was down
the street from the sheriff's office, where she waited for Sheriff Reg
Gonzalez to see her.  Marcia had already learned that Reg and his wife
Conchita had been blessed two weeks ago with their fifth child, a girl,
named Maria Elena Gonzalez, weighing in at seven pounds, eight ounces.
A healthy size, at this altitude.

"Pardon me," a man said.  Marcia looked up from the paper, realizing
the man was speaking to her.  He was just taking a seat next to her,
ajld he was her own age or close to it and he was unexpectedly
handsome.  He was tall and rangy and his eyes were a light-colored
brown, almost golden, like a lion.  His skin was weathered but healthy,
reddish over the cheekbones and nose as though he spent a lot of time
in the sun.  His hair was white and thick and brushed back from a deep
widow's peak.  He was wearing a light blue shirt and a pair of ancient
khakis.

Marcia realized she was staring, and blinked.  How long had it been
since she'd met a good-looking older man who wasn't on a movie
screen?

"Yes?"  she said, and breathed an internal sigh of relief when her
voice came out normally.

"I was wondering where you got the coffee," the man said.

"Is that a cappuccino?"

"A latte," Marcia corrected with a smile.  And he liked coffee, too!

The internal girl in her, who would never be anything more or less than
twenty-five years old, tried to get her to smooth her hair.  She
refused.

"I'm waiting to see Sheriff Gonzalez," the man said.

"The clerk told me it might be a while.  So I thought I'd get a
coffee."

"I'm first in line, I think," Marcia said, her focus suddenly
returning.

"Why are you here to see him?"

"The girl they found on the dunes," the man said, his expression
suddenly desolate.

"They--"

"Ma'am?"  the clerk called from the desk.

"Yes?"  Marcia said, getting to her feet and unable to help her hands
from smoothing down her skirt, her brain buzzing with unexpected
surprise.

"Sheriff Gonzalez will be another hour or so.  Are you sure you want to
wait?"

Marcia took a breath and turned to the man in the chair.

"Want to get a coffee down the street?"  she asked.  The man stood up
and shrugged, still looking bleak.

"Might as well," he said, and held out a hand.

"Alan Baxter."

"Marcia Fowler," Marcia said, shaking it.  Was he MUFON?  Rabble?  Or a
goddamned government agent?  A goddamned gorgeous government agent. She
was going to find out.

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"We'll call you this afternoon," Eileen promised as she buckled her
seat belt.  Another homicide, in an apartment close to the Citadel
Mall.  She and Rosen had to go clear the scene.

"Shall I clear the office for Mr.  Mitchell?"  Bandimere asked.

"He wants to get Major Leetsdale's files."

"If he means computer files, he's going to be disappointed," Eileen
smirked.  The computer's main processing unit sat in the backseat of
her Jeep along with a box of disks.  They also had Major Leetsdale's
briefcase, his uneaten lunch, the contents of his desktop and a yellow
Post-it Eileen had found pasted to the underside of his desk, all
carefully marked and logged as evidence.  Of the lot, Eileen was most
interested in finding Krista Lewis, whoever she was.  That was the name
on the little Post-it note, and the location and the jagged look of the
writing gave Eileen a little buzz at the base of her spine.  The note
might lead somewhere.

"I don't know what he wants," Bandimere said.

"Can I let him into the office?"

"Sure," Eileen said.

"We'll return the items within the week, if Mitchell wants to know."

"Thanks," Bandimere said, but she still didn't look very happy.  She
gave a little wave as they drove away.

"She's scared as hell by that guy," Rosen said.  He had Leetsdale's
briefcase on his lap and was methodically going through the contents.

"I don't like him," Eileen said.

"Even though I don't like Bandimere either.  I pretty much don't like
any of this."

Rosen nodded absently and Eileen grinned.  She was lying, and Rosen
knew it.  This was going to be a fascinating homicide, a puzzle as
interesting as they'd had for a long time.

The apartment was close to the mall.  It was messy.  Eileen and Rosen
met Officer Hetrick at the door to the apartment building.  Shelly
Hetrick was as tall as Eileen but almost Rosen's size.  Her breasts
strained the buttons at the front of her uniform.  Her belt cinched in
to a narrow waistline but her pants strained over an enormous bottom.
Some people didn't notice that Hetrick's buttocks didn't jiggle, that
her curve of belly was as hard as stone.  Hetrick could bench-press
nearly two hundred pounds.  She wore her hair in a complex series of
braids, held back by a huge clip.

"Welcome, guys, this one should be simple," Hetrick said without
preamble.  She shrugged her ample shoulders and led the way into the
building, talking as she went, jingling and creaking with handcuffs and
leather holster and belt.

"Young female, Carol Campbell, working in the kitchen while her two
kids, aged two and ten months, take a nap.  Perp enters the apartment
through the front door, which is not locked.  Grabs the woman at the
entrance to the kitchen, is in the process of raping her when--"
Hetrick looked down and consulted her notepad.

"When neighbor Charlie Washington shoots him in the side of the head.
Thirty-eight caliber, we've got the gun and Charlie.  And here we
are."

Hetrick stopped in the hallway, then stepped aside to let Eileen and
Rosen by.  Eileen caught the stink of blood and human waste before she
walked through the door.  There was a dead man on the kitchen floor in
a pool of blood.  There were murmurs of voices down the hallway, the
querulous voice of a young child, a hiccuping sob.

"Janine is with them," Hetrick said from the doorway.  Officer Janine
Johnson, as fair-skinned as Hetrick was dark, had a knack for
comforting victims.  She was the least motherly looking person Eileen
had ever met.  She was thin and tall and had wispy white-blonde hair
and a bony face.  Her eyes were pale gray.  Even her eyebrows were
white.  She looked like she could play the Fairy Queen in a movie, or
maybe the Lady of the Lake.  Yet Johnson had incredible skills when it
came to negotiation.  She could walk into a pile of arguing drunks and
send them on their way within a few minutes.  Domestic assault victims
practically fell into her arms.  Johnson had a knack.

"Good," Eileen said.

"She's doing her usual?"

"Excellently as always," Hetrick said with a grin.  Eileen grinned
back.  Janine Johnson couldn't hit the o-ring on a target to save her
life, and everyone knew it.  She barely made her certification each
year and Eileen suspected someone was helping her out.  Perhaps by
turning in a faked target sheet from the shooting range?  But what did
it matter?  As long as Captain Harben kept Johnson and Hetrick
together, Janine's shooting skills didn't matter.  Hetrick was deadly,
with gun or fists or feet.

"Where's Washington?"

"He's in with Janine and Carol.  He's an old guy, good friend of Carol,
plays with the kids.  Apple pie grandpa type."

"So tell me, Rosen," Eileen said.

"Is the story a true one?"

Rosen looked at the dead man, eyed the splintered apartment door, and
looked down the hallway.

"Yep," he said.

Why?  ""Don make him talk too much, he'll get a sprain," Hetrick said
with a teasing smile.

"Door is splintered properly for exterior blows.  Kitchen floor is not
a typical place for consensual sex.  Blood spray consistent with story,
perp had his pants down when the neighbor shot him but he still had
them around his ankles.  If they were lovers, he probably would have
taken them all the way off."

"He didn't put a condom on," Eileen observed, squatting by the dead man
to take a look.

"Sometimes they do."  She suppressed a quick, vivid shot of Teddy Shaw,
with the same dead expression of surprise as the rapist, lying on the
black grass in the darkness.

"Did she know him at all?"

"She says not," Hetrick said.

"You going to advise her on shades and dog?"

"Yep," Hetrick said, mocking Rosen's laconic tones.

"And, for starters, to lock her front-damn-door."

"Shades?"  Rosen asked.

"Shades," Eileen said.

"And dog.  The shades clinch the story for me.

Women who are raped by strangers overwhelmingly have no window
coverings and no dog.  If you have those two things, the chances of
what happened to her today go down substantially.  With a big dog, to
practically nothing."

"We'll tell her," Hetrick said.  Rosen nodded, looking at the uncovered
windows, filing it away in his computer-like brain.  Eileen stood up
and stretched, feeling her back crackle pleasurably.  She flipped open
her notepad to take a few brief notes.  This case was their bread and
butter, the kind of homicide investigation that made up ninety percent
of their workload.  The victim and the perpetrator clear as glass, and
only the details and the forms to be filled out.  The puzzle of a Jim
Leetsdale was tantalizing and frustrating, without any of the
obviousness of the crime in front of her.  Who had killed him, and why?
Why did they take such care to make it look like a suicide?

"Do you want to talk to Charlie Washington?"  Hetrick asked,
interrupting Eileen's thoughts.  She blinked and turned to Hetrick.

"No.  He'd be embarrassed because I'd kiss him right on the lips," she
said with a grin.

"I don't see any reason to impound his gun.  We'll write this up as
citizen defense."

"Okay, then," Hetrick said with a laugh.

"Thanks for coming by so quick.  Nice doing business with you."

As they walked back down the apartment hallway, Hetrick shouted after
them.

"Hey, Rosen, good job.  But you should shut up once in a while!"

Alamosa County Sheriff's Office, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"I know I'll be held for questioning," Alan Baxter said worriedly.  He
and the schoolteacher, Marcia Fowler, were once again sitting in the
hard plastic chairs of the sheriff's office waiting room.  Alan put his
arms on his knees and leaned forward, massaging his face with his
hands.  His mouth tasted like milky coffee, and he realized he was
going to have to find a bathroom soon.

"I'll be happy to help you if I can," the schoolteacher said kindly.
She had already told him her version of events.  Running into the
person who found the body on the sand dunes was not so remarkable
considering how small Alamosa was, and how someone like Marcia Fowler
would be interested in finding out the identity of the young woman.
Marcia was a teacher, or had been, just like Alan.  Curiosity came with
the itch to teach, and it never really died.

She was his own age, or near to it.  Her body was as trim as a girl's,
although she was quite short.  Her gray hair was cut close to her head
and swept back, and her eyes were the dark color that told Alan her
hair used to be black.

"If they arrest me, call Sam Williams at the Williams's Ranch," Alan
said with a sigh.  Did he have alibis for the past three or four
nights?  He lived in Pinedale, Wyoming, and it had taken him three days
to drive down.  Luckily, he had stayed with friends in Laramie and
Pueblo.  They would be able to vouch for him.  He was still trying to
get his mind around the fact that he would have to identify the body
as Krista's.  Alan repeatedly tried to contact her through her Internet
mailbox before he gave up and drove his Bronco into Alamosa to talk to
the sheriff.  Krista had promised to meet him for dinner tonight.  She
would have contacted him by now.

"I'm very sorry.  I hope it isn't your friend," the woman said.

"Marcia Fowler?"  the clerk called, opening the doorway to the inner
offices.  She held a clipboard and she looked tired.

"Sheriff Gonzalez can see you now."

"I think he wants to see Mr.  Baxter first," Marcia said.

"I can see him afterwards, if that's okay."

The clerk shrugged and wrote on her clipboard.

"Fine by me," she said.

"Thank you, Ms.  Fowler," Alan said, holding out his hand to shake
hers.

"I'm glad we had a chance to talk."

"I hope we can talk some more later, and it's Marcia," Marcia said.

There was a half-embarrassed, half-determined look on her face.

"There's more we need to talk about."

Alan was barely listening.  He nodded to her and followed the clerk
into the inner hallway.  His gut was twisting, and he really needed to
find a bathroom now.  He knew what he would feel if he discovered that
Krista was dead.  He would feel relieved, because not knowing was worse
than knowing, just like his ex-wife.  He hadn't heard from her in
thirty years, and then he found out, when he qualified for social
security, that she would not be getting a portion of his benefits
because she hadn't used her social security number for twenty-eight
years.  People changed their names, but never their social security
numbers.  She might be dead.

She might still be alive.  He would never know now.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he mumbled to the clerk.

"I need to use the bathroom."

"Right here, next to the sheriff's office," the clerk said kindly, her
tired face breaking into a smile.

"I know how it can take you sometimes."

"Thank you," he said.

"Just knock on Reg's door before you walk in," the clerk said.

"I'll let him know you'll be a minute."

When Alan knocked on Reg Gonzalez's door a few minutes later, he

felt much better.  He was still nervous, but at least his system
wasn't threatening to blow in all directions.

"Come in," the sheriff said.  Sheriff Gonzalez was sitting behind his
desk typing rapidly at a computer console.  He was a big man with black
hair and eyes and swarthy skin.  His hands were huge.  He looked up as
Alan approached his desk.  His fingers kept typing away, as though they
knew what they wanted to do and were independent of his brain.

"Sit down.  Alan Baxter, yes?  What can I do for you?"

"I might know the girl you found on the dunes," Alan said.

"I'm not sure, but I was supposed to meet her here tonight for dinner
and she hasn't answered her e-mail.  She was supposed to contact me
before today and she hasn't."

The fingers stopped typing and hovered over the keyboard.  The
sheriff's face showed nothing.

"What does she look like?"  he asked.

"I've never seen her in person," Alan said, feeling his face grow
red.

"She and I wrote to each other over the Internet.  But she sent me a
picture once.  She was blonde, with blue eyes.  Not large, but not tiny
either.

That's about all I know."

The sheriff looked at Alan for a few long moments.

"Hmm," he said finally.

"The body is at the hospital morgue.  Let's go down and take a look,
shall we?  I'll ask you some questions on the way."

Alan, who had not sat down despite the sheriff's request, nodded and
sighed heavily.  Just like that, he was going to find out.

"I hope it's not her," he said.

"We'll see," the sheriff said.  He got to his feet, and he was more
than big.  He was huge.  He topped Alan's own six feet by at least five
inches, and he was as thick around as a barrel.

"Let's take my cruiser, it's out the side door.  I want to keep things
as quiet as I can for as long as I can."

"Quiet?"  Alan asked.

"What do you mean?"  Sheriff Gonzalez led him down a short hallway and
into the blazing bright day.  A big four-wheel-drive Ford Expedition
sat next to the door.  It was white with a few streaks of rust.  A
county seal was pasted brightly to the passenger side door.

"Get in," the sheriff said, unlocking the doors.  Alan clambered into
the big vehicle and belted in, wincing as his fingers touched the hot
metal of the seat buckle.  The car was explosively hot and smelled like
old shoes.  Litter was packed between the seats and the back floor was
covered in old fast-food wrappers.  A gym bag sat on the backseat,
unzipped.  The old shoe smell was thus revealed.  The sheriff got in
and started the engine.  Within a few seconds, cool air blasted from
the vents.

"Ahh," Alan said gratefully.

"Because there's rumors around town that this girl was abducted and
killed by UFOs," the sheriff said calmly, engaging the gears and
backing out of the parking space in a swirl of gravel.

"I'm hoping she's your girl and you're the killer, come to see if I can
figure it out."  The sheriff eyed Alan, who was trying hard to breathe
normally and look innocent, and smiled.

"Or maybe not.  We'll just have to see."

Alan stood before a white shape under a sheet, and he wasn't sure if he
was going to see Krista Lewis or the face of his wife.  Nothing seemed
quite real, not the cold dead smell of the brand-new morgue or the sad
expression of the coroner.  Sheriff Gonzalez laid a huge paw on his
arm, and the warmth and gentleness of this touch was almost more than
Alan could stand.

"Are you ready?"  Gonzalez asked gently.

"I'm okay," Alan said, and took a shallow breath.

"Okay, then."

The coroner gently folded back the sheet and Alan let out a miserable
little cry of pain.  He'd never met Krista face to face, but he knew
this poor, forlorn shape was her.  What was left of her.  She'd sent
him pictures over the Net--funny poses of her with fish she was
examining for her work and once a scholarly pose when she'd been
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  Now her
face was drawn tight, showing the fine bones of the skull beneath.  Her
eyes were open and filled with sand, giving her a calm statuesque look,
as though this were only a marble casting of Krista and not her
remains.

Alan couldn't speak.  He nodded, and bent his head, and heard the swift
rustle as the coroner folded the sheet back over her.

"Come this way," Gonzalez said gently, and led Alan back down the
hallway where they'd come in.  Behind them, Alan could hear the oiled
sound of the drawer sliding back into the refrigeration unit.  He drew
shallow breaths and tried to seize control of his horribly spinning
brain.

"What happened to her?"  he asked, as Gonzalez showed him to a chair in
the coroner's office.

Gonzalez got a paper cup of water from a bottled-water dispenser and
handed it to him, then drew one for himself.  Alan drank gratefully and
thirstily, feeling ashamed that the water tasted so good, so pure and
sweet.  Krista would never drink water again.

"Before we talk about that, let's talk about Krista," Gonzalez said,
settling into the coroner's office chair.  The morgue was in the
basement of the hospital, so the coroner's office had no windows.  He'd
done something both amusing and soothing to his wall, hanging a real
window frame with a poster of the Sangre de Christo Mountain Range
behind it.  A little flower pot with silk daisies sat on the sill of
the frame.

Gonzalez flipped open a well-worn notebook and picked out a pen.

"Okay," Alan said huskily, suddenly feeling afraid.  Just because he
was innocent didn't mean he wouldn't spend time in jail.  His brave
words to Marcia the schoolteacher now sounded foolish.

"I know you talked to Miz Fowler, the lady hiker who found Krista on
the dunes.  Did she tell you how she found her?"

"Yes," Alan said.

"Was that incorrect?"

Gonzalez smiled unexpectedly.

"You sound like a teacher.  What do you do?"

"I was a professor at Laramie County Community College, in Cheyenne,
Wyoming," Alan said.

"I retired two years ago.  I taught English."

"Where do you live now?"  Gonzalez asked.  He led Alan through name,
social security number, address, phone, and all the other identifying
tags that would tell the world who Alan Baxter was.  Alan explained how
he'd driven down to see Krista and fish the Rio Grande, and who he'd
stayed with in Laramie and Pueblo.  When he described the earthquake,
Gonzalez straightened up in surprise.

"The rest stop's gone?"

"Half of it," Alan said.

"The half I wasn't standing on."

"Well, shit and shinola, that's in my jurisdiction," Gonzalez said.

"I

haven't had any reports, and I've been working this goddamned
homicide.

Come with me, Mr.  Baxter.  We need to get back to my office."

Gonzalez gave a wave and a shout down the hall to the coroner, who
mumbled something back, and he and Alan worked their way out of the
basement and back into the moldy shoe smell and the icy blast of the
Ford's air conditioner.  Gonzalez got on his radio immediately and sent
out a deputy to the rest area.  He ordered the man to bring a camera
and some police tape to rope off the site so no silly tourists would
kill themselves by looking at the damage.

Gonzalez then blew a deep sigh and swiped a hand across his forehead.

"What a hell of a mess," he said, putting the Ford in gear.

"We're going back to my office, Alan.  We'll finish up there and check
your alibis."

"Okay," Alan said humbly.

"You're going to come clean, I think," Gonzalez muttered.  He looked
furious.

"At least we know who she is now.  I got a strong feeling you weren't
the one to end her life, Mr.  English Professor.  Although I'm still
hoping I'm wrong."

The Ford scattered gravel as they left the parking lot, and Alan leaned
back in his seat and let Gonzalez, and events, carry him.

 Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

When Joe Tanner opened the door, he looked surprised.  Eileen smiled at
him over the computer she held.

"For me?"  he asked, putting a hand theatrically to his chest.

"Kinda," Eileen said.

"Quick, take these Zip disks."

Joe snagged the toppling little pile of disks from the top of the
computer and put them on the table by his door.  He then lifted the
computer from her arms.

"Thanks," she said with a sigh.

"I'll take this to my office," he said.

"Get the disks."

The television was on in the background and the smell of quesadillas
was in the air.  Joe thought that quesadillas, flour tortillas folded
in half with cheese inside, were the world's most perfect food.  He put
various things in: cheese, mushrooms, chicken, and spinach, and
whatever happened to be around.

Joe's house was a three-bedroom family home, a place he'd bought for
tax purposes.  One spare room was empty and bare and the other one held
Joe's sport's equipment--camping gear and skis and bike parts.  The
basement, never used, was full of dust and empty boxes.  The study off
the master bedroom was a bewildering array of computer equipment spread
over four desks and a series of small tables.  This is where Joe
brought the computer he'd taken from Eileen.  He set the computer on
the carpeted floor since there was no room on the desks or the
shelves.

"What did you bring me?"  he asked, turning to Eileen and putting. 
his arms around her.  She laughed and shifted the Zip disks so she
could put her arms around him.  She kissed him briefly, then sagged
against him as he refused to break the kiss.  He forced her lips apart
with his tongue and cupped a breast with one hand.  His other hand
slipped deliciously to her bottom and pressed her against him.  He was
already most of the way to an erection.

"Wait, let me put these down," she said breathlessly.  Less than a
minute inside his door and he was already trying to strip off her
clothes.

Joe took the disks from her and set them carefully on the top of the
computer she'd brought.  Then he turned to her with a look of such
leering anticipation that she started laughing helplessly.

"Come on, Joe," she protested, as he picked her up, managing to get one
hand on her other breast as he did so.  He shifted her with a grunt as
her shoulder holster dug into his chest.

"We had sex last night, remember?"

"That was yesterday," Joe said with an incredulous look.

"That was hours and hours ago."  He carried her into the master bedroom
and dumped her with an undignified bounce onto the bed.

"Well, okay," Eileen said, in mock reluctance.  She reached up and
pulled him down across her on the bed.

San Luis Valley, Colorado

When Sheriff Gonzalez hung up the phone on his last call, he shrugged
his shoulders and turned to Alan Baxter, who was sitting in the corner
chair of his office.  The calls had taken an hour and a half.  The rest
stop was the first order of business and then Gonzalez had worked his
way through calls to the Pinedale Police, Alan's friends in Laramie and
Pueblo, and finally Sam Williams.  As Gonzalez spoke to Sam Williams,
he waved Alan to the corner chair.

The corner chair was a comfortable wingback affair upholstered in a
plush fabric.  The chair in front of the sheriff's desk, where Alan had
started that day, was a straight-backed wooden chair.  Alan felt like
he could breathe again once he'd settled into the embrace of the non
suspect chair.

"You're clean, once I have the local cops check out your alibi,"
Gonzalez said.

"I didn't expect different."  He leaned back in his chair and stretched
powerful arms above his head.  Alan distinctly heard the big man's neck
crackle.

"From here on out, we're going to backtrack Krista Lewis.  Every move
she made, every place she's been."

"She's an--she was an environmental engineer.  She specialized in river
pollution.  I know she was investigating that E. coli outbreak in
Medano Creek."

"That's right," Gonzalez said.

"Some kids got sick from playing in the water, and that never happened
before."

"That's right.  The contamination was found where the river rose up
from the sand, and that water should have been all but distilled.  So
she said she was backtracking the contamination, trying to find a
source in the sand dunes or in the water drainage from the mountains.
That's all I really know, except we were going to meet for
dinner--tonight?  I think so.  Tonight," Alan said miserably.  Now that
the enormous weight of being a murder suspect seemed to be easing, he
could feel the first real stirrings of grief.  He dropped his head into
his hands, massaging his forehead with his fingers.

"She worked for the government?"

"No, a private company called Riverworks.  She worked with the
government a lot, though.  I guess you'd call Riverworks a government
contractor.

State and federal, wherever the work took her," Alan said.  He lifted
his head and looked at Gonzalez, who was taking notes.

"Family?"

"Her parents are alive, and she's real close to one of her sisters.  I
don't know about other relatives."

"What was her job here in the dunes?  Federal?  Tell me it's
federal."

"Federal, I think.  She was working with a guy up in Colorado Springs,
some Air Force officer.  I can't remember his name, though."

"Federal," Gonzalez said cheerfully.

"You know what this means?"

"No," Alan said.

"The FBI, if we're lucky," Gonzalez said with satisfaction.

"With any luck, I'll be shoved aside by the Bureau kids and they'll
take care of this."

"You want to be shoved aside?"  Alan asked carelessly.  But Gonzalez
was not angered.  His grin broadened.

"Shoved aside is good, if I care about finding Krista Lewis's
murderer.

I don't have the resources to work a murder like this.  I have my hands
full, Alan, and I don't have any detectives.  The last murder here was
four years ago and it was real easy to solve, since Vie went straight
to the bar and started drinking after killing his girlfriend.  I'd have
to work evenings and weekends on this, and I have a new baby."

"No time for a case like this," Alan said in understanding.

"Nope, and the FBI kids have lots of toys and lots of money," Gonzalez
said.

"They're also arrogant as hell, and annoying, and whatever else you
want to say.  But they'll work it, I hope, if I can get the right words
said."  Gonzalez paused and looked out his own window, a frame that
showed the enormous sweep of mountains that made up the walls of the
San Luis Valley.

"You'd work it anyway, wouldn't you?"  Alan asked, smiling.

"I would, and I will, if I can't get the FBI to take this," Gonzalez
said with a nod.

"You're going to be at Beth and Sam's place for a while?"

"At least a week," Alan said.

"Don't leave without contacting me," Gonzalez said.

"If the FBI wants to talk to you, make sure I'm with you.  They have a
tendency to forget little things like the Constitution when they get
their boxers in a bunch."

"Okay," Alan said gratefully.

"Thank you."

"Sam isn't a good judge of character, he'd bring home Ted Kasczinski if
Ted asked him nice enough.  But Beth, I know Beth.  You wouldn't stay
more than a night if you didn't pass muster with my Beth," Gonzalez
said with a grin.

"Your Beth?"

"My big sister," Gonzalez said.

"She got a dose of our Spaniard DNA, which is why she's got that light
brown hair and light skin.  Kind of a Mexican-lite."

"You look alike," Alan said, smiling for the first time since he'd seen
Krista's body.  Their smiles were the same, and the shape of the eyes,
now that he knew.

"Except for the coloring," Gonzalez said with a grin.

"Every once in a while the Gonzalez family produces a Spanish
throwback.  Sam was lucky to catch her."

Alan, who agreed, nodded firmly.

"She's a great cook, too," he added.

"Well, stick around for her cooking," Gonzalez said.

"I'll get a hold of you in a few days and we'll see where this goes."

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Baby?"

"Don't call me baby," Eileen grumbled, mostly asleep.  She was vaguely
aware that Joe's weight had shifted on the bed, that he was no longer
pressed against the length of her.

"I'm going to look at that computer you brought me," he whispered.

"Sleep," Eileen said, trying to put her arm out and draw him back to
her side.  The television was still on in the living room and she could
hear the roar of a television audience in laughter.  The late-night
shows were on then.  She wiped a sheaf of hair from her face and pried
open an eye.

Joe was sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on a pair of boxer
shorts.

"I'm wide awake," he said softly, turning to her and kissing her on the
cheek.

"You sleep, babe."

Eileen tried to say something, tried to get up, but she couldn't seem
to make the words come together in any particular order.  The next time
she drifted to the surface she heard the Star Trek theme music.  The
original Star Trek.  Joe was a complete addict for all things Star
Trek.  Eileen did a sleepy calculation and realized that it must be one
o'clock.  She struggled up on one elbow and saw Joe through the door
that led to his office.  He was still in boxer shorts, a half-eaten
cheese quesadilla in one hand, and his face was lit by the computer
screen.  His desk was angled so he could watch the television at the
same time.  This so he could see William Shatner say lines Joe already
knew by heart.  He saw the movement through the door and looked up.

"Go to sleep," he ordered.

"You wouldn't understand what I'm doing anyway."

"Classified," she said sleepily.

"Don't go on the Net with anything."

"Okay," he said with a smile.

"I figured that one already.  Go back to sleep."

Eileen wisely lay back down and curled up on her side.  There was
something immensely comforting about Joe working in the next room while
she slept.  Some half-sensed memory of sleeping while the grownups
talked, perhaps, when she was a child.  Whatever it was, she fell back
into sleep so soundly she didn't wake until dawn flooded the windows
with light.

San Luis Valley, Colorado

Alan drove straight back to the Williams's Ranch.  He didn't try to
fool himself about his motives.  He was going home, or at least as
close as he could manage.  He longed for the warmth of Beth's kitchen,
the merry eyes of Susan Williams, the comfort of his clean white guest
room.  He kept seeing the blank eyes of Krista Lewis, filled with sand.
He kept smelling the morgue, the clean antiseptic smell that wrapped
over the deeper smell of death like clear cellophane.  How had he come
to this place, this death?

The sun sank quickly over the range of mountains to the west, throwing
the enormous valley into shadow.  Alan spotted the turnoff to the ranch
and slowed down, putting on his blinker and turning on his lights at
the same time.  There was no other traffic on the long stretch of
highway and the air blowing through his open window was redolent with
the smell of sage.  Stars began to spring out over the sky.  Venus
appeared over the mountains, glowing with her bright and serene light.
Sam had given him the combination to the gate so Alan didn't have to
wait for someone to open it for him.  Once he was on ranch property,
Alan began to relax.

Then he saw the cluster of lights in one of the Williams's pastures.

Alan turned toward the lights and boosted his Bronco to a
teeth-rattling speed.  Irrationally, he thought of Susan Williams, the
same age as Krista Lewis.  Not her, he thought.  Not her, too.

As he bumped to a stop over the pasture, he breathed a gusty and
trembling sigh of relief as Susan herself came running to his truck.

"Who's that?"  she called.  Her face was grim and pinched and she
carried a very ugly looking shotgun in her left hand.  The business end
was pointed in Alan's general direction, which made the gun look even
uglier.

"It's me, Susan," Alan shouted, waving his hand out the window.

"I

thought someone was hurt."

"Well, shit, Alan, you scared me," she said, coming up to the Bronco
and leaning against the side.  The shotgun now drooped toward the
ground but was still held firmly in her left hand.  She was wearing her
work clothes, jeans and a sturdy patterned shirt.  Her cowhide gloves
were tucked in the pocket.

"Nobody is hurt.  But I'm sorry you didn't come any later."

"Why?"  Alan asked.  He got out of the Bronco and peered into Susan's
eyes.  He suppressed an urge to take her in his arms and hug her.

He was not her father.  But she looked forlorn somehow, weary and
lost.

"Because you sure don't want to see this," Susan said, then breathed a
gusty sigh and shrugged.

"I guess you'll have to, though.  You're here, anyways."

"The--what?"  Alan asked.  Here the sage was stronger, along with a
whiff of girl-sweat from Susan and the ever-present smell of cattle.
The sun was long gone over the mountain range and the twilight was
deepening.

"Come with me," Susan said, with a touch of grim amusement.

"Come and join the club, as it were."

Alan, mystified, followed her as she trudged back toward the headlights
of the two ranch trucks.  Frank gave a brief wave as he approached.

Alan noticed without surprise that Frank was wearing two western-style
holsters, crossed at the hips like a gunslinger, and that both holsters
were full of what were assuredly not toy revolvers.

"Hey, Alan," Frank said.

"Have a look."

Alan moved to Frank's shoulder and looked at what was in the glow of
the headlights.  He stared for an eternity, transfixed.

"Pretty bad, eh?"  Susan murmured.  She put her free hand on Alan's
shoulder, her big callused palm warm through his thin shirt.

"You gonna be sick, now?"

"No," Alan said numbly, looking at the bodies of the two cows.  They
were lying back to back, their heads thrown over at awkward angles.

The flesh was stripped from the jaws of the cows, stripped so
completely that half the faces were polished white bone.  Where the
udders and back ends of the cows were supposed to be there was nothing
but gaping holes.  Small circular holes were punched along the body of
one cow, circles as big as a coffee cup and as black and gaping as the
spaces where the udders were.

"There's no blood," Alan said numbly, and was grateful his voice did
not tremble.

"And no ants or flies," Frank said conversationally.

"Won't be, either."

Alan was suddenly aware of the immensity of the night that surrounded
them.  The sky was littered with stars, stretching from one end of the
valley to the other.  Alamosa was a feeble glow in the distance.

There were no other lights, no car lights or streetlights or traffic
lights.

The night seemed to press against him.

"I wish I had a gun," he murmured plaintively.  Frank surprised him by
throwing back his head and roaring with laughter.  Susan, too, giggled
madly.  She and Frank staggered into each other, laughing, and the
night seemed to recede a bit from Alan.

"You are so funny!"  Susan finally gasped, wiping her streaming eyes
with a grubby hand.

"You don't even ask about what did this, you just want a gun.  You're
my kind of guy, Alan."

"Thank you," Alan said.

"So what did this?"

"Predators," Frank said, his laughter gone in an instant.  His eyes
were angry.

"Predators, Alan.  We don't report UFOs at the Williams's Ranch.

We don't report cattle mutilations, no matter how often they occur.
This was done by predators."

Alan looked silently at the dead cattle, at the surgical precision of
the circular holes punched into the tough hide, at the polished bone of
the jaws.

"My granddad reported one of the first series of cattle mutilations,
back in the seventies," Susan said.  She held out her shotgun to Alan,
who took it automatically.

"You know how to use one of these?  Safety?

Yes?  Good.  First he was ridiculed, then he was harassed, then when
everyone was having them, he was the first to shut the hell up.  The
insurance company began to refuse payoff on a cow lost to little gray
men from saucers.  So now we have predator attacks."

Susan picked up a shovel from the truck bed and began to dig in the
sandy soil.  Frank, after a sincere look at Alan's hands on the
shotgun, took up another shovel and joined her.  Alan was afraid they
were planning to bury the two big beasts, but then realized they were
digging a trench around the bodies.

"Firebreak?"  he asked.

"We burn them," Susan said.

"It's my dad's idea.  First we take pictures, which the insurance
company requires.  I don't know what they do with them, and I don't
care.  They pay up, that's what matters.  Then we burn them.  Like
poisoning meat for a coyote, which of course we never do because it is
illegal, of course, to poison the beautiful and lovely coyote."  She
grinned at Alan, her face lit like a Halloween pumpkin by the glow of
the truck lights.

"Anyway, if they want to come back and dine, or practice their surgery,
or whatever the fuck they do, well, we try to deny them the carcass."

"Coyotes won't eat 'em anyway," Frank said.

"No predators will touch a thing like this."

"How often does this happen?"  Alan asked, looking away from the
headlights into the darkness and trying to see if anything moved out
there.  His skin crawled into gooseflesh.  The roof of the sky was
suddenly enormous, deep, stretching over his head.  There were
pinpoints up there that were galaxies.  It was then he realized how
scared he really was.

"Don't be too scared; they never attack humans," Frank said, his trench
joining Susan's.  With well-practiced movements, the two cowhands threw
their shovels in the back of their trucks and both took out containers
of diesel fuel.  They poured the fuel on the carcasses without stepping
close to the bodies, an awkwardness that would have seemed comical
without the look of the stripped faces beneath them.

"Some people who touch kills get funny burns on their hands," Susan
said, capping her fuel can and setting it back in her truck.

"I don't plan to get funny burns on my hands."

Susan got into her truck and moved it to a watching distance from the
fire.  Frank moved his next to Alan's Bronco.

"You want the honors?"  Frank said, dusting his gloved hands
together.

"Not today," Susan said.  Frank nodded and touched a wooden matchstick
to the palm of his glove.  With a soft whump and a bloom of light, the
cattle went up in flames.  They turned off their lights and the three
of them settled on the tailgate of Susan's truck.  Susan and Frank's
calm was soothing.

"We'll stay until it's done, then we'll bury the ashes," Susan said.

"There's not much wind, but we need to keep a watch the whole time.

We'll miss dinner but Mom will keep plates hot for us.  Hey, does she
know you're out here?"

"No, I drove straight here," Alan said.

"I thought well, I thought someone was hurt or something."

"Okay," Frank said.  He reached into his shirt pocket and flipped out a
small black gadget.  He pressed a few buttons.

"Hi, Beth, it's Frank.

We're at a little bonfire and we've got Alan Baxter with us.  He helped
us out.  We'll bring him in when we're done.  Yes, he did.  No, he
didn't.  Yes, you're right.  Bye."  Frank grinned at Alan.

"That Beth, she likes you.  She knew you'd be fine with it.  Hey, what
about your friend?  She okay?"

"No," Alan said heavily.  He remembered everything about Krista again
all in an instant, and his head drooped.

"She's dead.  She's the girl they found on the dunes."

"Oh, Alan, I'm sorry," Susan said.  She put an arm around him and
hugged him against her side.

"What a bitch," Frank said.  He nudged Susan and handed her a flask.

She took a deep gulp and handed it on to Alan.  He took a good mouthful
and felt Wild Turkey cannon down his throat and light a fire in his
belly.  It felt very good.

"You have good taste in medicinal whiskey," he said hoarsely, handing
the flask back to Susan.

"We only chug the best Kentucky bourbon when we deal with UFOs," Susan
said solemnly.  Then they were all laughing, leaning against each other
in the darkness, their eyes lit by flames from the pyre of the cows,
and Alan knew that this was okay, this was right.  This was another way
of understanding Krista's death, and his own eventual death, and the
death of everything that lived and moved and breathed under the hard
sprawl of the stars above them.  The flames danced and crackled, and
when Susan handed the flask back to him, he took it gratefully.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Hi, baby," Joe said as Eileen opened her eyes.  The good smell of
coffee filled the air.  He was standing in the doorway wearing
sweatpants and a ragged T-shirt and he held a steaming cup of coffee in
his hand.

"The coffee is for you."

"You're calling me baby," Eileen groaned.

"I hate that."  She rolled over in bed and stretched.

"I've been up all night," Joe said.  He sat on the edge of the bed and
carefully handed her the hot mug as she sat up.

"By the way, have I told you that you are absolutely beautiful when you
wake up?"

Eileen grimaced and took the coffee.  A glorious mouthful lit a warm
fire in her stomach and radiated in all directions.

"Ahh.  That's good.

Have I told you how gorgeous you are when you stay up all night?"

"That deserves a kiss," Joe said, and leaned in to capture one.  Eileen
balanced the coffee mug and kissed him thoroughly, knowing that she
wanted this man, this morning, forever.  She almost said so, just like
that, and then she couldn't.

Joe hesitated, as though he were going to say something, then he
didn't.  Eileen caught a sudden flash of Teddy Shaw, dead forever, and
a sudden bleakness filled her soul.  She had told Joe she loved him
over a year ago, the first time they had slept together.  He'd said he
loved her too.  That was the last time they'd said the words to each
other, and Eileen couldn't figure out why.  She wanted to hear the
words from him.

Maybe he wanted to hear the words from her.  But she was afraid,
afraid that a cop wife wasn't what any man wanted, particularly now
that she was a cop who'd killed a man.

"Let me tell you about Jim Leetsdale," Joe said, leaning back from her.
His dark green eyes were grave, as though he'd been reading her
thoughts.

"He's my homicide," Eileen said, taking a quick gulp of coffee and glad
to be on safer ground.

"I figured.  Well, the guy had an okay system as far as security
goes.

He used PGP, Pretty Good Privacy, as an encryption method."

"Which is?"

"A public domain encryption scheme.  The guy who created it put it out
on the Net and the government went after him.  Said that he was hurting
national security, or whatever," Joe snorted.

"They don't like it because it's unbreakable."

"Except to you?"  Eileen asked.

"Oh, I can't break it either," Joe laughed.

"Unbreakable in the classic sense, as in un-freaking-breakable."

"So how'd you break it?"

"He wrote the encryption key down on one of his Zip disks," Joe
grinned.

"He scratched it on the back."

Eileen put the mug between her knees and clapped her hands, grinning.

"So next I looked at his files, then I looked at his Zip disks, and
then I did some thinking, then I looked some more," Joe continued,
scratching his uncombed hair.  He rubbed his eyes, which were tired and
red.

"Something made this guy get whacked by people who wanted him to look
like a suicide.  So maybe I found something."

"I'm all ears," Eileen said, finishing her coffee.

"I found some pictures," Joe said.  He scratched an armpit.  His face
flushed a little in embarrassment.

"Girl pictures."

"Oh," Eileen said, frowning.

"Like pornography?"

"Yeah," Joe said.

"Like pornography.  Not too bad, really, girlie pictures like you'd see
in a magazine."

"So what's significant about girlie pictures?"  Eileen asked.

"That's what I wanted to know," Joe said, brightening.

"You can go on the Net and find any pictures you want, anytime day or
night.  Why bother storing data images away when you can look at them
for free?

Plus, storing girlie pictures is a good way to get fired.  We had some
people get fired that way out at Schriever Air Base.  They were storing
dirty pictures on government equipment."

"A no-no," Eileen murmured.

"A big fir able no-no," Joe said.

"Plus this guy had these images stored three times, on two hard disks
and one Zip disk."

"Three times?"

"Three times, same images."

"Can I see them?"  Eileen asked, looking for her clothes.

"No," Joe said.

"You shouldn't.  Waste of time."  He flushed again.

"Besides, they're--well, they're girlie pictures."

Eileen put her mug down and swarmed out of the sheets.  She thumped
into Joe's chest and knocked him backward on the bed.  Kissing him, she
smelled all the work of the night in his breath and on his body.

He was sweaty and unwashed and his breath was stale, and she didn't
care.

"You are such a gentleman, Joe Tanner," she said.

"Thinking that I shouldn't be seeing girlie pictures."  Joe grinned
underneath her and began caressing her naked body.

"Stop this, because I'll make love to you again and forget everything I
want to tell you."

Eileen put on a pout and flounced out of bed.

"Follow me to the shower, then," she ordered, "and tell me why I
shouldn't see these pictures."

"Okay," Joe said amiably, following her to his bathroom, watching her
with an unabashed smile of appreciation.

"But I'll have to explain what a digital picture is.  You ready?"

"I'm ready," Eileen said, turning on the shower.

"Good.  Okay then, each picture that you see is composed of a grid of
pixels.  Each pixel, or point on the picture, is a color.  The color is
stored on the computer as a digital code--you know, ones and zeros that
tell the computer what color to display on the screen.  All the pixels
make up a picture of colors and you have Wanda displaying all her
charms.  Right?"

"Right."

"Okay, then, next interesting point.  Color codes only take up part
of

a computer word.  Colors are easy.  Therefore in a picture map, each
word is a color, which takes up only a part of the word, and a bunch of
extra space."

"He put stuff in that extra space," Eileen said, cupping her hand to
test the water.  Still cold.

"Excellent!  You're so quick," Joe said, clapping his hands.

"This isn't new, of course.  People have been hiding data in pictures
for a long time, ever since the Net made picture transmission possible.
Once I realized these pictures were valuable to the dead guy, what's
his name--"

"Leetsdale," Eileen said.

"Leetsdale.  Once I realized he'd stored them multiple times, it was a
matter of dumping the data hidden within the words."

"How'd you do that?"

"I wrote a little program," Joe said modestly.

"Took me a few hours but I did it.  Now comes the interesting part." He
paused and looked at her with a smile.

"The numbers look like simulation points."

"Simulation points?"

"Yup.  My field, simulations.  Now I'm sure another programmer could
have figured it out eventually, but I saw it immediately.  Simulation
points, each one time-marked and set for a geographic location.  Looks
to me like maybe a traffic simulation, or a weather simulation.  I'll
know by tomorrow, maybe, or the day after."

"Wow," Eileen said slowly.

"Why tomorrow?  Not that I'm pushing, of course.  You need to sleep
today?"  She put a hand on his arm, feeling like she'd just insulted
him.  Joe, to her relief, didn't appear to be insulted at all.  The
shower, forgotten, began putting out a cloud of steam.

"No way, I just need to catch about three or four hours is all," he
said.

"The reason I'll know tomorrow is that I need to get out to Schriever
with this data and put it through our big simulator."

"Will they let you do that?"  Eileen asked.

"They won't know about it," Joe laughed.

"You know Nelson, he doesn't really care what we do.  Nobody else will
be around.  We're in between war games right now, and I'm improving the
simulation speed anyway."

"Okay," Eileen said.

"Nothing else in the files?  No confessions, love letters, anything?"

"Nothing," Joe said.

"Just some e-mail from his wife, over a year ago, which he saved.  You
going to get in?  Can I get in too?"

"This is not efficient," Eileen smiled, adjusting the water
temperature.

"We take twice as long this way."

"But I always get that long, gorgeous back of yours completely clean,"
Joe said innocently, stripping off his shirt.  Eileen stepped into the
shower and let the water cover her.  In the few seconds before Joe
crowded in next to her and coherent thought was lost, she thought about
Leetsdale and the care he took to hide whatever it was he was working
on.  The next thread she had to follow was to find Krista Lewis,
whoever she was.

Great Falls, Virginia

"Eileen!"  Lucy Giometti said.

"It's so good to hear from you."

"You too," Eileen said.

"And how is Hank?  Sleeping okay?"

"Sure," Lucy lied brightly.

"Sleeping like an angel.  And I'm in such good shape that Sports
Illustrated is using me as a swimsuit model this year."

"Well, of course," Eileen said.

"They called me first, though.  I had to turn them down so they called
you."

"Why did you turn them down?"

"I hated that leopard thong bikini."

"Oh, you kill me," Lucy laughed.  She rubbed Fancy's ears and waved at
Hank.  He'd had a good night's sleep last night, the first one in
days.

At dawn Lucy had found a new white tooth poking up through his pink
gum.  With the pressure and the pain over, Hank was a different baby.

He sat in his playpen and examined brightly colored toys with the
seriousness of a research scientist.  After he'd looked one over
minutely, he would toss it aside and look at the next one.  Lucy
wondered what he was looking for when he played this toddler game.  She
hoped he wouldn't find it soon.  When he was in this mood, he'd play
until his morning nap.

"I do have a reason for calling," Eileen confessed.  Lucy raised her
eyebrows.  Eileen didn't often ask for help.

"Whatever I can do," Lucy said.  A cup of decaffeinated coffee

steamed next to her computer.  She took a quick hot mouthful and
sighed.  If she pretended it had caffeine in it, she would almost feel
like a human being again.  Hank couldn't tolerate caffeine in her
breast milk.

Yet another reason to wean the little fiend.

"Okay, then.  We had a murder at Peterson Air Force Base; a guy named
Jim Leetsdale.  Major.  He was working on a top-secret project that's
headed by a guy named Jacob Mitchell."

"Congressman Mitchell?"  Lucy asked, typing quick notes on her
computer.

"Ex-congressman, one of the crowd that ran for President last
election?"

"That's the guy, I guess," Eileen said.

"I don't pay much attention to politics."

"Well, I'll see what I can find out," Lucy said.

"You caught me at a good time.  I actually got four hours sleep last
night."

"I'd be dead," Eileen said.

"I can go without sleep for a couple days, but you haven't been
sleeping for a whole year."

"You get used to it," Lucy said.

"When you nab Joe and marry him and start a baby, you can call me up
and complain about morning sickness and not sleeping.  I'll be
sympathetic."

"Oh, now," Eileen said nervously.  Lucy teased Eileen every chance she
got about Joe Tanner.  She wanted to be the matron of honor in a
Colorado wedding, she told Eileen.  Mostly, she wanted another friend
to call and talk to when motherhood got to be too much.  She figured
Eileen would be a great mom.  Mostly, she wanted Eileen to be as happy
as she was.  The lack of sleep, the extra weight, the loss of freedom,
were meaningless compared to the bliss of having a family.  Lucy wanted
Eileen to come in out of the bleak single life and into the warmth of
marriage and home and children.  She knew what she had wasn't for
everyone, but it was for mostly everyone.  She thought Eileen needed
Joe.

Lucy had the matchmaker urge, and she had it bad.

"Any other names?"

"Oh, yeah, one.  Krista Lewis.  We don't know anything about her, just
her name.  She might work for this project, she might not.  Whatever
you can find out would be great."

"I'm the oracle," Lucy said.

"Ask and I shall find out."

"Thanks," Eileen said.

"So, how are you, anyway?  Sleeping okay since the whole Teddy

Shaw thing?"  Lucy asked cautiously.  Eileen had told her about Teddy
but most of the details came from the police report Lucy grabbed off
her secure computer link.  Eileen wasn't talking much about it yet.
Lucy knew how she'd feel if she shot someone.  She'd feel awful and
she'd feel glad and she wouldn't know how to feel, all at the same
time.  Her friend would cope, and Lucy wouldn't pry.  Eileen would talk
in her own good time.

"Sleeping fine.  They're making me see a psychologist.  That's no
fun."

"Female?"

"Female.  Gerri Matthews, you'd hate her like I do.  Little, cute, not
an ounce of fat on her body.  Seriously, she's okay."

"Call me anytime," Lucy said.

"I'm always up with Hank.  If you can't sleep, call me."

"I will, girlfriend," Eileen said with a smile in her voice.

"Thanks."

Lucy turned to her computer and rubbed her hands briskly together.

She was supposed to be researching a new religious cult that was
springing up in northern Afghanistan but this was much more
interesting.  Time to find out about Jacob Mitchell and his secret
project.

"Here we go, team," she said to Hank and Fancy.  Fancy panted and Hank
gravely threw a Big Bird toy over the edge of the playpen.  Lucy
grinned and took a gulp of coffee and connected to the Internet.

Kirn's Place, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"I'll sit at the bar, thank you," Marcia told the waitress, a young
girl with a tortured hairdo and the bored, sullen expression of someone
who watched far too much television.  Her young skin was covered with a
heavy layer of makeup, and the curves of her eyelids were painted
bright blue.  Marcia gave an inward sigh, wishing the girl would listen
to some advice.  Advice about her skin and her hair and her pretty
eyes, and how the center of the world is wherever you are, be it the
San Luis Valley of Colorado or a cornfield in Iowa or the city of Los
Angeles.  But this girl, like so many of her former students, believed
that there was some place just like the world seen through her
television, a place she could reach.  A place where boredom and
unhappiness and acne would vanish, never to appear again.

"Okay," the girl said.  Her nametag read "Kay," though Marcia was sure
she'd rather be called Melindra or Tori or whatever movie stars in
Hollywood called themselves nowadays.

Marcia picked a spot in the middle of the diner's bar and Kay placed a
menu, a clean glass of ice water, and a cup for coffee in front of her.
Marcia gave the girl a grateful smile and a nod.  There was competence
behind the makeup.

"Are you a senior this year?"  Marcia asked.

"No, I'll be a freshman," Kay said, breaking into a surprised smile.

Marcia tried to look suitably astonished.  Children wanted to look
older, and grown-ups wanted to look younger.

"Well, I'm sure you'll love high school," Marcia said.

Kay walked a round of coffee to the tables in the restaurant.  Marcia
had picked her seat deliberately; there was a table full of locals
right next to her.  As she sipped her hot coffee and looked at the
menu, she heard the four men at the table greeting a newcomer.  He had
just walked in.

He was young, in his early thirties, and he held a bicycle helmet under
his arm.  He had the lean body and the overdeveloped calves of a
serious bicyclist.

"Hey, it's Grantham," one of the men said.

"Sit with us, Daniel," another one said.

"We were just talking about the girl they found on the dunes yesterday.
She wasn't one of your students, was she?"

"I don't think she was from around here," Daniel said, stripping off
bicycle gloves and taking a seat at the table.

"I'm not sure she was from this time, much less from around here," the
first man said solemnly.  The teacher, Daniel, was frowning at the
other diner, but in a way that suggested he was a friend of the other
man.

"Now Tony," he said.

"Now what?"  Tony said.  He was older than the teacher was but not as
old as Marcia.  He looked like a rancher, or perhaps a local
businessman, in for breakfast and some gossip.  He had large hands,
scrubbed pink, curled around his coffee cup, and a weathered face that
had seen rough work in cold weather.

"Like we all don't know that this was going to happen someday."

"What was going to happen someday?"  the fry cook asked from behind the
counter.  He was tall and round--was that a law, that all fry cooks
have to be fat, Marcia wondered--and he was red-faced from the heat of
the grill or, perhaps, anger.

"That they were going to kill a person, and not just horses and
cattle," Tony said triumphantly.

"You know, Hal.  You've seen my cattle with their legs stripped to the
bone and their eyes--"

"That's enough of that, Tony," Hal said calmly.

"I'm serving breakfast."

"I'll have pancakes and eggs, scrambled, no bacon or sausage," Marcia
murmured to the waitress.

"Yes, ma'am," the waitress said, and took the menu away.

"Just because you lost some cattle to our local vandals--" "They're not
local, and they're not vandals," Tony said contemptuously.

"You telling me those lights you saw six weeks ago were just jets from
the Air Force?  Jets that can cross the valley in four seconds, stop,
turn around, and go the other way?  What kind of jets can do that?"

"I heard that some people heard the Taos Hum," another rancher said in
a low voice.

"I heard it!  I heard it!"  Kay said in a near whisper, nearly sloshing
coffee from her glass pot as she spoke.

"Did you hear it?"

"Yes," Tony said.

"Maybe vandals," Hal murmured to his grill, flipping an enormous
pancake with one hand and cracking eggs with the other.

Marcia knew all about the San Luis Valley and the plague of cattle and
horse mutilations.  The first and most famous mutilation was in fact
Snippy the horse, found dead with no blood, no predator tracks around
the body, and stripped of flesh from legs and face.  This was in 1967,
twenty years after the supposed crash landing of a UFO in Roswell, New
Mexico.

Snippy was actually a young mare named Lady, a beloved pet of a woman
named Nellie Lewis.  Snippy, her sire, had such an evocative name that
the press couldn't resist attaching the name to Lady.  Few people knew
the story of Nellie and her own mysterious death.  Marcia did.  She'd
read about the San Luis Valley for months before her trip.  The valley
averaged at least one mutilation a month, sometimes more.  Many people
reported fast, silent lights, orange or white or blue, zipping across
the high night.  Often military aircraft screamed after the intruders,
though the Air Force always denied any activities.

The most interesting aspect of the UFO stories surrounding the valley

was the mutilations.  Here was evidence, actual physical evidence,
unexplainable.  The mutilated animals were found with no blood.  Their
reproductive organs were removed with cuts so precise the cell walls
showed cauterization under a microscope.  Sometimes the facial skin and
tissue were removed as well, like the hapless Lady.  Often the bodies
showed no insect life, no small animal predation, and no sign of
decay.

All Earth's creatures, even flies, shunned the bodies.

After a great deal of adverse publicity, what Marcia would categorize
as disinformation from government agents, cattle mutilations seemingly
stopped.  The reports of mutilations had gone underground.  The local
ranchers reported their livestock losses as predator losses.  Insurance
companies would then pay their fees and not hassle the ranchers with
talk of UFOs and little gray men.

"So I heard the lady on the dunes was found the same way as the
cattle," Tony the rancher confided.

"But they never take people," the other rancher said.  Marcia knew them
by face as well as voice now.  This one was younger than Tony, about
the same age as the schoolteacher Daniel Grantham.

"That's not true," Tony said.

"I read up on the Internet last night.  Did you ever hear of a man
named Bill English?"

Marcia, who had, sipped her coffee and stared into the distance as
though she weren't listening to every word at the table at the end of
the bar.

"He was part of a Special Forces investigative team that went in to
retrieve a downed B-52 bomber in Laos back in seventy-one.  The plane
had gone off radar after sending some very strange transmissions,
something about a large light and 'under attack by a UFO."" Tony had
the table's rapt attention now.  Marcia noticed Daniel's distressed
look.  He knew this story too.

"So they found the plane, intact, and crew, not intact at all.  They
were all dead, all mutilated just like my cattle, and when Bill English
tried to reveal this information, he was discharged from the military
and his reputation was ruined.  He's been trying to tell his story ever
since, and no one listens."

"Not exactly," Daniel murmured.

"Then there's Jonathan Louette," Tony continued.

"He was a sergeant in the Air Force at the White Sands Missile Test
Range back in 1956.  An Air Force major witnessed his abduction by a
"disk-shaped" object at two o'clock in the morning while they were
searching for missile debris after a test.  He turned up several days
later, dead, his eyes gone, blood removed, and his privates " Tony cut
off abruptly.  Hal was leaning over Tony with a heavy spatula in his
hand, glowering.

"Well, you know what I mean," Tony said to his coffee cup, and Hal
turned back to his grill.

"The Internet," Daniel sighed, speaking to Tony's fascinated
audience.

"What used to take months of research now takes minutes.  But Bill
English's story of the B-52 pilots is just rumor, Tony.  Sergeant
Louette's story was told by a guy named John Lear and it has never been
corroborated either."

"And the Guarapiranga mutilation down in Brazil?  That dead guy, he's a
rumor too?"

Marcia blinked.  That was an interesting mutilation, heavily suppressed
by the Brazilian government.  A man was found by the Guarapiranga
reservoir in 1988, apparently a victim of a Jack-the-Ripper kind of
sadistic killer.  The doctors who autopsied him were not cattle
mutilation experts, so they didn't recognize the signs of a UFO-style
mutilation.

The removal of organs, the lack of signs of struggle, and the precise
and bloodless cuts puzzled them.  The man's eyes and genitals were
missing as well as many of his internal organs and parts of his brain,
all through tiny circles punched through various parts of the victim's
body.

The detectives who were assigned to the case which was never solved
were fascinated by the strangeness of the murder, and eventually the
pictures were bootlegged onto the World Wide Web.  From there, the UFO
community came to full alert.

Nothing happened after that, of course.  The Brazilian government sat
firmly on the evidence and declared that it had never happened.  Once
again, a chance for proof was hidden away.

"So now we have one right here, after years of my poor cattle being
ripped apart and nobody wants to listen," Tony was saying.

"I have a strong feeling, Tony," Daniel the teacher said solemnly,
"that you're not going to like it when people do start to listen.  You
really want Hard Copy making you look like some stupid country yokel
with a UFO story?"

"Somebody has to listen.  Whoever this girl was, she's dead now.  I
don't want my daughter to be next."

This sent a chill through the people at the table.  Hal, briskly
cooking eggs and bacon and hotcakes, paused with spatula in hand.  He
eyed the busy, bustling restaurant, then turned and walked to the
table.

"Well, folks, we just have to be careful.  Whether it was UFOs or some
ordinary killer, it doesn't matter much, now does it?  We have to watch
our kids and our wives and be careful."

With this calm assessment, Hal returned to his eggs.  As the waitress
placed her breakfast in front of her, Marcia looked at the
schoolteacher.

She knew what he was.  When she left, she placed a slip of paper neatly
under the brake line of his bicycle.  On it was her phone number and a
brief message.

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"This was not what I ordered, Roger," Jacob Mitchell said pleasantly.

"He almost killed Scott," Roger Bennett said, as relaxed as a cat.  He
was sprawled in Mitchell's office chair.  Bennett had gray hair but the
rest of him was built like a twenty-year-old weightlifter.  His face
had the odd, flat look of a habitual steroid user.  He'd been turned
down by the Marines, long ago.  Mitchell had seen the report; Bennett
had failed the psyche board, not the strength requirements.  Bennett,
unaware why he failed, spent two years in bodybuilding only to fail
again.

His bodybuilding frenzy intensified.  He failed enlistment in every
branch of the military, the FBI, and the Colorado Police Academy.

Eventually, he'd ended up in a security firm as a bodyguard.  Mitchell
saw a kindred spirit in Bennett as soon as he first saw him standing
quietly outside his Congressional office at the Capitol.  Mitchell
could sense the simmering bitterness behind the stony face.

Bennett held a can of soda pop in one hand and took a long drink before
he went on.

"He smacked him with a file cabinet drawer.  A drawer.  He could have
killed him."

"Really," Mitchell said.  He rubbed the corner of his jaw with one
hand.  His muscles there were bunched tight as marbles.  Any member of
his staff, seeing that gesture, would shrink into themselves and find
something to do that took them as far away as possible.

Mitchell was a powerful congressman--well, had been a powerful

congressman--and he led a stressful life.  He didn't smoke or drink.
He knew he was highly intelligent and clever, and he was blessed with
craggy good looks and a gorgeous voice.  He'd been born with good
looks; one only had to look at his baby pictures to see that.  After a
brief period of terrible acne in high school, he'd come into maturity,
with height and breadth and looks enhanced by the pits the acne left.

But the stupid voters had turned him out of office, the fools.  He'd
been orchestrating a political life since middle school, and when he
had achieved the position of Colorado Congressman, he thought the White
House was only a few years away.

He was beaten by an aw-shucks opponent, a man whose campaign was based
on his experience running a remodeling business.  Mitchell didn't look
back, not for long.  His goal was to be President, of course, and there
was more than one former President who'd lost a few campaigns before
taking the highest office in the world.  When he was assigned Secret
Service protection during the Presidential primary race, he felt
completely at home.  This was what he was born to do.  This was what he
was born to be.  That was four years ago.  His Secret Service
protection was withdrawn after it was clear he would not win the
primary.

The past four years had been spent on an alternative plan for his
lifelong goal.

Now Roger Bennett, his strong right arm, had endangered the whole plan.
It was disturbing.

"Did Scott leave any blood in Leetsdale's office?"  Mitchell asked,
still rubbing at his jaw like a philosopher contemplating an
interesting question.

Bennett finished the soda pop and dropped it into Mitchell's
wastebasket.

He took out a stir stick and twirled it in his fingers.  Bennett was
never without his supply of plastic stir sticks, his one nervous habit.
He would chew them methodically, mangling them with his teeth until
they were wadded balls of plastic.  Then, like a chain smoker, he would
take out the next stir stick before he spat the first into the
wastebasket.  His soda pop done, he was ready for a stick.

"No, he caught him with the flat part so Scott just has one hell of a
concussion," Bennett said.

"Anyway, Leetsdale had Scott down and was coming right at me so I shot
him."  He put the stick in his mouth and gave it an initial chomp.
Mitchell folded his hands carefully, containing his rage.

"In the eye," he said coldly.

"In the eye," Bennett admitted.

"I missed.  But we did everything else perfectly.  I loaded low powder
bullets so the back of his head didn't blow.  We rolled him in the rug
we brought and placed him by the cannon and left the gun in his hand. I
even left the other low-powder bullets in the gun.  No prints, no
evidence, a clean suicide."

"Except nobody shoots themselves in the eye," Mitchell shouted.

"You fucked up!  The little skirt, Bandimere, already told me that the
Colorado Springs detectives think it was a murder.  That skinny bitch
and the fucking Indian, they're looking for evidence."

"They won't find it," Bennett promised, his eyes like angry
pinpoints.

"If they do, you might have to take care of them, too," Mitchell
said.

"And it will have to look like an accident."

"Killing cops?"  Bennett said doubtfully, taking the mangled stick out
of his mouth.

"Sir, killing cops is never a good--" "I'll tell you what's a good idea
or not," Mitchell said.

"Shooting a man in the eye, that's a bad idea.  We'll just wait and see
if these two are any good.  If they are, they're going to be very
dead."

"Yes, sir," Bennett said stiffly.

"I'll come up with a plan."

"Good," Mitchell said with warmth.  His voice was instantly soothing,
calm and reassuring.  Time for honey, after the sting.

"I need you, Roger."

"I know," Bennett said with a smile in his voice.

"You won't be disappointed."

Mitchell turned to look out his window, rubbing the clenched muscles of
his jaw.  Bennett left the room as soundlessly as a cat.

This was only a setback, he told himself.  Leetsdale was dead.  O'Dell
was dead.  Everyone else on the project was his, body and soul.

Mitchell sighed and stretched.  Sometimes he felt that Bennett was more
than his right-hand man.  Bennett was his other half, his shadow set
free on the world.  Bennett hadn't batted an eye when Mitchell
reluctantly ordered him to kill O'Dell.  Mitchell emptied a bottle of
whiskey the night O'Dell had died.  He was stricken, unable to bear the
thought of kindly, pudgy O'Dell no longer a living, breathing creature.
Bennett wasn't bothered by O'Dell's death, even though he himself had
blown a neat hole in the computer programmer's chest.  O'Dell had
begged for mercy, Bennett reported casually, but he didn't trust a
man's word under the round eye of a gun.

Then there was Lori Leetsdale, killed by accident in the Burbank
earthquake.  And Jim Leetsdale, a year later.  Victims, both of them,
victims like O'Dell.  But they had died for a cause much greater than
they knew.  There was so much riding on his shoulders right now.  So
many lives depended on him, millions of lives.  He couldn't let anyone
stand in his way now.  Not when he was so close.

San Luis Valley, Colorado

Halfway to the Rio Grand River, Alan suddenly remembered the name of
the Air Force officer with whom Krista had been working.  The day was
just beginning.  Sam Williams insisted he go fishing this morning.

Beth had agreed, which sealed the decision.  The last thing Alan Baxter
needed to do was hang around and feel depressed about his poor friend
Krista, they decided.  The best thing would be some fine trout, an
early morning hatch, and a healthy communion with nature.  Perhaps
because he wasn't thinking about Krista right then, the name sprang
into his mind.

"Leetsdale!"  Alan exclaimed, and gave the steering wheel a little
smack with his fist.

"Major Leetsdale.  I'll have to call the sheriff when I get home." Then
Alan reconsidered.  Would Gonzalez mind if Alan took a quick trip up to
Colorado Springs and talked to Leetsdale?  With his workload, Gonzalez
might appreciate a little amateur help.  Alan immediately shook his
head at the thought.  Gonzalez was a professional and wouldn't
appreciate Alan Baxter, elderly amateur detective, messing with his
case.

But maybe he would do a little harmless snooping.  He couldn't go back
to fishing when Krista's murderer still walked free.  And Colorado
Springs was only a few hours away.  He picked a spot on the highway to
turn around, and he put on his blinker.

Gaming Center, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado

Joe Tanner sat alone in the Gaming Center, his feet folded comfortably
beneath him.  The computer screen in front of him was lit with a
picture of the earth from a low orbit.  At this height, only a tiny
slice of black

space showed beyond the curve of the planet.  The atmosphere swirled
with clouds.

"No clouds," Joe muttered to himself.  He typed rapidly.  The clouds
disappeared from the screen, leaving an earth that looked blue and
brown instead of blue and white.  Brown for land.  Brown for dirt.

"Let's take the dirt view," Joe said.  He often talked himself through
a difficult problem.  Art Bailey, his old friend, had taught him that
trick.

When Art and Joe were in their frenzied last days before a major war
game, an observer would have thought they were crazy.  Each one would
talk to their screen, ignoring the other one.  It was a strange sort of
three-way conversation among Art, Joe, and their supercomputer.

Art was dead over a year now, and Joe still missed him fiercely.
Particularly when he had a difficult problem like this one.  What were
these coordinates all about?  They were larger than citywide but less
than country wide he'd determined that already.  They were
time-driven.

Each one had a stamp and each coordinate progressed in location as the
times progressed.

Joe had spent the entire day inserting the data Eileen had given him
into his war-game program.  It felt strange to see the earth without
missile silos or submarines or country boundaries.  He'd gotten rid of
all of them one by one as he determined that the data had nothing to do
with military transport or weaponry.

"What now?"  he said, but the back part of his brain was already
supplying the answer.  He'd color coordinate the time-stamped data, so
that the colors would correspond to the coordinates as they changed
with time.  That would tell him what was going on.  Maybe.

Joe worked for the next two hours without lifting his head and thought
he'd been working only fifteen minutes.  Computers were like that.  You
sat down for a little while and when you stood up you were sore all
over and you had to pee so badly your eyes were crossed.  He sighed and
strapped on his sandals.  He jogged to the bathroom and then took a
quick run to the stairwells to pick up a can of soda pop, working his
way through submarine-style doors and coded doorways and back again
without noticing his surroundings.

When he returned, his code had compiled and was ready to run.  Joe
opened his can of soda pop and sat back in his chair.

"Illuminate me," he said, and pressed the return key.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"You're sure this is a murder?"  Harben asked.  His face was
expressionless as always but his hands were clasped on top of his
spotless desk.  For Harben, this was the equivalent of a screaming
fit.

"Positive," Eileen said.  She was worried, though.  The evidence was
all circumstantial at the moment.  The autopsy was still being done.
Without a good piece of corroborating evidence, they wouldn't be able
to get a verdict of murder at the inquest.  She and Dave Rosen were
sitting in Harben's office in the late afternoon, and that was
worrisome.  Harben's clasped hands were even more worrisome.  Before
Eileen could express her thoughts, Rosen did it for her.

"Where's the pressure coming from?"

"The police commissioner.  The mayor.  The general in charge of
Peterson Air Force Base.  I'm expecting a call from the Governor, the
President, and, possibly, God."

"Make sure you ask Him who killed Leetsdale," Eileen said dryly.

"Mitchell's putting the pressure on," Rosen said.

"He was a Colorado congressman for two terms," Harben said.

"And he's running a big government project out at Peterson.  And he's
the district-wide FEMA director."

"The what?"  Eileen asked.

"Isn't that for floods, or whatever?"

"FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency," Rosen said, his
eyebrows raised.

"This district would mean the entire western states, wouldn't it?"

"Everything but California, Oregon, and Washington State," Harben said.
His eyes glittered.

"Of course in the western states we mostly have blizzards and the
occasional tornado.  Mitchell doesn't have a whole lot to do as a FEMA
director, which is why he's got himself a job at Peterson.  Still, the
FEMA director carries a lot of clout."

"Why?"  Eileen asked.  She was honestly puzzled.  She'd grown up in
Wyoming, a place where disasters were dealt with at a very local
level.

The only time she'd ever seen anything to do with FEMA was when they
rescued people out of trees during midwestern floods.  Seemed pretty
harmless to her.

"The FEMA director can suspend the Constitution and impose martial law,
did you know that?"  Rosen said.

"They control all police, fire, ranger, and National Guard units
during the duration of the emergency, whatever that might be."

"So if the earthquake had been really severe, Mitchell might be our
temporary boss?"  Eileen found the thought horrifying.

"I find it horrifying as well, Eileen," Harben said dryly.

"But Colorado is a place where natural disasters on a large scale just
don't happen.  So Mitchell has a pretty title and not much else.  The
FEMA association doesn't worry me as much as his power with the state
government.

And he's bearing down hard on us right now."

"Can you hold them off?"  Eileen asked.

"And for how long?"

"I can keep this open for three days, detectives.  You'd better have a
tight case by then."

"Deal," Rosen said.

"We'll have it for you, boss."

"See to it," Harben said.  He waved a hand at them to shoo them out of
his office, and turned to his computer.  Eileen and Rosen shared a
look, then heaved themselves up and exited quickly.

"Are you pissed?"  Rosen said conversationally, as they headed for
their desks.

"I am pissed," Eileen said.

"I hope being pissed off is enough to get us what we need."

"What about Joe?"  Rosen asked.

"Did he let you know anything about the disks?"

"Still looking at them," Eileen said.

"Hey, you know if Harben got pressure from the commissioner, you think
the coroner might change his verdict on Leetsdale from murder to
suicide?  There wasn't much doubt to me, but--" "Good thought," Rosen
said.

"I think I'll pay a visit to Doctor Durland.  If he's getting pressure
from one side, I'll apply it from the other."

"I'll get Joe on the line," Eileen said.

"We'll see what he says."

"Detective Reed?"  The secretary asked.  She was holding out a slip of
paper.

"Major Bandimere called.  She said she got a call from a man who wants
to talk to Jim Leetsdale.  He's coming into town and she wants to know
what to do."

Rosen looked wolfish.

"Go gettum," he said.

"I'll go twist Doc Durland's arm.  Be careful, et cetera."

"Of course," Eileen said absently, looking at the slip of paper.  The

name was Alan Baxter, which sent an odd shiver down her spine.  It was
a perfectly ordinary name, and nobody she'd ever heard of before.

"He said he'd be into town at six o'clock or so, and he'd call after he
checked into a motel," the secretary said.

"That's about half an hour from now."

"I can tell time," Eileen snapped, and turned toward her desk.  She
felt bad about the snap even as she walked away.  She felt worse after
getting Joe's answering machine at work and at home.  He was probably
in his chair in the Gaming Center, his hair bristling on end and his
eyes red, lost to the world.  She wanted him desperately right now, not
for his work on Leetsdale's files but simply because he was Joe, and he
was hers, and he was good.  She sighed and looked out the window at
Cheyenne Mountain, then heaved herself to her computer screen and
started working on her earthquake reports.

The phone rang promptly at six.

"Hello, this is Detective Reed," Eileen said crisply.

"This is Alan Baxter," a man's voice said.

"I'm calling about Jim Leetsdale.  I called his office and they
referred me to you."

"Why did you want to speak to Jim Leetsdale?"  Eileen asked.

"Well, it's hard to explain," the man said, hesitating.

"My friend Krista Lewis was working--" "I think we need to meet, Mr.
Baxter," Eileen interrupted, feeling a jolt run up her spine.  Krista
Lewis!  Right in her lap.

"Should I come to the police station?"

"Where are you staying?"

"At the Rodeway Inn, off Bijou Street."

"There's a Perkins right across the street.  I'll meet you there in
fifteen minutes," Eileen said, glancing at her watch.

"Okay," the man said doubtfully.

"Will you be in uniform, ma'am?"

"No," Eileen said, amused.

"Just find a seat and I'll find you."

Eileen hung up the phone and found herself twisting a lock of her hair
with her finger, a nervous habit from her childhood.  She thought she'd
broken the habit long ago.  Odd.  And there was no reason to be this
nervous, either.  Even odder.

Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Daniel Grantham's house was agreeable, obviously built from a log home
kit and added to over a period of years.  The large center room was
open to the ceiling, with a stone fireplace at one end and a bank of
windows at the other.  The furniture, huge and overstuffed, looked
comfortably used.  A television sat unapologetically atop a set of
bookshelves crammed tight with books.  Books in stacks surrounded the
television.

Two stacks of library books were piled on top of the set itself.  More
books sat in untidy piles on the floor.  The air held the tang of
wood-smoke and the smell of some sort of evening stew.  In one corner a
staircase rose to the second story where Navaho rugs hung over the
railings.

Marcia was examining the rugs with pleasure when she saw a flash of
movement behind one.  A little figure suddenly darted down a hallway
and disappeared.  Marcia flinched, startled.

"That's my daughter, Sara," Daniel said, stepping from the kitchen with
two glasses in his hand.  He shrugged.

"She might come down later.

She's going through a shy period right now.  Or maybe she's playing at
being a super spy.  It's hard to tell, with Sara."

"Might we sit down, Mr.  Grantham?"  Marcia asked, smiling.

"Do you have some time?"

"Time enough for conversation and supper, too, if you don't mind stew,"
Daniel said, gesturing to the couch.

"We have stew a lot.  My lady Jane is a weaver and she doesn't cook.
She's in Alamosa tonight, so she won't be back for supper."

"She did the rugs?"  Marcia asked, settling herself on the couch.  It
embraced her with well-worn cushions.  The edge of a paperback rose out
of a crack as her weight pushed the cushion down.  Marcia picked it up
and set it on the side table.

"Yeah.  She doesn't make a whole lot of money or anything, but they are
really beautiful.  And it makes her happy."

"They are beautiful," Marcia said.

"Is Sara yours, hers, ours?"

"Originally hers, mine too since she was two," Daniel said without
offense, drinking from his glass.

"Crestone attracts people, Miz Fowler.

Some people feel the call when they get here, some when they read about
it.  Jane was here when I came here, with little baby Sara and her loom
and not much else.  She was staying with some friends, and we met at a
party the school held for me.  Took me a year to romance her, never
have gotten her to agree to marry me."  Daniel frowned.

"Eight years now, and she's my Lady Jane and our Princess Sara and
that's all that matters to me.  So what enchantment do you have, ma'am,
to make me tell you these things?"

"I'm nothing but an old schoolteacher," Marcia laughed.  Then she
stopped smiling, wanting to be honest with this lean young man, wanting
to convince him that she was worthy of trust.

"I wanted to find out about you, Mr.  Grantham.  I'm willing to tell
you all I know about the girl on the dunes.  I need to know if you'll
be open with me, too."

Daniel nodded gravely.

"Done.  First of all, I'm Daniel, not Mr.

Grantham."

"Marcia," Marcia said, and they nodded heads.  It wasn't even a
handshake, but they didn't need to shake hands or sign documents.  They
had made an agreement, and it would bind them both as though it were
written in blood.

"Tell me about the girl, first," Daniel said.  Marcia took a deep sip
of her water, and started.

"I was trying to see the dawn from the dunes," she said.

"I'd been hiking for about forty-five minutes when I thought I saw
something on the sand ..."

When she finished, the water was gone from her glass and her voice

was a little husky.  Her ankle throbbed a little, as though
remembering the pain from her story.  She'd soaked it well and wrapped
it tightly in an Ace bandage, but it was grumbling.

"More water?"  Daniel asked, and Marcia nodded.  When he left, Marcia
leaned back in the couch and stretched her arms above her head, feeling
her back crackle a little.  She worked the ankle in circles and rotated
her head backward to relieve the stiff tension in her shoulders.

She stared directly into a pair of wide brown eyes, peering at her
through the banister.

"Hi," she said softly.

"Hi back," Sara said, in a deliberately scornful voice.

"Your stew smells delicious," Marcia said, and Sara broke into a
surprised grin.

"It's elk.  And I put morel mushrooms in the broth, and carrots that we
grow in our garden.  Potatoes, too.  Dad makes biscuits, but they're
pretty heavy."  She stood up, revealing herself as a compact little
girl of ten or so.  Long brown hair spilled down her back.  She was
dressed in jeans and a thick wooly sweatshirt that contained a swirl of
so many colors it hurt Marcia's eyes.

"You listened to my story," Marcia said.

"I hope you're not upset."

Sara's scorn intensified.

"Not me," she said.

"Dad gets all the calls from the valley.  He keeps all the information.
Cattle and horses all chopped up, and lights and fireworks and the
Grays and the jets."

"So you hear about it."

"Yeah, and when he gets a live one we go out and see if we can spot it,
too.  Lots of times we do.  We always see the jets come screaming by,
trying to follow."  Sara was all the way down the stairs now, her face
animated.

She wasn't shy at all, Marcia realized.  Her father's second guess must
have been the correct one.  Sara had been playing some sort of
espionage game, with Marcia as the target.  The game now forgotten,
Sara strode into the room.

"This must be yours," Marcia said, picking up the book she'd recovered
from the couch cushions.

"Hey!"  Sara said in delight and sat down with a solid thump at
Marcia's side.  Sara was no pixie of a girl.  Everything about her was
steady, as though she could break down walls by walking right through
them.  She was going to be a formidable woman in a very few years.

"One of my favorites of all time," Marcia said, handing Sara The Black
Stallion.

"But I never owned a horse in my life."

"I have a horse," Sara confided.

"His name's Dusty.  He's not like the Black, of course.  He's a
quarterhorse, and Mom and Dad never let me ride without a helmet.  But
he'll take a carrot out of my hand.  You want to help me feed him?"

"After supper, Sara," Daniel said from the kitchen doorway.  He was
wiping his hands on a dishtowel and looked very satisfied.

"I put some biscuits in to go with Sara's stew.  About fifteen minutes.
Marcia and I need to talk some more before supper."

"Make sure you tell her all the parts," Sara said, heaving herself up
from the couch and stomping from the room.  She was not angry. Stomping
was her way of walking.  She held her recovered book in one hand and
when she'd disappeared upstairs, the lights seemed to dim a little.

"Wow," Marcia said.

"What a girl."

"I know," Daniel said smugly, and happily.  He tossed the dishtowel
over his shoulder and settled into his chair.

"I don't like to talk about the Big Picture over supper," he began, "so
let's get right to it.  First of all, you've read about the SLV?"

"The SLV?"

"What we call the San Luis Valley."

"Okay," Marcia said with a nod.  She leaned forward.

"I know there are a huge number of sightings in the San--the SLV.  Lots
of cattle mutilations.

The Taos Hum, the mysterious Great Sand Dunes that may not have been
here as little as ten thousand years ago.  That's about it.  Not a very
coherent picture."

"I'll give you a list of books to read," Daniel said.

"Here's the short version.  The SLV is the largest alpine valley in the
world.  Mountains border it.  The only entrances into the SLV are over
mountain passes-Poncha Pass in the north, Cochetopa in the northwest.
Wolf Creek to the west, and La Veta to the east.  All of them close
during heavy snows, which we get often during the winter months.  The
southern part of the valley closes up down in New Mexico.  There are
hardly any roads down there."

"I came over Poncha Pass," Marcia said.

"The north.  It was breathtaking to see the ranges on either side,
opening out into the valley."

"One of the best ways to come into the SLV," Daniel said approvingly.

"When you came in, the Sangres were to the east--your left.  To the
right was the San Juan Mountains.  Over the San Juans is approximately
twelve million acres of national and state forests.  You could get lost
in there for months and never find your way to Gunnison or any other
town.  To the east, over the Sangre de Christo Mountain Range, there is
another deep valley, quite small, and then the Wet Mountains.

Over the Wets you hit civilization--Pueblo, Colorado Springs,
Interstate 25, and then the plains spreading out on into Kansas."

"I see," Marcia said.

"Two mountain ranges to the east, wilderness to the west.  You're
pretty isolated here."

"A big empty playground," Daniel agreed.

"Now, I hope you're not going to take this wrong, but I believe most of
the playing down here is done by the U.S. government."

Marcia raised an eyebrow.

"I know, I know," Daniel said, raising his hands.

"There are cattle mutilations that defy any explanation.  There are
abductions and lights that travel across the SLV at better than a
thousand miles an hour, silently.  Those are inexplicable to me and fit
the category of a UFO.

However, there's a big Army base up north.  Fort Carson.  There's
Peterson, and Schriever Air Force Base, which we believe is not a
weather station at all but some sort of missile defense base.  There's
NORAD, of course, which is extremely interesting to us not only in
terms of what they do, but who they work with.  NORAD--the North
American Air Defense Command--works with every branch of our military
and they act as the early warning system for the free world.  So, in
sum, we have a very large military presence to the north, and a very
isolated valley with a small, rural population down here."

"Missile defense?"  Marcia said, puzzled.

"I never even heard of Schriever Air Force Base.  And wasn't missile
defense cancelled--" "We don't think it was," Daniel said.

"And we believe some of their technology comes from either bartered or
captured alien spacecraft.

Plain old American military pilots fly some of the craft that we see in
the SLV.  We knew all about the Stealth fighter long before the Gulf
War.

They flew it down here and over the San Juans, to try the fighter over
something other than Area 51 desert terrain."

"What an interesting aircraft that is," Marcia murmured.

"Here's a tidbit for you," Daniel smiled.

"The designers of the Stealth knew that it was going to work when they
started seeing dead bats in the hangar.  Every morning they would have
to clean up dozens of bats."  He paused and looked at Marcia
expectantly.

"The radar deflection is passive?"  she guessed.

"The bats couldn't see the plane and ran right into it."

"Bingo," Daniel said.

"We've got some pretty amazing technology without ever adding in Grays.
I think that perhaps ninety percent of what we see is plain old
American know-how."

"And the rest?"  Marcia asked, knowing the answer.

"We know the rest," Daniel said.

"Most UFOs are spotted close to or by military bases, sites of military
activity, nuclear power and weapons plants.  They aren't here to gather
soil samples.  Military presence generates UFO presence, which
generates more military aircraft, and so on.  I'm surprised we don't
see them chasing each other in big circles in the sky."

"The girl I found," Marcia said.

"What does her death mean?"

"I don't know," Daniel said soberly.

"The Grays are usually much more careful in abductions.  They usually
don't leave bodies behind.  But the girl you saw was mutilated."

"Large, rectangular cuts on her shoulder and arm."  Marcia said.

"I

didn't try to roll her over and see if there were any underneath her,
though."

"Odd thing about muties," Daniel said.

"You always see mutilations on the up side of the animal.  Hardly ever
on the down side.  As though they aren't big enough to roll the
creature over once they get it down."

He grimaced and Marcia hunched her shoulders.  The image was all too
clear--child-like Grays, with their instruments and probes in their
three-fingered hands, and the rolling frightened eye of the doomed
cow.

Marcia collected herself and swallowed past a dry throat.

"These clues seem to point toward a human being, then."

"Which is even more frightening to me," Daniel agreed.

"A human implies a sociopath, a psycho, someone who enjoys killing
women and cutting them."

Into the silence, the buzzer from a kitchen timer went off.  Sara came
striding out of the upstairs hallway, her book in one hand.  She
thumped down the stairs two at a time.

"Supper!"  she yelled.

"I'm starving!  Come on, you guys.  Marcia needs to taste my stew."

Daniel met Marcia's eyes as they stood from their chairs, and the fear
in Daniel's eyes was as apparent as a shout.

Perkins Restaurant, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Eileen Reed was nervous.  For no reason.  Something had lit up the
lizard part of her brain and it was frantically alert.  This reminded
her of her one bungee-jumping episode, back in her teens.  She'd had no
problem going up in the balloon, and the tightness of the cuff on her
feet was reassuring.  She pushed off the platform built along one side
of the balloon's wicker basket and that was okay, too.  The falling,
though, woke the lizard part of her brain.  No matter how much she
tried to tell herself that she was safe and on an adventure, the
ancient part of her screamed in fear and poured adrenaline into her
body until she saw spots in front of her eyes.  Her heart raced and her
mouth filled with a coppery taste as a field of grass beneath her raced
to meet her.  Then the cord tightened around her ankles and she was
jerked abruptly skyward.  She shook for an hour after she was safely
down, laughing in delight and fear.

Now the coppery taste was back in her mouth and the adrenaline pounded
in her bloodstream.  At Perkins?  She shook her head.  This was
ridiculous.  The restaurant was roaring with the dinner hour, six
o'clock.

The scent of greasy frying and the tasty smell of baking and roasting
food drifted in the air.  The evening was warm and still and the sun
was just settling down towards the Front Range.

The restaurant was just off Interstate 25, surrounded by trees and
residential housing.  The houses were beautiful small Victorians, built
for the middle-class workers of the eighteen hundreds.  Across the
highway and down in the valley stood the grand Old Dames, the priceless
Colorado Springs Victorians with twenty rooms and cupolas and
gingerbread so elaborate it looked like Battenburg lace.  The smaller
Victorians were once crumbling and in disrepair, but a whole generation
of young couples had discovered they could afford them.  Eileen could
see half a dozen people with paint or shingles or lawn equipment,
working on their houses in the warmth of the evening.  A beautiful
time, late August, heading into the incomparable days of Indian
summer.

She took a breath and resolutely entered the door of the restaurant.

There were two couples waiting for a table and a family taking care of
their check at the cash register.  A teenage host stood behind a little
podium, working on the restaurant map.  The carpet was clean.  Eileen
remembered this place as well-run and tidy.

"May I help you?"  the host asked with a credible attempt at dignity.

"I'm looking for a friend," Eileen said.

"A man, Alan Baxter?  Is he here?"

"Oh, yes, this way," the host said.

"Please."  His face was spotted with acne and his ears seemed too big
for his head, but his eyes were bright and quick.  He was trying hard
to sound like a grand maitre d'.  Eileen nodded gravely back, silently
applauding the effort, and followed.

Alan Baxter had managed to get a booth, Eileen saw, in the nonsmoking
section.  His back was to her, but he was a tall man, white-haired,
wearing a clean blue shirt.  He stood up as the host appeared at the
table and turned, and the turning seemed to take forever because Eileen
recognized him.

The hair was white now where it once had been brown and the skin was
weathered and wrinkled where it once had been smooth and fresh, but a
three-year-old's memory of her father does not go away.  Besides,
looking at Alan Baxter was a bit like looking in a mirror.

"Daddy?"  Eileen said, in a tiny little voice.  The man who stood in
front of her, his eyes widening, the color draining from his skin, was
her father.  Until now, she hadn't known his name.

"Oh my god," the man said.

"Eileen?  Eileen?"

Then he stumbled a little, pitched forward, and Eileen barely had time
to get her numbed arms up to catch him.  His head narrowly missed
slamming against the plastic of the booth as Eileen eased him to the
carpet.

The teen host, his face dismayed and shocked, yelped and dropped the
menu he'd been carrying for Eileen.

"Don't fret, he's only fainted," Eileen said, her cold fingers feeling
for the pulse in the old man's neck.  There it was, steady as could
be.

"Get me a cold cloth."  She noticed the sudden silence, the lack of
conversation.

All around her, people sat with forks in hands or bites of food in
their mouths, still and staring.

"It's okay," she said loudly, with a forced amusement, to the
restaurant at large.

"He's just fainted and he'll come around in a minute.  Don't worry."

Around her, the noise rose again like someone turning on a switch.

People were generally very nice, Eileen thought.  They were curious,
and that sometimes made them appear mean, but they were mostly just
nice.

The man stirred under her hands.  She became aware that she was
smoothing the hair back from his forehead, and stopped.  She told
herself she didn't feel at all like fainting.  Time slowed and
stretched.  She could feel her heartbeat, thudding firmly.  Her
father's name was Alan Baxter, and he was alive.  She took a deep
breath.  She told herself she felt fine.  She told herself that Alan
Baxter meant nothing to her, that what really mattered was Jim
Leetsdale and Krista Lewis and what information this man might carry.
She knew she was lying to herself but that didn't matter now.  She had
to get through this moment.  Beneath her hands, Alan Baxter opened his
eyes.

"Just stay still for a minute," she said, more harshly than she
intended.

"I've got a wet cloth coming for you."

"Did I pass out?"  he said in a wondering voice, and Eileen nodded
calmly.  She recognized the voice now, too.  It hadn't changed a bit.

"You fainted," she said.  The man, Alan Baxter, blinked hard a few
times.  His eyes cleared.

"What a stupid thing to do," he said.

"I want up off this horrid carpet, please."  He sat up gingerly, then
got to his feet.  He brushed at the seat of his pants.  Eileen rose
silently next to him and brushed at her own pants.

The carpet wasn't really that bad.  Alan Baxter looked better, though
very pale.

"Let's sit down," he said, not looking at her.

"I'm not sure if I look at you I'm not going to pass out again."

Eileen sat down and watched as Alan Baxter slid carefully into the
other seat of the booth.  The teenage host bustled up with a cold cloth
and two glasses of ice water, his face still frightened.

"You okay, sir?"  he asked, his voice cracking.

"You sure scared me."

"I'm fine, thank you," Alan Baxter said.

"Such a silly thing to do.

Thank you for the cloth."  He took it and wiped his face, then handed
it back to the boy with a smile.

Such a nice seeming person, Eileen thought.  He looks like a nice
person.

The nice person raised his head and looked at her.

"Are you really Eileen Baxter?"  he asked.

"I'm Eileen Reed," she said, trying to sound level and calm.

"Funny for us to run into each other like this."

"I can't believe it," he said hoarsely.

"After all the years I looked--" "Look," Eileen interrupted.  She felt
icy calm and completely in control.

"Whatever happened is in the past now and I don't want to talk about
it.  It was a long time ago."

"But I'm your dad," Alan Baxter said in a bewildered voice.

"I already have a dad," Eileen said.

Into the silence the waitress arrived, coffeepot and cups in hand.

"Coffee for you too, ma'am?"  she asked, and poured expertly at
Eileen's nod.  She filled a cup for Alan Baxter as well.

"Feeling better, sir?

I'll give you a minute to look over the menu."

Off the waitress went.  Eileen met Alan Baxter's eyes levelly.  He
nodded at her, his own expression smoothing out.  It was eerie to see a
face that looked so much like her own, controlling emotion the same way
she did.  Her calmness wavered like water for a moment and she forced
it back.

"All right," he finally said.

"Let's not talk about the past.  I'm glad to meet you, though."

"Okay," Eileen said.  The man (her father, her mind whispered) stirred
cream into his coffee and took a healthy sip.

"We met to talk about Major Leetsdale, Miss Reed--eris it Miss?"

"Detective Reed," Eileen said, and felt a thin trembling in her
stomach.

Could that be pride?  How ridiculous.

Alan Baxter smiled at her, an uncomplicated smile of happy pride, pride
that he had no right to feel or express.  He must have seen her
reaction because he stopped smiling and took another sip of his coffee.
Carefully, he opened his menu and gazed at the contents.

Eileen opened her own menu, knowing that she couldn't choke down a bite
of food.  She picked a chicken salad and shut the plastic menu with a
snap.

"Why do you want to talk to Major Leetsdale?"  she asked.

"Is Krista Lewis with you?"

"Krista Lewis is the reason I want to talk to Major Leetsdale, and no,
she's not with me," Alan Baxter said grimly, closing his own menu and
setting it carefully on the table.

"She's dead, Eilee--Miss Reed.  She was murdered in the San Luis
Valley.  She was a friend of mine, and she was working with Major
Leetsdale up here in Colorado Springs.  I thought I might be able to
talk to him--" He stopped, and Eileen saw the calculation and the
conclusion in the widening and narrowing of his eyes.  She was a police
detective, and she didn't know Krista Lewis but she did know Jim
Leetsdale.  Ergo .. .

"He's dead too, isn't he?"  Alan said.

"Murdered, Mr.  Baxter," Eileen replied.  For a moment, her
relationship to this man forgotten, she contemplated him over the rim
of her coffee cup.

"How interesting," he said dryly, and picked up his own cup.  His hands
were shaking enough to slosh the coffee back and forth in the thick
restaurant mug.

"You wouldn't have a murder suspect, would you?"

"No," Eileen said.

"Would you--would you tell me about Major Leetsdale?  I'll tell you
about Krista Lewis in any case, but I would like to know about
Leetsdale.

Sheriff Gonzalez is going to want to know--" "Gonzalez?  You're working
with the sheriff's office?"  Eileen interrupted.

"What do you do, Mr.  Baxter?"  He couldn't be--was he a police
detective too?  That would be too much, she thought remotely.  It just
couldn't be true.

"I'm a retired English teacher, Miss Reed," Alan said apologetically.

"I'm not a deputy or anything.  I ended up talking to the sheriff
because I identified Krista's--Krista's body."  He swallowed hard and
finished his coffee.

"Oh.  Okay.  Could you tell me about Krista Lewis, then?  I'll tell you
what I can about Major Leetsdale."

"That's a deal," he said.

"Ready to order?"  the waitress said brightly, startling them both.

"Ready," Alan said.

"Ready," Eileen said.

 Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Hey!"  Joe said in surprise, as Eileen thumped solidly into his chest.
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into the curve of
his neck.  For a moment he was sure she was weeping, but when she
lifted her face for a kiss, her eyes were dry.

"Well let's get inside and close the door, at least.  The neighbors,
you know."

"Very funny," she said, her voice not entirely all Eileen-sounding. Joe
frowned but knew better than to pry.  He wondered if this had something
to do with that Teddy Shaw guy, the psycho child-killer that Eileen had
shot.  Joe desperately wanted to talk to Eileen about this, to give her
his opinion on child-killers and what should be done with them, but she
wouldn't talk to him.  It was frustrating.

He loved her.  He'd loved her when he told her, over a year ago. Eileen
loved him back, he was certain.  At least, he knew when they were in
bed together.  When they were making love she was entirely there,
entirely open, entirely his.  At other times she would cloud over, turn
away, and hold him away with her words.  He'd realized months ago that
he felt like the girl in their relationship, which made him laugh at
the same time it made him furious.  He was determined to make her trust
him, not just with the fragile length of her glorious body but with her
heart and mind.

It would happen eventually, and then he could stop biting back his "I
love you."  When she was ready, she would be ready.

"Talk to me," he said, making his voice light and teasing.

"Tell me about your day."

"Rough day," Eileen said.  She allowed herself to be shuffled down the
hallway so he could close the door.

"If you're going into barnacle mode, we're going to have to sprawl out.
Bed okay?"

"Sure," she murmured against his chest.  He was certain her eyes were
closed.  He picked her up--that would be twice this week--and carried
her to the bedroom.  When he collapsed on the bed with her, her head
bounced on his chest.

"You okay?"  he asked, seriously this time.  She nodded, still limp
against him, and he shrugged.  When she was ready, she would be ready.
After ten minutes, her weight became heavy and her breathing slowed.

He eased her to his side and waited, grimacing, for his left arm to
come back to life.  Then he cautiously reached out and snagged the
television remote.  As long as she was sleeping, he could catch up with
preseason football.

At the end of the third quarter, he realized Eileen's eyes were open.

She was watching the game.

"They've got a good linebacker prospect," she said, in a very
Eileen-sounding voice.

"And a new receiver too," Joe said.  He picked up the remote and turned
off the television.

"But it's preseason, so who cares.  Talk to me, my woman.  It is the
price I demand for watching football with me."

Eileen sat up and smoothed her hair back with both hands.

"It was a tough day," she said.

"I met this guy at Perkins, over off the Bijou exit, and he knew Krista
Lewis.  The late Krista Lewis."

Joe flipped the remote in the air and caught it.  Then he gently set it
down.  When she was ready, he reminded himself.

"Was she murdered too?"  he asked.

"Yeah.  She was found down in the San Luis Valley, two days ago.

Same day Jim Leetsdale was snuffed.  Hers didn't look like a suicide,
though.  According to Mr.  Baxter, this guy I talked to, she was laid
out like one of those cattle mutilations they get down there."

"Cattle mutilations," Joe said darkly.

"Was this guy one of those UFO freaks?"

"I guess not," Eileen said.

"He was visiting some friends down in the

valley.  Anyway, he says the whole place is about to boil over with
talk of alien abduction and UFOs and stuff like that."

"Oh, great," Joe said.

"Just what you need to screw up your case."

"You don't believe in UFOs?"  Eileen asked with a teasing little
smile.

When she smiled like that, it made Joe want to leap right on her and
lick her like a big ice cream cone.  A strawberry ice cream cone.

"UFOs?"  he said, bringing his mind back with an effort.

"No way, man.  UFOs are for sad, stupid people with nothing better to
do.  What a bunch of idiots."

"So what about your simulations?"  Eileen asked.

"Have you figured out what Leetsdale does--er, what he did, yet?"

"I think so," Joe said.

"Maybe.  I'll know tomorrow morning."

"Why tomorrow?"

"I can't tell you," he said.  At 4:40 a.m."  to be exact, he was going
to know if the incredibly crazy theory he'd developed was correct or
just a bunch of UFO-like hot air.

"So if you don't have anything better to do tonight, you want me to
order pizza?  You want to work up an appetite for it?"

Eileen's eyes went so dark for a moment he was sure he'd said something
wrong.  Then she grinned like a little girl.

"You betcha," she said.

"I've got lots of things to do tonight.  But nothing better than
you."

"That's what I want to hear," Joe said, loving her so fiercely he
didn't care if she ever told him she loved him back.  He picked up the
phone and hit the speed-dial number for pizza.

LaVeta, Colorado

Alan Baxter pulled into the Texaco for gas and sunflower seeds.
Sunflower seeds kept him alert and awake while driving, even though
they made the sides of his mouth sore after a while.  Tonight, he
didn't care.

Every inch of him felt sore.

After his daughter had left the Perkins parking lot, Alan had sat in
his Bronco for almost half an hour, unable to move his hand to start
the engine.  Everything in him was paralyzed with exhaustion.  She
looked just like him.  That was the thought that kept returning to him.
He'd comforted himself for years with the thought that his daughter
would look just like Linda when she grew up and would probably act just
like her too.  That her loss was inevitable and predetermined from the
moment he married Linda Doran.

He had slowly leaned forward until his forehead was pressed against the
plastic of the steering wheel, there in the Perkins lot.  It felt good
against his hot skin, like a warm hand.  She looked just like him.  The
height, the shape of the eyes, the cheekbones that made him handsome
had made her absolutely beautiful.  The only touch of Linda in her was
her dark red hair, a beautiful sweep to her shoulders.  She'd had it
cut indifferently, which only made her more outrageously beautiful.
Alan wondered if she'd gone to her high school prom, and the thought
sent a spasm through him so sharp he clutched his middle with both
hands.

The spasm passed.  Eventually, he found the energy to start his Bronco.
He had told his daughter he was staying at the Rodeway Inn, but he was
planning to register only if he had to.  The place he wanted to be
right now was the Williams's Ranch.  Pulling into the bright glare of
the Texaco station in La Veta, he found himself longing for his white
bedroom, for Beth Williams, for Susan and Frank.  How strange, that the
Williams's Ranch was so much like home.  His spare little two-bedroom
house in Pinedale, Wyoming seemed like a relic from another life.

At the Texaco station he walked slowly into the store, trying to
stretch muscles that were stiff from tension and exhaustion.  The
interior of the building smelled like boiled coffee and smoke, a
nauseating mix that almost made him decide against a cup of coffee to
help the sunflower seeds.  The clerk was settled deep into his chair
with a thick fantasy novel, something with swords and cloaked soldiers
and ram-headed monsters on the front.  He didn't look up when Alan put
his credit card on the counter, but Alan saw the man was holding the
book with only one hand.  The other was under the counter, probably
resting comfortably on a shotgun fully chambered with the safety off. A
veteran night clerk.

"I'm going to fill up, pump six," he said.  The clerk nodded, eyes on
his book.  Alan loped out to the Bronco and filled the tank, trying not
to think about Eileen Reed.  If the clerk had decided to shoot a hole
in his belly the size of a dinner plate, he could have tried not to
think about that either.

A few minutes later, a wad of sunflower seeds in his cheek and a hot
cup of coffee steaming in his cup holder, he pulled out of the station
and accelerated down the highway.

If Beth Williams asked, he was going to tell her, he decided.  Perhaps
he could tell Beth and Susan and Frank about his daughter, and Linda
Doran, and what happened thirty years ago.  Maybe they could help him
decide what to do.  The one thing he wasn't going to do, he knew, was
lose his daughter again.

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"I checked on the stocks of water in Rapid City," Mitchell's
administrative assistant said, her face tired and resentful.  She'd
been there much later than usual, and she was on salary and didn't get
overtime.

"Sorry about this, Greta," Mitchell said.  He knew his own face
mirrored hers, with sympathetic lines of tiredness and impatience.

"I want to be home with my family just like you do.  But we have to
make sure we're prepared."

"Yes, sir," she said.  She lifted a piece of paper from the stack she
carried in her arms.

"We're fully stocked with food and clothing for a major Colorado
earthquake reaching into Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and Idaho.  We
have tents, first-aid supplies, names and numbers of doctors and nurses
from the entire FEMA area.  We also have National Guard Armory
locations and access codes for call-up from each governor.  The
governors prefer to call up their own guard and then pass it on to the
FEMA director, but since our area has never had to call up the guard
for a natural disaster, they were willing to pass on the codes.  We
won't need them, probably?"

"Probably not," Mitchell said warmly.  She was the administrative
assistant for his FEMA directorship.  With a staff of close to fifty,
her responsibilities were enormous, and after the earthquake she'd been
working nonstop.  He had to force his face away from a smile.  Fifty
people, and only three of them knew what was going to happen.  The
others would believe, and follow, and adore the man who saved them
all.

"After all this preparation, the Colorado earthquake illustrates the
importance of the work we're doing."

"Mr.  Mitchell," Bennett said from the doorway, a half-chewed stir
stick in his mouth.  That spelled some sort of trouble.

"Thank you, Greta," Mitchell said.  Greta disappeared through his
office door like smoke, deftly managing to avoid touching Bennett as
she went.  She'd never liked Bennett and he knew it.  He contrived to
bump into her constantly, lightly, and never quite offensively.
Mitchell didn't care, as long as Bennett didn't tease her into
quitting.

"We may have a problem," Bennett said as soon as he'd closed the
door.

"We traced a call into the Alamosa sheriff's office from the Colorado
Springs Police Department, Special Investigations."

"Krista Lewis," Mitchell said immediately.  He could feel his face
darkening with rage.  His teeth clenched together.

"This is terrible.

How?"

"My guess is the homicide detectives," Bennett said reluctantly.  He
moved his stir stick from one side of his mouth to the other.

"The Indian and the girl.  There's a guy down in Alamosa, named Alan
Baxter, identified the dead girl.  He took a trip up here and now
they've connected Leetsdale and Krista Lewis."

"Get a picture of Alan Baxter.  Then you know what to do," Mitchell
said, relaxing back in his chair.

"Sir, Alan Baxter is no problem, but the detectives?  I still don't
think we should kill cops, sir--" "My decision, Bennett," Mitchell
said.

"My responsibility.  Do you have a plan for it?"

"Of course, sir," Bennett said.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Murdered," Rosen said without expression.

"Murder," Eileen said, taking a deep sip of her double-shot mocha
latte.  Despite her evening with Joe, she hadn't slept well.  Her
dreams had been tangled and full of desperation.  She'd slept at her
own apartment because Betty needed to be fed and she was afraid of what
she might say while she was sleeping.  Joe wanted to know about her,
parts of her that would drive him away.  She couldn't bear to lose him.
Not him, too, whispered a part of her mind.

"We should contact this sheriff," Rosen said.

"Is Alan Baxter still in town?"

"No, he had to go back to the valley.  He's not a suspect but he knew
the victim, so Gonzalez wanted him to stick around."

"Is Baxter a potential suspect?"

The question hung in the air a lot longer than it should have.  Eileen
knew the answer but it still took an eternity to force it out of her
mouth.

"I guess so.  We'll have to check his alibis for Leetsdale's murder.
Evidently he's solid for Lewis's murder.  According to Sheriff
Gonzalez, which is according to Alan Baxter."

"So we'll check him out," Rosen said.

"Of course," Eileen said, taking another sip of her coffee.

"We'll start with--" "With your appointment," Harben interrupted.  He
had appeared, as always, with no warning whatsoever.

"Damn, sir!"  Eileen yelped.

"I just about dumped my coffee."

"That's not coffee, that's some sort of government conspiracy," Harben
said grimly.

"You've got an appointment with Gerri Matthews this morning."

"I don't have time for that," Eileen said.

"I've got--" "You've got to tender your badge and your gun if you don't
go," Harben said.

"That's policy, Detective."

"Oh, jeez," Eileen mumbled.

"I'll follow up on Alan Baxter.  Don't let her shrink you too much,"
Rosen said.  He hardly ever made jokes.  Peter O'Brien, already at his
computer console, overheard and laughed far too loudly for Eileen's
taste.

"That's a great one, Dave!"  he roared.

"Ha, ha," Eileen said, and punched the keys on her computer to lock up
her machine.  She gathered her car keys and jacket and left, refusing
to feel anything but numb.  Refusing to feel at all.

Gerri looked relaxed and shapeless as ever when she opened the door to
her office.  She was wearing pottery-red pants and a baggy shirt of a
no-color beige.  She looked terrific, of course.  She smelled of fresh
rose soap.

Her hair was shiny, and the whites of her eyes had the clarity of a
child.

Eileen had finished her latte on the way over and carried a glass of
water from the small service area off the waiting room, an area that
had originally

been the family kitchen in the old Victorian house.  Eileen knew her
own eyes were bleary and tired.  She felt exhausted just being among
the battered women and the stiff unhappy couples waiting their turn
with one of the six therapists who worked there.

"Hey, Eileen, come on in," Gerri said, opening her office door and
dimpling into a smile that was as fresh as her eyes.  Eileen walked
past her and dropped into one of the comfortable armchairs Gerri kept
in her office.  Gerri's office breathed comfort, from the quiet prints
on the walls to the plants that grew happily around the windows.  A
thick wool rug covered the glow of a pine floor.  Gerri settled into
the other chair and picked up a clipboard.  It was stacked with
papers.

"Okay, I'm here," Eileen said, trying to sound neutral instead of
grumpy.

"Nick told you he'd take your badge, didn't he?"  Gerri laughed.

"That's usually how I get officers for their second appointment.  Nick
uses threats.  Intimidation.  What a guy."

"Nick?"

"Nick Harben.  Nick to me, and to you, in this office," Gerri said.

"He wouldn't send his people to me until he'd talked with me and made
sure I was acceptable.  He's a good boss, your captain."

"He's a great boss," Eileen said absently.  His name was Nick?  The
image was almost unthinkable, the emotionless Harben sitting in this
very armchair, talking with Gerri Matthews.  Harben, drinking tea?

"Did he drink tea when he came here?"

"That is a secret between Nick and myself," Gerri said serenely.

"Just as I will never reveal that you drink Red Zinger with honey. It's
all confidential."

"Right," Eileen sighed.

"So what do you want to know about today?

Do you want to hear about Teddy Shaw again?"

"Nope," Gerri said, consulting her clipboard.

"Let's get really Freud and talk about your childhood."

Eileen clutched the chair arms convulsively.  Her stomach squeezed into
a ball of ice.  For a moment, she could see nothing but the face of
Alan Baxter.

"Okay," she said, forcing calm.

"What do you want to know?  I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.  My
parents love me, they're still married, I had a great childhood."

Gerri looked up from her clipboard.

"Funny," she said.

"Because your personal records show you were adopted at the age of
four.  Plenty old enough to remember what happened before."

Eileen was up and at the doorway in four quick strides, fumbling at the
door handle with trembling hands.

"You know department rules, Eileen.  You'll lose your badge and your
job," Gerri said mournfully, not moving from her armchair.

"You'll never work in law enforcement again.  Is this what you want?"

Eileen stopped trying to turn the doorknob.  She leaned her forehead
against the wood panels, smelling a clear odor of Lemon Pledge.  She
couldn't leave this room.  She couldn't give up the career that she
loved with all her heart.  She felt like she was being torn in two.
Weren't adoption records sealed?

"Sealed as to content, but not the fact of adoption itself," Gerri said
calmly.  Eileen didn't realize she'd spoken aloud.

"Fine," she said, rolling the hotness of her forehead across the
smoothly polished wood of the door.

"I'll talk to you about what I remember, Gerri.  If that's what it
takes, I guess I can do that."

"I've said this before, but I'll say it again, Eileen.  Nothing that
goes on in this room goes outside.  Have you noticed my filing cabinets
are all made of metal?"

Eileen shook her head, still leaning against the door, still struggling
not to tear open the door and run.

"They're metal because if somebody decides to violate the Constitution
and grab my records, I can burn them without burning down this
beautiful house."  Behind her, Eileen heard a click and the
unmistakable sound of a lighter.

"I don't smoke, Eileen."  There was a click as the lighter went off.

"Does this convince you?"

"Sure," Eileen said.  Her stomach was lurching inside of her.  She
wondered if she were going to throw up.

"What do you want to know?"

"I want to know why you think adoption is such a horrible thing.  Do
you think if people knew you were adopted they would stone you in the
streets?  Laugh at you?  What?"

"My mother didn't love me," Eileen said, and grinned a mirthless grin
at the door.

"Isn't that clear enough?"

"She loved you enough not to abort you, Eileen," Gerri said, implacable
as a field of snow sliding downhill.

"She loved you enough to bear you, which I hear is pretty difficult
and painful to do.  She loved you enough to give you up for adoption--"
Eileen laughed wildly at this, and turned around.  She didn't know if
she were going to throw up or try to kill Gerri, and she didn't care.

"She didn't give me up for adoption, Gerri," she snarled.

"The last thing she did was try to unbuckle my seat belt, after she
picked a long straight road and a bridge to hit.  After she'd downed
enough alcohol to drown a horse, after she had a little bonfire at a
campground where she burned every piece of identification we had, she
floored the car and aimed at the bridge and tried to unbuckle my seat
belt.  She missed, and lost control, and flipped the car before she hit
the bridge, and I stayed buckled and I lived.  That's how much my
mother loved me, Gerri."

Eileen covered her face with her hands and sank to the floor, her
shoulders quivering.  She did not cry.  Tears had been burned out of
her a long time ago, perhaps even before she was three years old.  But
she curled up in a ball and wrapped her arms around her legs and buried
her face into her knees, and she shook.  She wished she were dead.
Anywhere but here.

A hand touched her shoulder, a hand as light and soft as a dandelion
seed.

"Don't touch me!"  she shrieked into her knees.

"Don't look at me!"

She hunched away, trying to curl herself tighter.  Her ankle gun
pressed painfully into her thigh.

"Well," Gerri's voice said from right next to her, "Aren't I a great
big turd."

There was a long silence.

"Yes, you are," Eileen said.  There was more silence, and the sense of
Gerri's body sitting right next to hers.  Gerri wasn't touching her,
but she could smell the light scent of the soap Gerri used.  Eileen
started giggling.

She couldn't help it.  The image of Gerri, a great big turd, sitting on
the floor next to her.  She giggled harder, unable to stop, her face
pressed into her knees.

"I'm sorry, Eileen," Gerri said sadly.

"I've got this--blind spot, I guess, about adoption.  I had an abortion
when I was twenty-two, just out of school.  I was married, but my
husband and I weren't ready.  He was in law school and I was starting
my master's degree in counseling work."

Eileen's giggles trailed off.  She scrubbed her face against her
knees

and was surprised to see dampness there.  Gerri continued, her voice
calm.

"So it turned out I had a condition called endometriosis.  It's a
fibrous growth in the uterus and fallopian tubes.  Sometimes it causes
very painful periods; sometimes it's absolutely silent.  In my case, it
was silent.

But by the time my husband and I decided to have children, my tubes
were scarred shut and my uterus too damaged to bear a child."

"Oh no," Eileen said.

"Oh, yes," Gerri said.  Eileen looked at Gerri and saw a flood of tears
down Gerri's pretty face.  She was sitting right next to Eileen with
her back against the door.  Her eyes were red and her cheeks were
flushed, but her voice never changed.

"That baby I aborted was a miracle child, the only one we would ever
have.  And we never knew it, until it was too late."

"I'm so sorry," Eileen said.  She reached out a hand and touched
Gerri's hand, which lay limply on her knee.  Gerri squeezed back.
Gerri's hand felt like a little bird, all lightness and fragile
bones.

"I'm okay," Gerri said.

"I'm a therapist, after all.  My husband and I, we love each other very
much.  We didn't know what we were doing.  But I've got this wad of
scar tissue in my heart, and it makes me make bad mistakes
sometimes."

"So I guess you're pro-life, right?"  Eileen asked.

"Not always," Gerri said.

"I believe abortion is the only answer in very rare situations.  But I
counsel waiting, and thinking, and understanding your options.  Nobody
told me that pregnancy is a miracle, that stopping this baby was
stopping the potential for an entire life.  Abortion is such a fiercely
protected right they don't bother to tell you what could be the result.
This abortion meant more than a life."  Gerri blew out a breath in a
resigned sigh.

"The cure for endometriosis, you see, is a baby" "Oh, no," Eileen said,
and realized she was gripping Gerri's little hand far too hard.

"Oh, yes," Gerri said.

"I've told this story lots of times, Eileen.  The pain does go away,
mostly.  If you carry a baby to term, endometriosis is cut back, in
many cases never to return.  So if I'd carried this baby and given it
up for adoption, I could have had more children, when I was ready"

"That's why you talked about my mother loving me enough to have me.

"That's right.  But I had the adoption hat on, instead of the abused
child hat on, and I made a great big turd out of myself.  Not for the
first time, as you now know," Gerri said, grinning a little girl grin
at Eileen.

Eileen smiled back, still holding Gerri's hand.

"Now we have to get back to me, don't we?"  she said, and Gerri dimpled
into a smile.

"You are a very, very intelligent woman, Eileen Reed," she said.

"Yes, I do have to earn my pennies.  If we keep talking about me, I'll
end up paying you.  Let's get up, and sit back down, and start all
over.  Okay?"

"Okay," Eileen said.

"But I don't think I can tell you my story the same way you told me
yours."

"You haven't had the practice I've had," Gerri said grimly.  She
scrambled to her feet and dusted off her narrow bottom and held a hand
out to Eileen.

"Let's get to it, shall we?"

"Right," Eileen said, taking Gerri's hand.  She unfolded from her
crouch and stood up.  It was harder than it should have been, to stand
straight as though she were unafraid.  She walked to the armchair and
sat down and took a sip of water as Gerri settled into her own seat.
Gerri took a tissue and blew her nose with a very unladylike honk.  She
wiped her eyes and took up her clipboard and grinned a one-sided grin
at Eileen.

"This job sucks sometimes, eh?  Tell me about what happened after the
accident.  You survived?  Where was this?  Take a deep breath first,
then--just tell me."

Eileen took a deep breath and held on to Gerri's courage as though it
were her own.  She knew that Gerri had told her the story of her
aborted baby so that Eileen would feel that she could open up, too. But
it still took incredible guts to use your own horrible mistake as a way
to help your patient.  If Gerri could talk, so could she, no matter how
much it hurt.  And it hurt plenty bad.

Eileen took a deep breath, and told her.

"I was about three and a half, I think.  I remember my mom packing me
up and putting me in the car late at night when we first left.  She
woke me up when she buckled me in the car.  She forgot my Raggedy Ann
doll and I cried the whole next day.  But she wouldn't go back."

"You were on the run because of your father?"  Gerri asked.

"I guess," Eileen said doubtfully.

"I don't remember him ever hitting her, or anything like that.  I was
only three, hardly old enough to remember anything but the way he--the
way he smelled and sounded, and I remember him rocking me in a big
rocking chair.  So I had good memories of him.  But something made my
mom take off.  I wish I knew what it was."  Eileen blinked hard,
realizing that maybe she could find out now, if she wished.  Her
stomach gave another huge lurch, and she gulped some water.  Gerri
didn't seem to notice her hesitation.

"What do you remember about the accident?"

"We were in Rapid City, South Dakota.  It had taken us a long time to
get there because she spent some time in Las Vegas, a couple of months
I think.  I think I must have been born in California, but I'm not
sure.  It just seems that Las Vegas to South Dakota makes sense if you
started out in California.  Anyway, I remember all the lights in Las
Vegas, how the lights made the night seem like day.  She bought me a
new doll in Las Vegas but she burned it at the end, the last day."

"She was erasing your identities?"

"Yeah, I guess that was the idea.  One night we drove to a campground
and she burned everything except our clothes."

"License plates?"

"Buried them, I guess, or hid them somewhere.  So we were in the car
and she was crying, and humming, and then she'd sing a little bit and
then cry some more, and I kept telling her I was hungry, and she told
me I wouldn't be hungry soon.  She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt
that was a very pale pink, I remember, and she had red hair like mine
and she just looked beautiful, and wild, and, and--" "Crazy," Gerri
commented.

"You can say crazy.  What you mean is that she was very ill, Eileen."

"Yes," Eileen sighed.

"She was ill.  I know that now.  I took a course in college,
psychology, and there was a chapter on manic-depressives
and-Pow!--there was my mom, staring me in the face.  Everything I
remembered about her fit the profile."

"Any signs of that illness in you?"  Gerri asked, voicing Eileen's
worst fear in the most casual tones imaginable.  Eileen laid a hand
across her belly, but apparently her stomach had decided that throwing
up was not going to happen this morning.  Her stomach gave another
lurch, and that was all.

"None that I've seen," Eileen said, trying for the same even tone.

"I

had the psych tests done before I entered the Police Academy.  So far,
I think I dodged the bullet."

"That's a relief," Gerri said neutrally.

"I'll say," Eileen said fervently.

"So, your mom managed to kill herself but not you.  How long before you
were found?"

"Less than five minutes," Eileen said.

"My angel was watching over me, that's what Mom--my adoptive mom, now,
not my birth mom-says."

It was like an angel had sent them, Paul and Tracy Reed of Wyoming.

They picked up their mail in Belle Fouche, South Dakota, because that
was the closest town to their ranch.  But their baby was in the
hospital in Rapid City, their little boy slowly dying in an incubator.
They'd both gone home for a day to look after the ranch and to try to
come to grips with what was going to happen, something their doctor had
talked them into after their third dreadful week at the hospital. There
was no way to know that little John Reed would be born with
transposition of the vessels of the heart.  The condition was a simple
blunder of nature, a mixup where fresh oxygenated blood circulated
through the lungs, and old, used-up blood circulated through the body.
The doctors had put a shunt in his chest and had operated twice.  A
transplant heart was the only option in John's case, and there wasn't
one available.  So John Reed slowly slipped away, and Paul Reed
wondered if he were going to lose Tracy along with John.  She was mad
with grief and helplessness, and even one day away from his side was
too much for her.  She'd insisted they leave that evening, not wait
until morning.

So there they were, two people with broken hearts, and they saw the
dirty sedan flipping and corkscrewing through the air, and the abrupt
star shape in the windshield that meant that someone had probably just
died.  The night had been quiet and still and warm, with the fragile
scent of early spring in the air and the stars so thick in the sky the
Milky Way itself was visible, hanging over them like a shroud.  Tracy
had the window down, her hair blowing back in the breeze, and she
smelled the black scent of burning rubber and the sharpness of the
spilling gasoline as the car passed them, tumbling into the ditch by
the side of the road.

Paul stomped on the brakes and their truck skidded to a stop, adding
their own stink of rubber to the still night air.

"Oh my god, Tracy," he gasped.

"Hang on."  He reversed the engine and backed up the road, tires
squealing, and came to a stop next to the silent wreck.  They both sat
there, paralyzed, looking at the crumpled thing that had been a car.
One wheel spun crazily, upside down.

Then, from a thousand miles away, it seemed, they heard the tiny wail
of a child.

Gerri said, her pen forgotten in her hand.

"They found you."

"They found me," Eileen said, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Their child was dying and God dropped me into their arms.  I was
trapped in the wreck, but I wasn't badly hurt.  A piece of glass cut my
arm.  They were afraid of a head injury, of course.  They were Wyoming
ranchers, and they'd seen wrecks on rural highways before.  So Dad
stayed with me and Mom drove into town to get the ambulance and the
police."

"That's odd.  Why Tracy, instead of Paul?"

"Because Dad worked at the hospital when he was in college, learning
Agricultural Engineering.  Actually, he told me later, most of his
training came from the veterinary courses he took.  So he wormed his
way into the wreck and put a towel around me and immobilized my head,
just the way he'd been taught.  Then he put his socks over the cut on
my arm, and laid his head right next to mine and talked to me nonstop
until the ambulance got there.  Mom went screaming into town and
brought back, well, everybody, I think.  Fire truck, ambulance,
police."

"And your birth mom?"

"Dead just the way she wanted," Eileen said without emotion.

"Painlessly, I think.  Dad said she was completely still, not a sign of
life.  I couldn't see her in the wreck, which was a mercy."

"I was a difficult problem for the police, as you might imagine.  Dead
woman, living child, not a clue as to her identity.  The only thing
they found was my first name, and that didn't turn up anything.
Evidently my father hadn't filed a missing persons report."

"Maybe she killed him before she left," Gerri mused.

Eileen bit back a response and nodded as though thinking that idea
over.

"At any rate, your brother died, is that right?"

"Within a few hours after I got there.  While I was in X ray, and they
were deciding I didn't have a head injury.  As though he were waiting
for me to come so he could go ahead and go."  Eileen swallowed past
something in her throat.  If there was an angel in her life, his name
was John Reed, she thought, and gave a silent little prayer up for
him.

"So how did they end up adopting you?  Were you in foster care?"

"They were my foster care," Eileen said.

"This is rural South Dakota.

They don't even have much of a social services department there.  They
had a bureau of Indian affairs office that dealt with foster kids, but
since I was definitely not Indian, they didn't want anything to do with
me.

The police had no clue what to do.  So Mom and Dad stepped forward and
said they'd be happy to take me home until things got worked out."

"As simple as that," Gerri murmured.

"As simple as that," Eileen smiled.

"Like taking home a lost puppy.

Once they had me in Wyoming, South Dakota was happy to wash its hands
of me.  So after searching for a year, the state declared me free for
adoption and I think it took about five minutes for the paperwork to go
through.  They didn't change my name, though.  It was the only thing I
carried out of the wreck, and they wanted me to keep it."

"Wow," Gerri said, her face alight.

"You are one lucky woman, Eileen Reed."

"I know," Eileen said.

"I know I am.  And that's what I want to be, Gerri.  Daughter of Tracy
and Paul, sister to John.  I don't want to be some little girl by the
side of the road, next to the body of her crazy dead mom."

"You are their daughter, Eileen, and you always will be," Gerri said
firmly.

"But you are also your birth parents' daughter."

"I know," Eileen said.  Gerri fixed her with a stern look, and Eileen
wilted back in her chair.

"Okay," she mumbled.

"Maybe I don't know so well."

"Eileen, I'm not just a sponge, you know.  I'm here to give you
tools.

To arm you, as it were, just like your guns and your badge.  We aren't
just going to pick at our old wounds and admire the scar tissue, we're
going to get beyond them."

"I want to forget all about it," Eileen said.

"Why can't I just forget about it?"

"Because it's a part of who you are.  Do you know how many parents
kill their children every year?"

"How many?"  Eileen asked with a sigh.

"I don't know," Gerri said promptly, and dimpled into another
infectious laugh.

"I pretend to be a fountain of knowledge, but I actually have a cheat
sheet on my clipboard.  Guess what my cheat sheet is all about
today?"

"Adoption," Eileen grinned.

"Adoption.  Next week, I'll have a great slew of facts and figures for
you.  Just let me arm you with this today.  Lots of parents kill their
kids, every year.  Hardly any of them kill themselves along with their
children.

They drown them, shake them, burn them alive, strap them into car seats
and let the car coast into a lake.  But they don't kill themselves
along with their kids.  They walk away and try to get away with murder.
Your mother, crazy as she was, didn't do that."

"So what's better about killing herself along with me?"

"Do you think she hated life?  Hated her condition, hated what was
becoming of her?"

"Definitely," Eileen said without hesitation.  She could remember her
mother's black fits of depression, the hours she spent staring into a
mirror without moving, the crying, and the maniacal laughter.  She
remembered being held by her mother, nearly crushed in her arms, as
though Eileen weren't a child but a comforting teddy bear.

"Then take this with you today, Eileen.  She wanted a release from a
life of hell for herself.  And she tried to take you away from that
hell, too.

She had no idea that the whole world wasn't just the way she thought it
was.  She tried to release you as she released herself."

"She tried to kill me out of love?"  Eileen tried for a cynical laugh
and it stuck in her throat like a fish bone.

"She loved you, Eileen," Gerri said earnestly.

"She was sick and she was confused and she abused you horribly, but she
loved you.  It was a broken love, but it was still love.  Think about
that, just take it with you.

Next week, we'll talk again."

"Time to go?"  Eileen asked shakily.

"I don't know if I can stand up."

"I'm sure you can, girl," Gerri said.

"Me, I'm meeting my husband at home for lunch, and I'm going to cry and
cry and make him hold me.  He always knows when I tell my own story.
He can see it in my face.  So I need to go, too

"Thank you," Eileen said, and was surprised to find she meant it.  She
stood, and managed it without wobbling.

"I feel like going home and sleeping until next week."

"It's called catharsis, my dear," Gerri said.

"Fixing what's wrong doesn't come easy.  Now out with you, before we
get all weepy and girlish with each other."  Gerri shepherded Eileen to
the door and waved her out after giving her a firm, no nonsense hug. It
wasn't motherly or girlish, and it felt just right.

"Next week, okay," Eileen said numbly.

"I will think things over."

"Just let it simmer.  And remember, I carry a lighter.  No one on this
earth will know a word of your story, not my husband, not anyone."

"Okay," Eileen said.  She walked out through the waiting room and into
the brightness of a beautiful late August day.  The grass was
overwhelmingly green, like something out of a drug scene in a movie.
Nothing seemed quite right.  The angles of the buildings seemed a
little out of true, and the cars in the parking lot were too shiny. Her
own Jeep was blazing hot and stuffy inside when she opened her door. 
She sat down anyway and started the air conditioner, looking at the
windshield instead of through it.  She noticed the clarity of the new
glass, replaced shortly after Teddy Shaw blew out her old windshield. 
There were already several tiny pits in the glass, catching the noon
sun and blazing like tiny diamond chips.

Eventually the cold of the air conditioner and the reassuring comfort
of her Jeep brought her back.

"What a morning," she said to herself, blinking her vision into
focus.

Suddenly she remembered what Rosen was doing while she was getting her
guts hung up to dry by Gerri Matthews.  He was doing a background check
on Alan Baxter.  The man who could answer questions that she didn't
know if she had the courage to ask.

"Gerri," she said to herself as she drove out of the parking lot.

"Gerri, I met my father yesterday."  She laughed, thinking of Gerri's
owl-eyed response.  She spotted a sign for a sub shop and her stomach
awoke and growled at her.  She was hungry, ravenously hungry, as though
she'd run a marathon with Gerri instead of just sat in comfortable
armchairs and talked to each other.

"I'd rather have run a marathon," she said to herself, and pulled into
the sub shop parking lot.  She felt hollowed out with hunger, but she
could feel her energy rising back inside of her.  It was over.  She'd
told a stranger the worst story of her life and she'd survived it. Time
for a sub sandwich and a huge iced tea, and then back to work.

Great Falls, Virginia

"Okay, this is what I've got.  It might not be much good," Lucy warned
Eileen.  She had just bathed Hank and he was sitting in her lap chewing
on a squeaky baby toy.  Drool ran down his chin, and he smelled
wonderful, a clean warm baby scent that was the finest thing Lucy had
ever smelled.

"Tell me," Eileen said.

"I hope you have something new."

"First of all, Krista Lewis is dead.  You knew?"

"Not when I first called, actually.  But I do now.  Who was she?"

"She was an environmental engineer.  She worked for Riverworks, a
government contractor enviro company.  The head of Riverworks is Walter
Albrose.  You probably don't know him, but he swings a lot of weight in
D.C. Former head of the EPA, lawyer, golfing buddies with every
President since Bush, apparently.  But as far as I can tell, Riverworks
isn't corrupt.  Powerful and political and dedicated to a clean
environment, but not corrupt.  I'm going to have Krista's autopsy
online here as soon as the Pueblo medical examiner puts it out.  Do you
want it?"

"Yeah," Eileen sighed.

"She was murdered.  It wasn't an accident."

"That's what I've read.  Walter Albrose is on fire out here, trying to
find out what happened to her.  She was a good, solid engineer with
good instincts.  She was working on some kind of stream pollution in
the Great Sand Dunes National Monument.  That's where she was found,
right?"

"Yup."

"And every other hit I get on the Internet on her name is on the UFO
nets.  There was something very strange about her death, and the UFO
guys are going crazy."

"I don't think it was UFOs," Eileen said doubtfully.

"Okay."  Lucy said.

"I'm not up on UFOs."

This wasn't precisely true.  Four years ago Lucy let her top-secret
clearance and her computer snoop in every government archive looking
for information on the so-called saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

She'd seen a UFO documentary on The Learning Channel and it made her
ravenously curious.  She found some interesting documents that were so
cropped they were gibberish.  She found some files that were locked so
tightly even she couldn't pry them open.  She got nervous after a while
and stopped looking.  Whatever the government had about Roswell, not
even a CIA agent with top-secret clearance could take a look.

The only other time Lucy had become nervous about her government
snooping was when she found out what happened to Eileen's friend Bernie
Ames, a pilot who'd crashed herself and her A-10 combat plane into a
mountain.  She thought she'd get the government reports on Bernie's
crash without any trouble, but after her second attempt to access the
Office of Special Investigations database, she'd received a stiff
e-mail asking for an explanation.  She talked her way out of trouble
but it was obvious she wouldn't be allowed access.

So she used a virus.  When the Office of Special Investigations
bureaucrat sent her the e-mail, she sent him an e-mail apology card.
The card was animated and adorable, a little puppy who barked and ran
in circles and held up her spotted paw.  The puppy said she was sorry
and could they still be friends?  Hal Blackwell, the OSI bureaucrat,
had mailed her back a cheerful response accepting her apology.  Lucy
almost felt guilty at his response.  When Hal had opened the animated
card, he'd started up two computer programs that were contained in the
same e-mail.  One program was the spotted puppy.  The other program was
a virus that examined the logging data of the OSI computer and found
passwords.

At the end of the day, Lucy had her own account in the top-secret OSI
computer and the virus had vanished without a trace.  No tracking
system could find her now; she had her own perfectly legal account on
the computer.  She used it and kept the account.  After all, she might
need it another time.

She delivered the information to Eileen personally, at Hank's
baptism.

She sat with Eileen in the back guest room while the party roared down
the hall.  Eileen bent her head over the sheets of paper, her hair
swinging down over her face.

"I'm sorry," Lucy said, putting her hand on Eileen's shoulder.

Eileen sighed and let the sheets fall to the coverlet of the bed.

"It could have been me," she said.  The report, still classified, had
been about a malfunction in Bernie's oxygen equipment.  The mixture had
been fouled and Bernie had gone into a delusional state where her
abilities were compromised.

"Compromised," Lucy said bitterly.

"She was hypoxic and dying, and she did her best to land her plane
anyway.  It wasn't her fault."

"They fixed the oxygen equipment failure," Eileen said.

"I remember when they came around and did that.  They didn't even
ground us.  They said it was just a routine upgrade of the
equipment."

"Didn't want to scare the pilots, perhaps," Lucy said.

"Or the contractor who made the equipment was a big political
contributor," Eileen said bitterly.

"What's the reputation of a single pilot, a woman pilot, compared to a
scandal?"

"Now you know," Lucy said.

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing," Eileen said.

"I didn't get this officially, and I don't want to get you in
trouble."

"Thank you," Lucy said with a sigh.  She'd support her friend however
she could, but she was afraid her hacking would be discovered if Eileen
tried to bring the information to the public.

"It's good to know," Eileen said at last, smiling a grave and lovely
smile at Lucy.

"A mystery is solved."

"There are always more," Lucy said, crinkling her nose and bumping her
shoulder into Eileen's.

"Always," Eileen said, grinning.

"Let's go get some of my father-in-law's homemade wine and get
snookered," Lucy suggested.

"A fine idea," Eileen said.  And they did.

"What about the other two people ?"  Eileen said into her ear "Let's
move on to Jacob Mitchell.  This guy is as sanitized as a brand new
baby diaper.  Every hit on the Internet looks like a public relations
piece.  If I do hits on "mitchellsuxs.com" or "mitchellblows.com" I
come up with a glossy Web site that tells me all about Jacob Mitchell,
the man who should be President.  He's got some savvy computer people
working for him, I know that much."

"Any dirt at all?"  Eileen said.

"Yes, of course, I am a relentless snoop," Lucy said smugly.  She
shifted Hank to the other side of her lap and moved the phone to her
other ear.

"He divorced his first wife and his second is as glossy and shiny as he
is.  The first is where the dirt comes in."

"I'm all ears."

"She called 911 twice during their marriage, both times for domestic
assault, and both charges were dropped.  She had a very good lawyer
during the divorce and got a substantial settlement.  According to
sealed police documents--sealed except to me, of course--she had pretty
good proof that he beat her up."

"How nice to hear," Eileen said in a voice both satisfied and hungry.

"Yes, it does make one interested in where he was the night Krista
Lewis was murdered.  However, you can't use this information to bring
him in since--" "It was obtained illegally, yeah, I figured," Eileen
said.

"But it's good to know anyway.  What about Jim Leetsdale?"

"He's clean but in a different way.  Clean, as in ordinary.  He went to
Rolla University, got an undergraduate in Geology and a Masters in
Computer Science, joined the Air Force, traveled around, ended up at
Peterson Air Force Base where he was killed."

"Do you know what they were working on?  The project?"

"I don't," Lucy admitted.

"I feel awful about it.  I might take Hank up to the Pentagon and do
some strolling around.  Sometimes you have to talk face to face.
Whatever this project is, it's hidden well.  I'll keep looking."

"Thanks, Lucy," Eileen said.  She sounded tired and strained.  Lucy
jiggled Hank on her lap and frowned.

"You okay?"

"Doing okay," Eileen said, and laughed in a way Lucy didn't like at
all.

"I'm just having a hard day."

"Take it easy, okay?  I know you won't, but try."

After Eileen promised with a total lack of sincerity that she would

definitely take it easy, Lucy sat with the phone in one hand and
stared into space.  There was something wrong with Eileen, something
different.

Hank dropped the toy in his hands and lunged at her computer mouse.

"No way, kiddo," Lucy laughed, pushing the mouse away from his grasping
fingers.

"Let's find some other toy that won't get wrecked by a good soaking in
drool."

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Alan Baxter walked into Beth Williams's kitchen to see Sheriff Reg
Gonzalez having lunch.  His lunch was a huge steak and egg breakfast.
His sister was working her way through a salad.  Both looked up as Alan
walked through the kitchen door, and both smiled identical smiles.

Despite their coloring, they looked enough alike to be twins.  Alan had
left for the Rio Grande before dawn, too wound up to sleep more than a
few hours and too polite to wake his sleeping hosts.  Instead he'd left
a note, put on his fishing waders, and headed for the river.

"H'lo, Alan, how was the fishing?"  Beth asked.

"I hooked one, landed one, spent a lot of time looking at the water and
the trees," Alan said.  His fishing gear was stowed neatly in his
Bronco and he'd changed out of his waders and muddy wading shoes, so
all he needed to do was wash his hands.  He headed for the sink as
Gonzalez washed down an enormous bite of steak with a swig of Beth's
coffee.

"I whipped up breakfast for Reg because he loves my steak and eggs, but
we have some of that leftover meatloaf and some salad in the fridge,"
Beth said.  She started to get up, and Alan waved her back down with
his hands still dripping water.

"I can rustle up my own lunch, if you don't mind me rummaging in your
fridge," he said.

"You can't use my stove, that's my only restriction," Beth said.

"She's an old gas beast, and I don't like letting amateurs near her."

"I'll make myself a meatloaf sandwich and have some of that salad,"
Alan said with a smile.  Beth relaxed back into her chair.

"Not that I like eating salad for lunch," she grumbled, spearing a
carrot with her fork.

"But if I eat like Reg, here, I'll be as wide as he is and look like a
beer keg."

"I don't look like a beer keg," Gonzalez protested mildly, putting
another chunk of beef in his mouth.

"I'm only half your height," Beth said crisply, and bit into her
carrot.

Alan grinned, his arms full of supplies from the fridge.  They talked
like siblings, too.  He felt much better this morning, after spending
time in the river.  Fly-fishing was the best therapy he'd ever had. The
peace and the calm of the rushing water, the solitude, the sharp jerk
of a fish taking the fly, these took every problem out of his mind. 
Even the horrible memories of Linda that were brought up by meeting his
daughter, the nightmare of his marriage, was soothed and flattened by
his time in the river.  Everything would work out.  He had found his
daughter, and whatever else happened, he would hold on to that for
whatever time he had on earth.  He'd found his daughter.

"You going to make that sandwich, or just stare at it?"  Beth asked
from behind him.  He jumped, and started assembling ingredients.

"Sorry, I got lost there for a minute," he said sheepishly.

"Thanks, sis," Gonzalez said.  Alan turned around with his sandwich on
a plate to see Gonzalez's plate polished clean.

"I needed a break from town.  And my little Maria Elena, if I go home
right now I won't be able to think."

"Reg goes all goo-goo eyes around his kids," Beth explained to Alan,
still working on her salad.

"He goes home and his brain melts.  So he comes out here to take a
think-break."

"And to talk to my favorite senior-citizen homemade detective, Alan
Baxter," Gonzalez said with heavy sarcasm.  Alan, with his sandwich
halfway to his mouth, froze.

"Captain Harben called me this morning.

Krista Lewis was working with Major Jim Leetsdale, who was killed the
same day she was, or near enough.  Luckily your alibis are sound, or
I'd be herding you into our facilities right now."

"I'm sorry, Sheriff," Alan began guiltily, his sandwich still in the
air.

"I just remembered, all of a sudden, so I thought I'd drive up and talk
to him, then come down here and tell you--" "You're not a deputy,
you're not a detective, and I don't need your help," Gonzalez said.

"Are we clear about this, Alan?"

"We're clear," Alan said.  He felt awful.

"I'm sorry."

"Okay then," Gonzalez said.

"Now, eat your sandwich and tell me what you found out."

Alan gaped at him, and Gonzalez gave him a wicked grin.

"Just because I don't need your help doesn't mean I won't use your
information.

Since you deputized yourself, Deppity Baxter, I want a full report."

"Okay," he said, and put down his sandwich.

"I met a detective in the Springs.  Her name is Eileen Reed.  She's
working the case, and she told me everything about Major Leetsdale."

"As long as you told her everything about Krista, right?"  Gonzalez
said unhappily, and Alan nodded.

"Oh well, that's what I expected.  Shit.

Go ahead."

"First I need to tell you something.  Eileen Reed is--well, she's my
daughter."

"Your daughter?"  Gonzalez asked.

"My daughter," Alan said.  He blinked heavily a few times, then took a
large and determined bite of his sandwich.  He chewed and swallowed.

Gonzalez looked confused while Beth looked stunned.  She knew something
about Alan Baxter's past, and there had never been a daughter there
before.

"And I'm glad you asked," he said, "because I've been wanting to tell
somebody about this since it happened.  But I don't want to take the
sheriff's time with a family issue when he needs to get back to work--"
"Right now I've got CNN, Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, and the Sightings
people in town," Gonzalez said, turning his empty coffee cup around in
his hands.

"I have UFO investigators from all over the country making reservations
at every hotel, motel, and trailer court.  I have a call in to the FBI
but they haven't given me an answer yet.  Tonight I'll be busting up
fights when drunken journalists pinch local barmaids' bottoms, and I'll
be giving out speeding tickets to UFO fanatics trying to get here
before the mother ship lands, or whatever the fuck they believe.  I
believe right now I'm going to have another cup of coffee and listen to
your story, Alan."

"Alan, you didn't tell your daughter about--our cows, did you?"

Beth suddenly spoke up, her eyes worried.  Gonzalez gave her a sharp
look, groaned, and started rubbing his forehead.

"No, I didn't," Alan said, bewildered.

"I didn't think--they aren't connected.  Are they?"

"Not unless you believe in UFOs," Reg said grimly.

"How many, Beth?"

"Two.  We burned them.  Alan helped Susan and Frank."

"Grantham might have seen the fire," Reg said heavily.

"Has he called you yet?"

"No," Beth said.  She put her fork in the remains of her salad and
stood up.  She started cleaning up the dishes with a distracted air.

"Who's Grantham?"  Alan asked.

"Daniel Grantham.  He teaches math at the high school.  He also writes
books on the San Luis Valley.  He's brilliant, and very dedicated, and
as hard to shake as dogshit from your shoes when he's on to a story."

"Books?"  Alan asked.  Beth set a big cup of coffee in front of him,
creamed and stirred just the way he liked it.  She sat down with a mug
of her own.

"UFO books.  They sell well.  The San Luis Valley has a lot of
sightings, strange lights, abductions, crap like that," Gonzalez said.
He held out his mug to Beth who threw him a withering glance.  He
pouted, then got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.

"Cattle mutilations," Alan said.

"That too," Beth said grimly.

"We aren't wealthy, Alan.  We can't let the insurance company get away
with denying our claims because some of our cattle are killed under
mysterious circumstances.  Susan told you about this, didn't she?"

"She did," Alan said, sipping his coffee.

"I wonder if Krista's death has anything to do with all of this."

"CNN, Fox News, MSNBC all seem to think so," Gonzalez said heavily,
sitting back down.  The afternoon light was just starting to come in
through the kitchen windows.  It would be dark in less than nine hours,
Alan thought, suddenly feeling a touch like a cold hand at the back of
his neck.  Something was out there, something that had killed Krista,
and maybe Jim Leetsdale, and the cows that lay so forlornly with the
holes gaping in their sides ... "Creeps you out, doesn't it?"  Gonzalez
said with a nasty grin.  Alan barked out a laugh at being caught with
his thoughts on his face.

"Your daughter," Beth said.

"This has to be all connected.  I want to know about your daughter."

"Okay," Alan said.

"Maybe this does all tie in, somehow.  I married

when I was thirty-two.  I lived in Los Angeles and I was a salesman,
can you believe it?  I sold data storage, big tape machines for the big
computers we had back then.  I made a lot of money, and I fell in love
with this young girl at Lockheed.  She was the desk receptionist as I
was finalizing a big deal with the aerospace division at Lockheed, and
she was beautiful and full of energy and her name was Linda Doran."  He
took a sip of coffee to clear a throat suddenly dry and scratchy with
memory.

"So we had a short engagement and we married, all within six weeks, and
I took her to Hawaii for our honeymoon and when we got back she was
pregnant.  Life was perfect, you know.  Then she changed.  She got
depressed, really depressed, and I took her to the doctor, and they
thought it was pregnancy-related.  They thought she might just have
mood swings because of the hormones.  So we struggled through, and our
little girl was born, and we named her Eileen."

"Eileen," Beth said with a smile.

"Eileen.  So six months after she was born, Linda got better, then she
got worse, then she got better again.  I think she was
manic-depressive, what they call bipolar nowadays, but I never got her
to the right kind of doctor.  She thought I was going to have her
committed because I wanted to have her evaluated."  Alan looked down at
his coffee and it was sloshing around in his cup.  He was trembling a
little with the memory, even though it was thirty-three years old.
Funny, that a memory so old could hurt so much.

"So she took off.  I got back from an overnight business trip up in San
Francisco and she and Eileen were gone.  She took all our cash from the
bank account, packed the car, and left."

"When did you find them again?"  Gonzalez asked.

"Yesterday," Alan said, and nodded at the stunned expression on their
faces.

"Yup."

"Oh my god," Beth said.

"I thought she'd killed them both, because I never found them.  Not the
car, not a record, nothing."

"Like they dropped off the face of the earth," Beth said.

"Did your daughter tell you anything about it?"

"She was about as upset and surprised as I was," Alan admitted,
remembering again the odd look of her face, so much like his own,
shutting down like someone putting on a mask.

"She said she didn't want to talk about our past, and I respected
that.  She's a detective with the Colorado Springs police, and
she's--she's just beautiful."  Alan took a last gulp of his coffee and
set the cup down.

"Wise, to go slow," Reg said.

"Who knows what her mother told her about you?"

"Nothing good, I fear," Alan said sadly.

"But I know she's alive, and she's my daughter.  At least we can keep
in contact."

"She's on Leetsdale's case?"

"She's a homicide detective," Alan said, and smiled at Beth who was
grinning at him.

"Nothing I can take credit for, of course.  But I'm still proud."

"I know Harben," Gonzalez said.

"I'll give him a call later today and talk to him about Leetsdale and
Krista Lewis.  If they're related, this could help everyone."

"Can I go back up there and talk to her again?"  Alan asked, as
Gonzalez stood up and adjusted the mile of black leather around his
waist.

Gonzalez fixed him with a baleful eye, then shrugged his shoulders.

"You are a strange duck, Mr.  Baxter," he said.

"You've been here three days and you've got the most important women in
my life treating you like a long-lost uncle.  If my wife falls in love
with you too, I'm just going to have to shoot you."

Beth giggled and stood up.  She gave Gonzalez's shoulder a hearty
punch.

"You big softy," she said.

"Go spend some time with Conchita and your little Maria Elena."

"Call me a softy tonight when I'm throwing Mr.  Important Journalist in
the drunk tank," Gonzalez said wryly.

"Hopefully I won't be scraping his puke off my shoes at the same
time."

"I won't talk about Leetsdale or Krista," Alan promised.

"I just want to talk to her."

"Well, whatever," Gonzalez said.

"If she lets anything slip about her case, you trot on back here like
Deppity Dawg and unload it, hear?"

"Deal," Alan said with a grin.

"And thanks."

"Don't thank me, thank your loyal brigade of supporters," Gonzalez
said, putting a huge arm around his sister and hugging her.

"Thanks, Sis.

I'll call you with any news.  I wouldn't come in to town for dinner for
a few days.  It's going to be a circus for a while."

"We'll stay away," Beth promised.

"If some journalist pinches Susan's bottom, you'll be picking up pieces
of him all over Main Street."

"I know," Gonzalez sighed.

"So keep her here."

"I'll try," Beth laughed.

"But I haven't been able to tell her what to do since she was ten.
She's just like I was."  She opened the kitchen door and waved her
brother through, then came back and started cleaning her massive stove.
To Alan's eyes, it already looked spotless.

"I'm making roast beef enchiladas for supper, Alan," she said.

"I

could sure use some help grating cheese."

"You bet," Alan said.

"I think I'll head back up to the Springs tomorrow morning, and see if
I can get an appointment to see Eileen."

"Good idea," Beth said, setting a block of cheese and a grater in front
of Alan.

"Now, grate.  And tell me about Eileen.  You haven't told me what she
looks like.  What happened when you met?  Is she married?"

Alan grated cheese, and waited for Beth to stop talking so he could
answer her questions, and hoped that things would be well, all things
would be well.  The kitchen was safe and warm with sunlight and the
smells of cooking.  Alan tried to avoid thinking about the emptiness
beyond the windows and the coming darkness.

Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Marcia Fowler was huddled over Daniel Grantham's computer when the door
to his tiny study burst open.  She looked up in surprise to see a
fantastic creature standing in the doorway, fierce green eyes glaring
at her.

Marcia gaped.  The creature resolved itself into a woman after a few
blinks of her computer-blurred eyes, a woman wearing a wild shawl of a
hundred colors, fringed extravagantly.

"Hello," Marcia said uncertainly.

"Are you Lady Jane?  I meaner

She felt like a fool, but it seemed the right thing to say.  The
woman's fierce glare dissolved into a grudging smile.

"That's me, although the Brits wouldn't like me claiming a title just
like that," she said, in a rich, throaty voice.  Her voice was
beautiful, like music.

"Daniel told me he's lent you the spare room."

"I hope that's all right," Marcia said uncertainly.

"I had planned to camp for this vacation, and the motels are so
expensive this time of year..."

"Oh," Jane said, and the line of her shoulders relaxed a trifle.  She
came into Daniel's study, filling it to bursting.  She had her
daughter's solidness, draped in that wildly woven shawl, and as she
came into the light, Marcia realized she wasn't a whole lot younger
than herself.  She was perhaps fifty, with the radiant skin of a woman
who'd spent a lot of time outdoors, with no makeup at all.  Lines
bracketed her eyes and mouth, lines of a life well lived.  Her hair was
a pumpkin orange shot with gray, rich and coarse and spread over her
shawl like a cloak.  She was absolutely beautiful, and Marcia
understood instantly why Daniel Grantham loved her.  And perhaps why
Lady Jane wouldn't marry her young and handsome schoolteacher.

"I can go back to the motel, if you feel uncomfortable," Marcia
offered.

"Truly, I don't want to be a bother."

"You'll have to get a motel in Pueblo, if you want one," Jane said
dryly, dropping into an ancient armchair wedged into the corner.

"The Rabble's here."

"Oh, shit," Marcia said.

"Er, I'm sorry."

"No problem," Jane said, with a shake of her head and a wave of a
sturdy hand.

"I mean real rabble.  The news organizations.  Sightings.  The
Skeptical Enquirer.  And every MUFON member who can get some time off
work."

"Because of Krista?"  Marcia asked.

"This is awful.  Daniel and I think we've determined this isn't
UFO-related.  That's what I was reading about, news reports of rapes
and murders in the Front Range.  I didn't--"

"Daniel told me you found the body.  You really did, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Marcia said, and then understood.

"You thought I was a reporter, didn't you?"

"Yes," Jane said.

"But I can see you're not now.  Daniel is a brilliant man, but he lacks
the cynicism he needs in his chosen field of ... expertise.

I was prepared to bounce you out on your arse if you'd fed him some
cock-and-bull story just to worm your way in here for a story."

"Why do you think I'm real?"  Marcia asked, fascinated.

"Your aura.  Your honest face.  Your politeness.  I'm the true cynic in
this family, Miz Fowler.  I make judgements based on a thousand clues
and call it intuition.  But I'm never wrong."

"I'm glad I'm not a reporter," Marcia said humbly, and Jane laughed.

She laughed the way she looked, a full-bellied lioness roar that
brought Sara stomping to the doorway.

"Hey Marcia," she said happily.

"The whole town is going nuts.  Did you see?"

"I'm clueless," Marcia sighed.  This was going to be much more
difficult now that someone had tipped off the media.  Who it was, she'd
like to know.  That might point in a direction that would be
interesting.  She clicked off her Web browser and disconnected from
the phone line.

She'd traveled back to Daniel's house early that morning after checking
out of her motel room, not stopping for breakfast.  She was right in
her guess; Sara had fixed breakfast for her, an enormous plate of eggs
and toast.  The eggs were scrambled badly and were rather rubbery, but
the toast was hot, and Sara provided homemade chokecherry jam.  Thus
she had missed what was undoubtedly the beginning of a media circus.

She'd spent the whole day buried in Daniel's books and computer.  She
hadn't turned on the little television at all.  Daniel took himself and
Sara off to school not long after her hoped-for breakfast.  She was
amazed and gratified at his trust in her, leaving her alone at his
house all day.  She'd have to leave the valley, otherwise.  She lived
off a pension and limited social security, and she really couldn't
afford to spend nights in a motel and eat at restaurants all the time.
Not if she still wanted to make that trip to Stonehenge at Christmas.

"So what's that in the oven?"  Sara demanded.

"Did you make supper, Marcia?"

"I cobbled a lasagna together," Marcia said.  She'd taken a lunch break
earlier that included making lasagna for supper.  There were no lasagna
noodles, but there was an old bag of egg noodles, so she used those,
along with some deer burger and mozzarella cheese and canned spaghetti
sauce.  It wasn't real lasagna, more like Italian food in layers.

"I

hope you don't mind.  I thought I could fix you dinner."

"Fine by me," Sara said.

"Have to do homework.  Later."  She left, and Marcia heard every step
as she thumped her way upstairs.  She looked at Jane and smiled at the
bemused look on the other woman's face, a look of love and exasperation
and happiness.

"You couldn't make me do homework when I was her age," Jane said with a
shake of her head.

"I had to be dragged.  My room was always a disaster.  Sara's room
looks like a magazine photo.  If she hadn't come from my body right in
front of me, I'd think the fairies brought her."

"Very solid fairies," Marcia remarked.  Jane grinned.

"Exactly!"  she said, but her look faded quickly into worry.

"Daniel told me a few things, enough to send me back from Maria's house
without finishing the weave.  We talked a Navaho weaver into coming up
from the reservation, and we've spent the last week working with
him.

I'll just have to catch him some other time, if ever," she said, and
chewed her lip.

"Krista was murdered by a human," Marcia said firmly.

"Daniel is sure of it," Jane replied.

"After he spent the evening with you, and listened to your account, and
after sleeping on it, he's sure.  So I drove Sara home today instead of
letting her catch the bus."

"Can Daniel talk to the principal?  The administration?"  Marcia asked,
then bit her lip as Jane gave her an I-thoughtyouwere-smarter than-that
look.

"Of course, and he has, and he'll be talking to Sheriff Gonzalez
today.

A very nice pig, as pigs go," she said.

"Even with Beth, that fat, pampered witch of a sister he's saddled
with.  He doesn't believe, but he'll work with Daniel.  Grudgingly.
Maybe not so grudgingly now, since he's not talking abduction but some
kind of bad human."

"Very bad human," Marcia said, her mind supplying her with a fresh
image of Krista, crumpled and dead on the sand.

"So," Jane said, standing up in a swirl of shawl and hair, "Let's go
open some wine to go with that lasagna, which smells wonderful.  You
can tell me about yourself, and I'll tell you about myself, all those
girlish things.  And if Serial Killer comes through the door, I'll be
Scarlett O'Hara and shoot him in the face, and you can be Melanie and
faint in the doorway."

"Melanie didn't faint in the doorway," Marcia said primly.

"She'd gotten that god-awful heavy shotgun and she was ready to use
it.

Besides, why do you get to be Scarlett?"

"Because I'm bigger than you," Jane said, as solidly as her daughter.

Marcia giggled like a girl and followed Jane to the kitchen.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

When the doorbell rang, Joe realized he hadn't brushed his teeth all
day.

And they'd had garlic on their pizza last night, and he'd sweated right
through his T-shirt at least twice, leaving dried salt rings under his
arms and down the front of his chest.  He jumped for the bedroom and
grabbed a fresh shirt, snatched his toothbrush from the bathroom and

tried to stick the toothbrush in his mouth while pulling his old shirt
over his head.  The doorbell rang again before he untangled himself.
Cursing under his breath, he pulled the fresh T-shirt over his belly
and opened the door with his toothbrush still in his mouth.

"Hey, Joe," Eileen said, smiling.  She looked tired, more tired than
he'd seen her for a long time.  There were shadows under her remarkable
blue eyes and her mouth looked pinched.  She was gorgeous.

"Hey," he said, "Let me finith with my teef."  Eileen followed him
inside.  He gestured at his computer study and rinsed his mouth in the
bathroom.  He quickly swabbed at his armpits with his deodorant, much
like pouring perfume over a great big dead skunk, but it was worth a
try.

"Wow, what's this thing?"  Eileen asked.  The Thing was sitting on his
second desk, and was the reason he smelled like roadkill and hadn't
brushed his teeth.  He hadn't eaten today either, he suddenly
realized.

Well, whatever.  The Thing was an old laptop personal computer, rewired
extensively and running Linux, the personal computer version of Unix.
Extra battery packs were duct-taped to the bottom along with an extra
hard drive.  A special fan he'd salvaged from a very old Macintosh
whirred off the rearranged guts of the back end.  It was portable
still, barely, though he wouldn't try to take it on an airplane.  The
extra battery packs made it look like a computer timing device wired to
a bunch of C-4 plastic explosives.

"This is Frankenputer," Joe said.

"And you are going to love what she's going to show you tonight."

"Your theories were correct?"  Eileen asked eagerly.

"My theories were correct.  Let me show you," Joe said.

"You are not going to believe this.  I don't believe this, and you know
what I do for a living."

"Yes I do," Eileen said absently.  She sat down in his guest chair. Joe
took his own well-used office chair and put his arm around her. She did
not smell like roadkill.  She smelled faintly of apricot soap and
faintly of something which was really just Eileen.  She was warm and
soft, and he kissed her temple.

"You okay?"  he asked.

"Want to get right to it, or do you want food?

Water?"

"Let's get to it," Eileen said, making Joe adore her all the more.

Unlike most female types, who seemed to have to go through elaborate
dances of drinks and snacks and conversation, Eileen could cut directly
to the point.  Food, sex, work--she knew what she wanted.

"Here we go, then," he said, and hit the Enter key with a flourish.

The screen, dark at first, changed to a globe, almost exactly like the
simulation globe from the War Gaming Center.  Eileen, who'd seen her
share of war simulations a year ago, gasped in surprise.

"This is from Schriever?"  she said.

"Isn't that illegal?  I mean--" "This isn't all from Schriever," he
said dryly.

"I pirated certain parts to get my world display, but only the
unclassified ones.  I suppose I'd get in trouble if I tried to sell
this as some sort of commercial package, but I'm not violating any
rules.  So don't worry.  I like my job too much to risk it."

"Good," Eileen said.

"That's a relief.  So--why did you need to do this?"

"I had to build this laptop today to power my software," Joe said.

"Incredibly complicated stuff, simulations.  I have eight CPUs working
in here and a different operating system.  Open Linux, that makes your
usual personal computer operating system look like garbage, and--well,
I won't go into boring, computer-geek detail.  Let's just say I've got
a good simulation of the earth, right here."

"Okay," Eileen replied intently.

"Show me."

"Here we go," Joe said, clicking on a pull-down bar that showed a
series of names.

"Here are all the girlie pictures that Jim Leetsdale took such care to
store on his disks.  I'm going to click on this one, Tia."  He did so,
and the pull-down bar disappeared.

"Here we go."  He clicked on another series of controls that dropped
their point of view from a near earth orbit down to an airplane-level
view of Central America.

On the earth in front of them, a rainbow band of colors appeared on the
green and brown tones.  The colors were jagged and thickly drawn, like
paint strokes.  Suddenly the color bands moved, bumping against each
other and sliding up and down on the map.  The colors stopped moving.
Joe let out his breath.  He hadn't run the simulation enough to know if
it would run perfectly every time.  Usually software decided to go
belly-up when it was first demonstrated to a new person.

"Wow," Eileen said.

"Okay.  What the hell was that?"

;' "An earthquake," Joe said.

"That was an earthquake that took place in Colombia this morning at
4:40 a.m. Mountain Standard Time.  A 4.2 , on the Richter scale, not a
big one.  I looked it up on the Internet."

"An earthquake," Eileen said.

"Yes indeed.  Jim Leetsdale's girlie pictures are all earthquake
simulations.  Now let me show you an interesting one."  Joe pulled down
the menu of girl's names and clicked on "Celeste."  He pulled his world
* angle back to a low earth orbit and then dropped toward the United
States.  He hovered over Colorado, and felt Eileen go tense and still
next to him as the strange pattern of colored lines appeared.  The
lines ; humped and crawled and then disappeared.

"The Colorado earthquake," Eileen said.  ^ "Our earthquake," Joe agreed
happily.

"So his girlie pictures are earthquake simulations.  That tells us what
the project is all about, I guess," Eileen said heavily.  She leaned
into him,

?! slumped against him, really.  She really was tired.  She hadn't made
the connection.

"Leetsdale was killed the morning of the Colorado earthquake," Joe

^ said gently.

"So he was--oh!"  Eileen straightened.

"He knew it was going to happen?"

"He knew it was going to happen.  He didn't simulate earthquakes that
had occurred, he simulated earthquakes that were going to occur.

That's why I had to wait until 4:40 this morning."

"The Colombia earthquake."

"The Colombia earthquake," Joe said.  He grinned at her.

"I can think of lots of ethical reasons why a project like this would
be kept a big secret."

"If they can predict earthquakes, why don't they warn people?"

Eileen asked.

"That's the ethical dilemma, yes.  If you warn a population of an
impending earthquake, do the resulting deaths from panic outnumber the
deaths from the quake itself?"

"So logical," Eileen murmured, scrubbing at her forehead.

"But so true."

"Maybe Leetsdale couldn't handle the pressure of watching people

die in earthquakes he knew about in advance.  What if he decided to go
public with this?"

"They'd fire him and discredit him," Eileen said.

"The government doesn't make hits on people and stage suicides.  They
can just make him appear to be mentally unstable, crazy.  Or they'd
arrest him before he had a chance to get his information out."

"Well, maybe," Joe said.  He held his own opinions on what the
government was capable of doing.

"But he hid a bunch of very interesting data in a bunch of girlie
pictures.  Why, if he wasn't going to go public with it?"

"It's a good premise," Eileen said.  She reached forward and slid her
hand under Joe's, which was still resting on the little touch mouse pad
on his laptop.  The feel of her hand under his palm sent forks of
electricity down his arm.  He wanted to make love to her immediately.

"Let me try one," she said.  She pulled down the menu of girls' names
and picked one halfway down the list.  Juanita.  The date of the file,
which Leetsdale had changed to mean the date and time of the
earthquake, appeared on the upper left corner of the screen.  Eileen
looked, puzzled, but there were no jagged lines.

"We don't know where this one is," Joe said, and moved her hand on the
mouse like a father guiding a child's hand.  He adjusted the picture so
that their view rose and hovered at earth orbit, and he ran the
simulation again.  The squiggles appeared, very faintly, in the middle
of North America.  Joe dropped them towards the earth with tapping
motions on the mouse pad.  They were suddenly hovering over the Midwest
of the United States, Missouri perhaps.  The squiggles appeared roughly
along the Mississippi River.

"Wow, those are big," Joe said.  He felt a small chill, different from
the one he felt when Eileen's hand crept under his palm.  This one was
centered in his back and was cold.

"They're really big," Eileen said.

"But there's no is there a fault line in the Mississippi Valley?"

"Let me consult the machine," Joe said.  He spun around in his chair
and duck-walked himself and the chair over to his main computer desk.

He ran an active Web site from his home, so his computer was always on
and always on the Web.  With a few quick keystrokes, he opened a search
window on his computer screen.

"Earthquakes, fault lines, Mississippi," Eileen murmured, duck walking
her chair over and reading his rapid typing.

"Let's see," he said, leaning back and putting his arm around her.  She
nestled into his chest with a sigh and closed her eyes while the
machine hummed.  Joe began to think of food for the first time that
day.  Would Eileen mind pizza again?  A big wheel of pepperoni and
mushroom would taste just right..  . his stomach awoke and growled
furiously, right below her ear.  She sat up straight and started
laughing.

"You're hungry," she said.

"Did you eat today?"

"No, I forgot," he said, thinking that if he had a choice between
lovemaking with Eileen and a pizza, he would be hard-pressed.

"Let's order a pizza," she said.  Joe pressed both hands to his heart
and rolled his eyes.

"My woman!  You read my mind."

"No, I didn't," she said dryly.

"Pizza is the only delivery food out here, and we're not leaving for a
while."

"Nope," Joe said, "you are correct.  But I still adore you."

Eileen laughed and leaned forward for a quick, hard kiss.  Then she
spun her chair around and reached for the phone.

"Hey, it's coming up," Joe said, as Eileen speed-dialed the pizza.

"The usual," Eileen ordered into the phone.  Their pizza service knew
their address from caller-ID on their phone, and knew their usual order
from their computer system.  Joe loved that.  He supposed there were
pizza ingredients other than pepperoni and mushrooms, but he couldn't
imagine what they might be.

Joe forgot the pizza as he scanned the first of the Web sites that
contained information on fault lines in the Mississippi Valley.  The
first site he'd chosen was the University of Missouri's library system.
There, a master's thesis from a geology student was available.  The
title of the thesis unhinged Joe's jaw and brought his hands limply
into his lap.  Eileen rolled over and read over his shoulder.

"A Nation Split in Two; Ramifications of a New Madrid Fault Line
Earthquake," Eileen read aloud.  She scanned the first few
paragraphs.

"On the morning of December 16, 1811, the residents of New Madrid,
Missouri, were awakened by a sound like distant thunder.  The

thunder intensified, accompanied by a strange smell, like sulfur. Then
the ground began to shake.  The ground heaved wildly, floors cracked
and broke apart, cabins fell into piles of lumber.  Mixed with the
sound of rumbling were sharp explosions and a loud whistling and
hissing sound.  For the sailors on the Mississippi River, the
earthquake was even more deadly.  Ancient trees shot from the bottom of
the river and exploded from the surface.  Whirlpools appeared and raced
upriver, swallowing small and large craft alike.  Banks along the river
began to crumble and fall into the water.  The very course of the
mighty Mississippi River was changed.

The New Madrid earthquake had begun.  For a series of months, the
Mississippi Valley was shaken by earthquakes that would measure today
somewhere around 8.4 on the Richter scale.  The tremors were felt in
twenty-seven states, from Colorado to Virginia.  Few people lost their
lives because the Mississippi Valley was sparsely populated in 1811.

Fewer than four thousand people lived in the whole region.

In the beginning of the twenty-first century, we see a heavy population
in the most fertile stretch of land in the world.  From the industrial
centers of Chicago, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana, to the port city of
New Orleans, people live and work in blissful unawareness of the
potential for cataclysm underneath their feet."

Eilene lifter her eyes to Joe.  He found that his hands were clenching
hers too tightly and he forced himself to loose them.  He remembered
what it was like, seeing Ralph Morrison bellowing in his Jockey shorts,
feeling the earth writhe and crawl underneath him like a huge slug.
Colorado's was a baby earthquake, just a minute or so in duration, and
Joe didn't think he'd ever forget what it had felt like.

"How big is this earthquake?"  Eileen said, voicing his thoughts.

"Let's see," he said, and they rolled together back to the laptop
Frankenputer.  He hit the replay button on his simulation and they
watched the deadly squiggles appear along the Mississippi River.

"Oh, my god," Eileen said faintly.

"Eight oh," Joe said, leaning back in his chair.

"Is that possible?"

"When?"  Eileen asked.  Joe leaned forward again with a jerk, peering
to read the numbers off the digital window.

"Three days," he said numbly.

"No, this isn't right," Eileen said suddenly.

"This has to be a mistake."

"What do you mean?"  Joe asked.  He couldn't get his mind around the
idea that an earthquake could--was going to--strike in three days that
would leave millions of people dead.  It just couldn't be.

"No, not that it shouldn't happen," Eileen said.

"But it wouldn't happen.

If the government knew this, there would be massive National Guard
call-ups.  A few days are plenty of time to evacuate the towns around
the Mississippi River.  Hurricanes strike in less than a couple of
days, and they evacuate everybody.  No government agency--oh, shit."

"Oh, shit, what?"  Joe said.  Eileen was frozen, her eyes wide and
empty.  She was obviously rummaging for a memory and had turned herself
inward.  She blinked and her eyes focused.  It was an eerie thing to
watch.  Joe had seen it several times.  She reminded him of a robot
when she did that.  Eileen could abandon her body and go searching
through her skull, as though her body were nothing more than a
brain-support system and she'd left the controls for a few minutes.

"I got it," she said.

"The guy, Jacob Mitchell.  He's Leetsdale's boss, and he's the FEMA
director for the whole Rocky Mountain Region.

FEMA mobilizes the National Guard in an emergency."

"No, that would be the state governors," Joe said.

"The National Guard is called out by the governor, not by the FEMA
weenies.  Besides, this earthquake isn't the Rockies.  This earthquake
is in the Midwest.

Wouldn't that be a different FEMA?"

"Oh, that's right," Eileen said, frowning.

"And he only gets to take over the National Guard if there is an
emergency.  But he can't do anything before.  So--well, now I'm not
sure what to think.  Are we sure this earthquake will happen?"

"Hey, no, we're not," Joe said.  Let's check on the rest of the
earthquakes that should have happened.  If any of them didn't happen,
we can hope."

By the time the pizza arrived, they'd found two that were duds.

Charlotte and Odetta were beautiful girls with enormous breasts, as Joe
recalled, but they both contained earthquakes that hadn't happened.

"Oh, thank you," Eileen breathed when Odetta refused to put out.

Joe answered the door and paid the deliveryman and danced back to the
study with the pizza box held high in the air.  He spun around and
around, doing a Snoopy dance of joy.

"Beer, my woman?"  he asked.

"Just don't call me 'baby,"

" Eileen growled.

"Hey bay-bee, beer me and be quick about it.  I won't grant you the
pleasures of my body later if you don't hop to," Joe grinned.  Eileen
narrowed her eyes at him and smiled dangerously, then fetched two beers
and a pile of napkins as Joe piled cushions on the floor next to the
coffee table and dug out the television remote.  There was no need for
utensils or plates.  They dug in, and the food was glorious and the
beer was fine and foamy and just right.  And later, when she held his
shoulders in the act of love and ground her face into his neck and
muffled her cries against his skin, and when he shuddered and
surrendered everything to her as he came, he knew that there was no
more he wanted than this, ever.

Then it was late, and she was picking up her clothes by moonlight, and
he lay in bed and pretended to be asleep and felt the ice pick of
loneliness and fear digging into his guts and his heart.  Why wouldn't
she stay?  Why was she going?  After the door clicked closed behind
her, he turned over and dug his face into her pillow and the bed was
too large and cold.  Cold.

Westside, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Eileen, wide awake, turned off her lights and cruised in darkness the
last few blocks to her house.  Despite what had happened the last time
she cruised without lights, despite Teddy Shaw and everything he seemed
to have brought down upon her, she still enjoyed the silence and the
motion.  It was very late, two thirty, and she tried to soothe herself
with darkness.  Why had she left Joe?  What was so wrong about spending
the night with him, many nights, a lifetime?

Her small apartment building had no parking lot, so she pulled into an
empty spot on the street two blocks from home.  The night air was warm
and fresh, and the stars filled the sky in the slice she could see
between the trees that lined the street.  She got out and stretched and
tried to fake a yawn, keyed up as tight as a wire, trying to think of
nothing at all and succeeding only in remembering Teddy Shaw.  Damn.
This night, like that one, was clear and beautiful and full of danger.
There was a movement in the darkness.

A man was walking toward her from her apartment building.  He had a
friendly stride and was not hurrying and had his hands bent at the
elbows like he had them in his pockets, but he didn't have them in his
pockets.  Eileen wasted no time peering at the man's chest to see if he
had a gun held flat to his chest, because she knew he did.  She hurled
her body into a rolling fall over the grassy lawn to her right and drew
her pistol as she fell.  He was settling into a full-armed firing
position, quick as a snake, as she came up into her own firing
position and it was luck, really, that she shot first.  First, and
only, because he was less than twenty feet away, and that was better
than any dusty Western shoot-out at high noon.  He flew backward just
like Teddy Shaw, and because she was using the heavier caliber Sig
Sauer instead of her Ladysmith, she didn't have time to take a second
shot before he fell backward on the sidewalk.

He bounced once and lay still.

Eileen got to her feet, pistol held straight and steady, her mouth and
throat filled with acid and dismay.  She'd just killed another guy? She
was going to have to see Gerri Matthews for years.  Pete O'Brien was
going to roast her like a Thanksgiving turkey.  Captain Harben was
going to be so angry A pair of headlights flipped on like eyes coming
open in the night.  A car engine roared and tires squealed.  Eileen
took one eye blink to decide that she didn't want to try to take on a
car with an unknown number of occupants and guns.  Her neighborhood
contained a mixture of town houses and small apartment buildings.
Lights were already clicking on in windows.  The Sig Sauer was no
Ladysmith; the sound of her shot was loud enough to wake people from
their sleep.  She clicked the safety on her pistol as she ran for the
nearest fence.  She reached the fence in five strides and scrambled up
and over like a cat chased by a dog.  Once over the fence, she ran
straight for the back fence and scaled that one, too, taking out a
pottery urn filled with flowers as she went and setting off a fusillade
of barking dogs within the house.  Two turns and she was behind the
building and running along the carports, listening to a fading scream
of engine and tires.  The dogs barked for a few moments more, then
settled down.

Eileen realized she had no breath left.  She was panting and trembling
and hot.  A tiny early morning breeze touched her cheeks and her sweat
soaked hair.  It took almost more courage than she had to make the
final turn back on to the street where her car was parked.  Gun still
in hand, ready for the car or another hurrying figure, she stood
silently and listened.

Nothing.  The dogs had quieted and the night was silent.  There were
lights in several windows, and far in the distance Eileen could hear
sirens.  As soon as the police arrived, the awakened neighbors would
venture out in bathrobes and slippers, but for now the street was
silent and deserted.

She walked carefully down the block, hugging the fence line and trying
to avoid shrubs and more pottery.  It would be just her luck to be shot
by a homeowner right before she finally reached her Jeep and was safe.
There was something missing.  Eileen stood still and tried to calm her
racing heart.  What was it?  She stood next to a bush that was heavy
with late summer blossoms.  The air was thick with the scent of
roses.

Then she had it.  The body was gone.  The man she'd shot.  He was gone.
She slithered as quickly as she could to the spot where she'd shot him,
looking for the pool of blood that had to be there.  There was no
blood.  The sidewalk was clear.  Eileen stood with her mouth open,
staring at the ground.  This wasn't possible.  She pulled the clip from
her gun and felt the cartridge weight.  She'd shot a round.  There was
no way she'd imagined this.  She'd hit that man in his chest and had
seen him bounce backwards onto the sidewalk.  But there was nothing
there.

She turned and walked back to her Jeep.  Her skin started to crawl with
goose bumps as she fumbled out her cell phone and called in.

Whatever she'd shot, it wasn't human.  It was a dark man-shape, and it
walked like a man, but it hadn't been a man.  She waited for the patrol
to come to make the night less hugely empty and menacing, to give her
company, and she started to shake.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Joe awoke when the door opened, and knew it was Eileen even before she
called his name.  The blinds that covered his bedroom window glowed
with the approach of dawn.

"Come to bed," he said.  He turned over and opened the comforter after
she'd hurriedly stripped off her clothing.  She put her knee on the
mattress, and he asked no questions as she swarmed in next to him.

She was naked, and her skin was cold, and she smelled funny.  Like
she'd been lighting off firecrackers.  She shivered against him for a
few minutes.  He was already mostly asleep, happy that she was there,
but knowing without asking that this wasn't what he wanted and
needed.

She was there for some other reason than love.  Whatever.  She was with
him.

Alamosa, Colorado

Marcia spotted Alan Baxter as he left the Daylight Donuts shop, his
arms full of fragrant donuts.  She was waiting in the line that snaked
out the door.  The Rabble was here, and they were hungry.  It was six
o'clock and the morning sun had just sprung over the mountains to the
east.  A huge mountain stood like a sentinel at the end of the Sangre
de Christo Mountain Range, its snowy peak catching the sun rays--Blanca
Peak, one of Colorado's famous fourteeners and a tough one to summit.
Marcia was looking at the staggering view and observing the line of
Rabble at the same time.  Alan Baxter saw her at the same time she saw
him.

"H'lo, Miss Fowler," he said, stopping.

"Good morning," Marcia said, smiling too widely in return and cursing
herself internally.  He was damn good-looking, but she was far beyond
reacting to a good-looking face.

"Picking up some donuts for your friends?"

"Yeah, you too?"  Alan asked, shifting the boxes to one arm so he could
dig out a set of car keys with the other.  Marcia got a good waft of
chocolate and hoped there would still be some chocolate donuts left
when she got to the counter.

"Me, too," Marcia said, which was not precisely true.  There was going
to be a very quiet MUFON meeting at the Alamosa County Library this
morning.  Robert Carter had reserved a room yesterday and the morning's
breakfast selections were going to include donuts, coffee, and Marcia
Fowler.  She was incredibly nervous about the meeting.  Some of these
people had dedicated their lives and fortunes to the paranormal, and
she had no illusions about the grilling she was going to receive.  She
hoped the gift of donuts would help.  That, and MUFON members were
generally very nice people.  Tough, but not mean.

"This is amazing, isn't it?"  Alan said quietly.  He didn't cut his
eyes toward the slow-moving line and didn't have to.  The Daylight
Donuts sat on the highway that ran through Alamosa and the street was
lined with vans festooned with colorful logos and radar dishes.  There
was even an enormous RV parked along the street with a forest of dishes
and antennas growing from the top like weird hair.  Kirn's Place, the
diner where Marcia had breakfast and saw Daniel Grantham, had a line
out the door nearly as long as the one at the Daylight Donuts.

There were people in the streets, even this early, people with avid
looks on their faces, searching looks.  People who were attracted to
trouble like moths to a light.  Some of those people were paid for what
they did; television reporters and camera crews and print journalists.
Quite a few of those types were waiting patiently in the lines at
Kirn's Place or for morning donuts.  Marcia had already abandoned the
idea of trying for a latte.

"Can we get together later today?"  she asked him quietly, breathing a
sigh of relief when he stepped sideways so she could keep her place in
line.

"There's some things I think you need to know."

"Not today," Alan said, his brow furrowing.

"I'm going up to Colorado Springs to work on something up there.  Maybe
tonight?  Tomorrow morning?"

"You're working on something?"  Marcia asked, and could feel a flush
climbing in her cheeks.  She wanted to leap forward and grab him by his
nicely pressed shirt lapels.  He knew something, he did!

"Maybe," Alan said quietly, and took another step sideways with her.

Now his own face looked flushed, across the nose and cheeks.

"And you?"

Marcia nodded, and then she couldn't help it she cast her eyes left and
right.  She was terrible at this spy business.  Alan stepped forward
immediately and bent his head down next to hers, as though he might
give her a kiss.  She caught a clear whiff of Dial soap and some light
shampoo and ruthlessly stomped on her interior girl.

"Looks like human, not alien," she whispered, barely moving her lips.

"Daniel Grantham thinks he might find his victims out in the dunes.

They lost two hikers there five years ago, young women, never found."

Alan stepped back and nodded with interest, as though she'd told him
nothing more important than the cheapest place to gas up his
automobile.

There was so much Marcia wanted to tell him, but she couldn't say
anything here.  For all she knew the murderer was the broad back of the
man in front of her, stolidly waiting his chance at the chocolate
donuts.

"We'll get together tonight," Alan said casually, but his eyes were
blazing and intent.

"Do you have a phone number where I can reach you?"

"Sure," Marcia said brightly, and dug her address book out of her
purse.  She quickly copied Daniel's number to a blank page at the
back.

She ripped the page out and felt her face grow terribly hot and
flushed.

She couldn't help it.  It looked like a pickup.

Alan suddenly grinned at her, understanding.  He dropped a broad wink
at her and tucked her phone number into his back pocket with a
satisfied little gesture that telegraphed to anyone watching that he
was putting a "hot score" right into his pocket.  Marcia giggled a
little and put her hand up to her mouth, and she wasn't acting.  She
was a terrible actor.  She couldn't help the giggle any more than she
could help smelling the fresh scent of his skin.  She couldn't help her
wrinkles and her gray hair and the funny saggy places at her knees and
elbows, and she couldn't help that what lived within her aging body was
eternally dancing and light and young.

She remembered Krista Lewis the same time he did, she saw.  His face
drooped and he nodded and turned away without another word.  She
watched him go, and shuffled forward another pace in line, and tried to
stiffen herself against a wave of loss and despair.  Krista Lewis never
had a chance to feel like this, a young thing somehow caught in an old
body.

After a while, Marcia convinced herself that Krista was the one to be
pitied.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"You're not crazy," Rosen said economically as Eileen approached her
desk.  He was working on a report, and the remains of a lunch salad sat
next to his terminal.  The office roared with afternoon business.  She
sat in her chair and uncapped her latte.  Her watch said twelve thirty.
She'd slept through the morning with Joe, who had happily lazed in bed
next to her.  When she woke she found he'd sneaked a book into bed and
was reading it quietly.  It was titled Earthquake, and the cover
screamed in lurid tones of red and orange.  Joe's library of books was
amazing.  He picked up hardbacks at garage sales and used bookstores
and piled them into bookshelves he'd built everywhere in his house. His
choices were random and sometimes based on nothing more than the size
of the book, or the color of the cover, or the good condition of the
dust cover.

He'd put the book down when she awoke and showered with her.

He'd kissed her and gone off to work at the same time as she.  He came
and went as he pleased.  Just as long as he produced miracles every
game time.  Which, he allowed modestly, was never a problem.

"Why am I not crazy?"  she asked Rosen, after taking a sip from her
latte.

"Because there was hair and traces of blood on the sidewalk where the
skull of your 'man-in black bounced after you shot him," answered
Rosen.

"Because we didn't find a bullet."

"My 'man-in-black'?"

"Harben's idea," Rosen said.

"He's been on the phone to Sheriff Gonzalez down in the San Luis Valley
about the Lewis homicide.  Evidently they've got a UFO frenzy going
on."

"Men-in-black should be appearing in the valley, not up here," Harben
said.  As usual, Eileen hadn't seen him approach.

"But since your mysterious gentleman appeared to be able to absorb a
nine-millimeter bullet in the chest, I felt some humor was in order."

"At least I'm not crazy," Eileen said in relief.

"But you do appear to have attracted some attention," Harben
continued.

"That was quite clearly a hit, and I'm quite sure it originated on
Planet Earth.  We checked your apartment but there were no signs of
entry or explosive devices.  I'd still prefer that you stayed away
until we figure out what went on last night.  Your neighbor, Maria,
took your cat to her place.  She says she takes care of her when you're
away."

Eileen nodded and took an enormous gulp of her cooling coffee.
Explosive devices?

"Okay," she said weakly.

"You and Rosen will work Leetsdale, also this side of the Lewis
homicide.  I've assigned Peter O'Brien to your case, Eileen.  Try to
put it out of your mind."  With that, Harben was gone.

"Put it out of your mind," Rosen said soberly as Harben disappeared
into his office.

"Ho, ho," Eileen said heavily.

"What about Joe?"  Rosen asked.

"Did he crack those files yet?"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you!"  Eileen said.

"He did.  He put together a--" "Hold it," Rosen said.

"Let's keep that thought until we're in your Jeep."

"Where are we going?"  Eileen asked.

"No questions," Rosen said.  Eileen shrugged and recapped her latte.

What gives?"" Ilene asked crossly, as soon as they'd buckled into her
Jeep.  Rosen hadn't said a word the whole way to the parking lot.  This
kind of silence was extreme, even for Rosen.

"Let's cruise up in Garden of the Gods," he suggested.

"It's a nice day."

The Garden of the Gods was a spectacular natural rock formation in the
midst of Colorado Springs.  The rocks were sheer and vertical, hundreds
of feet high and sometimes no more than a few feet apart.  Their bright
red color and the deep green of the trees and shrubs that surrounded
them made for breathtaking views from any angle.  The garden was
crisscrossed with sandy trails, perfect for a run or a leisurely hike.
It was a lovely place.

The drive to the garden was only a few minutes.  Rosen said nothing at
all the whole time.  Eileen stubbornly refused to try and make
conversation.

Rosen would talk when he was ready.

The parking lot at the entrance to the park was nearly full.  A couple
of women with a flock of brightly clad children were struggling with
two double strollers.  They inserted babies and bottles into one and
older children into the other and strode off with expressions of
exasperation and triumph as Eileen pulled into an empty slot.

The afternoon was hot and still as Eileen got out and closed her
door.

The air was full of the smell of pines and sun-warmed rock.  In the
distance, the chattering of the double-stroller moms was tiny and
meaningless, like the conversation of geese.

"Beautiful day," Eileen said to Rosen.

"Shall we walk?  Does this mean you'll talk, now?"

Rosen's eyes glittered.  He tucked a water bottle into a pouch at his
belt and gestured toward the first trail.  Eileen sighed.  Whatever.

As soon as the trees closed in around them and the parking lot was
gone, Rosen worked his big shoulders in a circle and took a swig from
his water bottle.

"Here's the why for the cloak and dagger," he said.

"Who can take a nine-millimeter bullet in the chest?"

"I don't know," Eileen said.

"But I get the feeling you do."

"A cop can," Rosen said grimly.

There was silence.  They continued walking.  The stroller moms had
taken another path and now there was nothing on the trail but
themselves and a man with a dog, further ahead.

"Kevlar vest?"

"Something like that.  That's the worst option, is a cop.  Here's
another one.  Who else has Kevlar?"

"The military," Eileen said.  The day was hot and she was sweating, but
the sweat suddenly felt chilly on her forehead.

"I'm not sleeping at my place tonight either," Rosen said.

"Harben and I had breakfast this morning.  I'd gotten most of the way
there, but he had more arguments than me."

"This has to do with the Leetsdale case," Eileen said.

"And the Lewis case."

"That's what Harben thinks.  Me, too.  So here's the next question, if
supposition number one is true.  What did you do that makes you worthy
of a hit?"

"I didn't do anything," Eileen said.

"You tied together Leetsdale and the Lewis girl," Rosen said.

"Water?"

Eileen took the bottle and drank it gratefully.  The late August sun
felt like the height of summer.  There was no wind and no thunderstorm
clouds along the Front Range.  This was a certain sign of a change in
weather.  By tomorrow there might be a solid bank of rain clouds to the
west.  Or it might snow a foot by midnight.  Indian summer was
unpredictable.

"I found out something else, too," she said.

"Or at least, Joe did."  She explained the earthquake simulations in a
few minutes.  Rosen stood motionless, his face calm and remarkably un
sweaty  When she explained about the New Madrid earthquake, Rosen
shifted and blinked his eyes.

"This is not good," he said after she finished.

"No, it isn't," Eileen said.

"Though we found a couple of duds among the pictures Leetsdale stored.
I think this one has to be a dud, too.  We still don't know why
Leetsdale died.  But how could anyone know what Joe's discovered?  How
could they even know about Joe?"

"Nobody knows about you and Joe but Harben and me," Rosen said.

"And Lucy Giometti."  This was true.  Eileen, as discreet as a cat,
didn't discuss her lover with anyone in the department.  Not even her
friend Gary Hilyer knew Joe Tanner's name.  Hilyer, who'd been a
reporter longer than Eileen had been alive, knew she had a lover. He'd
tried mercilessly to find out who was putting that creamy, satisfied
expression on her face, as he put it, but even he had been
unsuccessful.

They crested a mild rise on the trail, coming into an open space
amongst the scrub oak.  The rise held a breathtaking view of the spires
of the garden.  The man with a dog had paused here and was sitting on a
bench with a sketch pad on his knee; his face turned dreamily to the
view.

Eileen looked at him suspiciously as she and Rosen walked by, but he
didn't move his head.

"So it's probably Lewis and Leetsdale, which sounds like a floor wax
Eileen said.

"If that's true, then--" "Then your contact, Alan Baxter, might also be
in danger," Rosen said casually.

"Harben got a hold of Gonzalez.  Evidently Mr.  Baxter is on his way up
to see you, so he'll be in town sometime tonight.  We'll talk to him
then.  What's the matter?"

Eileen stood still, her hands clenched together.  The view from this
vantage point, further down the slope from the dog man and his sketch
pad was still stunning.  She saw nothing beautiful in it.  She wanted
to turn and run for her car, to find her father and make sure he was
safe.

And if she did so, she'd have to explain to Dave Rosen about the real
Eileen Reed.  The abandoned Eileen Reed, the adopted one, the one who
was so worthless her own mother ... She made a strangled sound in her
throat.  Rosen stood calmly, watching her.  She cursed Teddy Shaw in
her heart, cursed him for bringing her to Gerri Matthews, for breaking
her eggshell of a life into a thousand pieces that couldn't be brought
back together again.  She had to stop trying to paste all the ruined
pieces into some sort of covering.  The thought brought a certain
relief, in the midst of roaring embarrassment.

"Oh, shit," she said, when she could get spit back into her mouth.  She
looked Rosen squarely in the face and met his undemanding eyes.

"I

have to tell you something."

"He's related to you, isn't he?"  Rosen said immediately.

Eileen burst into laughter.  She covered her mouth with both hands, but
the laughter kept coming.  Rosen stood without smiling, waiting for her
to stop.  She felt sure that if she started weeping hysterically, he'd
slap her with the same level demeanor.  That more than anything caused
her laughter to dry up to a stream of giggles.

"Sorry," she said finally, wiping tears from the corners of her
eyes.

"I

just was all prepared to tell you this incredible secret, and--" "I saw
his picture from the background report I did.  He looks just like you,"
Rosen said.

"Is he your dad?"

This, on top of everything else, was too much.  Eileen held up her hand
politely, then turned and stumbled behind the nearest shrub.  There she
threw up everything in her stomach, her latte, her breakfast cereal,
what appeared to be last night's pizza.  She wouldn't have been
surprised to see a lunch from grade school.

Finally, an endless time later, she sank back onto her heels and spat a
couple of times to clear her mouth.  Rosen nudged her elbow and handed
her the water bottle.  She rinsed her mouth and then drank gratefully.
She handed the bottle back to him and scooped dry, reddish soil over
her vomit.

"Sorry," she said, standing up.

"It's okay," Rosen said, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"We should go back, though.  We need to make sure we get Mr.  Baxter
into safety as soon as he gets here."

"Let's keep him Mr.  Baxter to everyone but you, for now," Eileen
said.

"I'm not ready for more than you."

"Well, Harben knows I think," Rosen said.  His dusky face suddenly
looked darker, and Eileen realized he was flushing.  This was a first.
She looked at him curiously, then understood.

"You were talking about me!"  she accused him.  He looked down and
blinked rapidly and the flush increased.  She laughed again, but this
was her old Eileen laugh, a good one from the belly.

"Gossiping like girls.

What did you talk about?"

"Nothing, except that Alan Baxter sure isn't your dad from Wyoming.
Harben met him, remember, when you got promoted to detective."

"Oh, yeah," Eileen said, and felt a longing like a pain for her mom and
dad.  They'd been puffed up like spring mushrooms when she got her new
badge and had insisted on taking her to dinner up in Denver at some
fancy place in LoDo they'd discovered on one of their trips to the
National Western Stock Show.  The dinner was extravagant and enormously
expensive, and she drank too much champagne and spent the whole trip
home sleeping on her mom's shoulder.

"They're my adopted parents," she said sadly.

"I never knew my dad.

I thought he was dead, or something.  My mom took me away and never
told me how to find him before she died.  It was a big weird
coincidence that we met that way."

"Stuff like that happens sometimes," Rosen said.  His face had lost his
unexpected flush.  He held out the water bottle again and she took it
and drank deeply.  She handed it back and nodded without a word.  The
water was his version of a hug, a reassurance, and an entire
conversation that they would never have about the subject of Eileen and
her father.  Rosen would never pry, never tell Peter O'Brien over a few
beers at the pub about Eileen's past.

"Thanks," she said, and knew she needed to say nothing else.

"Let's get back and find Mr.  Baxter," Rosen said, and turned to walk
back up the trail.

"Where are we going to take him?"  Eileen thought to ask, after they
passed the man with the dog.  She could see the parking lot at the end
of the trail ahead of them.  The stroller moms' van was still in the
parking lot but many of the other cars had gone.  The lunch crowd had
gone back to work.

"I think we should take him to Joe's house," Rosen said.

"If you can handle it.  I want to see Joe's simulation.  And nobody
knows about Joe except us."

Eileen tried to shrug nonchalantly.  She felt like an iron bar had just
been driven side to side through her shoulder blades.

"Great, I'll just get this all over at once," she muttered, and Rosen
surprised her with what sounded suspiciously like a snort of
laughter.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Hey, Eileen, take a look at these--" Joe Tanner stopped abruptly.  She
wasn't alone.  There were two additional people on his pocket-sized
porch.  One of them he recognized; Dave Rosen, her partner.  The other
was a much older man, tall and white-haired and somehow familiar
looking

"Hi, Joe," Eileen said.  Her face was pale.  When she was very tired or
very stressed, he could see freckles scattered across her nose,
remnants of a childhood spent outdoors.

"Come on in," Joe said.  He dropped the books he had in his hands to
his mail-collector table and put his arms around her as she stepped
inside.  She came into his arms woodenly, but she didn't push away.  He
didn't move from his doorway.  She smelled of breath mints, which she
usually scorned, and oldish Eileen-sweat.  Something had happened
today.

"Can we come in, Joe?"  Rosen asked.

"Somebody tried to kill Eileen last night."  As usual, Rosen said a lot
with very few words.  The tall white-haired man flinched in surprise
and his mouth dropped open.

"What?"  he said, too loudly.

"You didn't tell me!"

"Let them in, Joe," Eileen said, pushing away from his shoulder.  She
had spent only a second or two hugging him, but her color was back and
the freckles were gone.  Joe backed up, and in a few seconds Rosen had
closed and locked the front door.  Joe's mind was still full of
earthquakes and the Mississippi and the New Madrid fault line.  He had
trouble coming to grips with what Rosen had just said.

"I was grilling brauts for supper," he said stupidly.

"Can we still do that?"

Eileen laughed and the good color came back even further into her
face.

"We sure can," she said.

"Let's go into the kitchen and break out some beer and we'll all fill
each other in."

"Somebody tried to kill you?"  the white-haired man said.  Eileen's
color was good but this man's face was paling.  Joe wondered, not for
the first time, who the hell he was.  Then what he was saying sank
in.

"Somebody tried to kill you?"  he said, turning to Eileen.

"Yeah, that's one of the reasons we're here," she said, shrugging her
shoulders as though the topic held little interest for her.

"But first things first.  We need to sit down and talk.  Then eat,
because I'm starving."

Joe led the little group to his kitchen.  The table, a slab of oak, sat
in what would be a breakfast nook in an ordinary person's house.  He'd
paved one blank wall with shelves so that side was a solid mass of
books.

Two other sides of the nook faced into his mostly unused kitchen and
the family room.  Sliding glass doors led to his deck and a smallish
backyard.

His propane grill was on and smoking off the remains of the last thing
he'd cooked.  Joe believed a good grill scrubbing consisted of turning
up the flame really high and waiting fifteen minutes.  The smoke from
the grill spiraled into the late afternoon air, hot and still as a held
breath.  There would be a change of weather later, he was sure of it.

Tonight, he was planning to grill fat Polish brauts and smother them in
sauerkraut and mustard.  He'd also picked up some potato salad at the
deli and some green salad ingredients that he hoped Eileen would want
to assemble into something good.  After days of pizza, he wanted to
make it up to her.  Luckily, he always bought his food in family
packs.

What he didn't eat tonight he was planning to freeze for later.  He'd
be able to feed his guests.

"Beer?"  he asked the strange man, opening the refrigerator.  He
fetched beer and brought out a bottle of distilled water for Rosen
without asking.  He still had the remains of the last six-pack Rosen
had brought over.  If Rosen hadn't been Eileen's partner, he supposed
he could be friends with the man.  But he was certain Rosen was
secretly in love with Eileen.  Joe couldn't imagine any man failing to
fall in love with Eileen.  He handed the distilled water to Rosen and
sat down with his own beer.  The other man, still unnamed to him, sat
down.

Eileen took a healthy swig of her beer, eyes closed, as though she were
taking medicine, and seated herself.  Rosen opened his distilled water
and headed toward Joe's back deck.

"I'll check on the grill," he said, and disappeared neatly out the
door.

"Okay, then," Eileen said.  She took Joe's hand in her own and looked
into his eyes.  Her freckles suddenly stood out on her face again.

"This is going to be the hardest part for me, so I'll just get it out
of the way.  This is Alan Baxter, and he's my father."

"But," Joe said.  He realized Eileen was gripping his hand far too
hard.

"I met him two days ago, and I've never seen him since I was three,"
Eileen said.  Her voice was small and husky and determined.

"I was adopted when I was four and all I've ever wanted to be was my
mom and dad's child."

"You still are," the man--Eileen's father--said in a calm voice.  Joe
looked at him and saw the resemblance, the feeling that he knew this
man suddenly understood.  Alan Baxter had Eileen's cheekbones and the
way her eyes were placed, although his eyes were a disconcerting
yellowish-brown color and hers were blue.  The height, the long and
sensitive hands, all were hers as well.

Eileen stared at the man--Alan Baxter--levelly.

"I know," she said coolly.

"How did you meet--wait, is this Krista Lewis's friend?  The one who
wanted to talk to Jim Leetsdale?"

"Yeah," Eileen said, and grimaced.

"I should have told you then, but I couldn't believe it myself.  I'm
sorry, Joe."

"It's okay," Joe said automatically, squeezing her hand.  That's what
one said, anyway, when someone apologized.  It's okay, even if it's
not.

Even if it means that the person you love with all your heart doesn't
love you enough to seek your consolation, your understanding, your
help.

It's okay, but it's not.  It hurts like hell.

"So Mr.  Baxter and I found ourselves involved in different sides of
the same case," Eileen continued with a rush, obviously relieved to
move to safer ground.

"He's been visiting friends in the San Luis Valley and we've been
working our case up here."

"Then someone tried to kill you?"  Alan Baxter asked.

"My God, what happened?"

Rosen slid the glass door open and observed the grouping at the
table.

He nodded at the plate of brauts Joe had set on the kitchen counter.

"Brauts," he said.

"Someone tried to shoot me when I went home last night," Eileen said,
standing and fetching the plate.  She gave it to Rosen who disappeared
toward the grill.  Joe also stood and moved to the refrigerator.  He
started pulling out condiments and side dishes.

"They must have been waiting for you," he said.

"You left here late."

"I think they were," Eileen said.  She started collecting plates and
napkins and flatware with the easy movements of a person who knew where
everything was stored.  Joe glanced at Alan Baxter and saw a flat,
speculative look in his eyes.  Alan was looking directly at him.  For a
moment he felt absurdly like flushing.

"Anyway," Eileen continued.

"A man came along like he was just out for a walk, which would have
worked at ten or so but not at two a.m. I think he was going to shoot
me with a silenced gun, then they were going to bundle me into the car
they had waiting and drive off.  But I saw his gun and startled him
enough to out draw him, and shot him right in the chest."

She set her dishes down at the table with a clatter and looked down at
her hands.

"So I spent the next second or two wondering how it was I ended up
shooting two men inside of two months, and then his friends came
roaring down the block in a car.  I jumped a fence near me and circled
the block, and by the time I worked my way back to my Jeep, the whole
crew was gone, including the guy I shot.  There had to be two, I know
that.  I don't know how many more there were."

The sliding glass door opened, sending in a gust of grilling bra ut
that sent the juice into Joe's mouth in an instant.

"Captain Harben thinks someone put a hit on Eileen because she tied
together Jim Leetsdale and Krista Lewis," Rosen said, sliding the door
shut behind him.

"So if they wanted to hit her, they might want to hit me too, and maybe
Mr.  Baxter, here."

Joe set a pot of potato salad down on the table.

"But nobody wants to hit me?"  he asked.

"No, of course not.

Nobody knows about me, do they?"  He looked at Eileen.  Something
heavy suddenly went rolling off his chest.

"I didn't want " she said, then stopped abruptly.  She didn't have to
say anything.  For once his Eileen's face was as open as the sky.  He
would bet his life, that moment, that she loved him.

"Could someone have followed us?"  Alan Baxter asked.  Eileen's
expression closed like a set of blinds rattling down.

"That's why we're in a division car," she said.

"Rosen and I left our cars at the motor pool.  We're having your Bronco
towed there, too.

Harben is having all three swept for bugs."

Alan flinched and his eyebrows drew together.

"They're going to search my car?"  he asked.

"I didn't give permission I mean, I don't want them to do that!"

"Drugs?"  Rosen asked.

"Should we have asked?"

"No drugs, for gods sake just my shotgun and my .357," Alan Baxter
said.

"Is that illegal in Colorado?  Do I have to have permits, or
something?"

"We have reciprocity with Wyoming," Eileen said easily.

"I know they have Vermont-style carry there.  You don't have the .357
in a spring-loaded clip or anything, do you?"

"No, but it's loaded," Alan said miserably.

"And I have hundreds of flies for my fishing, you know.  Thousands,
probably.  They're all sorted and I tied them all and if you open any
of my boxes in a breeze, they'll blow away."

Joe started laughing.  He couldn't help it.  Sometimes one thing or
another just struck him as funny and not a thing on earth could keep
him from laughing.  Alan, Eileen, and Rosen all turned to look at
him.

He struggled for a moment, trying to stop.

"They're going to sweep his car for bugs," he explained, and then he
was off, laughing like a fool.  Nobody laughed with him.  They looked
at him like a panel of solemn judges, and that made him laugh harder.

"Let me check the brauts," he offered, and ducked out the sliding glass
door before he really lost control.

Outside, in the still afternoon air, he kept on laughing.  The brauts
sizzled and popped on the grill.  Rosen had placed them neatly in a
row, too close together for Joe's taste.  He took the fork and moved
them apart, checking to make sure the fat juices didn't start a fire
and char the food.

Suddenly, he wanted a dozen ears of butter and sugar corn, still in
their green jackets, to lay on the grill.  That would have made a
perfect addition to his little feast.  The door slid open behind him
and he didn't need to turn around to know it was Eileen.

"They smell delicious," Eileen said awkwardly.

"Of course they do, they are my specialty," Joe said grandly, turning
around and waving his barbecue fork in the air.  Eileen shut the door
behind her and stepped towards him on the deck.

"I have more to tell you about, well, me," she said.

"Okay," Joe said evenly.

"I wish you trusted me enough to tell me."

"I couldn't," she whispered thickly, not looking at him.

"I will now, I promise.  But not now, and not here.  Can you wait for
me?"

Her words hung in the air, as still and move less as the barbecue
smoke. Eileen's face reddened and then paled again.  She looked tired
and unhappy and grim.  Joe lowered the barbecue fork and held his free
arm out to her.  She came into his arms as neatly and quickly as a
nesting bird.

"I'll wait for you," he said, holding her and keeping the tines of the
barbecue fork out of her hair.

"Don't worry about me, my love.  Never worry about me."  For a moment
her shoulders trembled under his hands and then she was still.

"Thank you," she whispered into his neck.

"I can't lose you.  I just can't."

"Not a chance, woman," Joe said, with mock ferociousness.

"I would make love to you right here, but people would talk.  The
neighbors.  Your partner.  Your dad.  And the weenies would burn."

Eileen loosened her arms and let him go.  He turned to check on the
brauts with his barbecue fork.  She stood next to him, and he stole a
quick glance.  She looked tired still, but her color was high and her
eyes were bright.  Joe Tanner magic, he thought smugly, and flipped a
bra ut so exuberantly he nearly tossed it onto the deck.

"Wanna make a salad while I finish these?"  he asked.

"I bought the ingredients but I haven't had time today."

"I will," Eileen said.

"We've still got a lot to talk about.  So hurry in."

Joe turned his brauts and contemplated the depths of his grill and
listened as the door slid open and shut behind him.  Things would be
well, he thought to himself, all manner of things would be well.  A man
should always quote Robert Burns while grilling weenies.  He began to
whistle.

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Jacob Mitchell sat quietly, words and figures on pieces of paper in
front of him.  He sat with his hands on them, his face turned dreamily
to the open window where the stillness of late afternoon made the sky
look like a depthless lake of blue.  Everything was ready.  Everything
was prepared.

"Martial law," he said to himself, relishing the sound of his own voice
in his ears.  He had an incredible speaking voice, as smooth and rich
as butter.  He'd need every talent he possessed in the coming days.

He'd been working to this day, this coming moment, all his life.  He
understood the joke in the phrase public service as soon as he started
reading history at the age of seven.  Politics in this country,
America, was the only path to real power.  Some of the smarter
Presidents had shown quite clearly that laws did not apply to them,
even the most ordinary ones.

All of the Presidents, however, bent their necks to the Constitution
and meekly walked out of office after their time of service, leaving
the country to flounder through an election and a new administration.

Mitchell knew an administration with twenty years of experience would
achieve remarkable prosperity.  All it took was for one man, one
President, to provide stable leadership.  The country desperately
needed it.

Mitchell was the man to help his country, and he knew it.  His staff
knew it.  The media seemed to know it, too.  He consistently received
favorable, even fawning, press.  Yet America persisted in their silly
bread-and-circuses elections, where the stupid electorate voted again
and again for the wrong men.

"Martial law," he said to himself.  That was the answer, of course.

There was no voting during martial law.  There was no Constitution.

There was no court system, no due process, no free press.  During
martial law, there was something as good as a king in America, a man
whose very word was law.  That man was the FEMA director.  And the
Western District FEMA director was Jacob Mitchell.  All he needed was a
disaster.  A disaster large enough to require martial law.  Once
imposed, there would be no turning back.

His hands moved on the papers.  Here, under his hands, was the plan
that would catapult him into the highest office in the world.  He knew
it would work.  And nothing on earth could stop him.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"They didn't open anything in your Bronco," Rosen said, pressing the
off button on his cell phone.

"They did an electronics search only.  Jean says thanks for the warning
about the guns.  No bugs in any of the cars.

No bugs in our apartments."

"These guys are very careful," Eileen mused.

They were all seated in Joe's living room.  Eileen was stuffed full of
brauts and potato salad and sauerkraut and now all she wanted to do was
take a nap.  She was on the short couch leaning back into Joe's
shoulder.

The other couch, the longer one, held Rosen and Alan Baxter.  They too
had the look of serious food overload.  The beer hadn't helped.  The
sun was nearly at the edge of the Front Range and rays flooded the
kitchen and laid bars of gold on the living room carpet.  The weather
hadn't broken yet; if anything, it was even more still and breathless
than an hour ago.  Eileen struggled to keep her eyes open.

"I'm going to make coffee," Joe announced.

"Then, when we all wake up, I think you guys should see my simulation.
I've been doing some reading too.  Maybe everything will start fitting
together."

Eileen sat back into the couch cushions as Joe went to the kitchen. Joe
selected his furniture the same way he chose his clothing, with regard
for maximum comfort.  Eileen had glanced at the tag on the sofa once, a
long time ago, and noticed a very expensive brand.  The side tables
were junk, though, wood veneer over particle board and already peeling
up at the edges.  No need for coasters in Joe's house.

The sharp whir of the coffee grinder made Alan Baxter jump.  Eileen
looked at him, and for a moment his image wavered.  She lost her grip
on Alan Baxter, interesting subject in a homicide investigation, and
saw her father sitting on a couch not five feet from her, looking back
at her.

Something filled her mouth like water, a taste that felt exactly like
fear.

But it couldn't be fear.  What did she have to fear from this man?

"I'm staying at Sam and Beth Williams's ranch this week," Alan said.

"I might have something interesting to add to Joe's simulation.  I
talked to a local--no wait, I don't think she's local.  She's a
schoolteacher like me, retired, and she told me the local opinion is
that Krista was murdered by someone inside the dunes."

"Raped and murdered," Rosen said.

"Got the preliminary coroner report today.  No semen, bastard wore a
condom.  Maybe he thought that would save him, but they found a couple
strands of hair that weren't hers, and she showed rape injury.  So if
we find the guy, we might be able to nail him."

"Raped," Alan said, in a lost and horrified voice.

"Oh, Krista."  He put his face into his hands and bent over his knees.
Joe's coffee maker gurgled in the kitchen and Joe walked back into the
room, looking cheerful.

"Coffee soon," he promised, then looked at Alan in concern.

"What's wrong?"

"Sorry," Rosen said to Alan.

"I forgot you knew her."

"Krista Lewis was raped before she was murdered," Eileen said flatly.

Joe bent next to Alan and put a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, man," he said.

"Hang on."

"I'm okay," Alan said, his voice muffled.

"It's just a shock, that's all."

Eventually he sat up and took his hands from his face.  His eyes were
reddened and looked tired.  He nodded at Joe, who patted his shoulder
and moved back to the kitchen.  Eileen sat on the couch and felt both
awkward and cruel.  But she simply could not get up and go to this man
and give him a hug or even Joe's reassuring pat.

"Coffee," Joe announced.

"Hot as hell and loaded with caffeine."

" f i .  , Joe said, borrowing an Eileen phrase.  He drained the last
swallow of coffee from his cup.

"The New Madrid fault line, a subject in which I am swiftly becoming an
expert.  Did you know the Mississippi actually ran backward for a
period of hours, right near the fault?"

"That's hard to believe," Alan Baxter said, his cup held carefully in

both hands.  He and Rosen sat in kitchen chairs.  It occurred to
Eileen that since Joe's laptop was portable they could view his
simulation anywhere, but she didn't suggest moving.  Joe's study
contained his Web machine as well as what seemed like an endless array
of other machines, mostly computers.  Books lined the walls in every
direction and stood in stacks on the floor.  If a house had a heart,
this was it.

"There's lots more, stuff I can hardly believe myself," Joe said.

"I got a bunch of books from the library today.  Let's take the San
Andreas, for example.  Everybody knows about Los Angeles and San
Francisco, right?"

"Right," Eileen murmured.

"Well, turns out San Andreas is a less dangerous fault than the New
Madrid.  The San Andreas is fractured, like a plate with cracks all the
way through it.  The fractures of the San Andreas fault run right under
downtown L.A."  it's true, but they also act as an absorber for
earthquakes."

"An absorber?"  Rosen asked.

"A buffer, I guess I should say.  The earthquake breaks up into the
fault lines and doesn't continue its large-scale waveform.  Like a wave
hitting a series of rocks.  It breaks up the power so the wave that
moves through the rocks is disorganized and weak."

"There's no break in the New Madrid?"  Alan Baxter asked.

"No small fractures.  When the New Madrid went off in 1812, people in
Boston lost china from their shelves.  In Denver, water sloshed out of
those pitchers everyone used to have in their room.  You know."  Joe
made curving motions with his hands, trying to trace a shape.

"A pitcher and basin for washing, like in the Old West movies," Alan
said.

"In Denver?"

"Denver.  At the fault line, in New Madrid and Little Prairie, entire
homes dropped into cracks that opened up in the ground.  The river
boiled and turned dark in seconds from all the silt and mud.  Trees
that had sunk to the bottom of the river shot up into the air like
they'd been wired with explosives."  Joe pushed the button that made
the New Madrid happen in bright cheerful colors on his little laptop
screen.

"Trees fell.  Lots of people scrambled onto the trees since they were
large enough to span the cracks that were opening in the earth.  There
was a groaning sound, and shrieks, and sulfur fumes filled the air.
What an incredible night that must have been, right?  No television, no
radio, just townspeople running away from the riverbanks and trying to
hold on to trees.  People were sucked into quicksand that opened up
near the river, and all sorts of small boats were pulled into
whirlpools or buried by collapsing riverbanks."

"Hey," he continued, still staring at the laptop screen.

"I could probably figure out how many people would die today, just the
way we figure deaths from nuclear blasts.  There were only three
thousand people living in the Mississippi Valley in 1811.  I don't know
how many today.  Millions, though.  I need to program in the intensity
at ground zero, and decreasing rings of intensity as the distance from
the quake increases.

This could tell us where the worst damage would be ..."  Joe trailed
off and tucked his bare feet under him.

"Wait a minute," Alan said.

"Let's get back to the topic, here.  How does this affect Krista
Lewis?"

"Leetsdale was going to expose the earthquake prediction project,
that's what we think," Eileen said.

"And somehow Krista was a part of that."

"Krista and the Great Sand Dunes," Rosen said.

"Hey, Joe, was there anything in Leetsdale's files about the Great Sand
Dunes?"

Joe, staring raptly at his laptop screen, started in his chair.

"What?"

"Leetsdale's files.  Great Sand Dunes," Eileen said, with amusement.

Joe would be gone for hours if they let him, and when he came back he'd
have programmed the computer to show damage in three-dimensional
color.

"No, not that I can remember," Joe said.  His eyes were drawn back to
his laptop screen as though he were hypnotized.

"What about anything odd, anything out of place?"  Rosen asked
patiently.

"Oh, yeah, hey," Joe said.

"There was one thing.  Leetsdale kept one picture that wasn't a
simulation description at all."

"What was it?"  Alan asked.

"Well, it was kind of weird.  Among all those girlie pictures he had a
black and white image of a guy named Nikola Tesla."

"Who's Nikola Tesla?"  Rosen asked.

"He's a famous guy here in Colorado Springs, and he should be

famous around the world.  He was an inventor.  He invented AC power,
did you know that?"

"That was Thomas Edison," Alan said.

"Nope," Joe replied.

"Edison invented the lightbulb.  Tesla and Thomas Edison were huge
rivals.  Edison invented DC and Tesla invented AC, and now everybody
uses AC power.  And whom do people know?  Edison.  Tesla sold his
patents to Westinghouse so he could beat Edison Power.  He did, but he
died broke and unknown in some fleabag hotel in New York City."

"Was he from around here?"  Alan asked, looking bewildered.

"Or was he from the sand dunes?"

"No," Joe said, his laptop forgotten.

"He was born in Croatia and emigrated to America when he was young.  He
spent a summer here in Colorado Springs in 1899 doing experiments.
That's why they had the Tesla museum here.  I wandered in one day and
became an instant Teslaphile."

"A Tesla filer' Alan asked.

"A Teslaphile, with a p-h," Eileen said with a grin.

"As in, the opposite of a phobe.  A really big fan."

"Tesla was very strange, I mean very," Joe laughed.

"He blew the entire power structure in the city one night with his
experiments.  He used to invite people over for these crazy experiments
with electricity.

I've seen a picture of him sitting in the midst of a tiny lightning
storm that he created.  He's reading a book, calm as could be.  Anybody
else would be afraid he would become a crispy roasted critter, but not
Tesla "What does this have to do with the earthquake simulations?"
Rosen asked.

"Why did Leetsdale put Tesla's picture in his files?"

"His picture, his name, and a latitude and longitude point," Joe
said.

"Hey, I have some books on him that I bought at the Tesla Museum.

They were those kind of off-the-wall books, you know, published in
somebody's basement.  I never got around to reading them.  Let me see
if I can find them."  He rose from his chair and left the room, coffee
cup in one hand.

"So what does this have to do with the Great Sand Dunes?"  Alan
asked.

"I don't know," Eileen said slowly, feeling a tingle run like a cat's
paws up her spine.

"Hey, Joe," Rosen called out.

"Where was the lat and longitude point?"

"I didn't plot it," Joe shouted back.  From his voice, he was somewhere
in his breakfast nook, rummaging through his wall of books.

"I

would have, but I got sucked into this New Madrid thing."

"Can we plot it?"  Alan asked.

There was silence from the other room.

"Joe?"  Eileen called.  There was no response, and the total silence
made the hair on Eileen's arms brush up in an instant.

"Joe?"  she called again.  She started to stand up, her hand going to
her gun, when Joe appeared in the doorway.

His face was dead white, pale as if he'd not only seen a ghost, but
become one.  The handle of his empty coffee cup was clenched in his
hand so tightly the knuckles stood out in sharp relief.  He was holding
some documents in his hands, all large and unwieldy and dusty.  They
were obviously home-printed, with cheap binding and faded colors.

"What's the matter?"  Alan asked.

Joe said nothing.  He turned the top document in his hands around so
that it faced Eileen, Rosen, and Alan.

After a few moments that felt like an eternity, Eileen found her
voice.

"Nikola Tesla's Earthquake Machine," she read calmly.

"its getting dark outside," Joe said.  He was standing at the edge of
his study window, looking through the blinds.  He was looking for
strange cars, or people behaving oddly, just in case Eileen, Rosen, and
Alan had been followed after all and the killers were waiting for
darkness for their strike.  The sun had set over the Front Range long
ago, and the long twilight was starting to draw down towards full dark.
The weather, still and breathless until now, was beginning to change.
Little puffs of air, like breaths, were starting to gust in the trees.
The temperature was starting to drop rapidly.  If Joe had been alone,
he would have had the television on long before now, watching the
weather reports.  As it was, he felt out of touch.  There was a big
storm coming, and he wanted to see the satellite pictures.

"I feel like those vampire hunters in Dracula," Alan said.

"Worried about the dark."

"I am worried about the dark," Eileen said.

"If we're right about this, we're dealing with something very
dangerous."

"Big enough for the Government to send in assassins?"  Alan asked
soberly.

"Like what happened to Eileen?"

Joe shook his head, still staring out the window.

"I don't think so," he said.

"The Government, big-G Government, doesn't really exist.  You could no
more order some Fort Carson soldiers to come kill us than you could
order Eileen and Rosen here to go kill someone.  Special Forces, SEALS,
Delta Force, they're professionals.

They don't kill Americans on command, they are Americans.  They have a
code of honor as long as your arm."

"Well, what about the CIA, then?"  Alan asked stubbornly.

"Or the FBI?  Like what they did to those religious dialogue at Waco,
Texas.  That sure wasn't friendly.  Or honorable."

"It was a total fuckup, is what it was," Rosen said.  Eileen was
nodding in agreement, Joe saw.

"People in government can screw up," she said.

"People can be bad.

Our government can do bad things by stupidity or accident, like a big,
dumb kid.  But there are too many good people in government for
anything really bad to happen, at least not for long."

"Japanese-Americans during World War Two," Rosen said.

"Sure, and slavery, and the eradication of the buffalo to starve the
American Indians," Eileen said.

"Really bad things happen.  But we aren't bad by design, like the Nazis
or the Communists.  Eventually, things get straightened out.  There are
enough good people to fix the bad things."

"I wish I had your optimism," Alan said.

"So you don't think your men-in-black were government men?"  Eileen was
already shaking her head.

"No, actually, I think they are government men," she said.

"Okay, now I'm totally confused," Alan said.

Joe left his place by the window and came to sit by Alan on the long
couch.  He saw the remote control to the television and suppressed the
urge to pick it up.

"I agree with Eileen, I guess.  Big Government can't do this," Joe
said, clasping his hands in front of his knees to keep them away from
the remote.

"But little government can.  A small project could get away with
murder.  Or a small project could do something really, really good." He
looked over at Eileen and saw her looking gravely back at him.  She
didn't smile.  They'd saved the world, Eileen and he and some little
government people  No one would ever know, except for a tiny few, what
they'd done.

"True," Eileen said.

"You can keep a huge secret if you have a small enough group."

"The Manhattan Project," Rosen offered.

"The Roswell saucer crash," Joe said.

"Yes, and the missile defense program," Alan suggested.

"I heard that it was really already deployed--are you all right?"

"Must have swallowed a bug," Joe said, choking.  He cleared his throat
and sat up.

"Where did you hear that?"

"From Krista," Alan said sadly.

"She thought that there might be something in Colorado that dealt with
missile defense, because of NORAD and all.  She read some Internet
stuff that suggested we might really be able to shoot down nuclear
weapons in flight.  But what she was looking for was environmental
pollutants any way she could find them."

"Well," Joe said with an effort, "I think if our earthquake people are
responsible for Krista Lewis and Jim Leetsdale, then they might be a
government-funded project."

"A top-secret, special-access-word project," Eileen said.

"Small enough to hide murder, if necessary."

"Rape and murder," Alan reminded them.  His face flushed across the
cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.

"And I don't know why we're still just sitting here talking.  We need
to get up and go there."

"Where?"  Joe asked in puzzlement.

"There," Alan said angrily, pointing with his finger at the Colorado
map Joe had spread across the coffee table an hour before.  Directly in
the middle of the Great Sand Dunes, at latitude 37 degrees, 47 minutes
and 50 seconds and longitude 105 degrees, 33 minutes and 20 seconds,
Rosen had drawn a small and careful X. The latitude and longitude
points stored in the picture of Nikola Tesla.

"And what do you propose to do there?"  Eileen asked gently.

"Have us walk in and arrest these people, if they're there?  For
what?"

"For murder," Alan said.

"You said you had hair from Krista's murderer.

Arrest everybody and DNA everybody and then you have your killer."

"Not a bad plan," Rosen said, deadpan.

"Yeah, if we lived in China," Eileen said.

"We can't do that, Mr.  Baxter.  We have to have some sort of probable
cause and we have to have a warrant.  We might be able to get one from
the sheriff down there, Gonzalez, but--"

"We can get one, I bet," Alan said.

"He's a friend of mine."

"First of all, we have to figure out what they're doing.  Then we can
figure out why they've decided to kill people," Joe said patiently.

"I still think they're causing earthquakes with a Tesla machine."

"I still don't know about this Tesla machine idea," Rosen said.

"I can't figure out why nobody knows about the earthquake thing.  If it
really exists, everybody should know about it."

"You didn't even know about Tesla until an hour ago," Joe said with a
shrug.

"And we're sitting under electric lights powered by his invention.

We run our world on AC power, invented by Nikola Tesla.  And not one of
you knew that."

"So call it the Edison Earthquake machine," Rosen said reasonably.

"Why doesn't the world know about it?"

"I think I can answer that," Alan said.

Rosen made a go-ahead gesture.

"Because Tesla's documents got into the government's hands, somehow,"
Alan said.

"That's the answer.  That's why this is a government project."

"So what about these home-published books?"

"Based on rumors about the earthquake machine," Alan said.

"Just like the books you can read about the Roswell saucer crash.  No
proof, just rumor."

"I can't believe a government project would be assigned to create
earthquakes," Eileen protested.

"Anyway, why?  They're not holding anything for ransom, they're not
making money or advancing any kind of agenda.  What would be the
point?"

"I don't know," Joe said stubbornly.

"It's a gut feeling sort of thing.

I'm going to check my printer.  Maybe there's something in the reports
I'm printing out."

Joe's ancient laser printer, beloved and reliable, was also as stinky
as a very old dog.  When he started to print documents from the Web on
the sand dunes and Nikola Tesla, the whole group had fled his study.
No one seemed inclined to go back to the hard wooden chairs after
sitting on Joe's couches.

When he returned from his study, a thick handful of papers in his hand,
the television was on.

"Hey!"  Joe said happily.

"I wanted to do that hours ago."

Eileen shrugged her shoulders guiltily and patted the couch next to
her.  The nine o'clock news was on and the headlines were all about the
Colorado earthquake cleanup.  From there the newscasters moved on to
the adorable baby eagles at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, then to a
birthday celebration of a one hundred-year-old woman in Nebraska.

"Slow news day," Rosen said.

"The Great Sand Dunes are made of ground quartz, did you know that? And
they didn't exist ten thousand years ago?"  Joe read from his papers.

"Wow.  There's some talk here about something called the Taos Hum, or
something.  It's this weird noise, supposed to originate in the dunes,
or maybe down in New Mexico, nobody knows."

"Probably the earthquake machine," Eileen said absently, her eyes on
the television.

"It's got to make some sort of noise to trigger an earthquake."

"Weather," Rosen said.  Everyone shut up and leaned towards the set.

Joe felt a sense of satisfaction, seeing the long comber of clouds
approaching the Front Range.  A huge front had moved in from the
California coastline and was making its way across the country.  Often
this meant sunny weather in the Front Range and a Midwest buried in
rain or snow, but sometimes the front combined with a wet low-pressure
system moving up from the Gulf of Mexico.  This front swept up from New
Mexico and had a nickname that sent a shiver down every Coloradan's
backbone.

"An Albuquerque low," Rosen, Eileen, and Joe said at the same time.

The weatherman gave a wolfish smile on the television screen.

"It's an Albuquerque low, folks," he said.

"Get up early tomorrow.

Give yourself plenty of time to get to work in the morning, and be sure
to check our listings for closures."

Joe clicked the remote and the set went dark.

"What's an Albuquerque low?"  Alan asked.

"Big storm, heap big snow," Joe said.

"My gut has been telling me all

day there's something coming in.  I hope there aren't any summer
campers left in the woods."

"Good thing it's Wednesday and not Saturday," Rosen said.

"Or we'd lose some hikers."

"I still want to go to the sand dunes," Alan said stubbornly.

"Not tonight, you don't," Joe said.

"Where do you live?"

"Pinedale, Wyoming," Alan said.

"It's a nice little town at the foot of the Wind River Mountain Range
and yes, I know all about snow.  You guys live in the tropics compared
to Wyoming.  What's a little snow?  I want to do something."

"I do, too," Rosen said.

"Because they almost got Eileen, and next time they might get her.  Or
me."

"Believe me, we're not going to relax about this," Eileen said.

"We just need to know more, or we'll be shoving our heads into a
trap."

"Speaking of knowing more," Joe said, "Here's about four hundred pages
of articles.  If we each take a stack of papers, we'll get through them
that much quicker."

"Oh, no," Eileen groaned, but she was smiling.  She took a stack of
papers from Joe.

"I hope you gave me some interesting ones."

"They're all interesting," Joe said.

"Somewhere in here is our answer.

It has to be."

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Two hours later, snow began to blow through the wind.  Joe perched
himself next to the window with his stack of documents.  He watched the
first swirls appear, little gusts of snow travelling quickly down the
street as though they had urgent business.

"Eileen, come watch this," he said quietly.  Eileen jerked her head
upright and blinked owlishly at him.  She'd been dozing over her
papers.

Joe grinned at her and she smiled guiltily back.  She swept her hair
back from her forehead and massaged her temples with her narrow hands.
Joe suppressed a wave of desire, a need so sharp it was almost pain, to
take her to bed and hold her and love her.  She looked so tired.

"Snow?"  she said softly.

"Snow," he said.

Alan Baxter was frankly asleep, his head pillowed in the couch and his
mouth open.  Rosen, who apparently needed no sleep at all, also got up
and joined Joe at the window.  The three of them watched the thin rags
of snow grow heavier and heavier, until the window was a horizontal
blur of white.  The window rattled under a gust and sent a swirl of
flakes against the glass.  The sound was sly and secretive and
unfriendly, as though the storm knew they were inside, dry and warm,
and resented the walls that kept them safe.

"No killers in this," Rosen said, and Joe saw his shoulders drop a tiny
bit.  For Rosen, this was remarkable.

"You were really worried, weren't you?"  Joe asked.

"I'm still worried," Rosen said.

"I need sleep," Eileen said.

"I can't read this stuff any more.  I'm not getting any of it inside my
head.  It's all just words.  Listen to this guy."  She took a page at
random from her pile of papers and read out loud.

"There were a. lot of trucks that were leaving with government files,
specifically IRS and tax files, moving them to the eastern parts of
California and into Arizona.  So, I think that the Northridge quake was
somehow artificially induced.  And that the quake was induced
specifically to relieve the kind of pressure on the San Andreas fault
that so many people have been talking about, to relieve the nine-plus
mega quakes that were building along the San Andreas up in Lancaster,
Palmdale, all the way up into Parkfield and Cloverdale."

Eileen stopped, her mouth open in surprise.

"Holy shit, that's it!"  Joe said.

"I didn't see this one," Eileen said.

"I hadn't read this one yet."

"What's that one from?"  Rosen asked.

"This is from a conspiracy newsgroup named Truthnet.  This person was
talking about a conversation they heard on The Art Bell Show."

"Hey, I listen to him sometimes," Joe said.

"AM Radio.  He's the night owl's friend."

"Some of it might be true, evidently," Rosen said dryly.

"What else does it say?"

Eileen read through the paper, bright flags of excitement in her
cheeks, her tiredness erased.

"Now, for the last couple of years there've been very mysterious
hums.

One is called the Taos Hum in Colorado and New Mexico, where many
people are hearing these very, very odd radio frequencies that some
people can hear, that other people cannot.  There's another interesting
thing that was reported on CNN, which they call the Monterey
Heartbeat.

And that there is a thumping, pounding, heartbeat sound that's being
heard directly off the coast of Monterey.  And one of the reasons I was
able to pinpoint the Northridge quake is because, in my meditations
with the Grays, I kept getting 'man-made, man-made, man-made."  That
word kept flashing across my mind.  "

Eileen trailed off.  One of Rosen's eyebrows was raised exactly like

Mr.  Spock's on Star Trek, and Joe couldn't help it.  He started
laughing like a fool.

"Hey, this guy has got something," he said, raising his hands as Eileen
looked at him with a thunderous expression.

"It's just, you know, Monterey, and meditations, and communicating with
the aliens..."

"He gets this way sometimes," Eileen said coldly to Rosen.  This only
made Joe laugh harder, so he flapped his hands at Eileen and Rosen and
headed to the kitchen.  It was far too late for coffee or a soda pop,
so he snitched one of Rosen's distilled water bottles from the
refrigerator.  The cold, tasteless water soothed his throat and dried
up his laughter.

When he came back in, Eileen and Rosen were still at the window,
watching the snow.  There were already a couple of inches on the
streets.

It was going to be a big one, a fall storm that would break tree limbs
and paralyze city services for a day or so.  Then the sun would come
out and everyone would whoop and laugh and throw snowballs at one
another.

A few men would drop dead of heart attacks shoveling the heavy snow,
like modern sacrificial offerings to the storm, then a few days later,
the snow would be gone and people would wear shorts to the parks.  That
was the Front Range for you.

"Okay, I'm better," he announced.

"Want some of Rosen's water?

He'll be pissed when we're stuck here for three days and he runs out
because I drank it all."

"I have more in the car," Rosen said evenly.  Joe grinned at him,
feeling a bit friendlier towards him.  Rosen had a sense of humor after
all.

"So who cares if this guy got his information from the aliens," Joe
said.

"It doesn't really matter, does it?  It puts everything together."

"You're right," Eileen said, smoothing the paper with her fingers.

"It is bizarre, but there's the Taos Hum, and the Northridge
earthquakes, and a plausible reason for setting off a Tesla
earthquake."

"Not only plausible, but heroic, really," Joe said.

"If you can keep a fault like the San Andreas from hitting an 8.0
level, you can save thousands of lives."

"Heroic," Alan said from behind them, startling them all.  He was
blinking and rubbing at his eyes.

"Maybe they started out that way, but then they killed Krista.  Why,
because she found the place where they set them off?  They killed her
because she stumbled on to something she shouldn't have?  What kind of
heroics is that?"

"Not heroic at all," Joe said evenly.

"They killed Jim Leetsdale, too, you know."

"We know who heads the project," Eileen said in a musing, thoughtful
voice.  Joe looked at her sharply.  She was looking at Rosen, who gave
a very small shrug to his shoulders.

"Jacob Mitchell," she said to Joe.

"We met him the day we investigated Leetsdale's murder.  This man
practically had 'bad guy' tattooed on his forehead."

"We saw his worst side," Rosen said.

"There must be other sides to him.  He's got a lot of power."

"Do we have enough of a linkage to get a DNA sample from him?

For Krista?"  Eileen asked.  Rosen was already shaking his head.

"Not enough," he said.

"Not yet."

"Why not?"  Alan asked, clearly exasperated.

"Because privacy laws make DNA sampling a very tricky issue, Mr.

Baxter," Eileen said coldly.

"Private citizens have a right to keep their DNA to themselves, and
that's the way I like it.  We can't take a sample from Jacob Mitchell
without his permission, or unless we have some very good circumstantial
evidence that he's committed the crime we suspect him of.  We don't
have those things."

"Damn it," Alan said.

"Can't have it both ways," Joe said, and grinned at Alan to take the
sting from his words.

"We can't complain about government assassins and then allow Detective
Eileen to go taking blood samples from innocent citizens."

Alan flung his hands out, then laughed ruefully.

"You're right," he said.

"I admit it.  So how do we get evidence?  Find our killer over the next
dead body?"

"No," Eileen said.

"Particularly not since the next dead person is likely to be one of
us."

"Lucy?"  Rosen asked.

"She's working on her side.  I'd call her right now with what we've
found but she's definitely sleeping.  Remember the time zones make it
even later there."

"Let's send e-mail," Joe suggested.

"Encrypted," Rosen said abruptly.

"If someone is searching for keywords in e-mail, they could find
Joe."

"Who's Lucy?"  Alan asked.

"A friend of ours," Joe said after a moment.

"She works in Washington,

D.C."

"Let's do it, then get some sleep," Eileen said.

"We all need it."

"Do we need to set watches?"  Alan suggested.

"I was just thinking perhaps we shouldn't all sleep at once."

"Good idea," Joe said.

"I'll take first watch.  I'm still wide awake.  I'll send Lucy e-mail.
Do you have a regular password with her, Eileen?"

"Yeah, it's 'peckish,"" Eileen said.

"Lucy picked it.  I hope she has something else for us."

"Me too," Joe said, and briskly rubbed his hands together.

"Ready for bed?  Alan, why don't you take the couch?  Rosen, I have a
camping mattress in my second bedroom.  And Eileen, you take my bed for
now."  Joe tried very hard for nonchalance and avoided looking at
Alan.

"Sounds good," Eileen said.  She leaned into Joe and kissed him, then
disappeared toward the bedroom without another word.  In a very few
minutes, Joe was alone in his study with the door closed.  He could
hear the wind-driven snow beating against the side of the house. Little
hoots and howls screamed around the corners of the eaves, making sounds
like a hundred masked killers sneaking towards the house.  Joe wasn't
afraid.

He knew what it was like to be out in weather like this; buffeted and
blinded, freezing cold and unable to breathe through the wind that
snatched your breath away or stuffed your mouth full of flying snow. It
was not a night for anyone, much less human killers.

"Hey, Lucy," he typed.

"It's Joe.  I've got some interesting stuff for you.  First of all, let
me fill you in on what's happened here the last few days ..."

Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"I love Albuquerque lows," Daniel said.

Marcia grinned at Lady Jane and took a sip of her spiced tea.  It was
spiced with more than herbs; Jane had tipped a generous slug of brandy
into each glass.  Marcia had no idea if the brandy was expensive or
not.

Probably not, considering Daniel's salary as a teacher.  But Marcia had
never had any money to develop a taste for fine brandy.  The herbal
tea, the roaring fire, the company, and the enormous white blizzard
made the brandy taste as fine as anything she'd ever had.

The wind roared around the little cabin.  The big sheets of glass at
the front of the great room were white and blind with snow.  The panes
rattled occasionally and sent icy little drafts to make the flames
dance in the fireplace.  The wood stove in the center of the house was
delivering the real heat, but Daniel had lit the big stone fireplace
with a roaring fire.

"For effect," he'd said with a grin.

"Feeling better?"  Jane asked.

"Or should I make the next one mostly brandy?"

"Feeling lots better," Marcia said with a sigh.

"The MUFON team was very nice, actually."

"Liar," Jane said comfortably.

"They would have spread your guts out on the table and tried to read
the future in them if they could."

"Jane," Daniel said.

"That's horrible."

"I know," Jane said.

"But I'm right.  They want an alien murder and they've only got a
standard one, and it's bugging them."

"I think you're right, but you can't blame them.  I mean, us," Marcia
said.

"I'm one of them, you know.  MUFON is a very meticulous group.

They'll come out tomorrow with an official announcement, and hopefully
that will be it."

"Too late now," Daniel said.

"The Rabble is here in force and the media always pay attention to
them.  The MUFON announcement will be ignored because that would lend
too much credibility to the UFOinvestigation movement."

"I'll say the Rabble is here," Jane said.

"When I went into town to pick up Sara today I could hardly believe it.
There wasn't a parking place to be had.  I saw a guy walking down the
street in a cowboy hat with ping pong balls glued all over it.  He'd
covered them with aluminum foil.  Green aluminum foil."

Daniel and Marcia sighed in unison.  Marcia drained her cup and tilted
the empty cup toward Jane with an inquiring look.  Jane gave her an
evil little grin and disappeared toward the kitchen teapot.

"Just bring the bottle, Hon," Daniel called after her.

"I think I'm going to need it too."

"Nothing from the cops?"  Marcia asked.  Daniel shook his head.

"Nothing from Gonzalez.  Except I think there might have been

another cattle mutilation somewhere in the valley.  Something in the
way he was avoiding my eyes.  Maybe on his sister's place, maybe
somewhere on the Baca Ranch.  Wherever it was, they didn't call me, so
that narrows it a bit."

"People call you?"  Marcia asked.

"I photograph, I document, I take them seriously, and I never talk to
insurance companies.  This allows ranchers to have someone to express
their fear and anger to, and also a way to collect on their losses.  So
far, only a few ranchers have been really hostile towards me."

"Gonzalez's sister?"

"Beth Williams," Jane said flatly, returning with teapot and a brandy
bottle from the kitchen.

"She and Jane have never seen eye to eye, you might say," Daniel
said.

"I think she's a big-arsed snooty bitch," Jane said.

"Oh, Jane," Daniel said with a smothered grin.  He tilted his teacup to
Marcia and addressed her.

"She came into the valley with her beautiful baby girl and her gorgeous
everything else and I think Beth was a little jealous, that's all."

"Huh," Jane snorted.

"Calling me a barefoot slut of a hippie chick doesn't sound like
jealousy."

"Trust me," Daniel laughed.

"It was."

"Enough about her," Jane commanded.

"Okay, so what now?"  Marcia asked.  She took the cup from Jane, and
the buttery smell of brandy wafted up to her nose.  The tea was nearly
all liquor, this time.  She needed it.  The MUFON meeting had gone as
well as could be expected, but it was exhausting.  Marcia had reacted
as a normal person and not a field agent, and her lack had been pointed
out to her multiple times.  This, even though everyone had finally come
to the conclusion that there was nothing in the murder of Krista Lewis
to suggest anything but a natural, human predator.

"Luckily, I don't think we have to worry about another murder tonight,"
Daniel said.  He pointed toward the windows with his teacup.

The windows roared with snow.  The whiteout was total, blind, and
beautiful to watch.

"Not a night for murder," Marcia sighed, and felt her shoulders relax
even more.  The brandy was setting up a nice glow in her midsection,
tingling her fingers and toes and making her lips go slightly numb.  It
had been a long time since she'd drunk anything more than an
occasional glass of wine with dinner.

"Not tonight," Daniel agreed.

"I was thinking, though ..."  he trailed off.  Jane frowned at him
immediately, obviously sensing something bad.

"What?"  Marcia asked.

"I was thinking that after this storm finishes, there's going to be a
lot of snow over the dunes.  For a few days, anything that moves out
there is going to leave a trail.  A big one."

"You're going to go hunting for this guy?"  Jane asked, and snorted
angrily.

"Are you crazy?  Who do you think you are, Jackie Chan?"

"No," Daniel said patiently, "Although I'm not sure I like what you're
suggesting, love.  What, I'm a wimpy, gee ky math teacher and anybody
could knock me over with a feather?"

"No," Jane backpedaled immediately.

"I don't mean that at all.  But this is a murderer, Daniel.  You should
leave this to--oh."  She stopped, and gave Daniel a small and rueful
grin.

"Sorry.  You were going to suggest that Gonzalez go out there, weren't
you?"

"I was," Daniel said.

"I really don't care to shoot someone, or whack them about with karate
chops, or whatever.  If this girl were you or Sara, I would feel
differently."

"I should think you would," Marcia said through her increasingly numb
lips.

"It's something to think about," Daniel said.

"A nice carpet of white.

Maybe he stalks the dunes a lot, maybe he only comes once in a while.
If he's still out there, though, we could get lucky and the storm could
get him."

"I hope it does, the bastard," Jane said viciously, and raised her
glass in a toast to the rattling windows.

"To the storm.  May it kill the killer, tonight."

"Tonight," Marcia said, and raised her teacup at the windows.

"Tonight," Daniel said, but his eyes weren't hopeful.

Great Falls, Virginia

"Nikola Tesla?  Who the hell is he?"  Lucy asked Hank.  It was two
o'clock in the morning.  Hank was starting another tooth, which made

Lucy weep with frustration.  What was God thinking, making teeth come
so quickly in a little baby?  Couldn't he have taken a break from
designing octopuses or leopards or something and made teething
better?

At least she had something interesting on her e-mail.  Hank was nursing
sleepily at her breast.  The pain medication was starting to kick in
and he'd finally stopped wailing.  Lucy hated late-night television,
even though the armchair in the family room was her favorite place to
nurse.

Nothing seemed to be on but infomercials and horror movies.  So she had
carried Hank to her basement office and her second best armchair and
logged on to the Internet.

"Wow," she said, reading Joe's e-mail.  No wonder Eileen was strained.
Joe wrote logically and well.  His e-mail letters were like computer
programs: first this, then that; if this is true, then that must be
true.

Lucy grasped immediately the concept of a government program to set off
bleeder earthquakes.  She could understand the logic of such a concept,
and how it could go terribly wrong.  There were lots of examples of
good ideas gone bad in government programs.  The swine flu vaccine.

The welfare system.  Helium reserves.  Mind control experiments.

The list was long and full of sometimes fatal blunders.  These
earthquake games sounded reasonable.  Wrong-headed, but reasonable.
What was really interesting was Nikola Tesla.

"Let me see what I can find out," she said.  Hank gave a snort and a
sigh and let go of her nipple.  She looked down and saw that he was
fast asleep.

"Tomorrow," she sighed to her computer.

"Tonight, I'm going to get some more sleep."

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Joe blinked owlishly over some sketchy drawings of what Nikola Tesla's
earthquake machine might look like.  It was very late, nearly three
o'clock in the morning.  He should have woken Alan Baxter over an hour
ago.  But like a program that was almost but not quite running
perfectly, the pieces of the Tesla puzzle refused to come together.

He thought he had the general story right.  A secret government project
created small earthquakes to bleed off pressure from major fault lines.
They did this using a Tesla device, nothing supernatural or alien
about it.  Rumors of Nikola Tesla's plans for an earthquake machine
have been floating around the conspiracy-minded population for years.

Joe's smudged book on Tesla's earthquake machine seemed simple enough.
Evidently Tesla made a device that would create sonic vibrations.

His machine would tune these ultra-low frequency sound waves until the
waves matched the natural frequency of whatever was interesting to him.
The waves would build naturally within the building or the bridge or
the fault line until it destroyed itself.  The drawings of the Tesla
machine were poor.  Joe couldn't even tell how big it was supposed to
be.

He looked at the second book in his lap.  The book was open to pictures
of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a perfect example of a natural Tesla
effect.  Joe had seen the film of the bridge, along with everyone who
took high-school physics.  The destruction of the bridge was incredible
and, best of all, caught on film.  The wind currents down the Narrows
in Puget Sound, Washington State, made the brand new suspension bridge
vibrate.  The vibration became an uncontrollable, spectacular sine
wave.

The bridge was totally destroyed within a matter of days.

So that was the essence of the Tesla machine.  It made a thing vibrate
at just the proper frequency, and the thing would shake itself apart
all on its own.  Earth, buildings, bridges, people even, could be
destroyed by this thing.  Theoretically, anyway.

Someone, Jacob Mitchell perhaps, headed up the government project to
use the machine to help ease pressures on fault lines.  A scientist
lost his wife and unborn child in one of the bleeder earthquakes and
decided to go public with the project.  Someone panicked and killed
him.  A woman stumbled on the location of the project and she, too, was
killed.

Probably by the same someone, who was now willing to commit murder and
perhaps had a taste for it.  Detective Eileen Reed, too close to
tracking down the killer, was marked for assassination.  The killer had
to keep killing to cover up each death.

All of this made sense and fit perfectly.  There were only two
problems, and these two puzzle pieces had Joe Tanner blinking over a
dusty book and trying fruitlessly to find a place for them.

First, why the New Madrid earthquake?  It was due to go off in two
days.  It was an 8.0 earthquake, a massive human killer and certainly
not a "bleeder."  None of the other simulated earthquakes in Jim
Leetsdale's files had the magnitude of the New Madrid.  The only
explanation Joe could come up with was that the New Madrid was a
simulation only, an earthquake that was not going to be set off by the
earthquake people.

Maybe the New Madrid was just one of their worst-case simulations.

Joe loved fighting virtual nuclear battles with his missile defense
system, shooting down incoming nuclear bombs.  Sometimes, though, his
job as a war gamer called for fighting a losing war.  In these games
everyone died.  He hated them.  He understood the necessity of fighting
for the last scrap of breathable air in Australia, the last penguin in
Antarctica, the faint potential for human life to continue on the
planet after a nuclear holocaust, but he still hated it.  He hated
fighting a war game and using every last brilliant pebble, every single
ground interceptor, every patriot battery, and then sitting helplessly
while the final missiles fell like deadly rain.

Perhaps that was the New Madrid.  An earthquake game that wasn't
supposed to ever happen.  But it still didn't quite fit right, it
didn't feel right.  Why would Jim Leetsdale have included this game in
his selection of secret pictures?

Joe moved on to his second worry, the second puzzle piece that lay on
his imaginary table.  Why hadn't a Tesla machine been built and used
before now?  Terrorist groups had existed in the United States since
the American Patriots had kicked the English out and declared
themselves a country.  There were labor riots in the twenties and
thirties, coal strikes in the West in the twenties.  Then there was
George Metesky, the Mad Bomber, who terrified New Yorkers from 1940 to
1957, an astonishing seventeen years.  Joe had seen a late-night
documentary on Metesky and was amazed when he saw the plain, ordinary
face of the madman who had injured so many people with his bombs.
Wouldn't George Metesky have shaken down buildings with a Tesla machine
if he could?  Perhaps Metesky just wanted to see things get blown up.

But what about the sixties?  Joe knew about the dark side of the
sixties, more than most children of his generation who'd only read the
sanitized flower-power history textbooks or seen the vapid television
shows from the period.  His father was a Vietnam veteran and an
insurance claim adjuster after his tour of duty.  He worked a lot of
claims from universities, hospitals, and government buildings that were
bombed and vandalized by the "love generation."

He had, in fact, done some paperwork on the Patty Hearst case, the

dreadful story of the kidnapped newspaper heiress who'd been tortured
and raped by the Symbionese Liberation Army back in 1974.  Beaten and
psychologically terrified, she'd been compelled to join their bank
robbing gang.  Joe, who'd heard about Patty Hearst from his father,
remembered how disgusted his father was that she was put on trial as a
gang member when the SLA was finally captured.

So if Donald De Freeze the SLA leader, had access to a Tesla earthquake
machine, wouldn't he have used it?  Joe blinked again, realizing his
thoughts were slowing and stretching like taffy.  He was starting to
fall asleep.  Yes, Donald De Freeze would have happily slaughtered
hundreds to spread his message of peace and love.  Maybe the dark man,
the legendary terrorist who somehow slipped away before De Freeze death
in fire, knew about the earthquake machine and they just hadn't built
it yet.

Then there was the Oklahoma City bombing, and there was a dark man
there too, wasn't there?  John Doe Number Two, the one so many
witnesses had sworn seeing with Timothy McVeigh before the truck bomb
had gone up and the building had come down.  He had escaped somehow,
just like the dark man from the SLA, escaped so completely that finally
the FBI declared that he didn't exist, that only Timothy McVeigh had
parked the truck and set off the killer bomb.

The print blurred in front of Joe's eyes.  He was tired, but he was
spooking himself out, too.  Somehow he was imagining the dark man as
Stephen King had written him in his stories, the walking dude with his
rundown bootheels and his jolly mad grin.  Joe thought of hiking into
the dunes, tomorrow or next week or next year, and finding latitude 37
and longitude 105, and there would be a man with no face sitting
crosslegged on a dune crest, his arms cradling a metal device drenched
in blood, his smile as sharp and mindless as the grin of a shark.

There was a tapping on the glass behind him.  Joe whirled around, the
books on his lap falling to the floor, his heart giving a tremendous
horse kick

For a second he saw a face, crazed and madly gleeful, framed in the
black and the snow whirl of the window.  Then it was just snow, and the
tapping was a branch from his tree that had torn in the relentless
wind.

"Ah, jeez," Joe said to himself, putting a hand to his heart.  If he
were twenty years older, he was sure he'd be dead right now.

"Hey," Alan said from behind him, and Joe whirled again.  Alan was
standing in the doorway to his study, hair frowzled, eyes red,
scratching at an armpit and frowning at Joe.

"You were supposed to wake me up at two."

Joe started laughing and clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle it. It
sounded wrong, too high and too scared.  He had succeeded in completely
weir ding himself out.  Two cops in the house with guns and a blizzard
outside so he had to go inventing himself a supernatural monster.

"I got carried away," he said.

"I was trying to fit all the pieces together and I just can't do it."

"Like how come Ted Kaszinski didn't use a Tesla machine to bring down
civilization?"  Alan asked.  He rubbed his eyes and stretched.

"Yeah, the Unabomber, exactly," Joe said, feeling foolishly happy that
someone, anyone else was awake.  He didn't want to be the only one
awake right now.

"Except with me it was Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber."

"Yeah, I was thinking maybe because there's something missing from your
drawing," Alan said, pointing at the Tesla book spread open on the
floor.

"Maybe the government took the real drawings and locked them up, and
these are ones that don't work right."

Joe bent down and picked up his books, feeling a new respect for Alan
Baxter.  That would make sense.  And the earthquake gamers, they were a
government agency, weren't they?

"The killers, they're a government agency, so maybe they could get the
good drawings," Alan said, voicing his thoughts.

"But you guys all seem to think the government is a good guy, an
impression I really don't share.  Hey, would you mind making me some
coffee before you go to bed?  I didn't sleep so well, and I don't know
where your stuff is in the kitchen."

"I'd be happy to," Joe said automatically, his eyes still on the
drawing.

He was searching for the missing piece, the part of the machine that
looked unfinished or strangely incomplete.  It wasn't obvious to him.
He surprised himself by yawning, a huge jaw-creaker that made his eyes
water.

"Make me some coffee before you fall over," Alan said with a smile.

Joe nodded and rose to his feet.  He was going to make Alan Baxter some
coffee, and then he was going to go in and snuggle up next to Alan's
sleeping daughter.  He'd be damned if he were going to sleep on his
couch because of the measuring look in the old man's eyes.  Still,
after making Alan coffee, he went to the bathroom first and brushed his
teeth far too long.  Alan was safely in Joe's study when Joe opened the
door and walked carefully to his own bedroom, feeling foolishly as
though he were sneaking.

But all guilt was forgotten when he slid carefully under his covers.

Eileen was divinely warm and heavy with sleep, curled up on one side
with her hair half covering her face.  He slowly moved closer until
they were spooned together, and within a few seconds, he was sound
asleep.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"I see you made it through the night," Harben said.  Eileen grinned
around a mouthful of latte.  She was still half frozen, exhilarated by
the glorious morning world.  The wind had blown all night, sculpting
the heavy snow into enormous white drifts.  The storm itself was now
moving ponderously over Kansas and into the Midwest, feeding from the
warm Gulf moisture and storming heavily where it went.

Colorado Springs had woken to a lovely hard blue sky and a move less
world of glittering white.  Because the storm had brought winds with
it, the snow had blown from the trees before they could build up enough
of a covering to crack branches and send old, weak trees to the
ground.

Therefore, everyone had power and hot water and, with the exception of
icy streets, a harmless aftermath to the storm.

"We made it," Eileen said.

"But you'll notice we're wearing the same clothes as yesterday.  I'm
hoping to get some fresh stuff soon."

"We've got a bag for each of you," Harben said.

"I forgot about it yesterday.  Sorry.  Hetrick packed a bag for you,
Eileen, so don't worry about O'Brien going through your underwear."

"I have very unexciting underwear," Eileen said.  Her cheeks started to
sting a little in the warm air, and her nose suddenly regained its
sense of smell.  Her latte suddenly came alive with chocolate and she
took a heavenly warm gulp.

"But thanks."

"Alan Baxter wants to head back to the San Luis Valley this morning,"
Rosen said.

"We couldn't talk him out of it."

"He should be safe at the Williams's Ranch," Eileen said unhappily.

Harben looked at her sharply, and she nodded her head slightly.  That
was enough, for Harben.  Harben, like Rosen, would not discuss Eileen's
parentage with her unless she wished him to.

"No reason to hold him here," Harben said.

"But let's go into my office.  I'd like to know what you came up with
last night."

"Some interesting things," Eileen said.  This was going to be fun,
laying out the different information they'd discovered and seeing if
Harben bought their way of piecing everything together.  Breakfast that
morning had been far too early but more fun than Eileen expected.  Joe
had dug a huge bag of pancake mix from his cabinet and what seemed like
a five gallon jug of pancake syrup.  He continually surprised her with
what he considered important.  Who would think, pancakes?  He made them
superbly: thin and steaming and with a crisp crust at the edges that
crunched beautifully under her fork.

The morning sun was striking in dazzling spears through the windows as
she followed Harben to his office.  Eileen knew the storm was going to
be more bark than bite, today, for the police.  The drifts would be a
trial for the snowplow drivers and an education for the military
personnel from points south of Colorado who'd never tried to bust a
snowdrift before.  This would bring lots of business to the body repair
shops and a few stitches at the local hospitals.  Who would think that
such a lovely light thing like snow could make a drift that would
crumple a car so completely?  The dangerous driving conditions would
exist for the next few days, as the melting snow froze into glare ice
each evening.  That would be a problem, but a problem the department
handled each winter.

This morning, the ideas that everyone had come up with during the night
were handled and examined and set aside or placed in what they all
thought of as the explanation.  Someone in Jacob Mitchell's
organization, perhaps even Mitchell himself, had killed Jim Leetsdale
and Krista Lewis.  They had done this to keep their secret project
under wraps, which meant that they probably received funding from black
money and their project would be shut down if they were exposed.

Black money was fragile stuff.  The military had a budget that they
spent on items so secret not even Congress knew where the money went.
This money, nicknamed "black," was legitimate but dicey.  Only
successful black projects, like the Stealth bomber, were ever
revealed.

The unsuccessful ones disappeared.  But no project, however secret, had
permission to murder people.  Area 51 had UFO nuts practically
tunneling into it, and the worst that happened to the nuts was the
confiscation of their cameras and a quick escort out of the area.

"Mr.  Baxter wants his Bronco cleared," Bob said from his station near
Harben's office.  He was holding a hand over the phone receiver, a
habit that irritated Eileen to no end.  Why didn't he ever put anyone
on hold?  Bob was the office manager, and he and Eileen had never
gotten along.

"Clear it," Harben said.  Then when they were in Harben's office with
the door shut, he seated himself and folded his hands calmly.

"Let's hear it," he said.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Alan Baxter drove carefully past the destroyed rest stop.  Gonzalez or
one of his deputies had wound orange tape around the entrance sign and
put traffic cones across the entrance to the parking lot.  The cones
were half buried by snow thrown up by a plow.  The roads were actually
quite good, plowed and sanded and now nearly dry after a half-day of
brilliant sunshine.  Alan caught only glimpses of the valley as he
negotiated his way down the pass.  The snow had fallen here, too,
frosting the tops of the mountains and turning the tan stretch of the
sand dunes into a glittering prism.

He didn't care to breathe in the beauty, today.  He wanted to get to
the Williams's Ranch, to rest, to decide what to do.  He had to call
Marcia Fowler, he knew that.  Perhaps they should meet.  He had the
feeling Marcia had the same distrust of government organizations as he
did.  He hadn't made any promises to keep the information he'd learned
a secret.

In fact, he'd promised Gonzalez that he'd come back to the valley and
tell him everything.

The ranch turnoff was neatly plowed.  Alan could see tire tracks
leading into the pasture where the cattle were kept.  Susan and Frank,
undoubtedly, feeding the cattle or making sure they were okay, or
whatever they did after a snowstorm.  He took the main road to the
ranch house and parked next to Sam Williams's truck.

"Well, hello, Alan," Beth said.  She was, as always, in the kitchen.
This time she was seated at an old-fashioned pull-down desk.  The front
was down, revealing a powerful looking laptop.  Beth was typing rapidly
as Alan entered with a quick, country-style knock, a double rap of the
knuckles that announced entry.

"Hello, Beth," Alan said.

"Coffee if you want; let me finish this up and I'll join you and we'll
catch up," she said, her fingers rattling over the keys.  Alan found
hot coffee in the pot but chose the teakettle instead.  It was
steaming, on the edge of a boil.  He made himself some mild hot tea and
sat down at the empty kitchen table and thought for a moment that if
Eileen were here right now, he'd be the happiest man alive.  Even if
she looked at him without love, even if she mistrusted him.

"Accounts," Beth said balefully, closing her laptop and her pulldown
desk.  She stretched and stood up, knuckling the small of her back.

"I

make myself keep up, or I have to spend days making all the numbers
work.  How are you, Alan?"

"I'm fine, now that I'm here," Alan said, and smiled guiltily.

"I hope that doesn't sound wrong."

"Not to me," Beth said.  She poured herself a cup of coffee and stirred
in milk from the refrigerator.  Sitting down, she curled both hands
around her cup and looked directly at Alan.

"Tell me all.  Did you see your daughter?"

"I saw her," Alan said.

"She has a boyfriend.  He's a good man, I think.  But I still want to
punch him in the nose.  Isn't that strange?  She's thirty, and I
disapprove of her having a boyfriend."

"The last time you saw her she was just out of diapers," Beth observed
with a wry smile.

"It takes time, I think.  Though it's not easy for me, even now."

"Susan?"  Alan asked.

"She's--well, she's what she wants to be, I guess," Beth said.  She
gave a small, pained shrug to her shoulders.

"She's the same age as your Eileen.  Thirty.  Time to get married and
have kids, and she acts like she's twenty.  But who am I to drive her
life?  My mom tried to drive mine, and I ran in every direction but the
one she wanted me to go in."

"I don't want to drive her," Alan said sadly, sipping at his tea.

"I just want to get to know her.  I think I made a little bit of a
start yesterday.  I don't know.  But there's more than Eileen to all of
this."

"Krista Lewis?"  Beth asked.

"Your friend Marcia Fowler called last night.  She thought you might be
able to get out for dinner, but I told her you'd be back today.  Is she
involved in this too, this Marcia?"

"She's the schoolteacher who found Krista's body on the dunes," Alan
said.

"We met at the donut shop the other morning and I thought we should get
together.  Does your brother know anything more?"

"More than getting no sleep last night and throwing a dozen half frozen
drunks in his jail?"  Beth said.  She threw up her hands in a little
gesture of disgust.

"Early fall snow is bad enough without adding a bunch of
out-of-towners.  Reg wouldn't know anything more about Krista unless
the murderer tapped him on the shoulder and confessed.

Poor guy.  He's going to have to ask the county to give him another
deputy.  At least we didn't have any fatalities last night.  Couple of
fender benders, but no big wrecks."

"So the roads are okay today?"  Alan asked.

"They were good coming into the valley, but I wasn't sure how much
you'd gotten."

"They're fine," Beth said dismissively.

"Little bit of blowing, six inches or so of good fall snow.  Susan and
Frank are out in pasture two looking at some of the cattle, but they'll
be back soon.  My Sam is working in the barn;

he's got a tractor he wants to fix before it gets really cold.  Spring
storms are the real killers.  That's when we lose the babies.  Calves,
I mean.  Don't forget to scrape your shoes the next few days, it's
going to be muddy."

"I won't," Alan promised.

"I better call Miz Fowler and find out if she still wants to talk to
me."

"She'll want to talk to you," Beth said, laughing.  Alan, puzzled,
looked at her for an explanation, but she waved a hand at him and
raised her bulk to her feet.

"Got to get the roast in for supper.  You go on and call Miz Fowler."

The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Lucy felt strange without a stroller and a diaper bag.  She locked her
car and swung her tiny, light handbag over her shoulder.  The morning
was

humid and hot.  She'd left Hank with Ted, who'd agreed to take a day
off work.  School hadn't started, but most teachers were already
putting in full days in meetings and administrative work.  Ted was
happy to miss a day of that.  He'd swung Hank to his hip and declared
that they were going to visit the Washington Zoo.  Hank giggled
delightedly.  He loved his daddy.

Suddenly, Lucy stopped still, wondering if Ted had put sunscreen on
Hank.  Was he wearing a hat?  Did Ted have enough diapers?  She blinked
and forced her feet, feeling funny in brand new shoes, onward.

She was wearing a good suit, one that used to fit her perfectly.  Now
it strained.  Only seven pounds separated her from pre- and post
pregnancy weight, but it all seemed to be in her hips and breasts. Her
good shoes simply did not fit her.  None of her dress shoes fit her. 
She made a quick call to her sister-in-law, Carolyn, who was up and
sipping hot tea and reading the morning paper.

"Yeah, your feet got bigger," Carolyn laughed.

"The ligaments relax during pregnancy and your feet get a little bit
bigger.  Plus, they get ornery and unwilling."

"Unwilling?"  Lucy said, dress pumps clutched in her hands, her suit
buttons straining over her breasts, her curly hair, still wet and
uncombed, nearly standing on end with frustration.

"Yeah, unwilling.  You used to squinch your feet into those horrible
girl's shoes, but you're a mom now.  So are your feet.  They're not
going to put up with being squeezed.  Throw out those horrid things and
go get a sensible pair of low heels in a size bigger."

Her feet did feel better.  She'd found a pair of cushioned pumps with
low heels in a good color in five minutes at the local shoe store.  So
she shouldn't feel so nervous.  She realized she was feeling very
nervous about seeing people, not about her shoes.  For an entire year
her whole life had been her computer and her baby boy.  She was feeling
shy.

"I gotta start getting out more," she muttered to herself.  She
smoothed her curly hair and hitched at her jacket.  The Pentagon was
where she had to go.  She'd found a marker for Nikola Tesla in the FBI
weapons database.  There was no information, only the marker that stood
for a classified box in the Pentagon basement files.  She'd never been
to the Pentagon basement.  The basement, carved out during the
renovation ten years ago, was now an archive.  The Pentagon covered
over six million square feet, which made the archive enormous.  Lucy
hoped there was someone who could help her look, or at least point her
in the right direction.

Everyone knew about the National Archives and the Smithsonian, but few
people knew about the Defense Archives.  Lucy didn't know if her CIA
credentials would get her into the files.  She was going to give it a
try, though.

Twenty minutes later she'd worked her way through metal detectors and
guards at the Pentagon.  She'd been to the Pentagon many times and she
knew the routine of entrance, the way the Pentagon sloped at odd angles
and smelled like old, dusty paint, the way the guards checked not just
badges and faces, but eyes.  Her eyes were nervous but evidently not
nervous enough to capture the guard's interest.  At ten thirty the
largest office building in the world was stuffed with people, but most
of them were at their desks.  A goodly number of people walked the
halls on business from one place to another, most carrying documents or
notebook computers.  Nearly half were dressed in civilian suits just
like hers.

Lucy fit right in.

She got on the elevator and pressed the down button.  When the doors
opened on the basement level, she walked to the staircase and headed
down one last flight of stairs.  She'd called a friend at the CIA and
gotten directions.  What she was doing was perfectly legitimate, but
she still felt that any moment security guards were going to burst from
a doorway and hold her at gunpoint.

When she opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, she found herself
in a large room.  Two desks sat facing each other, both topped with
huge computer terminals.  A water cooler with a blue bottle stood
against one wall and a big copy machine stood against the other wall.

Facing her from across the room was a vault door with a big spin lock
like the helm of a pirate ship.  Two men sat at the desks, both intent
on their computer screens.  They both looked to be of medium height.
One had sandy blond hair and pale skin and the other was bald and had
dark skin.  Except for the hair and the color of their skin they could
have been brothers, so alike were the sharp profiles of their noses and
chins.

"Hold on," the bald one said in Lucy's general direction in a Southern
accent.

"You die now," the sandy blond one said, with satisfaction.  He was
hunched over his keyboard.  Suddenly he sat up straight and back from
his screen, wincing.

"Damn!"

"Left your flank exposed," the bald one said.  He took his hands off
his keyboard and massaged his fingers.  He turned to Lucy and smiled.

"May I help you?"

"Lucy Giometti, I'm with the DIA," she said.

"I'm an analyst and I'm doing some research and I was wondering if I
could get some information from the archives."

The two men exchanged glances.  The sandy-haired one massaged his
fingers and left arm and regarded her levelly.

"DIA never comes here.  Usually when we get fake DIA they're really
CIA.  Is that what you are?"

"Depends," Lucy said.

"What are you two party animals?  The guardians of the gate?  Or are
you just minimum-wage security guards?"

"We're archivists," the bald one said with a grin.

"So that makes us very much guardians.  Tate Webster.  Doctor Webster.
Tate to my friends."

"Randy Streeks," the blond one said.

"Doctor Streeks.  No jokes about the name, please.  I'm sensitive.  You
can call me Randy."

"Lucy Giometti, from-another-bureau-but-I-have-to-say-DIA," Lucy said,
and held out her hand.

"I'm Lucy.  Nice to meet you."

They both stood and shook her hand.

"What brings you here.  Miss Lucy?"  Tate asked.

"I'm trying to find the archives on a man.  Nikola Tesla.  Have you
heard of him?"

"I've heard of him," Randy said.

"Yeah, he's the guy who invented the whole missile defense program,
right?  Death rays, and all that.  I heard he was the one who caused
the huge explosion in Tungus, Siberia, in 1908.  That's him?"

"Well, I'm not sure about that," Lucy said, blinking.  Death rays?

"I

wanted to see his file box.  I've got the tag number from the FBI
database."

She dug in her purse, well aware of their interest in her legs and
breasts and curly hair.  After a year of nothing but Ted and Hank and
family, it felt pretty good to be seen as a female, not a mommy.

"Oh, yeah, and he invented AC power too," Randy said.  He stood up from
his desk and took the slip of paper from Lucy's hand.

"We can find this."

"Want to go with us?"  Tate said abruptly.  Randy glanced over at his
friend with a slight, quickly suppressed frown.

"I'd love to," Lucy said instantly.  She held out a foot with a brand
new, navy blue sensible shoe.

"Look, I wore comfortable shoes."

This seemed to tip the scales.  Randy laughed and shrugged.

"Tate has a nose for bull shitters he said.

"He's never been wrong yet.  Come with us, then, Miss Lucy.  Prepare to
be amazed."

i .  i , ; Tate spun the vault door shut behind Lucy.  The three of
them were wearing masks, jumpsuits, and booties.  Tate and Randy looked
like a couple of deranged surgeons.  Lucy had no idea what she looked
like, with her skirt crumpled on each side of the big jumpsuit and a
paper hat on her unruly hair.  Probably like an overweight clown.

In front of her the files began, piles of boxes that blocked her view
in almost every direction.  The boxes were stacked on metal shelves and
the shelves were set close to one another, at a distance that would
send a claustrophobe into a panic attack.  She saw shelves stacked
randomly as far as she could see.  She knew the archives were large,
but now she understood how big they really were.  The air was hushed
and still and she sensed the enormity of what she stood in.  In Mammoth
Cave, Kentucky, as a girl, she'd stood and felt the same weight in the
cool air against her face.

"What are you doing?"  she asked Tate.  He had taken a spool of twine
from a hook by the vault doorway.  The twine was heavy-duty plastic
cord, and one end was tied securely to the hook, which was a big steel
affair bolted to the metal frame of the door.

"This is our trail of bread crumbs," Tate said through his mask.

"We wear these lovely outfits to protect the archives from us.  The
twine is to protect us from the archives."

"Getting lost, you mean," Lucy said.  She looked at the maze of shelves
in front of her and gave a tiny uncontrollable shiver.  The air was
still in here, cool like a basement or a tomb, and the quiet was
absolute.

"Yes, getting lost," Randy said.  He scratched at his armpit through
the paper jumpsuit.  He picked up a folder that sat on a small table
under the hook.

"Here is our raison d'etre, Miss Lucy, our life's work, I'm beginning
to believe."  He flipped the notebook open and Lucy saw a geometric
drawing.

"A map!"  she said.

"A map," Tate nodded.

"Government types have been shoving papers in here since the twenties.
Well, not here, exactly.  The Pentagon basement was set up ten years
ago and all the archives were sent here from different defense
organizations."

"Like Roswell," Lucy said immediately, and bit her lips behind the
mask.

"Hey, a believer!"  Tate said instantly.  She could see his smile
behind his mask.

"You don't know how much I want to stumble over some alien mummies in
here."

"Me, I want to find the Ark of the Covenant," Randy said.

"Remember that final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark?  The government
worker is putting the box in with a million other boxes in an archive?
This is where it should be."

"That was fiction, man," Tate said.

"Roswell, Roswell was real."

"Roswell was fiction, you freak," Randy replied.  This had the flavor
of an old argument, well maintained.

"How do you expect to find Tesla's file in this?"  Lucy asked.

"Because we already found it," Tate responded absently.  He tested the
knot on the twine with several sharp tugs on the line.

"It's a fairly recent file, you know.  Nikola Tesla died in--what,
1943?  We found it two, three years ago."

"Looking for Roswell," Randy said derisively.

"Gives me a reason to go on, my friend," Tate said.

"Organizing this mess is going to take more than our miserable
lifetimes.  Let's go.  I'm sick of this suit already."

Tate struck off ahead and Lucy followed.  Randy walked behind her
because the stacks were so close together.  He could have managed a
brush at her breasts or her bottom at every turn but he kept a foot or
so away, talking nonstop as Tate walked from stack to stack.  He was a
sweetheart, Lucy decided.  All man and very interested, but polite.

The mask began to chafe and her skirt clung to her legs under the paper
jumpsuit, but Lucy appreciated the protection as the twine unrolled
behind them.  Paper dust hung in the air, dust as fine as powder.

Even through the mask the smell of moldy paper was pervasive.

"Did you know there really was a curse of King Tut's tomb?"  Randy
asked conversationally as they passed through two stacks of dark brown
boxes piled to the ceiling.

"Trying to scare me?"  Lucy asked, peering in every direction she could
see.  Wanting to see shriveled alien feet, of course.

"Nope," Tate said.

"One of my favorite stories, too, since we're working in a version of a
pharaoh's tomb."

"Lots of people who were at the opening of King Tut's tomb began to
die," Randy said behind her.

"Lady Evelyn Herbert, the diggers, Arthur Mace.  Over thirteen people
were dead by 1929.  This was the genesis of the 'curse of the mummy.""
"Turns out anyone who worked with mummies also got sick, sometimes
fatally," Tate continued.  He stopped at a junction and consulted his
map.  Lucy stood waiting as patiently as Randy, trying not to think of
the lights failing and leaving her in the dark.  Once the thought had
crossed her mind, of course, she could think of nothing else.

"Yeah, and it was only years later they discovered a spore.  Sometimes
it was in the mummy's wrappings, sometimes in the paintings on the tomb
walls.  One woman died after touching the wall of the tomb with one
finger.  It's called Aspergillus niger, and it infects the lungs, fills
them with fluid, until you suffocate.  Thus the mummy's curse," Randy
finished.

Tate turned left.  The stacks began to look more and more disorganized,
paper spilling from over packed boxes and wrapped shut with twine
instead of tape.  The smell got worse, more moldy and awful.

"Smells like a mummy is in here," Lucy said.

"Either that or a cat got loose."

Tate barked out a laugh and Randy chuckled behind her.

"Worse than cats, I'm telling you.  Some of this stuff was stored in
places where rain got in, mice got in, chipmunks, cats, whatever.  We
wear more than this paper stuff when we open a new crate, I'll tell
you."

"So these masks will protect us from airborne spores?"  Lucy asked.

"Keeping us safe from the mummy's curse?"

"We think so," Tate said with horrible nonchalance.

"Hey, here we are."  He stopped along a wall of boxes, each one taped
and marked with black pen.  The other side of the narrow corridor was
piled high with crates, stenciled carelessly with numbers and letters
that made no sense at all.  At the top of the pile of boxes, Lucy saw a
chain of wooden beads painted in bright colors, something that would
go on an old-fashioned Christmas tree.  A section of the beads were
stained dark brown, a substance that looked suspiciously like very old
dried blood.  She instantly wanted to know the story of the beads.  She
craved to know.

"Aren't those interesting?"  Tate said, following her gaze.

"All of a sudden I think I wouldn't be bored by this job," Lucy said,
looking at the bright colors of the beads.

"Treasure, yeah, the best kind," Tate said approvingly.

"I dream of breaking open the right box, someday."

"Somewhere in this stack, right?"  Randy said, stepping down the stack,
fingers trailing along the boxes.

"Tesla," Tate said.

"Help us look.  But don't let go of the twine, please."

"Not on your life," Lucy said fervently.

Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Bad news, team," Harben said, his hands folded together.  He'd
appeared between their desks while they were both at their computer
screens, and as usual, Eileen didn't see him coming.

"Don't tell me," Eileen began, and Harben raised his hand slightly.

She shut up like he'd thrown a switch.

"Durland changed his verdict to suicide."

"They got to him," Eileen said quietly, swallowing past acid in her
throat.

"Mitchell must have leaned on someone," Harben said.

"I am very disappointed.  I don't believe Leetsdale was a suicide."

"So what do we do?"  Eileen asked.  She glanced at Rosen.  His face was
dark and his lips were pressed tight together.  He was absolutely
furious.

"Look at Krista Lewis.  That is a murder and we have an arrangement
with Sheriff Gonzalez.  That's the only link we have open.  Sorry."  He
turned and walked back to his office.

"We'll have to prove he killed Krista to get to Leetsdale."

"That might be difficult," Rosen said.  He had been looking through the
autopsy report on Krista Lewis.

"What is it?"  Eileen asked.  She was beginning to think about lunch
before Harben came by.  The office was still at a post-snowstorm
roar.

The light outside, tending toward noon, was blindingly bright with
reflected snow.  The snow was already melting rapidly, which would
make driving after dark an incredible hazard.

"Looks like the time-of-death of Lewis's body was revised by the Pueblo
coroner.  The Alamosa coroner put her in a twelve-hour time slot, but
the Pueblo office revised upward at the autopsy."

"The Alamosa coroner didn't do an autopsy?"  Eileen asked.

"He doesn't handle murder very often.  He didn't want to screw it up,
so he did the prelims and sent the evidence and the body on to
Pueblo.

Good people there."

"Good coroner in Alamosa," Eileen commented.  A good decision.  So much
evidence could be lost in a botched autopsy that a conviction could be
lost as well.

"Anyway, the Pueblo coroner said that she might have been dead more
than twelve hours, given the state of the body and the location."

"The sand dunes," Eileen said.  She was thinking of latitude 37.47.50
and longitude 105.33.20.  Was that spot where Krista had met her
death?

The light outside seemed even more blinding for a moment.  Eileen
realized she was developing a headache.  From hunger, perhaps.

"Maybe we should have a talk with Jacob Mitchell," Eileen said.

"Really find out his alibi for Krista's murder.  Maybe my little
incident as well."

"If Harben will let us," Rosen said doubtfully.  He turned to her and
held up the autopsy report.  Then he set it down.  Then he picked it up
again.

"What is it?"  Eileen asked.  Rosen was never unsure.  He certainly
never hesitated to speak his opinion, if he had one.

"It's just that there's another person involved," Rosen said slowly.

"Whose alibi might not cover the twenty-four-hour period of Krista's
murder time."

Eileen heard a rushing sound, as though a large airplane had passed
over the building.  She realized it was her heart, pounding sickly and
heavily against her temples.  Spears of light from the windows seemed
to strike into her eyes.  She took her hands from her keyboard and
touched her temples lightly, to steady herself.

"I see," she said.

"Alan Baxter."

"I can't believe it," Rosen said.

"I don't believe it.  But--"

"Of course we know it could be true," Eileen said sharply.

"Murdererscan look like anybody.  Just because he seems like a nice
person doesn't mean he's not our murderer."

Rosen rustled the autopsy papers in his hands, then set them down at
his desk and smoothed them awkwardly with his hands.

"This would disconnect our two homicides," he said slowly.

"Which would complicate our story."

"But they could be disconnected," Eileen said.

"Perhaps we can't tie this all together because it isn't tied
together."

"So we should talk to Alan Baxter again," Rosen said.  Eileen looked
directly at him and saw distress in his eyes.  She had no idea how she
would handle the reverse situation.  Discussing a person's father as a
potential murderer was difficult enough without the person being a cop,
and your partner.

"I'm okay, you know," she said.

"We can check his alibis with Gonzalez," Rosen said, picking up the
autopsy pages and scanning them.  Eileen knew he wasn't reading a
word.

"Okay.  I really need some food."  She stood from her chair and reached
for her coat.

"I'll go with you," Rosen said immediately, starting to rise from his
own chair.

"No, don't bother," Eileen said.

"I'm just going to run down to the sub shop.  Why don't you get on the
phone to Gonzalez and clear this up?  I hope."

"Okay," Rosen said doubtfully, sitting back down.

Eileen wrapped her coat around her and put her gloves on.  The rushing
sound was back, like the way her A-10 jet airplane used to sound at
idle, the way it sounded before takeoff.  It was called the Warthog,
the ugliest plane the Air Force had, and she loved it.  Warthogs
cruised very close to the ground, carrying heavy antitank cartridges in
a chain gun that ran the length of the plane.  Eileen had never seen
combat, and was glad.  She loved to fly, but she'd never loved to
shoot.  She'd never wanted to kill anyone.

"What was that?"  Rosen asked.

"Nothing," Eileen said, trying to keep a small, hurt smile from her
face and failing.

"I was just thinking that it would only make sense."

"What would make sense?"  Rosen asked, real concern flaring in his
eyes.

"That my father would turn out to be a murderer too," Eileen said
bitterly, and turned to find her way to the stairs.  She could hardly
see, the light from the windows was so mercilessly bright and
glaring.

While she was warming up her Jeep, there was a knock at her window,
nearly scaring her to death.  It was Rosen, and he was pointing at the
other side of her car.  He wanted to get in.  She smiled and gave him a
friendly wave, and pulled away from the parking lot and out into the
street with what she hoped was nonchalance.  As she drove away, she
caught a glimpse of Rosen standing, coat less staring after her.

His figure receded in her rearview mirror, receded like the events of
her life, as though being a detective were a dream she had once before
she woke up.  She felt nothing but the roaring sensation, heard nothing
but the pounding blood in her ears.  She made a slushy, muddy turn onto
the entrance ramp to the Interstate, and headed south toward Pueblo
and, eventually, the San Luis Valley.

She was going to confront her father.  She was going to learn the
truth.

And if it killed her, if he killed her, than that was okay too.  Her
whole life felt like a dream, the dream of a dying three-year-old
child, perhaps, as the wheels spun in the crushed car and her mother
lay dead beside her.

What lay between that moment and the coming one was unimportant, as
meaningless as a mote of dust drifting in the air.  As she accelerated
onto the nearly dry highway, she began to hum tunelessly.

Kirn's Place, Alamosa, Colorado

Kirn's Place was almost deserted in the hush between lunch hour and the
dinner rush.  Alan saw Marcia Fowler immediately.  She was sitting in a
booth with her back to him.  A tendril of steam rose from a cup of
coffee in front of her.

"Have you been waiting long?"  he asked, sliding in to sit across from
her.  She looked up and smiled and tilted her cup toward him.

"Just poured," she said.

"I nearly got stuck getting out of Crestone.

The roads are dry here, though."

"Menu?"  the waitress asked.  Alan noticed that her nametag said "Kay."
She was a hard-looking teen but she carried a glass of water, a cup of
coffee, and a menu with competence.  Marcia smiled at the girl as
though she were a fresh-faced country girl with rosy cheeks instead of
a pale-faced thing with too much makeup.

"Yes, please," Alan said, taking the menu.  His body was settling down
and he was ready to refuel.

"Coffee, too, thank you."

"So tell me all and I'll tell you all," Marcia said with a smile that
didn't reach her eyes.  Alan realized for the first time that she was
pretty, with curly gray hair framing a face that carried lines that all
curved up, as though she'd spent a lifetime being cheerful.  Her eyes
were dark, framed by lashes as black as soot.  They were poker eyes,
those, revealing nothing.

Her hands, older than the rest of her, rested quietly around her coffee
cup.

"I remembered the name of the Air Force officer that Krista was working
with up in Colorado Springs," Alan began.

"So I drove up to the Springs to talk to him, and found out that he was
dead, too ..."

Alan talked through two glasses of water and a turkey and Swiss cheese
sandwich.  Marcia was a good listener, her dark eyes intent and
interested.  She lost her poker expression when Alan finally got to
Nikola Tesla and the earthquake machine.  Her eyes widened and she
mouthed something that looked to Alan like "arp."

"What was that?"  he asked.

"Nothing," she said, waving her hand.

"Finish your story."

Finally he wound down, poking his French fries one by one into his
ketchup and eating them as he finished with his own lonely vigil in Joe
Tanner's house.  No murderers attacked, no assassins tried to stage
suicides, no explanations came to Alan Baxter as he read through
Internet pages spit out by Joe's smelly laser printer.  Nothing tied
the whole story together for him.

Marcia, who had ordered a piece of pie somewhere during his story,
stirred the crumbs with her fork after he stopped.

"Well," she said.

"That certainly explains a lot."

"What about you, then?"  Alan asked.  He felt confused all over
again.

Telling about the events of the past few nights didn't seem to make
much sense now.  People were setting off earthquakes?  It was
fantastic, impossible.

"Don't go running away screaming, now," Marcia said.

"I don't want to be left with the bill.  I'm on a fixed income, you
know."

"I won't run away," Alan said, smiling.

"Okay, then," Marcia said calmly.

"I belong to MUFON, the Mutual

UFO Network.  So I'm one of your friend Joe Tanner's freaky alien
believers.  I was convinced that aliens murdered Krista Lewis when I
first saw the body.  There was a lot that seemed similar to cattle
mutilations, but a lot that didn't seem similar as well."  She glanced
up beneath her black eyelashes to gauge his reaction and must have seen
something in his face.

"What?"  she asked.

"The cattle," Alan whispered.  He swallowed hard, seeing the cattle in
his mind's eye with perfect clarity.  The round brutal holes punched
into the tough hide, the missing organs, the perfect blackness of the
injuries, and the uncaring light of the night sky.  He could almost
smell the sage and the gasoline.

"You've seen a cattle mutilation?"  Marcia said eagerly.

"You have?

Where?  Was it here?"

"I can't tell you about it," Alan said, blinking the image away.

"But-I was told that Krista Lewis was raped.  I saw those cows--" he
stopped.

"You don't have to tell me," Marcia said, though she obviously wanted
him to.

"Our conclusion--MUFON, that is--is that this is a human murderer.  The
whole UFO frenzy going on is just a smokescreen.

Your ideas make so much sense to me!"

"What do you mean?"

"I can tell you," Marcia said slowly.

"If you want to hear."

"I want to hear," Alan said.  He'd heard about UFO nuts and had watched
television shows about aliens, but had never heard anyone explain the
phenomenon in any coherent way.  If someone could do that, it would be
Marcia Fowler.  He could hardly believe this very intelligent,
sane-looking woman was a UFO believer.

"All right, then," Marcia said.

"Here's the explanation in as few words as I can make it.  You know
about the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico saucer crash?"

"Sure."

"It was a crash, and there was a survivor.  He was what we call a Gray,
and they've been visiting our planet for a long time.  The crash was an
accident, and the original cover-up was just an automatic reflex, from
a government that was essentially still in World War Two battle mode.
But then the cover-up became something more."

"Why?"

"Because the Grays struck a deal with our government," Marcia said

calmly.

"They are a species on the way out, on the far end of their
evolution.

Their birth rates are almost nonexistent, their life-forms increasingly
frail.  They have incredible technology, though, far in advance of our
own.  So, more or less by accident, our captive became their
emissary.

Our government agreed to allow genetic testing of animals and limited,
non harmful abductions of humans."

"What for?"  Alan asked.  He took a long drink of water.  The worst
part of this was it sounded plausible to him.  Who believed the Air
Force when they came up with their lame explanation about Roswell? Alan
thought the crash-test-dummies-in-balloons idea was hilarious. And
ridiculous.  And unbelievable.

"We share some parts of our DNA," Marcia said.

"I'm a Christian, lots of serious UFOlogists are.  God created us all,
we believe, so why wouldn't we share a common ancestry?  Anyway, the
Grays believe they could re-infuse their species with our younger DNA.
The deal was that the Grays give us technology, our government gives
them some medical subjects who wouldn't be harmed, who wouldn't even
remember that they'd had eggs harvested or sample materials taken--"
"That's horrible," Alan said thoughtfully, and Marcia nodded back
gravely.

"Of course.  But so was incarcerating Japanese-Americans, right?  And
the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on black men.  It seemed like a
pretty good deal at the time to men who were still reeling from World
War Two and the rise of Communist Russia.  Now here's the really
horrible part."

"What's that?"

"The Grays reneged on the deal.  They abducted far more than they
agreed to, they harmed animals and humans, and they didn't deliver on
the warp drive, or whatever it was they were supposed to give us
humans.  This, to me, is the part that makes the most sense.  Why won't
the government come clean on Roswell?"

"Because they'd have to admit they offered up their own citizens as
medical guinea pigs," Alan said.

"Of course."

"We're in a war, you know," Marcia said.

"A very covert war, but a war just the same.  That's what I believe.
That's why you see Air Force jets trying to intercept UFOs; that's why
they never admit that's what they were doing.  And all of that has very
little to do with Krista Lewis, except she doesn't fit into the
pattern.  She was raped.  That's a human thing."

"So her murder has nothing to do with aliens."

"I don't think so," Marcia said.

"But I do think there might be someone in the government involved.
There's a lot of government activity in the San Luis Valley.  That may
or may not be why there is so much UFO activity here too.  But when I
found Krista's body I heard the Taos Hum, the tone, right before the
earthquake."

"They set it off.  They set it off right next to you," Alan said in
wonder.

"Good thing it wasn't right next to me," Marcia said matter-of factly

"Or I would be dead like Krista.  But don't you see?  The hum proves
your story.  The Tesla machine makes a sound."

"And it's gone off before," Alan said.

"Enough to have a name.  Enough to attract the attention of the MUFON.
It's going to go off again, Alan.  Eventually, they're going to kill
lots more people than Jim Leetsdale and his wife and baby and Krista
Lewis.  They're playing with forces they do not understand.  This time
they have to be stopped."  Marcia stopped, breathing hard.  Then she
laughed and a blush climbed her cheeks.

"I sound like an idiot," she said.

"Not an idiot," Alan corrected.

"Like a person who knows right from wrong.  They don't, these
earthquake people.  They think it's okay to rape and kill.  They think
it's okay to set off earthquakes that might hurt more than they help.
They can't have this kind of power."

"So how do we stop them?"  Marcia asked.

"Do you want to come back to Crestone with me tonight?  There's some
people you could meet--" "No," Alan said.

"I'll tell Sheriff Gonzalez what we know, and I'll let the Colorado
Springs detectives know too.  I think if we get the word out to the
police, they might be able to handle the rest."  He smiled at her, a
great big reassuring smile, because he knew who was going to stop this
madness.

He was.  He hoped.

Interstate 25, Southern Colorado

Memories clamored outside the windshield like ghosts pressing against
the glass.  Eileen couldn't keep them out, not entirely.  For a while
she could concentrate on the road, on the slushy spray thrown up by the
big

trucks she passed, on the brilliance of the sun as it fell to the
horizon.

Then she would find herself remembering how it was to be hugged by
Tracy Reed, how it took her a year to allow herself to be cuddled and
kissed without turning into a fearful wooden doll.  She was four years
old before she returned one of Tracy's carefully casual hugs.  She
remembered how Tracy had burst into tears when she put her arms around
her adoptive mother's neck and gave her a tentative little squeeze.
They'd been making cookies in the kitchen and the air smelled
wonderful, full of vanilla and chocolate chips.  Eileen had cried too,
startled and afraid she'd done something wrong.  Tracy tried to keep
from weeping but she couldn't.  So she sat down on the floor of the
kitchen and rocked Eileen and held her until they were both calm.  That
was the beginning of trust.

Eileen put her turn signal on to pass a lumbering old Winebago.  She
didn't want to remember any of that.  She wanted to remember the ten
year-old Eileen.  She hadn't hit puberty yet so she was slim and strong
as a willow wand.  She was chasing a cow that was trying to cut back
out of the herd and head back to the creek bed, where there was shade
and water.

The herd had eaten all the grass in the area, so Eileen and her dad
were moving them into the upper pasture.  Eileen and her cow horse
Redbone, had dashed after the cow, and when it abruptly disappeared
Eileen had only a second to realize that the cow had fallen into a
brushy, narrow ravine.  Then she lifted herself over Redbone's haunches
and lifted him into the air with all the force of her will.  They'd
jumped the ravine and saved both their lives, and even when Eileen had
to put down the poor injured cow, she kept remembering how it felt to
jump, how she knew she could leap over anything, anything at all.

She remembered the extra psychology courses she'd taken at the
University of Wyoming, the extra reading she'd done to try and discover
whether or not she would end up like her birth mother.  She guessed her
mother had been manic-depressive, or bipolar, in high school.  She
didn't know if she would end up like her mother.  She didn't know who
her father was or what he was, or even if he was still alive.  She held
herself back from humanity like a person in a glass jar.  She always
thought she was brave, but she wasn't.  She was an enormous coward.

Now she knew who her father was.  She was trying to find him, now, to
find out if her father was a murderer just like her poor damaged
mother.  What haunted her, the thought that couldn't be kept entirely
away, was Teddy Shaw.  She was a killer now.  Had Teddy Shaw's death
brought her father out of the past like some ancient, unlocked door?

Was her father a killer?

Once she knew, she would find a way to live with it, she promised
herself.  Not knowing was the difficult part.  She had to know.

The exit for La Veta and the San Luis Valley loomed up in the
distance.

Eileen flipped on her headlights in the coming dusk and took the
exit.

Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Okay, run that by me one more time," Joe said into the phone.

"Eileen's gone.  I think she's heading down to the San Luis Valley
after Alan."

"Who might be a murderer."

"Might be."

Rosen's voice was, like always, without emotion.  Joe rubbed his
forehead with suddenly cold fingers.  He was sitting in his home office
chair, where he'd been working all day on a refinement of his
earthquake simulation.

He'd had some ideas that he simply had to put into his program.

Once Eileen, Rosen, and Alan Baxter had left, Joe had taken a seat in
his chair and hadn't moved except for an occasional trip to the
bathroom.  It seemed as though Eileen had just left.  Alan, a
murderer?

"Impossible," Joe said flatly.

"He couldn't be."

"I don't deal in impossibilities," Rosen said coldly.

"In other words, we can't take the chance that he could be the
murderer," Joe said, feeling a sinking sensation in his gut.  He
couldn't, either.

Could Alan be an imposter, a man pretending to be Eileen's father?  As
soon as the thought materialized in his head, Joe rejected it.  You
couldn't fake bone structure, placement of the eyes, the clever narrow
hands.  They were too alike to be anything but father and daughter.

But he could still be a murderer, Joe reluctantly admitted to
himself.

All murderers were someone's son or daughter, sometimes a father or
mother or uncle.  Just because Alan seemed as transparently good as a
pane of clear glass didn't mean a thing.

"That's right," Rosen said, answering Joe's thoughts.

"Well let's go get her, then," Joe said.

"That's why I called," Rosen said.

"Harben released me to drive down and find her.  He contacted Gonzalez.
It's my idea to bring you."

"Where are you now?"  Joe asked.

"About two blocks away," Rosen said with infuriating calm.

"Well, shit, that doesn't give me any time," Joe said, and cast a
glance at his Frankenputer.  There was that one last change he wanted
to make.

Never mind.

"Do you have hiking gear?  Camping gear?"

"A change of clothes in a gym bag," Rosen said.

"I can't go home, remember."

"Good thing I have two backpacks," Joe said, walking down the hallway
toward what he'd dubbed his sports room.

"And a tent.  Knock when you're here, I've got to--"

"I'm here," Rosen said, and keyed off his phone.

"Get some stuff ready," Joe said grimly.  He spun on his heel and
hurried back to the front of the house.  He caught a glimpse of his
bedroom, and his bed, striped with late afternoon sunshine.  He hadn't
made the bed today and he could clearly see the imprint of Eileen's
head on a pillow.

He could almost smell her, the sleepy soapy fragrance that clung to
every inch of her skin.  Underneath that she always smelled a little
bit wild, a strong musky scent that must come from her
adrenaline-charged lifestyle.  Joe loved her a bit sweaty, a little bit
tangy, when her natural scent threatened to overwhelm all the civilized
coverings of soap and deodorant.  The way she smelled after they made
love.  He bit back a strangled curse and looked away from the bed.  He
couldn't lose her.  He simply couldn't.

Rosen stood on the doorstep holding his gym bag and a six-pack of
distilled water bottles that dangled from their plastic loops like
little hanged men.  Joe immediately wanted to punch him in the nose,
and saw the tight line of muscles in Rosen's jaw.  Rosen probably
longed to punch him back.

"Come in," Joe said.

"I haven't had time to pack.  You can help."

Rosen said nothing.  He followed Joe to the sports room and set his gym
bag and the package of water on the floor.  The room had been a nursery
before Joe bought the house, and he'd never bothered to change the
wallpaper.  Banding the center of the walls was a happy collection of
animals being loaded on a whole set of arks, with Noah and his wife
cheerfully waving all the animals aboard.  There were no clouds in the
pastel blue wallpaper sky.  Rosen contemplated the artwork and touched
a gentle finger to the elephants.  Joe felt a little less like hitting
him.

Joe had arranged his equipment neatly on the carpeted floor.  He had
hiking gear and his bike along one wall, his safety vest and helmet for
white water rafting in one corner along with some climbing equipment
that he had used only a few times.  Climbing gave him no thrill at all,
even though he gave it a few tries to really decide.  He was simply
scared and cold and mad at himself the whole time he was climbing, and
tired afterwards.  He had some fishing gear as well, but his hiking
equipment was by far the most used of the lot.  He had recently bought
a new pack so he tossed his old one at Rosen.  It still had his old
sleeping bag and pad tied at the bottom.  Rosen would probably get cold
in his old bag, but right now Joe didn't much care.

He picked up his new pack and checked the contents.  He had a propane
camping stove, matches and a flashlight, toilet paper and bug spray,
and sunscreen.  He had a small set of cooking dishes and a plastic
flask of Glenlivet Scotch.  He had a ceramic water filter--but there
was no water in the dunes.  He left it in there anyway.  He had a good
first-aid bag with a snakebite kit.  What else?  Compass, but no map.
Flares for bears that were useless in the sand dunes but might come in
handy if they ended up anywhere in the San Juan Mountains.  Mountain
lions and bears did not like the huge hissing noise and the bright red
light of a road flare.  Joe had never actually tried this out, he had
merely read it on the Internet and decided it sounded like a great
idea.  He'd secretly wanted to encounter a bear ever since to see if it
worked, which he knew was a very foolish idea.  What if it didn't?

"Food and maps, and a set of warm clothing," he said to Rosen.

"Do you have a GPS?"

"Yes, I do," Rosen said.  A GPS module was essential if they intended
to find latitude 37.47.50 and longitude 105.33.20 in the dunes.
Otherwise they could stumble in circles for days and never find their
spot.

"Alan has one, doesn't he?"

"Yes," Rosen said.

"Is there anything I can carry?"  He'd loaded his borrowed pack with
his water and clothing, and it sat empty on the floor.

"Yeah, the tent," Joe said.

"I'll carry most of the food and we'll split

the water.  Maybe we won't have to go in after them."  He contemplated
his newest sports room addition.  It was a .357 handgun, polished
steel, oily looking, and ugly.  Eileen taught him how to shoot it,
picked it out for him, showed him how to care for it.  He still didn't
like it much.

"You have a conceal-carry permit?"

"Yes, I do," Joe sighed.

"Eileen made me get one."

"Then take it," Rosen said.

"If you need it, you'll have it.  Is that the tent?"

Ten minutes later they were out the door.  Joe folded up his
Frankenputer laptop and carried it with him along with his pack and an
empty Thermos.  He intended to fill it with hot truck-stop coffee when
they refueled, somewhere between here and the San Luis Valley.

"I've got a division car," Rosen said.  Joe had to smile.  It was a
fullsized Ford Bronco, old and battered.  Originally a deep blue, the
paint had faded over the years and turned a milky color over the
fenders.  It didn't look at all like a cop car.

"Does it work?"  he joked.

"Yes," Rosen answered, and Joe rolled his eyes.  That's right, Rosen
had a very strange humor bone.  The late afternoon was now definitely
early evening.  The sun was starting to set over the mountain range to
the west, and Joe realized they would be driving over roads that were
going to turn to slippery ice in a matter of hours.  He stepped through
slush to get to the back of the Bronco and put his gear inside, slush
that was getting colder by the minute as the temperature dropped.

"I hope you're a good driver," Joe said.

Rosen shrugged, setting his backpack into the Bronco.  Joe kept his
laptop and his Thermos with him as he settled into the passenger
seat.

He put on his seatbelt and held his computer with both hands as Rosen
muscled the Bronco into the street.  They didn't skid on two tires
going around the street corner, but Joe would have sworn he felt the
tires lighten up on his side.

"Don't worry, I can drive," Rosen said, as he roared toward the
interstate.

Joe nodded and gave him a big smile.  Rosen glanced over at him and Joe
winked.

"Go faster," he suggested, trying not to clutch his laptop too hard.

He'd be damned if he were going to let this cop out-macho him.

"As fast as we can," Rosen said.  Joe found he could relax as they
made

their way to the interstate and accelerated up the on-ramp.  Rosen was
a very good driver.  He pushed the limits of the Bronco but never
exceeded them.  Something about his driving seemed to reflect a hidden
Rosen.

His driving was flamboyant and arrogant.  He took the car to the edge
at every corner and squealed the tires like a freshly pinched girl at
every stop.  His driving was anything but emotionless.  Joe decided he
was starting to like Rosen.  Maybe.

The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

"What about Detective Rosen?  Is he available?"  Lucy asked.  She'd
kicked off her shoes the moment she got back into her car.  Despite the
fact that they were low-heeled and cushioned, she had blisters on the
upper parts of both heels.  The walk back through the archives and then
her fast walk out to her car had broken one of the blisters, and it
hurt like fury.

"One moment, ma'am," the administrative assistant said.

Lucy looked around the parking lot and saw no one close.  She held her
cell phone to her ear with her shoulder and reached under her skirt
with both hands.  She ripped a hole in her pantyhose pulling them down,
but she didn't care.  In a few moments she had the horrid things
dangling from one hand, and her broken blister stopped throbbing so
badly.

"I'm sorry, he's not available," the assistant said.  Lucy remembered
him.  Bob.  Evidently he was a whiz at administrative duties, but he
hated Eileen and she disliked him right back.  Consequently, he'd never
been helpful to Lucy on the few occasions she called the Colorado
Springs Special Investigations Bureau.

"Get me Captain Harben," she said, starting her car and slamming the
door shut.

"He's in conference," the Bob voice said smugly.

"I can take him a message."

"Tell him Lucy Giometti called for Eileen Reed.  Tell him this has a

material bearing on their current investigation.  Tell him I have
information that might save their lives.  Can you tell him that.
Bob?"

"I'll let him know, ma'am," Bob said.

"Can you give me a number where he might reach you?"

Lucy relayed her cell phone number and started her car.  She started
the long drive home with the air conditioner blowing and her bare feet
feeling strange on the pedals.  She was on the beltway and moving
slowly in the constant traffic jam when her phone chirped.

"Captain Harben?"  she said.

"Mrs.  Giometti," Harben said.

"I wasn't aware your agency had any interest in this case."

"They don't," Lucy said impatiently.

"This was a favor for a friend.

As such, everything I say is off the record and unusable in court.  But
Eileen needs to know this.  Is she there?  I need to reach her."

"My detectives are on assignment," Harben said cautiously.

"And this is a cell phone on your side?"

"Yes," Lucy said, and blew a sweaty lock of hair from her forehead.

"We'll just talk in a roundabout way, then.  Okay?"

"No way to get to a land line?"

"None," Lucy said, looking at the traffic.

"Listen to me.  I found the file that Joe asked me about.  Certain
information that was supposed to be there was missing.  There was
plenty there, but the file we wanted to look at was empty."  Here Lucy
had a memory of the open box with the files and the pictures and the
ancient dead dove encased in plastic, the inexplicable white dove.

"The--er, sanitized person that Eileen asked me about was the one who
took the contents out of the file.  So he took it, and he is using it,
and I think he is more dangerous than she may suspect."

"How do you know?"

"He took the plans, but he left some of the other documents," Lucy
said.

"I know what he's doing, and it's huge."  She had a copy of the folder
but Tate and Randy had insisted on keeping the original.  Her visit was
unofficial and they were planning on taking the theft to their own
highest level.  They were incandescent with fury, even though the Tesla
designs had been stolen before the box had arrived from the FBI.  Randy
had broken the FBI seal on the box to let Lucy look inside.  Lucy was
awed by Randy and Tate's command of curses in English, French, and what
must have been medieval Latin when they saw the nearly empty folder.

"This could be difficult," Harben said slowly.

"Your information isn't enough for an arrest warrant, and I don't have
enough either.  We could get a temporary for a few hours if my
detectives find him in a compromising location."

The dunes, Lucy whispered silently to herself.  Eileen was in the dunes
with Rosen and she was going to try and find Jacob Mitchell.

"I have an idea," she said finally.

"I have a contact with the FBI out there.  I can get things moving on
the FBI side to confiscate his--whatever it is, device, as material to
an investigation here in Washington."

"We've been trying to get some action from the FBI on our side as well,
since the young lady involved was a government contractor.  So far, no
luck."

"Let me try," Lucy said grimly.

"I'll call you when I get some information."

"Thank you," Harben said gravely.

"Thank me when it's over," Lucy said, and hung up the phone.  She
tapped her bare toes on the gritty surface of her brakes and tried to
think.  She wanted to go out there.  She wanted to get permission to
fly out there, as she had once before, and meet up with Eileen and
defeat the bad guys.  She lifted her phone to call the travel agency.
Then she put the phone back down.

She could not go.  She could not.  Hank was still a nursing baby.  He
needed her every four hours.  She couldn't take him with her, either.

What was she going to do, put him in a carrying sling?  How
ridiculous.

The air conditioner spat cold air at her and the traffic shimmered
through the heat waves and Lucy started to cry.  She cried bitterly for
what she could not have, cried as inconsolably as a child wanting a toy
that has been taken away.  When she was done, she blew her nose one
handed and wiped her eyes, and then she picked up her cell phone and
dialed the FBI.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

The main gate to the Williams's Ranch was closed and locked, an
arrangement Eileen found curious.  There was a button set into a pole
at the gate, positioned for an easy reach from a truck.  She pushed it,
and

waited.  Eventually a tall woman in an enormous sheepskin duster
arrived.  The'name, Eileen learned later, was Susan, and as she
approached, Eileen knew she was everything her own parents had hoped
she would become.  This was a woman, strong and tall and sun weathered
who would want nothing more than the land, the cattle, the horse,
forever.

Eileen felt a piercing sorrow watching the other woman approach.

She wanted nothing else, in that moment, but to be married to her
childhood friend Owen Sutler and to live on a ranch in Wyoming.  She
wanted to be wearing a sheepskin duster and calfskin gloves and know
nothing more of death than what happens to steers in the fall and lambs
in the spring.

Susan was driving a pickup truck so exquisitely battered it could have
been some sort of art sculpture.  Or maybe it had just been rolled a
few times.  It was covered in icy mud, and the hood was wired shut with
a twist of baling wire.  Susan's expression was as chilly as the ice on
her truck as she pulled up at the gate.

"Yes?"  she said, then her expression changed into bewilderment.

"Do I know you?"

"I think you know my father," Eileen said.

"Alan Baxter.  Is he here?

Could I talk to him?"

Susan's face crinkled into a broad grin, changing her in an instant
from sternness to merriment.

"Of course, you're Eileen!  I'm Susan Williams.  You look just like
him."

"Everybody says that," Eileen said under her breath as Susan spun a
combination lock and swung open the gate.  Eileen had never seen a
locked ranch gate before and it puzzled her.  Why would you lock your
front gate?  What kind of visitors would you want to keep out of a
ranch?  In Wyoming, most people depended on their dogs to warn them of
visitors.  Visitors were rare where she was from.  She drove through
and pulled her Jeep over so Susan could take the lead after she closed
the gate.  This bit of ranch savvy elicited a raised eyebrow from the
other woman.

Beth and Sam Williams's spread was instantly familiar to her, an
arrangement of main house and outbuildings much like her own family
home in Wyoming.  At the main house, Susan waved Eileen to a parking
spot in the slushy yard, then led the way to an enormous mud room
where Eileen was shown a hook on which to hang her winter coat and
hat.

The floor was tile and it was covered in mud and dirt.  Hooks and
shelves and baskets held an astonishing array of coats, hats, gloves,
and boots.

Underneath a particularly large pile of mud-smeared clothing, a washing
machine clanked and hummed busily.

Susan, shedding her duster and a shapeless wool hat, revealed herself
to be younger than Eileen thought at first.  She was Eileen's own age,
but she topped Eileen by six inches of height and forty pounds of
weight.

There wasn't an ounce of fat on her; she was just large all over.  She
smelled strongly of horses, a scent that made Eileen draw a deep breath
in nostalgia.  Eileen used to smell that way.

"Horses," she explained to Susan.

"I used to ride just about every day."

"I'm surprised you could tell," Susan said, brushing at her jeans and
frowning.

"I rode out this afternoon, but it was too muddy for Charlie so I came
back and got the truck."

"You don't smell that strongly," Eileen said, sitting down at a handy
bench and tugging at her shoes.

"I just haven't smelled horse in a while, that's all."

"You could go out with me tomorrow, if you'd like," Susan offered.

"My old mare, Origami, she's as gentle as a rocking chair.  I don't
ride her much since I got Charlie."

Eileen had to swallow before she spoke.  What was wrong with her?

She wanted to accept; in that moment, it seemed as though she wanted
nothing else.

"I don't know how long I'll be here," she said.

"Is my father here?"

"No, he's in town having lunch with somebody who might know about
Krista Lewis," Susan said, so casually it made Eileen jump.

"He should be back pretty soon."

"You know about Krista Lewis?"  Eileen said.

"Sure, and Jim Leetsdale too," Susan replied, shaking out her short
brown hair.

"Come on.  Mom's got coffee and sweet rolls waiting.  She's going to be
really excited to meet you."

The kitchen, clean and warm and smelling of cinnamon and vanilla, was
inhabited by a woman who could only be Susan's mother.  She was as tall
as her daughter but larger by far, with brown hair going to gray and
light-colored eyes.

"I'm Beth Williams.  Susan told me she was bringing Alan Baxter's

daughter," she said, in a voice as warm as her kitchen.  Susan patted
her shirt pocket for Eileen's benefit.  A cell phone.

Beth held out her hands and Eileen found herself being drawn into a
hug.

"I'm so glad you found each other," Beth whispered, for Eileen's ears
only, then released her.  Eileen found herself swallowing hard for the
second time in five minutes.

"Coffee, and rolls," Beth said briskly, turning away.  Eileen found a
place at the big country table, watching as Susan poured herself a cup
of coffee and rummaged around a cabinet until she found a package of
what looked like hot chocolate mix.  She dumped the powder into her
coffee and stirred it with a spoon, then came and thumped down next to
Eileen.

"Want one like it?"  she offered.

"It's my version of a hot chocolate.

Hot coffee chocolate."

"Just coffee, thanks," Eileen said, grinning.  She was starting to feel
a bit less overwhelmed.  The sweet rolls were very good, steaming and
full of raisins and with just enough icing.  She hadn't eaten lunch,
she recalled, and she wolfed two of the rolls and finished a cup of
coffee in just a few minutes.

"You look better now," Beth said, leaning back over her own coffee and
roll.

"You were pretty pale.  So why are you here?"

Eileen opened her mouth, and looked at the two women sitting at the
table with her.  Their hospitality was more than simple ranch manners,
she knew.  Her treatment was a reflection of the impact that Alan
Baxter had made on this place.  She knew what that was like.  She liked
Alan Baxter, too.

"I suspect he might try to find Krista's murderer on his own," she
said, and before the words were out of her mouth she knew they were
true.  Either Alan Baxter was the murderer, or he was going to try and
find the murderer.  There was really no other explanation for what he
was doing.  In order to find out what he was, Eileen was going to have
to play along with him.  And it might get her killed.  She'd known
that, too, before she'd gotten into her Jeep.  It was a risk that
seemed acceptable.  It still seemed acceptable.

When Alan walked into Beth's kitchen two hours later, Eileen was eating
supper with Susan and Beth and Sam.  Frank, Eileen had learned, was
one of the hired men.  He was out riding a fence line to make sure it
was intact after the storm.  The other ranch hands, Jenny and Mark,
were married and had their own cabin.  They usually ate supper at their
own place.  Alan stepped through the doorway and Eileen felt that
peculiar humming sound again, the rushing sensation of her own blood
through her veins.

"Eileen," he said, stopping abruptly.

"Hi," she said mildly, scooping a forkful of lasagna to her mouth.  The
delicious bite could have been sawdust for all she tasted it.

"What are you doing here?"  he said.  He looked stunned, guilty even,
and Eileen's heart contracted fiercely.

"Some interesting developments," Eileen said.

"So I came on down."

She took another determined bite of food.  ' "We've been getting
acquainted," Beth said with a grin.

"I tried to get Reg to come out but he's at home with Maria Elena and
won't leave.  He said he'd try to come by tomorrow for lunch.  I hope
you're still here for lunch?"  She looked anxiously at Eileen, who
managed to nod and shrug her shoulders at the same time.

"We'll ride out in the morning, Eileen," Susan said with a wrinkle of
her nose.

"I promised Eileen a ride on Origami.  Before you invited Uncle Reg."

"Are you hungry, Alan?"  Beth asked.

"There's plenty of food."

"I'm not hungry.  I had a late lunch," Alan said, looking dazed.

"Maybe Eileen and I could talk for a little bit?"

"Sure," Sam Williams said through a mouthful of food.

"Use the living room, we hardly ever go in there 'cept for parties."

Eileen took a last bite and stood up.  She carried her plate and cup to
the sink, rinsed them, and stacked them in the dishwasher.  She had no
idea what she was going to say to Alan.  Her father.  When she shut the
dishwasher door, it slammed more loudly than she thought it should.

Then she realized someone was standing in the doorway to the mudroom,
in coat and hat and muddy boots.  The outside door had slammed shut at
the same time as the dishwasher door.

This must be Frank, the hired man, Eileen realized.  He was slender,
not particularly tall, with black hair and eyes and a nose that would
rival Rosen's.  Frank would have been right at home in Lucy Giometti's
very Italian family.  If he were wearing a handmade suit and his hair
were slicked back, he could have played an extra in one of the
Godfather movies.  Instead, he was wearing a sheepskin duster even
filthier than Susan's.  His hair was in disarray and his face pinched
and white and wild.  Eileen stood straight, and if she had coyote ears
they would have come up into stiff, tall points.  Frank looked upset.
More than upset.  He looked scared to death.

"There's two guys at the gate," he said, panting.

"They were trying to get in and when I drove up they said they said "
"Take a deep breath," Sam said, standing from the table.

"They didn't ring the bell."  He took two steps and hooked an enormous
shotgun from an alcove Eileen had not noticed.  He calmly checked the
load and clicked the safety off as Frank took a couple of calming
breaths.  Everyone else stood or sat as if electrified, and Eileen
thought of a horrid movie she'd seen as a child, some late-night thing
that scared her more than any bug-eyed radioactive monster ever did.
The knock on the door, the jack-booted troops bursting in on a family
at supper, and the long ride in the cattle cars to the concentration
camps and horrible death.

But this wasn't Nazi Germany.  Sam Williams's enormous shotgun was
proof of that, if nothing else.

"They said they were from the DEFA, whatever that is, and they had
badges, looked like FBI badges but different.  They said they had a
warrant to search this place and I had to let them in.  They said they
had an arrest warrant for Alan Baxter!  I said I'd be right back and I
kicked the Honda into top gear and I came right here."

"They don't," Eileen said into the silence.

"I'm working with the feds and they don't have Alan as a suspect.  They
" "I think they shot at me," Frank said, and if everyone were silent
before, the room was now as still as stone.

"You know how the Honda can go, and I was going as fast as I could. But
I heard something, like a backfire, and I swear something went right by
my ear."  He sat down on the bench in the mudroom, his face looking
both lost and angry.

"They shot at me."

Susan was kneeling at Frank's feet before anyone else moved, and as her
arms went around Frank and she buried her face in his shoulder, Eileen
saw a stunned look on both Beth and Sam Williams's faces.  Then Beth's
face broke into a grin of delight, uncomplicated and joyous.

Evidently Susan was keeping a secret about the hired man.  Beth, all
thoughts of invaders at the gate gone, beamed at her daughter's back.

Eileen could practically read "wedding" and "grandchildren" on the
woman's broad forehead.

"Were they dressed in black, Frank?"  Alan asked.

"Yeah," Frank said, bringing his face up from Susan's sleek brown head.
She was still buried in his shoulder, hugging him hard.  He looked at
Beth and Sam anxiously.  He was obviously more worried at the moment
about the shotgun in Sam Williams's hands than the shooters at the
gate.  What he saw in their faces obviously reassured him.  He blew a
gusty breath out and his arms tightened around Susan.

"How did you know?  They were dressed in black.  Black suits, like.
Mafia suits, I'd call 'em."

"Men-in-black?"  Sam Williams asked, his face even grimmer.  Eileen
looked at him with surprise.  He didn't sound derisive, or doubting.
Sam Williams sounded as though he believed in them.  She shuddered,
suddenly, and obviously.  All heads turned to her.

"Just like the ones who tried to kill you, Eileen," Alan said calmly.

Eileen shrugged at the faces that were looking back at her.

"I doubt my man-in-black was an alien.  He was very upset when I shot
him in the chest."

"But he survived," Alan said quietly.

"Evidently, he did," Eileen said.

"But he might have been wearing body armor.  And hadn't we better get
out to the gate before your friends find a way through?"

"They aren't going to find a way through unless they have a tank," Sam
Williams said with satisfaction.  He was a big, rangy man, with muscles
like old ropes in his arms and neck.  The sun had weathered him to
mahogany and put crow's-feet around his eyes that were as deep as
cuts.

His hair was mostly gone and what little remained was a brilliant,
movie-star white.  His eyebrows, white like his hair, were bushy and
enormous, like wooly white caterpillars on his forehead.  He smiled at
Eileen.

"The ditch along the highway is too deep and broad for a truck to
cross.  The culvert where the gate goes is the only good place to get
in.

They can walk up here, but it'll take them a good hour or so.  I got
tired of reporters and those UFO types trespassing after our first set
of cattle mutilations.  So I fixed it."

"They might be on their way up on foot," Eileen said, thinking cattle
mutilations?

"They really might.  These guys could be killers."

"Then we'll be ready," Beth said, focussing with an effort from her
daughter.

"Frank, Susan, get Jenny and Mark up to the main house.  Let the dogs
out.  I'm going to call Reg and get him out here as quickly as he
can."

"You mean your cattle dogs?"  Alan asked, as Susan and Frank scrambled
to their feet and rummaged in the mudroom.  Eileen saw Susan come up
with a handsome shotgun and Frank strap on a pair of revolvers fit for
an Old West movie, and approved.  They dove out the door as Beth dialed
the sheriff's number.

"Yeah, the cattle dogs, and I'd hate to lose them," Sam said quietly.

He turned off the kitchen lights and the room was plunged into gloom.

The only light came from the gas burners on Beth's big stove.

"They're mostly Border collie mixed with some German shepherd.  You've
seen them work.  Damn smart dogs.  They'll stay away from our friends
and bark like mad, which is all I want.  I hope they don't get shot
at."

"Okay, Reg, just get here as soon as you can," Beth said into the
phone, and hung up.  She looked cheerful.

"He's on his way with lights blazing.  He said not to kill them,
please, particularly if they're the fed agents he's been asking for. He
said they probably won't send him any more if we shoot these guys."

"Better tell Susan," Alan murmured, his eyes sparkling.  Eileen, too,
felt much better.  Perhaps this was all a mistake.  Then she remembered
that these men said they had an arrest warrant for Alan Baxter. Perhaps
they were Feds, and they knew something that she didn't.  So why did
she immediately leap to Alan's defense when Frank burst through the
door?  She couldn't be losing perspective that badly.

"According to Joe's simulation, there's going to be an earthquake the
day after tomorrow," Alan said abruptly.

"I want to be at that spot in the dunes, that latitude and longitude,
the day after tomorrow.  And if I'm not here, and those feds are really
feds, then you don't have to try and get them off your land.  You can
let them on and let them search when Reg arrives, and I'll be gone."

"You're going into the dunes?  At night?"  Sam gripped his shotgun and
the wooly eyebrows drew together.

"Alan," Beth said gently, "we've had people go into the dunes in broad
daylight and never come out.  They're a strange place, and that was
long before Krista was found.  You could get lost.  Really lost."

"Dead lost," Sam said.

"But he won't," Eileen said.

"He's got a GPS system, and that's how he's going to find his X marks
the spot."

"That's right," Alan said, "How did you know?"

"Because I have one too," Eileen said.

"And I'm coming with you."

Sam shook his head and looked out through the curtains.

"GPS systems go haywire in the dunes too.  Sometimes they work great,
sometimes they don't.  Depends on sunspots, for all I know, or the UFOs
that don't exist.  All I'm saying is, you're taking a big chance."

"You can't go with me," Alan said to Eileen, as though they were the
only two in the room.

"I can't let you go with me."

"Because you might get killed?"  Eileen said.

"Because I might get killed?  Because you might kill someone?  This
isn't some sort of revenge mission.  We're going to find these people
and talk to them, and if necessary I can arrest them."

"I wasn't planning on killing anyone," Alan said stiffly.

"I just want to see who it is, that's all.  And I'll tell Sheriff
Gonzalez, and you, and whoever else needs to know--"

"I'm going with you," Eileen said again.

Alan threw his hands up in the air and his face suddenly crinkled into
a twisted sort of smile.  It was the strangest smile Eileen had ever
seen.  It looked like it hurt.

"You took your diaper off at two and a half," he said.

"And you wouldn't put a diaper on again.  You looked just like that
when you told me you wouldn't wear a diaper anymore."  He blinked
furiously.  Eileen's mouth dropped open in surprise.  Beth looked at
the two of them and shrugged her ample shoulders.

"I'd rather try and stop an avalanche with my bare hands than step
between the likes of you," she said grimly.

"And I'd prefer not to mess with real feds, if they're real feds.  Let
me get some grub put together for you.  Sam, get your topographical
maps out so these two can find the back way out of the ranch and to the
dunes.  You two get your gear on and we'll have you out of here before
my brother arrives.  He won't approve, so we'll just get you on your
way."

Sam Williams's pocket chirped and he pulled out a cell phone.

"They're still at the gate?  Good," he said.

"Keep an eye out for others, just in case, Frank.  Stay in pairs.  Reg
is going to be here soon."

"Let's go, then," Eileen said.

"We don't have much time."

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado

"We're ready, sir," Bennett said.  Scott stood behind him, still
slightly canted to one side.

"The ribs are healed?"  Mitchell asked, his voice full of concern.  He
sat at his desk without an office light.  The only light came from the
dying day, behind him, and he knew he was silhouetted in the window.

It was a fine dramatic effect and he'd used it before.

"Almost completely, sir," Scott said.  The concussion, given to him by
that traitor Leetsdale, was almost gone, but now the skinny bitch
detective had broken two ribs through his Kevlar vest.  Scott was loyal
to the bone, though, however broken they might be.  Mitchell almost
giggled at the metaphor.  Scott would take a bullet for him, he was
sure of it.  He would be secretary of defense in his new
administration.  Roger Bennett, of course, would be his chief of
staff.

"I have a question, gentlemen," Mitchell said, bringing his thoughts
back to the present.  Here was the reason for the back lighting, the
imposing outline of the Boss.  He concentrated on their faces.

"Yes, sir," they said in unison.

"Did either one of you rape Krista Lewis?  Did either one of you kill
her?"

Both men, in the light where he was in shadow, reacted with innocence
and surprise.  Mitchell breathed a sigh of relief.  He was afraid one
of them had killed her.  Killed her without permission, without orders
from him.  Killing without orders was unacceptable and dangerous.

When Krista Lewis had walked over a dune and into their encampment, no
one had been more surprised than Mitchell.  She was a tall girl with
enough Swede in her to give her the vanilla blond hair and the big
boned look of someone who could walk up and down mountains all day.

She was investigating an outbreak of E. coli-related illness among a
picnicking church group at Medano Creek.  The Centers for Disease
Control investigators finally pinned the outbreak to the unpasteurized
Juice that was served at the picnic, but by that time Krista Lewis,
working with the CDC, had discovered elevated levels of E. coli at the
point where the waters of the creek rose out of the sand.  Mitchell's
group hadn't brought in latrines and they'd used the encampment for two
years.  Enough human waste had soaked into the sand to reach the ground
water and create a trace of E. coli in Medano creek.  Busted by their
own shit, imagine that.

He'd known something like this could happen, of course.  The Great Sand
Dunes were the only location in the world for his experiments and they
were public property.  He couldn't arrange to have any part of them
restricted.  The edge of the dunes, where the roads and visitor's
center were located, was crowded with tourists from June until
September.

Even the center of the dunes, his required location, saw an occasional
hardy hiker or two.  On top of the legal restrictions and the tourists,
the dunes themselves were an almost impossible obstacle.  The sand got
into everything; equipment, tents, food, clothing.  The device gummed
up with sand after two or three experiments and had to be thoroughly
cleaned before it could be used again.

The solution was obvious, though more vulnerable than Mitchell wanted.
He'd finally agreed with his scientists; the experiments had to be
flown in and out.  The base of operations, Peterson Air Force Base, was
as secure as a locked vault.  But the experiments themselves had to
take place in the open, in the dunes, with nothing more than a few
soldiers to guard the perimeter.  The team knew that someone like
Krista Lewis would happen.  The irony was that she had been looking for
them, following the telltale presence of their own waste.

Krista hadn't been very impressed with his credentials and his
presence, but she'd allowed herself to be escorted away from the area
before they'd cranked up the machine.  It was legitimately top secret
and she worked for a government contractor.  She knew she had to leave
the area.

She made sure they all knew they were busted, though, top secret or
not.

Environmental pollution was a trump card in the game of government
bureaucracy and Krista knew it.  They knew it, too.  It was infuriating
to watch her stride out of sight, muscular haunches flexing her Swede
behind, knowing she would be filing reports within the week that would
require them to fly in portable latrines with their experiments. Krista
didn't have to know what their experiments were.  She obviously didn't
care what they were doing.  Her job was to keep them from polluting the
environment and she had the power to do it.

Scott stood guard that evening to make sure she didn't come back and
see the machine with the tarpaulin off.  They'd spent the night, that
night, as they sometimes did when they had more than a single event to
deliver.  Any one of the three of them could have crept away that night
and followed her tracks.  But there was no need to rape her, to kill
her, no need to threaten the whole purpose of the project.  Mitchell
was legitimately involved in a government project and by the time her
reports made it through Washington, it would all be over anyway.  There
might not be a Washington anymore.  Killing her was a mistake.  Raping
her was stupid.  There would be all the rape in the world, if they
wanted.  But after, after.  Not yet.

"Someone was very careless.  The event is tomorrow," he said coldly.

"Let's not let our appetites get the better of us, gentlemen.  I don't
really want to know which one of you did it and endangered our entire
program.

I just want to warn you.  Don't ever do anything like this again."

"Yes, sir," they both said, in unison again like the good soldiers they
were.  Then Bennett cleared his throat.  Mitchell nodded at him.

"Yes?"

"Sir, it might have been someone else entirely," Bennett suggested.

"We don't know that it was one of us.  There are other people in the
dunes.  Maybe even that Alan Baxter guy, the one that identified her
body.  He seems like the most likely killer."

"This man?"  Mitchell said, looking at Alan Baxter's picture in the
file Bennett had created for him.  This man didn't look much like a
killer.

The file also contained pictures and background sheets on Eileen Reed
and David Rosen, the infuriating Springs detectives.

"That's right, it could have been that Baxter guy," Scott said, a bit
too eagerly for Mitchell's taste.

"Perhaps," Mitchell said, and flipped the folder closed.

"It doesn't matter now.  Sit down.  We need to go over the final plans
one more time."  He reached over and turned on the desk light.  He
gestured Scott and Bennett into the room, and as they took their seats,
he spread out the first of the maps.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"What do you mean, they're gone?"  Gonzalez roared.  His face was lit
by the flashing blue and red police lights on top of his vehicle, and
to Marcia Fowler he looked seven feet tall and as wide as a house and
positively terrifying.  She glanced over at Daniel Grantham, who sat
with his arms wrapped around his chest.  Daniel hadn't wanted to come
with the sheriff.  He particularly hadn't wanted to come to the
Williams's Ranch with the sheriff.  There was that big bad blood
between Beth Williams and Lady Jane.

The two of them were in Gonzalez's office when Beth had called for
help.  Daniel was only part of the way through his idea of hunting the
killer through the fresh snow of the dunes, and already Marcia thought
they were losing the sale.  Gonzalez looked thunderous at the start of
their talk and only grew darker as Daniel continued.  The only
lightness to him was when Daniel explained the MUFON theory of a human,
rather than an alien, predator.

"Well, okay, then," he muttered.

Shortly after that the phone rang, and now Marcia watched out the truck
window as the ranch owner, who must be Sam Williams, talked to the
sheriff.  Gonzalez insisted they come with him to the Williams's Ranch.
The Expedition had enormous heaters that kept Marcia warm even though
the driver's side window was down, but she thought Gonzalez should be
cold.  He didn't look cold--he wasn't even wearing a heavy jacket, just
his police jacket with his name sewn on the front and his badge of
office on the sleeve.

Sam Williams didn't look cold, either, although both men were standing
in six inches of snow.  He was a big, rangy man, tall as Gonzalez but
half as wide.  An old baseball cap shaded his face, but Marcia could
see his mouth and chin, and they looked capable and kindly.

"Come up to the main house," Sam said.

"We'll tell you what happened.

But I'm not happy having my gate open right now, to tell the truth."

Gonzalez glanced back at the Expedition then leaned forward and spoke
urgently and softly to Sam Williams.  Williams scrubbed at his face and
adjusted his hat, then shrugged with a what-the-hell gesture.  Gonzalez
shouldered his way back into the truck and flipped his police lights
off.  Darkness fell abruptly.  It was only then that Marcia realized
how dark the night was out here, the absolute lack of any lights but
those of their truck, Sam Williams's truck, and a lone approaching pair
of headlights along the highway.

Gonzalez shifted into first gear and rolled the truck over the cattle
guard and onto Sam Williams's property.  Sam, who had stayed out of his
truck to close the gate, straightened abruptly as the approaching
headlights turned and lit him from head to boots.

"Oh shit," Gonzalez said, and was suddenly gone from the front seat.

He was so quick and silent that Marcia was left with her mouth hanging
open.  How could a man that big move that fast?

Everything happened quickly after that.  Sam Williams slammed the gate
shut and shoved the lock into place.  He stepped back from the gate,
and as Gonzalez appeared at his side, he grew a pistol from one hand
like some sort of magician's trick.

"Is that a gun?"  Marcia asked in a silly high voice, then bit her lips
closed.  Of course it was a gun.  And her own little .38 was stashed in
her backpack at Daniel's house, where it was totally useless.  She
tried to shrink down into the backseat and wondered if she could run
fast enough to hide herself in the vast blackness that surrounded them,
if things went really wrong out there.

The headlights grew dazzling.  The car pulled up and stopped at the
gate.  Marcia couldn't tell what kind of vehicle it was behind the
glare from the headlights.  Then the lights flicked down to fog lamps
and a man jumped out of the driver's side.

"Hello," the man said.

"Is this the Williams's Ranch?"

"Yes, it is," Sam Williams said, holding his pistol very casually in
his hand.  The man was mostly a shape to Marcia, a tall sort of
shape.

Another man climbed out of the other side and Gonzalez and Williams
sharpened their stances minutely, like runners coming up to point
before the starter's pistol sets them off.

"Oh, man, I hope you have a bathroom we can use," the other man said.

"I gotta whiz like you would not believe."

"I'm Dave Rosen with the Colorado Springs Special Investigations
Bureau," the driver shape said.

"And this is Joe Tanner.  Are you Sheriff Gonzalez?  Did you talk to
Captain Harben?"

Sam Williams's shoulders dropped in relief and his pistol disappeared
as magically as it had arrived.

"Eileen thought you might come after her," he said.

"And Alan told us all about you two.  You're her partner, right?  And
you're the computer guy?  Her boyfriend?"

"I'm the boyfriend, who has to go something awful," the Joe shape
said.

"Are we all guys here?  Can I just use your fence post?"

"Better water your truck wheel, my fence is electrified," Sam said with
amusement.

"Just a tickle, but it would give you a surprise in the wrong place."

"I'd like to see some identification before we open the gate," Gonzalez
said stolidly.

"I'm more suspicious thinking than Sam is."

"Sure," Rosen said.  He stepped toward the gate and his shape resolved
itself into a tall Native American with short hair and a neatly
buttoned shirt and tie.  He wore a roomy, puffy winter jacket that
looked warm.  He held out a badge, carefully not touching the gate.

"Did you have some trouble here tonight?"

"He's sharp," Daniel whispered in Marcia's ear, making her jump.

She'd forgotten he was sitting next to her, so absorbed she was in the
drama playing outside their window.

"All better," Joe Tanner announced, coming out from behind the back
corner of the truck.  He saw Rosen handing his badge to Gonzalez and
frowned, then his face cleared and he shrugged.  Marcia liked him
immediately.

He was very young and had a big, impudent smile.  His hair was bristly
and dark-colored.  He was wearing a soft blue jacket shell over a
fleecy under jacket that was a swirl of colors, both of them well
worn.

Marcia had the same arrangement of cold weather gear, a fleece jacket
with a waterproof shell that could take her from a desert night in
August to a snow slope in December.  This Joe was no stranger to the
outdoors.

He dug a dog-eared wallet from his pants and fingered through some
slips of paper before he produced a driver's license.  He offered it to
Gonzalez and accepted it back from the sheriff with a nod.

"Let me warn Beth who's coming," Sam said, holding a phone to his ear
as he worked the combination lock on the gate.

"She'll put on some coffee and we'll get some chow for everyone and
we'll get things sorted out."

"Is Eileen with Beth?"  Joe asked.  The brightness faded from his face
as Sam looked at him soberly.

"We'll talk at the main house," Gonzalez said firmly.

"I want to get the hell away from the highway," Sam said, putting away
his phone.

"So let's go, people."

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Alan Baxter stopped at the top of a dune and looked around him.  As far
as he could see there were nothing but dunes, an endless rise and fall
of them.  Even the range of mountains had disappeared, the lovely
Sangre de Christos, buried by the mountains of sand.  There was no wind
but there were no clouds, either.  The snow made the night seem colder
than it was.  The moon was thin, on the wane, which meant it was a
horned moon.  It gave enough light to see by, anyway, and he hoped the
evil that a horned moon was supposed to portend was meant for the other
guys, not for them.  The rest of the sky was packed with stars, so
thickly the Milky Way looked like a high, thin cloud.

"Are you cold?"  Eileen asked.

"Do you need to rest?"

Her voice was as cold as the snow they had slogged through for two
hours.  The wind had already blown the snow off the sand on the west
facing sides of the dunes, but the east slopes were deep with powdery
snow.  She was in fantastic shape.  She made no attempt to show him
that she could out-hike him.  They both knew she could do that. She
just wouldn't talk, that was all, and it pained him.  He had parked his
Bronco well off the little-used back road, hiding it as best he could
in a fold of hills.  A helicopter could spot it easily, but he hoped
it would not come to that.  Eileen assembled her gear and fell into an
easy stride at his side.

The road petered out to a trail, then disappeared into the sand.  From
then on, it was their GPS receivers and the stars.

"I'm not cold," Alan said.

"But I think we should set up camp now.

We're going to have to eat, and hide our tent, and that's going to take
some time.  Plus, look at our tracks."  He waved over their back trail,
and Eileen turned obediently and looked down the slope of the dune.
Their trail stretched to the horizon, as clear and obvious as a pencil
mark.

Along each lee side of the sand dunes their footprints showed in
snow;

along the other slope their prints showed as a dragging, irregular line
in the sand.

"Is there a morning wind?"  Eileen asked, after contemplating their
trail in silence.

"That's what Sam said.  He said it picks up about three in the morning
or so, and blows until five or six, unless there's a storm.  Then it
blows all day.  That should help cover our tracks."

"Best to give it more time to blow our tracks away, then," Eileen
said.

"You said you had an idea how to hide the tent?"

"Something I picked up," Alan said.  He carefully dropped one shoulder
strap and set his pack down on the sand.  Even in the cold, there was a
curious smell to the dunes, a smell like some sort of obscure spice. It
was a toasted smell, definitely, a well-baked smell, and elusive.
Eileen set her pack down and took a long drink from the water bottle
she carried at her waist.  She had pulled her shoulder-length hair back
and fastened it at her neck before they left.  She was wearing a woolen
watch cap.  Her parka was a tan color and matched her khaki pants. They
looked too light to be worn on a cold night like tonight, but she'd
assured Alan with a chilly smile that she was wearing long underwear
underneath and that she was plenty warm.  Thank you.

He unsnapped his pack and removed his tent.  The tent was a miracle.

He simply removed it from its clever little container, holding it
carefully, then tossed it into the air.  The internal ribs sprang open
and the tent came down onto the sand with a soft little thump, fully
assembled.

"Nice," Eileen said with her first real smile.

"That must have cost you a bundle."

"Worth it," Alan said.

"I always come back from fishing when it's too damn dark to see,
because I spent the last hours of the day casting to the evening
hatch.  I got tired of stumbling over equipment in the dark."

"So how do we hide this marvel?"  Eileen asked.

"A trick from Afghanistan I read about," Alan said, which was a lie
because he'd read about it in a science fiction book that was named,
suitably enough, Dune.  After he explained, Eileen nodded her head and
pitched right in, digging a hole in the smooth slope of sand of a dune
without snow.  After they'd dug a ragged indentation, they pushed the
tent into the hole.  Alan watched apprehensively as Eileen scooped
armloads of sand down the slope, spilling it over the smooth surface of
the tent.  The ribs of the tent held.  After ten minutes of cold sandy
shoveling, the tent was buried except for a person-sized opening.

"I think this is going to work," Eileen said, brushing sand from her
arms and the front of her parka.  She was smiling.  He was sure of it;
he could see the flash of her teeth in what was left of the
moonlight.

"I think so, too," Alan said.  He felt like cheering.  In the daylight,
after the breeze finished smoothing the rough marks their arms had
made, their tent would be invisible, and so would they.

"Now if we can only avoid the worms," Eileen said, and hoisted her
backpack to her shoulder.  Alan straightened, seeing the blur of her
face and the flash of her smile.

"Busted," he laughed.  She'd read Dune too.

"Let's see what Beth packed for us tonight."

What she had packed was plentiful, and it was very good.  She'd made
cold sandwiches of roast beef and turkey, loaded with mustard and
cheddar cheese.  She'd thrown in a baggie of black olives and a baggie
of green ones, along with a tube of potato chips and a container of
potato salad and some homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Eileen dug a
Thermos of coffee from her pack with a satisfied sound, her mouth full
of sandwich.  The tent was squeezed together on the inside by the
pressure of the sand, so much so there was barely enough room for their
sleeping bags and pads.  They could sit cross-legged on their bags at
the opening of the tent and share the food, which they did.

The sand was a good insulator.  After just a few minutes, their body
heat warmed the cold air and Eileen's shoulders dropped.  Alan realized
she'd been cold after all.  He didn't say anything.  Outside their tent
door the sand spilled down to a little valley and then rose again to
another dune, a tan flank that rose to the sky.  A slice of the night
stars was visible.

"At the top of the next set of dunes we should be able to see outside
to the Sangres," Eileen commented after she sipped her coffee.

"The highest peaks of sand.  Then we should work our way down into the
center.  I hope our GPS receivers work down there."

"It's worked so far," Alan said, patting his front pocket.  The GPS
had, in fact, performed flawlessly.  Eileen checked her GPS with his at
every stop and they had matched exactly.  They'd also checked with the
line of mountains they could see at the top of each dune crest.  Alan
also checked the North Star, though he wasn't very confident about his
navigation skills by starlight.  So far, though, everything seemed to
be working.

If everything went according to plan, they would be at the exact center
of the dunes tomorrow by mid-afternoon.

"I was thinking we could set up the tent just as we have it now, if no
one is at the spot when we reach it," Eileen said.

"Then when our bad guys arrive, we can just sit tight and watch them.
It might work a little bit better than trying to wade in there without
knowing exactly what to expect."

"I think that's a good idea," Alan said.  He had been thinking the same
thing, but didn't want to say so.  The meal was finished.  They shared
the cookies and the hot coffee and then it was time to settle into
their sleeping bags.  Eileen handled this as deftly as she did
everything else.  She removed her parka and khakis, revealing a fleecy
top and a set of sensible long underwear, and rolled into her sleeping
bag.  She rolled her pants neatly and stored them inside the parka. The
parka went under her head as a pillow and she was done.  Alan clambered
into his own bag with much less grace, feeling awkward and old.  He
settled his head on his jacket.  Next to him was his daughter. He still
had trouble getting his mind around the thought.  But he could hear her
breathing, the slow steady sound of it, and it was a wonderful sound. 
If he had nothing more from her, ever, he had that. He moved his head
on his jacket, seeking a comfortable position, and closed his eyes.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"We need to follow her," Joe said, his patience at the ragged edge. The
sheriff, the Gonzalez guy, he was the one who was keeping them here.

Rosen deferred to him, of course, since Gonzalez was the local law.  If
not for the big sheriff, Joe was sure he could have had them on their
way by now, following Eileen and Alan's trail, maybe catching up to
them.

He wanted to be with her, not sitting in this kitchen jawing endlessly
with the locals.

But since he had to sit here, he took another bite of coffee cake. That
Beth, she made some incredible coffee cake.  And the coffee to go with
it was just as damn good.  Joe took a swig of coffee from a big mug
that was printed Monterey Bay Aquarium, and fidgeted impatiently at the
table.

Dave Rosen sat at his left, then the big sheriff.  Next to the sheriff
was a younger, thinner version of Beth, her daughter Susan.  Susan was
merry and savage.  Joe liked her.  Next to her was a smaller guy,
black-haired and wiry and with more than his share of nose.  Frank.  If
Joe had been inclined to think little of Frank, the crossed pistol
belts would have changed his mind.  A man who would openly wear that
kind of hardware was an actor, or a flake, or a man absolutely
confident in his masculinity.

Frank didn't look like an actor or a flake.

At the head of the table was Sam Williams, tall and rangy, whitehaired,
with "salt of the earth" practically stamped on his furrowed brow.
Beth, his wife, was stirring something on the stove.  She was fiftyish
large in a comfortable way, and was very worried about Alan and Eileen
out on the dunes.  Curiously, she seemed to lose her focus
occasionally, as though she held some happy secret that would break out
now and again like a light behind a flapping curtain.

The other ranch hands, Jennifer and Mark, had left long ago for their
own cabin over the objections of Rosen.  He wanted them to sleep in the
main house, at least, but they insisted that with the dogs and their
own guns, they would be fine.  They were nice people, a matched set,
darkhaired and slender and young.

The other two people at the table were still a mystery to Joe.  Marcia
Fowler, the older woman, sat composed and still with her little hands
folded on the table.  She had neat gray hair and deep dark eyes that
were full of worry.  She was dressed for the weather in a
solid-looking pair of pants and a fleece jacket just like Joe's.

Daniel Grantham, her companion, was tall and thin.  His hair was brown
and his eyes were blue and he was hunched over his coffee like he
wasn't sure if he were going to be offered food or thrown into the cook
pot.  Something about him and Marcia seemed similar, as though they
were related somehow.  They didn't look alike, but there was something
there Joe couldn't put his finger on.

"I don't want to haul two sets of lost hikers out, or three," Gonzalez
repeated, doing his own glaring, most of it at Joe.  Some of it he
shared with Daniel and Marcia, some of it was aimed at Beth, who
evidently shouldn't have let Eileen and Alan head into the dunes,
according to Gonzalez.  Joe agreed heartily.

"Let's go in together," Rosen suggested.

"Just you and me."

This set up an immediate chorus of protest around the table, which
Gonzalez squelched by raising an enormous meaty paw.

"I can't go," he said reluctantly.

"I'm supposed to have the FBI in here sometime tomorrow, and I have the
valley to take care of.  I have two drunks in jail tonight already.  I
can't go running off into the dunes."

"I think we need to look at Joe's simulation," Marcia said.  She had
not spoken much so far.  Her voice was warm and clear.  It was the
voice of a lifelong teacher and carried a little whip pop of authority.
Everyone immediately turned to her, even Beth.

"I think Joe's simulation might be the key."

"The key to what?"  Susan asked.

"To the murders, of course," Marcia said, and looked around the table
with her dark, intelligent gaze.

"There's a pattern.  I can almost see it."

"Yes!"  Joe said.  His laptop was sitting by his chair like a faithful
pet.

He reached down a hand and patted it.

"The day after tomorrow if they set off the New Madrid, we could be
talking about--" "Millions of people," Gonzalez interrupted.

"I know."  He looked a little dazed, like he had the first time Joe had
explained about his simulation.

"I still don't get it."

"Let's look at this logically," said Marcia in her clear, carrying
voice.

"First, we have to decide if we think these earthquake people are going
to set off the New Madrid tomorrow.  If so, that's our first priority.
We have to stop them, either because they don't know what they're
doing, or ..."

"Or because they do," Sam Williams said heavily.

"Yes," Marcia said.  Joe found himself wishing she'd been at their
impromptu information-gathering session the other night--was it last
night?  Yes, only last night.  Twenty-four hours ago the snow had been
howling outside his house and Eileen had been sleeping in his bed.  No
sense wishing things were different now.

"If they think their earthquake is going to help prevent a large-scale
disaster, then we have to convince them otherwise."

"If they know they're going to create this disaster, they're going to
kill Alan and Eileen," Rosen said flatly.

"But why?"  Beth asked, her eyebrows drawn together in distress.

"Why would anyone want to do that?"

There was silence around the table.  Everyone looked at Marcia.

"I can think of a half-dozen reasons right off the top of my head," she
said dryly.

"But I don't know that any of you want to hear them."

In chorus, everyone at the table disagreed.  Marcia shrugged her
shoulders, an oddly cynical shrug.

"Okay, then.  Here's several.  A New Madrid earthquake would cut the
country in two.  Set off a couple of earthquakes in Washington, D.C.,
or just blow a couple of canisters of anthrax virus.  By the time
you've gotten the mess straightened out, you have a new capitol in
Washington State, or California, and another one in Washington, D.C.
Two countries, just the way the South wanted us to be in the Civil
War."

"A second Civil War," Rosen said thoughtfully.

"And we'd all be speaking Japanese pretty soon, or Chinese, or German,"
Daniel said.

"As soon as they could figure out how to take over.

But how about a revolution?  A newly minted America with no taxes, no
government, no bloated bureaucracy?  Just a Constitution and a new
Congress and no more of the old crap."

"Or a theocracy where homosexuals are hanged in public and attendance
at church is mandatory," Joe said.

"Just to balance out the concepts."

"It all sounds terrible," Beth said, wiping her hands slowly on a
dishrag.  She poured hot water into a cup and started rummaging around
her cabinets.

"What else can you think of?"

"How about the biggest bank robbery ever?  Fort Knox, Kentucky," Marcia
said apologetically.

"Set off a massive earthquake as a diversion.

Take a helicopter from here, kill anybody who's left there, grab all
the gold you can carry."

"Hell, just be ready to rob a few banks here or there," Sam Williams
said.

"How much currency could you get in a day, in conditions like that?" No
one answered.  Beth found a tea bag and stirred it around her cup,
making small clinking sounds with her spoon.

"We could sit here all night," Marcia said.

"I could come up with many evil reasons to kill millions of people, if
you really want.  I think we all know about evil."  She stared around
the table and Joe found himself dropping his eyes like a kid afraid to
be called upon in class.

"We have a chance to stop it.  The question is, how?"

"Since we're not evil, we can't just go in and blow everybody away,
just to be sure, right?"  Susan asked.  She sounded like she wanted to
be convinced otherwise.

Gonzalez gave her a quick fond grin.

"Not how it's done.  We have to give them a chance to show us they're
not going to set off this machine.

Hell, we don't even know what it looks like."

"It'll look like a machine," Joe said.

"In the middle of the dunes.  I think we'll be able to figure out what
it is."

"And when it starts, it's going to create a hum.  If we're close, a
loud hum.  I figure about two minutes after the hum starts, it'll be
too late," Marcia said.

"I can arrest anyone out there for the murder of Krista Lewis, on
suspicion," Gonzalez said thoughtfully.

"Maybe I should go."

"I could arrest people, as your deputy," Rosen said.

"Captain Harben wouldn't object."

"You realize that you probably will be arresting Krista Lewis's
murderer?"

Daniel Grantham said with a mirthless smile.

"And Jim Leetsdale's, too.  I doubt these people are going to be
friendly.  They're not going to allow themselves to be cuffed and
hauled away."

"And if we don't get there before they meet up with Alan and Eileen, I
wouldn't give them much chance of making it out," Beth said
worriedly.

"Who's going to make it out?"  Joe asked.

"Depends on who sees whom first.  But I still want to be there.  She
barely made it away from the last attempt."

"Let me call Paris," Gonzalez said.  Joe thought he hadn't heard
correctly, but he saw Marcia's puzzled expression.  Daniel Grantham,
however, was shaking his head.

"Oh, no," he said.

"Save us all."

"Paris?"  Rosen asked.

"You need to get out there fast.  You need Paris."

"Paris Linsley is just a guy who lives in the valley," Daniel said, and
rolled his eyes.

"Just a guy.  Right.  He's an engineer, invented some kind of pollution
sniffer device that every factory in America has to have on every
smokestack.  Now he's retired, and he invents other stuff that's mostly
crap but occasionally makes him even richer."

"And he's only twenty-nine," Susan said, with a twist to her mouth.

Joe had seen that look before on a woman's face.  Paris Linsley had
made a try for Susan and had been shot down in flames.  She was
obviously attached to Frank, nose and holsters and all.

"Why do we need this guy?"  Joe asked.  Rosen wasn't saying anything,
but his eyebrows were drawn together.

"Because he owns Babe, his own personal hummer," Gonzalez said.

"It's a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Humm-V, outfitted for the sand and
painted a color of purple that I have only seen on dead people."

"He helps with search and rescue," Susan added, with that bit-into-as
our-grape expression.

"He loves to help with search and rescue."

"I'm going to call him," Gonzalez said, heaving an enormous sigh.

"I'm going to send Detective Rosen, who will be my sworn deputy in
about a half-hour, Joe Tanner, Marcia Fowler, and Daniel Grantham.

No, Susan, you can't go."

"Why Marcia?"  Susan all but wailed.

"Why Daniel?"

"Because they might have a handle on things if they turn a direction
that we haven't discussed openly," Gonzalez said heavily.

"What the hell does that mean?"  Joe asked.

"It means aliens," Marcia said matter-of-factly, her face wreathed in a
smile that made her look about sixteen years old.

"Thank you, Sheriff.

I'm sure we'll just be along for the ride."

"I hope so," Daniel said fervently.

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Eileen couldn't sleep.  She was wire-tense.  Her shoulders ached, not
with the strain of the backpack but with the strain of lying a foot
away from her father.  He was unmoving, probably asleep, but she
couldn't see his face.  His interesting tent had an igloo-type opening
and they'd left the flap open.  Outside, the stars crowded the sky. The
sand was still and move less so Eileen knew morning was still a few
hours away.  If, in fact, the morning wind blew.  If it did not, they
would have to come up with a different plan when they reached the
center of the dunes tomorrow.

They had to be completely hidden when Jacob Mitchell's people came, if
they did come.  She hoped one of them would have a bruised chest from
her bullet.  Eileen shifted a little in her sleeping bag.  The sand was
marvelously comfortable, as good as a mattress.  She should be
sleeping.

She had to sleep.  She was certainly not going to say anything.
Certainly not.

"Do I have any brothers or sisters?"

"No," Alan said immediately, in a voice that told her that he was as
wide awake as she was, and was waiting for her to speak.

"I never married again."

"Any older brothers or sisters?"

"No," Alan said, in a surprised voice.

"We got pregnant on our honeymoon with you.  Didn't she tell you?  And
Linda--that's your mother--she had those cycles."

"Bipolar cycles," Eileen said.  Linda, she thought, through the sick
pounding in her chest.  My mother's name was Linda.

"Yeah, that's what I figure, but I couldn't get her to go to a doctor,"
Alan said.  His voice was rough.  He shifted a little in his sleeping
bag and rose on one elbow.  There was a faint gurgle of his water
bottle as he drank.

"I'm sorry.  This is hard for me."

"No kidding," Eileen said under her breath.  Alan chuckled rustily.

"Can you--tell me about your mom?  Your adoptive parents?  How did you
end up in their care?  I tried so hard to find you, and I never
could."

"My parents called every state to see if a three-year-old and her
mother had been reported missing, after Mom died.  They never found any
reports," Eileen said harshly, and louder than she intended.

"She's dead, then," Alan said, after a long silence.

"She's dead."  Eileen took a long sip from her own water bottle, easing
a throat that felt suddenly rough.

"I'm sorry," Alan said quietly.

"It's a long time ago," Eileen said with a shrug he couldn't see.

"I reported you both missing the minute I got home from my trip.

The police never found anything.  That's what they said.  And--Linda
knew where I was.  I knew she could find me, if she wanted to.  She
never did.  Now I know why."

"Maybe the police reports you filed never made it to South Dakota,"
Eileen said grudgingly.  She was in police work.  She knew how many
things slipped through the cracks every day.

There was silence again, not as tense as before.  Eileen could feel
dampness at her hairline and down the line of her back.  The tent was
warm, even though there was snow not twenty feet from the entrance.

"I never knew she was dead, you know.  I didn't know why she never
wanted support of some kind, or a divorce.  I--I missed you a lot."

"Really."

"Yeah, really," Alan said.  His voice was rougher, and Eileen heard the
gurgle as he took another sip of water.

"Your mother wasn't right when I married her, Eileen.  You know what
she was.  I didn't know, not for a long time.  When we brought you home
from the hospital you were so little and sweet.  You had beady little
eyes like some sort of wild animal baby, and it seemed like you were
always awake.  She nursed you, she would do that, but once you were
done, she would just lie back and turn away.  I had to burp you and
change you and walk with you."

"She must have been in the low part of her cycle," Eileen commented.

She had faint memories of digging in her mother's handbag and devouring
crackers wrapped in crackly cellophane, crackers that seemed to taste
like heaven, while her mother lay in a curled-up position on some motel
room bed.  She was sure there were more memories like that, if she dug
for them.  She didn't really care to dig for them.

"I know that she was, now.  Then, I was just frantic.  I had a job and
a new wife and a new baby and nothing was turning out like I thought. I
talked to my neighbors, thank the Lord for them.  Maria Escobar came
over every day while I was at work and looked after the two of you. She
would fix supper and leave it on the stove, and I paid her in cash
because she was an illegal alien, a refugee from Nicaragua.  Her
husband worked as a gardener with a big crew of mostly illegals.  I
would feed your mother and change your diaper and then I would rock
you, for hours.

We'd talk, you and I."  Alan made a ghastly little chuckling sound.

"I'd coo and say hola and hello and gut en Tag and every other hello in
every language I could think of, and you would look at me with those
bright eyes and spit up on my shoulder.  Then we'd talk some more.  I
loved my little girl.  I was sure that Linda would pull out of it.  The
birth was so hard, you know.  So hard on her."

"But things didn't get better," Eileen whispered, in a voice that felt
like something run over in the road and left to dry in the sun.

"No, they didn't.  So when I tried to have her evaluated, she thought I
was going to have her committed, or killed.  I should have waited until
the manic phase of her cycle, but I didn't.  My mistake."

Outside, the sand started to pick up in tiny swirls and drifts.  There
was a sighing sound.  The toasted, burned smell of the dunes drifted
into the tent.

"I think we'd better close the flap," Eileen said.  She let Alan reach
forward and fix the tent flap in place.  Spatters of sand immediately
began to strike against the entrance, and there was a mournful hooting
sound as the wind began to pick up.  The tent was now pitch dark
inside, and a little stuffy.  Eileen could smell some sort of soap
smell from Alan, and a whiff of old-man sweat.  The smell of her
father.  It didn't smell familiar to her, and for a moment she was
swamped with a feeling of desolation.

What was she doing here in the sand and the dark with this stranger?

"So I thought I'd got over hating her," Alan said hoarsely.

"Can you tell me how she died, just to put my mind at rest?  I know I
have no claim on you, on your story.  But I want to know what happened,
where you went, how she died.  I want to know why I couldn't--" he
stopped.

"Couldn't what?"  Eileen asked cruelly.  She knew he was overcome with
some strong emotion, but she didn't care.  He owed her that much.

"Couldn't see you off to prom," he said, and laughed the laugh of a man
who was trying very hard not to weep.

"Oh," Eileen said, feeling very strange, blinking in the stuffy
darkness.

Her prom had been like a check mark in a series of things to do to
graduate.  Finish finals, get her graduation robe, go to prom.  Owen
Sutter was still trying to choose her instead of Molly although it was
obvious to both girls that Molly belonged with Owen.  So he took both
of them, because there were always more senior girls than boys, and
they'd smirked for the prom photographer and pretended they were a
sophisticated, decadent threesome.  Her mom and dad had taken lots of
pictures of her in her pale green prom dress, and she supposed it was a
fun night.

"I would like to know about your mother," Alan said simply.  So Eileen
told him.  She told him about the little dented sedan and the failed
run at the bridge and John Reed, her angel brother, sent to die so that
she would live.

The near-total darkness made it easier for her to tell her story.  The
unseen weight of the sand pressing on the tent and the warmth of their
sleeping bags, pressed shoulder to shoulder, made her feel curiously
isolated and intimate at the same time.  They lay curled close to each
other like twins in a womb, sharing nothing but their warmth and their
voices.

And this was no stranger, assessing her flaws.  This was her father,
the only other person in the world who knew what it was like to live
with the monster who had inhabited Linda Doran.

When she was done, there was silence.  The sand scratched at the tent
entrance like tiny hands, and the wind hooted against the flap.

"I'm so sorry," Alan said finally, in a voice so low she could barely
hear him.

"I couldn't save you from that.  I'm your father, and I couldn't save
you."

"I survived," Eileen said, shrugging in the darkness.

"I was lucky, what happened to me.  What--what did you do?"

"I survived, too," Alan said grimly.

"After the first six months I gave up sales.  I couldn't sell anything
anymore.  I used to be such a whiz, and it all turned bad.  I quit
before I got fired.  Then I waited tables while I tried to decide what
to do.  I finally went back to school and got my master's degree in
English literature.  I know that sounds funny, but I didn't know what
else to do.  I was just drifting.  Then I landed a job in Wyoming, at
the community college in Cheyenne.  That was pretty much it for me.  I
taught.  I learned how to fly-fish.  I learned how to love life
again."

"But you never married," Eileen said.

"No, I didn't.  I had a lot of girlfriends, if you want to know," Alan
said, with a ghost of his old humor in his voice.

"But marriage was poisoned for me, forever.  I lost my wife.  I lost my
baby daughter.  I wouldn't take that kind of risk again."

"Marriage is risky," Eileen whispered with an effort.  She realized she
was getting sleepy, which was insane.  She should be asking him the
careful questions that would let her know if Krista Lewis, recently
murdered, was one of his girlfriends that he wouldn't risk marrying--if
Krista Lewis had entered these dunes with him last week--and never come
out.  But it all seemed far away and silly, to imagine this man a
murderer.  He couldn't be.

"What was that?"  Alan asked, from a long way away.

"I trusted Joe," Eileen said after an eternity.  She thought she was
explaining everything about Joe, how he was a suspect in her first big
military case and how she couldn't believe in her heart that he was a
murderer.  How she'd been right, which was very good because if she'd
been wrong he could have killed her and would have killed her.  But she
wasn't saying anything, she realized, surfacing for a last time.  She
was drifting down again, and across the now enormous floor of the tent
she heard the measured, slow breaths of her father, asleep.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"Thanks for sharing your room with me," Marcia said to Susan, trying to
spot the best place on the floor for her mat and sleeping bag.  The

room was small, like most country bedrooms, small because most of the
living was done outside the room and the space was truly meant just for
sleeping.  Susan had a large old-fashioned bed with a handsome oak
headboard.  Metal scrollwork curved along the top, flowers in iron.
Very appropriate.  She may have had an adolescent bedroom at one time,
and a little girl's before that, but there was nothing left of that
now.  She had a big handsome quilt and two framed prints hanging over
an oak dresser, a bedside table piled high with magazines, and a small
carved chair.  That was it.  There wasn't much room on the floor.

"Not a problem.  Don't look for a spot on the floor, there isn't one.

You're about as big as a wet cat, so if you don't mind sharing a
mattress, I don't," Susan said.  She scratched her neck and yawned
hugely and set her shotgun by the small nightstand.

"I changed the sheets this past Monday and if you've noticed " "I
noticed," Marcia said with a smile.  Susan was in love with Frank,
clear as a bell.  So Susan wasn't offering to share her body as well as
her bed.  That was sweet, actually.  Susan was a beautiful young woman
and Marcia was older, so it should have been Marcia making the pass,
not Susan, if she were a lesbian.  Which meant "I have an eye for Alan
Baxter, but don't you dare tell anyone," Marcia said firmly, and was
powerless to control the blush.  It was supposed to be a reassuring
lie, but there was far too much truth in it.  Susan grinned, and Marcia
smiled back.  The forms had been satisfied.  They could now share a bed
tranquilly.  If their feet touched or someone shifted a warm buttock
against the other one, there wouldn't be a sudden stillness from the
other, and a quiet shifting away.

"You'll be getting an early start tomorrow," Susan said, and frowned.

"I wish I were going.  I'm a good shot."

"I wish you were going, too," Marcia said.

"The more the better, I think.  But the sheriff is just trying to
protect you.  And your parents are too."

"They just found out tonight about me and Frank," Susan confessed,
stripping off her shirt.  Marcia sat down on the bed and started
stripping off her socks.  She listened with real interest, but there
was a part of her that was far away, in the wind and sand, waiting for
the lights and the hum.  Searching for whatever walked the dunes now,
human or otherwise, carrying humming death.

Joe sat in his sleeping bag, stripped down to his boxer shorts, and
clicked on another girlie picture.  Yolanda.  He found the earthquake,
a 4.5 in Kobe, Japan, and sighed as the squiggles of the earthquake
rose and died on his computer screen.  There had to be something he was
missing.  Something that they all had missed.

"Would you put that thing away?"  Rosen said.  He was a few feet away,
his big feet in Joe's old sleeping bag crowding Joe's feet.  Daniel
Grantham muttered support under his breath, rolled up in a bag that had
to be Sam Williams's own.  They were jammed in the living room like
boys at a slumber party.  Joe could tell the other men didn't like it
any more than he did.  They were all strangers to one another.  There
was something else, too: the flavor of impending battle.  It made them
nervous with one another.

"I usually don't sleep much at night," Joe said.

"I'm a computer geek, remember?"

"We all need to sleep tonight," Rosen said.

"That Paris guy is going to be here at six o'clock."

"For breakfast," Daniel said.

"If Beth weren't fixing him breakfast, he wouldn't be here before
noon."

"Great," Joe said, his eyes on his screen, finding earthquake "Doreen"
in Costa Rica.

"We're depending on some weirdo millionaire to get us into the dunes
before Mitchell turns Kansas City into soup."

"He's reliable, I'll say that much," Daniel said.  He rose up on an
elbow and looked over at Joe.

"What do you mean, soup?"

"Kansas City is built on what used to be mud flats from the
Mississippi," Joe said, watching Doreen's earthquake again.

"When an earthquake of magnitude six hits--and remember, the New Madrid
is supposed to be an eight--the vibration turns the ground into a thick
soup.  Essentially, it liquefies.  Down go houses, people, cars,
skyscrapers.  Then when the shaking stops, the ground hardens.  A
really awful way to die, I think.

Like being buried in Portland cement.  That's just Kansas City."

"Oh," Daniel said.  Joe glanced over at him and he was blinking, eyes
gazing into the distance, his mouth working soundlessly.  He didn't
look like a happy man.  That was okay with Joe.  He wasn't all that
happy, either.

"So I'm learning all about earthquakes," Joe continued.

"You know about how all the continents are really just big plates
floating on the liquid core of the earth.  I kind of knew that before,
but I really understand it now.  There are lots of fractures in these
plates and when they shift against each other, we humans get all shook
up.  Hey, do you know why Mount Everest is so tall?"

"Why?"  Rosen asked, in a voice that meant he knew Joe would tell them
anyway.

"Because India is an island that crashed into Asia.  India is still
crashing, by the way, shoving its nose under the big Asia plate and
lifting up parts of Asia.  That's the Himalayas.  So Mount Everest is
the result of a big continental car crash that's still happening--we
just can't see it.

Pretty cool, huh?"

"This is not something I think humans should mess with," Daniel said,
his brow furrowed even more.

"Who knows what they could set off by accident or ignorance?  Did they
cause the one we just had?"

"Yeah, they sure did," Joe said.

"And that was just a 3.5, a baby one.  I can't imagine what an eight
pointer would feel like."

"Maybe the Tesla machine can't produce an eight pointer," Daniel
suggested.

"I think it can," Joe said.

"I've been reading about Nikola Tesla.  Alan thought that maybe the
government had the plans to the real Tesla earthquake machine.  Turns
out when Tesla died, his hotel room in New York was sealed by the FBI.
Everything within it was confiscated by the government."

"No one protested?"  Daniel asked.

"Tesla never married.  He didn't have any family to protest for him.

He had a family of doves, one white dove in particular that he loved
dearly and kept in his room when he was older.  But no family.  There's
something else about him, too," Joe said.  He shut down his program and
closed his laptop.  He looked over at Rosen, who was propped up in his
sleeping bag watching him.  Daniel, too, was looking at him.

"He was asked to join the Manhattan Project.  He refused.  Every other
prominent scientist said yes, but Tesla said no.  He didn't think
wholesale slaughter was a good weapon design.  He designed something he
called a death ray, that would shoot down missiles.  It, too,
disappeared into the FBI's hands."

"He wouldn't approve of what they're doing," Rosen said unexpectedly.

"That's right," Joe said.

"Exactly right.  He didn't approve of murder, and that's what they're
doing if they set off earthquakes without warning people.  Secrecy is
necessary for some things, but not for that.  And killing Krista and
Jim Leetsdale only proves that they don't care who they hurt."

"We have to stop them," Daniel said.

"We'll stop them," Rosen said.

"So shut the hell up, Joe.  I need sleep."

"Aye aye, Captain Bligh," Joe said sarcastically.  But he set his
laptop aside.  Whatever mystery remained would be solved on the dunes,
not in his computer.  He patted his Frankenputer affectionately.  It
wasn't her fault.  He lay down in his sleeping bag.  He tried very hard
not to think of Eileen, somewhere out there in the sand and the snow
and the darkness.

She was with Alan Baxter, who Joe was sure would die to defend her.  He
was not a murderer, could not be.  Joe was sure of it.  He had to be
sure of it, or he would not sleep an instant tonight.  Holding that
thought tightly, Joe closed his eyes and was asleep.

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"Good morning," Eileen said.  Alan opened his eyes with a start.  He
saw that Eileen had unfastened the flap.  She was staring out the small
hole she had made, her face lit by strong morning sunshine.  The
fiercest light, the most unkind light.  Her skin was fresh and clear
and beautiful, as pretty as a child's.  Her eyes were sparkling and she
was smiling.

"You should look outside.  We're completely hidden.  Nobody could see
us from a foot away, I swear.  They'd have to step on us.  Take a
look."

Alan rolled over cautiously, trying not to appear too stiff and
elderly.

He edged on his elbows to the entrance and looked out.  The dunes were
brilliantly tan in the dawn light.  Their tracks were gone.  The sand
lay around them perfect and smooth.  Alan remembered how their efforts
to bury the tent had stirred the sand up and down the slope.  He
couldn't see far to either side, but what he could see was reassuring.
Their idea for a hiding place was a good one.  The cold morning air
tasted wonderful, even with the smell of the dunes in his nose.

"We need to get to our spot as soon as possible today," Eileen said.

She had already turned away from the entrance and was getting into her
clothes.  Her movements were as small and tidy as a cat's, with the
same economical grace.  She was already dressed before Alan started. As
he dressed, she braided her shoulder-length hair, taking pieces from
the top of her head and braiding down the back in a complicated sort of
weave.

She finished it off with a small elastic band and snapped it on with a
mouth of distaste.

"I hate dirty hair," she said.

"If I braid it, I can keep from getting too grossed out."

"I hate dirty teeth," Alan said.

"You will let me brush before we leave, won't you?"  He grinned at her,
and she smiled back.  For a second her smile was natural, then it
turned inward and became something forced.

She turned away and rummaged in her bag.

"Let's eat on the dunes," she said.

"I want to stretch my legs."

When Alan scrambled from the tent entrance, he immediately turned and
looked at the slope.  He couldn't have hoped for better camouflage.

The tent was completely invisible.  The sand had smoothed over the
marks they had made digging into the slope, and now the only thing
visible was the slit of the tent opening.  Eileen followed him and
looked carefully in all directions before she, too, examined their
hiding place.

"Very nice," she said.  Her breath misted in the cold morning air.  It
was already degrees warmer than yesterday morning.  By noon, the dunes
were going to be as hot and dry as though the snow had never happened.
Alan stretched and rotated his head on his neck, then leaned forward
and did a few runners' stretches to limber up his muscles.

"I have a surprise for you," Eileen said.  Alan turned to her and saw a
Thermos in her hand.  She'd taken it from her pack.  It wasn't the same
Thermos as the one they'd shared the night before.

"Is that?"  Alan asked.

"Coffee," Eileen said with a grin.

"Beth packed us two bottles."

"Oh, my," Alan sighed happily.  He smoothed a place for his rump in
front of their tent entrance.

"Let's pack up the tent later."

Their coffee and breakfast done, Alan scrambled over the nearest dune
and Eileen headed in the other direction.  He dug a deep hole and did
everything he needed in the hole, toothbrush foam and all, then covered
it well and headed back with a light step.  Eileen was already at the
tent, carefully pulling sand away from the sides.  He shook the tent
out and stored it in the little tent bag, and they were done.  He
looked around and nodded.  There were few tracks.  Eileen brushed the
last of the sand from her arms and took a little bottle from her
pocket.

"Sunscreen?"  she offered.

"It's going to be a hot day."  She'd changed into shorts while she was
over her dune, Alan noticed.  The clothes must have been loaned from
Susan Williams.  He took the little bottle and spread some goo on his
nose and cheekbones and arms, more to make her happy than anything
else.  The sun, lighting the sky for some time now, suddenly crested a
dune.  The light was blinding.  They both turned their backs and stood
together as they consulted their GPS receivers.

"This way," Alan said, and Eileen nodded.  They walked together.

Eileen did not speak, but Alan felt her silence was different from the
night before.  He might have a chance with her, after all.

The Williams's Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Paris Linsley was everything Joe had been led to expect.  Maybe even a
bit more.  He was tall and young and had a full head of curly, dark
blond hair.  He had a big smile full of white teeth.  He wore an
elegant white shirt and pleated khaki pants as though he were going to
ride a camel into the dunes and open a mummy's tomb.  Joe could
understand immediately why Susan Williams disliked him, why Daniel
Grantham rolled his eyes at the thought of spending time with him.  He
was just altogether too much.

His Humm-V, named Babe, was painted an incredibly vivid shade of
purple.  Joe had never been close to a Humm-V and was faintly
astonished at the size and height of the thing.  Not to mention the
paint job.

There were faint gold flakes in the purple paint, which were going to
make it sparkle in the sun when the sun climbed over the mountains to
the east.

Paris, having jumped from Babe and posed nonchalantly against the wheel
to give everyone a chance to admire his car and his attire, stood to a
kind of attention as Beth came out of the house, wiping her hands on
her apron.  Everyone else in the strange group had left the breakfast
table when Paris rang the bell at the gate.  Joe thought of them as
earthquake hunters and had heard Rosen mutter something about a motley
crew as he shaved in the small guest bathroom.  Joe and Daniel and
Rosen had shuffled in and out of the bathroom and tried to keep their
elbows out of each other's ribs, with limited success.

"Mrs.  Williams!"  Paris exclaimed.

"Tell me you have sweet rolls!"

"I have sweet rolls," she smiled.

"Come on in, Paris."

Joe expected Paris to have perfect highbrow pronunciation, given the
color of the car and the elegant clothing.  Paris, instead, had a voice
that belonged with a mud-spattered pickup and a varmint rifle, a voice
that was as deep and country as a twanging guitar.

"He's a nut," Daniel said softly to Joe, startling him badly, as they
followed Beth back into the kitchen.

"Out there.  He does his own thing.  I think his IQ is off the
chart."

"You read minds, or what?"  Joe said, and noticed Marcia's grin as she
held the door for them.

"Not usually," Daniel replied.

"I could just tell what you were thinking.

Once you get past Paris being Paris you'll find he's a good guy.  He's
a lot deeper than he looks."

Paris, his mouth stuffed full of sweet roll and a cup of coffee in his
free hand, looked undignified and un brilliant

"Okay, fill me in," he said between swallows, waving at everyone and no
one.

"We'll get to the details on the way," Rosen said.  The star that
Gonzalez had given him the night before was pinned undramatically to
his shirt front.

"In brief, we have two people in the dunes and, potentially, a serial
murderer out there as well."

"At dawn tomorrow, where X marks the spot," Marcia murmured, in a voice
that Joe thought was too low for anyone but him to hear.  Paris,
however, gave Marcia a still look over a mouth ringed with icing
flakes.

His eyes brightened.

"Sounds like a job for Paris," he said, wiping his mouth and flashing
his teeth in a movie-star grin.  Rosen looked at him steadily and said
nothing.  Paris grinned even wider and pointed at Rosen's star.

"But of course you're in charge, am I correct?"

"Only if I need to be," Rosen said.  As Paris looked at Rosen, Joe
saw

something interesting.  Paris had dark hazel eyes, and for a moment
they went queerly light, as though blinds were being pulled up.  For a
moment, something wise and powerful looked out through Paris's eyes,
something that was very much "out there" and "off the chart."  Then the
blinds lowered and the eyes darkened and Paris took a big swig of
Beth's good coffee and grinned.

"You're the boss, Boss," he said.

"Babe and I are at your service."

Daniel blinked and Beth looked visibly startled.

"Can anybody else drive your hummer but you?"  Joe asked.

"Sure, she's easy to drive," Paris said.

"I'd better handle it when we get to the dunes, though.  Why?"

"Because I want to show you my computer simulation," Joe said.

"While we tell you all the rest of this story."

Joe was half-afraid Paris would use his X-ray vision, or whatever it
was, when Paris turned his gaze to him.  But his eyes remained muddy
and friendly.  Joe wanted to show Paris the New Madrid.  Maybe Paris
would pull up the blinds and figure out why Jacob Mitchell and his
friendly gang were going to kill millions of people.  Or whatever it
was they were going to do.

"I'll drive Babe," Daniel offered.

"Okay," Paris said mildly.

"Let's go, then, people," Rosen said.

"We have less than twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-four hours?"  Paris asked.

"Twenty-four hours before the New Madrid goes off, set off from here,
and we'll explain it all to you on the way," Marcia said briskly.

"Anyone have to pee?  No?  I'll ride with Paris and Joe in the back, if
you and Rosen want to ride in the front, Daniel."

As Babe rumbled off down the ranch road, Joe forgot to look back.

He was too busy showing Paris his Frankenputer, showing off, really,
too busy trying to fill Paris in on the details of their wild story and
make it believable.  When he thought to look back, to wave at Beth
Williams who had taken him in and fed him and given him shelter and
blessed his journey, she was out of sight.  He felt a chill, looking
out the back window, as Paris delightedly punched buttons on his
simulation and watched the earthquakes wiggle.  He hadn't waved
goodbye.  Somehow it seemed vitally important that he had forgotten
that, as though he hadn't waved goodbye at the last bit of light and
love and warmth he was going to have for a long time.

The dunes lay ahead of them, a different kind of lightness.  Hard
light, like going into a different sun.  As Babe rolled down the
highway, he started to smell the burnt spice of the dunes in his
nose.

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

Eileen, participant in many stakeouts, was patient.  Alan Baxter,
catcher of fish with fake flies, was also patient.  What they were not
was patient with each other.  Eileen could not bear to touch him with
her shoulder or leg, but the constriction of the tent opening meant
that they had to brush up against each other.  They were both sweaty
and sandy from their efforts to bury the tent and erase their tracks.
Since they didn't know how long it took to set up the Tesla machine and
make it go, they were both in a hurry to get well hidden as soon as
possible.

Now the sun stood high and move less and the heat shimmered on the
sand.  In the tent it was stuffy but cool.  The latitude 37.47.50 and
longitude 105.33.20 was at the bottom of a long spill of sand below
them and to their left.  A rise of dune in front of them nearly cut off
their view of the spot but would keep their tent opening from being
seen.  Eileen had checked this out herself by standing in the exact
crosshairs of their destination and looking at the spot where they'd
finished burying the tent.

She could see the opening but it looked like a dune shadow.  At least
that's what she hoped.

Standing with her GPS receiver displaying the exact center of the dunes
gave her a funny feeling.  Here was where the Colorado earthquake had
originated, or so she believed.  Here was where the Burbank earthquake
in California had begun, the earthquake that had toppled a cement wall
on Lori Leetsdale and started a chain of events that led inexorably to
this moment in time, this crossing of paths.  Tomorrow morning, at
dawn, there would be a kind of showdown, a battle between the people
who believed they should interfere and people like herself, who
believed they should not interfere.  That was the best way she could
figure it.  While they walked last night in the ghostly white darkness
of the sand, she thought about what she was doing here, what she meant
to do.

Ultimately, she thought that Jacob Mitchell and his people had crossed
a line when they started setting off earthquakes.  Once the line was
crossed, Krista Lewis's death was only an addition, not the start, of
their evil.  Jacob Mitchell not her father, not Alan Baxter, her heart
whispered believed that he was somehow above other people, better than
they were.  He believed he could alter people's lives without their
permission because he was something more than they were.  Murderers
like Teddy Shaw were the same way.

Then wasn't she, too, an alterer of destinies?  She had certainly
altered Teddy Shaw's destiny, permanently.  But she was an officer of
the law, a person sworn to keep the peace.  When she shot Teddy Shaw,
she was defending her life, not executing him.  If he'd thrown his gun
down, she would have taken him alive.  She didn't believe in her own
superiority.

She believed, simply and ultimately, that people knew what was best for
themselves.  Even if Mitchell was setting off small quakes in order to
stop a big one, creating bleeder earthquakes was only justified in the
light, with everyone knowing about it and making their own decisions
about what they were going to do.  Creating chaos without warning was
evil.

The end did not justify the means.

Suddenly Eileen realized that Alan was waving at her, gesturing for her
to come to the tent.  She was standing stock-still in the heat of the
late afternoon with her feet on the invisible X, and at any moment a
helicopter or a vehicle could come over the horizon.  She scrambled up
the dune toward the tent opening, brushing out her tracks clumsily as
she went, and arrived at the buried tent sweating and panting, her
heart pounding.

Now, an hour later, her sweat had dried sticky and sandy and she was
bored and uncomfortable.  No helicopters had come swooping over the
dunes.  Nothing moved in the late day's glare, not even insects.  She
sat far too close to this man, her father, and didn't know what to say
to him.

"Water?"  he said.

"No thanks, I have my own," she replied stiffly.

They waited.

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Babe took the first hill of dunes without enthusiasm.  She waddled, she
sputtered sand, she complained.

"What a pig," Joe said.

"You couldn't get up the first ridge in anything else," Daniel said
loudly.  Babe's engine was amazingly quiet for a girl her size but
Paris had her in a low roar as he side-walked up the second slope.
Paris said nothing, eyes intent on the sand, his hands dancing over the
wheel and gearshift.

"An ATV could make it," Joe said.  He'd folded up his modified laptop a
long time ago and stored it in a laundry bag he'd brought along for it.
An ordinary laptop case wouldn't hold the whole contraption, and he
didn't want sand to get inside Frankenputer's guts.  Now he was well
braced in the rocking vehicle and ready to bitch at somebody,
anybody.

The whole approach to the dunes had taken far too long.  The bright
glare of the sand seemed to be just over the next hill, but every time
Babe crested a rolling hill there was another beyond it, and the dunes
no closer.  Then when they'd finally gotten onto the sand, they'd
roared across the low sandy creek at less than a walking pace, Paris
intent and silent behind the wheel that he'd taken from Daniel before
they'd started into the sand.

The day was blazing toward noon and they hadn't even gotten out of
sight of the creek and the edge of the dunes.  Rosen wore Old Spice
deodorant and his sweaty body slammed into Joe's shoulder every time
Babe rocked on the sand, which was every few seconds.  Joe had never
liked Old Spice, and now he hated it with a passion.  It caught in his
nose and throat, and the queer smell of the dunes seemed to sneak in
around it and choke him further.

More, there was no sign of Eileen and Alan Baxter.  No sign of
earthquake people.  Joe had never met Jacob Mitchell, so his mental
image of the earthquake people was based on his imagination.  He
thought of them as trolls in lab coats, men with twisted bodies and
hairy eyebrows and long hands like tentacles.  He knew they wouldn't
look like that on the outside, but then again murderers never did. He'd
worked with a murderer for months, a murderer who killed his best
friend, and he'd never known.  The murderer, a fellow war gamer, looked
nice to the last, when he'd tried to kill Joe with a sharpened
screwdriver.  He hadn't looked like a hairy troll on the outside,
either.

"An ATV could make the first stretch," Daniel corrected him.  Marcia,
sitting on the other side, looked with bright curiosity out the
window.

She didn't seem bothered by anything, and she didn't appear to need to
sweat.  Joe hated her, too.

"The dunes are compressed up against the mountains.  They're higher
than any dunes you've ever seen.  They didn't exist here ten thousand
years ago, did you know that?  No one knows why they appeared.  Ute
Indians describe in their verbal history about arriving one season in
the valley and there the beast was, lying against the slope of
mountains like something that had moved in and found that it liked
it."

"I read sand is pushed across the valley floor by winds from the west,
piling up against the Sangre de Christos in the east," Marcia
shouted.

"Is that why they're so high?"

"I guess so," Daniel said.

"Anyway, nobody's ever taken a vehicle in here except Paris, and that
was to rescue two hikers four years ago."

"Did he find them?"  Marcia asked.

"Yes," Paris said abruptly, his profile as intent as something carved
from stone.

"Dead.  Not murdered.  They died of hypothermia and dehydration."

"How could you die in such a small space?"  Joe asked.

"I can see the mountains from here.  Just walk towards the mountains
for a day or two and you're out.  The Sangres?"

"Look at them now," Daniel said.

"We'll lose them as soon as we go deeper into the dunes.  You can only
see the mountains at the highest peaks, and by the time you get to
another peak, you've been wandering in circles.  The dunes have a huge
amount of iron in the sand, so your compass is going to go nuts."

"The GPS is working fine," Marcia said, examining the object in her
hands.

"Let's hope it keeps working fine," Daniel said.

"We lost some hikers who had a GPS receiver.  Who knows what happened?
Sand in the works, something else?"  He glanced over at Marcia, who
gave a small nod.  That was right, Joe thought.  These two were UFO
nuts.  They probably thought the hikers had been abducted and murdered
by their little gray men.  He wanted to snarl in exasperation.  Rosen
slammed into his shoulder again.  Old Spice reeking from his armpits,
his face quiet and calm.

"When are we going to reach the center?"  Rosen asked, just as Paris
reached the top of the dune crest.

"Sometime tonight, after dark," Paris said.

"If we don't hit a ridge too high to go over.  We don't have much of a
moon so we can't travel in the dark.  I could flip Babe and we'd be in
real trouble."

"Why, because we'd have to walk out?"  Joe asked pleasantly.  Rosen
glanced at him, and Joe realized his voice perhaps wasn't that pleasant
after all.

"Because we might not get out," Paris said, idling Babe and
contemplating the dunes in front of him.  To Joe they looked like ocean
waves frozen as though in a picture, ocean waves in a storm.  For a
moment he could imagine them moving toward him, and he had to blink
hard.  It made him dizzy and slightly sick.

"We'd be buried under Babe, and she'd sink in this stuff like a stone
in mud.  Rolling over wouldn't do any of us any good."  Paris shut up
again and rolled Babe down the dune with care, his fingers like a
surgeon's on the wheel and gearshift.  Joe saw Rosen nod, and he
remembered how Sam Williams had shrugged and agreed with Gonzalez that
the only person to call was Paris Linsley.

Now he knew why.  But it didn't help his mood or his shoulder when
Rosen came slamming against him for the thousandth time.  And there
were no tracks of Eileen and Alan Baxter, no tracks at all.  They
hadn't even found the Bronco, though they'd taken the same route Sam
Williams mapped out for Alan and Eileen.

Joe blinked again, trying to keep the waves of sand still like he knew
they had to be, looking for a long track in the sand that would mean
Alan Baxter was in the dunes with his daughter, the woman Joe Tanner
loved and wanted to make his wife.  Alan couldn't be a murderer.  He
wouldn't be.  Joe squeezed his eyes shut on the image of Alan Baxter
driving down some New Mexico highway, humming a tune, his hands freshly
washed of blood, laughing at the idiots who were searching the dunes
for him.

He didn't realize he'd made some sound until Rosen nudged him.  He
opened his eyes and Rosen was offering him a water bottle.  Joe blinked
at Rosen and saw somewhere in those black eyes the same fear, the same
maddened impatience.

"Keep hydrated," Rosen said.

"We need to be ready."

"Thanks,* Joe said.  Rosen's words were steadying.  They were also
battle words, and that was good too.  Joe was ready.  He was ready.

He braced himself against the door frame, watching Paris nurse the
wheel and coax Babe up another dune, and he drank deeply.

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

"I figured out why they're going to set it off tomorrow," Eileen said.
She felt better as the day started to wind down towards night.  The
long horrid afternoon was behind them.  She'd washed with a dampened
washcloth, swabbing at her grimy face and hands and using just a little
bit of water on the cloth because they had to conserve what they had
left.

They had to walk out, too, after this was all over, and they'd need
water for that.

"Why?"  Alan asked.  He, too, had washed his face and hands as they
prepared to eat their meager supper.  He looked more cheerful as
well.

Waiting was hard, even if you were good at it.

"Because it's Saturday morning," Eileen said.

"Saturday morning when everyone is at home in their beds.  Saturday at
five o'clock here is six o'clock, seven o'clock in the Midwest.  The
big office buildings will be empty, the highway bridges will be
deserted, and the bars will be closed.  Saturday morning is the best
time for an earthquake.  I'll bet the least loss of life in earthquakes
is on Saturday mornings."

"That's why the Colorado earthquake was so early," Alan said.

"At least we know they don't want to kill as many people as they can.

But they can't set every one off on Saturday and Sunday, that would be
too suspicious," Eileen said.  She bit into a crumbly energy bar and
grimaced at the dry taste.

"So maybe they don't know they're setting off one so big," Alan said.

"Maybe they think this one is a bleeder too.  Maybe they think it won't
kill anyone, the way the Colorado earthquake didn't kill anyone."

"That's why we have to talk them into stopping it before they start
it.

We can't just barge in and start shooting like some action movie.  Who
knows how many people it takes to do this?  They might be good people
who really think they're saving lives."

"They killed Jim Leetsdale," Alan said stubbornly.

"And Krista Lewis."

"We don't know who killed them," Eileen said patiently.

"Whoever killed Krista was a rapist, not an executioner.  She might not
even be related to this."  Eileen watched Alan Baxter carefully and
swallowed the chunk of dry energy bar in her mouth.  It felt like a
rock going down her throat.  Alan frowned and looked out the tent flap,
and if he were a rapist and a murderer Eileen couldn't tell.  Her gut
twisted like a hanged thing, and she folded the wrapper around the rest
of the energy bar.  Her supper was done.

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

"Thank you, Paris," Marcia said as Paris handed her a plate.  Paris
Linsley was a sweetheart through and through, despite the accident of
birth that had left him with such a handsome face and build.

Paris had kept his balance, it appeared.  He'd put on armor like a
medieval knight, like Lancelot, who was so handsome he never smiled.

Right now Paris, smiling, was handing out cold chicken and potato salad
and rolls from Beth Williams's inexhaustible kitchen, a surprise cooler
that he and Beth had hidden in the back of Babe while everyone else was
scrambling for their gear.

Marcia bit into her chicken, her plate balanced on her knees, watching
Paris.  He moved like a dancer, perfectly in tune with his body.  Joe
Tanner took a plate and forced a thanks.  Joe had been wired tight all
day.  He was desperately concerned about Eileen.  There was something
additional going on with him and Rosen, some secret they held between
them that interested her.  Something in their glances when they spoke
of Alan and Eileen.  Marcia wondered what it was.

She and Daniel had their own secret, their own fears.  Here in the
dunes things could happen.  Things happened in the San Luis Valley,
things she'd only read about until now.  There might be a human killer
out here, but that was not the only thing that walked the dunes at
night.

She shivered suddenly, uncontrollably.  The sun was gone over the dune
heights and the sky was darkening.

"Better bundle up, the temperature's going to drop like a stone," Paris
said, sitting by her side with his plate piled high with chicken and
coleslaw and fruit salad.

"Let me guess," Marcia said with a smile.

"You can eat anything and not gain an ounce, right?"

"Of course," Paris said with a smile that held bitterness like a dash
of salt, bitterness that perhaps only Marcia Fowler could taste.

"Babe is a wonderful beast," she said, aiming with her chicken to where
the Humm-V sat, ticking slightly, in the fold of sand where they were
going to spend the night.  As far as they could tell, they were less
than a quarter mile from the center of the dunes.  At three o'clock,
they had agreed, they would walk in.  This agreement was not come to
easily.

Joe nearly set off on his own before Rosen talked him out of it.
Finally he'd subsided, muttering darkly, looking terribly worried.  Now
he sat with his chicken, untouched, in his lap.  Rosen said a few words
to him, and he nodded and picked up a piece of food.  He ate like he
was feeding a machine.

"She'll get us out, which is important," Paris said.

"What brings you on this posse?"

"I found Krista," Marcia said simply.

"Oh," Paris said.  He ate a piece of chicken with surgical neatness.

"And you're MUFON, right?"

"That's right," Marcia said, and didn't bother asking Paris how he
knew.

"So the Taos Hum is caused by this Tesla machine?"

"We think so."

"So we have to stop it before they set off the New Madrid," Paris
mused.

"I get it, I guess.  But why kill Krista?  I can't figure that out."

"I can't either," Joe said, squatting at Marcia's side with his empty

plate in one hand.  Daniel and Rosen were still eating their supper,
sitting in different slopes of sand.  Everyone wanted to be far apart
from one another when Babe finally stopped.

"Maybe Krista was killed by a boyfriend.  Maybe her murder set off this
whole chain of events by accident."

"That's one theory," Joe said unhappily, and Marcia read his untold
secret in his face in one flashing computation.

"You suspect Alan Baxter, don't you?"  she said, and she realized her
voice was far too loud even as she spoke.

"I don't know," Joe said.  He wouldn't meet her eyes.

"I can't believe it, but--" "But we don't have the luxury to take
chances with Eileen's life," Rosen said.  He walked to join them,
moving in a quiet way that Marcia admired.  He was so light on his feet
he hardly left tracks in the sand.

"That's ridiculous," Marcia said.

"He'd die to protect Eileen.  He wouldn't harm a fly."

"How long have you known Alan Baxter, ma'am?"  Rosen asked levelly.

"Less than a week," Marcia said, her chin up.

"And I don't care.  He's not a murderer."

"I don't think he is, either," Rosen said.

"But yes, we need to make sure he isn't."

"But that means anyone could be a murderer.  Daniel lives here.  He
could be one."

Daniel looked at her with sad eyes.

"Already occurred to me," he said.

"Try being an adult male in a community when a woman is raped and
murdered, Marcia.  Right, Paris?"

"Not me," Paris said.

"I'm suspected of being everything from a closet gay to an alien, but
not a rapist."

"Why?"  Joe asked.

"Because I'm too good looking," Paris said loftily.

"So was Ted Bundy," Rosen said.  Paris frowned and opened his mouth,
then shut it and looked down at his plate.

"Women can be murderers, too," Marcia said, and almost felt insulted
when the men grinned at her as one.

"Well, I could."

"You could," Joe assured her.

"Don't worry, Marcia, we'll suspect you if that makes you feel
better."

"What a mess," Paris said, his good humor restored.

"And all is going to be revealed--what, at dawn tomorrow?"

"Yes," Joe said.

"Yes," Daniel said, looking afraid.

"Yes," Rosen said, looking as though he were ready to paint on war
stripes.

"Well, then," Paris said, with a movie-star grin.

"Let's get to bed, shall we?  I'll set my alarm for what, three a.m.?
We'll get out of here by four and sunrise will be at six or so.  Plenty
of time to get there."

"No lights tonight," Marcia suggested.

"Let's stay as quiet as we can."

"No sense in drawing the wrong kind of attention, eh?"  Paris said with
a mocking grin.

"No sense in drawing any kind of attention," Daniel said.

"Of any kind."

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

The wind had not yet begun to blow the cool night wind that smoothed
the dunes.  Eileen woke, totally alert in an instant.  There was a
sound, an enormous sound, approaching.

"What is that?"  Alan whispered in the darkness beside her.

"I don't know," she whispered back.  For a moment she felt dizzy,
unreal.  Had Alan whispered to her, and had she whispered back?  Or had
they simply communicated mind to mind, like some science-fiction
tale?

His hand was real, though, fumbling for hers in the darkness and taking
it into his own.  His hand was larger than hers.  Both their hands were
cold.  Eileen realized she was terrified.  The sound grew louder.

"Is it--" Alan started, then stopped with the caution of a deer coming
to a halt in the brush, head held high and nostrils smelling the
wind.

Eileen pressed his hand, not daring to answer.  She didn't move.  She
wondered if their heat signature was sufficiently buried underneath the
sand, or if their body outlines would show up in infrared detectors.

The sound grew impossibly loud.  It wasn't the heartbeat of helicopter
blades or the roar of tanks or the purr of trucks.  It wasn't the sound
of a jet engine.  Eileen thought dizzily that it sounded something like
a boat engine in water, only that was impossible.  The bubbling sound
started to fade just as Eileen thought she had pinpointed the location.
It was just over the ridge to their left, whatever it was, and it
sounded huge.

As quickly as it came, it was gone.  The silence grew and stretched
out.

Eileen heard a tiny tapping at the tent door, and her heart leaped in
fright before she realized it was sand.  The early morning winds were
starting to blow.

"Was that the Tesla people?"  Alan whispered.

"I don't think so," Eileen said doubtfully, trying to get her breathing
under control.

"They'll have to have equipment, and that means the Tesla machine.
Maybe that was just a reconnaissance of the area to make sure no one is
here."

"That sounds reasonable," Alan whispered.  His hand squeezed hers and
let it go, a squeeze that felt like a kind of wink.  We were both
scared, said the squeeze, weren't we?

Eileen thought she would wait until dawn, sure that she couldn't sleep
any more that night.  She heard Alan's breath even out and take on the
slow, measured breaths of sleep, and without thinking she lengthened
her breaths to match his and felt herself drift back into sleep.

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

The sun approached over the earth.  The dunes were dark but the sky was
clear and light.  The morning winds had blown themselves out and the
sand was still and silken and unmarked.

Eileen, under the sand, awoke at a sound.  It was the beating-heart
sound of a helicopter.  A Blackhawk by the tempo of the rotors and
engine, and she was right.  She could have guessed that they would come
in a Blackhawk, the military transport helicopter.  It rose over the
skyline, a black humped shape like a surfacing whale, and she reached
out to wake Alan.  He clasped her hand in his own.  His hand was cold
and damp.  Her heart was kicking in her chest and she struggled to
breathe normally and deeply.  Whatever had patrolled the sand last
night had not seen them.  Their prey was coming into the trap.

Someone on that helicopter should have a bruise over his heart.

Someone on that helicopter should have DNA that matched the curly pubic
hair found on the dead body of Krista Lewis.  Someone on that
helicopter had posed Jim Leetsdale's dead body by a cannon.

Someone on that helicopter was a murderer, not the person holding her
hand.

The Blackhawk was lit by the rising sun as it came into sight, but it
dropped into the shadows as it came down into the dunes.  It swirled
into a landing at exactly the spot she'd stood the day before.  The
blades kicked up a hurricane of sand then slowed to idle speed.  The
Blackhawk was painted in desert colors, tan with splotches of white and
light gray.

She could see the pilot behind the glass, and for a terrified moment
she thought he was looking straight at her.

Then the man looked down and raised a container to his lips.  He was
opening a Thermos in his lap and staring out the window as he did, that
was all.

Someone stepped out of the helicopter.  Eileen saw with a fierce pulse
of satisfaction that the man was Jacob Mitchell.  He was dressed in
khakis that looked faintly military.  He wore a broad-brimmed
Stetson.

Another two men dropped lightly to the ground behind him, both also in
civilian clothing.  Three uniformed soldiers jumped from the helicopter
and lowered a box shrouded in canvas to the sand.  The box was big
enough to give the three men trouble as they hauled it out of the
helicopter.

"The Tesla machine," Alan whispered.

"That must be it."

Eileen nodded and squeezed his hand to make him let her go.  Her
fingers were going numb.  It was five o'clock.

The soldiers dropped several packages out of the helicopter, things
that looked like ordinary supplies, perhaps tents and food and water.

Then they hopped back on board with nods and waves.  They showed all
the excitement of parcel de liverymen  One of the other civilians
jumped lightly into the helicopter as the rotors started to speed up.
Jacob Mitchell and the other man put their faces into their elbows as
the sand whipped up around them.

Then the helicopter was gone over the ridge, leaving only a dwindling
sound like a fading heartbeat.

"Only two of them," Eileen whispered.

"I think we can walk up on them without a problem."

"What time is it?"  Alan whispered back.

"How much time do we have?"

"It's five fifteen.  We have less than forty-five minutes."

"If I can get out of the tent when they're turned the other way, they
won't know where I came from," Alan said.  Eileen raised her
eyebrows.

"I?"  she hissed.

"What do you mean.  I?"

"I think you should stay here," Alan whispered.

"What if they shoot on sight?  Somebody needs to watch and see what
happens."

"That somebody should be you," Eileen said.

"I'm a police officer.

This is what I do for a living, Mr.  Baxter."  She peered at him in the
gloom of the tent, and she could see a stubborn set expression to his
mouth.  Prom, she thought despairingly.

"I'll tell you what," Alan whispered angrily.

"We can start to argue and then we'll fight and the tent will collapse
and we'll roll down right to their feet.  Then we'll see what
happens."

Eileen put both hands over her mouth to hold in a great honk of
laughter.  She put her face to her sleeping bag and her stomach muscles
heaved for a few moments.  Finally she lifted her face and looked over
at Alan.

"Don't do that again," she said, grinning like a fool, like someone who
wasn't within fifty yards of a pack of serial killers.

"We'll go together, if you won't stay here."

"I don't want you to go," Alan whispered.  His eyebrows were drawn
together and his face was flushed in the dim light from the tent
opening.

"We go together," Eileen said.

"Let's get this over with, Mr.  Baxter."

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

It was Humm-V versus Blackhawk, a showdown at the Techno Corral, and
Joe was sure that the Blackhawk was going to win.  It could fly, after
all, out of this crappy dragging sand.  The Blackhawk stood at the top
of a dune crest, blades slowly revolving at idle speed.  Three
uniformed soldiers stood halfway down the dune, hands at their side
arms and looking at the posse with faces like planks.

Paris stood against the purple door of Babe, his hands in his pockets,
his shirt as immaculately crisp as the day before.  How the hell he
managed that, Joe had no idea.  What he did know was that these three
goons were going to keep them from Eileen and the killer Tesla
machine.

He looked at Rosen, as blank-faced as the soldiers, and at Daniel and
Marcia.  Marcia had the same despairing look on her face that Joe knew
he had on his own.  Daniel looked furious, an expression Joe hadn't
seen before.  Daniel Grantham seemed like a low-key guy, a scholar with
the light bones and flat muscles of a bicycle rider.  He seemed more
bird than man.  Yet here he was with his jaw muscles clenched, hands
in fists, his hair askew on his head, his eyes red and savage.

"These are not your dunes," Daniel said in a low voice.

"I'm a deputy with the Alamosa sheriff's department," Rosen
interrupted.

"We're on a search and rescue mission and we have authority here, as
you well know."

"You're not allowed in this part of the dunes," the lead soldier
said.

Joe recognized the insignia of a captain but couldn't read the nametag
from the distance separating them.  The captain had the robot-soldier
look, all blond hair and freezing blue eyes and muscles on his muscles.
If there was a person in there, Joe couldn't see it.  Inside the
helicopter the pilot looked out, bored, picking his teeth with a
toothpick.

"This is not military property," Rosen said.

"This is my property, as a citizen," Daniel said.

"And technically, you work for me."

The helicopter had swept over a dune and caught them as their GPS
receivers led them back to Babe the hummer for the second time.  Joe
was ready to scream with frustration.  They'd gotten up at three in the
morning, the five of them alert without coffee, wide-eyed as owls in
the low flicker of Paris's penlight flashlight.  They'd shouldered
their packs and headed out by three thirty.  The fifth dune they'd
climbed showed Babe the hummer at the bottom, their own tracks leading
up the opposite slope.  Paris consulted his GPS and Marcia consulted
hers.  She and Daniel exchanged worried looks.  They both recalibrated
their machines.

At five fifteen, Babe appeared in front of them once again.  The sky
was lightening.  Three sets of tracks led out of the little hollow; two
sets leading out and one set leading in.  It was impossible, but there
the hummer was.  They had gone in an enormous circle again.  They no
longer had time to walk to the center of the dunes before six o'clock.
Joe was beginning to believe the dunes weren't going to let them get
there at all.

"We need to drive in," Joe said.

"So much for the element of surprise," Paris said, and shrugged.

"If we can get there at all," Marcia said.  Her face was a pale circle
in the false dawn, her eyes black holes.  She sounded worried and
afraid.  Joe wasn't afraid.  Then the helicopter sound thudded in their
ears and the Blackhawk swept over the dune.

Joe was afraid now.  He wasn't afraid of the three soldiers in front
of him.  He dealt with soldiers every working day, armed ones and flag
officers and men who'd seen the elephant, as Kipling said, men who'd
killed other men.  Joe knew these men wouldn't kill their little posse.
They weren't part of the earthquake people, they were being used by
them.

But they were soldiers, and they had their orders.  Joe was afraid of
the Tesla machine, he was afraid of the New Madrid earthquake.  And he
was afraid for Eileen, all alone without him.

"Enough of this," Marcia said suddenly, in her teacher voice.  She
stepped forward and put her fists on her hips.

"Look.  We know about your project.  We're here to stop it, if we can.
The machine that you carried out here in that Blackhawk is a Tesla
machine and it's going to kill about a million people today if we don't
stop it.  It's going off at 6:45 this morning.  You're due back here
before noon, aren't you?"

The soldiers never moved.  The rising sun, relentless, started creeping
down the dune face toward them.

"It's an earthquake machine," Joe said.

"I have the simulation here.  I can show you.  You can't let this
happen."

"You're not allowed in this part of the dunes," the captain repeated.

His pale eyes didn't change, and Joe thought despairingly of UFO nuts
trying to sneak into Area 51.  They, too, had desperation and
courage.

They were nuts, and Joe knew that his group sounded just like them.

Nuts.  They weren't going to reach the human inside the soldier.  To
him, they were the ones who weren't really human.

"Think," Marcia said suddenly.

"Damn you, think.  Why are there only a few of these people out there
today?  There's only, what, four or five people doing their little
experiments.  Why?  Shouldn't there be fifty people wandering around
taking notes and getting in the way?  That's the way government
experiments run.  Three people for every one that actually works.
Quality assurance to make sure everything is filled out in triplicate.
Radios and camcorders and tracking equipment.  There's none of that
today, is there?  Why not?  I'll tell you.  Because they're doing
something bad.  Something secret because it hurts people.  We can show
you ..."  She trailed off, breathing hard, her hands clenched.  The
captain frowned slightly and shifted a little in the sand.

"It doesn't matter what we're here for, Captain," Rosen said.

"What matters is the law, and I represent the law.  You may not stop us
because we are not on a federal base.  If you continue to stand in our
way, I will arrest you."

One of the soldiers snorted, and the blue-eyed captain made a short,
sharp movement with his hand that chopped off the other soldier as
though gagged.  The captain was still for a few moments, looking at
Rosen as though he were a new and interesting species of ant.

"You're not allowed in this part of the dunes," he said finally. Marcia
and Daniel groaned in unison, Paris shifted against the hummer and Joe
clenched his teeth shut on a very bad word.  Rosen stood like a man at
a chessboard contemplating his next move as the seconds ticked by.

Joe looked at his watch.  Six twenty.

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

"Hello, Mr.  Mitchell," Eileen said pleasantly.

Jacob Mitchell spun around and the look on his face was a pleasure to
see.  His mouth dropped open, his eyes bulged, his face turned gray in
the dawn light.  His companion dropped the balled-up tarpaulin in his
hands and started to reach toward his armpit.

"No no," Eileen said, raising her gun and aiming very carefully.

"Let's put our hands right on top of our head, shall we?"

"Do it, Scott," Mitchell said.  He put his hands on his head as though
it were the latest fashion at dinner parties.  His eyes had lost their
surprised look and he smiled at Eileen and Alan, who stood behind
her.

"You're Alan Baxter, yes?  What are you doing here?"" Mitchell stopped,
looking back and forth between Alan and Eileen.

"I wasn't aware that you're father and daughter.  How interesting."

Behind Mitchell the Tesla device sat on the sand, revealed at last.  It
was beautiful.  Two wooden platforms held a series of what looked like
metal spools, each one sprouting wires from the top like multicolored
hair.  The wires twisted together into a thick braid that led into the
bottom of a glass globe of the earth.

Eileen focused on Mitchell and tried to ignore the globe.  It caught
the eye, round and glowing and colored green and blue and brown.

In the midst of the wire and the metal spools it looked totally out of
place, like a work of priceless art caught inside a piece of
industrial machinery.

On the sand next to the machine sat a black car battery on a wooden
crate, a car battery with wires that led into the metal structure that
held the cool glowing crystal of the globe.

"You run the Tesla machine with a car battery?"  Alan asked.  Mitchell
narrowed his eyes but his voice remained light and friendly.

"Jim Leetsdale, right?  He left you something on his computer, or in
his files?  I was surprised when you took his computer so quickly.  I
didn't expect you'd be able to break his encryption or his system.  Ah,
well, water under the bridge."  Mitchell started to lower his hands and
raised them again as Eileen made a slight movement with her gun.

"We'd like to stop your experiment for today, Mr.  Mitchell," Eileen
said, her voice as calm and friendly as she could make it.

"We're going to escort you back to Alamosa, and we'll find out if your
DNA, or your friend Scott's here, matches the DNA from material left on
Krista Lewis's body.  If not, you're free to go."

"Why didn't you just arrest me in Colorado Springs?"  Mitchell asked, a
smile playing on his lips.  He seemed totally unafraid.  Eileen felt a
freezing doubt sweep her and suppressed it.

"I think you know," she said.

"I know about the New Madrid.  I don't know why, though I'd like to
find out.  But officially, Mr.  Mitchell, I'm just here to talk to you
in the Great Sand Dunes because that's where Krista Lewis was raped and
killed.  By placing yourself in the vicinity of the crime, you allow me
to bring you in for questioning.  We're also going to get a court order
for DNA testing."

"Are you arresting me, Detective Reed?"  Mitchell asked.

"Only if you don't wish to voluntarily come in for questioning, Mr.

Mitchell."

"Of course, I'd be happy to.  But have you tested Alan Baxter, Miss
Reed?  Your father?"

"Excuse me?"  Eileen said coldly.

"He was in the dunes that night too, you know.  Scott and--and I have
each other for alibis.  We were here conducting earth resonance
experiments.

What was your father doing that night?"

"I was driving down from my home in Wyoming," Alan said stiffly.

"I don't know what you're trying to pull.  I never met Krista Lewis."

"Or so he says," Mitchell said.

"Let's both go in and get tested, shall we?"

Eileen made the mistake of looking at her father.  As her eyes left
Mitchell another man rose up from the sand.  He was the other person in
civilian clothes from the helicopter and he was holding a gun aimed
directly at her.

"Don't move, ma'am," he said politely.  He was gray-haired, black eyed
as competent looking as a rattlesnake.  He got to his feet slowly,
giving her no chance to correct her aim.

Eileen didn't move.  Her pistol had wavered from Mitchell and she
couldn't aim it at the new man in time.  She was caught by the simplest
of traps, and she tried hard to keep her face from showing her dismay.
She should have thought of the third man, jumping back into the
helicopter.

It was like that elementary school test,
Which-object-does-not-belong?

The third man, not in uniform, belonged to Mitchell and not in the
helicopter.

He'd been dropped over the dunes to make a sweep of the area.

She'd flunked a test and she and Alan were going to die because of
it.

"I'm not moving," she said, keeping absolutely still.  Her voice did
not waver and for that she was very glad.

"But I'm still a police officer, and you are under arrest."

"Drop your gun, ma'am," the gray-haired man said.

Eileen let her gun's trigger guard drop through her index finger.  Her
gun fell against her wrist and was completely useless to her as a
weapon.

It was, however, safely out of the sand.

"One of you clowns should have a very sore chest," she said.

"Which one is it?"

"That would be me," Scott said, with an expression of hungry
satisfaction.

"Broken ribs."  He stepped forward and, keeping clear of his
companion's line-of-sight, took the gun from Eileen's hand.  He looked
at Eileen, close, and smiled into her face.  Alan made a stirring
movement, the first he'd made.

"Now, now," the gray-haired one said.

"Let's not get everyone all riled up.  We're professionals here."

"No you're not," Alan said.

"You're about to become the biggest mass murderers in American history.
There's nothing professional about that."

Scott stepped away from Eileen and handed Mitchell her gun, her

beloved Sig Sauer with the clean trigger pull and the sleek, elegant
shape.

It was the prettiest gun she owned, but it wasn't the only one.  Her
Ladysmith was in her ankle holster, oiled and loaded.  If she could
distract the gray-haired one, if she could alter the situation
slightly, she could turn everything around.  She was perfectly willing
to risk rape to do that.  Being raped was much better than dying.

Mitchell took Eileen's Sig Sauer from Scott and clicked the safety
on.

He stuck it casually in his pocket and Eileen realized that he was
making no attempt to keep his fingerprints from marking it.  He wasn't
planning on giving it back.  She felt a chill at the small of her
back.

"We're not mass murderers, Alan," Mitchell said with a pained
expression.

"I would never do something like that.  The New Madrid is going to go
sometime this century.  Better now than later."

"That's crap," Alan said.

"You're playing God with people's lives, you're--" "Why are you doing
this, Mr.  Mitchell?"  Eileen interrupted.

"I can't figure it out.  This isn't a bleeder earthquake, like the rest
of them.  This is a big one.  Why?"

The sun caught Eileen in the eyes and then moved on.  They were in full
early morning daylight now and the sun felt good after the chill of
dawn.  Eileen wondered briefly if the dunes were the last thing she was
ever going to smell, and she suppressed it hard.

Mitchell glanced at his watch.  Eileen could see him in the Oval
Office, behind the big desk, looking at his watch with the same
expression of genial calculation.  Sure, there's enough time, he'd say.
We'll talk to the Boy Scouts from Rapid City, South Dakota, today.
We'll meet with the Akron, Ohio, Ladies Club today.

"Sure, there's enough time," he said.

"The New Madrid is going to cause a lot of disruption, Eileen, Alan.
Just as it would if it went off on nature's timetable instead of my
own.  As FEMA director I've been preparing for this earthquake for the
better part of two years.  We have food, clothing, water, and tents,
all ready to go.  We have National Guard units in Colorado, Wyoming,
the Dakotas, Idaho, Montana, and New Mexico fueled and ready to
mobilize.  Instead of panic and chaos, I'll be directing relief efforts
that will minimize loss of life and property.  I'm actually saving
lives by doing this."

"The nation will be grateful to you, too, won't it?"  Eileen said.

"You'll have more airtime than the President.  You'll be the country's
biggest hero."

"I'm no hero," Mitchell said modestly.

"I'm just a civil servant doing his job, that's all."

"But you want to be President, don't you?"  Eileen said.

"Yes, I do," Mitchell said, his voice still civilized and calm.  But
underneath Eileen could hear the starving hunger, the lust.  The
overwhelming desire to be The Man, the President.

"You worthless shit," Alan said.

"You're going to kill hundreds of thousands of people so you can get on
television giving the survivors leftover clothing?  You're going to
kill women and children so you can run for President?  What kind
of--"

"Alan," Eileen said without turning her head.

"Shut up."

"Oh, there's no need, really," Mitchell said.

"You're almost out of time anyway."

"This is crap," Alan said.

"This is too huge to risk just to get good PR.

You ran for President before, remember?  You couldn't win.  You
couldn't even hold on to your job as a congressman--"

"Shut your trap," Bennett said viciously, taking a step towards Alan.

"Now, Bennett," Mitchell said soothingly.  He smiled at Eileen,
ignoring Alan.

"Who said anything about running for President?"

"Oh," Eileen said.

"Oh my God," Alan whispered.

"Exactly," Mitchell said.

"Scott, if you would take over for Bennett.

Bennett, the program is ready to go."

Scott drew a gun from a side holster and held it on Alan and Eileen
with casual competence.  Bennett let his own arms down with a sigh and
rolled his shoulders.  He holstered his gun and took a tiny white stick
from his pocket.  He put it in his mouth like a toothpick and chewed it
as he walked to the Tesla machine.

"So who killed Krista?"  Eileen said.

"I'm curious."

"I don't know," Mitchell said absently, joining Bennett at the Tesla
machine.  He was intent on the console, watching Bennett press
buttons.

Bennett wrote down numbers from the console and compared them to papers
on a clipboard.  The clipboard was attached to the battery crate.

Bennett chomped on his stick until it broke with a wet little snap.  He
spit it into the sand and immediately produced another from his
pocket.

Eileen watched this with interest.  There was something about the stir
sticks that tugged at her mind.

"We have to stop this," Alan whispered desperately to Eileen.

"We don't have to do anything yet, Alan," Eileen said.

"Just stay still."  The freezing at her spine had invaded her stomach
and her legs.

She was afraid if she looked down her legs would be trembling.  She'd
never been so afraid in her life and she had to keep calm.  If she lost
it, her father would die trying to protect her.  She knew this in every
fiber of her being, without thought.  He would not let her be hurt if
he were still alive.  She had to keep him alive, then, by staying in
control.  And she had to stay alive herself.

"Almost ready," Bennett said.  Mitchell glanced at his watch and gave a
merry smile to Eileen.

"Six forty," he said.

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Stalemate.  Unless someone had something extra, Kansas City was going
to disappear like a T. Rex into a tar pit.  Joe could hardly keep
still.

"Well," Rosen said, shrugging his shoulders, "I can't think of anything
else to say.  Anyone?"

The soldiers stood in the same places they had before.  Everything
Rosen had said had fallen on professionally deaf ears.  For fifteen
minutes they had tried, while the sun rose in the sky and heated the
sand.

"What do we do now?"  Marcia said.

"We drive on," Rosen said calmly.  The robot captain reacted to this.

He blinked.

"What?"  Daniel said.

"We drive on," Rosen repeated, looking at the captain.

"We're driving in, captain.  If you shoot an Alamosa deputy on public
land you are going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
You think your commander is going to stand up for you if you do?"

"And four civilians, too," Joe said.  He gave a little hop in the sand
and turned to Babe.

"Let's get going, guys."

"You can't do this," the captain said.  His calm was broken but his
face hadn't changed.

"I have authority to use deadly force."

"Your authority will melt like yesterday's snow if you kill a cop,"
Daniel said.

"He's a cop.  He's not some sheepherder's boy like El Paso or some
religious nuts like Waco.  You better think about it."

Marcia said nothing but scrambled into the back of the HummV.

Her face was pale and frightened.  Daniel joined her.  Paris shrugged
elaborately and climbed into the driver's seat.

"What do I get into," he murmured to himself, and started the engine.

Rosen stepped up into the vehicle and closed the door.

"You think they'll shoot us?"  Paris said casually, as though he were
asking about the weather.

"Don't know," Rosen said.

"Okay," Paris said, and gunned his engine.

"Let's give it a try."

The soldiers stood where they had before, all but the captain showing
faces of anger and dismay.  His face was still and silent, looking
remarkably like Rosen's.  He raised his hand in the air and Joe
swallowed and clenched his hands into fists.

Another hummer roared over the dune, nearly taking to the air.  It
skidded down the slope.  It was covered in sand and painted Army green
and a slender hand waved a badge out the window as it came to a sandy
stop between Babe and the Blackhawk helicopter.  The face behind the
wheel was Sheriff Gonzalez.  A huge grin split his face.

"Hold it, everybody," a voice yelled.  The voice belonged to an Asian
American man who jumped from the hummer.  He waved his badge, trying to
get it in everyone's vision at once.  Joe didn't need the badge to know
who this was and felt his heart leap in joy.

"Lucy came through!"  he shouted, and opened the door.  Fred Nguyen,
FBI agent, saw Joe and gave a great sunny laugh.

"Hey, Joe!"  he said.

"I came as fast as I could.  We have a warrant to arrest anybody we
want to out here, military or not.  Plus I get to confiscate materials
stolen from the Defense Archives, if I find them.  How's them
apples?"

"Like the freakin' cavalry over the hill," Daniel said reverently from
behind Joe's shoulder.

"You drove in here?"  Paris asked the sheriff, who had rolled his
window down.  Gonzalez rested a meaty arm on the door and gave Paris a
lazy grin.

"I was driving in here in Volkswagen dune buggies before you were
born, son," he said.

"I just don't have the time anymore."

"We've got less than ten minutes," Rosen said.

"And we may have a hostage situation.  Can you follow us in?"

Gonzalez nodded and looked at Fred Nguyen.  Fred stood for a moment,
eyes flashing, smile still on his face.  Joe had met Nguyen several
times, through Lucy Giometti.  He was no slouch.

"We'll follow, of course," Fred said.

"We're going to need you there too, gentlemen."  This was said to the
Army captain, who nodded politely.

"I'll need to see the warrant, then I'm at your disposal," he said. The
other two soldiers heaved unprofessional sighs of relief.

"Go on," Gonzalez said to Rosen and Joe.

"We'll catch up."  Nguyen leaned into the hummer to rummage for the
warrant that Lucy, the angel, had gotten them.  Joe didn't see if
Nguyen found the warrant because he was pressed back into his seat.
Paris had hit the gas.  Babe swarmed up the dune, spitting sand as she
went.

"How much longer?"  Paris asked.

"Three minutes," Rosen said.

"We've got three minutes to come up with a battle plan, then," Paris
said.

"One plan is that I just try and run the Tesla machine over.  Any other
ideas?"

There were several, and everyone shouted over the scream of Babe's
engine and the relentless ticking of the clock.  Six forty two.

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

"So who killed Jim Leetsdale?  Did you, Mr.  Mitchell?"

"Still trying to solve your murder cases?  A little irrelevant now,
isn't it?"  Mitchell asked in amusement.  He stepped away from the
Tesla machine and unrolled a sandwich bag he took from his pants
pocket.  He started rolling ear protectors in his fingers, the little
yellow tubes that expanded to fit inside the ear and protected shooters
from hearing loss.

"I killed Leetsdale," Mitchell said.

"At least, it was my orders.  Bennett and Scott carried out the actual
execution.  Poorly, I might add.  He was supposed to be identified as
a suicide.  You figured out he was a homicide immediately, didn't
you?"

"Yeah, it was a lousy faked suicide," Eileen said, still searching her
mind for a way to get to her gun.

"Did you see Krista?  Was she ever here?"

"She was here," Mitchell said.  He put the tubes in his ears.  They
were almost out of time.

"Ready, sir," Bennett said.  Scott had his gun steady on Eileen and
hadn't wavered.

"Let's go, then," Mitchell said.  He looked at Eileen with sparkling
eyes.

"Then we'll celebrate."

Eileen knew what he meant.  Alan's lack of reaction meant that he
didn't.  She breathed a prayer that if it came to rape, she'd have the
courage to keep her wits about her.  She'd met rape victims who did,
and they usually survived their attack.  Not without being raped, of
course, she remembered with a freezing and distant coldness.  Not
without being raped.  Well, if it came to that, it would come to that.
She would feel about it later.

Mitchell pressed a button on the console of the Tesla device with a
flourish and stepped away.

For a few moments there was nothing.  Then the machine gave a kind of
shiver, almost too slight to be seen.  Eileen stared at it, fascinated
and horrified.  The lovely crystal globe within the machine began to
spin slowly, then sped up.  The etched colors blurred into a blue-green
blur.  A low sound started in her teeth and head and toes and then
invaded every part of her.  It was a sound but it was a vibration too,
a vibration so quick and high that it felt like ants crawling over her
body.  Beside her, Alan made a sound of disgust and fear.

"It won't hurt you," Bennett said, stepping behind Scott and putting
earmuffs on the other man's ears.  He never passed between Scott's gun
and Eileen.  He moved away and put earmuffs on his own ears as the
sound started to increase.

"It gives you a hell of a headache without ear protection, though," he
shouted.

Eileen felt the insect sensation increase, invading the inside of her
body as well as her skin.  Then the hum began, the atonal pulsing hum
that filled the sky and the sand and her bones.  It was loathsome.

Mitchell raised his face to the sky and pumped his fists in the air,
grinning and shouting something.

"I'm going to try," Alan said calmly and softly.

"We have to stop this."

"No," Eileen hissed.

"You'll get us both killed."  It was hard to speak over the waves of
sound.  Her head ached fiercely and she knew that she had lost.  Alan
was going to take out Scott and he might just give her a chance to get
to her gun.  At the cost of his life.  The life of her father.  She
couldn't do this, she couldn't let him die in front of her.  Not when
she had just found him.  But if Alan gave her a chance to stop these
men they could save millions of lives.  Maybe even America itself.  She
felt like something had seized her by the throat as she understood,
finally, that she didn't have to be raised by him to love him.  She
loved him.  And she wasn't going to have a chance to tell him, because
she was going to let him sacrifice himself.  For her.  She took a deep
breath.

Alan started to move, and Scott shook his head tiredly and raised the
gun.  He was going to fire.

Mitchell turned, Bennett turned, and Scott turned as a growling snarl
burst over the dunes to their right.  An enormous Humm-V soared over
the dune crest and skidded down the sand and that was all Eileen saw
before she crouched, drew, and fired at Scott.

His gun whirled like a Frisbee, switching ends back and forth, and he
flew backwards into the sand.  She hadn't drawn a breath.  She was
vaguely aware of figures tumbling out of the Humm-V.  Bennett, next.

His eyes were still widening and his arm was still moving toward his
armpit when her second shot took him full in the chest.  She drew her
first breath.  Easy shots, both of them, and as he thumped backward,
she ran at him.

She landed with both knees on his chest and felt the reassuring
solidity of the body armor.  She drew her second breath.  He was
gasping underneath her, face pasty gray but alive.  She reached under
his jacket and removed his gun.  She twisted on her knees and faced
Mitchell, who had her gun in his khaki pocket.  She drew her third
breath.

The bodies piling out of the still-moving Humm-V seemed endless, like
clowns erupting from a circus car.  Two of them were racing toward the
Tesla machine and one of them looked like Joe Tanner.  Someone else
was running toward Jacob Mitchell and she saw with a surging sense of
relief that it was Dave Rosen.

"Gun!"  she shouted as loud as she could, over the groaning waves of
the Tesla machine.  It felt like her head was going to burst open.
Rosen blurred into a speed he'd only hinted at before and took Jacob
Mitchell to the sand with bone-crunching force.  Someone dropped to her
side and knelt on Bennett's right arm.  Eileen caught a glimpse of gray
hair and an elderly, kindly, frightened female face.  She looked at
Scott, who was lying in the sand with Alan Baxter and someone else on
him, a tall man with dark blond hair.

"Come on!"  screamed the dark blond guy, and Eileen realized he was
screaming at Joe Tanner and the other man.  They were standing in front
of the Tesla machine and looking at the console, clearly trying to
figure it out.

Alan Baxter got up from Scott's chest and ran at the Tesla machine like
he was sixteen and on the football team.  He dropped his shoulder and
hit the battery crate with enough force to snap the cables and send the
little crate tumbling over.  Alan tumbled over in the sand and lay
still.

The hum stopped.  The air shimmered like a pan of boiling water.  The
crystal globe slowed in its cage of wire and metal.  Silence came
back.

"I never thought of that," Joe said into the silence.

"Did we get it in time?"  The gray-haired woman next to Eileen was
sobbing.

"Did we?"

"We won't know until we can get to a television," Joe said.

"I don't know."

"It didn't go very long," Alan said, sitting up in the sand.  His hair
stood up wildly and he was very pale.

"It doesn't matter," Jacob Mitchell snarled.  His face was caked with
sand and he spit a few times to clear his mouth.  Rosen held an arm
twisted up behind him and he grimaced in pain.

"You'll all go to jail for interfering with a top-secret project.  You
have no authority to do this!"

"Authority," Rosen said with satisfaction, "is on the way."

"And you won't be using this machine any time soon," Joe said.

"Paris?"

The dark blond-haired man tossed Joe a tire jack from the HummV.

Joe caught it with both hands and used the momentum to swing the jack
into the lovely crystal globe caught inside the wires of the Tesla
machine.

Every line of his body went into the effort and for a moment he was
something more than human.  He looked like an angel, the kind who
spears devils and throws them down into hell.

"No!"  Mitchell shouted as the jack made a very satisfying noise.  The
globe shattered with a musical, echoing sound, and glass flew into the
air.  Joe struck again and wires and metal spools cracked like china
plates.

Joe took two more hits and the wooden platform itself splintered and
threw wood fragments across the sand.

"My turn," said the tall man who'd gone to the Tesla machine with Joe.
Joe handed him the jack and the man made two direct hits, his face
wrinkled with effort.  The interior of the bigger spools held two
fragile onion-shaped metal devices mounted on a labyrinth of bracing.
They collapsed into shards of metal.  Something black and greasy ran
into the sand.  A thin sheaf of papers fluttered out from the main
console and several landed in the grease.

Joe took the jack back but he had little to do.  He took a couple of
good whacks at the twisted metal pieces.  The machine was destroyed.

Crystal fragments and shards of metal sparkled in the morning sun.  He
set the jack handle on the sand and leaned against it nonchalantly,
like an Englishman with a cane.

"Hi, baby," he said to Eileen, winking.

"Hey there," she said, laughing.

"You must be the cavalry."

"No that would be Lucy," Joe said.

"Let me introduce my friends.

This is Paris Linsley, Marcia Fowler, Daniel Grantham, and of course
you know old-what'shis-name."

"Alamosa Deputy Rosen," Rosen said with a hint of satisfaction.

"You are under arrest, Mr.  Mitchell.  Anything you say can and will be
used against you in a court of law."

"Don't give me that bullshit," Mitchell shouted angrily.

"You had no right to destroy my machine.  You can't arrest me."

"Oh yes, we can," Eileen said.  Bennett coughed weakly underneath her.
She belatedly remembered Scott.

"Is he okay?"

"He's breathing," Paris said.

"His eyes are rolled up in his head, but there's no blood on his mouth.
He hasn't punctured a lung or anything.

How did you know he had body armor on?"

"He had it on the last time he tried to shoot me," Eileen said
absently.

She looked at the woman Joe had named Marcia Fowler, kneeling on
Bennett's arm.

"Can you hold his arm down for a minute?"

"As long as he stays passed out, I can," Marcia said nervously.

Eileen got to her feet and stretched her arms to the sky.  She wanted
to run in circles, shout with crazed laughter, throw up on the sand.
She was alive.

"Are you okay?  They didn't hurt you?"  Rosen asked.

"We're both fine," Eileen said.

"I know who killed Leetsdale."

"And Krista?"  Rosen asked levelly.  Alan, sitting in the sand near Joe
and the other man, Daniel Grantham, looked at Eileen.

For a moment there was only Alan Baxter for Eileen, only his tired face
in her vision.  He looked at her with sadness and love and
acceptance.

If she arrested him for the murder of Krista Lewis he wouldn't fight,
he wouldn't argue.  He'd go into Gonzalez's prison cell and wait
quietly and when his DNA came back negative for the hair found on
Krista's body, he would disappear from Eileen's life forever.  He'd
never stop loving her, she knew.  But that would be a betrayal that
could never be healed.

Thank goodness he hadn't done it, then.  Eileen felt herself grinning
like a fool.

"Yes," she said.

"I do know."

Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis
Valley, Colorado

"Hey, cool!"  Joe shouted.  He still hadn't gotten over the Tesla
machine's enormous sound.

"Just like Agatha Christie!"  He took on a phony English accent.

"You may be wondering why I've gathered you here today."  His voice
dropped back to normal tones.

"Someone here did it, right?"

"That's right," Eileen said, her beautiful face glowing.  When Paris
gunned Babe over the dune crest, Joe had eyes for no one but Eileen.

There she'd stood, pale as death, hands in the air.  Joe nearly broke
the plan by heading for the creep that was holding a gun on her.  He
saw the Tesla machine as Paris skidded Babe to a stop, and he
remembered what he was supposed to be doing.  Sure enough, Rosen was
right.  Eileen could take care of herself.

Daniel Grantham stirred nervously.  Joe looked at him, then saw Marcia
and Alan Baxter and even Paris Einsley looking apprehensive.  He
remembered, suddenly, that each one of them was in the San Luis Valley
the night Krista Lewis was murdered.  Any one of them could have done
it.

"So?"  Rosen asked, as though he were sitting comfortably at a desk
instead of kneeling in the Great Sand Dunes holding Jacob Mitchell's
arms behind his back.  Rosen's short black hair was as unruffled as
always, but great dark patches stained the back of his shirt and
armpits.

Joe knew he, too, had sweated through his deodorant and his shirt. The
sun was already turning the sand into an early morning oven.

"Krista found this spot while Mitchell and his goons were setting up
for the Colorado earthquake.  She found this place because she was
researching ground water contamination in Medano Creek.  Right, Mr.

Mitchell?"

"That's right," he said, his face calm again.

"We escorted her out of the area.  And that's all we did--" "That
night, someone followed her tracks and raped her and killed her.  Then
the murderer cut two slices of skin from her shoulder and arm, two
flaps of skin.  Why?"

"To make her look like a UFO abduction," Marcia said.

"That was the red herring, wasn't it?"  Eileen said with a twinkle. Joe
pressed his lips together to keep from laughing out loud.  She was
enjoying this as much as he was.

"What do you mean?"  Paris asked.

"I didn't know until I saw Bennett in action.  He got his little chew
sticks out, right before they set off the earthquake machine.  I
watched you bite them.  You're a biter, Bennett.  You like to bite
things."

There was a vast and echoing silence in the cup of sand.  Joe's
internal laughter died.

"He bit her," Alan Baxter said in a choking whisper.

"He bit her," Eileen said.

"Then he cut the bitten skin from her body to keep anyone from matching
the bite marks to his teeth."

"What a story," Mitchell said, his brow furrowed.

"Ridiculous."

"That son of a bitch," Alan said.

"We have a pubic hair from her body," Eileen said.  Joe was watching
her face and not Mitchell's.  She wasn't angry or sad.  She was
implacable, as stony as a blind marble statue holding the scales of
justice.

"Bennett used a condom when he raped her and he cut her skin off where
he bit her.  He stripped her naked and brushed her off.  But he left
one little hair.

Just one little hair.  And that's all we need.  Bennett is under arrest
for the rape and murder of Krista Lewis."

For a moment there was no sound at all, just the blue sky above them
and the sand below them and the pieces of the Tesla machine twinkling
in the sun.  Joe could smell greasy oil and sweat and underneath it all
the smell of the dunes, uncaring about what these little creatures were
doing on its great tan hide.  Marcia still knelt on Bennett's arm and
Paris was kneeling astride the prone body of Scott.  Daniel stood at
Joe's side and Alan Baxter sat on the sand next to them.  Eileen and
Rosen and Mitchell stood a few feet away and Babe stood beyond them,
her big front wheels nearly buried in the sand.

"No," Mitchell said, twisting forward in Rosen's grasp.  His eyes were
narrowed to tiny slits like slices of hell.

"It can't be.  He couldn't.  He wouldn't!"

Joe saw Alan suddenly rise to his feet and bolt forward.  Joe couldn't
move fast enough as Marcia went flying off the body of Bennett, the man
who appeared to be completely unconscious but who was shamming, he was
faking it.  Joe should never have left Marcia alone with him.

Bennett had another gun.  He had been carrying two just like Eileen
always did.  It was in his grasp and he was aiming at Eileen.  Joe saw
Rosen shove Mitchell into the sand with a shout and start to reach for
his own gun but it was going to be far too late.

Alan Baxter slammed into Bennett's side, his arms low and reaching for
the little pistol.  A single shot snapped in the air, an unimportant
sounding crack.  Bennett went down and didn't get off another shot.

Eileen had his gun arm and she jerked and twisted, and Joe clearly
heard the sound of bones popping.  Bennett shrieked, a thin high
whistle of a sound.

Marcia was screaming, her arms around Bennett's kicking legs.  Paris
was shouting something, still holding Scott's arms.  He wisely wasn't
going to leave Scott.  Joe fell across Bennett's back, jostling Eileen,
before Marcia lost her grip on Bennett's flailing feet.  Rosen was
cuffing Mitchell with lightning speed, ignoring Mitchell's muffled
screams as he pressed the man's face into the sand.

Someone else was screaming.  It was Eileen, her voice high and thin and
breathless.  She clicked the safety on Bennett's gun and threw it
toward Rosen and fell to her knees beside Alan Baxter.

There was a great spreading pool of red beneath him.  The hungry sand
soaked it up as fast as it spilled from his body.

"Daddy," Eileen said in a broken voice.

"Can't breathe," Alan whispered, his eyes looking into the empty blue
sky.

Joe put his arms around Bennett and bodily picked him up.  The man's

broken arm flopped in a horrible way as Joe staggered away from Eileen
and Alan.  He fell down with Bennett underneath him and heard the
breath leave the other man in a pained whistle.  He didn't care if he
killed him.  Joe's vision was blurred with rage.

Paris Linsley sprinted past.  Joe turned his head to see Daniel
Grantham on top of Scott.  Paris threw open Babe's door and lunged
inside.  He fell out of the Humm-V with the cooler.  His face was
sweaty and his hair flopped over his forehead.  He threw open the lid
and threw things out of the cooler.  Chicken and potato salad flew into
the air.  He ran back past Joe with two plastic bags, which once held
chicken, in his hands.

He fell to his knees beside Alan Baxter.  Joe twisted on top of Bennett
so he could see.  Paris elbowed Eileen roughly aside.  She let him
shove her out of the way.  She knelt, her face puffy and flooded with
tears, and twisted her hands together.  Alan turned his head slowly to
look at Paris.

Alan's lips were stained with frothy red blood, and he was deadly
pale.

The right side of Alan's chest was covered with bright red bubbles.
Paris put one plastic bag against Alan's chest and rolled him on his
side to put the other on his back.  Alan groaned.

"It went right through you," Paris said loudly.

"It's a Kevlar-piercing round and it didn't mushroom, all right? You're
shot through the lung but you're going to live through this, all right?
You're losing blood but I'm going to take care of that.  Don't die on
me, mister, you're not going to die if you don't want to."

"Don't want to," Alan mouthed, and Paris gave him a sunny smile.

"That's right, pal," he said.

"Lady, hold these bags against his shoulder here while I get the
first-aid kit.  His back, that's the exit wound and that's the biggest
one.  The shot didn't hit any arteries but we've got to keep his lung
from collapsing.  This is what we call a sucking chest wound, and we
can deal with it.  Put a lot of pressure on it."

Someone dropped to the sand near Joe, and he turned his eyes to see
Rosen holding a roll of duct tape from the Humm-V.  Bennett, still
squirming weakly, shrieked again as they bound his arms to his sides
with duct tape.  The injured arm was roughly splinted and Bennett
couldn't move.  Joe appreciated Rosen's detachment in caring for
Bennett's injury.  Joe didn't care if Bennett's arm came completely
off.  Rosen was trotting toward Scott when Sheriff Gonzalez's Humm-V
hauled itself over the horizon and, blessedly, the helicopter
followed.

"We need to get this man to a hospital," Paris shouted as Fred and
Gonzalez got out.  Fred looked with dismay at Alan Baxter and the duct
tape bound Bennett, still groaning.

"This guy needs to go, too.  He's unconscious and his breathing's bad,"
Daniel Grantham said reluctantly.

"They all have to go.  I need to go in the helicopter with the
prisoners, Paris," Rosen said crisply.

"And Eileen will be going with Alan.  Can you--" "Of course," Paris
said.

"The sheriff and I are the only ones who can drive out of here. Eileen,
keep the pressure on the bandage and keep him flat for the shock.  Get
some warm blankets around him.  That's all you can do until you get him
to the hospital."  He stood up as the helicopter crew came down the
slope of sand.  The captain had been reprogrammed to be on their side
now, evidently.  His crew carried stretcher boards for Bennett and
Alan.  Joe breathed a sigh of relief as they competently loaded the
injured men on the stretchers.  It was nice to be on the side of the
good guys again.

Eileen held the pressure bandage on Alan as they carried him to the
helicopter.  She didn't look at Joe as they loaded Alan in.  In seconds
the blades were throwing up sand as the helicopter rose into the air.
The big machine turned directly above them, and for a moment Joe caught
a glimpse of Eileen's face, white and strained, at the side window. She
was looking right at him.  Then the helicopter accelerated into the sky
and was gone.

The silence seemed huge.  Marcia made a harsh little sound.  She was
weeping.

"He's going to survive," Paris said to her.

"And it's not your fault."

Marcia held her hands over her face, still on her knees in the sand.
Joe dropped into the sand next to her and put his arms around her.
Paris packed his first-aid supplies back in his big green box.  Daniel
came over to help.

"Are you all right, ma'am?"  Fred Nguyen asked.

"I'm fine," Marcia said underneath her hands.

"I'm a little upset, that's all."

"Where will they take them?"  Joe asked Gonzalez.

"To Pueblo, that's the nearest trauma center," Gonzalez said.

"We'll go right there."

"What happened to the Tesla machine?"  Fred asked.

"Somebody bumped into it and it got broken," Joe said.  Fred regarded
him in silence.

"I see," he said finally.

"We have to pack up what's here, then we'll head out."  He regarded the
shards of the Tesla machine and shook his head slowly back and forth.

"I'd like to get to Pueblo," Marcia said, putting her hands down.  Her
face was tear-stained but calm.

"Me, too," Joe said.

"Yes," Daniel said.  They all looked at Paris.

"Of course," Paris said.  He stood up with the first-aid box in his
hands.  Joe helped Marcia to her feet.  Daniel dusted his hands off.
They looked at Fred Nguyen and Sheriff Gonzalez, who looked back at
them.

Both men looked furious.

"You should have waited for us," Gonzalez said.

"There'd be about a million people dead if we had," Joe said.

"I hope there aren't a million people dead right now."

"Babe has AM and FM radio," Paris said.

"And we're not getting closer to Pueblo just standing here."

Marcia stood for a moment more, looking at the bright red sand where
Alan Baxter had bled.  She stepped forward and kicked sand over the
stain with savage little movements.  Tears ran down her face.

"Let's go," she said.

North of the Great Sand Dunes, Colorado

Alan was unconscious, his face sweaty and gray.  The big gauze pads
that she was holding over the plastic bags were slowly soaking through
with blood.  If they didn't get to a hospital soon, she believed he was
going to die.  She looked at the front of the helicopter but there was
no point in asking for more speed.  She could hear the engines herself
and they were shrieking at full power.

The helicopter was crowded.  Rosen sat next to Mitchell and Scott, who
had also been bound with duct tape.  Mitchell was still trying to shout
orders and arguments but Eileen couldn't understand what he was
saying.  Rosen had pressed a length of duct tape over his mouth
shortly after takeoff.

Eileen turned back to Alan.  Her arms were beginning to tire of the
strain of holding the pads, but she welcomed the pain.  It should have
been her.  She was younger.  She could take the trauma better than a
sixty year-old man.  She was so delighted at finding the murderer that
she forgot he might want to fight back.  She was stupid, stupid.  She
shouldn't be a detective.  All she ever did to solve cases was wander
around and kick at rocks until something crawled out.  She wasn't
brilliant.  She wasn't even bright.  She was stupid.

"I was trying to get Mitchell," Bennett's voice said at her right
elbow.

She looked in surprise to see him looking up at her, his arms bound at
his side, his face sweaty and ill looking.

"Really?"  she said, uninterested.

"Really.  I'd never kill a cop.  That's Scott, he doesn't care.  He
killed Leetsdale and he shot at you at your apartment.  I wanted
Mitchell, that son-ofa-bitch."

"Why?"  Rosen asked.

"Because I joined his team to get to the White House," Bennett said.

Echoing in his voice was the same lust for power Eileen heard in
Mitchell's voice.  She wished she wasn't sitting so close to him.

"He screwed it up.  He screwed me up.  He had to start killing people,
and look where it got us."

"Krista Lewis?"  Rosen asked.

"She was just a chick.  It was an accident," Bennett said with an
attempt at a shrug that caused his face to grow sweaty.

"I didn't kill anybody but her, and she was an accident.  Wouldn't stop
fighting, was what.

I can do ten years for that, but I don't want to go to prison for
trying to kill a cop.  I'll get life.  I don't want that."

Disgusted, Eileen turned back to Alan, who seemed no worse than before.
She wished the helicopter didn't smell so badly of fuel and oil.

She wished the stretcher weren't so hard.  She wished they were there
already, damn it, how long?

"You should have waited for me," Rosen said abruptly to her.

"I did what I had to," Eileen said.  She didn't want to turn her head
but she did.

"I had to go."

"If you don't trust me, maybe we shouldn't work together," Rosen said.
His jaw was tight.  He was furious with her.

"You'll have to decide that," Eileen said hoarsely.

"I had to go after him, Rosen."  Her throat closed up to a pinhole, and
she felt the pressure of tears in her nose and eyes.  Was she going to
lose Rosen too?  She deserved no less.  She was so stupid.  She bent
her head and blinked two fat tears out of her eyes.  She watched them
fall to the dirty floor of the helicopter with a sense of distant
surprise.  When was the last time she had cried?

She felt the first warm touch of the blood soaking all the way through
Alan's pressure bandage and turned back to him.  He was so pale.  She
closed her eyes.  Nothing was important now but getting him to the
hospital.

She didn't matter anymore.  Alan Baxter mattered.  Somewhere inside
her, in the roaring dark, she held her father's love.  Her father was
no murderer.  Her father loved her.  The helicopter pounded and
shuddered around her and she held the wet bandage tighter and she
prayed desperately that they would get there soon.

Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Paris lifted his hand in a wave to Gonzalez as Babe chugged over the
top of the dune.  Joe fiddled with the radio as they wallowed down the
next slope.  The radio on all bands played nothing but music and
commercials.

"That's a good sign," Daniel said.

Joe said nothing.  His heart thudded heavily in his chest.  Eileen had
looked out the window, looking for him, as the helicopter took her
away.  That had to mean something.  It had to.

"Is Alan going to make it?"  Marcia asked.  Her voice was husky with
emotion but her eyes were calm.

"If they get him to the hospital within the next half hour or so, and
they have a trauma doctor who's not completely useless, I should think
so," Paris said.

"How'd you know how to do that?"  Daniel asked Paris.

"EMT training, and about six months up in Denver working for an
ambulance company," Paris said.

"We did runs into Denver General and University Hospital.  I hadn't
invented anything in a year and was feeling useless.  So since being a
doctor seemed extreme, I thought I'd be a paramedic.

Just for kicks, you know."

"Were there kicks?"  Joe asked, turning down the radio volume.  Paris
shrugged, his arms corded with muscle as he held Babe's steering wheel
and aimed her into the slope of a dune.

"Yeah, there were.  Not like today.  I know I saved Mr.  Baxter back
there, but didn't we just save the world, too?"

"I think so," Joe said, and laughed.

"America, anyway," Daniel allowed.

"America is the world," Paris said with a sideways smile at Daniel.

"Let's say the world," Marcia said, and blew her nose with an enormous,
unladylike honk.  She put her tissue back into her pocket and
shrugged.

"Set off powerful earthquakes wherever you want.  Who's going to stop
you from taking over the world?"

"We are," Daniel said.

"Just don't make me wear any stupid superhero outfit with tights,"
Paris muttered.

Joe laughed with the rest, but his thoughts were with Eileen, and Alan.
He sent thoughts, prayers, whatever he could, toward Pueblo and the
hospital and the trauma doctor who should not, could not be useless.

Hold on, he thought, and held on to the dashboard.  Hold on.

"We interrupt this program to bring you a special news report," said
the tinny voice of the radio announcer.

There was abrupt silence in the HummV.

"Oh, God, no," Marcia whispered.

"Turn it up," Daniel hissed.  Joe fumbled with the knob and turned it
too far.  The announcer's voice boomed into the truck.

"We have reports of an earthquake in the Midwest.  Is that right,
Ben?

Check the AP wire for me.  Are you sure it isn't California?"

Paris came to a stop at the top of a dune and let Babe idle.  He rested
his forehead on his arms.  Joe slumped back in his seat.

"We were too late," Joe said in a dull little voice.

"After all that, we were too late."

"Shh," Marcia said.

"No, that's right, the Mississippi Valley," the announcer said.

"Maybe our earthquake here in Colorado was a precursor, or
pre-trembler, or whatever it's called.  Okay, here's the report from
the AP wire.

"An unexpected earthquake shook the Midwest at 8:23 this morning.  The
earthquake made buildings sway from Kansas City, Missouri to Chicago,
Illinois and was felt as far away as Denver, Colorado.  The earthquake,
measured at 3.7 on the Richter scale, damaged some older buildings in
Memphis, Tennessee.  No fatalities were reported.  The earthquake was
along a little known fault line named the New Madrid."  That's all
we've got so far.  Looks like some flatlanders got their shorts scared
off of them today, just like we did last week.  Stay tuned for updates,
and in the meantime, here's an oldies tune to match the day, "Shake,
Rattle, and Roll.""

"He did say 3.7?"  Joe asked.

"He said 3.7," Paris said.  He gunned Babe and she spit sand and headed
down the slope of the dune.

"That would be less than four.  Less than four!"

"We did it," Daniel shouted.

"We really did it!"

"We did," Joe said.

"Alan has to live now.  He has to."

"He will," Marcia said.

"How fast can this thing go on the highway, Paris?"

"We're going to find out," Paris said.

"Just as soon as I can wrestle her back on to solid ground, that is."

Joe leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.  He kept seeing
Eileen's face in the gritty window of the helicopter.  Her face was
strained and dirty and exhausted, but there was something different
about her.  There was something different in her eyes.  Did she even
know they'd won?  At this point, he didn't think she cared.  She would,
later on, when Alan Baxter was out of danger.  Then she would care that
their little band of earthquake hunters had won.

"What a strange team we were," Marcia said, echoing his thoughts.

"I was thinking that, too," Daniel said, "Two police detectives, two
ufologists, an inventor, a computer programmer, and a retired English
professor.  What a crew."

"Two computer programmers," Joe said.

"Two?"

"Two," he said quietly.

"Me, and Jim Leetsdale.  He gave his life to give me the codes I
needed.  He's the real hero."

"You're right," Daniel said in a low voice.

"I wish he knew."

"Oh, I think he does, somehow," Marcia said.

"We'll turn a glass for him," Paris said.

"We'll toast his memory at the biggest stinkin' party the valley has
ever seen, when Alan gets out of the hospital."

"Damn right," Joe said.

"Is that Medano Creek?"  Marcia said.

"Yeah, we're almost out," Paris said.  Babe slid down the last slope,
taking an avalanche of sand with her, and roared toward the creek.  Joe
could see the glitter of sunlight on the water and the glorious fall
colors of the cottonwood trees that lined the edge of the dunes.

"We're out," Daniel said, as Babe crossed the creek.

Joe reached for the water container and took a long drink.  The water
felt delicious going down his throat, washing the last taste and touch
of the dunes away.

"Here," he said, handing the water to Paris.  Each of them drank.

Daniel, the last, poured a measure of water from the window as Babe
hauled herself back on to the roadway.

"Water for our lives," he said, with a sideways look at Marcia and
Joe.

"Thanks to Gaia, for sparing us."

"Gaia?"Joe asked.

"The earth goddess," Marcia said crisply.

"Let's ask her for Alan's life, while we're at it."

"I already am," Joe said.

"Every second."

Paris put Babe's wheels on the highway and leaned over the steering
wheel.  The engine revved up to a near scream and Babe took off like a
rocket.

"Give her all she's got, Scotty," Joe shouted, laughing.  Behind him
the dunes receded, flat and tan and uncaring.

In the center of the dunes, tiny left-behind shards of the Tesla
machine were lying on the sand.  Tonight the wind would come, Joe
thought, and the grains of sand would cover the remains, and tomorrow
the sand would be silken and unmarked.  Pure, and silent, and clean.

The Rio Grande River, San Luis Valley, Colorado

Eileen squinted and set her jaw and cast the fly rod like she was
trying to beat a carp to death.  Joe laughed so hard he staggered in
the water and nearly fell down.  She looked at him with flashing eyes
and a tight mouth.  Then her mouth relaxed and she grinned.

"I'm trying," she said.

"I know, I know," he laughed.

"I can't help it, though.  You look so cute!"

Eileen sloshed over to him and he put an arm around her.  She was
dressed in a fleecy jacket against the cold November day.  She was
wearing winter Neoprene waders that came up past her waist.  She made
waders look good.  The winter sunshine had heated her hair.  He smelled
flowers as he buried his face in the gloss of her hair.

"Say it," he said roughly.

"I love you," she said instantly.

"Want me to say it again?"

"Yes."

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she said, hugging him with her
free arm.

"Don't try to make love to me here, Alan is coming back down the river
to check on me."

"Okay," Joe sighed.

"He's still pretty slow, though.  We might be able to get in a quickie
before he gets back."

Eileen pulled back and glared at him, which gave him a perfect
opportunity to kiss her thoroughly.

Alan came around the river bend as Eileen was getting her fly rod
sorted out for another try at casting.  Joe was a good six feet down
the river, innocently untangling a knot in his leader.

Alan was a little slower, Joe thought.  He moved slowly and carefully
but he managed the fly line.  Good thing he'd been shot in his non
casting side.  Best of all was the way he looked when he saw Eileen and
waved.

She waved back, unsmiling, her face as radiant as morning.

"How's it going?"  he asked as he joined them.

"Not so well," Eileen said.

"I'm not so good at casting."

"Let's try together," Alan said.  He stepped behind his daughter and
put his arm on her casting arm.  He held the back of her hand, and as
she held the line in her other hand he moved her arm back, then
forward.

The fly line floated over the water and sailed back again, making a
perfect loop.

"Like this," Alan said, "Now let go."  The fly line settled on the
water and the whitish fluff of the fly landed on the water.

"This is a good cast.

I know there's fish in this bend, that's why I put you here."

The water sparkled in the winter sun, cold and clear as melted ice. The
fly floated downstream.  Joe watched Alan and Eileen.  Their eyes never
left the tiny fluff.  Beyond the river, the winter grasses were golden
yellow, speckled with snow.  Joe shifted in the river, his toes
protesting the lack of movement.  The icy water was making his feet go
numb.  Alan was still, Eileen was still, and the fly suddenly
disappeared underneath the water.

"Now!"

Alan pulled up Eileen's hand and the line and the tip of the fly rod
abruptly bent down.  The line tightened and went straight into the
water.

Eileen laughed as the line suddenly moved underneath the water.  It
darted to the left, then to the right.  Under the water, there was a
fish with Eileen's fly caught in its hard little mouth.

"Got one!"  Joe crowed.

"Oh, wow, what do I do, oh wow," Eileen panted, her cheeks flushed pink
with excitement.

"Keep your rod tip up," Alan said, his eyes never leaving the fly
line.

He was grinning.

"Let the line out until you've got the fish on your reel.

There we go.  Now reel in slowly.  Don't pull too hard."

It seemed like forever but it was only a few moments before Alan
scooped up the fish in his net.  It was silvery purple and spotted and
not as big as Joe expected.  Maybe a foot long.

"So small," Eileen gasped.

"I thought it would be bigger."

"This is a wild rainbow trout," Alan said reverently.  He took a pair
of forceps from his vest and expertly slipped the hook from the jaws of
the fish.

"This isn't a hatchery fish.  See the fins, how they're perfectly
shaped?  Hatchery fish have worn fins from swimming along the concrete
bottoms of hatchery ponds.  Wild trout have perfect fins and they fight
like demons.  Aren't they fun to catch?"

"Oh, my," Eileen said.

"That was incredible."  Alan let the net release the fish without
touching it.  It flipped a few drops of water at them as it swam off,
as if outraged at losing the game.  They all slogged to the bank and
sat down together.  The day was cold but there was no snow.  With the
sunshine, it was a gorgeous day to be outside in the wild.  Joe tilted
his head back and sighed.

"We ought to get back pretty soon," Eileen said.

"Supper."

"We don't want to miss Beth's cooking," Joe agreed.

"And Marcia said she was bringing Daniel and Lady Jane and Sara down
tonight."

They all grinned at each other.  Watching Beth and Lady Jane learn to
be friends was like watching two elephants get to know each other.
There was a lot of stomping and ear flapping and trunk blowing.

"Marcia is really moving down here?"  Eileen asked.

"That's what she says," Alan said.  He eased his shoulder in the
sling.

"Some people just get taken with this place, she says.  Looks like
she's one of them.  Anyway, she can visit her friends up in Fort
Collins whenever she gets the urge.  That's what she says."

"That's what she says," Joe repeated mildly.  Alan gave him a sharp
glance but Joe said nothing more.  Joe grinned to himself and wondered
when Alan was going to be leaving the San Luis Valley.  By the looks of
it, not any time soon.

"So you'll be going back to the Springs tomorrow night?"  Alan asked.

"Yeah, got to get back to work," Joe said.

"You can't take a few more days?"

"Rosen is still mad at me for taking off after you," Eileen said.  Her
face brightened.

"He didn't ask for reassignment, though.  So I'm trying to keep on his
good side.  But we'll be back for Thanksgiving, for Susan's wedding to
Frank.  We wouldn't miss that."

"It's going to be huge," Alan said with a smile.  Joe grinned too.
Susan Williams had allowed her mother to plan her wedding.  She didn't
care, she told Joe, and her mother did.  Whatever her mother wanted was
fine with her.  As rumor had it, the wedding train was long enough to
reach from the front of the church to the back.  Frank's family was
coming out from New Jersey.  Joe wondered what the easterners would
think of the San Luis Valley.

"You'll have to come up for a while after that," Eileen said
suddenly.

"The trial."

Mitchell's trial was going to be in early December and Alan had been
called by the prosecution as a witness.  Bennett's trial was scheduled
for May.

"Okay," Alan said.

"I'll come up early.  The kokanee salmon are going to be running in
eleven-mile reservoir any time now.  That's the big reservoir west of
Colorado Springs.  Kokanee are really fun to catch."

"It's about time to go," Joe said, glancing at his watch.

"I want to fish one more bend," Alan said, climbing gingerly to his
feet.

"I'll meet you back at the truck in about fifteen minutes."

"Okay," Eileen said.  She looked doubtfully at her fishing gear and Joe
knew she'd had enough.  Why spoil the experience of catching the pretty
little rainbow?

"Let's just sit here a while," Joe said as Alan disappeared upriver.

He'd reach the truck before they did, which was fine with Joe.  He had
something to talk to Eileen about.

Alan waded into the river to cast at the far bank.  The water was
freezing cold and they'd been fishing all day.  His shoulder was
starting to ache fiercely.  It was time to go, but the fishing had been
terrific today.

As his fly floated downriver his eye was caught by the figures of Joe
and Eileen.  They'd been hidden around the curve of the bank.

He watched them, puzzled, ignoring his fly.  They were on their feet
and almost looked like they were arguing.  He felt the slightest of
tugs on the fly and knew he'd missed a strike from a fish.  They didn't
see him.

He couldn't hear them over the sound of the river and he couldn't catch
their expressions.  The sun touched at the horizon and painted the
winter grasses with gold.

Suddenly Joe knelt down as though he were going to pick something up or
retie his wading shoe.  It took Alan a moment longer to realize what
Joe was doing, and he turned his back to them immediately.  There was a
tightness in his throat, a sense of happiness and loss so mixed he
could hardly breathe.  Was this what fathers felt like when their
daughters married?  The river doubled, then tripled in his vision.  He
felt absurd and yet the feeling was pure and good and sweet.

This was what it felt like to be a father.  He laughed at the river, at
the fish underneath it, at the dark blue winter sky and the beginnings
of the stars coming out directly overhead.  He was a father.  He waded
to shore, reeling up his fishing line and trying not to stumble.  He'd
meet them at the truck.  What was that line that Joe always muttered?

"All will be well, and all will be well," he said to himself, grinning
like a foolish old dog.

"And all manner of things will be well."

Colorado Springs, Colorado

"Well, here we are," Gerri Matthews said, leaning back in her chair.

Eileen wrapped her fingers around her own mug and grinned at Gerri like
they were little girls at a tea party.  The Victorian house hummed with
psychologists and social workers working on marriage problems and
abuses and relationships.  The place no longer bothered Eileen.  In
fact, she believed she was going to miss it.

"Last session, right?"  Eileen hadn't killed either Bennett or Scott,
as it turned out.  She'd re-broken two of Scott's ribs when she shot
him the second time.

"Last session," Gerri said.

"You've come a long way.  And you're taking your father up to Wyoming
to meet your parents?"

"Right after New Year's," Eileen said.

"I think they'll love him as much as I do."

"And you love Joe Tanner," Gerri remarked.

"Love, love, love," Eileen said comfortably.

"Yes, I can say love.  I even think I can do love, now."

"Too bright for the ordinary traps, as always," Gerri laughed.

"I just have one question, Eileen.  For me, not for my notes."

"Okay," Eileen said.

"What happened that night you killed Teddy Shaw?  Why did you lie to me
about it?"

Eileen was still for too long.  Gerri looked at her solemnly.  Caught
by Gerri after all, and at a time she was least expecting.  She looked
down at her hands.  Thoughts of Teddy Shaw had faded so much from her
mind that she'd forgotten what she'd done, how she'd lied.

"I'll tell you," she said slowly.

"But you won't think very well of me."

"I think well of you, Eileen," Gerri said calmly.

"That's not going to change."

Eileen grimaced and twisted her tea mug around in her palms.  It was
empty and dry but still smelled faintly of sweet herbs.

"I have to start way back, if you want to understand why I did what I
did," she said.

"All the way back."

"At the traffic accident where your parents found you."

"Yeah.  I didn't tell the whole story there, either, Gerri.  My
Dad-that's my adoptive dad, not Alan--had climbed in next to me and
steadied my head.  He'd put his own shirt on the cut on my arm.  But I
was starting to pull all the fuses.  Too much had happened, I think.  I
was just--shutting down.  He saw that, and he tried to get me to talk
to him, to tell him my name and where I was from.  But I was just
fading.  I remember what it was like, just easier not to pay attention
to what was going on out there in the world around me."

"Dad, he knew he was losing me.  Maybe I was going catatonic or maybe I
was going into shock and I was going to die.  I don't think he knew. We
never talked about what he did.  But he did it.  He reached around to
my mother and pulled her head over so I could see her.  She was dead
and her eyes were open."  Eileen swallowed hard.

""She's dead," my dad shouted into my face.

"She's dead and you're alive and you're going to stay alive.""

"That brought you back?"  Gerri said.

"Like being slapped across the face," Eileen said.

"I don't think I've ever thought about it clearly until now.  He showed
me the worst demon of my life and she was dead.  I couldn't shut down.
I couldn't die.  I know she was ill, she wasn't really a monster, but
then and there she was to me.

Even with all the love mixed in, I was more afraid of her than anything
else.  If I died, I might end up right back with her."

"You did the same to Jeannie Bernowski?"

"Oh, worse," Eileen said with a wry smile.

"She'd pulled almost all the fuses.  She was almost entirely gone,
which is what I would be in the same situation.  I knew it, too.  But
there was something there, something behind her eyes that was still
alive.  So I pulled her up and showed her Teddy Shaw lying in the grass
in front of her.  I used the same line on her that my dad used on me."
Eileen looked out of her tea mug and into Gerri's face.

"And I know I'm not a professional therapist.  That's why it isn't in
my report.  I broke the rules."

"I see," Gerri said.  She took an absent mouthful of cold tea and made
an awful face.  She put the mug down and picked up her pen.

"And?"

"And I put my pistol injeannie's hands," Eileen said.

"I aimed it at Teddy Shaw's body and I told her that if she needed to,
just go ahead and pull the trigger.  Shoot him again and again until
she knew that he was gone and was never going to hurt her again."

Gerri closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair.

"I sure hope you don't plan on writing this down," Eileen said.

"Only if you promise never to do such a boneheaded thing again," Gerri
said.

"But it did work," Eileen said.

"She came back.  She put the fuses back in and turned on the lights in
her head, just like I did.  She never pulled the trigger.  Just knowing
she could gave her back enough to want to stay alive."

"Let's just leave the shock therapy to the professionals from now on,
okay?"

"Well, it worked," Eileen said again.  She tried a smile on Gerri.
Gerri glared at her for a moment, then sighed and relaxed into a
smile.

"Okay," she said.

"I won't put it in my report."

"Thank you."

"There's a trade-off, though," Gerri said, fixing Eileen with a stern
glance.

"What?"

"Once a month, my tea, your time.  Finding your birth father and
getting married is a pretty tough transition.  You're going to need my
help.

I'll give you a good deal on cost and you never, ever lie to me
again.

Deal?"

Eileen thought it over for a few moments.  She liked Gerri.  Most of
all, she liked the Eileen that Gerri seemed to see.  Flawed and not
entirely grown up, but decent just the same.  A good person.

"Deal," Eileen said.

"I'll even keep drinking your crappy tea."

Great Falls, Virginia

Lucy hung up the phone and jumped up from her office chair.  Hank,
examining a toy in his playpen with the intensity of a research
scientist, looked up.  Fancy woke out of her daytime doze in her padded
bed and perked up her ears.

Lucy danced around the office, arms above her head, making cheerleader
sounds.  She scooped Hank up into her arms, Tonka truck and all, and
whirled around and around.

"I get to be a maid of honor," she said to Hank.

"I've never been one, did you know that?  Lots of times a bridesmaid,
but never the maid of honor.  Oh, wait, I'm the matron of honor.  This
is going to be such fun.  And she's getting married next summer, so
Daddy and you and I can take a whole week's vacation."

She turned to her computer and hit the key to save her report.  She'd
upset her boss, Steven Mills, once again.  Involving herself, even
unofficially, in what was definitely an FBI case was strictly against
policy.  Fred Nguyen had written a glowing report that gave her credit
for her involvement and got her into furious hot water.  For a while
she wondered if she were going to keep her job.

Then her two new friends came through.  Tate and Randy had more clout
than she realized.  They seemed like college students down in their
archive dungeon, but they weren't.  They'd gone through Pentagon
channels to give her credit for the recovery of the Tesla file.
Exposing Jacob Mitchell's "earth resonance" project had shaken the
Pentagon's black program management to the core and might lead to a
congressional review.

Lucy didn't care much about that, but she did care that Mills was off
her back again.  She might even get a raise.  A raise would be very
nice.

Tate and Randy had been to the house to celebrate the return of the
Tesla file and Lucy and Ted had fixed them an Italian dinner to
remember.

After a couple of bottles of good red wine, they'd all agreed, Ted
included, that it was for the best that Tesla's earthquake designs were
damaged.  The documents were stored within the machine itself and
machine oil had obliterated some of the crucial ink drawings when Joe
Tanner had destroyed the machine.  Tate and Randy carefully stored the
damaged documents anyway back in their original folder with Tesla's
handwriting on the cover.

"So how did Mitchell find the Tesla machine in the first place?"  Ted
asked, one arm holding a sleepy Hank and the other a wineglass.

"The FBI transferred a section of files from their own archives to
ours.  The section included the whole Tesla grouping," Tate said.  His
face darkened.  He was still angry about the theft.

"Mitchell must have heard about the Tesla file from someone in the FBI.
So he got to them before they came to us."

Then Tate had coughed delicately into his fist and set down his
wineglass and, after a look at Randy, had offered her a job.  They
often encountered puzzles and mysteries, and they needed an analyst who
had some time to investigate them.  An analyst might have prevented
Jacob Mitchell from carrying off the Tesla file, for example.  They had
approval for a generous salary and they'd make great bosses, they
earnestly declared.  They liked her.

Lucy, flattered and astonished, had told them she'd think it over.  She
still hadn't decided, even though the long string of Christmas beads
haunted her mind.  What were the stories locked in those boxes?

Hank shifted in her arms, and she looked down into his glorious dark
eyes.

"Woolgathering again, Hank," she said.

"I don't know about this job.

But I do know I have to lose weight.  You're weaned and I have no more
excuses.  I want to look good for Eileen's wedding.  We'll have such
fun!"

She danced around with Hank, and Fancy leaped to her feet and joined
them, panting.

Lucy was sure they looked like idiots, the three of them.  She didn't
care.  Hank laughed in her arms and Fancy barked and turned in circles
and grinned her doggy grin, wagging her tail as though it would never
stop.