Taken

Chapter One

The gleaming government car came to a halt beside a vast field of corn. Other cars lined the road, and everywhere, excited onlookers were scrambling to get a view.

“I really appreciate you taking me along on this, sir,” Eric Crawford said.

“I thought it was time you… came on board,” Owen replied.

“You won’t regret it,” Eric assured him. He glanced about excitedly. “This could be really big.”

Owen said nothing, less pleased than irritated by Eric’s enthusiasm. It was not Eric he wanted by his side, but Sam, who’d gone in the opposite direction, and was now in journalism school. Sam had had the mind and the will and the sheer energy to keep up with him. Eric seemed able to do little more than ride precariously on his old man’s churning wake.

“We get these reports two or three times a week.”

Owen said dismissively. “It’ll probably be nothing of real interest. Mutilated cattle. Dancing lights.”

Eric persisted. “But for you to come personally… there must be some reason.”

Owen shrugged. “Well, these particular reports are a little better than usual,” he admitted.

Owen got out and surveyed the scene before him, a vast field of corn that waved green and lush in the spring breeze. People were streaming in and out of the field, eager to get in on the big news. He paused briefly, then pushed his way through the crowd and the waving stalks of corn, until he came into a clearing where the corn had been leveled and lay flat to the ground as if pressed down by a huge invisible hand.

A helicopter landed a few minutes later, bearing two fresh young government agents.

“Colonel Crawford, I’m Toby Woodruff,” the taller agent said. “Defense Department. This is Ted Olsen. He’s with the NSA.”

They were low-level officials, Owen knew, and their lack of seniority reflected the low esteem to which he and the project had sunk. It should have been President Nixon in that helicopter, he thought bitterly, not two snot-nosed kids.

Owen pointed to the still whirring copter. “Let’s go for a ride-take a look from the air.”

In the air over Indiana, the leveled corn assumed the pattern of a perfect circle.

“It’s a landing field if I ever saw one,” Owen said, suddenly confident that the reports had been accurate, that something very noteworthy had happened in this cornfield. “This has happened before. Here and in France and Germany. But the scale of this. The intent. Look at that formation. It’s like a runway.”

“A landing strip?” Eric asked. “If it’s a landing strip then maybe they’re going to be…”

“Landing?” Owen interrupted.

“Look over here,” Eric cried as the helicopter banked to the right.

Owen stared out the window, down into the undulating corn, where a different pattern emerged, not a vast landing strip at all, but a huge peace symbol, and the single greeting, “Howdy.”

“Landing field?” Woodruff scoffed.

Owen gave him a lethal stare, but couldn’t rid himself of the mockery he saw in Woodruff’s eyes, the way this pasty-faced kid seemed to be looking at a man who’d wasted his life chasing phantoms. He’d once had the proof in his grasp, he thought angrily, but Russell Keys and his tumor had gone up, quite literally, in smoke. And as for his son? The way he just vanished from a bomb shelter? How could he have followed a trail that disappeared in a beam of light?

Owen stared down at the earth beneath him. Jesse Keys might well be down there somewhere, he thought, but it seemed to him that the way he’d been taken was the most powerful argument so far that whatever the visitors were doing, he didn’t have a chance against them.

“I think your control over this project has ended,” Woodruff said with a smirk.

The rocket lifted from the launch pad, and Jesse Keys held his breath as it rose into the empty blue. Men were headed for the moon. The small screen seemed hardly able to contain the magnitude of the achievement, the sheer awesome nature of what was happening.

Willie slouched on the ratty sofa next to Jesse. “Hey, man, what’s the weirdest thing you ever saw?”

Jesse shrugged, his attention still riveted on the rising rocket.

Willie tapped a small portion of brown powder into a spoon and began to heat it with a match. “I think I saw a flying saucer once.”

Jesse wrapped a belt around his arm. “I’ve been on a flying saucer. More than once. One time I saw my father. He’d been dead for four days.”

Willie sucked the solution through a cotton ball and poured it into the syringe. “Okay, my man.” He handed the syringe to Jesse. “That is really and truly weird.” He slouched back on the sofa, watching dully as the rocket continued upward. “Waste of frigging time and money, going to the moon.” His gaze drifted over to Jesse. “You know what I always admired about you? When we were in ‘ Nam, I mean? That you were the only officer who walked point. Every single mission, you walked point.”

Jesse shrugged, his attention on the few balloons Willie had placed on the table before him. “How’s my credit?”

“Sorry,” Willie said.

“I saved your life, Willie.”

“Two times, man,” Willie said. “Now I’ll save yours. Get straight, Jesse.”

Jesse released a despairing laugh. “I don’t want to get straight.”

“I know what you want. You want to get taken to that other world.” He grinned. “Well, that costs money.”

“I’m good for it.”

Willie shook his head. “No, you ain’t. You’re like every other junkie. That’s why it’s strictly cash and carry.”

Jesse gave up and returned his attention to the television. The rocket had disappeared into the empty blue by then. Well, not exactly empty, he thought. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of felt, his father’s medals inside it. “These were my dad’s,” he said. He handed them to Willie. “They should be worth something, right?” He closed his eyes wearily. “At least one balloon.”

Sarah, a young graduate student, set the canned beans and coffee on the store’s plain wooden counter while Dr. Powell, her boss and lead archeologist, went to see if the telegram had arrived. The other people in the store watched them warily, unused to strangers.

“You’re the people digging in the woods, aren’t you?” someone asked.

Powell looked at the little girl who’d suddenly come over to him. “Yes, we are,” he told her. “And who are you?”

“Wendy.”

“Nice to meet you, Wendy.”

The little girl cocked her head, her large eyes filled with innocent curiosity. “What are you looking for?”

“We’re trying to find out about the Indians who used to live up there,” Powell answered. He glanced at the other people in the store, took in their curious resentment.

“That’s nice,” a man said. “You gonna be getting the hell out of there any time soon?”

Sarah stepped back from the counter and turned to the other people in the store. “Why are you all so hostile to us?” she asked. “We’re not doing anything but digging up a few artifacts from…”

“Maybe some things should be left buried,” the man said.

“Like what?” Powell challenged. “What have we dug up that should have been left buried?”

The man hesitated, as if at the mouth of a tomb. “Word is, a mummy.”

Sam Crawford sat in his father’s study, his attention focused on an article in the Anchorage Daily News. The headline read MUMMY FOUND IN TSIMSHIAN village. An accompanying photograph showed a certain Dr. Powell standing inside what appeared to be an underground chamber, the walls of which were covered with strange markings.

Suddenly the door opened and his father stepped into the room.

“Eric has just started working on the project,” Owen said. “Did he mention that?”

“He might have,” Sam said indifferently.

“I’d hoped it would be you,” Owen said. “But I guess you’ve decided to be a reporter.”

“I won a prize,” Sam said. “Best coverage of an on-campus event.”

Owen was not impressed. “I’m offering you a chance to be a part of history, Sam.”

“I’m not going to live your life over again for you, just so you can make up for your mistakes.”

Owen’s voice turned chilly. “I never made any mistakes.”

“Chasing… little green men your whole life?” Sam replied.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam,” Owen said angrily.

“Evidently no one else does, either,” Sam said. “Because now you’ve lost your job.” He smiled. “I read about it at college. How this guy Tom Clarke fooled you with that crop circle. That’s what did it, right? That’s why you lost your job?”

“I was wrong about the crop circle, but I’m not wrong about this,” Owen said. “Something is about to happen. Maybe next week. Maybe in thirty years… but these visitors are moving toward something.” He walked to the safe, opened it and drew out the artifact. “I found this at a crash site in New Mexico,” he answered. “What crashed… it was nothing man made.” He paused to let what he’d just said sink in. “There were five… beings, in that craft. Three of them were dead. The fourth one died under observation. The fifth one…” He glanced upward. “Everything I’ve done since I found the wreckage has been about trying to understand who they were and what they wanted.” He paused a moment, then added, “That fifth one. The… survivor that was never accounted for. I tracked him down to a small town in Texas. He had formed a bond there with a young woman. The woman’s name was Sally. She was Tom Clarke’s mother. The man who made the phony crop circle in order to destroy me. She had another son, as well. Named Jacob.” He looked at Sam pointedly. “A strange boy. Not much emotion. I looked into this boy’s eyes, Sam, and I saw… all my memories and all my fears… more than that… I saw them add up. Do you understand?”

Sam shook his head.

“I saw my own death, Sam,” Owen said. “I saw how I would die.”

Powell came out of the store and handed Sarah the envelope. “Here are the test results. The body is only around six years old.”

“Well, we knew it wasn’t a mummy, no matter what the locals wanted to call it,” Sarah said.

“I also got a letter from the people at the university,” Powell told her. “The glyphs on the wall are indecipherable. No one in the language department has a clue as to what they mean or who could have put them there.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Powell.”

Powell turned to see a young man with long hair.

“My name is Sam Crawford,” the man said. “I’m a journalism student at UC Berkeley. I was hoping to talk to you about your dig.”

Powell shook his head. “I’m afraid our story’s not going to turn out to be quite as exciting as you’d hoped.”

“What do you make of the writings you found on the walls of the burial chamber?”

“They’re no language we’ve been able to identify,” Powell answered. “Probably no more real than our ‘mummy.’ And the ‘mummy’… was only a few years old. Which makes our dig a crime scene.”

Sheriff Kerby arrived at the dig a few minutes later. “Okay, so where’s the body?” he asked.

“This way,” Powell said.

At the tent, Powell opened the entrance flap and motioned the sheriff and Sam inside the chamber.

Sam came in just behind Sheriff Kerby, his eyes combing the interior of the tent, mainly a long table where the body had been laid out, but which was now bare.

“It’s gone,” Powell said, thunderstruck. He turned to Kerby. “The body’s gone.”

“Well,” Kerby said sarcastically, “it didn’t just get up and walk away now, did it? I want you and this whole bunch up and out of here by tomorrow morning.”

Something caught Sam’s eye. “Dr. Powell, there’s something over here you ought to see.”

“What?” Kerby asked.

Sam pointed to a distinct pattern on the inside of the tent, a four-fingered handprint, each finger with an extra joint.

Kerby stared at the print for a long moment, then turned to face Powell menacingly. His lips parted, but before he could speak, a patrol car ground to a halt just beyond the entrance of the tent. A woman sat inside, her gaze wild, desperate. “Wendy’s missing,” she cried. “She went into the woods behind the store and…”

“It’s all right, Louise,” Kerby told her. “Kids wander off all the time. We find them.”

“Not in these woods,” Louise said darkly.

“Don’t you worry,” Kerby said reassuringly. “We took care of that problem a long time ago.”

Louise stared at him. “Do you really believe that, Kerby?”

Jesse Keys was not sure how he’d ended up in the Veterans Hospital, but only that the last surge of the drug had taken him far, far away, perhaps to the very rim of life, where things shimmered briefly then went dark.

For the last few days, he’d stayed in the ward, talking to three old vets, listening to their war stories. But it was a nurse named Amelia who’d cheered him, Amelia who’d seemed always to be there when he needed something, and who sat beside him now, the two of them together on the riverbank, eating hot dogs and watching a clown blow bubbles into the warm spring air while kids frolicked around him.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Amelia asked.

“Yeah, those kids look really happy,” Jesse said.

A few feet away, the bubbleman took a long wand and blew a bubble that seemed big enough to capture a small child and lift it up and up into the vast forever.

Jesse watched with horror as the bubbleman turned slowly, his face now clearly visible, a thin, emaciated face, with flinty eyes.

“The camy,” Jesse whispered.

“What?” Amelia asked.

Jesse leaped to his feet. “No!” he cried. He dashed forward, charged toward the bubbleman and knocked him to the ground. “What do you want?” he screamed. “Why do you keep taking me?”

Amelia rushed up behind him and pulled him back. “Stop it, Jesse!” she cried.

The bubbleman looked directly into Jesse’s eyes, and suddenly the features of the carny vanished into another face, tired, burned out, a street performer at the end of his rope.

Jesse released him and stepped away, Amelia at his side, her arm in his.

“You can tell me,” she said as she gently drew him away.

Jesse nodded. “Maybe someday I can explain,” he said.

Sam stood alone in the woods. Several hours before, Powell had handed out whistles and led Sarah and several other people who worked at the dig into the woods to search for Wendy. Since then he’d heard that two of the searchers were now missing. It was as if the woods had swallowed them up.

He looked at the whistle, then at the engulfing woods around him. Even in daylight, the ground was beneath a veil of deep shadow, every sound frightening. He moved forward, determined to continue the search. Gradually the woods thinned around him, and he finally emerged into a meadow where waist-high grass rippled in the wind. He looked up. The sky was still faintly blue, but the light was fading. There was no choice but to return to the camp.

It was deserted when he reached it, all the others still moving deeper into the woods or making their way back.

First he walked to the tent where the body had been placed, examined the bare table, then the floor beneath, grassy, and covered with leaves. Nothing had been touched, not any other artifact from the dig, only the body. And nothing had been left behind, no bit of metal like the one his father had taken from the safe. Only the muddy print of a four-fingered hand.

For a time he studied the print, the extra joint of each finger. It was not a human hand, of course, and the more the studied it, the more he began to wonder if all the crackpot theories, all the weird sightings, all the fantastic tales were true.

He strode out of the tent and over to the earthen chamber where the body had been found. The strange markings he’d seen on the piece of metal his father had kept for so many years were clearly visible on the wall of the chamber. Powell had told him that they were not part of any human language. Nor could they be, Sam thought now. They weren’t letters, as far as he could tell, nor numbers, nor drawings of any kind. Perhaps they were part of a funeral rite, but if so, it was not a human being who’d been buried here.

Suddenly he heard a rustling from the surrounding woods. He glanced about, looking for movement within the shadowy forest. His fear spiked, and he felt its edge like a finger down his spine. He imagined that finger with four joints, amazed at how quickly he’d absorbed his father’s dread, the sense that they were… out there… waiting… watching… that no one was alone.

The rustling sounded again.

Sam wheeled around and thought he saw a shadow pass somewhere deep in the woods. He peered out into the tangled green where a figure suddenly staggered out of the shadows: Sarah, caked with mud, in tatters, her eyes staring wildly, her mouth wide open in a scream.

Chapter Two

Jesse felt Amelia’s arm in his and it seemed to him that with each touch, some part of him gave way. To the right, the Great Lake swept northward and tumbled over the horizon.

“What happened?” she asked. “In the war, I mean.” She stopped and looked him dead in the eye. “I heard you say to one of the other men that you thought you couldn’t get hurt.”

She had never approached him so directly, and Jesse knew he could not put her off any longer. “No, I knew I couldn’t be hurt.” He drew in a deep breath, like a swimmer preparing for a long dive. “We were in Quang Ngai Province. We walked into a trap. Knowing what I knew, knowing I was safe, I dared them. I said, ‘Go ahead, take me! Take me out of this one.’ ” His eyes filled with wonder.

“And they did. They got me out. And they let twenty-seven men from my unit who were there with me die.”

Amelia looked at him quizzically. “Who are ‘they,’ Jesse?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know, or won’t tell me?”

“A little of both, I guess.”

Amelia didn’t press the issue. “Then I guess I’ll just have to add that to the list.”

“What list?”

“The list of things you’re going to tell me someday,” she said as she urged him forward once again.

He smiled and touched her hair. “Will you marry me, Amelia?” he asked.

She smiled and nodded.

After depositing Sarah into safe hands, Sam returned to the site of the dig, drawn by a terrible curiosity. Taut with fear, he shined his light into the chamber, but saw nothing but a pile of rocks. The chamber was just as Powell and the others had left it, a pit nothing could come out of, save through the single entry where Sam stood.

He lowered himself into the chamber, moved past the altar, and faced the wall of rocks wedged in and around other rocks, almost like the stone walls of New England. He pulled one rock out, then another and another, until the rocks began to fall away, dropping to the floor of the chamber.

There it was.

He looked into the large shaft dug out of the ground behind the rock wall. He shined his light into the shaft, but the darkness rose solidly, blocking the beam.

Sam pulled himself into the shaft and the darkness closed in around him. It was thick and dense, and he felt a suffocating airlessness, as if the oxygen were growing thinner and thinner as he continued to drag himself deeper into the mouth of the shaft.

He was moving upward now, the floor of the shaft rising oddly, inching him toward the surface, where he could see the beam of his flashlight touch the open air. He followed the beam and pulled himself to the surface, rising out of the shaft like a man out of a foxhole.

He got to his feet and peered around.

And there it was-the “mummy”-laid out ceremoniously on a bed of leaves.

Sam knelt down and began to unravel the shroud that concealed the face. Shred by tattered shred, he unwound the shroud. The outline of the head emerged first, taking shape as he drew back the layers of cloth from a decidedly unhuman pear-shaped head and almond eyes.

“Proof,” Sam whispered.

A sound, little more than a rustle of leaves.

Sam scrambled away, hid among the trees and waited.

At first he saw nothing, then a figure emerged from the woods, moved slowly to the body and brought it tenderly into its arms, weeping softly as its four-fingered hand stroked the creature’s long-dead face.

Then, suddenly, the mysterious visitor turned and peered directly into Sam’s eyes. Sam felt himself locked in the visitor’s gaze, helpless, frozen, until a key turned, releasing him, and he fell into an engulfing darkness.

“Are you all right?”

Sam’s eyes opened and he looked around in surprise.

An old man knelt over him.

“At first I thought you might be dead,” the man said.

“Who are you?‘” Sam asked.

“Name’s Leo,” the man said.

Sam sat up quickly, watching the man closely.

“My daughter’s name was Nadine,” the man said, his face in a curious trance, the story coming from him as if from a puppet. “She’d have been forty this year.” He seemed to be looking into his past, watching it from afar. “She went off walking one night, wanted to get a better look at these strange lights we got up here. She come back a day and a half later. No idea where she’d been or what had happened to her.” The old man stopped briefly, then continued, like a doll whose string had wound down, but been pulled again, loosening his tongue. “It was about four months after that she begun to show. Had twins in early fifty-nine. Died giving life to them. It was Dr. Shilling delivered them and he told me that Nadine saw her babies before she died.” The string wound down and was pulled again. “I took the boys. Named them Larry and Lester. Strange boys. Grew too fast. Looked sixteen by the time they was eight. Had a way of peering inside a fellow. Spooked people doing that, so we moved out to the woods.”

Sam heard another rustling in the trees, turned and saw Kerby emerge from the shadowy forest.

“Evening, fellas,” Kerby said. He placed his hand firmly on Leo’s shoulder.

The old man gave no response, but only faced Sam silently, a doll whose string had broken on the final pull.

Kerby looked at Sam. “You and I are going to go for a drive.” He drew the the pistol. “Let’s go.”

On the drive Sam knew he was going to die. He knew because Kerby had brought a deputy along with him, but the car was not a police car. And he knew because Kerby talked freely, even boastfully, about his other crimes.

“Yes, I killed one of the twins,” he said. He shook his head. “Larry was the worse of the two. He took to trying his ‘abilities’ when he was about sixteen. Did Leo mention that? All the dead dogs and cattle? The things he’d do to hunters in the woods.” He glanced back to where Sam sat, the deputy beside him, in the backseat. “This town runs on hunting season and for close to ten years, we couldn’t pay folks to go into our woods.”

Sam glanced at the deputy, who was mindlessly humming “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.”

“It’s my job to keep the town safe,” Kerby went on, “and that boy was a menace. I tried to talk some sense into him but…”

The deputy leaned forward and clapped his hand on Kerby’s shoulder. “He come at you, Kerby. It’s not like you had a choice.”

“Maybe so,” Kerby said. “Anyway, I buried him under a tree. How he wound up in that burial pit, wrapped up like that…”

The deputy’s hand remained on Kerby. “You’re just too kindhearted is what’s your problem,” he said.

“Maybe so,” Kerby said again.

It was now or never, Sam thought. He steeled himself for an instant, then reached past the deputy, opened the door and lunged forward, knocking him out onto the road, then following after him, the two rolling in the gravel as Kerby slammed on his brakes and brought the car to a skidding halt.

Sam leaped to his feet, glanced about desperately, then bolted into the woods. He could hear Kerby and the deputy in pursuit, thrashing through the undergrowth like angry bulls. If they caught him, there’d be no more driving down the road. They would kill him where he stood.

He ran and ran, and the woods seemed to thicken around him, branches slapping at his face, the undergrowth clutching at his shoes and pants like tiny, entangling arms.

A figure suddenly darted in front of him, blocking his path. At first he thought it must be Kerby or the deputy, but he couldn’t imagine how either of them could have managed to circle around and get in front of him.

He squinted hard, and the figure took shape, the head slightly pear-shaped, the arms elongated, and yet incon-testably human.

“Can you… come with me?” Lester asked.

They walked together, through the trees, into the ever-more entangling forest.

Then the forest suddenly drew back, and he stood in a clearing where a small cabin rose in the distance, its lights blinking out of the darkness. At the door, Lester stepped back and motioned Sam inside, where he saw a little girl lying on a couch.

“She’s hurt bad,” Lester said as they moved toward the cabin. “Must have tried to climb a tree to see where she was and she fell. Her leg’s broke in a couple of places.”

Sam went over to her. She was breathing slowly, her eyes closed.

“I sneak over and leave food,” Lester said. “I do it when she’s asleep, ‘cause I don’t want her to look at me.”

“What happens when people look at you?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” Lester answered. “When my brother and I were kids, we used to just scare folks mostly… but then it got worse. It’s nothing I can stop from happening… I think… people look at us… they see too much.”

“All their memories and all their fears,” Sam said, almost to himself.

Lester nodded. “I guess you could say that.”

Sam glanced about the room, his eyes lighting on another body laid out on a blanket, the unwrapped corpse of Lester’s brother, Larry.

“Why’d you wrap your brother up like that?” Sam asked.

“My brother and I, sometimes we would draw in this weird language. We never knew what it meant, but I thought maybe if I wrapped him up like that, put him somewhere special with all that writing all around him then…”

“Maybe he’d come back to life.”

“Kind of foolish, huh?”

“No, Lester,” Sam said. “I don’t think that’s foolish at all.”

Lester shook his head. “I never meant to hurt any of those people that dug up the grave. I was just trying to get help for the little girl.” He seemed almost to shudder at the way people reacted to him. “And the lady, the one that was coming out of the grave… I only looked at her for a second.”

“She’s going to be fine,” Sam assured him.

Lester looked at Sam with childlike helplessness. “My… whatever it is I do to people… I guess it got stronger after Larry left… I never really wanted anyone to get hurt.”

Sam’s gaze drifted toward the floor, where he suddenly noticed spots of blood. “You’re hurt too,” he said to Lester. “We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

Lester shook his head determinedly. “No, just worry about the little girl.”

Sam glanced back at her.

She stirred briefly, then opened her eyes.

“Hi,” Sam said softly.

“Hi,” the little girl said. “Are you the one who’s been bringing me food?”

“No, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Wendy.”

“Well, you’re going to be just fine, Wendy.”

Wendy looked at Lester. “Is that him? I want to say thanks.”

Lester moved quickly into the shadows.

“Not now,” Sam said, blocking her view of Lester. “Listen, I’m gonna pick you up. It might hurt a little. Can you be brave?”

Wendy nodded.

Sam reached to lift Wendy into his arms, and as he did so, a rock shattered one of the cabin windows.

“Bring him out, Lester,” someone cried from beyond the window.

Sam crouched at the window, lifted his head slightly and peered out. In the clearing, a group of local people held torches while others emptied cans of gasoline all around the cabin.

“The little girl is in here,” Sam shouted. He saw Wendy’s mother step out of the crowd.

“Stop pouring the gas,” she cried. “Wendy’s in there.”

“I’m coming out with the girl,” Sam shouted. He looked at Wendy. “You ready, honey?”

Wendy nodded.

Sam drew her into his arms and headed for the door.

Lester stepped away, but not before Wendy caught him in her eye.

“Mister?” she said sweetly. “Thank you.”

Lester touched her face with his strange hand. “You’re welcome,” he said.

Wendy’s mother rushed forward as Sam came out of the cabin.

“Thank God,” she cried, her eyes suddenly fixed on Wendy’s injured leg.

“Did he do this to you?” she asked her.

“No, Mommy,” Wendy replied. “I fell out of a tree.”

A man stepped up to Louise. “Get Wendy back to the car,” he told her. “We’re going to finish this once and for all.”

Sam felt a level of fear he’d never experienced before. He’d never been surrounded like this, lost and helpless and utterly misunderstood… as Lester was.

“Why don’t you let me take it from here.”

The familiar voice came from out of the darkness, and Sam suddenly realized it was his brother, Eric.

Eric stepped forward, Kerby and the deputy and Dr. Shilling just behind him, keeping their pace with his, all three of them moving at Eric’s command.

“What are you doing here, Eric?” Sam asked.

Eric lifted the copy of the Anchorage newspaper Sam had left in Las Vegas. “You weren’t very hard to follow, Sam,” he said. “And from everything the sheriff and Dr. Shilling have been telling me, you’ve got something here that’s important to the project.” He looked at Sam pointedly. “I’m here to keep you from doing anything… unfortunate.”

Sam’s face grew taut. “There’s nothing here for you, Eric.”

Eric smiled. “I think I’d like to see for myself.” He stepped toward the cabin, but Sam blocked his way.

“You can’t go in there,” Sam told him firmly.

“You’re going to stop me?” Eric said mockingly.

“You could be killed, Eric.”

Eric released a mirthless chuckle. “You care about me? Sam, I’m touched.”

Sam grabbed his arm. “I’m not going to let you take him.”

“Get your hand off me,” Eric snapped, pulling his arm away.

Suddenly Leo pushed his way out of the crowd and ran toward the house.

A man stopped him, a Zippo lighter in his hand. “Step back, Leo. We’re going to put Lester out of his misery.” He lit the lighter. “Stand back,” he said, then tossed the lighter to the ground.

The porch ignited, flames rising greedily up the walls and supporting posts. Sam wheeled around and charged through the flames and into the cabin where Lester stood in the far corner, Larry in his arms.

A wall of flame separated him from Lester, but through that wall, Sam could see it playing like a home movie in the bottomless pools of Lester’s two almond eyes: Eric as a little boy, running through the house, then his mother, spilling drinks over his brother’s homework. Suddenly he was in his father’s study, watching helplessly as his mother ransacked it, then again years later, his father standing at the safe, drawing something out of it, a small piece of metal.

He screamed, as all his memories flooded over him in a sea of anguish, and suddenly he felt himself hurled back from the past, returned to the cabin in time to watch helplessly as Lester stepped into the flames, his own death now burning in him, reducing him to ash.

Chapter Three

Owen had imagined happiness as such a simple thing, just the feel of his granddaughter in his arms, the way her large eyes seemed to study him, as if already yearning for his secret.

“Come on, Mary, say ‘Grandpa,’ ” he said quietly.

“She’s only a week old,” Julie told him.

Owen laughed. “Of course.” He looked at the baby tenderly. “I wish Sam…”

“Right,” Eric blurted stiffly. He reached out and pulled Mary from his father’s caress and handed her to his wife. “Julie, could you give Dad and me a minute?”

Julie rose, holding Mary to her chest, and left the room like an obedient soldier summarily dismissed.

“I bring my baby over to you, and you think about Sam,” Eric said sourly.

“I’m worried about him,” Owen explained. “I haven’t heard a word from him since he left.”

“You won’t be hearing from him anymore, Dad.”

Owen stared at Eric darkly. “What are you talking about?”

“Sam is dead,” Eric told him brutally.

Owen felt his soul empty.

Eric’s voice was as cruel as his eyes. “He went trying to find proof that would destroy you. He died trying to bring you down. He hated you that much.”

Owen sucked in a cold breath. He felt something close inside him, the last open chamber of his heart.

“You never told me any of the things you told Sam… I would never have broken your trust and you never once gave it to me.”

Owen slumped forward, then reared back, the room closing in upon him.

“Is this what you saw, Dad?” Eric taunted him.

Owen clutched his left arm. He felt one side of his face draw down, pain exploding everywhere, shooting tongues of fire through every vein and artery.

“Is this what you saw in that kid’s eyes?” Eric sneered.

Owen dropped to his knees.

Eric towered above him, staring down in spiteful triumph. “A stroke, right? The moment of your death? That’s why you always hated me. You knew I was the last thing you’d ever see.”

In the fading light, as the curtain fell, Owen realized that it had all come to nothing, all his cruelty and lies, his long train of crimes. He had sown the wind, and reaped the whirlwind of a son who would do no better, reach no higher wisdom, find no better life than his own sorry round of days. Oh, he had made a mark in the world, he thought as he tumbled forward at Eric’s feet, but it was only the mark of Cain.

Tom and Becky Clarke stopped at the receptionist’s desk. “We’re here to see Jack Barlowe,” Becky said.

A moment later, he stepped out into the room, a man who’d named himself Jack Barlowe, though Jacob’s features remained unmistakable. He was twenty-eight years old now, but he looked much older, already frail and losing his hair.

“My, God, Jake,” Becky breathed.

Jacob drew Becky into his arms, held her briefly, then did the same to Tom.

They sat down on a bench in the lobby.

“I read about your crop circle,” Jacob said. “The peace sign. Very funny.”

Tom smiled. “Not to Owen Crawford.” The smile widened triumphantly. “I wanted him to know he’d messed with a good Texas family.”

Becky touched Jacob’s face. “We thought with him gone, we could risk coming to see you.”

Jacob shifted the subject from himself. “How’s Mom?”

“Still feisty,” Becky replied. She glanced toward the reception desk, noticed how the woman behind it glanced away. “That woman, the receptionist.”

“Carol,” Jacob said.

Becky placed a finger at each side of her head. “I’m sensing something,” she said, pretending psychic powers.

“Really?” Jacob said with a shy smile.

Becky looked at him knowingly. “So, Jake, how long have you been going out with her?”

Eric stared contemptuously at the new sign that adorned his father’s old office. Lt. Colonel Marty Erikson.

“Eric, thanks for coming,” Marty said as Eric came through the door.

Eric gave Marty one of his father’s smiles. “You’re the boss.”

“How’s the new baby?”

“Fine,” Eric said, faking a bright cheerfulness. “Mary gets cuter every day.”

Marty’s tone turned serious.

“Listen, Eric,” he began, “I’ve got to say something here. This kind of thing has a way of coming out and I just want to clear the air between you and me about it.” He paused briefly, then went on. “I was always, not to speak ill of the dead, I was always a little afraid of your father.”

“He had that way about him.”

“Yes, he did,” Marty said. “You remember my friend Howard Bowen?”

“He was with my mother when she died.”

“That night, Howard told me he was driving your mother to a clinic in Minnesota,” Marty said. “For rehab.”

“Well, Howard and my mother were… close.”

“That’s not the way I remember it,” Marty said coolly. “Your dad took a car from the motor pool that night. When he returned it, the car had four hundred and seventeen new miles on it.”

Eric lifted his head slightly, as if to receive a blow.

“That’s the exact round-trip distance from Groom Lake to the spot where Howard and your mother were killed.” Marty waited for Eric to respond, then continued when he didn’t. “They were both killed with Howard’s service revolver. He lost that revolver two days before he died. I remember him asking me if I’d seen it. He said he’d left it in his desk drawer and it just disappeared.”

Eric felt it all come together, his father’s work, his mother’s murder. Almost to himself, he said, “She was drinking a lot. Threatening to expose his work.”

Marty did not deny it, and in that lack of response, Eric felt that he’d finally reached the truth not only of what had happened to his mother, but also what had to happen next. “Thank you for telling me this, Marty,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

Eric left the office, but only after shaking Marty’s hand with a hearty flourish.

It didn’t take long to decide how to do it, and by nightfall, Eric had chosen the two MPs and put them in position.

He stepped out of the shadows when Marty approached. Once again, he offered his father’s smile.

“I checked the motor pool records, Marty,” he said. “The night my mother was killed, you checked out that car, not my father. That makes you an accomplice. Accessory before the fact.”

Marty stared at him, stunned.

Eric motioned the two MPs forward. “These men will hand you over to the civilian authorities in Carson City,” he added. “I’m sure your fear of my father will be taken into account, as well as your service record.”

“And you’ll be stepping up to take over the project,” Marty said.

Eric nodded. “Who better?”

“The acorn doesn’t fall far, does it?”

Eric’s smile lay like a dagger across his lips. “Not this time, no.”