“I
should have known,” the Sentry bemoaned. “I was stupid. The only way they could have followed us here was through the credit card I used to rent the boat. I thought those thugs wouldn’t have the capability to do something like that. They must be well-connected.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tegan said aloud; inwardly, she wondered how in the world the Sentry was driving with a bullet wound in his arm. “Marshall, I know you don’t want to, but we should really get you to a hospital. Let me or Aari drive.”
“No.”
Tegan, fed up with his stubbornness, demanded, “Then what?”
“Get my bag, please.”
“Um . . . Sure . . . Where is it?”
“It should be by Aari’s feet in the back.”
Aari passed the bag to Tegan, who opened it. “What am I looking for?”
“A small green bottle with silver powder in it,” Marshall answered.
She rummaged around until she found the item. She held it up for the Sentry to see. “This it?”
“Yes. I need to know, are you squeamish when it comes to blood?”
“Uh, not really. Why?”
“What you’re holding is an old Dema-Ki healing compound. Or at least a knockoff version that I made. It still does the trick, but it takes a little longer to work. I need you to untie the bandage and pour a quarter of the contents of the bottle directly into the wound.”
“While you’re driving?”
“Yeah. The sooner we get this done, the better it will be.”
Tegan pulled off the bloodied strips that were tied around his upper arm, popped the cap of the bottle open, and tilted it until the dust trickled into the wound. Marshall winced, making Tegan worry that she’d done something wrong. “Is it supposed to hurt?”
“Just a little, and for a bit. It’ll abate soon. Thanks.”
Tegan put the bottle back into the bag. Marshall passed her his phone. “Go into my contacts and call Josh. Put him on speaker, please.”
“Gotcha.” Tegan found the scientist’s name and tapped it.
Josh picked up the call. “Marshall!”
“Hey, Josh,” Marshall said. “I need to cut to the chase. Tegan, Aari and I went to the B-29 wreckage and—”
“You found it!”
“We did, but the canister wasn’t there.”
“That can’t be right. Are you absolutely certain?”
“As certain as I’ll ever be.”
Josh was beyond devastated. “No, no. That’s impossible. It has to be there. You must have missed it.”
“Josh, listen . . . Dr. Branson was up there in age when he told you all this. Maybe he wasn’t able to recall things as they happened exactly.”
“No. That man was as alert as I ever saw him. Maybe even more so. These were not the ramblings of a dying man.”
“I didn’t say that. But maybe his memory had gone a little fuzzy.”
“Perhaps, but not on this subject. I’m telling you, Marshall, that man was completely lucid.”
“I don’t know what to say, Josh. All I know is that the canister wasn’t down there. Aari went with me. He can vouch for that as well.”
“I don’t understand,” Josh mumbled. Tegan heard the dejection in his voice.
We’re
all
down. We came all the way out here and failed to find the canister.
Marshall tried jogging the scientist’s memory in hopes that there would be some information that he might have missed. Tegan, paranoid that Tony and his men might have repaired their vehicle and were already giving chase, tuned out of the conversation and scanned the road behind them. For a fleeting moment she thought she saw a black SUV but it turned out to be a delivery van. She was lost in anxiety for several moments until she heard Josh exclaim, “Wait! Wait, wait, wait. Wait.”
“Remembering something?” Marshall asked sanguinely.
“Yes . . . Well, maybe. Dr. Branson did mention something else. At that time it didn’t seem significant . . . ”
“What was it?”
“After the plane crashed, they scrambled out onto their life boats. Dr. Branson remembered arguing with a crew member about retrieving the canister but the other man was opposed to it because the aircraft was sinking. The crew member said a lot of the equipment on board had been ejected from the plane when it hit the water and he wasn’t going to risk his life searching for something that might already be gone. It so happened that there was another person in the vicinity, a young man in a canoe who called out to them to make sure they were alright, then rowed away to get help.”
“What happened then?”
“They paddled over to the floating debris but found nothing. He was sure that the canister had gone down with the plane and that they could have retrieved it. Here’s what I’m thinking. That young man with the canoe was the only witness to the entire incident. Maybe, just maybe, he might know something about the canister.”
Tegan turned to Aari; a little bit of hope had crawled back to them.
“Do you have any info on this witness?” the Sentry asked. “Did Dr. Branson see him again after that?”
“Sadly, no. It made the news back in the day, though. I’m sure local newspapers ran the story, and small town papers would have included the names of those who were present. You should be able to find information at one of the libraries around there. They usually maintain records of stuff like that.”
Marshall looked at his watch. “Pretty sure the libraries are closed right now.”
“If we could find a place with Wi-Fi,” Aari said from the backseat, “I can check to see if they’ve digitized their newspaper archive.”
“Good idea, Aari,” Josh praised.
“It’s yet another long shot, though,” Marshall said. “And I mean really long. What’s there to say this kid—or man, now—would know anything about the canister?”
“He’s the best lead we have, Marshall. None of the crew members are alive today.”
Marshall bobbed his head slowly in agreement. “We’ll call back and let you know if we find anything.”
“Please do.”
Tegan ended the call and passed the phone back to Marshall. “Where are we going?”
“I remember seeing a motel around here,” he replied. “The sign said free Wi-Fi, so Aari can use his laptop there. We haven’t picked up a tail, have we?”
“Nope, nothing of concern,” she said.
“That’s a relief to hear.”
They reached the motel half an hour later. As they walked toward the entrance, Marshall said, “Would you look at that. The wound’s almost all closed up now.”
“Sorcery,” Aari whispered jokingly, but both he and Tegan were blown away.
Dema-Ki is amazing
, Tegan thought.
I really miss that place.
The woman behind the check-in desk eyed the Sentry. He noticed, and shrugged. “Hiking accident.”
While he got a room for them, the teenagers stood back and repressed their snickers as the woman at the check-in desk had to force herself to continuously draw her eyes away from Marshall’s fit, bare chest. The Sentry didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he made a point to ignore it. He paid by cash, took the keycard and led Tegan and Aari to their room. It was small inside, with two beds, a round table, and a couch.
“I’ll take the couch,” Marshall said.
Aari fell onto one of the beds, connected his laptop to the motel’s Wi-Fi and soon all that was to be heard from him was the patter of his keyboard and some muttering. “Maybe Boulder City newspapers . . . And Overton. Hmm . . . ”
Tegan kept vigil by the windows in case their pursuers turned up but as time wore on, she calmed down and paid more attention to Aari as he spoke to himself.
“Okay, forget local newspapers . . . How about high school papers? Maybe he was still in school at the time . . . ”
Tegan lurched toward the window as a car pulled into the premises. When she saw the occupants get out, she thought,
Just a couple . . . Good.
Aari was still muttering. “So not Boulder City, then. Overton?” He went quiet for a few minutes, then yelled out, startling Tegan and Marshall. “Got it! Right here in the school newspaper, they ran a small article about the B-29 crash and the student who went for help!”
Tegan forgot about her vigil and practically cannonballed onto the bed beside him. Marshall peeped over her shoulder. Aari pointed at a black-and-white photo of a thin but athletic-looking teenager on the screen.
“His name is Elwood McAllister,” Aari said. “Let’s see if we can find out where he lives.”
He typed the name into the search bar and included the name of the state and county. He scrolled down a few links before one in particular caught their eyes. Marshall rested his forehead against the edge of the bed as Tegan fell back and clawed at her face.
“Are you
kidding
me?” she cried. “He’s
dead?
”
Aari clicked on the link. “It says in the obituary here that he served in the Vietnam War as a pilot. His jet was shot down, so he was KIA. They mention his loved ones here . . . ”
Marshall looked at the laptop again. “Does he have any kids?”
“No kids, no. Uh, it does mention that he was survived by his wife who . . .”
“Where does she live? Wait, better question—is she still alive?”
“I’ll check . . . ” More taps on the keyboard. “Yes, she is! Oh. She remarried. And you’re not going to believe this—she’s right here in Overton. Looks like she’s lived most of her life in this town.”
“Get the address,” Marshall instructed. “We’ll see her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You really think she’d know anything about the canister?” Tegan asked doubtfully.
“As long as we have some kind of lead, we need to pursue it.”
Aari keyed the address into his phone, then shut his laptop down with an air of success and called Jag to tell him of the day’s events. After completing the call, he relayed what Jag had told him to Tegan and Marshall over a takeout dinner the Sentry had ordered, paid for with cash. Exhausted, they bade each other good night then turned off the lights and promptly went to bed. Despite Tegan’s fear of Tony finding them, she fell into a night of restful sleep.
J
ag parked the pickup truck in front of the Sanchez farm house just as the sun was setting and hopped out, mulling over his conversation with Aari. He picked up three shopping bags from the back and walked toward the front door. Jag had been relieved to hear that his friends and the Sentry were okay, but it bothered him that Tony had been able to track them to Lake Mead so quickly.
Does that mean they know the rest of us are in Kansas?
Jag stepped into the house and passed the living room on the way to the kitchen. As he was putting away the groceries, Kody trotted in. “Yo. What did you get for dinner?”
“Tuna salad. There wasn't much available.”
“Oh.” Kody peered into the two bags that Jag had left untouched. “I see the gizmo and hardware stores were open. Got everything you need for your plan?”
“Mmhm.” Jag put away the last of the groceries. “You know, I never figured we’d use our vacation money to buy these things.”
“Hey, if things go well, these could be considered souvenirs.”
They headed to the living room where Mariah was sitting beside Lady on a large throw rug, hugging her. She looked up at the boys as they walked in. “Hey. Got everything?”
Jag stretched out on one of the couches. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You okay? You seem a little preoccupied.”
“I was on the phone with Aari on my way here. They had a pretty big incident.”
“What happened?”
“Tony and his men came after them but they managed to escape. Marshall suspects that they traced his credit card transactions somehow. But that’s not the only thing. Marshall was . . . shot.”
Mariah, horrorstruck, pulled away from Lady. “What—how bad is he hurt?”
“It went right through his arm so it’s a clean wound, but he’s refusing to go to a hospital. Says he can patch himself up for now. Aari says he doesn’t look anywhere near out of the game, which is good.”
“Good Lord, he’s crazy.”
“Are they safe now?” Kody fretted. “Away from Tony? I’m telling you, when I get my hands on that piece of—”
“They booked it out of there, yeah.” Jag traced the contour of his pendant. “They’re lying low in a motel some ways away from Lake Mead.”
Kody sat down heavily on the other couch. “Did they at least find the canister?”
Jag’s face tightened. “No. It wasn’t there.”
Kody seemed to teeter on the edge of a fit. “Oh, great!
Great!
What are we gonna do now, then? Can Marshall’s friend in Goleta create some kind of explosive that we can toss into the nanomites’ hideout?”
“About that . . . Aari says that the nanomites are nearly indestructible. That’s kind of why they went searching for that canister. There’s an extremely rare material inside that may act as an anti-nanomite. But”—Jag sat up—“just because we can’t destroy them doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to at least disrupt them.”
Mariah pushed her copper-blonde hair over her shoulders as she laid down beside Lady. “Not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
Jag picked up a pencil and a small sketchpad from the coffee table. “We said we were gonna figure out a plan to get into the nanomites’ base. Look, I’ve had an idea in mind and I’ve already got the tools we’ll need tonight. Come up here.”
His friends joined him on the couch and watched with growing curiosity as he drew out his plan on the sketchpad. “Awesome art skills,” Kody said.
Jag hit his friend on the arm with his pencil. “I get it, I’m not Tegan. Bear with me here. I think we’ll be able to get into that garage tonight.”
* * *
The three walked up the street toward the blue house at the end of the road. It had been a restless drive to Ransom and the friends were glad to have finally arrived at their destination. They carefully peeked through the narrow-barred gate. The property looked as vacant as it had the night before.
“You ready?” Jag asked Mariah.
She removed her knapsack and pulled out a heavy black cloth. “All I need are Kody’s eyes.”
The aim was to render blind the middle of the three cameras that watched over the garage. Once Kody had recalled what model they were, it took a few quick keystrokes to find out that the cameras had a viewing angle of a hundred-and-thirty degrees. Taking out the camera in the center would give the friends a narrow blind spot to tread through. The trick was for Mariah to drop the black cloth over the camera fast enough so it would seem to anyone monitoring as if the camera had a temporary malfunction.