There was nothing else attached to the tower. No cellular transceiver. No microwave relays. Nothing but the heavy tube and the strange black drum. As Dryden listened, the thing’s bass hum seemed to come not only from overhead but from the tower itself, the steel lattice vibrating like a tuning fork. Even the hardpan beneath his feet seemed to throb.
Was there any reason to bring Rachel down to see this thing? What could she learn from it? He thought of her reaction to the tower in Bakersfield. If a random one could provoke that response in her, would the details of this one do more?
She would insist on coming. He could refuse—but what was the plan after that? Well, that was simple: There wasn’t one.
Dryden cursed under his breath.
He went back to the car but didn’t get in. If he was bringing Rachel here, there were safety measures to take first. These, too, were simple.
He tilted his face skyward and turned very slowly in a complete circle. He wasn’t looking for aircraft. He wasn’t looking for anything at all.
He pictured the satellite feeds he’d seen during his active years. Even that technology—outdated compared to what Gaul was using—had been able to resolve human faces in bright daylight. The resulting detail might not be wedding-picture sharp, but it would be more than enough to identify someone.
For good measure, Dryden made another slow circle, taking a minute or more to do it. If it had occurred to Gaul to keep watch on this place, then one of his computer rooms would suddenly be buzzing with activity.
Dryden opened the driver’s door of the Honda, got behind the wheel, and settled in to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
An hour passed.
Nothing happened.
Dryden opened the door and stood again. He made a visor of his hand and swept his gaze over the horizon on all sides. No choppers coming in. No vehicles coming down the two-lane from Cold Spring.
There were good-sized cities, sure to have at least one police helicopter, within half an hour’s flight time of this location. Those aircraft would’ve scrambled within a few minutes, if one of Gaul’s satellites had spotted Dryden here.
Gaul couldn’t have known this was a trick—that Rachel wasn’t in the car. At night, a satellite using thermal vision could’ve seen that she wasn’t in the vehicle, but in sunlight, with the roof of the car hotter than any person who might be inside, there was no chance of that.
If Gaul had been watching this place, the response would’ve already come down. Fast and hard.
Dryden waited another minute, then got back in the car and started it.
*
When he pulled up to the overlook, Rachel practically sprinted out of the trees. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen relief so vivid in a pair of eyes before. She climbed into the passenger seat and took hold of his arm—it was like she needed to be sure he was real.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Nothing I could make sense of.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he beat her to it.
“Yes, I’ll take you there. We’ll look at it for exactly one minute, and then we’re getting the hell out of here.”
*
For the first three or four miles of the drive, right up until the tower came into view, Rachel felt only exhilaration. She guessed part of it was excitement at maybe learning something in the next few minutes, but there was no denying what was mostly behind the feeling: She was no longer up in the woods, all by herself.
She had no intention of telling Sam how that had felt. Being scared—for him, more than for herself—had been one thing, but above all, what she’d felt was …
Cold.
That was all she could think of to describe it. Being alone felt cold, after all this time spent with him. All this time spent close to that fireplace feeling that seemed to roll off of him and encircle her. She was pretty sure she knew what that feeling was, though she didn’t plan to talk about that either. No doubt it would be awkward for both of them. No matter, though. It was enough just to feel it again.
She was thinking about that, and smiling, when her eyes picked out the faint line of the tower, way out ahead against the desert sky.
The smile went away. The same irrational fear she’d felt in Bakersfield, as if she were looking at a giant bug, stole back over her.
Sam noticed.
“We can turn back,” he said.
Rachel shook her head. She tried to push the fear out of her voice before speaking. “I’ll be okay.”
*
She felt the vibration in the ground as soon as she got out of the car. It hummed through the soles of her shoes, into her feet and her bones.
“Are you alright?” Sam asked.
She nodded.
Her eyes had fixed on the large black pop-can-shaped thing, a hundred feet up. The whole tower scared her, but that thing was the worst somehow. She made herself take a deep breath—her breathing seemed to go shallow if she wasn’t careful.