Like what?
They’ve built their own copies of the machine, but there’s more to it than that. They’ve got some kind of system they created, to exploit this technology in ways we never thought of.
Exploit it how?
Claire raised her head from her forearms and met Dryden’s eyes. Hers looked haunted.
“Dale told me some of what Curtis had told him,” she said. “Details about this system these people built, whoever the hell they were. It scared the shit out of me, just hearing about it. It’s … brilliant. And horrible. Dale told me that much, and then he said he had to go. He told me to ditch my phone and get a throwaway. He said he’d get one, too, and he’d leave the number with the machine I was supposed to pick up.”
Her gaze dropped to the open case. The tablet computer and the strange black box.
“This machine was there when I got to the place,” she said. “And the phone number. But when I called it, thirty seconds later, there was no answer. I gave it a minute and tried again, and then I ditched that phone, too, and got out of there. Six hours later, on the news, I found out what had happened. Maybe you heard about it, too, in a way.”
Dryden thought about it. Three days ago, the Bay Area—some memory flickered but didn’t quite light up. Some big story he’d just caught the end of, flipping past the news.
“Chemical fire and explosion,” Claire said. “A company called Empire Services. All employees dead or simply unidentifiable. Empire Services was the public name of Bayliss Labs. The building that was destroyed was Bayliss’s entire facility. I have no idea if Dale or Curtis is still alive somewhere. I don’t have any safe way of looking for either of them, and I guess they could say the same for me.”
For a long time she just sat there, holding the wheel again. Like it was the gunwale of a lifeboat. Like her own weariness would drag her into the deep if she let go.
“Whatever you need help with,” Dryden said, “I’m in. You know that. You had to know that before you even called me.”
She looked at him. An edge of sadness twisted her features.
“What?” Dryden said.
“I had no intention to involve you in all this,” Claire said softly. “Not for something random like the guy in the trailer, and not for the rest of this, either. I never meant to drag you into it at all.”
“Then why did you?”
Claire’s eyes went back to the machine.
“I didn’t, actually,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Claire started to respond, but stopped. A pair of headlights broke into view to the south, coming up 395 in the same direction Dryden and Claire had driven a few minutes before. The vehicle’s outline was just visible against the dim sky—a low shape with a light-bar on its roof. A police cruiser.
None of its flashers were on. The car was going the speed limit, maybe a little faster. Nothing about it suggested urgency or purpose. Just a random patrol.
“Shit,” Claire whispered.
She closed the plastic case, blacking out the glow of the tablet screen and plunging the Land Rover’s cab into darkness. Already its headlights and instrument panel were off. Along with Dryden’s Explorer, the Land Rover sat two hundred feet off the road where the cop would pass. The two vehicles were unlikely to be visible to the officer, though they would have to arouse suspicion if they were spotted.
Closing in now, the cruiser passed through a long, gentle curve where the road skirted some shallow rise in the desert. Dryden had hardly noticed the curve when he’d driven it himself. He noticed it now because it sent the police cruiser’s high beams swinging ten degrees west of the highway, out into the darkness where he and Claire were parked. An unwitting searchlight.
The brightest portion of the beams came nowhere near the two parked vehicles, but the beams’ periphery cast a faint glow through the nearby scrub, setting shadows beneath each chaparral bush. Dryden instinctively looked down to keep his eyes from shining. Claire did the same. Nothing could be done about the reflective metal and glass of the two SUVs.
Claire’s fingertips drummed on the wheel, the uncharacteristic tension running through her again.
“It’s not a problem if he sees us,” Dryden said.
“It’s a big problem.”
“We’re seventy miles from the trailer. There’s nothing to connect us to it.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“What, then?” Dryden asked.
Claire didn’t answer. She raised her eyes just enough to watch the cruiser coming on. It was a few hundred yards south now, its headlights finally swinging back onto the road as it moved beyond the curve. A few seconds later, without slowing, it blasted by and continued north into the darkness.
Then its brake lights came on.