Dryden had been there since Marnie had left the federal building.
She had the radio on. She flipped through the stations, one every second or two. She caught the tail end of a U2 song that gave way to a news report: the latest on the Miracle in the Mojave. The whole mediasphere had begun calling it that about two hours ago. Now as Marnie listened, she heard a sound bite that had become the go-to clip for all the networks. It was Leah Swain’s mother, being interviewed at the hospital where she’d just been reunited with her daughter. Through tears that cracked her voice almost beyond discernibility, she had a message for the man and woman who had rescued her little girl.
Thank you. Whoever you are.
Then someone—maybe a reporter, but more likely a random onlooker—yelled, Do you think they were angels?
There was no answer to that, because by then—as Marnie had seen in the televised version of this clip—Leah’s mother had turned to go back into the hospital.
“Let’s just go see,” Marnie said.
She pushed the Crown Vic to 90 and changed lanes.
*
She was five minutes from El Sedero when the little red thumbtack on the map started moving. She watched the phone’s display in glances as she drove: Dryden left the strip-mall parking lot and headed east on a surface street, away from the oceanfront. He crossed under the 101 freeway, then turned onto the northbound on-ramp, accelerating and merging in. The map screen automatically scaled out to a wider zoom as Dryden sped along, moving up the coast toward Santa Barbara.
A data tag popped up next to the thumbtack, showing Dryden’s speed: just above the posted limit. Marnie still had the Crown Vic doing 90. Watching the map, she did the rough math in her head: She would overtake him within five or ten minutes. Well, she’d catch up, anyway. She had no desire to overtake him. Better to hang back half a mile, just in visual range.
*
Dryden had his windows all the way down, the ocean air rushing through the Explorer’s cab. As he drove, the last portion of Curtis’s letter cycled through his thoughts, key passages standing out from the rest:
Dale Whitcomb is alive, Claire. He and I were in touch for a few hours, that last day, when everything went to hell—the day he left the machine in a safe place for you to find. I know he also left a phone number for you, along with the machine, but I’m guessing you got no answer when you tried to call him. When the Group’s people attacked Bayliss Labs that day, Whitcomb got away, but he had to leave behind everything, including the phone you could have reached him on. He just wasn’t expecting so aggressive a move, so quickly.
He did manage to contact me after that, just for a few minutes. Even that was a risk (to both him and me, I’m sure), but he had to talk to me.
Whitcomb said he knows who these people are, Claire. Who the Group really are. He said there are things he never shared with us, that he didn’t think mattered. He wants to tell us everything now.
He says there may be a way to go after these guys, off the record. A way to shut them all down in one shot, and possibly even erase this technology in the process. Everyone who’s known about it would be dead, at that point, except the handful of us—and we could take it to our graves.
Whitcomb asked me to meet him three days after that last call—meaning today, Saturday. He would spend the time in between trying to contact people on that list he was making—the powerful people he meant to show the machine to in the first place. He says some of them have the means to help us make a move against the Group.
The meeting is at 3:00 this afternoon, in a little town called Avenal, just off I-5 up in Central Valley. There’s an old scrapyard outside town. That’s the place. Whitcomb picked it at random as we spoke.
My job for the three days was to find you, Claire. We need the machine you have, or else the people Whitcomb wants to recruit will never believe any of this. They need to see it for themselves, just like we did.
I hope I’ll be telling you all this in person, but if all I can do is get this information to you indirectly, then I hope it’s enough. Please get to that meeting, and bring the machine. Good luck, Claire.
Curtis
It was 10:30 in the morning now. Four and a half hours until the meeting in the scrapyard. Dryden could reach Avenal by then without any trouble.
He watched the freeway rolling by, the white line segments coming at him like distinct thoughts.
Whitcomb.
The Group.
He says there may be a way to go after these guys, off the record.
A way to shut them all down in one shot.
Dryden saw the delicate thread again. The one connecting himself to Claire. Wire-taut under a world of strain.
But holding.