Wind scoured the vehicle. It moaned in the wheel wells and the complex spaces of the underside. It scurried little snakes of soot across the windshield.
Dryden felt the adrenaline leaving him. Felt the live-wire thrum in his limbs settling out, calming. He forced his breathing back to normal—and felt his attention go back to where it had been earlier, in the moment after he’d disarmed the woman.
Who was she?
A cop of some kind.
The implications of that came at him from every angle. Made him want to look around outside for some sign of a threat, in spite of the dust choking off the visibility.
If the authorities knew enough to be looking for him, what else did they know? If they had his name tied to Claire’s in any official way, then surely the Group would have already learned about him.
Dryden turned to the woman. “Tell me who you are. Tell me how you found me.”
For a second it didn’t seem like she’d heard him. She was staring forward into the haze, as if still trying to take it all in. The quake and the collapse. The fact that she’d been inside the building twenty seconds before that. She kept looking up at where the tower had stood.
She was thirty, give or take. Brown eyes, and brown hair to her shoulders.
Dryden grabbed her arm. “Hey.”
She turned to face him. Her eyes widened a little.
“Are the police looking for me?” Dryden asked. “Is there an investigation with my name on record?”
The question seemed to go right past her. She blinked, and when she spoke, she still sounded half-dazed. “How are you doing this? How are you showing up in these places before things … happen?”
Places. Plural.
How much did she know?
Dryden gripped her arm tighter, and found his voice getting louder of its own accord. “Are the police looking for me? How did you find me?”
She drew back from him, scared again.
“Tell me,” Dryden said.
She blinked. “The trailer in the desert. You left fingerprints. In the arroyo.”
Dryden opened his mouth to tell her that wasn’t possible. There had been nothing in the arroyo except strewn trash and— The washing machine.
Christ.
“I was there,” the woman said. “I’m an FBI agent.”
Dryden felt his mind working rapid-fire, like he was mapping a minefield while driving through it at freeway speed.
He let go of the woman’s arm and willed himself to speak evenly, but he locked his eyes onto hers and didn’t blink.
“I need to know how much you know about me,” he said. “You need to tell me everything, right now. This is life and death, maybe for both of us.”
She stared. “I don’t understand—”
“Everything,” Dryden said.
She looked into the eddying dust again, toward the unseen rubble of Mission Tower. “But how are you—”
“Look at me.”
She turned back to him. Met his eyes.
“If someone could access police computers,” Dryden said, “and FBI computers, what would they see about me right now? What is my name attached to, in the past twelve hours?”
The woman shook her head, thrown by the question.
“What would they see?” Dryden asked.
“Nothing. Well … no, nothing.”
“What were you going to say?”
The woman hesitated.
“Tell me.”
“There was almost a warrant.”
“Almost?”
“We wanted to question you. We were going to name you a person of interest—”
“For the trailer?”
The woman started to answer, but checked herself.
“For the trailer?” Dryden asked again.
The woman shook her head. “A cop that got killed, out in the Mojave.”
Icy little needles seemed to pierce Dryden’s skin. Down to his bones, where the chill spread deep and wide.
The Group knew all about the dead cop in the desert. Obviously. If Dryden’s name was linked to that on any police computer— “We held back on it,” the woman said. “There’s no warrant. There’s nothing official at all.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and one other person. There’s no official—”
“What other person?”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t understand what’s going on—”
“Someone you work with?”
“Yes.” The woman looked baffled as to why he was asking.
Dryden stared at her. His mind was still flooring it across the minefield, jostling and bouncing.
“Call them,” he said. “Whoever this person is. Call and make sure they don’t still go through with creating the warrant. You don’t understand how much this matters.”
For a long moment she just stared at him. She was calming a bit, but still entirely lost. “What is this? What the hell is any of this?”
He held her gaze for a beat. Then he turned and stared away over the hood, thinking.
There was only so much he could push her to do. Or not do. He couldn’t hold her against her will.
He exhaled deeply. Rested his arms across the wheel. Lowered his forehead to them. He was tired. Maybe not as tired as Claire had been, but getting there.
“You want to understand all this?” he asked.