A second man stood behind the first, ten years younger, blond hair going thin on top.
Both men held pistols. The man in the doorway had his leveled on Dryden, but the guy’s gaze was pointed elsewhere. It was focused on the plastic case Dryden still held in his other hand.
“You know what this is, don’t you,” Dryden said.
The man nodded just visibly. “Open it.”
Dryden unlatched the case. He eased the lid open with his free hand, so neither the machine nor the tablet computer would come loose.
The man stared into the red glow shining through the machine’s slats. For a moment he seemed almost entranced by it. Then he raised his eyes and looked back and forth between Dryden and Marnie. “Who are you people?”
Dryden said, “We’re on your side—Dale. But you’re a smart guy, right? So you must already know that.”
The man seemed to consider these words, holding Dryden’s gaze. Then he exhaled softly and nodded, and lowered his gun.
“Where are Curtis and Claire?” Dale Whitcomb asked.
“Curtis is dead,” Dryden said. He watched the news hit Whitcomb like an elbow to the chest. Watched him brace for whatever was next.
“Claire’s been abducted,” Dryden said. “I believe she’s alive. I believe we can get her back.”
Whitcomb stood there in the metal doorway, trying to process it all. At last he stepped back to let the two of them exit.
“Let’s talk,” Whitcomb said.
*
The four of them sat on the hard ground around the improvised fire pit. The wind coming down out of the mountains was chilly, coursing through the shadowy channels of the scrapyard. Dryden found a few short lengths of two-by-four lumber in the back of the Explorer, and set them on the bed of embers. Within a minute they began to blaze.
He also brought the bag with Curtis’s binders in it.
Whitcomb addressed Dryden and Marnie. “You know my name. I’d like to know yours—and how you’ve ended up here.”
Dryden took stock of the man. Dale Whitcomb looked exhausted, though not the same way Claire had. Whitcomb was stressed, not tired. Instead of sleep, he needed half an hour with a punching bag, pounding it until his knuckles were cracked and bleeding. Beyond the frayed nerves, he looked like a decent enough guy. Claire had trusted him; that counted for a lot.
“Fair enough,” Dryden said.
He introduced himself and Marnie, then spoke for ten minutes, covering the basics of what had happened since midnight. Claire’s phone call, the race to the trailer in the Mojave, Claire’s abduction, Curtis’s death. Then Santa Maria, the tower, Marnie.
When Dryden finished, Whitcomb introduced the blond man. His name was Cal Brennan, and he and Whitcomb had known each other for more than thirty years.
“We served together, way back,” Whitcomb said. “Our careers took different paths, but we kept in touch. Brennan’s here because I trust him, and because he can put together the kinds of resources we need, to go after the people we’re up against. I’ve brought him up to speed on everything I know. He hasn’t seen one of these machines in action yet, but … he’s aware of the kind of work I do. We’ll turn this one on and demonstrate it, as soon as we’re done talking.”
Brennan’s gaze kept going to the plastic case that held the machine. It was sitting on the ground between Dryden and Marnie, along with the bag full of binders.
Brennan, fifty years old, give or take, looked like a guy who rarely smiled. There were no laugh lines around his eyes. He looked like a hardass. He was also tanned in a way that suggested he had recently come from someplace even sunnier than California. He had a pair of Oakleys hanging from his shirt collar, their plastic bands scratched to hell as if someone had taken steel wool to them. Dryden had seen that effect before, in places where windblown sand was a constant feature of life. He would have put serious money on Cal Brennan having some connection to the world of private security contractors. He had the look.
Whitcomb turned to Dryden and Marnie. He seemed about to speak but then stopped himself, struck by something. He glanced at the nearby shipping container, its empty doorframe still exposed, and then looked back at Dryden.
“When you first saw me from inside there,” Whitcomb said, “you knew who I was. Had you seen a picture of me somewhere?”
Dryden shook his head.