Winston couldn’t find a way to push thoughts from his mouth.
“I’ve seen worse pictures of us,” muttered Shade.
Winston spun on him. “Can you name one?”
“It’s kinda cute,” said the young lady as she finally sat up straight. “And it’s cool if you’re, like, gay terrorists or whatever.”
“We’re not—!” Winston caught himself. “We’re not. Either of those things.”
Elvis laughed again. “Dudes. You must pardon my sweet mini keg of sunlight and love. Phaedra is totally yanking your chain.”
“Phaedra,” echoed Shade as he surveyed each of them in turn, barely suppressing a snicker. “And Elvis. Guess how I know you’re not with the government.”
“Because we ride the bus?” she offered.
“We don’t even pay taxes!” beamed Elvis.
Phaedra scooted across the aisle and hunched over beside her boyfriend. She wore no makeup, but her slender face bore full lips, flawless olive skin, and dark eyes that sparkled from under strikingly long lashes.
“Also, we have brains,” she said, “which is how we and anyone else not glued to the headline-news fear factory knows you’re not terrorists.”
“Technically, he’s the terrorist,” said Shade. “I’m only missing.”
Winston rolled his eyes. “Please stop helping.”
Elvis made prickly duck lips and nodded sagely. “It’s cool, man. We both ran away when we were kids, too. Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.”
Phaedra sighed. “You ran away. I stayed at a friend’s house.”
Elvis hugged her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “For three days, while the police were searching.”
She scowled, then kissed him back. Bizarre as Winston found this couple, he couldn’t deny they were charming.
“Any-weasel,” said Elvis. “We heard you talking, and I was curious. Don’t worry. I don’t want your autograph.”
“That’s good,” said Winston.
Elvis gave them a wink. “But I wouldn’t turn down a selfie.”
“I—”
“Kidding!”
Exasperated, Winston held up the bookshelf photo for Elvis. “You were saying?”
“Led Zeppelin I, man. In fact, I have two tracks from the album right there on the mixtape in my bag.” Elvis pointed to the lump under his seat. “‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘You Shook Me.’ It’s my Phadrea 25 tape, to celebrate our twenty-five-week anniversary.”
“Like, an actual tape?” asked Shade.
Elvis gave him a wide-eyed nod. “I admire the sweet simplicity of analog, bro.”
“OK.” Winston chewed on his top lip, trying to regain focus. “This picture is supposed to lead us somewhere. A place, a time, a…theme. I don’t know.”
“Is your theme rock and roll?” asked Phaedra. She pointed in turn at the stone and ball resting on the shelf.
“You’re so clever,” said Elvis as he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “But ‘Rock and Roll’ is on Led Zeppelin II.”
She ignored her boyfriend’s attempt at a pun. “Led Zeppelin was from England. They recorded this album in London. Does that help?”
Winston hunched his shoulders. “I’m really not sure. Most of our clues focus on the Northwest.”
“Around World War II,” added Shade, who then frowned, wondering if he’d said too much.
“Well, the album came out in 1969, specifically January 12,” said Phaedra. “Which is also my birthday.”
Winston couldn’t think of any other relevance for the date, but he said, “That might mean something.”
“Did your dad like Led Zeppelin?” asked Shade.
Winston raised a palm, indicating that he had no idea.
“Dude,” said Elvis with slow gravity. “Who would not like Led Zeppelin?”
“I mostly listen to EDM,” Winston replied.
Elvis shook his head mournfully. “I like you, bro, but we can never be friends.”
Winston showed them the other two photos, revealing the V in the sky and the altar candles. The couple studied them attentively.
“Any relevance you can think of?” Winston asked.
Elvis’s lips pursed into a small point, and he finally shook his head. “No Zep songs about V’s or fives or even clouds I can think of. And this one—” He pointed at the candles. “It’s in a church, so…maybe Houses of the Holy from 1973? But that’s about Satan and mankind. It’s deep.”
“The candles aren’t burning,” mused Phaedra. “And there’s a bee on this one candlestick. Maybe something about the sting of faith?”
Elvis chuckled. “My no-static baby-soft, not everything is a college thesis.”
Winston frowned and checked the photo again. She was right. Standing with its wings folded back, body somewhat camouflaged by shadow, stood the small, fuzzy form of a honeybee. This wasn’t the same image he’d received for the second Alpha Machine piece. The bee had been added…why? For emphasis?
“Did Led Zeppelin ever sing about beeswax?” he asked.
Elvis’s face twisted in confusion. “Beeswax? Uhh, no. Not even sure what that is.”
“Wax,” said Phaedra with a blank monotone that reminded Winston of Alyssa. “From bees. It’s for making stuff…” She tapped the photo. “Like candles.”
Elvis nudged her with his shoulder. “She always figures out our restaurant tips, too.”
Phaedra rolled her eyes. “Don’t let the pothead persona fool you. Elvis dropped out after three semesters of straight As at Yale to co-found a genetic sequencing algorithms company.”
“It’s a vicious rumor,” he mumbled, then added, “Yale was way too straight. Just drop out and go travel, my dudes. Trust me.”
Shade laughed. “Ha! What do you think we’re doing?”
Elvis gave him a fist bump. “On the lam and living large.”
“That’s right,” Shade said, “whatever that means.”
“Wait,” said Phaedra. She leaned in closer to the pictures. “Bees fly.” Her fingertip moved back and forth along all three images. “Not in the sky. And not in a V formation. But…”
“Ducks do!” Winston held up the photo of the bookshelves, the one showing a carved duck in the background. “Ducks flying. In a V. With…Led Zeppelin?”
Winston had felt a momentary flash of hope, but his threads of connection fell apart.
Phaedra flashed a thin smile. “I don’t know about wax, but you know what else flies in the sky? Blimps.”
“Which is what’s on the cover of Led Zeppelin I!” crowed Elvis.
Shade lit up. “Oh!” He raised his hand. “Pick me! Pick me!”
Winston smacked his friend’s chest with the photo. “Shade.”
“We’re headed south, right?” he asked. “If we keep going, we’ll reach Tillamook. Outside of town is the Tillamook Air Museum, which used to be — anybody? Anybody?” No one answered, and he looked slightly crestfallen. “Really? Nobody else goes on family trips? It was a blimp hangar in World War II!”
Elvis appeared suitably impressed. “Whoa! Well played, my man!” Then his brow crinkled. “Of course, that might not bode well.”
“Why not?” asked Winston.
“Well, the cover of Zep I does show a blimp, but it’s the Hindenburg crashing and exploding. A bunch of people died. It was the biggest blimp disaster of all time.”
22
Destination Revelation
Bledsoe felt his body tense with each of the three narrow steps up from the airport tarmac and into the Cessna, a sleek white beast with what seemed to be an improbably long, almost cartoonish snout. Bledsoe loathed cartoons. The early afternoon breeze chilled the sweat on the back of his neck. His left arm ached from how tightly he held his ballistic nylon messenger bag against his body.
It’s only another plane, he thought as he stepped into the cabin. Just a plane. On a short trip. Only ninety-seven miles. The plane makes a two-hour-plus drive into thirty-five minutes. Finding th
at artifact is worth it.
To calm himself, he mentally ticked off the plane’s key characteristics he’d studied on the drive over.
Model 510, aluminum alloy construction. Length of forty feet and seven inches. Average cruising speed of three hundred ninety miles per hour. Requires a minimum landing distance of seven hundred twenty-nine meters. Seats four or five. Only one pilot required.
As he glanced over the cabin, taking in the gray leather seats, beige carpeting, and tinted oval windows, Bledsoe was struck by the sight of a glossy, open-mouthed skull staring balefully at him from between the back seats. It took his brain a moment to adjust and realize he was looking at a pair of cupholders in their lacquered wooden panel centered between the chairs, which resembled black eye sockets in the dim interior.
Get it together. Focus on the objective.
The pilot, a gray-haired man with sunglasses and a Los Angeles Dodgers cap, appeared from the cockpit behind Bledsoe. “Afternoon, sir. We’re ready to take off when you are.”
Bledsoe made a fluttering wave with one hand, vaguely indicating that they should get going. It was as much enthusiasm as he could muster.
“Right,” said the pilot. “If you’ll make yourself comfortable, we’ll be on our way.”
He returned to the cockpit and took his seat on the left before clamping on his headset. Not even a curtain divided the cockpit from the main cabin. Hopefully, the man wouldn’t be chatty.
Bledsoe found himself in a dilemma. He couldn’t shake his superstitious dread of sitting next to the skeletal cupholder in the back row, but neither did he want to sit in the front row, which would not only leave him facing backward but also staring at the skull. Finally, he decided to tuck his suit jacket’s collar under the center armrest, never mind the creases, and drape the body and arms over the cupholders. This would also let him keep an eye on the pilot.
Once settled in, with three-point seatbelt firmly latched, Bledsoe extended a short table from a slot in the cabin’s side paneling. He withdrew the tablet from his bag and brought up the Claude recordings once again. Such a jumble of nonsense. Plane. Clouds. Propeller. That lattice of intersecting lines. Yet somewhere in here might be the image he needed to get the jump on young Winston and claim the Alpha Machine for himself.
The Cessna gave a slight lurch as the plane’s brakes released and the pilot started them backward. The engines grew louder, and Bledsoe realized he couldn’t hear the pilot despite seeing him talk into his headset. Two minutes later, they hurtled down their runway as the tarmac outside Beldsoe’s window whooshed by in a blur of gray and strobing white dashes.
The plane’s nose suddenly tilted up, then the rumble of back wheels on asphalt vanished. Bledsoe’s left hand instinctively reached for something to grip and landed on his jacket, right atop those two eye sockets. Grimacing, he held on to the edge of the slide-out table instead. After a moment, as always, Bledsoe forced his breathing to slow, and he gradually released the table.
Don’t be a fool, he chided himself. When you’re going to be the king of the world, there’s no reason to worry about—
Something caught his eye on the ground.
The south side of Portland International Airport was mostly industrial. UPS, FedEx, and DHL all had facilities scattered through the area. But a certain white structure grabbed Bledsoe’s attention, or rather two squat, round-topped hangars sitting side by side. Bledsoe could barely make out the Boeing logos on their fronts.
He peered more closely at them. They bore no other notable markings that he could see. Why should Boeing stand out to him? Was it the planes parked beside them? Something in the parking lot?
Bledsoe rubbed at his forehead and the dull thudding behind it that had been with him ever since Winston had lit that alien cherry bomb in his throat. He wasn’t thinking straight. He needed to be more efficient in this process, better at using his resources. Winston never should have gotten away, not just at the river, but he never should have made it off that freighter. Now, they’d lose valuable hours repositioning the searchers and picking up his trail.
The hangars.
As Bledsoe flicked idly back and forth through the recording, that lattice of lines reappeared. This time, it meant something.
Not lines. Beams. Hangar beams. Row after row of X shapes curving up and back into the distance.
No modern hangar would have an internal support structure like that. The beams in Claude’s memory were made of wood.
Now Bledsoe knew where he’d seen that pattern before. Blimp hangars from the war.
A chuckle escaped him as he brought up a web browser, wondering if it could possibly be so easy.
Blimp hangar near me, he typed.
The top two hits came back with the same result: Tillamook Air Museum. The associated images, showing a long, gray half tube on the outside and a dark web of crossbeams within, were a near-perfect match. Bledsoe forgot all about his fear of flying.
“God bless the Internet,” he muttered.
He took two minutes to think through what needed to happen next. The only variable he didn’t know was Winston’s location. That freighter had grounded in midmorning. Even if the boy had hijacked a car and driven straight from the crash to the air museum at top speed, he would need at least ninety minutes, which would put him arriving there right about now.
However, Bledsoe didn’t think Winston would be quite that aggressive. The boy didn’t have a ruthless instinct. Bledsoe just might beat him there, assuming Winston knew where he was headed at all.
Bledsoe considered ordering traffic stops on all roads going into Tillamook, then changed his mind. Traffic stops would prevent the boy from finding the next piece, and he might put up a fight. No, Bledsoe’s gut told him it would be better to lure the kid in, let him take the bait, and then force him to surrender everything on Bledsoe’s terms.
Yes. That was much better.
Bledsoe tapped his Bluetooth earpiece and called Agent Lynch. The man picked up after only two rings.
“Yes, sir.”
“Lynch, are you up to capturing the Chase boy?”
He could practically hear the man grow rigid with indignation on the other end of the line. “Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure? Because I thought the freighter seemed like a pretty easy job.”
“I understand how that must look, sir. It was… It was a very unfortunate combination of accidents.”
“Indeed.”
Could Bledsoe trust the man? He had now lost Winston twice, but, when it came to that topic, Bledsoe was hardly in a position to throw stones. More to the point, Bledsoe couldn’t think of anyone involved who might be more loyal or motivated at the moment than Lynch. So be it.
“All right, Lynch. Let’s make the third time the charm. I suspect our young terrorist is heading to the Tillamook Air Museum. You can redeploy the scanners to confirm that, but for now I want you at that hangar immediately if not yesterday. Take a chopper. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring whatever support you think you need. I’m in the air, headed your way. And don’t forget that artifact from the river.”
“Understood, sir. It’s in my hands, and I’m en route to the airport.”
Bledsoe hung up. That left one other person who needed to get in motion, and Bledsoe punched her up on the speed dial next.
“Hello, this is Monica Hendrix.”
Bledsoe sensed the woman’s disdain for him if only from her pretense of not having seen his code on her caller ID. Fine. She could play games on her own time.
“Nurse Hendrix, I need you to button up our patient and get him in the air.”
Bledsoe heard a short choking noise in reply. When the woman recovered, she said, “Yes, sir. We can replace the skull today. I recommend forty-eight hours for monitoring and—”
“Nurse, I recommend you be in the air in forty-eight minutes.”
“Sir, I—”
“Too long?” Bledsoe interjected. “Think
you can do it in twenty?”
“Sir!” Bledsoe could so clearly imagine her expression of indignant shock. “I will have to page the surgeon. The operation alone will take—”
“You do it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Scrub up. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Just pull that bone thing out of his guts, duct tape it back in place, and let’s go.”
“Sir, I am completely unqualified for such a procedure!”
Bledsoe drummed his fingers on his tablet. “Save it. You’ll do it right now, and you’ll have him in the air in thirty minutes. I’ll arrange it. All your patient has to do is not die and keep his brain intact for a little longer.”
“Agent Bledsoe, I can’t promise anything. You have to understa—”
Bledsoe hit the End button on their call.
“Understand that,” he said.
Bledsoe closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. He played out the events he expected, all the while probing for places where things might go amiss. How would he respond? How many people did he need? Where did they need to be, and when?
He pulled up satellite and street maps all around the Tillamook Air Museum and plotted Winston’s most likely route.
“It’s all in the when,” Bledsoe said as clouds encased the Cessna.
Bledsoe pulled his jacket out of the armrest and tossed it on the left seat. Looking straight down on it, the wood panel no longer resembled a gaping skull. And even if it had, Bledsoe realized, the foreshadowing of death wasn’t meant for him, after all.
23
Kin and Kit
“You’re positive this is it?” Theo asked.
“I spent a month every summer for over five years here,” Alyssa said. “I’m pretty sure.”
The faded single-story sat at the corner of Lakeshore and Grove, just across the street from a shrub-choked hillside that squatted over the Estacada River. The property wasn’t more than thirty paces long on a side, but it stood bounded by a seven-foot-high fence made of tightly spaced, weather-beaten boards. At each corner, just inside the fence, towered a single cedar tree with massive, drooping boughs. Alyssa knew that the four cedars had been planted by Grandpa Clayton way back in the 1960s, when this neighborhood was new. She’d listened to the tale countless times as he supervised her raking up an ankle-thick blanket of needles from the yard, roof, and gutters.
Winston Chase and the Theta Factor Page 17