“Fine. Can I at least carry it while we go looking for your new messenger bag?”
Reluctantly he handed her the object. Emily took it with dry thanks and placed it carefully in her bag, nestled nicely between Oliver’s file and those of the West children. “I wonder if we can get one of those big, strapping agents to drag that box upstairs. How long are we going to be in Vegas, do you think?”
Oliver shrugged. “With the way they run things here, it’ll be decades before they ever catch up with Hawk or Hummer. My guess is that they’ve already abandoned the city, though. Come on. I want to get a new bag.”
She rolled her eyes but followed him from the room. In the hallway outside, a couple of agents, one gray-haired and the other pale, stood talking in hushed voices. “There’s a box on the table in there,” Emily said to them. “Could one of you please make sure it gets up to Oliver’s room? We’re going out for a bit.”
“What for?” asked the older man. “I didn’t think the Prometheus kid was supposed to leave here unattended.”
“He’s not unattended,” said Emily through gritted teeth. “I’ll be with him the whole time. He needs clothing and supplies, so we’re going to buy him some. And his name is Oliver, not ‘the Prometheus kid,’” she added irritably.
The man looked shocked by her words. She didn’t give him a chance to respond. Instead, “We’ll be back in an hour. If you get any leads to the West children, my cell phone is on.”
With that, she oriented Oliver toward the exit and pushed him forward. He glanced at her as they walked, his eyes suspicious.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asked as they stepped out onto a busy street in the business district.
“Everyone’s so rude,” she said. “Am I not enough of an attendant for you? Do you need an entire entourage to walk behind you and around you to shield you from the world? Or maybe you’re plotting to run away from Prometheus yourself, like Hawk and his siblings. Maybe all Prometheus kids are plotting to run away. Why did they have to say it like that?”
Oliver didn’t immediately respond. When he did, his voice was far more candid than she expected. “They don’t have to worry about me running away. They don’t have to worry about most Prometheus kids running away. Most Prometheus kids have nothing beyond Prometheus to run away to.”
“Because Prometheus doesn’t let you have anything beyond it,” Emily said quietly.
He frowned but said nothing to this. Together they walked to a corner store, where bags were prominently displayed. Emily stood by the door with disinterest while Oliver went in to inspect. He came back out a few minutes later. “I need money,” he told her.
“How much?”
She didn’t bat an eyelash at the price he named, even though it seemed like more than it should have been. He was probably buying a top-of-the-line bag to carry his things in, and it wasn’t her money he was spending anyway. She handed him several bills. Briefly she considered following him into the store to oversee the purchase, but she felt rebellious right now. Let the little boy make his own transactions without someone watching his every move like a vulture.
Oliver emerged with a white paper sack. From this he extracted a dark blue messenger bag. “Where’s my digi-port?” he asked as he slung the bag crosswise over his chest. It was the same way Emily wore hers.
Wordlessly she pulled the tech device from her bag and handed it to him. In return, he handed her the paper sack.
“What’s this, I have to throw away your garbage too?” she asked sarcastically, but when she took the sack she felt the weight of an object within. She peered into the top. “What is this?”
“You stink,” said Oliver. “I got you another shirt.”
For the barest instant, Emily was touched by this gesture. She hadn’t believed he was capable of thinking beyond his own bloated head.
Her sentimental moment ended when she removed the garment. It wasn’t a nice blouse, or even a decently tasteful shirt. Oliver had bought her the ugliest, most garish tourist t-shirt she had ever seen, something that old people with no shame wore, something that, under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be caught dead in.
Her dismay must have shown plainly on her face, because she raised her eyes to discover him wearing a trembling smirk.
That little brat, she thought as she forced a plastic smile. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’m so happy to have something else to wear. I’ll be sure to tell everyone we meet that you picked it out for me.”
His smirk slipped, but rather than acknowledge the hit, he snorted and turned back toward the GCA offices. Emily trotted after him, thankful that her hands were full of ugly shirt. Otherwise she might have throttled him in broad daylight.
As they mounted the building’s steps, the door opened and a man hurried down. Emily recognized the same agent who had been with them in the black sedan the night before—Jones or Johnson, his name was.
“You shouldn’t have left,” he chided them. “We’re in the middle of an investigation. What are you doing, leaving?”
“Did you get a lead while we were gone?” Oliver asked.
“No,” said the man. “We’re still combing through hotel and restaurant records for yesterday. But that’s no excuse—”
Oliver sailed past him, through the glass doors and into the office beyond. Several agents sat within a glass-enclosed conference room, but the door was open. “You’re wasting your time,” Oliver said, loud enough for them to hear. “They’re not in Las Vegas anymore.”
“We’ve had no reports of them leaving the city,” one of the agents said. “We’ve got the bus depots and the train station covered. There hasn’t been any sign of them at the airport, either.”
“Mass transit isn’t the only way to travel,” the boy retorted. “I’m telling you, after last night’s debacle, there’s no way that they’re still here. I’d have skipped town at the first opportunity if it were me.”
The agents exchanged covert glances, either skeptical of his assertion or suspicious that he might be plotting an escape of his own. Oliver ignored them in favor of heading toward the stairs. “Hey, Smelly,” he said to Emily, “come on. I’ve got homework to do.”
Emily obediently followed.
Article II, Section 4
Travel to the Great Beyond
July 4, 10:42am mst, Hualapai Indian Reservation, Arizona
“Happy, if the canyon makes you that nervous, don’t get near the edge.”
The six-year-old cast a surreptitious glance Hawk’s way before taking a reluctant step backward. Hawk knew his brother was nervous not because that emotion manifested on Happy’s face, but because it had spread to everyone around him. Hawk himself had never been afraid of heights a day in his life before now.
The Grand Canyon stretched out in front of them, a sight of impressive majesty in the bright July sunshine. Already the desert heat was beating down upon them as they stood looking across the vast expanse.
Honey and Hummer had gone to explain to the helicopter pilot that they wouldn’t be making the return trip. More precisely, Honey had gone to explain, and Hummer had gone to make certain she didn’t bum money off anyone in the process. She’d become shameless in that habit, but they had enough to get by for now.
Hawk felt a twinge of conscience at the morning’s events. They deposited their room key in the hotel’s after-hours box at daybreak and then tracked down early helicopter flights. Honey convinced two separate couples that their time would be better spent seeing local Las Vegas sights. Hawk would have preferred buying their own tickets outright, but apparently this particular attraction, aside from being horrifically expensive, had to be reserved months in advance.
Hence they had cheated the two couples from their holiday excursion, a circumstance that he could only stomach because it was an unfortunate necessity. He and his siblings had to get out of town.
Their flight had brought them and a handful of others to the southwest side of the canyon. The surrounding
area had a number of tourist attractions, most of which were sponsored by the local Indian community, but it was largely removed from civilization in general. The one really good thing about being on an Indian reservation, though, was that under federal law, government agencies required special warrants to be here. In other words, the GCA reportedly had no presence. The very fact that Hawk now stood on this side of the Grand Canyon meant that the four runaways were, for the moment, safe.
Further, because it was a national holiday, plenty of families had ventured here for the day. There were enough children around that the Wests didn’t stand out in the least.
Revere had been left behind in Las Vegas. Hawk had explained to him that morning where they were headed and that he was free to go his own way. The raven, stubbornly loyal, seemed determined to follow them instead. Revere had a head start on the journey east, but it would take him far more time to cover the hundred-fifty miles between the city and the reservation than it had taken their little helicopter.
Still, Hawk’s eyes kept shifting toward the sky in hopes of seeing the familiar dark silhouette. While Revere was capable of flying the distance, the bird would be better off on his own. Hawk was torn between his desire to keep the faithful pet and the commonsense logic that told him to set him free, even as he scanned the clouds.
“Happy, stay back from the edge,” he warned again when his anxiety suddenly spiked.
Happy seemed obsessed with peering into the chasm, even though it terrified him. Fear kept him from any real danger, but Hawk didn’t like the nagging emotion intruding upon his thoughts.
When the boy looked up with innocent eyes, Hawk suddenly realized that his anxiety was possibly not just because of the enormous canyon.
“Are you worried about Honey?” he asked. Happy’s gaze flitted back up the path where their other two siblings had so recently disappeared. “She’ll be fine. Nothing and no one can get the best of Honey, right?”
Happy didn’t like when Honey was out of sight. Despite her young age, she was a surrogate mother to their youngest sibling.
They had a mother who should have been allowed to watch over all of them as she had wanted to. For the umpteenth time Hawk wondered if they would be able to find their parents, and, if so, how life would change from then on. It could never go back to the way things had been when he was Happy’s age.
Abruptly the little boy stood up, his gaze trained on the path. Hawk turned to see Honey and Hummer weaving their way back between the other tourists. Honey appeared satisfied, signaling that everything had gone well with the helicopter pilot.
“Any sign of your bird?” Hummer grudgingly asked as they reunited.
Hawk shook his head. “Any ideas on where we go from here?”
“Hitch a ride with one of the locals, I think,” said Hummer. “It looks like most of the tourists were bussed in, so there’s not much chance of going with them unless we want to strand someone here. We might be able to find some trucker to hitchhike with back at the Indian village, since their supplies have to come from somewhere, but it’s not likely, given that today’s a holiday.”
Hawk looked to Honey and Happy. “Any ideas from you two?”
Honey shrugged. “Hummer’s right. Hitch along with one of the locals.” Next to her, clinging to her arm, Happy nodded.
“So shall we search out one of those locals, or do you want to look at the sights a little more?” Hawk asked, and he cast his gaze across the panoramic view.
“It’s a hole in the ground,” said Honey. “A pretty hole, but a hole. Let’s go. I want to be someplace we can see fireworks tonight.”
“That’s not likely,” Hummer said with morose displeasure. “Fireworks are illegal except by special permit, and it’s too late to try making our own.”
“Do you know how?” asked Honey, perking up.
He shrugged. “Technically.”
“Technically not,” said Hawk flatly. “We’re not going to blow off our hands in an attempt to create a bunch of rockets that would only draw attention to us from places that we don’t want attention. Let’s go.”
He started back up the path. Behind him, Honey and Hummer exchanged a glance.
“Spoilsport,” said Hummer.
The task of finding a local to ride with was difficult only in that they wanted to find a local who was going in the right direction. Most of the workers around this tourist dump would be headed into Peach Springs at some point in the day. They met one that was going into Kingman for the evening, and another that had to go to Flagstaff the next day. Much to Hummer’s delight, the Indians—unlike the general populace of the country—did not drive namby-pamby electric cars. More than a few of them drove gasoline-guzzling trucks, and they did not seem to mind the idea of four children stowed away in the bed, with no seatbelts or safety gear to speak of. The federal government had a hard time regulating the reservation thanks to a nearly endless list of concessions and reparations they had agreed to honor toward the indigenous nations.
“Where should we start our search for Altair?” Hawk asked.
“On the reservation, if we can,” said Hummer. “If we can hook into the internet here, the GCA will have to jump through so many hoops to get to us that we’ll be long gone before they can even set foot on the land.”
Hawk shook his head. “They can’t come onto the reservation easily, but they can certainly search anything coming off of it. Besides, do you really think we’re going to find much about Altair on the internet? That’s so government-regulated that if there actually is a subversive organization, any reference to it would’ve been scrubbed clean—to protect the general public, you know,” he said sarcastically.
“If it’s a subversive organization, I seriously doubt it says as much in its motto,” Hummer retorted. “Cousin Paul said to look up Altair if we got the chance, and where else are we supposed to look it up? The phone book?”
“I want to go to Peach Springs,” Honey said out of the blue.
The two older boys looked at her curiously. “Why?” asked Hawk.
“Because the name sounds pretty. And because I’m sick of standing around a tourist trap listening to you two go back and forth about something you’ve already discussed a hundred times.”
They hadn’t discussed it a hundred times, but the subject had been broached more than once since the previous evening. Hawk could see her point. “All right. We’ll head to Peach Springs and decide where to go from there.”
The ride from the rim of the Grand Canyon into Peach Springs was not very long but it was excessively bumpy from the scant comfort of an old truck bed. Honey and Happy sat protectively beneath the cab window, while Hawk cavalierly leaned one arm against the edge as he watched the rocky, scrubby scenery go by. In sharp contrast, Hummer was practically hanging off the vehicle, enamored with its ancient construction and the way that it chugged along the gravel road.
Peach Springs was a small town that had remained small despite the massive amounts of money that had poured into the reservation. Most of the funds had gone to tourist attractions—a historic Indian village replica, a casino, and other such trappings—while the native people kept their own surroundings much simpler. The town itself looked like a relic from decades before, with only a handful of commercial businesses lining the highway that acted as the town’s main street. There was an ancient gas station, a traveler’s lodge, and very little else.
The four kids were dropped off in front of a small grocery store. They waved a cheery farewell to the truck driver, who, thanks to Honey, had not found their ingress to his hometown unusual.
“Where to from here?” asked Hawk as his eyes drifted skyward. There was still no sign of Revere. The bird had probably gotten distracted and moved on to pursue other interests.
“Do we want to head east or south?” Hummer asked.
“Why would we want to go south?”
He shrugged. “Mexico and other tropical destinations. Why wouldn’t we want to go south?”
“I think we need to find a public library,” Hawk said, ignoring the flippant question his brother had posed. “We can try to do a little research on Altair. I wonder if there’s one nearby.” He looked up and down the street unhopefully.
“If you want a library,” said Hummer, “then we should try to find a way to Flagstaff. They have a university there, so we could probably research whatever topic we wanted to without raising any red flags.”
“Right, because we all look like we belong at a university.”
Hummer made a face. “I meant any digital red flags. If we go to any old public library and start trying to research insurgent entities on their computer systems, there’ll probably be some raised eyebrows. Universities are so liberal that you can research anything and no one bats an eyelash. My vote goes for Flagstaff. Honey, Happy?”
“I don’t care where we go,” said Honey, and her apathy was more than apparent on her face. Next to her, Happy wore the same stoic expression, which made Hawk wonder how genuine her feelings were. “It’s getting really hot, though, so we need to get wherever it is we’re going.”
Behind them, the door to the grocery store opened, and a woman exited. The four children turned curious eyes to watch her walk away down the street with her bag of groceries.
“I guess we have to find someone who’s headed to Flagstaff,” said Hawk, and he tipped his head toward the store. “Shall we?”
The place was almost deserted, but it was nice and cool inside, and the few people there were all friendly. As it turned out, they knew of several locals who were headed over to Flagstaff for the holiday evening.
If Hummer had had his way, they would have ridden in the back of a pickup truck again. Honey put her foot down, though, and an hour later, they were all piled into the back of a van. The driver and his wife had been more than accommodating in giving them a ride (thanks again to Honey’s winsome smile and cheerful words). In lieu of conversation, they flipped the radio to an oldies station, and the children watched the scenery pass by the window.
A Boy Called Hawk (Annals of Altair Book 1) Page 14