by Roxie Noir
None of that solved his current problem. Seth took a deep breath, trying to calm his frazzled nerves, and stood, heading downstairs to where his brother still sat, staring at pages full of numbers.
Zach glanced up, then frowned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You stub your toe or something? I thought I heard you shout.”
Seth just showed him the letter, and watched Zach’s face go pale.
“They can’t do that,” he said. “The 16th is what, in three days? This is bullshit!”
“They’ve been sending us letters for months,” Seth said. Suddenly he felt tired, completely drained of energy. “We never opened them.”
“Shit,” whispered Zach, looking at the map. “At least it’s not the house.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” Seth said. “Has there ever been a deed to all that? Or is there a bill of sale, or even... anything?”
“Did Hiram even buy it?” asked Zach. He put his elbows on the desk, and pushed his hands through his thick, dark hair, making it stick up in every direction. “Or did he just decide to live here?”
“I have no idea,” Seth said.
They stared at each other, blankly.
“I guess I’m firing up the computer,” said Seth.
It was an old computer. The thing still ran Windows 98, and seemed positively ancient, but it was what they had. Seth used it once in a while for the basics, but the only internet service they could get was dialup, and it was deadly slow.
As the thing booted, Seth’s brain worked overtime. He had no idea how to find the deed to the land, if it had ever even existed. He had no idea how he could stop Quarcom if it hadn’t, or if he had no chance. As the oldest brother, he felt like he was responsible for the whole mess, even if all three of them were adults.
I was supposed to keep them safe, he thought. How is a mine in the backyard safe?
Finally, the desktop popped up, and Seth started the very slow research process.
4. Jules
Jules
Jules laid on the lumpy mattress, her book propped over her face. For the thirtieth time in about five minutes, she glanced over at her kitchen counter, about three feet from her face, where her phone sat silently.
Ring, she thought. She narrowed her eyes and focused all her brain power at the thing, willing it to ring as hard as she’d ever willed anything before.
The phone sat there stubbornly, refusing to ring.
She sighed and went back to her book. When she’d gotten a few projects back-to-back in the remoter parts of North America, Jules had optimistically decided that it was time for her to finally read some of the great classics of literature.
At first, she’d torn through Pride and Prejudice, mostly enjoyed Wuthering Heights, and given up on Anna Karenina after about two hundred pages. Right now, she was a quarter of the way into Moby Dick, but she just couldn’t concentrate on it, and it was mostly because of her phone that wouldn’t ring.
Rolling her eyes, she put the book down on her chest, then stretched out until she could just barely grab the phone with her fingertips. Even though Quarcom was a giant international company, they’d put her up in an RV in a campground on the edge of town. It could be worse, but it sure wasn’t the Ritz.
For the thousandth time, she checked that her phone had signal, which it did. Then she tossed it at the foot of the bed and put her hands behind her head.
Why wouldn’t he call? She wondered. He asked for my number. Why would he do that if he weren’t going to call?
A light breeze came in through the window, carrying the smell of the desert along with it.
Chill, she told herself. It’s been, what, ten hours? Give the guy a chance. He’s probably busy. Read your book and quit thinking about it.
But it was too late: she was definitely thinking about it now.
What if he thought he was doing me a favor? She thought. Get a chubby girl’s phone number, make her feel special for a little while?
Her stomach sank.
Or worse, she thought.
Worse had already happened, back in the dark ages of high school. From ages twelve through sixteen, she’d had a huge crush on Taylor Kimball, one of the guys on her high school’s football team, but Jules had been chubby and covered in a combination of freckles and zits, not to mention a huge nerd. For ages, she’d admired him from afar, until one day, he broke up with his girlfriend and asked her out.
She said yes, of course, flabbergasted and over the moon. Soon he asked for her help studying, and Jules was still so infatuated and, frankly, naive, that it had taken about a week before she’d started doing all his homework.
Lying on the bed, Jules’ face still burned in shame, ten years later. Time hadn’t helped that much, and she still felt like the world’s dumbest idiot when she remembered it.
Of course Taylor had still been banging his hot girlfriend, sometimes literally while Jules was doing his work for him, late into the night. Of course he’d shown all his friends the love notes she’d written him, and they used to shout the phrases she’d written back at her while she walked down the hall.
Jules’s stomach flip-flopped and she put the book on her face, trying to block out the thoughts.
In the years since, she’d had boyfriends. She’d had a random hookup or two, and many more men had expressed their sincere interest, but deep down, she thought she’d always be the dumb girl who did the football star’s homework. She didn’t want to think that every guy who approached her just wanted to use her for something and didn’t really like her, but the suspicion was a knee-jerk reaction.
Besides, the past few weeks mostly alone in a trailer were starting to take their toll on her. She needed to get out, to interact with other people, to have a conversation.
She needed her phone to ring. She sat up slightly on the uncomfortable bed, looking at it, daring it to ring.
Nothing.
Jules gritted her teeth and refocused on Moby Dick, forcing herself to read the same paragraph over and over until she was paying attention to it.
“Are you there?” crackled the voice on the Jules’s computer screen.
Barely, she thought. She sat up straighter, her laptop in front of her on the kitchen table. The curtains behind her were drawn, but there was no getting around the morning light leaking in around the edges, and nowhere else to sit with a computer in her RV.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “Am I coming through?”
“It’ll do, I guess,” said Gilbert Norfrey, Quarcom’s North American Vice President of operations. “How are things coming along?”
Jules’s heart skipped a beat. They were going badly, and telling Gilbert something that he didn’t want to hear didn’t always go well.
“All the preliminaries are pretty discouraging,” she said, practically shouting at her computer. “There’s a whole lot of problems with the site, for starters—”
“Speak up, Jules, I can’t hear you,” Gilbert said, leaning toward the screen. From what was behind him, he looked like he might be on the Quarcom jet. That would make sense, she figured; he was due in Obsidian the next day to oversee the final steps.
“The site is bad,” she said at top volume. “The underlying rhyolite layer is too weak, and the sandstone is very porous, and honestly, I’m not sure how the site got approved at all. Besides, it’s much too close to the river. If there’s any kind of accident, all the runoff will go right in, and it would be a disaster.”
“But is it legal?” he asked.
Jules opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.
“This is so new that regulations don’t really cover what we’ll be doing,” she shouted.
Part of her screamed at her to lie, but she knew that was stupid. Quarcom had an army of legal staff, and they’d figure it out in an hour. Then, they’d go ahead with their plans, plus she’d be reprimanded.
“So it’s not illegal,” said Gilbert.
“It’s a bad choice
of site for a mine like this,” she tried to say. Stripes of static cut across Gilbert’s face, and his image froze, got blocky, and then straightened out. “The environmental repercussions will be massive.”
“Are you using a tin can telephone for this call?” Gilbert said, half-joking and half annoyed.
“I have to use the cellular hotspot because Obsidian only has dialup,” she said. “But the cell signal’s not very strong.”
Actually, I’m amazed this is working at all, she thought.
“Well, I’ll be there first thing tomorrow,” Gilbert said. “As soon as I can drive in from Blanding.”
Jules couldn’t help but note that he wouldn’t be staying in an RV.
“I don’t think this mine should go forward,” Jules said, shouting at the computer now.
Gilbert’s face blinked out, and the screen went blank.
He’s not going to listen to me, she thought, dejectedly shutting her screen. He’d destroy the Grand Canyon or Yosemite if he thought he could make money from it.
Jules pushed open the curtains and looked out at the expanse of desert outside her window, stretching red and dusty to the horizon.
I should start looking for another job, she thought. I don’t think I’m making much of a difference in this one.
When the phone finally rang at five-thirty, Jules jumped. She was practically neck-deep in surveys and printouts, one pencil stuck through her thick red hair, holding it in a bun, and one pencil behind her ear. She held a third pencil in her hand.
The number wasn’t familiar, and she snatched it off the table, holding the screen up in front of her. Then she took a moment to clear her throat, collecting herself, before answering.
It was either going to be Gilbert or Seth, and she knew who she was hoping for.
“Juliana Morgan,” she said as professionally as she could.
“Hey there,” said a deep, almost scratchy voice. “It’s Seth.”
Jules’s heart did a somersault. No: ten somersaults.
“Hi,” she said.
“I know this is pretty short notice, but I thought maybe I could return the favor and pay you back by showing you around town tonight,” he said. “You busy?”
“Not at all,” she said eagerly.
Don’t be too eager, she thought. At least play a little hard-to-get.
“There’s a catch,” he said.
Jules frowned at the interior of the RV.
“What is it?” she said, cautiously.
It had better not be, ‘don’t tell my girlfriend,’ she thought.
“I don’t have a car right now,” Seth said.
Jules smacked herself on the forehead.
“Of course,” she said. “Do you need a ride? I can pick you up.”
“That would be perfect,” he said, and she thought that she could hear a little relief in his voice. “My truck hasn’t moved since the last time you gave me ride.”
She smiled at the interior of the RV.
“I feel like I’m doing the heavy lifting so far,” she teased. “First I rescue you, then I pick you up for our—” she fumbled on the word date— “night out on the town.”
“I promise I’ll make it up to you,” Seth said. “What do you say to burgers, shakes, and bowling?”
“I say you’ll have to give me directions,” Jules answered.
“Pick me up in thirty?” Seth said. “I know it’s soon, but if we really want to get the most from Obsidian, we gotta go before everything closes.”
Jules stood from the table and yanked the pencil out of her bun, knocking the one from behind her ear in the process, and they both clattered to the floor. She rolled her eyes, then grabbed another pencil from the table, pulling a blank sticky note from a pad.
“Sure,” Jules said. “Give me your address.”
“Okay, do you know how to get to the highway?”
“I’ve got a GPS,” Jules said. “It’s 2015, you know.”
Seth laughed.
“Not in Obsidian, it isn’t,” he said. “75020 Copper Mesa Road.”
“Got it,” said Jules. “See you soon.”
She hung up, then spent a moment staring at her phone, just grinning like an idiot before tossing her phone onto the table.
As she walked to the bedroom, she did a little shimmying dance, shaking her hips back and forth and rolling her shoulders.
“Who’s got a hot date?” She asked the empty interior of the RV, pointing both her thumbs at herself. “I’ve got a hot date!”
I’m pretty sure that’s Copper Mesa, Jules thought, driving up Seth’s long driveway, glancing at the dark, hulking mass that blocked the stars.
Maybe it’s another one, though. This part of Utah’s lousy with the things, after all.
In the dark she couldn’t tell how far away it was, a mile or fifty miles.
The house wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all. It was big and old, most of the windows glowing with light inside. It needed some work — a paint job for sure — but it wasn’t shabby or falling apart.
Someone built this place a long time ago, she thought. Probably before there was electricity. Someone worked really, really hard to build this house, and they really loved it.
Seth waited on the porch, leaning against one of the columns, and when Jules pulled up he hopped down the stairs and crossed the driveway. Jules swallowed hard, just watching him walk. A tiny part of her thought that it had to be some kind of trick, or Seth would turn out to have a clown fetish or a collection of toenails, or something, because he was really too hot to be true.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said, getting in and buckling up. Even in the dark, she could practically see his near-gold eyes flash.
“Where to?” Jules asked, shifting the truck into reverse, making a three-point turn, and then heading back down the long driveway. To their right, the mesa still hulked, silent and a little menacing.
Jules decided to not bring up the mine, not yet anyway. She could at least wait until she was sure about where it would be.
“You like burgers and fries?” Seth asked.
“Sure,” said Jules.
“Good. After we hung up, it occurred to me that you might be vegetarian, and then I’d really be screwed.”
Jules laughed.
“Nope,” she said.
“Then we’re going to Big Mary’s, Obsidian’s best and only restaurant with table service.”
“I’m really getting the VIP service,” Jules teased. “And then, bowling?”
“If we can get a lane,” Seth confessed. “The High Desert Fun Factory only has three, so sometimes they’re full.”
“I’m kind of surprised that you’ve got a bowling alley at all,” she said, turning onto the highway and picking up speed. “I mean, you’ve only got dialup internet.”
“We’re getting cable!” said Seth. “They’re extending it down Lake Powell, and they’re putting a spur out to Obsidian and a couple other towns out here.”
“You’ll come screaming into the twenty-first century,” Jules said. “Okay, where am I going?”
“I thought you had a GPS and didn’t need directions,” Seth teased. “Two more blocks, and then it’s on the corner on your right. Just park wherever.”
When they walked inside, Jules realized that something was off. The sign at the front simply said, “Please Seat Yourself,” but when she walked to a table by the windows, Seth made a face.
“How about that booth?” he said, pointing.
“It’s right by the kitchen,” she protested.
“Humor me?” he said. Then he smiled and flashed his dimples.
Jules gave in instantly. As they walked away, she glanced at the table behind Seth. The people sitting there were a perfectly normal family, but the two adults had stopped eating for a moment and gone still, their eyes watching Seth.
As they walked across the room, she realized that as Seth walked past, conversations hushed. Grown adults tried and failed to pretend they wer
en’t staring.
You’re definitely just making this up, she thought.
But what if Seth did something terrible, and now everyone hates him?
Well, at least we’re in public. For now.
“I just like booths,” Seth said, sliding along the red vinyl and grabbing a menu. “This place makes their own cherry coke, with the syrup and everything. It’s really good.”
Jules scanned the menu quickly. It had about ten items on it, not counting the drinks section, and eight were burgers.
“Burgers seems like the thing to get,” she said.
“I always get the one with cheese, bacon, and jalapenos,” said Seth. “Around here, jalapenos make something pretty exotic.”
From the corner of her eye, Jules watched the waitress, a middle-aged woman with a ponytail and lipstick that wasn’t quite the right shade for her. Someone at the next table over made a joke and everyone laughed, the waitress slapping her thigh.
“You’re a card, Jimmy,” she said, flipping a page over on her pad. Then she walked to where Jules and Seth were sitting, and as she came closer, her face totally changed, going from laughing to stony, her mouth forming a thin line.
“Can I get you two something to drink?” she asked, her speech clipped and formal.
“I’d like a cherry coke, please,” Jules asked, trying to sound as bright and bubbly as she could.
“Same here,” said Seth.
The waitress nodded curtly, then walked away. Moments later, Jules watched her smile at another customer, clearing his plate.
Jules looked at Seth, her eyes narrowing just a little. By now, she was pretty sure that she wasn’t imagining it: the people in town really were being specifically unfriendly to them.
“Are we in the beginning of a horror movie?” she asked, her voice low.
“I hope not,” said Seth, raising his eyebrows.
“You know, the part where a new person comes to town, and all the townspeople act shady, and then later when she’s walking somewhere alone she gets kidnapped, and it turns out that the townspeople have a monster that requires sacrifices or something?”