Saturday morning, and traffic was thick. Luckily, though, most of it was headed into Las Vegas rather than leaving it, and so once they were outside the city proper, he was able to get up to speed quickly enough. At that rate — and barring any accidents on the highway — they’d probably make it to Flagstaff around one o’clock.
While Addie was in the shower, Jake had called Jeremy to make sure there still was no sign of any pursuit, and also to ask if Laurel could go ahead and get housing set up for their newfound relative. Jeremy assured him that all was still quiet — “it’s kind of hard to make out any details about a vehicle when the satellite signal is being scrambled at the source” — and that their cousin was already over at the little cottage down the street from Jake’s house, which had been purchased specially for this very purpose.
“How is she?” Jeremy had asked, surprising Jake somewhat. Half the time, Jeremy was so buried in computer code that he barely seemed to realize the people around him were breathing, let alone having emotional reactions to the events in their lives.
“She’s okay,” Jake replied. “Shaken up, but I think she’s going to be all right. We just have to make sure she stays safe.”
“Not a problem. I took a copy of his image and posted it on the family bulletin board, so everyone will be keeping an eye out and will let me know if they see anything.”
“Thanks,” Jake said, relieved that his brother had been so proactive. He didn’t bother to ask where Jeremy had gotten a photo of the agent in question; his brother was very good at digging up useful information. And one good thing about being part of a witch clan that depended on family cooperation to keep everyone’s identities secret was that you never had to worry about someone saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, or questioning why it was so important to stay on the lookout for suspicious people. The Wilcoxes would do their best to prevent Agent Lenz from slipping into their territory undetected. Jake knew that some primas had the ability to detect when an interloper entered their domain, but Connor didn’t seem to have that gift, which was why they needed everyone to step up and keep an eye out.
“So, see you in a few hours, I guess,” Jeremy told him, signaling that he wanted to end the call and get back to monitoring his computers.
“Right. I’m going to take Addie straight to the cottage, so I’ll call once we’re there.”
“Sounds good.”
They’d hung up then, and not long after, Addie had emerged from the bathroom, combing her damp hair, face bare. Not that she really needed makeup; her fair skin was pretty much flawless, and her full mouth seemed to be naturally rosy.
At the time, Jake had told himself he probably shouldn’t be paying attention to those sorts of details. Now, though, as they drove south on the highway and the sun streamed through the car windows, casting a golden glow on her face and awakening warm highlights in her long, dark hair, he realized that was going to be harder than he’d thought.
She wasn’t just pretty; she was beautiful.
To distract himself, he told her about their destination in Flagstaff. “There’s a cottage a few doors down from my house that we bought for any ‘guests’ we might find. That’s where you’ll be staying. Eventually, of course, you’ll probably want to get your own place, but there’s no rush on any of that. You can take as much time as you need to get settled.”
Addie looked almost surprised. “I never really thought about having a house. I just….” The words trailed away, and she gave a rueful shrug. “I guess because my mom and I were always renting, I never believed I’d ever be able to have a place that I owned. So, you own your house?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Most of us do. Of course,” he added, wanting to reassure her that he knew the situation looked a little unusual to someone unfamiliar with the way the clan did business, “it helps to have other Wilcoxes approving the loans and doing the paperwork.”
“Mortgage broker witches?” Addie said, her expression now almost amused.
It was the first time he’d seen a real light in her luminous gray-green eyes, and Jake wanted to do whatever he could to make sure it wasn’t extinguished, that she’d always have a reason to light up like that. “Yes, and lawyers and teachers and electricians and small business owners…we’re sort of all over the place. Anyway, with Wilcox cousins handling the loans, it’s a lot easier to skate by with our ‘nontraditional’ income.”
“Convenient,” she remarked. “I guess there must be all sorts of perks to being in a witch clan.”
“Quite a few. But you can learn more about that as you get settled in.”
She nodded, but something in her face seemed to shift, as though it had really started to get through to her that this wasn’t some game of “let’s pretend,” that she actually was going to have to restart her life in a brand-new place surrounded by people who were strangers to her. Yes, technically, they were related to her, but since she’d never met any of them — hadn’t even known they existed until he’d told her about them the day before — their shared blood probably didn’t count as much as he wanted it to.
Jake resolved that he’d do his best to make the transition as easy as possible for her. Hopefully, she’d think it a good thing that his house was only two doors down from the cottage. He wanted her to feel as if she could reach out to him with any questions or problems, and being on the same street made it easier for them to get together…but not as creepy as it might have felt if she’d been staying in a guest house on the property or even next door.
“One step at a time,” he assured her. “But I know Connor will want to meet you as soon as you feel up to it.”
“My half-brother,” she said, her tone now one of bemusement, as though she was still having a hard time wrapping her head around the concept of having a sibling after an entire life spent believing she was an only child.
“Right.” Jake purposely hadn’t reached out to Connor with the news, figuring he might as well wait until he and Addie were safely in Flagstaff. How the primus was going to take the revelation that he had a sister, Jake honestly couldn’t begin to guess. In general, Connor was pretty easygoing — especially in contrast to his late brother, the strong-willed former primus. But it wasn’t as though long-lost sisters came out of the woodwork every day…especially when the sister in question technically shouldn’t even exist, at least according to the dictates of the curse that had ruled their family’s life for generations. “But again, we’ll get all that figured out after we’re home.”
The word slipped out before he could stop himself, and Jake winced inwardly, wondering if Addie was going to take the comment the wrong way. Of course, he didn’t believe that she would start thinking of Flagstaff as “home” right away, but he did hope she’d allow herself to ease into it. Surely, being around her relatives when she’d always thought of herself as being pretty much alone in the world had to count for something.
Or maybe not. He barely knew her, and he honestly had no idea if she’d ever even thought of herself as being alone, or whether having a small family that included only her mother and herself had always been plenty for her.
But Addie only tilted her head to gaze out through the truck’s windows, and gave a very faint nod. “Sure.”
Partway through the trip, she actually dozed off for a bit, her chin drooping to almost touch her chest, and Jake experienced an unexpected and not completely welcome surge of tenderness as he glanced over at her, at the way her dark hair fell around her face, almost but not quite obscuring her delicate features. He’d fallen asleep again quickly enough the night before, but maybe Addie hadn’t been so lucky. If she’d remained wakeful, no wonder she was tired.
However, she woke up as he guided the truck off the southbound 93 and onto I-40 east, passing through Kingman. She blinked, and he smiled at her.
“Welcome to Arizona.”
A quick glance out the window, and then she looked back over at him. “It just looks like more desert.”
“Well, t
rue.” Kingman had never been his favorite place, used as he was to the ponderosa forests that surrounded his hometown. “But we’ll be in the trees in about an hour or so.”
“‘Trees’?” she repeated, clearly not sure what he’d meant by that statement.
“Flagstaff is surrounded by the biggest continuous ponderosa pine forest in the world,” he told her, thinking he probably sounded a little too much like a tour guide. “It’s really beautiful. And you’re coming at a great time of year — summer in the high country is a little piece of heaven.”
Her mouth lifted slightly, as though she was trying to picture it in her mind. “Sounds like Durango.”
“It probably is…a little,” Jake said. “I’ve never been to Colorado, so I wouldn’t know. In general, we witches and warlocks don’t travel much.”
“Oh?” Addie said then, sounding genuinely curious. “Why not?”
“Because it’s sort of a tradition that each clan stays in its own territory and doesn’t go into another clan’s territory without permission.”
“Did you get permission to come to Kanab?”
He shook his head. “No. There aren’t any witch clans in Utah — didn’t want to compete with the Mormons, I suppose.”
That remark made her smile outright. “No, it’s probably not the best place in the world if you’re trying to maintain a secret identity. What about Vegas, though?”
“There’s a clan in Nevada — the Delmonicos — but most of them live in the northwest part of the state, up around Reno and Lake Tahoe, places like that. Because Las Vegas gets so many tourists, I guess they’ve decided it’s not worth policing. That’s why I didn’t worry about getting permission to go there.”
Addie seemed to absorb that piece of information, then shrugged a little as she settled against the back of her seat. “So…the Wilcoxes are in northern Arizona. What about the rest of the state?”
“The McAllisters are sort of in the middle, though they tend to mainly live in the Verde Valley — Jerome and Cottonwood and Clarkdale. But they also have branches of the family in Payson and Prescott and Wickenburg. And then down south, from Phoenix all the way to the Mexican border, are the de la Pazes.” Jake paused there before deciding to add, “Connor’s wife Angela is a McAllister.”
“So, you’re all friendly with each other?”
That innocent question made him smile, although he knew Addie wouldn’t have seen the irony in it. “We are…now. It’s kind of complicated. A lot of things have happened in the past seven years or so.”
“Like?”
The last thing he wanted to do was explain how, up until the time Damon Wilcox passed away and Connor took over leadership of the clan, the other Arizona clans had viewed the Wilcoxes with distrust, if not outright enmity. They had a bad reputation going all the way back to the time when Jeremiah Wilcox settled in Flagstaff with his three brothers, his sister, and their assorted spouses, and before Connor, none of the Wilcox primuses had done much to disabuse anyone of the notion that the rules didn’t apply to them. No, if anything, they’d encouraged it. Jake hadn’t even realized how much the McAllisters had thought of the Wilcoxes as the “big bad” until he’d hung out with some of them in recent years. It was sort of like thinking you were one of the good guys in Star Wars, and then discovering you’d actually been part of the Empire all along.
“Plenty of time to talk about that later,” he said. From the way Addie’s brows drew together slightly, he could tell she didn’t think much of his evasive response, although she didn’t push back, and instead gave a little shrug.
He really didn’t want to get into all that ancient history right then. Maybe later, after she’d had time to meet some of her family, to see that they really were a bunch of nice, normal people — well, mostly — then he’d go into some of the Wilcox history. At some point, someone would have to. Jeremiah Wilcox was Addie’s great-to-the-seventh-power grandfather, and it wouldn’t be fair to keep the truth from her.
For the moment, though, they had far more pressing matters to worry about. Jeremy had said that Agent Lenz didn’t appear to be an issue…for now…but Jake didn’t see how that state of affairs could continue for much longer.
He knew very little about the man in question, but he could already tell one thing.
Randall Lenz didn’t seem like the type of guy who would give up easily.
His head still ached, and he wondered if he should see a doctor after all. Not the team’s medic; the men had already returned to their various regular postings once it was determined that their quarry had somehow managed to give them all the slip, leaving him alone as he decided what to do next. However, Kanab probably had a walk-in urgent care clinic where he could have a doctor or nurse practitioner check to make sure he didn’t have a concussion.
Lenz scowled and pushed the thought aside. He didn’t want to admit to such weakness. Probably, what he really needed was a cup of coffee.
For all he knew, his headache could be directly blamed on what a clusterfuck this whole endeavor had turned out to be. Agent Dawson had gotten back to him and told him — sounding hesitant and worried, as if she feared he was going to blame her for the fiasco even though she couldn’t have had anything to do with it — that the feed from the satellite had been corrupted somehow and was nothing more than a mass of static for the hour preceding his arrival at Adara Grant’s house and approximately twenty minutes afterward. The traffic camera footage likewise had been corrupted.
Coincidence?
Randall Lenz didn’t believe in coincidence.
On the other hand, he had a hard time believing that someone like Adara Grant — a young woman with no family, no connections, not even a college education — could have pulled off that kind of sophisticated hack, or even knew the sort of people who might be able to accomplish such a feat. A far more likely culprit was some sort of associate of the mysterious “Jake” who’d shown up on her doorstep. However, even though Lenz had given the man’s name and the details of his appearance to Dawson in the hope she’d be able to locate someone matching his description, he knew that was a long shot at best. If the person in question didn’t have a criminal record, it would be difficult to track him down.
Which meant that Adara was with a stranger of unknown origin and motivations, someone who wanted her for…what? The same thing he did?
Randall Lenz didn’t like that idea very much. However, he wasn’t naïve enough to think there weren’t governments out there who wouldn’t be very, very interested in capturing someone with Adara Grant’s abilities. This Jake person didn’t look or sound Russian, but he supposed he could have been. Or an independent operative working for the Saudis…or the Iranians or the North Koreans, although he had to admit those two latter possibilities were long shots. Russia seemed to be the far more likely culprit.
Well, if the man who had appeared out of nowhere on Adara Grant’s doorstep had ever been identified as a Russian asset, then Agent Dawson would make the connection soon enough. And if she did, that would solve that particular puzzle.
But not, unfortunately, the larger problem of where “Jake” had taken Adara. Inquiries would be made, asking if people along any of the probable routes they might have traveled had seen a couple matching the description of the two fugitives, of course, and yet, those sorts of investigations tended to be unwieldy and time-consuming. There was no guarantee that he would find any leads…and if he did, the trail might very well be ice cold by the time he was finally able to get an actionable piece of information.
The motel room he was renting didn’t have a coffeemaker, so he showered and got dressed, then headed out in search of some caffeine and breakfast. Just down the street was a retro-looking diner, so he went in there and sat down at the counter.
A plump woman with unnaturally brassy blonde hair asked if he wanted any coffee. He said yes, noting as he did so that her eyes looked red and tired, as if she’d cried recently. And when she returned with the pot and poured him a
cup, he noticed the black ribbon pinned to her name badge, which let him know her name was Tammy.
Apparently, Tammy saw him looking at the ribbon, because she let out a sad little sigh and said, “Yesterday, we lost one of our waitresses and her daughter — who worked here, too. So, we’re all a little down right now.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Lenz replied, hoping he sounded appropriately somber. It didn’t take much deduction to guess who his waitress’s co-workers had been. What was interesting was that she’d said they’d “lost” Adara as well, although Agent Dawson hadn’t reported to him that local law enforcement considered her another casualty of the explosion at the house. “That had to be quite a blow.”
“It was.” Tammy reached into the pocket of the apron she wore and pulled out a Kleenex, then dabbed her eyes with it. “We’re all still sort of shell-shocked. They weren’t locals — they’d lived here for about a year and a half or so — but everyone who works here is treated as family. And to go like that….”
“A car accident?” he asked, figuring that would be a natural assumption.
Another dab of the Kleenex at the corner of her eye, and then the waitress returned the tissue to her pocket. “No. A gas explosion at their house. Burned the place right to the ground with both of them in it. And if it had happened only five minutes later, they would have already left for work and been completely safe. Such a tragedy.”
“That it is,” Lenz agreed, feeling inwardly relieved by these revelations. If Adara was presumed dead as well, that made the whole thing much easier. If — when, he corrected himself — he caught back up with her, there would be no need of a cover story to explain her disappearance from the world. She was already no one, a ghost.
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