The Shimmer

21

Brent Loft gave his most amused, sympathetic look to the camera, saying, “Near Arroyo Park, a tearful ten-year-old girl waved for a police car to stop and pointed to where her cat had climbed to the top of a high-voltage utility pole. Workers from El Paso Electric arrived with a crane and very carefully rescued the feline, which, as you can see, was more afraid of being rescued than of staying on top of the pole. The thick, insulated gloves of the man on the crane protected him from more than just the electrical lines.”

Next to Loft, his coanchor, Sharon Rivera, chuckled and read the next paragraph on the teleprompter: “The girl and her pet were finally reunited, but apparently this isn’t the only time the cat has been rescued. Last month two city workers had to free it from a storm drain.”

“Seven more lives to go,” Brent said, trying not to gag on the line. He turned toward the man on his left. “Frank, what’s the final weather recap?”

“Tomorrow’ll be another hot, sunny day with a chance of thunder- storms during the night.”

“We can always use the rain,” Sharon said.

“Sure can,” Brent agreed. “Well, that’s it for El Paso’s First-on-the- Scene News at 10. Be sure to watch our morning report from 6 to 7. We’ll see you tomorrow night at 5, 6, and 10. Thanks for joining us.”

With big smiles, they listened to their program’s pulsing theme music. The red lights on the cameras stopped glowing. The harsh overhead lights dimmed.

Like the other newscasters, Brent took off his lapel microphone and removed the earbud radio receiver through which the show’s producer could give him instructions to cut an item, add a late- breaking story, or make a joke.

Sharon’s earbud got caught in her voluminous hair.

“I hate reports about rescued pets,” Brent complained.

“Yeah, but people like to go to sleep with a cozy feeling,” sports re- porter Tom Montoya said as he stood from behind his desk. Tom wore a jacket and tie for the camera, but what viewers at home couldn’t see was that-hidden by the desk-the rest of his ensemble consisted of shorts, sweat socks, and sneakers. He’d played basketball between the 6 and 10 newscasts, barely returning to the station in time to refresh his makeup.

Sharon wore an elegant navy blazer and a pale-blue blouse, the tightness of which accentuated her breasts. When she stood from the news desk, her mismatched jeans became visible. Because she had chronic sore feet, she didn’t wear shoes. Her socks were thick wool because her feet were sensitive to the cold that came off the studio’s concrete floor.

In contrast, Brent wore a full suit, an expensive calfskin belt, and de- signer shoes that he always buffed before he went on the air. The shoes were the most important feature-he felt that their shine radiated upward and added to the substance of his delivery. From bottom to top, everything counted. He would no more go on the air with scuffed shoes than he would with hair that wasn’t carefully blow-dried.

But it had taken all his skill to sound sincere when he’d read that item about the damned cat. The next time the producer wanted a cute story, Brent promised himself he’d make Sharon read all of it.

“Want to go out for a drink?” he asked her.

“Brent, how many times do I need to tell you I’m dating someone?”

“Hey, it never hurts to ask. If you’re serious about this guy, why don’t you bring him around sometime so we can see what he looks like?”

“He?” She looked at him strangely.

“Very funny,” Brent said.

“You’ve been working here three months, and no one told you I was gay?”

“Yeah, right. Quit kidding around.”

“What makes you think I’m kidding?”

“Okay, okay, I can take a joke.” At that moment, the producer entered the studio, rescuing him from Sharon’s ridiculous act.

“Brent, I need to talk to you.”

Brent didn’t like his tone. Something’s going to hit the fan, he predicted.

He had risen through the broadcast markets from a small television station in Oklahoma to a modest-sized one in Kansas to this bigger one in El Paso. Every newscaster’s goal was to work for the premium cable news channels-like CNN or Fox-or the network stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and New York. Better yet, at the top-to go national on the evening news at ABC, NBC, or CBS.

Brent had rocketed through the lower-level stations, but he was forced to admit that he hadn’t gained the momentum he needed to get out of El Paso a year from now, as he’d planned. For one thing, he hadn’t managed to bond with the rest of the news team. Perhaps they sensed his determination not to stay in the area any longer than necessary. As a consequence, he hadn’t been given any career-advancing stories. Also, he had the sense that the news director regretted hiring him. Presumably he’d decided that Brent looked a little too white- bread for this market.

Shit, he’ll probably come down on me for the way I read that piece about the damned cat.

“Sharon, I need to see you, also,” the producer said. A somber expression on his face, he looked down at his tennis shoes as if he wanted to avoid eye contact.

“Listen, I can explain about the cat story…” Brent said.

The producer peered up, looking distracted. “What are you talking about?”

Sharon padded across the concrete floor on her thick socks. “Has something happened?”

“There’s been a mass shooting.” The producer’s somber expression was replaced with a look of grim resolve.

“What?”

“Outside a town called Rostov. That’s about two hundred miles southeast of here. Our contact with the Highway Patrol says as many as twenty people were hit, most of them fatally. It happened at some kind of roadside tourist attraction they have down there.”

Brent stepped closer. Even in today’s weird world, a mass shooting with five or six victims was news. But twenty?

“Who did it?” Sharon asked.

“The gunman hasn’t been identified. Apparently a woman on the scene shot and killed him.”

“A woman?” The story’s sounding better by the minute, Brent thought.

“The details are still coming in, but I don’t want our viewers to get all their information about it from CNN or Fox. This is a west Texas story. We call ourselves ‘First-on-the-Scene,’ and by God, we’ll prove it. Sharon, go back on the air for ‘breaking news.’ Our contact with the Highway Patrol agreed to an on-air telephone interview. Brent, the chopper’s waiting for you. Fly to Rostov immediately. Find out what’s happening. Hopefully you’ll be up to speed when Sharon and the broadcast truck reach there in the morning.”

As Sharon hurried toward the news desk, the producer called after her, “Sharon, at Rostov you’ll give live updates throughout the day. Tomorrow evening, you’ll anchor the show with a view of the place where the shootings occurred. This’ll be a special broadcast, and we’ll make a big deal about it. Squeeze in as much rest as you can. I don’t want you looking tired.”

“So Sharon and I will be coanchoring there?” Brent asked, already imagining how impressive that would look on his resume.

“No, Sharon’s the anchor. You’ll contribute background. If you do research all night and all day tomorrow, by the time the broadcast starts tomorrow evening, you’ll look like something the cat dragged in.” The producer seemed to emphasize the word “cat,” but Brent hoped it was just his imagination. “Now, hurry out to the chopper.”

“But I need to go home and get some fresh clothes,” Brent said. “This suit’ll be a mess by tomorrow.”

“You don’t have time. I want you on the ground before those damned CNN reporters show up.” With that, the producer turned to- ward the three camera operators. “Who wants some serious overtime?”

“I do,” a woman said. “The brakes on my car need replacing.”

When she stepped from behind the equipment, Brent recognized the cute Hispanic camerawoman who’d recently joined the staff. Her name was Anita something. In her early twenties, she was short and trim, with shiny dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore hiking boots and pants that had twice the usual number of pockets. Her shirt had ample pockets as well.

“Grab a camera and take one of the vans,” the producer responded. “Start for Rostov right away. This time of night, you can probably reach there in two and a half hours.”

“Less,” Anita said confidently.

“Whatever-I don’t care how many speeding tickets you get. Just don’t crash the van. By the time Brent’s done getting overhead shots of the crime scene and providing commentary, you’ll need to be close to the area.”

“Wait,” Brent said, “you want me to operate the chopper’s camera, too?”

The producer ignored him and kept talking to Anita.

“There’s a good possibility the bodies won’t have been removed yet. After the chopper sets Brent down, you and he will start interviewing the police and any witnesses you can find. Brent, I told you to get moving. If we cover this from enough angles, maybe CNN won’t bother sending their people. Maybe they’ll pay to have Sharon supply live updates. Our competition won’t stand a chance in the ratings.”

22

The eerie music drifted and dipped, hovered and sailed. Coming from instruments Halloway still couldn’t identify, the languid, sensuous melody settled into a lower register. He imagined that he was slow dancing with the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. He smelled cinnamon in her hair and tasted orange juice and vodka.

By now there were seven people in the room: Halloway and his partner, Taggard, another pair of guards who’d kept leaving the surveilance room to listen to the music, and the researcher-Gordon- who’d been joined by two others.

Transported by the sounds, no one spoke. Halloway imagined the woman he danced with pressing against him. She breathed softly into his ear.

Abruptly the music became silent. The woman disappeared.

“Hey, what happened?” Halloway demanded.

Static came from the speakers: harsh, crackly, loud, and aggravating.

“Gordon, what did you do?” he exclaimed. “Where’s the music?”

But Gordon looked as surprised-and annoyed-as everyone else.

“I didn’t do anything,” he protested, holding up his hands as if that would prove it.

“Then what happened? Why did the music stop?”

A researcher pressed buttons and twisted knobs on several of the consoles. “Maybe we have a phasing problem,” he offered.

The static’s brittle echo rebounded off the walls.

“Phasing, my ass.” Halloway clamped his hands to his ears. “Damn it, that hurts. Do something.”

Another researcher flicked a switch, disengaging the speakers. The static all but disappeared, coming only from headphones on a desk. When Gordon put them on, Halloway couldn’t hear the static at all.

What he did hear, though, was the hum of the many electronic devices that were crammed into the room-and the deeper vibration, almost undetectable, that the facility’s electrical generator or the huge dishes aboveground sent through the walls.

The music had distracted him from his increasing headache, but now the pain intensified through his skull.

“Where did it come from?”

The researchers gave each other guarded looks, as if hiding something.

“Bring it back!”

“We don’t know how we received it in the first place,” Gordon explained too quickly, “let alone how to find it again.”

“Just bring it back!” Halloway demanded.

“You’re not even supposed to be in here,” Gordon realized, now that the music no longer occupied his attention. “This area’s strictly off-limits. You belong in the surveillance room.”

“Like hell. My job’s to protect this place. I can go anywhere I want.”

“Well, how about protecting it by checking the security monitors? While you’ve been hanging around in here, a terrorist assault team might have surrounded us.”

Buddy, if you hear that music again and you don’t let me know, Halloway silently vowed, terrorists will be the least of your worries.

23

Dozens of emergency lights flashed in the darkness. Their chaos of orange, blue, and white contrasted starkly with the shimmering colors Page had thought he’d seen earlier. An engine rumbled as firefighters sprayed foam on what was left of the burning bus. Eight Highway Patrol cars were parked next to three police cars from Rostov. Law enforcement officers and medical personnel seemed everywhere. Page heard the wail of a departing ambulance and the roar of a medevac helicopter as it rose from a nearby field, its takeoff lights painfully intense.

From his vantage point a short distance down the road, he watched a patrolman interviewing Tori in her car next to the viewing platform. Page had already spoken to several officers and took for granted that they’d have more questions. Right now he was grateful for the chance to step back from the commotion and try to adjust to the trauma of what had happened.

He found himself next to a metal pole that had a large, brass rectangle attached to the top. Words were embossed on the rectangle. The harsh reflection from the emergency vehicles provided just enough illumination for him to be able to read:

Welcome to the Rostov lights. Many people have claimed to see them, but no one has ever been able to explain them. If you’re lucky enough to experience them, decide for yourself what they are.

Footsteps approached. Page turned from the plaque and saw a silhoette of a man in a cowboy hat. As the figure came nearer, he recognized a Highway Patrol captain he’d spoken with earlier. The Hispanic man had a broad face, with prominent cheek- and jaw- bones. The emergency lights revealed his blue tie and tan uniform. His last name was Medrano.

“We finished interviewing your wife,” he announced. “You can take her back to where you’re staying.”

Page didn’t comment on the complexities that lay behind that statement.

“You’re done with me, too?”

“For now. All the survivors tell the same story. The guy went crazy. If not for you and your wife, a lot more people would have been killed. You still don’t have any idea why he did it?” Medrano looked as if he desperately wanted something that would explain what had happened.

“Only that he said the lights were evil.”

“The lights? The way you talk about them… You saw them, too?”

“It took some effort, but yeah. At least, I saw something.”

The captain looked puzzled. “I live in Harrington, about a hundred miles down the road. It’s a big town because of the oil refinery, but there’s not a lot to do. Whenever my wife’s parents or my brother and his family came to visit, we used to drive here to try to see the lights. I bet I made that trip a dozen times. Never saw a thing. Neither did my wife’s parents or my brother and his family, even though strangers standing right next to us claimed they could. We finally gave up and stopped coming. What’d they look like?”

“They seemed miles away, yet I thought they were so close I tried to reach out and touch them. They bobbed and floated, merged and separated, and came together again. They kept changing colors. Once I saw them, I had trouble turning away from them.”

Medrano nodded. “That’s usually the way they’re described.”

“The thing is, I’m beginning to wonder if I just persuaded myself they were out there. It was like mass hysteria, and I might have just been caught up in it.”

“Yeah, that’s one explanation-that people talk each other into seeing them.”

“One explanation? What are the others?”

“Phosphorescent gas that rises from seams in the earth. Another theory suggests that the underground rocks here have a lot of quartz crystals in them. After the heat of the day, the rapid cooling causes the rocks to contract and give off static electricity.”

Page looked past Medrano toward the emergency lights, the smoke rising from the shell of the bus-and the corpses.

“All those people died because of static electricity?” He shook his head. “If so, that makes it even more senseless.”

“Your wife says the killer shouted to the crowd, ‘Don’t you realize what they’re doing to you?’”

“He meant the lights. Then he started shooting at the horizon. He yelled, ‘Go back to hell where you came from.’ Then, ‘You’re all damned.’ I thought he meant the lights again, but it turned out he meant that the crowd was damned because the next thing he opened fire on everyone around him.”

“Some kind of religious lunatic,” Medrano suggested.

“He sure had a fixation on hell. ‘Came from hell.’ ‘Going back to hell.’ He said that a couple of times while he was shooting people.”

“Well, the fire that burned him gave him a taste of where he was going,” Medrano said.

“That thought occurred to me, too. Do you know who he was?”

“Not yet-any ID he had on him was destroyed. By process of elimination, we’ll figure out which car he used and track its registration number.”

“Unless he came on the bus.”

“With an AK-47 that nobody noticed?”

“He could have carried it in something like a guitar case,” Page offered.

“Yeah, that’s possible. You know, you do think like a cop. Well, if the shooter arrived on the bus, any evidence was probably destroyed by the fire. That’ll make our job a lot more difficult.”

Page shivered, perhaps because of the cool breeze or perhaps be- cause he looked toward the corpses again.

“You could use a windbreaker,” Medrano said.

“Chief Costigan told me the same thing. Any word about how he’s doing?”

“An ambulance driver phoned me from the Rostov hospital. He’s in surgery. What about you? How are you holding up?”

Page rubbed his right side, where the gunman had kicked him. “I’m not looking forward to seeing the bruise.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. There’s a lot to sort through. For now, I’m just glad to be alive.”

“Ever been involved in a shooting before?”

“Once. But nobody died. For certain, my wife was never in a shooting before. If it hadn’t been for her, the guy might have reached me.”

“She did an amazing thing. We collected six spent pistol cartridges.”

“Actually, she fired eight times,” Page said.

“And yet she only remembers pulling the triggerfour times. If you and your wife worked for me, tomorrow morning you’d be talking to a counselor, but there’s not much I can do to help outsiders.”

“I understand. Thanks for your concern.”

Medrano turned toward the western sky, where the roar of a helicopter was rapidly approaching. “Good. Another medevac chopper.”

“I’ll drive my wife back to the motel.”

The emergency lights revealed Tori’s silhouette in the front seat of her Saturn. As Page headed in that direction, he heard the helicopter getting louder.

Its lights suddenly blazed, but instead of landing in a nearby field, it hovered over the crime scene-not close enough to the ground to kick up dust or blow objects around and interfere with the investigation, but carefully maintaining a legal altitude.

“What the hell’s going on?” Medrano wondered.

But Page had already figured it out, managing to detect four huge letters on the chopper’s side.

Medrano shook his fist at the sky. “That’s a damned TV news chopper.”

24

For a couple of seconds, Brent glimpsed the lights of a town below him. Then the helicopter roared over it, and all he saw was darkness again. At once a cluster of flashing lights appeared ahead.

A lot of flashing lights.

Through headphones, he heard the pilot’s voice. “There it is.”

Smoke rose from a burned-out shell of a bus. Firefighters, police officers, and medical personnel swarmed everywhere he looked.

“Do you see any bodies on the ground?” Brent asked the pilot. “Yes! There!”

Body bags covered human shapes on a gravel parking lot. Brent counted twelve. Others were being placed in ambulances.

His news producer was waiting back at the station, at the other end of a two-way radio. Brent flicked a switch and spoke into his microphone. “I made it here in time. They’re just starting to remove the bodies.”

“Any other news choppers?”

“None.”

“Good. You know what to do.”

“Did you find the background material I asked for?” Brent asked. “You didn’t give me a chance to do any research. I need to know about this town.”

“There’s not much,” the producer’s voice said through the earphones.

“‘Not much’ is better than ‘nothing.’”

“Wikipedia has a small item. Seems the town’s main claim to fame is that it was the location for the James Deacon movie Birthright.”

“It was released on DVD last month. I watched it,” Brent said.

“Well, I don’t know how that’s going to help you.”

“Rostov. What kind of name is that? Sounds foreign.”

“Russian,” the producer’s voice answered. “The railroad that was built there in 1889 was owned by a husband and wife who stopped in the area when the place was only a water-refilling station. The wife happened to be reading a translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. One of the characters is Count Rostov, so that’s the name she gave to the place. If you want to put our viewers to sleep, go ahead and mention that. Also, there’s an abandoned military base-just a ruin, really, where they used to train bomber pilots. There are so many unexploded bombs that they had to fence off the area and post warning signs, but there hasn’t been an incident in years.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing. Except…”

“What?” Page asked. “I need anything you’ve got.”

“There’s something about lights.”

“Lights?”

“It calls them, and I quote, ‘the mysterious Rostov lights.’”

“What the hell are those?”

“All it says is ‘colored balls of light in a field.’ Along with the old movie set from Birthright, they’re the big local attraction. Any bets the good citizens of Rostov go out in the field and wave colored flash- lights around to attract gullible tourists? But how you’re going to use any of that is beyond me.”

“You’ll be surprised. Get ready.”

The pilot had told Brent how to work the camera that was mounted on the chopper’s nose. Now he maneuvered controls that allowed him to aim the exterior lens wherever he wanted and zoom in on any detail.

“Transmitting in five, four, three, two, one, now,” he said. A cockpit monitor showed the images he sent to the station: the flashing lights, the emergency vehicles, the police, the firefighters, the medical team, and the bodies.

If that jerk-off thinks I’m going to play nice and let Sharon have most of the airtime, he’s out of his mind. I’ll give him stuff that’s so much better than she can do, he’ll be forced to put me on camera more than her. I’ve got a feeling this story is big enough to take me to Atlanta.

He let the scene achieve its impact, then gathered his thoughts around the meager information the producer had given him.

“This is Brent Loft reporting from the First-on-the-Scene News chopper. The carnage below me might be mistaken for the aftermath of an attack in a war zone, but this isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s peaceful west Texas cattle country, near the sleepy town of Rostov. That name comes from a character in Tolstoy’s War and Peace-but peace is exactly what Rostov doesn’t have tonight. The senseless gun- fire that broke out at this scenic vista two and a half hours ago left at least twenty people dead and prompts the question, ‘Is any place truly safe anymore?’”

Below, a vehicle backed away from the police cars, ambulances, and a fire truck. Brent aimed the camera toward it, hoping it was an emergency vehicle whose roof lights would suddenly come to life as it raced toward town. But he quickly realized that the vehicle was a civilian SUV, so he redirected the camera toward the firefighters spraying foam on the smoking shell of the bus.

“A half century ago, not far from here, James Deacon starred in the classic film Birthright, about a lifelong bitter feud between a wildcat oil driller and a prominent Texas cattle family. It’s a gripping saga about how the Old West became the New West. But even in the lawlessness of the Old West, the unspeakable massacre that occurred here tonight would have been unimaginable. The New West, as it turns out, is far more violent than the Old. Early reports indicate that the as-yet-unidentified killer was shot by someone on the scene, one of the innocent bystanders he was trying to slaughter. If so, his motive for this shocking outrage might remain as elusive and unexplained as the mysterious Rostov lights that draw tourists to this area.”

25

Hearing the roar of the chopper above him, Page drove Tori’s Saturn away from the turmoil of the crime scene. As he left the flashing emergency lights behind, he peered over at his wife, troubled by the way she stared straight ahead toward the darkness of the narrow road beyond the car’s headlights. Her face was tight. She looked dazed.

“You didn’t have a choice,” he told her. He kept remembering her frenzied shouts as she repeatedly pulled the trigger, even after the gunman had stopped moving. “You did the right thing. Never forget that.”

Tori might have nodded slightly, but perhaps it was only the motion of the car.

“Imagine the alternative,” Page said. “If he’d grabbed me, I might have been burned to death. Those people on the bus would have burned to death as well.”

“Maybe I shot him once to save you,” Tori murmured. Her lips barely moved. As she continued staring ahead, he had to concentrate to decipher what she told him.

“And maybe I shot him a second time to save those other people.” She drew a breath, her features more stark. “But I shot him the other times… so many…”

Page waited.

“… because he made the lights go away. He ruined the night, the son of a bitch.”

The interior of the car became tensely silent.

When they reached the motel, a neon sign said, NO VACANCY. Page stopped in front of unit 11 and recognized one of the cars farther along. The Audi belonged to the mother and father who’d brought their children to the observation area and then had become impatient, wanting to move on. Or at least the mother and the children had wanted to move on. Page remembered how defeated the father had sounded.

Your wife and kids saved your life, he thought.

In the harshly lit parking lot, he helped Tori from the Saturn, took the motel key from her purse, and unlocked the room. The place smelled old and musty.

He switched on the overhead light and saw that the room had two beds. Just as well, he thought.

When he secured the deadbolt on the door, the noise made her turn to him. Page was afraid she was going to say, “I don’t want you here.” But instead she told him numbly, “I’m going to take a shower.”

She opened a suitcase, removed boxer shorts and a T-shirt-her usual pajamas-and went into the bathroom.

She locked it.

Feeling empty, Page studied each bed and noticed that one had books on the table next to it. Choosing the other, he lay on a thin blanket and listened to the sound of the shower. He smelled smoke on his denim shirt and felt a spreading pain where he’d been kicked in the side.

The memory of the gunman’s blazing arms reaching out to embrace him made him grimace.

When Tori came out of the bathroom, she wore the boxer shorts and loose T-shirt. Her towel-dried hair was combed back, darker red than usual because it was damp. She went to the door, shut off the light, and crawled beneath the covers on the other bed.

The scent of soap and shampoo drifted from the bathroom.

“Good night,” Page said.

He lay in the darkness, waiting for her to reply.

“Good night,” she finally told him, her voice so muted he barely heard her.

26

When Page had learned to fly, his dreams had been filled with the sensation of floating, as if he were in the air on a gentle current, drifting over forests and fields. The plane was as silent as a glider.

He hovered.

He turned.

He sailed along the smooth air.

Now he had a version of that dream. But he wasn’t above forests and fields. He was in blackness, suspended in a void, settling, then rising, drifting to the left, pausing, then floating to the right, as if on invisible waves.

The way he’d seen the lights moving.

When he wakened, he felt groggy. He gradually opened his eyes and waited for his troubling memories to anchor him. Daylight streamed past the corners of the cheap drapes. He looked toward the other bed and saw that it was empty, its covers piled to the side. Immediately he sat up, realizing that he still wore his smoke-smelling jeans and denim shirt from the night before. He hadn’t even taken off his sneakers.

His side ached worse.

“Tori?”

The bathroom door was open. He looked inside, but she wasn’t there.

He hurried to the main door and pulled it open, relieved to see Tori’s car.

The sun hurt his eyes. A glance at his watch showed him that the time was almost a quarter after three. He recalled checking his watch when he’d driven Tori back to the motel. The time had been a little after one. My God, I slept more than twelve hours.

Tori.

Stiff from the pain in his side, he ran through the afternoon heat to the motel office. Inside, the same gangly young clerk was behind the desk.

“Did you see my wife go past?”

“She walked down the road toward the Rib Palace a half hour ago.” He gave Page a vaguely accusing look. “Like Chief Costigan told me, I saved a room for you last night. Could’ve used it when all that trouble happened. Lots of people coming to town.”

“I’ll pay for not using it. Give it to someone else now.”

“I already did after checkout time. A reporter’s got it now.”

“Reporter?”

“There’s a ton of them.”

The clerk pointed toward the television next to the soft-drink ma- chine in a corner of the lobby. On the screen, a handsome man in a rumpled suit held a microphone and looked intently at the camera. His tie was loose and his top shirt button open. His blond hair was in disarray. He had whisker shadow, and his face was drawn with fatigue.

A crowd was gathered behind him. Police officers motioned for people to stay behind barricades. Beyond a cluster of police cars, the observation platform was visible.

“Keep back. This is still a crime scene,” a policeman warned, speaking loudly enough for his voice to carry to the microphone.

Meanwhile, the television reporter addressed his viewers. “As you see from the commotion in the background, events are unfolding swiftly. Since First-on-the-Scene News started broadcasting images of the massacre’s aftermath early this morning, the eyes of the entire nation have been directed to this quiet Texas town. The gunman’s motive appears to have been a religious fixation on the mysterious Rostov lights that attracted the victims here last night. ‘You came from hell. Now go back to hell,’ witnesses report him shouting before he turned his rifle on them.

“The bizarre circumstances of his rampage prompted many people to start their weekend early and come here to satisfy their curiosity about the unexplained lights that ignited the killer’s frenzy. Those lights have been seen in this area for as long as anyone can re- member. Tonight, during our special live broadcast at 9, I’ll do my best to show them to you and explain what they are. Before then, Sharon Rivera and I will coanchor expanded editions of our 5 and 6 o’clock broadcasts. The bystander who shot the killer was a woman. The police haven’t released her identity, but I’ll do everything I can to find out who she is and be the first to talk to her. This is Brent Loft. I’ll see you at…”

“Shit,” Page said.

He looked out the window. The previous evening, the road in front of the motel had been almost deserted. Now a stream of vehicles went past, heading to the right, in the direction of the observation platform.

Page realized that Tori’s car keys were still in his jeans. He rushed from the office, got into the Saturn, and waited for a break in traffic that allowed him to go in the opposite direction, into town. That side of the road was deserted.

The previous evening, the Rib Palace’s parking lot had been only half full, but now it was crammed with vehicles, few of which were pickup trucks. A lot of the cars had rental-company envelopes on the dashboards. Police cruisers were bunched together at one end.

Page hurried inside, where a wave of noisy conversation swept over him. After scanning the animated people at tables and in booths, he caught a glimpse of red hair on his left and noticed Tori sitting at the counter, drinking coffee. An empty plate was in front of her. All the seats were taken, but she was at the counter’s end, so he was able to go over and stand next to her.

She glanced in his direction but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t tell if she looked troubled because of last night or because he stood next to her.

“Are you okay?” He kept his voice low.

“You have my car keys.”

“Last night I put them in my jeans by mistake. Sorry.” He gave them to her.

“You were sleeping so hard, I didn’t want to wake you by searching through your pockets,” Tori said.

“It would’ve been okay. I wouldn’t have minded being wakened. We need to…”

“Talk. Yes.” Tori reached in her purse and put money on a check that the waiter had left.

The smell of hamburgers and French fries filled the air, reminding Page that the last meal he’d eaten had been the night before, but food was the last thing he cared about as he followed her outside.

“Where’s my car?” she asked in the parking lot.

“Over there. The second row.”

More vehicles drove past, heading in the direction of the observation platform.

When Tori got behind the steering wheel, Page took the passenger seat, assuming they would sit in the parking lot while he did his best to get her to explain why she’d left him. Instead she started the car and steered toward the road. She found a gap in traffic and joined the vehicles going toward the observation platform. She didn’t say a word.

“Please,” Page said, “help me understand.”

“I have breast cancer,” Tori replied.

Page suddenly felt cold. In shock, he managed to ask, “How bad?”

“I’m having surgery this coming Tuesday. In San Antonio.”

“San Antonio?”

“My Santa Fe oncologist set it up. The plan is to rest at my mother’s house, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her over the phone. I wanted to do it in person.”

Page’s balance tilted dizzily. “Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you known?”

“The biopsy results came back a week ago.”

“You had a biopsy?” Page asked. “I had no idea.”

“In my oncologist’s office. I didn’t need to go to the hospital-she did it with a hypodermic. After you left for the airport on Tuesday, she called to tell me when the surgery was scheduled.”

“So you just packed your bags and left?” Page couldn’t adjust to his bewilderment. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it? You know I’ll give you all the support you need.”

Tori drove slowly, held back by the line of cars. After a few minutes, she spoke again. “My doctor thinks we found the cancer in time. She thinks surgery, combined with radiation, will get rid of it.”

“Under the circumstances, that’s the best news you could have.”

“I didn’t tell you about it because…” Tori drew a breath. “Because I’m tired of feeling alone.”

“Alone?” Page felt something in him plummet. “I don’t understand.”

“We live in the same house, but I’m not sure we live together. When you come home from work, I ask how your shift went, and you recite a list of crimes that you investigated.”

“That’s how my shifts usually go.”

“It’s the way you tell me, cold and flat, as if your shift happened to somebody else and you’re disgusted with the world.”

“Dealing with terrible things day after day has that effect.”

“As often as not, after work you go to a bar and drink with other cops. Do you talk with them about the crimes you investigated?”

“It’s not like group therapy or anything. We just drink a few beers and tell jokes or whatever.”

“Lately you do it after every shift. When you finally get home, we eat something I made in the crockpot. Otherwise the food would burn or get cold because I never know when you’ll actually come through the door. Instead of talking, we eat in front of the television. While you keep watching television, I go to bed and read.”

“But that’s what you like to do,” he protested. “You enjoy reading.”

“I’m not trying to place blame,” Tori said. “Each of us is who we are. On the days you’re not working, you go to the airport. As you told me once, nonpilots think flying a plane is all about feeling free and enjoying the scenery. But you like to fly because there’s so much involved in handling a plane, you can’t think about anything else. You can’t let the emotions of your job distract you while you’re control- ling the aircraft. That’s your defense against the world.

“When I learned about my cancer, I imagined the clamped-down look you’d get when I told you-the look you always get when you have emotions you don’t want to deal with. I decided I couldn’t go on that way. If I had a disease that might kill me, I didn’t want to feel alone any longer. Going to the airport is your escape. Tuesday morning, after my doctor called, I decided to escape in a different way.”

The car became silent.

Needing to distract himself, Page looked toward the sky, where clouds drifted in from the east. He glanced to the right. Beyond a barbed-wire fence, he saw the collapsed, rusted hangars from the military airstrip that had been shut down at the end of World War II. Vehicles were parked along the fence. Ahead, the procession continued, but some of the cars turned into the opposite lane and parked along the other side of the road. A glance toward the side mirror revealed cars stretched out behind the Saturn, some of which were pulling off and parking wherever they found gaps.

Tori broke the silence. “That’s why I grabbed at the memory of the lights. When I sat in that coffee shop outside El Paso and noticed Rostov on the map, the excitement of seeing those lights came back to me. Before I knew it, I couldn’t wait to get here and see them again. It’s been a long time since I felt that kind of emotion.”

“I feel as if I’m being compared to the way your father behaved that night.”

“Not at all. You’re a kind, decent man. My father was impatient and harsh. You’re nothing like that. But I need someone who feels positive.”

Page thought of the five children and the female driver who’d died in the head-on collision. He thought of the driver of the gasoline tanker who’d burned to death. He thought of his friend who’d been shot to death by the man who’d crashed into the gasoline tanker.

He couldn’t free his memory of all the people who’d been shot the previous night.

And now Tori had cancer.

“Feel positive?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure I know how to do that. But I saw the lights, too. That’s got to count for something.”

Tori didn’t respond.

“We’ll watch them together,” Page said, hoping. “I’ll learn from you.”

He heard the distant rumble of helicopters. Ahead, three of them hovered a safe distance apart. The choppers all had large letters on the undersides identifying the television stations to which they belonged. Their nose cameras were aimed at the line of vehicles.

Near the observation platform, a crowd faced barricades and the police officers who guarded them. Someone sold food from a van marked BEST TACOS IN TEXAS. Reporters stood in front of cameras next to news trucks with broadcast dishes on top. Page recognized the reporter he’d seen on the television at the motel office, the one with the rumpled suit.

“Tori, don’t stop,” he warned. “The TV people know a woman shot the killer. Sooner or later, they’ll find out it was you. They’ll never let you alone.”

But she didn’t seem to hear. All she did was stare toward the field where she’d seen the lights.

“They’re ruining it,” she said.

27

As the sun began its descent, the Black Hawk helicopter sped through the sky at 160 miles per hour. Ignoring the muffled vibration of the engines, Col. Warren Raleigh glanced to the left toward where the Davis Mountains stretched along the horizon. A moment later, he peered ahead toward clouds drifting in from the direction of the Gulf of Mexico.

Below, cattle grazed on sparse grassland that seemed to go on forever.

“Big country.” The pilot’s voice came through Raleigh’s headset.

“Some ranchers down there own a half-million acres,” Raleigh said into his microphone. “Lots of privacy.”

At 6 that morning, Raleigh and his team had flown from Glen Burnie Airport near the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Mary- land. Their aircraft had been a Falcon 2000 owned by INSCOM but registered to a fictitious civilian corporation. It flew them two-thirds of the way across the continent to the Army airbase at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. There they’d picked up equipment that Raleigh had ordered to be ready for them. They’d also added two members to their team. One was human-an Army dog handler. The other was a German shepherd.

The helicopter they’d transferred to was unarmed. In its cargo- transport configuration, without the dramatic-looking missile launchers and Gatling guns, it wouldn’t attract any more attention than most other helicopters, Raleigh thought, especially in an area where the majority of eyes that would see it belonged to cattle and coyotes.

He glanced at his watch. “We should be there just about now.”

“Exactly on schedule, sir.” The pilot gestured ahead toward a gleam of white.

The ten radio dishes grew rapidly larger. It had been three years since Raleigh had visited this facility. He’d personally supervised the installation of the new equipment and arranged for one of the dishes to be aimed toward an area near Rostov. Now he was impatient to return.

Through his headset, he heard Sergeant Lockhart telling the men, “One minute to touchdown.”

Raleigh watched the dishes get closer. Each was so huge that it dwarfed the combat helicopter. As an array, though, they were beyond huge. The only word that occurred to Raleigh was “monumental.” Not easily impressed, he found their intense whiteness to be awesome.

When the helicopter descended past the three concentric rows of fences, its whirling blades created a dust storm. He felt the skids touchdown and the helicopter’s weight settle. Then the speed of the blades diminished, their sound becoming a whistle, and Lockhart opened the rear hatch, motioning the men to grab their packs and hurry out.

Raleigh returned the pilot’s salute and jumped to the ground, joining his team a safe distance from the swirling dust. As the chopper lifted off and headed back toward Fort Bliss, a second Black Hawk appeared on the horizon.

The eight men were in their midtwenties. Their hair was short but not to the extent that they seemed obviously military. Each wore sturdy shoes, slightly oversized jeans, a T-shirt, and a loose outdoor shirt that hung over his belt, concealing a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol. That handgun wasn’t a match for Raleigh’s beloved M4, but until somebody figured out a practical way to conceal a carbine, the pistol would have to do. Besides, there were several M4s in the crates of equipment he’d ordered.

Apart from the magnificent observatory dishes, the only above- ground structure was a concrete-block shed from which two guards wearing khaki uniforms emerged into the sunlight. They held their carbines in a deceptively casual way, but Raleigh noted that they could make the weapons operational in an instant.

One of the guards had strained features, as if he were in pain.

“‘I hear a voice you cannot hear,’” the man said.

Under other circumstances, his seemingly deranged statement would have made Raleigh frown, but instead he immediately replied, “‘Which says I must not stay.’”

The guard continued, “‘I see a hand you cannot see.’”

“‘Which beckons me away,’” Raleigh said.

With the code recognition completed, the guard saluted. “Welcome to the facility, Colonel.”

“Your name is…?”

“Earl Halloway, sir.”

Raleigh remembered the name from documents he’d read en route. “Saw combat in Iraq. Former Army Ranger. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then there’s no need to salute me any longer.”

“It’s a good habit, sir.”

“Indeed it is. In case you’re curious, those lines come from an eighteenth-century English poet: Thomas Tickell.”

“I’m afraid I never heard of him, sir.”

“Nobody has. Posterity wasn’t kind to him.” But it’ll be kind to me, Raleigh thought. “You look uncomfortable, Earl. Is anything wrong?”

“Just a headache, sir. It’s nothing. I took some aspirin. It’s going away.”

But the tight expression on his face made Raleigh think the head- ache was doing anything but fading.

The second chopper interrupted them, roaring over the fences and setting down where the first had been. The moment the dust settled, the trainer got out with the German shepherd. Staying clear of the dog, the team hurried to unload wooden crates.

“Earl,” the colonel said.

“Yes, sir?”

“When I radioed ahead, I gave instructions for the two Suburbans in the underground garage to be ready to go.”

“It’s been taken care of, sir,” Halloway responded. “They’re out back.”

“Then all we need is for you to give us the keys.”

Halloway hesitated. “You might want to come inside first, sir.”

“Oh?” Raleigh frowned. “Why would I want to do that?”

“There’s something you should know about.” He looked even more pained. “If I’m right, sir, you’re here because of the music.”

“The music?” Raleigh was astonished. “You actually know about the music?” How bad has security gotten out here? he wondered.

“I heard it last night, sir.”

“You heard it?”

“And not long afterward, you contacted us to say you were coming, so I figured there was a connection. The radio dish that’s angled to- ward Rostov.”

“Make your point, Halloway.”

“I’m guessing it’s aimed toward whatever caused the music.”

Raleigh was stunned. One of the military’s most secret projects and this former Army sergeant was talking about it as if it were common knowledge.

He tried not to reveal how disturbed he felt.

“All right, Earl, show me what you think I should see.”

Leaving the team outside to prepare the vehicles, Raleigh followed the guard into the small concrete-block building. After passing through the two security doors, they went down an echoing metal stairwell into the glowing lights and the filtered, cool air of the underground facility. As they entered a surveillance room, Raleigh heard a voice that he at first suspected belonged to another guard. But then he scanned the numerous monitors that showed the area around the dishes, and to his surprise, one of the screens turned out to be a television set.

“You watch TV in here?” He made no attempt to hide his displeasure.

The screen showed a crowd in front of police barricades. In the foreground, a reporter in a rumpled suit held a microphone and faced a camera.

“What the hell is going on?” Raleigh demanded.

“They started broadcasting this on the early-morning news. You were probably in the air by then, so you didn’t hear about it. Twenty people were shot to death last night.”

“Bad things happen all the time. Why should it concern me?”

Earl pointed toward the reporter on the television. “This guy was the first reporter on the scene. He kept talking about the lights, what- ever they are.”

“The lights?” Raleigh stepped closer to the television. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me the shootings happened in Rostov?”

“Five miles away from it at what they call the observation plat- form. Apparently the gunman went crazy because of the lights. He started screaming, ‘You’re all going to hell,’ and opened fire on a bunch of tourists.”

Raleigh’s muscles tightened. It’s happening again, he thought.

“That reporter made a big deal about the lights being the reason for the killings, and all the other reporters followed his lead,” Halloway went on. “Now people are coming from every direction to try to see them. The town’s turned into a zoo. If you’re headed over there, I thought you’d want to know.”

Staring at the chaos on the television, Raleigh felt his pulse race as if he were headed into combat.

Just like in 1945.

My God, it’s really happening again.

28

The Rostov County hospital was a modest-sized two-story building, its stucco tinted the harsh orange of the late-afternoon sun. Heat radiated off the front steps. Even so, Tori hesitated on them.

Page watched her with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Just thinking about next Tuesday. San Antonio. The hospital.”

Page kept remembering that his mother had died from breast cancer. Numbness spread through him. “I’ll be there with you.”

“I never doubted that. But what happens if life gets back to normal and I’m alone again, even when you’re with me?”

“I can change.”

“Hard to do.”

“For you, I’ll do anything. I’ll quit being a cop.”

Tori looked surprised.

“The job’s what makes me shut down my feelings,” Page said. “To make things better between us, quitting’s an obvious start.”

“But what would you do?”

“What my father did. Be an airplane mechanic.”

Tori considered him a moment longer, then drew a long breath and approached the hospital’s front doors. They opened automatically.

Inside a lobby, Page walked past a row of plastic chairs and stopped before a spectacled woman at a desk.

“We’re here to check on someone. He was admitted last night with a gunshot wound. Chief Costigan.”

“He’s not receiving visitors.”

“Well, can you tell us how he’s doing?”

“Are you family?”

“No, we’re-”

“Edith, it’s okay,” a voice said. “They’re not reporters.”

Page turned and saw Captain Medrano standing at an elevator, its door closing behind him. He held his Stetson. Each of the upper sleeves on his tan uniform had a red Highway Patrol patch.

“In fact, they’re trying to avoid reporters,” Medrano said. He pushed the elevator’s up button, and the doors immediately reopened. “Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

In the elevator, Medrano looked apologetic. “I finally had to give the media your names. Believe me, I held off as long as I could, but I was starting to look as if I wasn’t in control of the investigation.”

“If they find out we’re at that motel…,” Tori said.

“The clerk promised to deny you’re staying there.”

“I hope he keeps his word. Do you know who the shooter was?” Page asked.

“Edward Mullen. One of the survivors remembered seeing him on the tour bus. We contacted the company that owns the bus. It’s based in Austin. The lights are only a brief part of the tour-it also goes to the big ranch house that was built for that James Deacon movie, Birthright.”

Page nodded. “Last night at the viewing area, someone mentioned that movie set.”

“Mostly, though, it’s a nature tour that goes through the Davis Mountains. The company gave us a list of everyone who signed up for that particular tour. All the victims had ID on them. We com- pared their names and those of the survivors to the names on the list. Edward Mullen was the only person we couldn’t account for. You were right-according to one of the survivors from the bus, he had a guitar case. The guy remembered because Mullen had a lot of trouble finding a place to put it. That must be where he hid the rifle.”

“A lucky guess.”

“No. I told you last night, you have the instincts of a good cop.”

Page glanced at Tori and found that she was looking at him.

The elevator doors opened. As they stepped into a hospital corridor, Page’s nostrils felt pinched by the smell of antiseptic.

“This was the ninth time Mullen had taken the same tour,” Medrano continued.

Page stopped walking and frowned at him. “The ninth?”

“The tour company gave us the credit-card number he used. The credit-card company gave us his address. The Austin police went to his apartment.”

“Surprise me and tell me he didn’t live alone.”

“His wife died a year ago,” Medrano said. “He didn’t have any children.”

“Now tell me the apartment wasn’t crammed with religious statues and paintings and all kinds of literature about damnation.”

“It’d take a truck to carry it all away,” Medrano replied. “I’m tempted to go with the theory I had last night: some kind of religious lunatic. But there’s a problem with that theory.”

“Oh?”

“Mullen has a brother. According to him, Mullen was never religious-never even went near a church-until his wife’s funeral.

Apparently her death hit him so hard that all he did was stay in bed all day. The brother tried to get him interested in things and happened to see a newspaper ad for one of those tours. Before his wife’s death, Mullen was a movie buff. If a movie was filmed in Texas, he knew it shot by shot. So when the brother read that the tour included the set for Birthright, one of Mullen’s favorites, he managed to convince Mullen-‘practically twisted his arm’ is how he put it-that the two of them should go on the tour. It also included some locations from movies that were made in the Davis Mountains. Before the group reached the movie locations, though, they arrived at that viewing platform. As usual, some people on the tour claimed to see the lights while others wondered what all the fuss was about.”

“Did the brother see the lights?” Page asked.

“No, but Mullen claimed they were spectacular. After he got back to Austin, he started filling his apartment with the religious statues and paintings.”

A phone rang, distracting Medrano. It came from a nurses’ station across from the elevators. Page glanced around and noticed open doors along the corridor, nurses going into some of them, people in civilian clothes coming out of others.

Medrano pointed toward a clock in the nurses’ station.

“Almost 5. I’m due at a press conference at the courthouse. I’d better show you where Chief Costigan is.”

As they walked along the corridor, Page looked again at Tori, who rubbed the back of her neck, obviously bothered by the smell and feel of being in a hospital. He stepped closer to her, reached out, and discreetly squeezed her hand, but got no reaction.

Medrano entered the second-to-last doorway on the left and stepped out of Page’s sight. “Want more visitors?” he asked someone.

“If they’re pretty,” a raspy voice said.

“One is. The other could use a shave.”

Medrano motioned for Page and Tori to enter the room.

Costigan lay in a bed that was tilted up, allowing him to see a news program on a television that was mounted on the opposite wall. The reporter on the screen was the same man Page had seen on the television at the motel office: rumpled suit, mussed blond hair, beard stubble, haggard but handsome features.

“Anything’s better than watching that damned fool get everybody fired up,” Costigan growled.

The chief pressed the remote control and shut off the TV. Bandages encircled his head, pads making one side thicker than the other. His face looked grayer and thinner. Even his mustache seemed gray.

“Recognize these folks?” Medrano asked.

“Sure do.” An IV tube was taped to Costigan’s left arm. Wires attached to heart and blood-pressure monitors led under the chest of his hospital gown.

“Glad to hear it,” Medrano said. “That’s part of the memory test. I need to get to a press conference, but I want this couple to tell a nurse if you start forgetting things, like the fifty dollars I lent you last week.”

“I didn’t borrow any fifty dollars.”

“You’re right. Come to think of it, I lent you a hundred dollars.”

“Get out of here,” Costigan said.

After Medrano grinned and left, the chief motioned for them to come closer.

“We brought your windbreaker back,” Page said. “Thanks. It came in handy.”

“Keep it a while longer. I’m hardly in a position to use it.” Costigan studied them. “He called you ‘this couple.’ Does that mean things are better between the two of you?”

“It’s complicated,” Page answered.

“Isn’t everything? At least you came here together.”

Tori changed the subject. “How bad are you hurt?”

“Apparently I’ve got a hard head. The bullet creased my skull. Didn’t fracture it but gave me a hell of a concussion.” Costigan winced. “And an even worse headache. If I start to drool, tell the nurse.”

Despite the burden of his emotions, Page almost smiled.

“Your head was covered with so much blood,” Tori said, “I thought you were dead.”

“Scalp wounds are terrible bleeders. Mrs. Page, I heard that you picked up my gun and made good use of it. You saved the lives of a lot of people. You’re remarkable.”

Tori looked away.

“Sorry. It wasn’t my intention to upset you.” Costigan changed the subject. “I don’t suppose either of you has any cigarettes.”

“Afraid not,” she said, looking at him again.

“Just as well. They won’t let me smoke in here anyhow.”

“It’s a good time to quit,” Tori said.

“Yeah, this wound gives me motivation to stick around as long as I can.” Costigan looked at Page. “Before the shooting started, you seemed to see the lights.”

Page could tell that Tori was waiting for his answer.

“I did.”

“I’m impressed,” Costigan said. “Not everybody does. Your wife sure saw them.”

“Yes.” Tori sounded as if she spoke about a lover.

“But I’m still not sure what it is I saw,” Page added. “What’s happening here, Chief? What are they?”

Costigan pressed a button. A motor under the bed made a whirring sound and raised his head a little more.

“I’ve heard every kind of explanation you can imagine. Everything from ball lightning to pranksters. If it’s pranksters, they’re good at it. When I came to town to be the chief after my father was killed…”

The harsh memory made Costigan pause. He gradually refocused his thoughts.

“Well, I spent a lot of nights out there, looking for people with flashlights or lanterns or whatever. That’s a long way to go for a practical joke. I never saw cars parked along the side roads, and I never heard any noises I couldn’t identify. It would take at least a half- dozen people to pull off a prank like that, and I don’t know how they could do it quietly. What’s more, it’s hard to keep a secret. After all these years, someone in town would have hinted about what they were doing. And how many pranksters have the determination to do it night after night after night?”

“What I saw wasn’t flashlights or lanterns or pranksters,” Tori said.

“No, but there still has to be some explanation. I’m not sure you’re going to like this, Mrs. Page.”

“Please call me Tori. What am I not going to like?”

“I don’t think there’s anything magical about the lights. On occasion researchers have come here, some from as far away as Japan. They’ve set up all kinds of scientific instruments, machines that analyzed light and measured distance and… I don’t pretend to understand it. The best explanation they could come up with is a temperature inversion.”

“A what?”

“I said you wouldn’t like it. A temperature inversion. The way it was explained to me is, we’re five thousand feet above sea level. At this altitude, when the sun sets after a hot day, there can be as much as a fifty-degree difference between the daytime and nighttime temperatures. That causes an inversion of hot air on top of cold. Under certain conditions, distant lights-from a moving car or a train-can bounce back and forth through the layers. The lights get magnified. They shift up and down and right and left.”

“But why would they change colors?”

“The scientists didn’t explain that.”

“Do the lights appear in the winter?” Tori persisted. “If so, then there wouldn’t be as big a difference between the day and night temperatures. So how could there be a temperature inversion in cold weather?”

“The scientists didn’t explain that, either.” Costigan gingerly touched his bandaged head. “This headache… Harriett Ward.”

“Excuse me?” The statement seemed to come out of nowhere. Page worried that Costigan was having trouble keeping his thoughts straight.

“Harriett’s the person to talk to about the lights. She’s the local ex- pert. She runs an antiques store a block south of the courthouse. Lives in a couple of rooms in the back. Given everything that’s happening, I doubt many locals will go out this evening, even if it is Friday night. You’ll probably catch her at home.”

29

The sign had old-fashioned lettering: WEST TEXAS ANTIQUES.

As Tori parked in front, Page noticed a hutch, a rocking chair, and a wooden sink in the store’s window. The frame around the window was painted a pastel blue that contrasted with the yellow on the art gallery to the left and the green on the coffee shop to the right.

“Reminds me of the lights,” Tori said.

They looked up the wide street toward the courthouse, where numerous vehicles were parked, including several television broadcast trucks. Page estimated that a couple of hundred people stood in front of the steps, presumably listening to Captain Medrano conducting the press conference.

“My rental car’s still parked up there. I can’t get it until they leave,” Page explained to Tori.

The lowering sun cast the street in a crimson glow.

A pickup truck stopped. A teenaged boy leaned from the passenger window.

“Supposed to be some weird lights around here. We came all the way from Lubbock to see them. You know where they’re at?”

“We’re strangers,” Page said. “Just visiting a friend.”

A boy in the middle told the driver, “Ed, let’s go ask somebody else. Try that crowd up there.”

As the truck drove away, Page knocked on the wooden doorframe and peered through the window toward the shadows in the store.

“Maybe the chief’s wrong and she’s out for the evening,” he said.

But after he knocked again, a door opened in the back of the store. A figure approached, passing old tables and cabinets. The figure had white hair that was cut short, like a man’s. Then a light came on, and the person stepped close enough for Page to see a lean woman in her sixties. She wore cowboy boots, jeans, a work shirt, and a leather vest. Her skin was brown and wrinkled from exposure to the sun.

When she unlocked the door and peered out, Page noticed a wed- ding band.

“Mrs. Ward, my name’s-”

“Dan Page. And your wife’s name is Tori.” The woman shook hands with them. “Chief Costigan phoned to say you were coming. Come in. And please call me Harriett.”

Won over by the friendliness, Page motioned for Tori to go first, then followed the two women toward the back of the store. He noticed old rifles on a rack on the wall. The wooden floor creaked. Everything smelled of the past.

“I was about to have a drink, but I hate to drink alone,” Harriett said. “So I hope you’ll join me.”

She closed the door after they entered a small living room that was sparsely furnished. The rug had a sunburst pattern. Page didn’t see any indication that a man lived there. Thinking of the wedding band Harriett wore, he concluded that she was a widow.

“I’ve got vodka, bourbon, and tequila,” she said.

“What are you having?” Tori asked.

“Tequila on the rocks.”

“I’ll have the same.”

Page was surprised. Tori seldom drank hard alcohol.

“Tequila for you also?” Harriett asked him.

“Just a little. I haven’t eaten anything in a while.”

Harriett’s boot heels thumped on the wooden floor as she went into a small kitchen. He heard the clink of ice cubes being dropped into glasses and the splash of liquid being poured over the ice.

“The chief tells me you’re interested in hearing about the lights,” Harriett said, returning with two glasses.

“According to him, you’re the local expert,” Page replied.

“I did a lot of research, if that’s what he means.” Harriett went back for the third glass and also brought a bag of tortilla chips, which she handed to Page. “I dug into history and found hundreds of re- ports, a lot of them from the old days. But nobody’s really an expert when it comes to the lights. Nobody really understands them.”

“Why hasn’t word about them gotten around?” Tori wondered.

“There was a segment about them on that old TV show, Unsolved Mysteries, and a crew from the History Channel did some interviews here about five years ago. Every once in a while, there’s an item in a magazine. When that happens, we get a wave of visitors. That’s why the county set up that viewing area and the portable toilets. People made so much mess out there that it seemed better to adjust to the tourists than to ignore them-turned out to be good for business, too. But eventually, interest dies down. For one thing, the lights don’t photograph well, so camera crews get restless. Plus, a lot of visitors don’t see the lights, which is why the county put up that plaque with its warning that people shouldn’t feel disappointed if they don’t see anything.”

Harriett clicked glasses with them and sat.

Although Page made a show of sipping the tequila, he had no intention of finishing it. He merely used it as a prop to encourage Harriett to feel comfortable and keep talking.

“Chief Costigan thinks they’re probably lights from a distance, magnified by temperature inversions. But I don’t believe that,” Tori said firmly.

“You’ll hear all kinds of theories. From UFOs to ball lightning.”

“Why do some people see them and others don’t?” Page asked.

“As I said, there are all kinds of theories. A psychiatrist on Unsolved Mysteries claimed it’s a form of mass delusion, that some people want their expectations to be fulfilled while others are determined not to be manipulated.”

“I don’t believe that, either,” Tori insisted, looking at Page. “I had no expectations when I first saw the lights, back when I was ten. All I wanted was for my father to stop the car so I could run to a PortaPotty. When I came out, the lights were the last things I expected to see.”

“Fred Nolan sure didn’t have any expectations when he first saw them back in 1889,” Harriett said.

“Fred Nolan?” Tori asked.

30

April 5, 1889.

Nolan watched as the train’s crew lowered the spigot from the water tower and filled the steam engine’s water compartment. He scanned the few small buildings that provided shelter for the men who hauled wood from the Davis Mountains and stacked it for trains to use as fuel.

Animals bellowed in the cattle cars.

“Slide the hatches open,” Nolan told his men.

Wooden planks rumbled as hooves descended into sunlight and open air.

“Keep ’em together,” Nolan ordered.

The five hundred cattle were scrawny, purchased cheaply in Colorado after a hard winter had piled so much snow on grassland that the animals couldn’t stomp through the drifts to get at it. Many had starved to death. These that survived looked awful.

But they did survive, Nolan thought. They’re strong. They’ll make good breeding stock.

He’d met with railroad executives in Denver, arguing that this water stop in west Texas was a perfect place for the railroad to build a town and sizable cattle pens.

“Sure, the grass is spread out, but there’s more land for the cattle to graze on. They thrive if there’s an acre per animal.”

“An acre per animal?” a cigar-smoking executive scoffed. “In that case, you’d need an awful lot of land to justify the expense you want us to commit to.”

“Well, my ranch is small right now, I admit. All I have is a quarter- million acres, but I’m planning to expand.”

“A quarter-million acres?” The executive sat forward. “Good God, are you telling us you plan to be able to ship a quarter-million cattle through that water stop?”

“For starters. If you build the pens and the town, I’ll supply the cattle.”

Now Nolan looked toward where the pens would be situated, the troughs for water and hay, the permanent ramps that would lead up to the cattle cars. He imagined the town’s wide streets through which the cattle would be herded to the pens. The stores that would make it easy to get supplies for his ranch. The homes for the people who would manage the stores. Perhaps a doctor and a church. Perhaps even a saloon, carefully monitored, for although Nolan was a devout Presbyterian who’d never touched a drop of alcohol in his life, he understood the needs of the men he employed and reasoned that allowing occasional, carefully controlled recreation would make it easier for him to attract and keep ranch hands.

He admitted that his ambition was greater than his capabilities. He had the quarter-million acres, which his grandfather and father had fought against Mexicans and Indians to keep. But what he needed now was the money to buy more cheaply priced, scrawny but amazingly strong cattle. So far he had a herd of fifty thousand, but he’d need a lot more to breed them into the quarter million he’d promised.

Well, it’s a beginning, Nolan thought. Next week, I’ll head for Oklahoma. Their winter was the reverse of Colorado’s, so dry that the spring grass isn’t coming up. Ranchers’ll be culling their herds, willing to sell their worst-looking stock for pennies on the dollar. They’ll think I’m a fool, but I know anything that lived through a winter drought has got to be strong.

“Move ’em out,” he told his men.

The angle of the sun warned him that darkness would fall in five hours, and during that time, his men had to drive the cattle eight miles to the stream they had dammed, creating a pond where the cattle could stay in a group and drink. More than a mile an hour. After the long trip in the cattle cars, there was a risk that some animals might collapse before they got to the water. But after that, they’d be able to rest, to do nothing but eat and drink and grow.

They’re strong, Nolan thought. They’ve been through worse than this. They’ll get to the stream.

As it turned out, two animals died and the others didn’t reach the water until after dark, when it was more difficult to control a moving herd and the yelping of coyotes could easily have spooked them. But finally the cattle circled the dammed-up part of the stream, and Nolan told his foreman, “Keep half the men watching the herd. Tell the other half to set up camp.”

In the light of the stars and a rising quarter moon, Nolan dismounted, unsaddled his horse, put a rope around the mare’s neck, and led her to the water, where he took care that she didn’t drink too much. His legs stiffening, he guided the horse to a stretch of grass, hobbled her, and allowed her to graze. The grass was sparse enough that she wouldn’t glut herself and get sick after the water she’d consumed.

On the way to the railroad, Nolan’s men had brought firewood from the ranch house and left it near the pond. Now, in the darkness, they arranged it in three piles to build campfires.

“Mr. Nolan, what do you suppose that is?” his foreman asked, sounding troubled.

“Where?”

“Over there, to the southeast.”

Nolan stepped away from the cattle and looked at the murky horizon.

“I don’t see anything. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“There, Mr. Nolan. Those lights.”

“Lights?” Nolan stared toward the darkness. “What lights? I don’t see… Wait a second.”

At first Nolan had thought he was looking at stars that glistened on the horizon. But suddenly he realized that whatever he saw was below the horizon. On the grassland. Twinkling. At least a dozen lights.

“Tell the men not to build the fires,” he ordered with a muted, urgent voice. “Make sure they don’t make any noise, either.”

As the foreman ran to obey, Nolan hurried to a man on horseback who was watching the herd.

“Get down. Stay low. Don’t show your silhouette. Tell the other men to do the same.”

“Trouble, Mr. Nolan?”

“Just do what you’re told.”

Feeling fire in his stomach, Nolan ran to another horseman and gave him the same orders. Stooping, he rushed to his saddle and pulled his Winchester from its scabbard. He always kept a round in the firing chamber, so there wasn’t any need to work the lever. All he had to do was pull back the hammer.

He crouched and studied the lights. They seemed to be five or six miles away. Some floated while others shifted from side to side. They were various colors-blue, green, yellow, red-merging, then drifting apart.

Nolan’s men gathered nearby while the foreman stooped next to him and murmured, “You figure they’re campfires, Mr. Nolan?”

“I never heard of campfires that keep changing their location.” Nolan’s voice was tense and low.

“Maybe whoever’s out there has torches, and they’re moving around, doing something.”

“Like what?”

“Like a war dance,” the foreman said. “You think those are Indians?”

“Those lights are close enough that we’d hear a war dance,” Nolan murmured, conscious of the weight of the Winchester in his hands. “Besides, all the Indians around here are mostly peaceful.”

“As you say, Mr. Nolan, ‘mostly.’”

“Sure, they could be renegades. But those lights are in the direction of Mexico. What I’m thinking is Mexican raiders. If they start shooting, they could stampede the cattle toward Mexico before there’s daylight enough for us to chase them.”

Nolan couldn’t take his eyes off the lights. As much as he felt threatened by them, he also felt hypnotized, drawn. Spellbound.

Inexplicably, he tasted lemonade.

A shiver prickled his skin.

Behind him, the cattle made lowing sounds as they settled for the night.

We caused plenty of noise getting here, Nolan thought. Whoever’s with those lights is bound to know where we are.

“Tell the men to get their rifles. Put them in groups of two so they’ll keep each other awake. Anybody I catch sleeping will be out of a job in the morning.”

“Somehow, Mr. Nolan, I don’t think losing their jobs is what they’re worried about right now.”

“Then tell the men they’ll get a bonus if they keep the herd together.”

“You bet, Mr. Nolan,” the foreman said. Staying low, he rushed to give orders to the men.

Meanwhile, Nolan stared harder toward the shimmering lights. They sank and drifted. They hovered and rippled. Their colors kept changing.

He remembered a couple of years earlier when he’d been in El Paso during a Fourth of July celebration. Chinese vendors had sold firecrackers and skyrockets, but they’d also sold quiet fireworks called sparklers: thick wires that had been dipped in chemicals capable of being ignited with a match. With a hiss that was virtually silent, the wires had erupted in sparks of various colors. At night Nolan had seen children use the sparklers to write their names in the darkness.

Is that what they’ve got over there? Sparklers? But if they’re raiders, why would they let us know they’re nearby?

The answer wasn’t hard to imagine.

To scare us.

Well, they’ll find out I don’t scare easily.

Even so, as the lights drifted and changed colors and beckoned during the longest night of his life, Nolan admitted that his fortitude was being tested.

Troubled, he heard faint music, but its melody and instruments were unfamiliar. Under other circumstances, he might have thought that it came from a town across the border, the Mexicans having some kind of celebration. Possibly a tune from a mariachi band had managed to drift this far but was distorted by the distance.

Nolan didn’t believe that. As he concentrated on the hard-to-hear notes, the lights seemed to brighten, their colors strengthening. The two were somehow connected.

The cattle became restive, their hooves scraping the dirt. Their lowing sounds had a nervous edge. Praying that they wouldn’t stampede, Nolan thought of the land that his grandfather and father had fought so hard to keep, and of the land he was determined to add to it. He thought of the quarter-million head of cattle he’d promised if the railroad built the town and the cattle pens.

He lay on the hard ground with his rifle propped on his saddle. He stared along it toward the lights and silently recited scripture. From the gospel of St. John: “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”

That was the first relevant quotation that popped into his mind, but it didn’t provide the affirmation he was looking for, so he recalled another, this one from Isaiah: “The people that walketh in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwelleth in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shone.”

The shadow of death.

That quotation didn’t provide the affirmation Nolan was looking for, either. Besides, if raiders came for his cattle, the shadow of death would be on them. If the lights and the music were indeed made by raiders.

If the cattle didn’t stampede.

Nolan went on like that all through the long, cold night, trying to calm himself with the word of God. His eyes aching, he kept aiming at the lights until, as dawn approached, they faded and shrank. With the sun finally rising, he stood stiffly and lowered the hammer on his Winchester.

His ears ached.

He told his foreman, “Take the herd all the way to the house.”

“You bet, Mr. Nolan. Just as soon as the men cook something to eat.”

“No. Do it now. The men can eat cold biscuits as they ride. I want to make sure the cattle are safe.”

“You’re the boss, Mr. Nolan.” The foreman looked troubled. “What do you figure those lights were? If they weren’t Mexican raiders…”

“Give me three riders, and I’ll find out.”

Nolan saddled his horse and rode southeast with the men. During the night, he’d estimated that the lights were five or six miles away, but when he traveled that distance, he didn’t find any sign of cooking fires or horse tracks or crushed vegetation that would indicate where a camp had been made.

He was sure that the lights had been in this direction, but darkness could play tricks, so he told his men, “Spread out.” Spacing them fifty yards apart, he rode three miles farther but still didn’t see any sign of campfires or horse tracks.

He was forced to ride around a section of black, ugly, twisted boulders that looked like huge dead cinders. A minister with whom he’d once traveled on a train through Arizona had told him that sections like this were left over from the pyrotechnics of when God had created the universe. But if this area was supposed to represent God’s power, Nolan didn’t understand why the Mexicans called them malpais.

Badlands.

He rode another five miles but still didn’t see any horse tracks.

I was sure the lights were southeast of the herd, he thought. How could I have misjudged their direction?

“Mr. Nolan?” one of his men called behind him.

Belatedly Nolan realized that the rider had been shouting his name for some time.

He looked back.

“Sir, if we keep going like this, we’ll end up in Mexico.”

Nolan suddenly became aware of how high the sun was and how far they’d ridden. Feeling as if he came out of a trance, he stared ahead toward the sparse grassland that seemed to stretch forever. Something wavered on the horizon. Maybe a dust devil. Maybe air rippling as the sun heated it.

I could follow that movement forever and never reach it, Nolan thought.

“We’re heading back!” he yelled to the men. “Pick a different section! Keep looking and shout if you find where somebody camped!”

31

“Did Nolan ever find an answer?” Page asked.

“A few Indians worked on his ranch. He figured it was safer to keep them close than have them fight him,” Harriett said. “He’d never been in that area after dark, but it was a good bet the Indians would know if any strange lights had ever been seen over there. To his surprise, they told him there’d always been lights in that direction. Their fathers and grandfathers had talked about them. The lights were the spirits of their ancestors, they believed.”

“Superstition’s even less convincing than temperature inversions,” Tori said. “Anyway, I don’t want to have the lights explained. I don’t want somebody to take away how special they are by telling me they’re just ball lightning or ghosts.”

“That’s the way most everyone here in town feels about them, too,” Harriett replied. “When my late husband and I first came here in 1970, we were hippies in an old station wagon that was basically our home. We happened to hear about the lights, so we drove out to where the viewing area is now. We opened the back hatch, sat on our sleeping bags, smoked dope, and ate dry cornflakes. I still don’t know if we actually saw the lights or if the dope made us believe we did.

“But the next night, we watched them without being stoned, and the night after that, too, and, well, we never left. Rostov wasn’t much back then, but we managed to find jobs, and we didn’t need a lot of money to live. Basically, being able to see the lights whenever we wanted seemed reward enough. After a while, we didn’t even need to go out there. Somehow we managed to feel that the lights were out there without actually seeing them.

“Every couple of months, though, we’d want to see them again, the way people feel the need to go to church. A lot of people in Rostov are like my husband and me. They intended to pass through, but the lights kept them here.”

“Or called them back,” Tori said with a hushed tone.

“Most people don’t see the lights at all, of course, let alone react the way I described,” Harriett said. “But many of the people who live here were fortunate enough to have the same experience, and we long ago stopped trying to explain it. The only thing that matters is, the lights make us feel… I guess the word is ‘blessed.’”

“Things weren’t so blessed last night,” Page replied.

32

The press conference was finished by the time they left the antiques store and glanced up toward the courthouse. The sun was lower, casting the deserted street in a deeper orange.

Page looked at Tori.

“I need to get my rental car from up there,” he said. “Do you want to follow me back to the motel?”

Tori didn’t answer right away. “Sure.”

But as Page drove to the motel, he glanced in his rearview mirror and there wasn’t any sign of Tori’s blue Saturn among the traffic that was heading out of town toward the observation platform. He parked in front of unit 11, got out, and waited. Glancing up, he noticed that there were clouds gathering for the first time since he’d been in Rostov.

Fifteen minutes passed and he still didn’t see any sign of her, so he finally took his suitcase from the trunk and moved toward the door.

The gangly motel clerk came from the office and hurried toward him. Page remembered his name.

“Something wrong, Jake?”

“There’ve been reporters looking for you.”

“I hope you didn’t tell them we’re staying here.”

“Captain Medrano said not to. But somehow the reporters found out the woman at the shooting has red hair, and your wife is the only redhead at the motel. I thought I’d better warn you.”

“Thanks.”

“It was weird.”

“Lately everything’s been weird,” Page said. “Did you have anything specific in mind?”

“The reporter who’s most determined to find you is the television guy from El Paso. You saw him on the TV in the lobby the last time we talked.”

Page thought a moment. “Movie-star jaw. Rumpled suit. Looks like he hasn’t slept in a couple of days.”

“That’s the guy. He was the first reporter to come to town. He’s figured out a lot of angles on the story-so many that the other re- porters have just been following his lead. I was in the office, watching him on TV. Then the door opened, and I looked over, and by God, there he was, walking toward me. I guess some of what I figured is ‘live’ must be on tape. Seeing him in two places at the same time felt unreal. Be careful of him. You want your privacy, but the look in his eyes told me he’d do anything to put your wife in front of a camera and make her describe how she shot that guy.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Page said. Before he could say anything more, a phone rang in the office.

“Gotta get back to work.” The gangly clerk ran toward the door.

As it banged shut, Page took another look toward the road, hoping their conversation might have given Tori time to catch up. But there was no sign of the Saturn. More clouds had gathered, filling the sky. His side ached when he carried his suitcase into the room.

If things had been different, it would have felt good to shave and shower, to get the smell of the smoke and the violence off him, but all Page thought was that he could bear anything-even what had happened the previous night-if only Tori had followed him to the motel as she’d said she would. If only she hadn’t left him again.

If only she didn’t have cancer.

The bruise where he’d been kicked was larger than he’d expected, dark purple ringed with orange. Trying to ignore it, he put on a fresh pair of jeans and another denim shirt. Kind of predictable, pal. He took the 9-millimeter pistol out of his suitcase, removed the magazine, made sure it was full, and checked to make sure there was a round in the firing chamber. You examined it before you left the house yesterday, he thought, aware that people whose occupation involved carrying a gun tended to display obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Or maybe he just needed to narrow his thoughts.

The gun was a Sig Sauer 225. It held eight rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Not a lot of firepower compared to pistols with double-stacked magazines, but the 225’s virtue was its compact size. He considered it an ideal concealed-carry pistol. The company didn’t make them any longer, and this particular gun had belonged to his father.

He holstered it on his belt, put on a windbreaker to conceal it, grabbed a baseball cap from his suitcase, and opened the door, ready to go looking for Tori, although he knew where he’d find her: the viewing area.

About to get into his car, he heard tires crunching on gravel and looked toward the road, surprised to see the blue Saturn coming through the parking lot toward him. Tori’s red hair was vivid through the windshield. When she stopped in front of unit 11, his knees felt weak.

“I figured you’d left me behind,” he said through the open window.

She showed him a paper bag. “I got this for you.”

Page almost frowned in confusion before he smelled the food.

“You said you hadn’t eaten since yesterday. I hope a burger and fries work for you. Anything else would have taken too long.”

“They’re perfect.” Emotion made his knees more unsteady. “Thanks.”

“You need to keep up your energy. This’ll be another long night.”

“Thanks. Really. I mean it.”

“Get in,” she said impatiently.

He did so, and pulled off the baseball cap.

“Better put this on. Reporters are looking for a woman with red hair.”

She nodded and took it.

As she drove, Page bit into the hamburger and recalled uneasily that this was what he and Chief Costigan had eaten the evening before.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“When I see the lights again, everything’ll be fine. They’ll make me forget what happened last night.”

“The trick is to distract your mind by paying attention to the small details. But I wasn’t thinking about last night. How are you feeling?”

Tori hesitated. “I never realized anything was wrong with me until the doctor phoned to tell me the results of my mammogram. Now I’m so self-conscious that I swear I can feel the thing growing in me.”

“On Tuesday, it’ll be gone.”

“I’d like to just reach in and claw it out with my fingers.”

“I love you.”

Tori looked at him. “You said that last night, too.”

Ahead, three TV news helicopters were silhouetted against the dark, cloudy sky. Vehicles were parked along both sides of the road. Taking his own advice, Page distracted himself by paying attention to small details and looked to the right toward the ruin of the World War II airbase.

He saw someone unlocking a gate. The man wore sturdy shoes, loose-fitting pants, a T-shirt, and an overshirt that hung below his belt. He was in his forties, bald and sinewy, with rigid shoulders and an air of authority. When he motioned for two dark Chevy Surburbans to drive onto the property, he had the manner of someone who was used to giving orders.

There was now a second sign on the gate.

“Tori, I want to check something. Please stop for a second.”

She looked at him reluctantly but applied the brakes as they came close to the gate. Page lowered his window and leaned out to get a better view in the dwindling sunset.

The older sign warned:

PROPERTY OF U.S. MILITARY

DANGER

HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS

UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE

The new one announced:

SOON TO BE

AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

RECLAMATION SITE

The authoritative man stepped through the gate, locked it, and noticed Page.

“Parking’s not allowed on this property.” He pointed toward the signs. “Restricted area.”

Page waved to indicate he understood.

Another man got out of one of the vans. He had a German shepherd on a leash. The authoritative man just stood there, staring at the car until Tori drove on.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” Page looked back and watched as the two Suburbans drove toward the collapsed, weed-choked, rusted airplane hangars.

Finally he couldn’t see them any longer, so he directed his attention ahead, toward the crowd. As Tori neared it, Page noticed that the county had brought a half-dozen more portable toilets. But they weren’t going to be enough. The crowd filled the entire parking lot all the way to the fence, onlookers standing where corpses had lain the previous night. People were on the road, forcing Tori to steer into the opposite lane. Medrano and other Highway Patrol officers struggled to keep order.

Tori parked at the end of the line of cars. Costigan’s windbreaker was on the front seat, and she snatched it up as she stepped from the Saturn. But as she stared toward the crowd a hundred yards up the road, she faltered.

“You okay?” Page asked.

“Too many people. I don’t think I want to go any farther.”

“Fine. We don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”

“Maybe I can see the lights just as well from here,” Tori said uneasily. “Maybe the viewing area’s only an arbitrary spot.”

“Why don’t we stay here and find out?” Page suggested.

“Yes.” She shivered and put on the windbreaker. “After last night, I don’t want to go near a crowd.”

33

Raleigh waited at the fence until the blue Saturn drove on.

There were several troubling things about the man who’d leaned out the window to read the new sign that explained his team’s presence here. The man’s features were guarded, revealing nothing about what he thought. His hair was short-not military short but shorter and neater than was common among civilians. And his eyes were attentive, as if he analyzed everything he saw.

Definitely not just a tourist, Raleigh thought.

He kept waiting until the Saturn was obscured by the long line of cars that were parked along the side of the road. Then he turned to the dog trainer who had the German shepherd on a short leash.

“Put the fear of God into anybody who tries to come over that fence.”

As the trainer turned on his flashlight, Raleigh walked ahead of the two dark Suburbans, their only illumination coming from parking lights. He motioned for them to follow, leading them along what had once been a heavily traveled dirt road, its furrows now cluttered with weeds.

After a hundred yards, the last rays of sunset showed a wide row of collapsed airplane hangars to the left. Their corrugated metal had long since rusted. Scrub brush grew among them. Dirt had drifted against them. A lot of this was the work of nature, but some of it had been deliberately arranged to make the ruin look more dilapidated than it actually was.

Raleigh held up his hand, signaling for the vehicles to stop. He surveyed the old runway. Its concrete was visible only here and there, most of it covered with dirt. Weeds grew where numerous cracks had been baked into the pavement by the sun.

His grandfather had once stood here. It made Raleigh feel tremendously proud that a circle was about to close, that a mission his grand- father had started so long ago was finally about to be accomplished.

In World War II, when the hangars and the runway were freshly constructed, this would have been a scene of intense noise and activity, enough to make one’s heart pound. Hundreds of airmen had trained here every month, practicing bombing runs and aerial dog- fights in a place so remote that only the cattle, coyotes, and jack – rabbits were inconvenienced by the commotion. But training airmen had just been the cover story.

A breeze swept dust across the decay. When the darkness was thick enough to conceal them from prying eyes, Raleigh pointed toward a hangar that seemed less collapsed than the others. The Suburbans followed, and he tugged away a section of corrugated metal, revealing a space large enough to allow a vehicle to enter the hangar.

Once they were inside, Raleigh pulled out a flashlight and examined a thirty-foot-high pile of debris that appeared to be the result of a clean-up effort long ago. Pushing aside some of the debris, he un- covered the edge of a camouflaged radio dish that was aimed toward a similar dish at the observatory. After verifying that the dish hadn’t been disturbed, he edged behind some of the debris and pushed a button.

A portion of the concrete floor rumbled as it descended to form a ramp. Lights shone up from below, activated by the same button. His footsteps crunching on dirt, Raleigh walked down the ramp into a rush of cool underground air. The Suburbans followed him slowly, and the moment they reached the bottom, he stepped to a wall, where he pushed another button. The ramp ascended, becoming part of the ceiling.

As the men clambered out of the vehicle, Raleigh said, “Sergeant, assemble the team.”

Seconds later, they stood in a row before him.

“Gentlemen.” His voice reverberated off the concrete walls. “You’re beneath Hangar 8 of an airfield that was a training facility for U.S. military flight teams during World War II. The hangar and this area weren’t part of that effort, however. Only personnel with top-secret clearance were allowed in the hangar, and even fewer were allowed down here. The explanation was that the prototype for a new bomber was being assembled in the hangar and readied for testing. Trainees cycled through the program so quickly that they never stayed long enough to wonder why the bomber wasn’t completed and flown.

“You’re familiar with the race to develop the atomic bomb during the Second World War. The location for that project’s main research facility, Los Alamos, was on a remote, difficult-to-reach mesa in New Mexico. This underground area enjoyed similar advantages and had a similar purpose. If it seems out of the way now, imagine how truly out of the way it was in 1943, when the project began. The objective was to develop a weapon quite different from the atomic bomb. In a way, Hangar 8 and Los Alamos were racing against one another as well as the enemy. Of course Los Alamos won the race. In fact, the first atomic bomb was detonated at what’s now called the White Sands Missile Range, just two hundred and fifty miles north of here, and after two of those bombs ended the war in the Pacific, the urgency to develop a parallel weapon lost its force.”

Raleigh chose his next words with care. “In addition, there were what might be called difficulties in conducting the research here.”

Difficulties, indeed.

Raleigh looked around the subterranean chamber. Even after all these years, rust-colored smears were visible on the walls, but they had nothing to do with rust.

“With the end of the war, there was no longer any need to train massive numbers of military flight teams, and the cover story lost its effectiveness. So for a number of reasons, the airfield was shut down. Except for this underground facility, the base was allowed to deteriorate. This area wasn’t exposed to the elements, however, and apart from minor water damage, it adjusted extremely well to remaining in hibernation. Indeed, from time to time, it received maintenance checks in case its mission should ever be reactivated. Fifteen years ago, I did exactly that.

“I reactivated it.”

34

“Anita, are you sure this angle will work?”

Brent raised his voice so that he could be heard above the noisy crowd. He and his camerawoman stood on top of a Winnebago motor home that the owner-a local car dealer-had agreed to let them use in exchange for free publicity.

Like Brent, Anita had gotten only a few hours of sleep since coming to Rostov. There’d been too many people to interview, too many locations to scout. Her eyes looked heavy under her baseball cap. Her outdoor clothes, with their numerous pockets, seemed even more baggy than when they’d started.

My suit looks worse, Brent thought. A day earlier, that would have depressed him, but now-as he peered down at his scuffed, dusty shoes-he almost smiled at the new image he was creating for himself.

“You’ll be on the right side of the screen,” Anita answered. “The horizon’ll be on your left.” She looked so tired, he wondered how she had the strength to keep the heavy camera balanced on her shoulder. “It’s a clear shot. If we tried this on the ground, the crowd would get in the way, but from high up like this, they won’t be in the shot at all unless you ask me to tilt down.”

“Perfect. Stay focused on me unless I indicate otherwise. Tell Jack and the guy in the chopper to keep their cameras panning across the crowd the entire time, just in case something happens.”

“In case what happens?”

“Just make sure they’re ready. And I definitely want a shot of that guy.” Brent pointed down toward a tall, gray-bearded man who wore a biblical robe, held a staff, and looked like Charlton Heston playing Moses in The Ten Commandments.

He frowned toward the east, where the dark clouds were getting thicker. That rain better wait until I finish the broadcast, he thought.

“Okay, time to prep a guest.”

“Button your shirt. Straighten your tie,” Anita advised.

“No way.” Brent rubbed his bristly whisker shadow. “I want CNN to see how hard I’m working.”

“How hard we’re all working.”

“Right.”

At dawn, after a night of chasing interviews, Brent had experienced a moment of powerful inspiration when he’d seen his reflection in a car window and cringed at how terrible he looked. He’d been reminded of an old black-and-white movie about a reporter racing against the clock to prove the innocence of a prisoner about to be electrocuted on Death Row. In the movie, the reporter barely had time to eat, let alone change clothes and shave. At the end of the movie, when he burst into the governor’s office with the proof, he looked like he’d suffered through hell to get the story.

At that moment, the idea had hit him: How can the viewers, or the CNN brass, know how hard I’m working if I make it look easy? I’ve been doing this wrong. What viewer gives a shit if I’m wearing a perfectly pressed suit? Most of them don’t even own a sports coat. For them, wearing jeans is dressing up.

I’ve got to make them realize that I’m one of them-that I’m killing myself to get the story for them.

And with that epiphany, he had done a complete about-face.

In addition to exhaustion, Brent suffered from too much coffee and not enough real food. Doughnuts and tacos had been just about all he’d eaten, always on the go. Except for when he drove with Anita, he never had a chance to sit down, and even then, he wasn’t resting. He was making hurried notes or using his cell phone-which wasn’t easy since the reception here was for shit.

He couldn’t let up. He needed to make sure he got to anybody who might have even the slightest information to contribute, and he had to get there before the other reporters. He wanted everyone else feeling behind the curve, certain that anything they did would look like an imitation of what he’d already accomplished.

But there was a cost. His stomach had a sharp, burning sensation. His hands had a slight tremor. He felt light-headed from exhaustion and lack of food.

Legs stiff, he climbed down the ladder to the crowd below. The noise of so many impatient conversations gave him a headache. The day light was gone now, and the sky was black and starless, but there were plenty of other sources of illumination: headlights, spotlights set up by the authorities and the television crews, flashlights carried by the curious. Brightly lit figures cast stark shadows, lending the scene a surreal quality.

His coanchor, Sharon, waited for him at the bottom of the ladder, her big hair sprayed perfectly into place. Anger made her more beautiful.

“Well, I’ve got to give you credit,” she said crisply. “You finally got what you wanted-you really screwed me today.”

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

Someone bumped against them, shoving through the crowd.

“Keep going,” a woman urged her male companion. “We can’t see anything from back here. Get close to the fence.”

“I was supposed to be the one giving the reports to CNN,” Sharon complained. “I was supposed to anchor today’s broadcasts, all by myself.”

“Well, while you were nursing your sore feet, I was out doing the interviews.”

Someone else bumped against them, almost knocking them together.

“If you ask me, these lights are all a bunch of bullshit,” a man complained to his companion. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into coming here. It took six hours, for Christ’s sake. If I’d known there’d be this many people…”

Brent faced Sharon again. “Maybe you should try being a reporter for a change. Dig up more stories about rescued cats and the people who love them.”

A man pushed a woman in a wheelchair, nearly knocking Brent off his feet and shouting, “Out of the way! Let us through. My wife needs to see the lights! They’ll heal her legs! Out of the way…”

Brent took advantage of the interruption and turned toward the broadcast truck, which was parked near the Winnebago.

“Mr. Hamilton,” he called to someone inside the truck. “We’re ready for your interview.”

An uneasy-looking man stepped out. Overweight, in his midforties, he wore cowboy boots and jeans with creases down the middle of the legs. His blue-checked shirt had shiny metal snaps instead of buttons.

“I was on the Highway of Death in the First Gulf War, but nothing ever made me nervous like this.” Hamilton’s puffy cheeks were flushed. He grinned at his own candor.

“Going on television? I thought car dealers were used to that be- cause of their television commercials,” Brent said as he adjusted the tiny microphone clipped to the man’s shirt.

“There’s no station in Rostov. Hell, I’ve never seen the inside of one.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll ask you some easy questions about what you told me this afternoon. I’ve never heard anything more fascinating. All you need to do is forget the camera and talk to me the way you’d talk to a customer.”

“Well, I can sure do that.” Hamilton looked up uncertainly. “But I’ve never tried to sell anybody anything from the top of a motor home, and in the dark to boot.”

Brent leaned inside the broadcast truck. “Harry, brighten the lights up there, will you? There you go, Mr. Hamilton, lead the way. I think you’ll enjoy the view.”

With that, they walked over to the Winnebago.

“I hope you’re not counting on too much,” Hamilton said as he started climbing the ladder.

Only a ticket to Atlanta, Brent thought.

On top of the motor home, he arranged Hamilton so that he stood a few feet away, with the crowd below them and the rangeland in the background.

“I just need to talk to somebody for a moment. Then we’ll do the interview.”

Brent adjusted his earbud so that it wouldn’t be conspicuous. Through it, he listened to the producer, who sat below him in the broadcast van.

“Ready in ten,” the producer’s voice said.

Next to Anita’s camera, a face appeared on a monitor, the craggy features of one of television’s most well-known personalities.

Hamilton pointed. “Isn’t that…?”

Keeping his right hand at his side, Brent motioned for him to be quiet. He was troubled that his hand had a tremor.

The producer’s voice finished counting down.

“Go.”

On the monitor, the CNN newscaster’s thin lips moved, but there was no sound. Brent could hear him through the earbud, though.

“And for the next hour, we have a special broadcast about a story that stunned the nation. Last night a crazed gunman shot twenty members of a tour group near the remote town of Rostov in west Texas. The killer’s rage was evidently set off by mysterious lights that appear almost nightly in that area. Joining us live at the scene of the shooting is Brent Loft, a reporter for El Paso television station…” The famous personality, whose power Brent hoped to have one day, read the station’s call letters.

“Brent, you look as if this story is taking a toll on you.”

“Things are very emotional here.” Brent’s words were picked up by a tiny mike clipped to his dusty lapel. “Believe me, there’s a lot more information to track down.”

“I understand you’re going to tell us more about the mystery of those lights, and why they drove this gunman into a homicidal frenzy.”

“That’s correct. The lights are a local phenomenon that have been here as long as anybody can remember. On most nights, they appear on the rangeland behind me-but not to everyone. Some people see the lights, while others don’t, and that’s as much a mystery as what causes them. In a while, we’re going to aim our cameras in that direction and see if the nation gets lucky.

“But first, you need to understand what the eager crowd below me is looking for. To provide some context, I want to introduce you to Luther Hamilton, a car dealer here in Rostov who probably knows as much about the lights as anyone. He’s one of the few who’ve seen them up close and personal. In fact, his experience with them nearly cost him his life.

“Mr. Hamilton,” Brent stepped toward his guest so that Anita could put them in a two-shot. The crowd milled impatiently below. “In the summer of 1980, you took part in a highly unusual event.”

“It sure wasn’t ordinary, I’ll tell you that,” Luther agreed.

“And it occurred in this area?”

“Exactly in this area. Right where everybody’s standing down below us. There wasn’t any observation platform in those days, just a gravel parking lot at the side of the road. On the Fourth of July, 1980, Rostov had a fireworks celebration. After it was over, we drove out here.”

“How many people were involved?”

“Almost as many as are here now. At least four hundred.”

“And what did you plan to do? Did you have a name for it?”

“We called it the Rostov Ghost Light Hunt.”

35

For the second time that day, Luther described what had happened that long-ago summer, and now he understood that the nervousness he’d spoken about hadn’t much to do with worrying that he’d forget what he was supposed to say on television. It was nervousness about what he’d started to remember. That afternoon, when he’d told the reporter about the hunt, he’d recalled it through a haze of decades, but now his memory was focusing, remembering details with clarity, and he dreaded returning to that time.

I wish to God I’d never agreed to this interview, he thought. He’d hoped that the publicity would help him sell cars, but all of a sudden, he didn’t care.

Rostov’s 1980 Fourth of July fireworks had turned out to be the usual joke. They were ignited on the high school football field: less than ten minutes of skyrockets, some of which had more of a pop than a bang. A few never went off, and the principal made a big show of pouring buckets of water on them. The senior class clown, Jeb Rutherford, burned himself with a sparkler. Bits of burned paper drifted from the sky, and Cal Bailey’s girlfriend got a speck in her eye. Cal had to drive her to the hospital. The big finish was a rocket that burst into the shape of a huge American flag blazing above the crowd. Smoke and the smell of gunpowder drifted everywhere. Eleven years later, Luther would associate that odor with the smell of gunsmoke from artillery in the First Gulf War.

And then the show was over. Rick Chambers, the president of the student council, murmured to Luther that the fireworks had lasted about as long as it took to have sex. Everybody headed toward their cars or trucks, but a lot of them knew that the festivities were just beginning, and it wasn’t just schoolkids who drove out of town to the gravel parking lot. A lot of parents went there, also, and families came from nearby towns.

Johnny Whitlock-the captain of the football team-was the guy who’d thought of it. Johnny was always coming up with crazy schemes, like suggesting that the Homecoming dance should have a Hawaiian theme because nobody ever left Rostov, so how could there be a home- coming? Maybe the dance should be called the “Wish I Could Leave Home” dance. That idea got only one vote-Johnny’s. Another time he sneaked over to the school in the middle of the night and managed to reach the flagpole without being spotted by the janitor or a policeman driving past. The next morning, when the students arrived, they found a Mickey Mouse flag grinning over the school. The principal was furious. At a hastily convened assembly, he ranted that somebody had insulted not only the school but also the American flag, and he demanded to know who’d done it. Only Luther and a few other kids had known it was Johnny, and of course none of them said a word-at least not until after that Fourth of July, when it no longer mattered.

“Let’s do something big this summer,” Johnny told Luther and a half-dozen other kids after their final class of the school year.

They were eating burgers at the Rib Palace, and Luther said, “Yeah, like what? You know there’s nothing to do around here.”

Johnny chewed thoughtfully and grinned. “All we got around here’s the lights, right?”

“And that old ranch house where they made that James Deacon movie,” Cal Bailey suggested.

“Who cares about that old dump? The damned thing’s falling apart. No, the lights are the only action we’ve got. How many times have any of you tried to figure out what they are?”

Everybody shrugged. It was a rite of passage that on your twelfth birthday you sneaked out of the house after your parents went to sleep. You bicycled out to the parking lot, where other kids were waiting to see if you had the guts to climb the fence and hike into the field to try to find what caused the lights. That was tougher than it sounded because the field stretched all the way to Mexico, and it was easy to get lost out there in the dark. Not many kids actually saw the lights to begin with, so most didn’t even know what they were looking for, which was why the older kids tried to make things scarier by calling them “Ghost Lights.”

Before the birthday boy arrived, other kids hid in the field. When he climbed the fence and started into the darkness, they raised lanterns, but as soon as he headed in their direction, they covered the lights. That made him look around in confusion. The next thing, he saw other lights-more lanterns-and went toward them. Then they disappeared. The joke ended when the kids with the lanterns couldn’t keep from laughing.

But sometimes the kids who were hiding saw other lights, and it was obvious that those lights couldn’t be lanterns because some of them floated high off the ground. They moved this way and that, and merged and changed colors, and kept getting larger and coming closer. That was another way the joke ended-when it suddenly wasn’t funny and the kids with the lanterns decided it was time to go home. That rite of passage ended after the Fourth of July, 1980. No one wanted to go into the field after that, and when Chief Costigan came to town to replace his father, who’d been shot to death, the field remained off-limits because the chief kept driving out there at night to try to figure out what the lights were.

“Sure, we kidded around about the lights,” Johnny said that June, lowering his hamburger. “But the truth is, nobody knows what they are.”

“They’re nothing,” Jasper Conklin said. “I bet I’ve been out there a hundred times. Never seen ’ em once. People who claim to see ’em are putting you on.”

“Well, I’ve seen ’em,” Johnny said.

“So have I,” Luther added. “And my mom and dad have, too.”

“Let’s make a difference and do something the town’ll remember for a long time,” Johnny said. “Let’s find out what causes them. Let’s have a Ghost Light Hunt.”

That was a typical Johnny idea, but the name had a nice shivery sound to it, and he suggested that they do it after the shitty Fourth of July fireworks and make a real celebration.

“Why not?” Jasper said. “We’ve got nothing better to do.”

They mentioned it around town, and then parents heard about it, and some of them-especially the editor of the weekly newspaper- thought it might be interesting. So the newspaper printed an article, and the next thing, there was a meeting in the high school gymnasium. A lot of people didn’t want anything to do with the hunt-they were happy with the way things were and felt that some things shouldn’t be explained. But most of the people were tired of not knowing what was out there, and a few had their own reasons for wanting the hunt to take place.

“Hell, before he died, my grandfather told me he saw the lights way back during the First World War,” Josh McKinney said. He owned Rostov’s only movie theater. “At the time, the town was afraid they were German spies, sneaking across the Mexican border. The Army came out and couldn’t figure what was going on, so to be on the safe side, they built that training field out there. Then they reactivated it during the Second World War, when the lights made the military nervous again. All these years, people around here have been trying to figure out what they are, and no one’s ever succeeded. Personally I don’t think you’re going to find out this time, either, but I’m all for trying, ’cause when you fail, it’ll only make the lights more mysterious, and we’ll get more tourists.”

“And more customers for your theater, eh, Josh?” somebody joked from the crowd.

“Well, I wouldn’t turn down the chance to sell more popcorn.” The way Josh grinned got a laugh, and everybody started talking at once, but the mayor didn’t bother calling for order because it was clear there was going to be a Ghost Light Hunt. Those in favor would work out the details on their own.

So that Fourth of July, hundreds of people gathered at the gravel parking lot outside town. All those headlights blazing were a show of their own, Luther thought, and the overwhelming rumble of that many engines, mostly from pickup trucks, was awesome. Johnny arrived on his motorcycle. Luther had a 1960 military-style Jeep he’d bought from a junkyard outside El Paso. A natural mechanic, he’d re- built it and painted it yellow. Several cowboys arrived on horseback.

Everybody was talking so much that Waylan Craig-who owned the hardware store-needed to use a bullhorn to get everybody’s attention.

“Shut off those engines!” His amplified voice struggled to compete with the noise of the vehicles.

A few people complied, and then others. Before long, Luther could hear everything Waylan said.

“And shut off those headlights! I didn’t think I’d need sunglasses at this hour!”

A couple of people chuckled, and soon there were only enough headlights to keep people from stumbling around in the dark. Luther looked up into the cloudless sky and saw the stars of the Milky Way stretching brightly across the sky.

“I brought eight sets of walkie-talkies from my store,” Waylan announced, “As soon as you get organized into groups, I’ll hand ’ em out. Naturally I ’d like ’em back when we’re finished-unless, of course, some of you want to buy a pair.”

That got more chuckles.

“You’re supposed to have your own flashlights,” Waylan continued, his words echoing into the dark grassland. “But in case you forgot, I brought some of those from my store, also.”

“And you want them back, too, unless we decide to buy them,” somebody yelled from the crowd.

“This week, they’re on special.”

Even more chuckles.

It wasn’t that Waylan was funny. A lot of people in the crowd had come with a supply of beer, and most of the men were sipping from cans. A few kept going back to their trucks to drink from bottles in paper bags. Luther noticed that some of the teenagers had beer cans, too, holding them close to their sides, trying not to be obvious. A breeze carried the smell of alcohol through the crowd.

As a result, it took more than an hour to get organized. Somebody brought wire cutters from his truck and opened a wide section of the barbed-wire fence.

“We’ll want to be sure to repair it after we’re done,” Waylan said.

“Got any tools to sell us to do that?” somebody yelled.

Four pairs of spotters were placed at strategic areas along the fence, about seventy-five yards apart. Each pair had a telescope, a compass, and a walkie-talkie. People went through the gap in the fence and spread out in a line about thirty yards wide.

Mayor Ackerman took charge of the bullhorn.

“Once we get started, just keep walking straight ahead. Use your walkie-talkies to tell us if you see the lights. As soon as we get every- thing coordinated on a map, we’ll send trucks in that direction. They’ll get there so fast, whatever’s causing the lights won’t have a chance to slip away.”

“My motorcycle’ll get there faster,” Johnny said.

Luther almost added, “And my Jeep.”

“My horse can get to places nobody else can,” a cowboy said.

“Everybody’s help is welcome,” the mayor assured them through the bullhorn. “Those of you in the line, don’t use your flashlights un- less you absolutely need to. They’ll ruin your night vision. Be- sides… ” His tone indicated he was about to make a joke. “We don’t want to scare whatever’s making those lights. Heck, we may look as mysterious to them as they do to us.”

But it didn’t get a laugh, and Luther decided that some people in the crowd believed that the mayor was right.

Finally, a half hour before midnight, everybody started. Well, not everybody. Some people got tired and cold and went home. Others had too much to drink and fell asleep in their trucks. Lucky for them. But the majority spread out carefully and started walking into the darkness of the rangeland.

“Happy Fourth of July!” someone shouted.

Luther stayed behind with Johnny, ready to drive into the field if anybody spotted anything. For a while, the backs of the people in the line were illuminated by the few remaining headlights. But despite the cloudless sky, the darkness of the field was murky, and when they disappeared into the darkness, it was like a magic trick.

A breeze cooled Luther’s face as he strained to detect any movement out there.

“I see one!” a spotter exclaimed.

“Where?” his partner wanted to know.

“No! I’m wrong! Sorry, everybody! It was just a flashlight some- body turned on and off!”

Another light flickered and vanished. Luther could tell that it, too, was from a flashlight. Then several lights flickered. The temptation to see what was ahead on the ground was evidently contagious. The off- and-on flashlights looked like giant fireflies bobbing and weaving out there.

A spotter yelled into his walkie-talkie, telling the people in the field, “Turn off those flashlights! You’re making it hard for us to see what’s beyond you!”

“Cut the flashlights!” another spotter shouted.

Gradually they went off, and finally all Luther saw was darkness. The sky was another matter. When he happened to look up, he saw the flashing lights of an airliner speeding toward its distant destination. Another moving light-this one not flashing-probably came from a satellite.

“Shit,” Johnny said, hugging himself. “If I’d known it’d be this boring, I never would’ve suggested coming out here. I’m freezing my ass off. This is worse than the stupid fireworks.”

Luther was about to agree when he glanced toward the grassland, and something in him came to attention as a patch of darkness seemed to brighten a little.

Probably just another flashlight, he decided.

But it appeared to be far beyond where the searchers were likely to be, and it was different from the darkness around it.

“Johnny.” Luther pointed. “Do you-”

“I see something!” a spotter announced.

“So do I!” somebody else exclaimed.

So did Luther. Definitely. A ball of yellow light out there in the distance. Then a ball of green joined it. They bobbed as if floating in water, then merged into a single large ball that was red. A few seconds later, they drifted apart, and there were three of them, blue, orange, and a different shade of green.

Luther realized that he’d raised a hand to his right ear. An almost undetectable, high-pitched sound irritated his eardrum. It reminded him of a vibration he’d heard when he’d watched a man repair an old piano that was always stored in a corner of the school’s gymnasium. The man had taken a shiny metal object from his toolbox. It had a stem and a two-pronged fork. He tapped it against the side of the piano, and the fork vibrated with a hum, allowing the man to adjust a wire in the piano until the tuning fork and the piano wire hummed identically.

Luther heard something similar now, like a note from an unusual- sounding piano, except that the barely perceptible vibration was annoying, making him imagine a hot needle piercing each of his eardrums.

“I see another one!” a spotter yelled.

“Two hundred degrees!” his companion shouted, checking his compass.

“One hundred and eighty!” someone farther along the fence yelled.

The other spotters made their reports.

“A hundred and seventy!”

“A hundred and sixty-five!”

In a rush, the mayor and two members of the town council leaned over the hood of a pickup truck, one of them pressing down a map while another aimed a flashlight and the mayor drew lines on the paper.

“They intersect at one seventy-five!” the mayor shouted. He used a ruler to measure the distance on the map and compared it to the scale at the bottom. “Looks to be about eight miles out!” he shouted into his walkie-talkie.

Standing nearby, Luther heard a crackly response from the mayor’s walkie-talkie. “Eight miles? In the dark? That’ll take all night!”

“Just keep the line going! Head for the lights, and make sure nothing gets around you! We’ll send the trucks out now! They’ll get there in no time!”

Luther heard the sudden roar of an engine and realized that it was Johnny kick-starting his motorcycle. Two trucks started up, but Johnny was the first through the gap in the fence. He had his head- light dimmed, and when the trucks quickly followed, they used only their parking lights. Even so, Luther could see the dust they raised, and the red of their taillights revealed two horsemen riding close be- hind them.

From the sound of the receding engines, Luther could tell that no- body was speeding, but in the dark, with minimal lights, speeding was a relative term. Twenty-five miles an hour would be plenty.

At once it occurred to him that he’d been left behind.

His Jeep didn’t have a top. He leaped over the door, landed in the driver’s seat, and twisted the ignition key. As the engine rumbled and his parking lights revealed the fence, he steered into the gap. His Jeep had a stiff suspension. Bumping across the rough grassland jerked his head back.

Man, I hope the other kids saw me make that jump. Luther was reminded of an old movie that he loved to watch whenever it was on television: Bullitt. It had the greatest car chase, and Steve McQueen was the coolest driver ever, but not even McQueen could have done that jump better.

Luther’s front wheels jolted over rocks. A jackrabbit raced across his path. A night breeze ruffled his long hair. He pulled a luminous compass from his shirt pocket, took a quick glance down at it, and aimed toward 175 degrees.

The darkness formed a wall on either side. Even at this reduced speed, Luther had the sense of hurtling through space. His faint lights allowed him to see only a hundred feet or so ahead of him. Combined with the shudder of the Jeep over holes and rocks, they made it difficult for him to keep a clear, steady gaze on the area he aimed to- ward. The Ghost Lights were sometimes hard to see, even if he was standing breathlessly still in the gravel parking lot, but now he realized that, under these conditions, he couldn’t hope to notice them unless he got very close.

Abruptly he saw movement ahead. The people in the line! he realized. Silhouettes materialized. They were scattered to the side, as if they’d scrambled to get away from Johnny’s motorcycle and the trucks and the horsemen. Two people writhed in pain on the ground, while someone yelled into a walkie-talkie. Then Luther saw a horse thrashing on the ground, one of its legs bent at a sickening angle. A cowboy lay beside it. He wasn’t moving.

The next second there were only rocks and clumps of grass and the elusive darkness beyond his parking lights as he hurried on.

If I’m not careful, I’m going to run into somebody, he realized.

Wary, he put on his headlights and gasped at the black, cinder-like boulders that suddenly appeared before him. They stretched all the way to the right. If he’d been going any faster, he’d have flipped the Jeep as he steered sharply to the left and tore up dust that swirled around his head, blocking his vision.

Keep turning! Keep turning!

The damned Badlands. As he swung clear of the boulders, coughing from the dust, he noticed a glow ahead of him.

I must be closer to the lights than I realized.

They increased until they hurt his eyes, quickly becoming larger and brighter. At first he thought it was because he was gaining on them, but as they intensified, he realized that they were moving, too.

They’re coming toward me!

Luther didn’t know why that frightened him. The whole point of the hunt was to get close to the lights and explain what caused them, but as they magnified, he felt his stomach contract.

Two of the lights weren’t colored, though. Close to the ground, they sped nearer. With a start, Luther had the sick understanding that they were the headlights of a pickup truck.

It’s going to hit me!

He swerved to the right and felt the truck speed past him so closely that wind from it hurled grit into his eyes. He braked hard and skidded over rocks and grass. The jolt knocked his teeth together. Frantic, he pawed at his eyes, trying to regain his sight. Dust filled his lungs, making him cough again.

Then his vision became clear enough for him to see a panicked horse galloping toward him. It didn’t have a rider. Terrified, Luther raised his arms across his face, certain the frothing animal would collide with the Jeep. He imagined the agony of its weight flipping onto him, crushing him. But at once the hooves thundered past.

He spun to look behind him. Farther back, distant shouts were ac- companied by bobbing flashlights that suddenly seemed everywhere. The people in the line had heard the truck and the horse rushing to- ward them and were running in every direction to avoid getting hit.

A woman screamed. The horse wailed. Or could that terrible animal outcry possibly have come from a human being?

Luther felt paralyzed by the chaos. Then the roar of another engine made him stare ahead again. He saw the colored orbs chasing the headlights of a truck that veered to avoid Luther’s car, angling sharply to his right. A single headlight raced next to the truck-Johnny’s motorcycle. Continuing to veer to the right, the truck smashed through a barbed-wire fence and detached a sign that flipped through the air. The sign nearly hit Johnny’s motorcycle.

Luther knew exactly what the sign said. He’d seen identical ones on the fences that enclosed the area over there.

PROPERTY OF U.S. MILITARY

DANGER

TOXIC CHEMICALS

UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE

The speeding taillights dimmed, pursued by the colors, which diminished as well, until all Luther saw was the darkness of the grassland.

A far-off rumble sounded like thunder. Several flashes might have been lightning on the horizon or fireworks from a distant town. But Luther had no doubt what really caused the rumble and the flashes. Despite the distance, he thought he heard Johnny screaming.

36

“So the sign didn’t exaggerate?” Brent asked as they stood atop the brightly lit motor home and the crowd milled impatiently in the shadowy parking lot below. Anita continued to direct her camera to- ward him and Hamilton.

“During the Second World War, there was an active military airfield in that area.” Hamilton sounded as if he were in pain. “This area’s so remote it was a perfect place for flight crews to practice bombing runs.

Usually what they dropped didn’t have detonators or explosives. But sometimes it was the real thing-to get the crews used to the shock waves. Not all the bombs exploded when they hit the ground. After so many years, the detonators became very unstable.”

“And your friend-did he survive?”

“Johnny?” Hamilton grimaced, as if the memory belonged to yesterday. “He and two men in the pickup truck were blown apart when they drove over a couple of the bombs.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Brent, of course, had already known it. Hamilton had told him about it earlier in the day. But Brent needed to put on a grave look of sympathy.

“Nobody dared go looking for them in the dark,” Hamilton continued. “A local pilot went up at dawn. She flew over the area and saw the wreckage and gave details about the location. But even then, a recovery team couldn’t just rush in for fear of setting off other bombs. It took them until midafternoon to get there.” He shook his head and looked as if he might be sick. “By then the coyotes had gotten to what was left of the bodies and-”

Brent decided it was time to change the subject. The program was close to being a tabloid as it was, without describing animals eating corpses.

“And the lights? What happened to them?”

“They just disappeared. The next night, they didn’t come back- and the night after that. It was a couple of months before they returned.”

“You said the lights chased your friend’s motorcycle and the truck?”

“And the other truck and the two cowboys. That’s the way it looked to me. Of course, it might have been an optical illusion. During the investigation, a psychiatrist claimed that everybody just got carried away, that we saw the lights because we wanted to see them, and when one person panicked, everyone panicked. I don’t know what to believe. That night the lights sure seemed real, and they sure seemed to have a will of their own. They scared one of the horses so bad it broke its leg, and another threw its rider and bolted away. That was the horse I saw galloping toward me. The cowboy broke an arm and his collarbone.”

“And what about you? From what you’ve said, the lights didn’t bother you.”

“I sat in the darkness for a long time, trying to figure out what I’d seen. I tried to tell myself that my eyes had played tricks on me. But if I was seeing some kind of hallucination, Johnny and the guys in the pickup truck must have seen exactly the same hallucination. Why else would they have been driving so fast to get away? When I finally got the strength to turn the Jeep around and go back to this parking lot, I realized that my shirt collar was wet.”

“Wet?”

“With blood.”

“What?” Hamilton hadn’t told him about this before.

“There was a sound.”

“A sound?”

“High pitched. Almost impossible to hear. It felt like a hot needle against my eardrums. They broke.”

“Broke?”

“My eardrums. Blood flowed out of my ears. I couldn’t hear any- thing for three months. My doctor was afraid I’d be permanently deaf. It’s amazing how much of that night I shut out of my memory. Talking about this again…”

Hamilton actually looked as if he were going to cry.

Time to wrap this up, Brent thought. He pointed toward the darkness.

“And now, all these years later, another tragedy has happened be- cause of the lights. We’re going to take a short break. As soon as we come back, we’ll train our cameras on the area behind me and try to find some answers about-”

“I see one!” somebody in the crowd shouted.

“Where?”

“Over there! To the right!”

“I see it, too!”

Brent felt the motor home shake as the crowd pressed in that direction.

“Look! A half dozen of them!”

Brent sensed Anita moving forward with the camera.

“Where?” someone shouted. “I still don’t see them!”

“To the right!” someone else yelled.

Brent stared in the direction a lot of people were pointing. All he saw was darkness. He hoped that the camera operators on the ground and in the chopper were following his instructions and focusing on the crowd. The people were the story. Their reactions were becoming frenzied.

“Yes! My God, they’re beautiful!” a woman exclaimed.

At once Brent saw something in the distance. Six lights appeared to float. They converged in pairs, then separated.

“I see them!” Brent said to the viewers at home. “This is extraordinary. You’re the first live audience ever to view the mysterious Rostov lights.”

Anita was next to him now, aiming the camera toward the lights. The intense look on her face told Brent that she was getting fabulous images.

“Perhaps this will help us understand what causes them,” he told his audience.

“That isn’t them,” Hamilton interrupted.

Brent continued. “Perhaps we’ll be able to-”

“I’m telling you those aren’t the Rostov lights,” Hamilton insisted.

“But I can see them. They’re obviously out there.”

“Headlights.”

“What?”

“You’re looking at the road from Mexico. Those are the headlights of cars driving along the highway. The road goes up and down over there. That’s why the headlights seem to float. A lot of people have been fooled by that road.”

“But…”

“The lights don’t look anything like that. Besides, it’s the wrong direction. That’s southwest. You need to look southeast.”

“Over there!” a man yelled.

As one, the crowd turned southeast, and the Winnebago shook again. Several pointed emphatically.

“There!”

Brent turned to stare in this new direction and felt overwhelmed. The first thing he noticed were the colors. He’d grown up in Michigan. One disturbing summer night when he was ten, he’d been out- side after dark and had seen countless ribbons of colors rippling across the sky. They’d radiated from the north and filled the heavens, eerily lustrous, swirling as if alive.

He’d run into the house and warned his mother, “We’re going to die!”

“What?”

“The sky’s on fire! It’s the end of the world!” His father had died from a heart attack six months earlier. That was probably why death had been on Brent’s mind.

When his mother had finally realized what was happening, she’d held his hand and made him go outside with her.

He’d struggled with her. “No! It’ll kill us!”

“There’s no reason to be afraid. What you’re seeing is the aurora borealis.”

“The what?”

“The Northern Lights. I heard an explanation for them once. Apparently they’re magnetic rays from the sun reflecting off the polar ice cap.”

What Brent saw now-off in the distance-made him feel as if the Northern Lights had been squeezed into seven shimmering orbs. Their iridescent colors kept changing, rippling from within, giving the impression that something churned at their cores. Their shimmer was hypnotic as they drifted and floated, sank and rose and hovered. Even though they were far away, Brent tried to reach out and touch them.

Many in the crowd felt the same. They reached toward the darkness.

“Get out of my way!” a man yelled.

“You’re blocking the view!” somebody complained.

“Move!” a woman insisted. “I need to get closer! I need to be cured!”

“Stop shoving!”

“No, don’t…”

Everyone surged toward the fence.

“Can’t breathe!”

People slammed against the motor home. As it shook, Brent had trouble keeping his balance. When even more people surged, it trembled violently. He reached out for something to hold him up, but all he grasped was air. The next time the Winnebago shook, his knees gave way. Suddenly he was in the air, plummeting toward the crowd. He fell between bodies, struck the gravel, and groaned from the mass of people charging over him.

37

Earl Halloway sat in the harshly lit surveillance room beneath the observatory’s dishes. He’d just swallowed six aspirins, for a total of a half bottle today, but he still couldn’t control his headache. His stomach burned. The hum from the facility’s generator or the dishes or whatever the hell caused it became louder, making him grind his teeth to try to relieve the pressure behind his ears.

This wasn’t Halloway’s shift, but there was no way he could contain himself enough to watch a movie on the computer in his room. He’d attempted to turn off the lights and lie in bed with a wet washcloth over his closed eyes. But the headache was too excruciating for him to lie still, so he’d come to the security office in the hope that doing something useful would distract him from it.

The harsh lights only made the pressure in his head more intense.

“Are you okay?” one of the other guards asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look like hell.”

Halloway had given up trying to make anybody else understand about the hum. No one else seemed to hear it.

“Every day’s the same. We keep looking at those monitors. Nothing ever happens.”

“That’s the way I like it,” the second guard said. “You’d rather have somebody attack us, just for the excitement? Maybe you didn’t get shot at enough over in Iraq.”

“As if terrorists care about an observatory,” the first guard said. “I have no idea what we’re doing here, but the pay’s good.”

“You got that right. The pay’s good. So Earl, just shut up and quit complaining.”

The night-viewing function on the cameras outside had been activated several hours earlier. On the monitors, the dishes, the fences, the scrub grass, the dirt, the miles and miles of godforsaken nothing-all of it was tinted green. One of the screens showed three coyotes loping by. Their body heat made them glow brightly. On a different screen, a jackrabbit jerked its head up. Sensing the coyotes, the rabbit bounded away in a panic. It, too, glowed unnaturally.

Moments later a third screen showed the coyotes chasing the rabbit through the green darkness.

“Who says nothing ever happens?” the first guard asked. “Any bets on who wins?”

“My money’s on the rabbit,” the second guard answered.

“How much? Oops, too late. Just as well you didn’t have time to make your bet.”

Halloway scowled at the screen. “Man, even blood looks green on those night-vision images.” He stood and walked toward the door- way, stumbling slightly.

“Get some sleep,” the second guard said.

“If only.” Halloway left the room and walked along the stark corridor. His bootsteps echoed irritably.

The door to the Data Analysis area was closed. Wincing from his headache, he put his left ear against it.

You’re not supposed to be in here, the researcher named Gordon had told him after Halloway had made an effort to be friends with him. Gordon’s eyes had looked stern behind his spectacles. This area’s off- limits. You belong in the surveillance room.

Try to be nice to people, and they treat you like shit, Halloway thought.

He pressed his ear harder against the cold metal door. All he heard was the hum. Throughout the afternoon, he’d made yet another effort to find what caused it. He’d searched every room in the facility- the latrines, the sleeping quarters, the kitchen, the mess hall, the generator room, the exercise room, the surveillance room-and yet again, he hadn’t found any answers.

I didn’t get a chance to check the research area again, he thought darkly. That son of a bitch Gordon decided I wasn’t good enough to be allowed in there any longer.

The hum filled Halloway’s head. The only time he hadn’t been in pain was last night when he’d listened to the music-the wonderful music that made him feel he was dancing with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, smelling her cinnamon hair, tasting orange juice and vodka.

He gripped the doorknob and turned it.

Nothing happened. That bastard Gordon had locked it.

Halloway banged on the door but didn’t get a response.

He hammered louder.

Down the hall, one of the guards leaned his head out from the surveillance room. “What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?”

“We were told to stay out of there.”

“I thought I heard somebody shouting for help.”

Halloway pounded so hard that his fist throbbed, but the pain was nothing compared to his headache.

Suddenly the door was yanked open. Standing in the harsh lights of the research area, Gordon glared from behind his tortoiseshell glasses. His face was bright red. “What’s the matter with you? Damn it, follow orders.”

Halloway stared past him toward the other researchers. Amid banks of glowing electronic instruments, they all wore earphones. A headset-presumably Gordon’s-was lying on a table.

“You’re listening to the music, aren’t you? But you didn’t let me know.”

“You have no idea what you’re interfering with. Unless you want to lose your job, leave us alone.”

Gordon started to close the door.

Halloway pressed a hand against it and stopped him. “That’s what you’re doing, right? You’re listening to the music.”

Gordon put more effort into closing the door.

Halloway rammed it open, knocking him back.

“Hey!” Gordon shouted.

Halloway stalked past him, approaching the table. The other researchers thought he was coming at them and stumbled away. But all he cared about was the earphones. Faintly the music drifted from them. The wonderful, soothing music.

“Gordon, you brought it back, but you didn’t tell me.”

“Of course we didn’t tell you. You’re just a damned guard.”

“I tried to be friends,” Halloway said.

“What?”

“Friendship doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

A guard appeared in the doorway. He held an M4.

“Is everything all right?”

“Lock this man up until a helicopter comes to fly him out of here,” Gordon said. “He’s fired.”

Halloway picked up the earphones.

The guard came over. “You heard him, Earl. They want you out of here.”

Halloway raised the earphones toward his head.

The guard gripped his left forearm. “The music isn’t our business, Earl. Make this easy for everybody. Let’s go.”

Halloway put down the earphones.

The guard looked relieved. “Good. We’ll just let these people do their work.”

Halloway punched the guard in the throat.

“Uhhhh…”

The guard dropped the M4 and raised both hands to his smashed larynx.

Halloway picked up the rifle and fired a three-shot burst into Gordon’s face. The tortoiseshell glasses disintegrated.

Hearing screams behind him, he turned and saw the other scientists scrambling for cover.

Aim away from the equipment, he warned himself.

When the second guard rushed into the room, Halloway shot him in the chest.

The panicked scientists ran for the door. Relieved that their direction took them away from the equipment, he shot all of them in the back.

He picked up the second guard’s M4 and checked to make sure that its magazine was full. As he stepped into the corridor, he saw Taggard running toward him. Halloway blew his head off.

He searched the facility and shot two maintenance workers crouching behind boxes in a storage room. He found a female scientist hiding beneath a bunk and shot her, also.

Throughout, he was conscious of the terrible hum. He returned to the research area, satisfied himself that the first guard was finally dead, and put on the earphones.

His headache vanished as the music drifted and floated.

38

Beneath the airbase, Raleigh unlocked a metal door and stepped into a room that he hadn’t visited for three years. The smell of dankness and must hung in the air. He saw tiny red and white lights that might have been the eyes of animals, but when he flicked a switch on the wall, overhead lamps revealed that they belonged to a vast array of electronic instruments stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Needles pulsed, and dials glowed. As he examined them closely, he saw that they registered an unusually high level of activity.

Perfect, he thought.

When he had personally supervised the installation of this array, the equipment had been state-of-the-art. Since then, major advances had made it necessary to supplement all the instruments with serious updates that his team had brought. Even so, the existing equipment was doing its job, amplifying energy from the source and transmit- ting it through the dish concealed in the wreckage of the hangar above him. That camouflaged dish was synchronized with the horizontal dish at the observatory.

Tomorrow night the signal would be amplified even more and beamed through a vertical dish that pointed toward a satellite.

In previous experiments, the links had failed, sometimes with disastrous results. But given the improved electronics that his team was installing, and the unusually powerful energy the source was giving off, Raleigh believed that this time he would finally be able to complete a journey that he’d begun as a boy inspired by his grandfather.

He pressed a button and activated a row of surveillance monitors. In night-vision green, they showed the ruined hangars as well as the area around the airbase. The superior lenses on the hidden cameras allowed him to magnify images impressively. He watched the dog handler and the German shepherd patrolling the fence.

He switched his attention to the viewing area down the road, where the crowd was out of control, charging toward the fence. He hadn’t counted on having human test subjects. The fact that there were hundreds of them provided an even greater benefit.

But what really mattered, he knew, were the test subjects he’d brought with him. The reaction of the men on his team would deter- mine whether or not the project could be reliably continued. They didn’t know that by setting up the experiment, they were crucial parts of it.

39

A shoe struck Brent’s forehead. For a moment, his vision turned gray.

“Keep the cameras rolling!” he shouted into his lapel mike as people trampled over him. He worried that the director in the station’s control room would stop the broadcast if he thought that Brent was being seriously injured on camera, so he did his best to sound in control.

From Brent’s perspective on the gravel, everything was a blur of pant legs and dresses. The truth was, he felt smothered. Another shoe struck him, this time on the side of his neck. He wheezed and rolled, trying to get away from the mob. The gravel tore at him. His shoulder banged against the underside of the motor home. Desperate, he squirmed beneath the vehicle as far as he could manage. From this vantage point, he saw shoes, boots, and pant legs rushing past. The side of his neck throbbed.

Any closer to my throat and I might have been killed, he thought. Suddenly the crowd was gone, and he crawled from under the truck.

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” he shouted into the microphone.

God, I hope the helicopter’s getting a shot of this, he thought. The left sleeve of his suit coat was torn open. Blood trickled from his forehead.

Hearing shouts and screams from the crowd, he was about to climb to the top of the motor home and continue broadcasting, but abruptly he saw Anita and Luther Hamilton lying on the gravel. The camera was on its side, its red light still on.

He ran to Anita and heard her groan. “Are you okay? Can you stand?” he asked urgently. “I need to get you away from this crowd!”

He put one of her arms around his neck and raised her. She wavered.

“Come on, I’ll take you where it’s safe.”

The producer and his crew scrambled from the truck. Brent gave Anita to them and hurried over to Luther Hamilton, who coughed and struggled to crawl. Brent helped him stand and guided him to- ward the back of the truck.

“We need an ambulance!”

“That’s for sure.” The producer pointed.

Brent turned and gaped at a half-dozen people lying on the gravel.

At the back of the parking lot, people charged against each other, pushing toward the darkness beyond the fence.

“I see them!”

“They’re beautiful!”

“Out of my way!”

“Can’t breathe!”

Brent picked up Anita’s camera and gave it to the producer. “Do you remember how to use one of these?”

“You bet. I even keep paying my union dues.”

“Then follow me to the top of the Winnebago.”

Brent grabbed the toppled ladder and propped it against the truck. The tremor in his right hand alarmed him. Feeling faint, he struggled up. At the top, he noted that the station’s helicopter had activated its landing lights, illuminating the crowd.

Hoarse from the blow to the side of his throat, he spoke into his lapel mike, describing what he saw. “The people at the back are forcing everyone ahead. Those in the middle are being crushed. The ones in front are being squeezed against the barbed-wire fence.”

Brent heard wood cracking.

“I think the fence is about to…”

Several posts snapped. The fence collapsed. The people in front dropped with it, screaming as they fell onto the barbed wire. The rest of the crowd surged over their backs, charging into the field.

In the distance, the lights continued to shimmer.

“I hear a sound,” Brent said into his microphone. “Luther Hamilton mentioned that sometimes a sound accompanies the lights. I wonder if that’s happening now. No, I’m wrong. The sound has nothing to do with the lights. It’s-”

40

Standing next to a car at the side of the dark road, Page gaped toward the observation area, where the crowd was out of control. If he’d been alone, he’d have run to help the police, although he couldn’t imagine how even ten times as many officers would be able to handle what he was witnessing.

Right now, Tori was all he cared about.

“You were right to stay away from the crowd,” he said.

He turned.

She wasn’t next to him.

He frowned toward the shadowy road, then stepped toward the space between the parked cars, but he still didn’t see her.

“Tori?”

He hurried back to her Saturn. She wasn’t inside. He studied the darkness on the far side of the row of parked cars. No sign of her.

“Tori!”

Page doubted that she’d have gone toward the crowd, which had become a single mass that was trampling over the barbed-wire fence, crushing people, and disappearing into the night.

But if she hadn’t gone in that direction, there was only one other possibility.

Thunder rumbled.

Page swung toward the murky grassland and ran toward it. Tori had been right when she’d guessed that the observation area was an arbitrary spot from which to try to see the lights. They could be detected from other points along the road, and tonight, to his surprise, he’d had no trouble spotting them. When Tori had pointed excitedly toward the dark horizon, he’d seen them immediately.

I must have learned to see them, he thought. The way I learned to see the cuttlefish.

Or am I just fooling myself?

In the distance, the colors bobbed and drifted. Not only did Page see them much more quickly than on the previous night, but he also saw them more clearly. It was as if a haze had been removed from his eyes. Radiant, they swirled, far away and yet close. His skin seemed to ripple.

“Tori!”

Thunder rumbled louder, the storm approaching rapidly.

Page made his way toward the fence. Thanks to his pilot training, he knew that the best way to see at night was to try to detect objects from the periphery of his vision. Staring straight ahead at something in the darkness achieved less results than if he worked to detect it from the corners of his eyes because the eye cells designed for night vision, known as rods, were located on the eye’s perimeter.

He looked obliquely past the barbed wire. To his right, he heard shouts from the viewing area. Over there, wraith-like shadows moved farther into the grassland, attracted to the lights. He also heard groans.

“Damn it, I told you to stop shoving me!” someone yelled.

Lightning flashed, revealing silhouettes in a struggle. A man punched another man in the stomach. When the second man doubled over, the first man knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the head. Other people grappled in similar frenzied fights, so many that Page knew he couldn’t stop them.

Then darkness swooped back, seeming deeper than before because Page’s night vision was compromised. Unable to wait for his eyes to adjust, he gripped a post and climbed it, using the barbed wire as a ladder, jumping to the ground on the other side. His holstered hand- gun dug into him.

“Tori!”

A sudden wind hurled dust into his face. He raised his left arm to shield his eyes and moved forward into the murky field. Scrub grass crunched under his sneakers. A drop of rain struck his nose.

He almost tripped over a rock. When he regained his balance, he shifted ahead and tried to continue in a straight line toward the distant lights. The dust made him shut his eyes for a moment. More drops of rain pelted his forehead.

The next flash of lightning revealed silhouettes closer ahead. Once the crowd had reached the field, everyone had separated, desperate to avoid the crush of people that had propelled them over the toppled fence. They looked confused, as if they suddenly realized where they were.

Thunder shook Page’s chest. Then he was sightless again, over- whelmed by darkness.

The next moment, the storm unloaded, the force of the downpour making him stoop. Shockingly cold, it enveloped him, obliterating the distant lights. Without them, he had no bearings. Even the lights back at the observation platform were no longer visible.

“Tori!”

Gusts whipped his face. His wet clothes clung to his skin, the cold rain making him shiver. The next flash of lightning struck nearby. He saw its multiple forks and heard a crack. The two-second blaze of light revealed a figure stumbling ahead of him. Then darkness enveloped him again. Propelled by thunder, he shifted toward where his memory told him he’d seen the figure.

Abruptly they collided. He knew at once that the figure was Tori. Ten years of marriage made it impossible for him not to be able to recognize the feel of her body in the dark.

“Thank God, I found you,” he said. “Come on. We need to get back to the car.”

“No.”

The rumble of thunder made him think he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”

“Leave me alone.”

“You’re not safe out here.”

Page gripped Tori’s hand, but the rain slicked her skin, and she was able to pull away, rushing from him.

“Tori!” he yelled. “We need to get back to the car!”

For a panicked moment, Page couldn’t see her. Then lightning revealed her outline, and he charged after her.

“Tori, you could get killed out here!”

Page grabbed her shoulders. Standing behind her, he tried to turn her in the direction from which he’d come. She rammed her elbow into his stomach, knocking him away.

The unexpected blow made him struggle to breathe. Holding him- self, he realized that she’d disappeared again.

The next time lightning flashed, he saw that she’d gone much farther than he’d expected. He ran to catch up to her. Again he grabbed her from behind, but this time, his arms pinned her elbows to her sides. He linked his hands around her stomach and lifted her, trying to carry her backward.

She kicked her heels against his knees. When the pain in his legs made him drop her, she spun.

“You bastard, don’t take me away from the lights again!”

“Again?”

“If you’d let me stay, if you hadn’t grabbed me and shoved me into the car-”

Stunned, Page realized she thought he was someone else. “Tori, I’m not your father.”

“All I want to do is see the lights! You son of a bitch, you’re always yelling at Mom! You’re always trying to touch me!”

Page was shocked by this further revelation.

“Tori, your father died a long time ago! It’s me! Your husband! I love you!”

Lightning showed her frenzied features as she drew back her fist. Drenched by the rain, he waited for the blow.

Her fist struck his mouth. His head jerked back, but as he tasted blood, he kept his feet in place, preparing himself for what he knew would be another blow.

She drew back her fist again. Then darkness made her disappear. The next time lightning flashed, Page saw her staring at him in shock.

Her shoulders heaved. Some of the drops streaming down her face weren’t rain, he suspected, but tears. Her mouth opened, releasing a wail of anguish. When she clutched him, pressing herself against him, she did so with the force of a blow. Her arms clung to him tightly. With her head pressed against his chest, she sobbed uncontrollably.

“Scared,” she moaned.

He could barely hear her in the roar of the wind and the rain.

“I’m scared, too. But it’s going to be all right,” he promised, tasting the blood from his swelling lip. “I’ll do anything for you. Please, let me help.”

“I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“I don’t know what’s happening to me, either,” Page said close to her cheek. “But believe me, we’re going to find out.”

With his arm around her, he waited for the next crack of lightning. It split the sky so close to them that he flinched, but its blaze allowed him to orient himself. Behind him, he briefly saw the shape of the observation area and began to recognize the faint illumination of headlights and flashing emergency lights.

Tori must have seen them as well. As thunder coincided with renewed darkness, she plodded forward through the gusting rain. Page took her hand and moved next to her. If the lightning didn’t provide more visual bearings, they risked going in circles in the field.

The ground became muddy, their sneakers sinking into it.

“Cold,” Tori murmured.

“Think of a hot bath,” Page told her. “Dry clothes. Steaming coffee. Warm covers in bed.”

“Lost,” Tori said.

“Then we’re lost together.”

Lightning fractured the sky.

Tori pointed. “The fence.”

Their shoes were weighed down by mud. They slipped in it, holding each other up.

When they reached the fence, Page shouted to be heard above the wind. “I’ll pull the strands of wire apart! Try to squeeze through the gap!”

As he used both hands to yank a middle strand up while pressing down on a lower one with his muddy sneaker, he feared that lightning would strike the fence, rush along the wires, and fry both of them.

“I’m through!” Tori yelled.

Page climbed the post and jumped to the ground, where he skidded in the mud, falling to his right knee. Lightning cracked close enough for him to smell it.

“Are you okay?” Tori asked.

“I will be in a minute.” Page came to his feet.

Down the road, headlights glared, revealing the row of cars and people hurrying for shelter. Gusts of rain buffeted them. Some wore ripped clothes and held themselves as if injured.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Tori shouted.

“Better than the way they look,” Page answered. He and Tori ran along the line of cars until they reached the Saturn.

Inside, Tori already had the keys from her pocket. She turned on the engine and started the heater, but the rush of air was cold, and she quickly shut it off.

As rain lashed the windshield, Page shivered.

Tori’s teeth clicked together. Her red hair was stuck to her head. Water dripped from her blouse, her muddy clothes clinging to her.

Behind them, more headlights blazed as cars pulled out of the line, retreating to Rostov. Thunder shook the car.

Tori wiped blood from his mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him.

Page touched her hand. “It wasn’t really you who hit me.”

“The past few days, I feel like I stepped out of my life. I don’t understand myself any longer. What the hell is happening?”

“Whatever it is, it’s happening to both of us.” Page held her, grateful that she let him. He loved her so much that he could barely speak. “We’ll find out together.”