Shadow Box. James Axler
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need that hybrid DNA,” Kane explained, “and right now, the two of you are our only link to finding it.”
Brigid made eye contact with Rosalia and Señor Smarts as she joined them. “We all have a lot of admiration for what you both did back there,” she told them, indicating the buildings ruined by the quake. “You stepped in to help when it was needed. We don’t need to be enemies. Perhaps we can reach a mutually beneficial agreement with regards to the DNA.”
Smarts reached up to scratch at the gauze that had been attached to his head before stopping himself with a pained intake of breath through his teeth. “This puts us in a difficult position, señorita,” he lamented, his eyes warily watching the shadows around them. “It would be inadvisable for Rosalia and I to engage in dealings that might be considered traitorous to our group,” he added quietly.
Kane nodded in understanding. “Would that still hold true outside of ville limits?”
Smarts considered this for a few seconds, smoothing down his pencil-thin mustache while, Kane noticed, Rosalia’s dark eyes scanned the alleyway in a predatory fashion. “Perhaps,” Smarts said eventually, “we would reconsider our position if placed in such a situation.”
Kane smiled. “Then let’s keep moving.”
“And where exactly is it that we are going, Señor Kane?” Smarts asked.
“Just a little walk in the desert,” Kane explained. “Friends out there need our help, but you can just watch if you want.”
Rosalia looked at the half-moon rising in the sky. “It is almost midnight, Magistrate man,” she told Kane, “not a good time to be walking across the desert.”
“Gets mighty cold out there,” Smarts added.
Along with his companions, Kane had arrived in Hope from the desert. The three of them had used the interphaser to jump close to the ville location, but they had still been forced to walk the last eight miles for the sake of appearances as much as anything else. That had been in the daytime, in the rising heat. At night the temperature in the California desert dropped significantly, and the chill wind could catch a traveler unawares.
“There’s never a good time to cross the desert,” Grant said practically, tilting the pistol in his hands so that it caught the light for just a moment. “Hence the argument’s over.”
“I think not,” Smarts told them. “We could borrow a vehicle from one of the people here without too much trouble.”
“By ‘borrow’ you mean steal?” Kane asked. “We don’t do that.”
“Señor Magistrate,” Smarts argued, “many people here have lost their homes, their loved ones, some even their lives. The loss of a cart, an automobile would be of little—”
“Doesn’t matter.” Kane silenced him with a firm look. “You have legs, so we walk.”
Rosalia smiled. “We have reconditioned Sandcats,” she said, “ideal for desert travel.”
“And where would these Sandcats be?” Kane asked.
“Back at the base,” Rosalia said lightly, gesturing toward the depths of the shantytown labyrinth. “If we went there, we could—”
Kane held up a finger to stop her. “No. Nice try, but we won’t be walking into any traps tonight. Now, let’s get moving.”
Kane and Grant urged their charges on as Brigid sank back to cover the rear of the party. What Kane hadn’t told Smarts and Rosalia was that he had his own special transport located outside the ville. They weren’t safe here, and he had feared being overheard, but soon enough the group would be traveling a whole lot faster than the two street thieves could imagine.
IT WAS THREE in the morning by the time the group stopped. The ville was long since behind them, now just a speckling of lighted dots on the far horizon. Ahead and all around, Death Valley and the empty California desert stretched relentlessly onward. Stars twinkled in the night sky, and the cool air seemed to drill through their bones as the group strode across the open sand. Rosalia shook, cold and miserable, hugging herself as she pulled Smarts’s bright frock coat over her shoulders. Smarts himself was cold, too, but he prided himself on being nothing if not a gentleman.
“Where are we heading, señor?” Smarts asked, looking at the distant rock formations, the endless swathe of sand around them.
“We’re almost there,” Kane assured him.
“It has been a long day,” Smarts told Kane. “We could stop. If not for ourselves, perhaps we should consider the ladies?”
“We’re not going much farther,” Kane told him.
Then he raised his voice. “Baptiste?”
Brigid had drifted a little farther behind the others, and she was looking around carefully as they crossed the bleak desert. “It’s just over there,” she called back, pointing with the muzzle of her handgun toward a rising sand dune.
Kane held a hand to stop Smarts and the rest of the party, while Brigid ran toward the dune that she had indicated.
“Be a minute, people,” Kane explained, ignoring the quizzical looks of his captives.
Exhausted, Rosalia sat on the dry sand and shook her head. “Magistrate clowns,” she muttered under her breath.
Hearing this, Grant smiled and caught her eye, shaking his own head in chastisement. “Oh, you are in for such a sweet surprise,” he told her.
Smarts’s head twitched like a bird’s as he watched Brigid disappear behind the dune. “What is going on?” he demanded.
Deciding that there was nowhere his prisoners could run to, Kane placed his handgun back in his low-slung hip holster before addressing the small Mexican. “It’s time we traveled in style,” he said.
Smarts narrowed his eyes, peering at the dune, his head jutting forward, until Brigid reappeared carrying a small case. The case was caked with sand, which Brigid brushed away with her hand as she approached. Smarts realized immediately that this item had been hidden out here, buried somewhere in the empty, featureless desert.
Brigid stopped before them and knelt, placing the case on the ground. Then she began to work at its twin catches. The carrying case folded open and a squat, broad-based pyramid-shaped object was revealed. Made of a dull metal that shimmered with the blurred reflections of the bright stars, the pyramid’s base was barely one foot square, and its peak was about twelve inches above the ground. This was the interphaser.
“What is this thing?” Smarts inquired.
Kane smiled tightly. “A little shortcut,” he said enigmatically.
Smarts gestured around them at the featureless desert. “You left this thing here, yes?” he asked. “How could you possibly find it? It is a—what you call it?—needle in the haystack.”
“Brigid’s our needle finder,” Kane said as Grant helped Rosalia to her feet behind him.
Smarts looked baffled as he assessed the beautiful woman with the shimmering red-gold hair.
Brigid smiled and tapped the side of her head. “I remember things,” she told him.
The Cerberus team had opted to bury the interphaser in its protective carrying case close to where they had first appeared in the desert. This was, on reflection, much safer than carrying the astonishing piece of technology into a covert meeting with Carnack’s merciless thieves and brigands. They had needed no marker for the location. One of the advantages of Brigid’s phenomenal memory was her ability to recall the smallest details of anything she had seen. While the desert appeared featureless and largely unchanging to most people, Brigid would recall the tiniest details, a ridge here, a dead tree stump there. Finding the burial spot for this particular treasure chest was as easy to Brigid as finding the toes on the end of her feet.