Taken

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“We’re going to be there when it all comes together when it finally all comes together. And we’ll know we did our part.”

“Our part?”

Wakeman took her hand in his. “They’re in the endgame,” he said, his tone now filled with a strange finality. “They have to be. By going it on our own… by keeping this all from the general, we’re helping to keep Allie safe until they can finish their work.”

“You’re fine with that, aren’t you?” Mary asked. “Them ‘finishing their work’?”

Wakeman nodded. “I can’t wait.”

Mary drew her hand from Wakeman’s grasp. “So what do you want? Just a front-row seat at the show?”

“They’re more highly evolved than we are, Mary,” Wakeman said. “And Allie’s more highly evolved than they are. It’s the way of the Dao. Nature takes its course.”

“What if it’s our nature to fight back?” Mary asked sharply.

Wakeman looked at her as if she were a small child in need of elementary instruction. “Then we lose. Evolution one oh one.”

From a short distance, Charlie and Lisa peered back at the Durango where John sat in the backseat, Allie beside him, nestled in his arm.

“He wants her to go with him,” Lisa said. “He came to take her.”

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Charlie said, his voice oddly broken for a moment, before he steeled himself again.

Lisa turned her gaze to Charlie. “There’s something more,” she said. “A feeling I’m getting.” She seemed reluctant to tell him.

“What?” he asked.

“He cares about her, Charlie. He wants to help.”

Charlie turned and headed for the Durango. “You ride up front with me,” he told John sharply, then noted the odd look he exchanged with Allie, as if to assure her that it was all right.

John did as he was told, Lisa in the backseat with Allie, John on the passenger side up front.

Charlie hit the ignition, and the radio came on, the William Jeffreys show once again blaring out of the speakers.

“Larry King wants to know why our government would cut a deal with a bunch of aliens. Technology, Larry. We need their technology. More of the things they’ve already given us. Like Velcro.”

Charlie’s eyes shot over to John. “Is that true?” he asked. “What this guy’s saying about Velcro?” His eyes narrowed. “Or were you too busy destroying lives to notice?”

Allie leaned forward. “Don’t talk to him like that,” she pleaded. “He’s hurt. He can’t stay human much longer.”

“He’s not human!” Charlie said desperately, his rage suddenly boiling over.

He pressed down on the accelerator and they drove on for a time in silence, Charlie staring up the deserted road while the William Jeffreys show droned on. Cynthia, another from Penzler’s group, called, backing up what Dale had said, and Charlie knew that she was like so many others, another person who seemed to know-or at least sense-that the kooks and crazies, the people who heard voices, saw visions, moved through space and time-had in fact touched, or been touched by, a vague and impossible truth. He knew that some of them were insane, drowning in black pools of madness. But the ones who weren’t, the ones who’d actually seen, he knew they had felt an anguish and loneliness that went down to the deep, deep bone. He could feel it in his own bones each time he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the little girl he had come to love, human and not human at the same time, and yet, beyond all question, his living daughter, the one thing in life he would not let them take.

He looked at Lisa. “Your uncle should have seen the ad we put in the paper by now,” he said. “He should call the William Jeffreys talk show tonight.”

They drove on in silence for a time, all of them listening as Cynthia continued.

“I saw this same little girl heal a man who’d been shot,” Cynthia said. “And Dale, his son was killed in the Gulf War, and Allie…”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jeffreys said. “But we’ve got Tom Clarke, the noted UFOlogist checking in.”

Charlie and Lisa exchanged excited glances.

“What do you have to tell us, Tom?” Jeffreys asked.

“I’m afraid I’ve got nothing for you but a false alarm,” Tom said. “I’m calling from the Grayback Dam in Idaho.”

“Grayback Dam,” Charlie repeated thoughtfully. He looked at Lisa. “I guess we’re going to Idaho.”

They reached Mount Grayback the next morning. Tom was waiting for them in the wide asphalt lot of the Grayback Dam, where they’d arranged to meet. Allie leaped out of the car almost before it halted and rushed into his arms.

He was in his sixties now, the long years of his struggle weighing down upon him.

“So this is Charlie,” Tom said as he brought Allie back down to the ground.

“He’s my dad,” she said brightly.

Tom smiled. “I know, honey,” he said quietly. He offered his hand. “Thanks for taking such good care of the family.”

Suddenly John came up to them. “Tom,” he said, “it’s good to see you.”

Tom’s face tightened slightly, as if he were a little boy again, facing the stranger who would change his life forever. Then he turned back to Charlie. “We’ll go into Mexico through Texas,” he said. “A friend of mine from El Paso will meet us at our old place in Lubbock. He’ll have all the documents you need to cross the border. Eventually, we’ll go to South America. I know people in Buenos Aires who’ll pick you up indefinitely.” He looked at each of them in turn, but his eyes finally settled on Lisa, the odd look he saw in her face. “What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” Lisa answered. “It’s just a feeling that all of this is going somewhere.” She shrugged. “So it’s okay, Mexico. It’s fine, Uncle Tom.”

“All right then, it’s settled,” Tom said. “Let’s go.”

Within seconds, they were on the road again, Tom at the wheel at first, then Charlie, then giving it over to Lisa as night fell, John in the passenger seat, Allie beside him, munching a granola bar while Tom and Charlie slept peacefully in the backseat.

Allie offered John a bite from the granola bar. “You eat, don’t you?” she asked.

“We eat,” John answered.

“So try it,” Allie said.

John took a bite of the bar. “It’s good,” he said with a quick smile.

Allie’s eyes were still, green pools. “I don’t want to do this,” she said.

Lisa felt her fingers tighten around the wheel. Allie was talking to John with a strange sense of equality, one alien to another, each with vast inhuman powers.

“I know,” John told her.

“At the gas station, I was going to make those men hurt each other,” Allie added. “I could have done that, too.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I almost did.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want to hurt people,” Allie went on. “So, how can I make this stop? I mean, if I couldn’t do any of these things-if I didn’t have these powers-then people would leave me alone, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know, Allie,” John confessed. “I don’t know much about people.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, nothing.”

“Will the others come for you?”

“It’s not important,” John said. He looked at her gravely. “Allie, things are going to get hard for you for a while. You’ll be afraid, and you’ll be alone. You’re becoming even more than you already are.”

“I’m not coming with you,” Allie said determinedly. “I belong here, with my family.”

John reached into his pocket. “I brought this for you,” he said, opening his hand. The star earring glowed silently in John’s palm. “It was your great-grandmother’s. She gave it to me when I left. I can’t… do this much longer.”

Allie took the earring from his hand. “I know,” she said.

Lisa searched the road ahead, her eyes now focused on the small, roadside gas station that shone out of the night. She pulled into the station, reached for Allie’s hand and led her to the bathroom as a second car came to a halt in the gravelly drive.