CHAPTER 28

Sierra was at the wheel, because although North had napped for the past two hours he was still getting flashes of hallucinations. His senses were recovering rapidly but he did not trust himself to handle the narrow rural road that was taking them deep into the Cascades.

A while back they had stopped to do some basic emergency rations shopping at a grocery store. They were expecting to arrive in Fogg Lake before sunset, but Olivia LeClair had warned them that it was never wise to drive the isolated road without enough food and water to last for a day or two. “If you get caught in the fog you’ll be stuck by the side of the road overnight,” she had explained. “Whatever you do, don’t try to drive in that stuff. And don’t leave your car. It’s not normal fog. It’s extremely disorienting.”

After the grocery shopping expedition, North had opened the cargo door of the SUV and taken out the machine he had found in Loring’s lab. The device was now sitting on the floor between his feet. He undid the flap of one of the pockets of his cargo pants and took out a compact screwdriver.

“Do you always travel with a full set of tools, a lockpick, penlights and a gun tucked away in your clothes?” Sierra asked.

“Yeah, just the basics,” he said. “I’d rather have a decent tool chest but it’s hard to haul one around when you’re trying to move quickly.”

“I’d hate to be the person behind you in an airport security line.”

“I rarely fly commercial. By the time my team gets called in to handle a problem the situation has usually deteriorated to the point where there isn’t time to go through the standard airport routine. We end up on the Foundation jet or in some very good, very fast cars.”

“You live an exciting life.”

“I guess.”

He examined the screws that held the box together. It was obvious they had been recently removed and replaced. He went to work on the metal box.

“Are you sure it’s safe to fool around with that thing?” Sierra asked.

“I am not fooling around with it. I am examining it.”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to act as if I just insulted you. But what if it’s another paranormal weapon?”

“It’s not,” he said, very sure of himself now. “I can sense the vibe in it. I don’t know what it was designed to do but I am certain of two things: it was built by Griffin Chastain and it is not a weapon.”

He was sure of something else as well. He had screwed up that morning when he kissed Sierra. She had said she was okay with him touching her and he thought she got the same red-hot charge out of the kiss that he got. But he must have been wrong, because just when things were getting interesting she had gone cold and pulled back. Okay, maybe not ice-cold, but there had definitely been a chill in the atmosphere. His fault, probably. He’d moved too fast. They hadn’t even had a real date. Nearly getting murdered by a light grenade and attacked by some tattooed Puppets did not constitute the start of a relationship.