She tilted her head then, her eyes narrowing at the lack of emotion or sensation that came from touching the tracks. They were calm, centered. As though whoever made them had known no fear, no anger, no emotion as they made their way into the gully.
"Control, I'm heading in to investigate," she announced as she rose and moved back to her vehicle.
"There's evidence of someone following on foot. It could be our missing hiker from Area Two."
"That's miles away, Fields," Lenny pointed out. "A good two-day hike."
"Yeah, but who the hell knows with some of these greenhorns." She sighed as she closed the door and attached her seat belt once again. "I'll check it out before heading home. Fields: out."
She engaged the vehicle's rough-terrain drive with a flip of the switch before heading down the steep incline into the sluicing path made by the millions of flash floods that had traversed it over the centuries.
Maneuvering slowly, she kept her eyes narrowed for signs of the vehicle or the hiker. The wide gully split into several smaller tributaries, some leading to secret caves that flooded easily during the rainy season, others cutting a course in the land before slowly narrowing to dead ends.
This gully was deeper than most, the steep walls easily reaching ten to fifteen feet above the sandy base. Rock houses and deep craters had been cut into the walls, proof of the incredible force of the water that had gouged a path into the gully. Through the center of it, the tire tracks continued until they disappeared around a steep bend.
Megan watched the curve as she approached it slowly. She could feel a building sense of danger as she drew closer, of something not right. The sun seemed too bright, the heat radiating off the hood of the Raider too intense.
All her senses suddenly kicked in and spiked in strength. Wariness filled her, as did the sense of impending doom.
Rounding the curve, she braked slowly, staring at the black SUV sitting silently beneath the golden rays of the sun.
Damn. This wasn't exactly what she had expected.
The vehicle, while not as desert-friendly as her own, was definitely built for off-road maneuvering. The heavy, terrain-cutting tires were made to aid in pulling the vehicle from muddy or sandy ground. At least. when they weren't flat, as these tires were.
She looked across the gully walls, eyes narrowed against the sun as she enabled the Raider's vehicle security. The hum and vibration of the tire protectors sliding into place, along with the energized bulletproof shielding, accompanied the rapid beat of her heart.
Death. She sensed it now.
"Fields, we show security engaged on your vehicle. Are you in trouble?" Lenny's voice was suddenly alert.
"Negative, Control. Not yet, anyway," she answered as she checked her field gun, sliding an extra clip of ammo into her vest as she disengaged her seat belt. "I found the vehicle. It appears abandoned, all tires flattened, windows shattered. I'm going in for a closer look."
She breathed in deeply, fighting to block the remnants of horror that pulsed through the gully. Death. Her chest clenched, her lungs aching as she forced air into them, fighting past the pure grief that rolled over her.
I failed. She flinched at the sudden random emotion that drifted to her. It wasn't her thought, nor her failure, but she felt it pierce her soul.
This was why she hid in the desert. Because of this curse, she wasn't safe to work with, nor to work around.
Because of what she felt now, she knew she could never do the work she had always dreamed of. The empathic abilities fractured her attention, drew her so deeply into the morass of emotions that flowed from others that her concentration and her control began to crumble.
She breathed in harshly, determined to push back the pain and rage of another's emotions as she attempted to find the reason why it existed.
"Negative, Fields." The voice of her cousin, Sheriff Lance Jacobs, came over the receiver. "Get out of that gully and await reinforcements. All copters are out of range and unable to assist. I'll head out with Crawford now."
Megan snorted. She could hear the demand in his voice.
"I'm not the meter maid, boss," she drawled. "Regardless of your attempts to make me one. The tracks into the gully are at best twenty four hours old. Whatever happened here is done and gone."
She hoped.
She activated the display board on her windshield, watching for signs of life within the gully. She couldn't trust her senses now; they were too flooded with the rage and pain that flowed from the vehicle in front of her. But she had a feeling she really wasn't alone.
"Display shows the gully clear of life signs. I'm going to do an initial investigation while I wait on you."
His curse was muffled, his frustration wasn't. He knew the problems she had experienced during training at the Law Enforcement Academy, just as he knew that it was the reason she had returned home rather than taking one of the offers from the larger cities that had come her way.
"Proceed with extreme caution, Megan," he warned her. "I don't like the feel of this."
Neither did she.
She stepped out of the vehicle, cocking her head at the silence of the gully. It was as though all life had deserted the area. Normally it would be filled with the whisper of birds' wings, small wildlife and insects fighting for food and survival. This gully was one of the few areas that managed to retain moisture within the small caverns the water had carved from it. There should be life here.
There was only death.
A peculiar, horrifying stench filled the air as well. The smell of death wrapped around her, thick and filled with menace in the late afternoon stillness. She felt the tension thicken, and it wasn't just her own.
"Lance, it stinks here." She heard her own voice tremble as she stared at the SUV gleaming beneath the hot sun.
Her chest tightened as she glimpsed the presence of two bodies through the heavily tinted, rnostly shattered glass.
"Goddamn, Megan. Get the hell out of there." Lance hissed, his voice heavy with dread.
Chills raced over her scalp, her shoulders, tightening her muscles as she pushed back the sensations and fought to get a better grip on what was there. Releasing the light field Wounder from the holster at her hip, she held it confidently, her senses rioting and sending adrenaline coursing through her as she walked to the vehicle.
Damn, she wished she had a real weapon, rather than the Wounder used for lighter duty such as patrol. It only slowed down a criminal rather than incapacitating him. Its greatest plus was its extended range. One of its drawbacks was the inability to predict its effect in any given situation.
"The vehicle is riddled with bullet holes. We have at least two dead," she spoke into the microphone, relaying the information she found to the control center.
The windows of the SUV were punctured with bullets. The tires had been ripped apart by them; the cliffs rising from the gully were scoured with
ammunition damage. The smell of death surrounded the area, the heat and carnage inside the vehicle twisted her gut as she surveyed the scene.
"Definitely two dead," she reported as she stepped back. "God, Lance, their mothers couldn't identify them." The bullets had tom through their upper bodies, ripping away much of their facial features.
"Megan, get back to the Raider now!" Lance ordered, his voice edged with steel.
She could feel the hairs along her nape standing on end as her spine began to tingle. Turning slowly, her gaze narrowed on the high gully walls as adrenaline rushed through her system and her senses began to riot. Someone was watching her.
"Infrared showed no signs of life_" she mused out loud. Somehow, something had interfered with the system's readings, because she knew someone, something, was out there.
She could feel the eyes watching her, malevolence following her.
Her finger tightened on the trigger of her weapon as she felt the danger intensify. Where? Where was it coming from? She could feel it watching her, tracking every move she made, yet the sensors in the vehicle showed no signs of life.
"I'm heading back," she agreed. "Something's messed up on the Raider, Lance. Check it out. It showed no life signs_"
Lance was cursing, screaming at Lenny to find the copters, to get his unit ready to roll. Backup. Yeah, she needed backup now.
Megan could feel the eyes trained on her. Even worse, she could feel the weapons.
She backed up, her eyes scanning the gully as her heart raced in her chest. Her mouth felt dry, her body tense with the need to turn and run.
She was halfway to the Range Raider when she felt the first shots being taken. She could actually feel the malicious energy pouring over her a second before she threw herself across the gully toward one of the small caverns that had been cut into the wall.
Violence exploded through the air. Bullets tore into the sandy ground, moving like lightning across the gully and taking chunks from the rock wall of the entrance of the cavern she had thrown herself into.
"Megan. Megan, report." Lance was yelling in her ear as she plastered herself against the dubious safety of a small indentation the water had cut into the side of the wall, keeping her body well away from the entrance.
"At least two," she snapped into the mic, keeping her eyes trained on the entrance and the sliver of outside she could see from her position. "How faraway did you say the copters werc?"
"I said they were too fucking far away." Lance snarled furiously.
"Dammit, Megan, we're too far away from you."
Yeah. She remembered now. Damn. That sucked.
Holding her weapon ready, she moved carefully to peer around the protection of the groove in the wall to get a sense of the movement outside the cavern. She ducked back just in time to save her head as the bullets ripped around her once again.
"Give me an idea of what's going on. We're heading out there but we're at least an hour away."
She could hear the force of his breath behind his words, proof that he was running from the control center and heading to his vehicle.
An hour.
Boy, she was so screwed.
"I'm holed up in a small cavern. I have at least one assailant in clear view of the entrance keeping me hemmed in. I can't tell what's going on outside though." She swallowed tightly. "Lance, I'm not going to make it an hour."
Chills raced over her flesh, a premonition of increasing danger as the air thickened around her, growing heavier, hotter. Time seemed to stand still, to creep by at a turtle's pace. So much could happen in an hour.
Over the receiver, voices raged in the background, the sound of tires screaming as vehicles roared.
"Stay put!" She winced at the fury in Lance's voice. "Keep your weapon aimed at the entrance and fucking stay the hell where you are."
"Yeah, that was my intention," she answered as she breathed in roughly.
"What the hell is going on out here, Lance? Why stick around after the killing?'
It didn't make sense. Whoever killed that couple should have been long gone, not waiting around to see who found the bodies.
And why hadn't she sensed the killers? She should have felt them, even if the sensors hadn't picked them up.
"Well, why don't you just ask them, Miss Nosy?' Lance snarled through
the mic. "Dammit, I told you to turn back. Didn't I tell you to turn back?'
Cousins. They were always : saying "I told you so."
"Yeah, well, you tell me to go to sit tight and look pretty too. Since when did I start listening to you?'
Sweat rolled down her back as the need to move tightened her muscles. Bullets tore through the entrance again as she flattened herself further against the wall and tried to become one with the stone. Damrnit, all she needed was a little bit more room.
"Shit." She wheezed. "Those were close. Hell, Lance, I really wish you would hurry."
She screeched as bullets ripped through the entrance again, hitting lower to the ground, spraying sand at her feet as she tried to crawl up the wall to prevent the deadly projectiles from tearing into her feet.