An hour later, Owen sat down to lunch with Colonel Thomas Campbell and his nineteen-year-old daughter, Anne. She was a shy young woman, and Owen immediately understood that she’d lived all her life under the colonel’s thumb. He also noticed the way she looked at him. Not exactly like the two intelligence officers had, but close enough. Long ago, Owen had decided that he did not seek love. What he wanted was someone he could mold to fit the life he planned, a cog in the wheel of his relentless forward movement. He had set himself to make a mark in the world, and only those who might serve that purpose drew his attention. Only fools were seduced by shapes and textures, hair of a certain length or color, a playfulness in the eyes. For Owen, every person had a context. And the context of Anne Campbell was her father.
“What do you make of the new recruits?” Colonel Campbell asked, breaking Owen’s reverie.
“They seem eager enough, but I’m afraid that this new crop of officers won’t have the same sense of mission now that the war’s over. The last two years seem to have taken the wind out of them.”
“I guess you’ll just have to blow harder,” the colonel said with a smirk.
Owen let a thin smile grace his lips. The colonel was no fool, that much was clear. His toast had been buttered by the best of them. There was no way flattery would impress him, nor patriotism, nor even high intelligence. Colonel Campbell was all crust, thick and dry and impenetrable. Colonel Campbell was a fossil.
“We had two more sightings today,” the colonel said. “Dancing lights mostly. The bulk of them in the Pacific Northwest and three I think over the Great Lakes.”
“People say they were from another planet,” Anne said.
“We used to hear that a lot at Los Alamos,” Owen told her.
“I forgot you were at Los Alamos,” the colonel said, his voice now oddly distant.
“We got a new mare at the stables Tuesday,” the colonel said, rapidly changing the subject. “I thought you might like to join me for a ride.”
“I’d like that very much,” Owen said. He turned his attention to Anne. “Will you be joining us?” he asked her.
“Well, actually…” she began.
“She doesn’t ride,” Colonel Campbell interrupted. “Too delicate.”
Owen kept his eyes on Anne. She was shy, yes, but pretty, and he suspected that her father’s grip was already loosening. Which was just fine since, in Owen’s opinion, Colonel Campbell’s days were numbered.
In the stables, Owen purposely delayed mounting his horse, and instead walked briefly with Anne while Colonel Campbell saddled up a few yards away.
“Your father is a bit of a bully, isn’t he,” he told her.
“It’s nothing personal,” Anne said. “He’s just like… that.”
“If he doesn’t let you ride, how does he feel about you going to the movies?”
Anne glanced back toward her father apprehensively. “I’d better meet you in town.”
Owen seized the opportunity without hesitation “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Tomorrow night?”
Anne smiled, then nodded toward the approaching stable hand.
Owen seized the reins from the stable hand and mounted. He knew he need do no more than offer Anne a final glance as he spurred the horse and galloped away. He could see that she’d taken in his broad shoulders, the cut of his jaw, the piercing look in his eyes.
The ride was brief, Colonel Campbell typically uncommunicative. Owen knew very well that he was not the old man’s favorite, and certainly not his choice for son-in-law.
But Anne, she was a different story, Owen thought, a soft flower of a girl. He wasn’t sure what he actually thought of her, nor even what use he might make of her, save the entertaining prospect of riling up her old man. He would know more after tomorrow night, he told himself, already imagining the two of them in the darkened movie theater.
She was standing dutifully under a marquee that proclaimed the night’s feature as Boomerang! starring Dana Andrews and Jane Wyatt, when Owen stepped out of his car a block away.
“Hey there, soldier,” a woman said as she steered her car alongside the curb. “Looking for some fun?”
Her name was Sue, and Owen had been with her the night before, parked out in the desert beneath a full moon. They’d spent a passionate couple of hours together, but Owen had no time for her now. At least not with Anne Campbell waiting for him only a block away.
“Not right now,” he said. “I’m on duty.”
She looked at him pointedly. “You look ready for action, but you don’t look like you’re on duty.”
“I’m meeting the colonel to go over something,” Owen explained.
Sue glanced toward the theater, her gaze fixed on Anne. “Sure you are.”
Owen tried to smile, but the chill in his eyes argued against it. “I’ll call you later,” he assured her.
Sue’s eyes flashed with anger. “I won’t be there,” she snapped.
Owen stood in place as she screeched away. What was he losing, he asked himself. Nothing. A roll in the hay. There were plenty where she came from. He slapped his hands together, as if ridding himself of some barely noticeable dust, then turned sharply and made his way to the theater, where, to his delight, Anne greeted him with an adoring smile.
On the desert highway, Sue was not smiling. She glared out the window at the desert waste and fumed at the way Owen Crawford had dismissed her. Like she was nothing, that’s how he treated her. Like she was just some small-time slut he could use and throw away.
She stomped the accelerator violently, then gave a quick twist to the radio’s volume control. Louis Jordan was singing “There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens.” A dumb song, Sue thought, perfect for some dumb girl who gets herself tangled up with a bastard like Owen Crawford.
Suddenly the radio turned to static. Just my luck, Sue thought, not even a stupid song to cheer things up. She reached for the dial, spun it, but still got nothing but static.
Okay, she thought, just go home. Have a drink. Sleep it off. She pressed down on the accelerator, but the car refused to pick up speed. Then suddenly the engine died and the car drifted to a halt on the isolated road.
Sue sucked in a fierce, angry breath and pounded the steering wheel. She lowered her head, exhausted by her own fruitless fury, then looked up again at the night sky where, to her amazement, an array of blue lights was moving weirdly, darting about, then moving together, in unison, assuming a formation.
Sue got out of the car and stood watching, mesmerized as two of the lights merged into one that grew larger and larger, assuming a vaguely circular shape as it sliced across the desert sky in full and sharp descent until it disappeared behind a jagged spine of hills.
The explosion that followed was muffled by the distance, but the light that rose from it threw the mountain range into dark silhouette.
Sue stood frozen as the light faded, the air around her eerily still, and nothing in the dark bowl of the sky but the usual scattering of harmless and unmoving stars.
In his office, Owen listened to a story he knew Colonel Campbell and the other dinosaurs would find utterly ridiculous despite the fact that it was coming from two middle-aged nuns who looked entirely incapable of lying.
“We believe that what we saw was God’s angels dancing,” the first nun said.
“That or some new airplane from White Sands gone out of control,” her companion added.
Owen drew a pencil from a cup that bristled with them and rolled it between his fingers. “You mentioned that you saw a crash.”
“Clear as day,” the second nun said. “If that was God’s angels, then right now they’re camped out about a mile and a half above Pine Lodge.”