She could feel her father studying her, and she wondered what she looked like. Her hair was windblown, tangled, even though it had been in a ponytail. A sunburn was prickling on her nose, but that only backed up the hiking story.
“Did you see the crash?” her father said. Fishing for some kind of answer. If only she knew what he was looking for so she could avoid it.
“Yeah, I did. Mostly the smoke afterward. Is everything okay? Did anyone get hurt?” Maybe he’d let drop whether the pilot had made it.
“You saw it and didn’t think to call anyone?”
“I couldn’t get reception.” She winced, because that really was lame. It was getting pretty hard to find anyplace that didn’t have coverage. On the main road there was no excuse.
“Kay, what are you doing out here?”
Her parents—especially her mother and the bureau—were not primarily concerned with protecting the border from the dragons. If the dragons decided to cross, the local law enforcement agencies couldn’t do much about it. That would be classified as an invasion, and Malmstrom Air Force Base, with its missiles and fighters, would take over.
Mostly, local law enforcement worked to keep people—the overly curious on the one hand, and the malicious on the other—from crossing into Dragon. Just last year, before she got her driver’s license, her father had been driving her home from school when one of his deputies called him out to an arrest. Kay had lingered by the car, watching while Dad and two deputies struggled to put handcuffs on a hysterical young couple. They’d looked like hippies, a white guy and girl with long hair partly done in tangled dreadlocks. She wore a peasant skirt, combat boots, and a torn sweater. He wore what looked like army surplus fatigues. They both had huge frame backpacks with sleeping bags and mess kits slung on them. They’d hitchhiked from Ohio and had planned on sneaking across the border. They wanted to find a dragon and “partake of its ancient wisdom.” They screamed at the sheriff and deputies about how they didn’t have the right to keep people from crossing the border, calling them fascists.
Her father had joked that at least they could prosecute them for resisting arrest, if nothing else. Kay had thought they were weird and maybe a little crazy. They obviously didn’t come from a place where you could sometimes see dragons flying on the northern horizon and where they practiced dragon-raid drills more than once a year.
People like that would be insanely jealous of Kay and her conversations with Artegal.
But more, her parents would be mortified if they knew what she’d been doing. If her parents found out, they’d report it. They would have to. She knew that. She just hadn’t realized how that would feel. They’d never look at her the same way again. They’d never trust her again. She couldn’t ever get caught—and there was no way the pilot would keep his mouth shut.
She waited too long to answer. Nothing was going to sound reasonable now. “Really, Dad, I was just hiking. I didn’t know there was a roadblock or I would have called. I’m sorry.”
They’d had enough arguments to recognize the standoff. She wasn’t going to say anything else, and nothing he said would change that.
“You know the plane crashed on the other side of the border? In Dragon?” he said finally.
The tower of smoke was close enough to the river; from a different angle it may have looked like it hadn’t invaded Dragon. She let him think the hesitation was shocked silence.
“What’s going to happen? Do you think there’ll be a fight?”
Her father leaned on the car, looked north, and shook his head. “We’re doing everything we can to prevent that. We have to assume they’re doing to the same on their side.” She pressed her lips and nodded. He sounded sure, and that was encouraging. “Now, Kay, I want you to get home. And call your mother.”
“Okay, I will.” She didn’t have to fake sounding nervous and scared. Her stomach was knotted.
“I love you,” he said, pursing his lips in a thin smile.
“I love you, too.” She watched him return to his SUV in her rearview mirror. He didn’t drive away until she did.
She spent the rest of the way home sitting at the edge of her seat, gripping the steering wheel hard.
As soon as she got home, she called Jon.
“Kay,” he answered. “Oh my God, are you okay? Where are you? Do you know what’s happening? Do your folks have any idea?”
She knew way more about the situation than she wanted to. Trouble was, she couldn’t tell anyone. “I just talked to my dad. He didn’t say much. Everyone’s worked up.”
“Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you.” He sounded tense, like he’d been really worried about her.
She winced, guilty. “I’m sorry. I had my phone off.”
“At a time like this? FOX News is talking invasion, Kay.”
She sat on the couch in the living room and rubbed her hair. She was exhausted and was starting to feel the aches and bruises where she’d been knocked around on Artegal’s back. Even with gloves, she had blisters on both hands. She needed a shower.
“Who’s invading?” she said tiredly. “Them or us?”
Jon was silent for a long moment. She was about to apologize again because she knew she was sounding irrational. Then he said, “The plane crash was an accident, wasn’t it?”
That made her straighten. “What do you mean?”
“It was a malfunction. The plane crashed; the pilot bailed out. It just happened to be on the wrong side of the border. The air force didn’t do it on purpose, did they?”
For a moment, just a moment, it made sense. If you wanted to start a fight, you’d provoke the other side somehow. Just to see what they’d do. But she was tired and not thinking clearly, so she shook her head. “Is that what the conspiracy websites are saying?” She tried to make it sound like a joke.
“I guess that’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“But no one knows what the dragons are going to do,” he said.
“No.” She wondered what Artegal was telling his people right now, if anything. If he were having to lie like she was. “The police have the highway closed down. They’re worried.”
“Can I come over?”
It would take him a little longer, but he could get here via back roads. She almost said no. The more time she spent around people, the more likely she would be to finally let it all out and tell someone about Artegal, especially with all this going on. Anything she said would be talking around the dragon. Her secret was starting to eat at her.
At the same time, the idea of hugging Jon as hard as she could made her feel warm, made her finally start to relax. “Yeah, okay. My parents are out working. It’ll be good to have company.”
“Okay. I’ll be right over.” He clicked off.
She’d have to hurry if she wanted to take that shower.
As soon as she hung up, her phone beeped another missed call from her mother. Kay didn’t want to talk to her, afraid of what she would ask about the crash and how much Kay would have to lie about it, but the calls would keep coming until they connected. She called back.
“Kay, are you home now? Please tell me you’re home.”
Mom and Dad had probably been conferring back and forth about what she was really doing. She couldn’t change her story.
“I’m home, Mom.” Her mother sighed with obvious relief. Before her mother could ask more questions that she’d have to dodge, Kay launched in with her own. “Is everything okay? Do you know what’s happening?”
“Oh, it’s a mad house here.” She must have been at the FBBE main office. Kay could hear voices, telephones, and activity in the background. “I think every newspaper and TV station in the country has been calling us for a statement. We don’t have enough people to take care of the PR and assess the situation at the same time. They’ve got me handling the press, and I can’t keep up with it.”