But he went on farther, until she could hear the rushing water of the creek at the border. “Here,” he said.
The care he’d taken made her life a little easier and his harder. She smiled grimly. “Thanks.”
Quickly, because the sun was now fading into afternoon, she undid the knots of his harness and coiled the rope.
“You’ll walk back?”
“For a time,” he said. “Until I won’t be seen.”
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
He had turned to go when she said, “Artegal? What happens if we don’t see each other again?” For whatever reason, whatever the fallout after this new plane, and whatever its pilot said about seeing a girl riding a dragon.
Artegal thought for a moment. She might have expected denials, assurances that surely that wouldn’t happen, that this would blow over and they would see each other again. But he didn’t do that. That’s what a human being would have done.
“Then we will remember. Tell stories, so others know it’s possible for us to be friends. Keep the book safe. Pass it on, if it will help.”
She nodded, trying to convince herself that nothing would change. “Okay.”
Once again, they hiked away from each other. In moments, he was gone. She couldn’t even hear him anymore.
She focused on her own journey.
Even though she wasn’t across the border yet, she was close enough that she thought she was safe. She let her guard down, just a little.
Then she heard voices.
12
Human voices echoed through the trees ahead. Kay couldn’t make out what they were saying nor could she tell exactly where they were, but they were definitely looking for something. She dropped to a crouch at the base of a tree, hiding as well as she could, just in case.
She took a chance and found her cell phone. Muffling the sound, she checked for messages. One, from her mom, an hour ago.
“Kay, something’s happened, there might be trouble at the border, so I need you to get home right away. Call me as soon as you get this.”
She wouldn’t call until she was back in her Jeep and driving away from here. But she couldn’t do that until those people left. For whatever reason, it seemed the pilot who’d crashed hadn’t told anyone that he’d seen Kay and Artegal, but the pilot of this new plane must have reported it. And now, people were looking for her. Kay wasn’t used to hearing people this far out—no one came here, that was the point. Who were they? Military, police maybe? Her dad? She really didn’t want to see him right now. She didn’t want to have to explain all this. She hiked along the border until she couldn’t hear them anymore.
She found a narrow place with stepping stones where she could cross. Once she was on the right side of the border, nobody could say anything, even if someone caught her. But if she showed up with wet boots, people would ask questions.
Safely away from Dragon, she ran straight through the woods, back to the trailhead where she’d parked her car before the searchers could find her and ask what she was doing out here by herself.
She threw her car into gear and drove. A few miles away, about halfway to home, she pulled over, gripped the wheel, and caught her breath. Her heart was racing as if she’d been running. But she was safe. Nobody was looking for her.
When she was breathing a little more normally, she found her phone and called her mother. It rang once and went to voice mail.
“Hi, Mom. Sorry I didn’t get your call, but I’m on the way home right now. I’m okay.” She hoped that was good enough.
Back home, she left the climbing gear in the car. She didn’t want anyone asking about it.
Her mom was at the dining room table. Her laptop, papers, books—work—were spread all over it, and she was talking on her cell phone.
“Yes, of course I’ve seen the photos. They’re supposed to be classified, but I think everyone and their goddamn dog has seen them. CNN’ll probably have them next.” A pause. “No, I can’t explain them. If I could, I would. Clearly.” Another pause. She seemed to be arguing with someone. “I’m home because I’m sick of talking to the press. Look, in this day and age you can’t hide something like this. That jet crossed the border, and everyone knows it.”
She hung up without saying good-bye.
“Mom?”
“Oh, Kay, thank God.” Her mother looked exhausted. She ran a hand through her hair, which was loose, limp, in need of washing. “Are you okay? Deputy Kalbach saw your Jeep way north. Were you hiking? What were you doing? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I went hiking. I’m fine. I saw the jet.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Kay sighed a little because her mother seemed more concerned with the jet crossing than with what her daughter had been doing.
“Everybody saw the jet,” she said. “The last one may have been an accident, but this one was a blatant border violation. The air force should know better; they ought to know better.”
“Then why’d they do it?”
She smiled a thin, ironic smile. “I have some ideas, but they’re not politically correct and I’m not allowed to say them to the media.”
“That jet—it’s new, isn’t it? I haven’t seen anything like it before.”
“That’s right. I think since the dragons didn’t react to the crash last month, they’re testing the border. They’ve got this fancy new plane, and they think maybe the dragons won’t do anything about it. But I can’t say that, because that means, or at least it suggests…never mind.” She shook her head, shrugging the subject away.
“That maybe the first crash wasn’t an accident,” Kay said softly. It made sense. Of course the press would figure it out. The military and government could deny it all they wanted. The pundits would still talk, and people would still make assumptions.
“Don’t go repeating that to anyone with a camera,” Mom said. “The official line they’re trying to feed people is ‘A navigation error caused the pilot to drift temporarily off course.’”
There was nothing drifting about that jet. Kay had been there; she’d seen it up close. But she couldn’t tell her mother that.
Kay sat at the table and looked over the mass of paperwork. When her mom didn’t send her away—Kay assumed this was all classified—she looked more closely. Emails showed on the laptop screen. The folders looked like case files, some of them old. Records of military patrols from the last sixty years. And photos, eight-by-ten, black-and-white printouts. Kind of blurry, as if they were taken from a distance at high speed. As if they were taken by a jet’s surveillance camera.
They showed a silvery-gray dragon and a tiny human perched on its back. Blurry, unidentifiable. Kay felt herself flush, skin burning to her ears. She shook the feeling away and tried to keep her heart from racing. Tried to act surprised.
“What’s this?” She showed the picture to her mother.
Her mom took the picture away from her, put it with the others, and gathered them into a folder. “That’s even bigger news than the jet. Looks like someone’s been having a little fun across the border. Don’t tell anyone you saw these, okay?”
“Oh my gosh,” Kay said, and hoped it sounded convincing. “Who?”
“If I knew that, I’d send the FBI, the National Guard, and your father to arrest his ass. Unfortunately, we don’t have any way of identifying him. I don’t suppose you saw anything while you were out?”
Him. So they thought it was a guy. Kay almost sighed with relief. Instead, she had to lie fast. “No, I didn’t see anything.”
Brow furrowed, her mother studied the folder. “I just want to know how someone walks across the border and talks a dragon into letting him ride around on its back. Or maybe it was the dragon’s idea.”
“Maybe it was both,” Kay said, and flinched when her mother looked sharply at her. Blushing, she continued, hoping it sounded like innocent speculation. “Maybe they talked about it. Maybe they’re, you know, friends.”