Unnatural Exposure

'Yes.'

'Okay. We're rolling.'

The plane surged forward, bumping over the field with gathering power that was unlike any takeoff I had ever known. It roared more than a hundred miles an hour,

pulling up into the air at an angle so sharp it flattened me against the back of my chair. Suddenly, stars spangled the sky, the lights of Maryland a winking network.

'We're going about two hundred knots,' a pilot said. 'Command Post aircraft 3060I. Flaps up. Execute.'

I glanced over at Lucy, who was behind the co-pilot and trying to see what he was doing as she listened to every word, probably committing it to memory. Laurel returned with cups of coffee, but nothing would have kept me up. I drifted to sleep at thirty-five thousand feet as the jet flew west at six hundred miles an hour. I came to as a tower was talking.

We were over Salt Lake City and descending, and Lucy would never come to earth again as she listened to cockpit talk. She caught me looking but was not to be distracted, and I had never really known anyone like her, not in my entire life. She had a voracious curiosity about anything that could be put together, taken apart, programmed and, in general, made to do something she wanted. People were about the only thing she couldn't figure out.

Clover Control turned us over to Dugway Range Control, and then we were receiving instructions about landing. Despite what we had been told about the length of the runway, it felt like we were going to be torn out of our seats as the jet crescendoed over a tarmac blinking with miles of lights, air roaring against raised slats. The stop was so abrupt, I didn't see how it was physically possible, and I wondered if the pilots might have been practicing.

'Tally ho,' one of them said cheerfully.

Chapter Fifteen

Dudway was the size of Rhode Island with two thousand people living on the base. But we could see nothing when we got in at half past five A.M. Laurel turned us over to a soldier, who put us in a truck and drove to a place where we could rest and

freshen up. There wasn't time for sleep. The plane would be taking off later in the day, and we needed to be on it.

Lucy and I were checked into the Antelope Inn, across from the Community Club. We had a room with twin beds on the first floor, furnished with light oak and wall-to-wall carpet, everything blue. It offered a view of barracks across the green, where lights were already beginning to come on with the dawn.

'You know, there really doesn't seem any point in taking a shower since we'll have to put on the same dirty things,' Lucy said, stretching out on top of her bed.

'You're absolutely right,' I agreed, taking off my shoes. 'You mind if I turn this lamp off?'

'I wish you would.'

The room was dark and I suddenly felt silly. 'This is like a slumber party.'

'Yeah, the one from hell.'

'Remember when you used to come stay with me when you were little?' I said.

'Sometimes we stayed up half the night. You never wanted to go to sleep, always wanting me to read one more story. You wore me out.'

'I remember it the other way around. I wanted to sleep and you wouldn't leave me alone.'

'Untrue.'

'Because you doted on me.'

'Did not. I could scarcely tolerate being in the same room,' I said. 'But I felt sorry for you and wanted to be kind.'

A pillow sailed through the dark and hit me on the head. I threw it back. Then Lucy pounced from her bed to mine, and when she got there didn't quite know what to do, because she was no longer ten and I wasn't Janet. She got up and went back to her bed, loudly fluffing pillows behind her.

'You sound like you're a lot better,' she said.

'Better, but not a lot. I'll live.'

'Aunt Kay, what are you going to do about Benton? You don't even seem to think about him anymore.'

'Oh yes I do,' I answered. 'But things have been a little out of control of late, to say the least.'

'That's always the excuse people give. I should know. I heard it all my life from my mother.'

'But not from me,' I said.

'That's my point. What do you want to do about him? You could get married.' The mere thought unnerved me again. 'I don't think I can do that, Lucy.'

'Why not?'

'Maybe I'm too set in my ways, on a track I can't get off. Too much is demanded of me.'

'You need to have a life, too.'

'I feel like I do,' I said. 'But it may not be what everybody else thinks it should be.'

'You've always given me advice,' she said. 'Maybe now it's my turn. And I don't think you should get married.'

'Why?' I was more curious than surprised.

'I don't think you ever really buried Mark. And until you do, you shouldn't get married. All of you won't be there, you know?'

I felt sad and was glad she could not see me in the dark. For the first time in our lives, I talked to her as a trusted friend.

'I haven't gotten over him and probably never will,' I said. 'I guess he was my first love.'

'I know all about that,' my niece went on. 'I worry that if something happens, there will never be anybody else for me, either. And I don't want to go the rest of my life not having what I've got now. Not having someone you can talk to about anything, someone who cares and is kind.' She hestitated, and what she said next was honed to an edge. 'Someone who doesn't get jealous and use you.'

'Lucy,' I said, 'Ring won't wear a badge again in this lifetime, but only you can strip

Carrie of her power over you.'

'She has no power over me.' Lucy's temper flared.

'Of course she does. And I can understand it. I'm furious with her, too.'

Lucy got quiet for a moment, and then she spoke in a smaller voice. 'Aunt Kay, what will happen to me?'

'I don't know, Lucy,' I said. 'I don't have the answers. But I promise I will be with you every step of the way.'

The twisted path that had led her to Carrie eventually bent us back around to Lucy's mother, who, of course, was my sister. I wandered the ridges and rills of my growing- up years, and was honest with Lucy about my marriage to her ex-uncle Tony. I spoke of how it felt to be my age and know I probably would not have children. By now, the sky was lighting up, and it was time to start the day. The base commander's driver

was waiting in the lobby at nine, a young private who barely needed to shave.

'We got one other person who came in right after you did,' the private said, putting on

Ray-Bans. 'From Washington, the FBL'

He seemed to be very impressed with this and clearly had no idea what Lucy was, nor did the expression change on her face when I asked, 'What does he do with the FBI?'

'Some scientist or something. Pretty hot stuff,' he said, eyeing Lucy, who was striking- looking even when she'd been up all night.

The scientist was Nick Gallwey, head of the Bureau's Disaster Squad, and a forensic expert of considerable reputation. I had known him for years, and when he walked into the lobby, we gave each other a hug, and Lucy shook his hand.

'A pleasure, Special Agent Farinelli. And believe me, I've heard a lot about you,' he said to her. 'So Kay and I are going to do the dirty work while you play with the computer.'

'Yes, sir,' she sweetly said.

'Is there anywhere to have breakfast around here?' Gallwey asked the private, who was tangled in confusion and suddenly shy.

He drove us in the base commander's Suburban beneath an endless sky. Unsettled western mountain ranges surrounded us in the distance, high desert flora like sage, scrub pine and firs, dwarfed by lack of rain. The nearest traffic was forty miles away in this Home of the Mustangs, as the base was called, with its ammunition bunkers, weapons from World War II and air space restricted and vast. There were traces of salt from receding ancient waters, and we spotted an antelope and an eagle.