Desert Dark (17 page)

Dr. Cameron reached for a file on his desk. He opened the manila folder and shuffled a few papers.
Don't look at the floor. Focus on his words or you'll be expelled. They don't want crazy spies. At least, not this kind of crazy
.

“Do she and Alan get along?” he asked.

Libby forced a light laugh. “She gets along with Alan as well as anyone, I suppose.”
Don't look at the floor!

Dr. Cameron smiled.

“It's just, he's not always easy to get to know. But he's a great guy. I mean, you know. He's nice. A little awkward sometimes.” Libby stopped talking. She squinted and rubbed her forehead. She managed to maintain eye contact. “I'm sorry, what was the question?”

“Is he particularly adversarial toward Nadia?”

“No more than anyone else. He and Damon both tease her a lot. Like that ridiculous phone call the other day.” Libby rolled her eyes.

“What phone call?”

“Oh, one of them called our hall. Whoever it was disguised his voice and said,
the pawn sings at dawn
, or some stupid thing like that. Alan's more mean-spirited, but Damon's the one who would think of something clever to say, so I'm not sure which one of them is messing with her. Maybe they're working as a team. It's nice Alan's making a friend, I just wish it wasn't at Nadia's expense.”

“Why are you so sure it was them?”

Libby shrugged. “Who else would it be?”

Dr. Cameron wrote something on his yellow pad. “You can go ahead to class.”

Libby hesitated. “I'm sure it was all in good fun. They don't mean anything by it.”

“I'll let Dr. Sherman know you're on the way.”

Libby stood. “You know, push comes to shove, those two would do anything for her. We all would.”

“Don't forget, Libby. This conversation stays between us.”

She nodded as she left his office. She wasn't sure why, but she felt like she'd just betrayed her friends.

Nadia found another note slipped under her door on Tuesday morning. She read aloud:

“Twenty-four hours alone in the desert? I don't like the sound of that at all,” Libby said, biting her lip. “Come on, before we're late for exercises.”

Damon and Alan were already at the dojo. They confirmed receiving a second order.

“Good thing we do not require tranquilizer guns, huh, Nadia?” Alan said. “No one would be there to carry you out.”

Damon jumped in, “You think you'll be able to sleep without a sedative? If not, I could sneak something over to your campsite.”

“You guys are hilarious,” Nadia snapped.

The rest of the week blurred into a stream of forgotten lectures and sleepless nights. Instead of paying attention in class, Nadia worried about the weekend, which then forced her to stay up late studying what she'd missed. She found little relief during morning meditation.

“I can't do it. What if something happens and no one is there to help me?” she asked Sensei after they'd trained on Friday.

“You are a different person than you were one month ago. It is not a competition, so you will not carry a gun. Your overnight is short, so you will not build a fire.”

“I don't get to make a fire?” she asked, growing more concerned. At least fire would keep the animals away.

“We cannot have novice students building fires all over the Southwest. The climate here is too dry. If a single spark is left to smolder, the desert will be consumed by flames.”

“So why do I need a knife? In case I'm attacked by a wild animal?”

“Do not be absurd. It is for emergencies. If you were lost and the temperature dropped,
then
you would be permitted to build a fire.”

“But I—”

“Enough! Nadia-san, you must understand: fear is a chemical reaction in the body, a warning administered by your brain to pay attention. Nothing more. How you channel your fear determines the course of your life. Always. Fear runs only as deep as the mind allows.”

Later that afternoon the team waited beneath the enormous iron gates at the front of the school. The van arrived and they climbed in; Damon in the far back, Alan in the middle, Nadia and Libby on the front bench seats.

The drive from school was quiet. Alan chewed his cuticles until one bled, then stuck his finger in his mouth. Nadia turned away.
At least I'm not the only one who's nervous
.

She ran her palms along the plush seat and slid her hands under her legs. The familiar anxious chill settled over her, starting with her hands and feet.
Stop worrying. If it wasn't safe, they wouldn't send us out alone
.

She leaned forward to speak to the driver. “Has anyone ever been hurt during their solo?”

“Not too bad,” he answered, watching her through the rear-view mirror. “I think we had a scorpion bite once, but I guess the kid was grabbing for wood without looking first. It's those bark scorpions you gotta watch for, the little guys.” His eyes returned to the road and he swerved back into his lane.

“Nadia, shut up,” Alan whispered, his voice tight. “He cannot drive and talk.”

Nadia closed her eyes and concentrated on her breath.
In for four, out for eight
.

The driver pulled onto the shoulder. “First stop,” he called.

“I'll go,” said Damon, climbing out of the van. “See you guys. Good luck. And for the love of all that is holy, whatever you do, don't—” He slammed the door.

They drove another fifteen minutes. Nadia volunteered at the next stop. She figured she'd rather be sandwiched between two classmates than stuck out on the end.
We've been driving fifteen minutes at what, forty-five miles an hour?
That put Damon about . . . eleven and a half miles away. She wondered how far a scream would travel.

Nadia watched the van drive off, and then took a moment to orient herself.
We headed east from the school, then due south. The driver turned right onto this road, so I need to go—north. Keep the afternoon sun on my left
.

The land was flat, but uneven, which forced her to watch the ground. She wove between knee-high plants, avoiding the shadows where snakes might hide. Nadia spotted a trail of dark
green brush in the distance and made a beeline toward it, knowing it would be near a stream. If she could follow the water until nightfall she wouldn't have to worry about dehydration. Worst case scenario, she'd fill her bottle once tonight and again in the morning. She could definitely make it back to school on that.

When the evening sky burned dark orange and pink, Nadia searched for a safe place to sleep. She remembered how quickly the black night had swallowed the desert on the first survival course. There were no streetlights, no flashlights, nothing to spear the darkness.

Nadia found a sturdy tree to use as shelter. She pushed fallen leaves together with her feet, huge sweeping motions that made her inner thighs tight. The smell of loose dirt filled the air. She stomped around a bit to chase off any neighbors and, when the dust settled, placed her knife and water bottle at the base of the tree.

She stretched out on the ground and looked through the branches. A sparkling river of stars crossed the sky. Coyotes called in the distance. She thought about the last time, and Jack's arm around her body. His dark hair, the way his skin smelled after being in the sun. She pulled a layer of leaves onto her torso and closed her eyes.

The constant effort to stay one step ahead of Nadia proved taxing. Late Friday evening, Jack drove toward town, relieved his errand was near completion. The sky was dark and clear; the road deserted. His team should be selecting their campsites right about now. He wondered if Nadia was as nervous as she'd appeared, or if she'd carefully scripted her vulnerability, knowing Jack's inclination to protect.

He'd been so conflicted since their date. He'd spoken to Libby—grilled her, really. Copious details about Nadia's schedule, her topics of conversation, word choices, background. Jack looked for anything to confirm his misgivings, any scrap of new information to take to Dean Wolfe. But he'd come up empty.

He began to feel like he was searching for evidence that didn't exist.

Jack pulled into the parking lot of the darkened office building and drove around back.
I guess I'll know soon enough
.

He parked away from the streetlights and stayed in the shadows as he approached on foot. He knocked softly on the back door. As it opened, a wedge of light spilled onto the asphalt.

“Come on in,” Samuel said. “You got the package?”

Jack nodded and handed Samuel a small box.

Samuel whistled as he looked inside. “Nice. Real?”

“Of course. What kind of guy do you think I am?”

Samuel laughed. “First class, all the way. She stepping out on you?”

Jack shrugged. “You tell me.”

“You know my motto: trust but verify. Close-range burst transmission?”

“Sounds good.”

“Gimme a minute.” Samuel disappeared down the hall.

Jack moved a stack of broken radio parts off the only chair in the room and sat down. The plastic shelves along the wall sagged under the weight of metal boxes and spools of wire. A graveyard of discarded speakers cluttered the floor.

A nagging voice in his head asked,
Are you sure you want to do this? To Nadia? Without the Dean's approval? You're crossing a line
.

He tapped his foot to drown out the voice.
This is the fastest way to prove her innocence
.

“Stop tapping your foot,” Samuel said as he entered the room. “I stayed open late for you.”

Jack quieted his body. “Sorry. Song stuck in my head.”

“You going out? There's a new club downtown, supposed to be pretty hot.”

Jack passed Samuel an envelope as he took back his box. “No, I think I'm gonna go for a run in the desert.”

Samuel counted the hundreds. “You're a wild man.” He looked up and smiled. “It's all here.”

“Trust but verify.” Jack smiled back.

“All right, Jason,” Samuel said. “Good luck, man. Let me know how it works out.”

“You bet,” Jack said as he stepped into the night. The door slammed shut behind him.

Nadia woke to warm, yellow fingers of light spreading across the desert. The air held the crisp promise of a new day. Quail began to call. An unstoppable grin spread across her face as she stretched awake.

I did it!

She stood to scatter the leaves evenly around her tree. Jack had taught them about the school's
Leave No Trace
philosophy: when she left the environment, it was to look as though she'd never been there. Nadia suspected this rule was probably more about being a good spy than a responsible steward of the earth, but when Jack had explained it on their last trip she hadn't had the energy to ask.

Beside the stream, she crouched and uncapped her water bottle. As the cool water flowed over her fingers, she scanned the ground for rattlesnakes. She lifted the bottle to her lips and something caught her eye.

Nadia leaned in for a closer look. There, in the loose dirt beside the stream, was a footprint. And it was not her own.

Her heart pounded as fear flooded her veins. She shot up and searched the low desert brush along the horizon. She held her breath and listened for snapping twigs or the crunch of gravel.
Noises surrounded her; lizards rustling across fallen leaves sounded like buffalo.

Knock it off. Fear is a chemical reaction. Nothing more. It doesn't mean I'm in danger
.

She reexamined the print. A man's shoe. Brush marks led away from the footprint, as though someone had tried to erase his tracks with a branch.
Am I being followed?
The marks clearly led away from the stream, but as the sandy soil turned to rock and scrub, she lost the trail.

Nadia tried to relax, to slow her quickened heartbeat, to force rational thought.
It could be weeks old. Who knows when it last rained?
This didn't soften the knot forming in her stomach.

Maybe Jack came by to check on us. Would that be part of his job?

Nadia stayed alert as she chugged a bottle of water. She reached behind her back to secure her knife and realized her weapon was missing.

No!
She dropped her bottle and ran back toward the tree. On her hands and knees she filtered through the dispersed debris.
Sensei's going to kill me
. Nadia searched the far side of the tree, the path to the stream, around the water. Her knife had vanished.

Did someone steal my knife?
She shook her head.
I must have misplaced it
. Nadia looked again, meticulously scouring every inch of ground she'd touched since removing the knife from her waistband the previous night.

I know I didn't lose it. I put it right next to my water bottle
.

The sun burned away the pleasant cool of morning. After a lengthy search, Nadia gave up.
I need to get moving. Even at a fast clip, it'll still be five, maybe six hours before I'm home
. She hurried, feeling exposed in the open desert.

She took only one break, pausing for a few minutes to rest in the shade of a palo verde tree. Rubbing her thighs, she leaned against the light green bark and closed her eyes. A branch snapped and her eyes shot open. She felt someone watching her. Nadia scrambled to her feet.