"I get that idea, too," Agent Lawford agreed.
"He frowned at the boy who told us what kind of car it was," Ashe said.
"Caught that, too, did you?" Agent Lawford spared a grin over the back of his seat for Ashe. "Kid, you're better than a lot of agents I know."
"Well, it makes sense that he may have seen those boys before," Ashe offered. "This isn't a regular hangout for tourists driving through, and there's another gas station only a little farther down the road, between here and the interstate. Their gas is more expensive, though. But you wouldn't know that unless you were familiar with Cordell."
"You think the kid may have friends or family here?" Derik North asked.
"Possible. I can bring Aedan or Nathan back after sunset and question the owner again," Marcus offered.
"Do it," Lawford said. The gravel drive surrounding the service station crunched beneath the van's wheels as the agent drove away from the service station.
* * *
"You didn't tell us you were running away." Nineteen-year-old Dale Sherman glared accusingly at Elizabeth, who sat in the back seat of his nearly restored 1968 Camaro. His uncle had called Dale's cell, so he'd pulled over at a truck stop on I-40 East to answer. "Now Uncle Rick has police crawling all over his gas station."
"I said I'd pay," Elizabeth's haughtiness was beginning to wear on Dale's nerves. Dale's best friend Lex lifted his chin over the seat to stare at Elizabeth as well.
"Uh-uh. You get out here. They said you were fifteen, not eighteen, like you told us. You get out now. You can call your folks or get another ride. I'm not goin' to jail for you." Dale's pale-blue eyes sparked with anger; his brown hair stood up in spikes after he'd raked fingers through it in frustration.
Elizabeth glowered at the two boys—they'd jumped at the chance to make five hundred dollars—that's what Elizabeth offered them to drive her north. She didn't have an exact location; the seductive whisper that had come the moment she left Cloud Chief behind kept promising all sorts of things if she'd travel to North Dakota. The term Grassland kept popping into her head, but that meant little to Elizabeth. She also didn't have five hundred dollars in her purse as she'd promised—but the voice was so persuasive Elizabeth would do anything to get where it asked her to go.
"One of those truckers would take you." Lex Snelson, worried that he'd be hauled off to jail with his best friend, urged Elizabeth to try other means to reach her destination. He figured his description—not that different from Dale's (brown hair and blue eyes, they were distant cousins, after all), was already in the Highway Patrol's database, along with a description of Dale's Camaro. Uncle Rick's new employee hadn't been warned to keep quiet before the cops showed up.
"I'm not that stupid," Elizabeth huffed. "You have to let me out, jerk." She lifted a spike-heeled foot and kicked the back of Lex's seat, ripping a hole in Dale's new upholstery. Dale cursed at the damage his passenger had caused as Lex opened his door and got out, pulling the passenger seat forward so Elizabeth could exit the vehicle.
Lex and Dale watched as Elizabeth walked unsteadily across the uneven truck stop parking lot in the heels she wore. Both struggled to hold onto car doors when the fierce blast of wind hit. It swept Elizabeth off her feet and carried her ten feet into the air, pushing her along with the force of a tornado until she crashed through the thick, plate-glass window of the truck stop. Dale's leg was nearly crushed in the door of his car as the wind slammed it shut. Lex had slid across the rough surface of the parking lot, ending up on his belly halfway between the Camaro and the building. Road burns covered his torso where the T-shirt he wore had been ripped away. Lex and Dale lifted their heads in horror as screams emanated from the building.
* * *
"You're saying it was the wind?" Agent Lawford stared at a grimacing Dale Sherman, whose leg was encased in a cast after x-rays at the hospital emergency room in Clinton determined it was broken. Lex was being treated in a cubicle next door for his own injuries—the parking lot surface had claimed quite a bit of skin across his chest and belly. The girl was dead—from a head injury after flying through the thick, plate-glass window of Teddy's Truck Stop east of Clinton.
"Man, I saw her fly through the air when the gust hit, and then it threw me into the car and the door almost slammed shut on my leg," Dale whined.
"If your uncle had informed us immediately, this might have been prevented," Nick Lawford snapped and stalked out of the cubicle.
* * *
"How many other deaths were reported under similar circumstances?" Director Bill Jennings stared at his assistant, Vince Jordan.
"Seventeen, sir. That we know of." Vince tapped the tablet in his hand for a moment, pulling up information. "It appears that this race can somehow command the wind or other weather elements."
"I was afraid you'd say that."
"Sir, if they can do this, it makes me think that the other murders in the area may not be by the same ones—how much easier would it be to just kill them with a blast of wind rather than breaking necks or strangling somebody?"
"True. Are any other deaths of these children by strangulation or broken necks?"
"None, sir. Plenty of gunshots, drownings and other things, but nothing like that."
"Then we may have two murderers, or sets of murderers, in the area."
"Possible," Vince handed the tablet to Director Jennings so he could scroll through the gathered information.
* * *
Marcus had allowed Sali to come; he and Ashe stood in the backyard of Ashe's home and watched as the dark limousine carried Mary Ellen and Francis Frasier away from Cloud Chief, the driver moving slowly through foot-high prairie grass toward the gravel road and Cloud Chief's hidden entrance. Ashe wished at that moment he didn't have exceptional hearing; he detected Mary Ellen's sobs as the car drove past.
"Son," Aedan's hand dropped gently onto Ashe's shoulder—the sun had set an hour earlier, bathing the Oklahoma prairie in twilight. Aedan and Nathan had already visited Elizabeth's grieving parents at Marcus' request. The human couple wouldn't remember where the supernatural community lay, or that it housed the unusual inhabitants that it did.
"Dad," Ashe's right arm slipped around his father's waist as the limo crunched onto the gravel road and rolled past.
* * *
"Ashe, do you want to go to work with me tomorrow?" Adele brushed Ashe's hair back from his forehead as he walked into the house a few minutes later. "It's Saturday and it'll be busy at the store. Your father said it was all right as long as you stayed inside the store with me."