Ash brandished the hair straightener at Jackie and snapped the mouth open and closed like an enraged croc-odile. "Out!"

Jackie giggled and hopped up so that she was sitting on the edge of the sink. "Oh, two more things before I leave you to your date with Smokey the Bear. First of all, I'm not sure what sort of blackmail or arm-twisting was involved, but Ade asked me to the masquerade ball, so thank you for whatever part you played in that."

"Zero blackmail; minimal arm-twisting," Ash replied.

277.

"And you're only welcome if you make out with him in front of Chad Matthews and his girlfriend at the ball."

"Deal. And second," Jackie continued, "I took the liberty of removing all of the box fans from your room, lowering the blinds, and plugging in an electric air freshener I found buried in the supply closet. Good thing that smoke detector is still out of commission, because you never know if things might heat up enough in there later-"

"Out!" Ashline screamed.

When Colt rolled up outside East Hall, Ash was grateful to see that he'd traded the chicken coop on wheels for a forest green, recently polished Pontiac. He popped open the pa.s.senger side door, and just as she went to squeeze down into the seat, light flashed behind her. She caught Darren leaning out the window with a camera, while Jackie laughed hysterically in the background behind it.

Ash shook her fist at her paparazzi and slammed the door as the next flash went off.

"Whoa," Colt said. He was eyeing her, from her face, to the elegant straps of her dress, down to the tapers of her waist, and following her tennis-toned calves to the clasps on her gladiator sandals.

Ash buckled her seat belt. "Can I a.s.sume that 'Whoa'

is boy-speak for 'You look beautiful?'"

"Well, sure." He adjusted the collar of his faded flannel b.u.t.ton-down. "But I think it also translates to 'You look a little overdressed.'"

Ashline pulled at the dress, suddenly feeling like she 278 was wearing a grain sack instead of silk. "We're . . . not going to dinner?"

But Colt just laughed darkly and s.h.i.+fted the car into drive.

They pa.s.sed through the front gates, and Ash traced her fingers over the dashboard. "I was expecting a pickup truck or maybe another retro monstrosity. For a combination park ranger and college student, an '81 Firebird seems a bit . . . extravagant."

Colt took his eyes off the road to gawk at her. "You know cars?"

"Yes. I can also count to ten and write my name."

She sensed he was still waiting for some explanation, so she said, "I don't have any brothers, so Dad dragged me to car shows. It wasn't until he tried to enroll me in a mechanics cla.s.s when I was twelve that I had the heart to break it to him."

"Not to worry. I figured changing spark plugs was better left for the second date." Colt patted her knee. Molten fire burned all the way up to her thighs.

Barely ten minutes from Blackwood, Colt pulled over to the side of the 101. The Firebird crackled to a stop on a patch of dirt, and he cut the engine. "We're here."

"'Here' is a relative term." Ash wiped away the fog on her window and cupped her hand around her eyes to see out. "This just looks like any patch of forest."

"That's the point." He popped the trunk and stepped out of the car.

279.

Ash reluctantly climbed out onto the desolate 101.

Peeking through the backseat window, she spied a wicker picnic basket resting on top of a flannel quilt in the claus-trophobic backseat. "Picnic?" she asked, hopeful.

"Yes, but only after," his m.u.f.fled voice replied from inside the trunk, where he was rummaging around for something.

"After . . . ?"

He snapped the trunk closed and in his hands held the two items he'd been looking for-a bulky-looking camera with a long zoom lens, and a tripod to go with it. He shook his head at her. "You know, if you were one tenth as patient as you are sarcastic . . ." He handed her a thick coil of black rope over the hood of the car. "You mind holding this? Thanks."

Dusk was quickly sinking its teeth into the horizon as they started in from the edge of the forest, Ash with the rope slung over her arm, Colt with the camera dangling from around his neck and the tripod in hand. They had maybe an hour before the woods retreated into darkness.

Ash was struggling to keep pace with him in her G.o.d-forsaken sandals-at least they weren't heels. "As much as I appreciate a little mystery on a first date," she said, slightly winded, "I have to admit that following a guy I barely know into the woods with only a length of rope and a camera is what my mom would refer to as a bad situation."

Colt laughed. "I came up with this idea a few months 280 ago when I was doing patrols," he explained. "I was wandering off the marked trail, and I ended up in this small clearing with a little tree growing in the middle of it, all alone. The whole s.p.a.ce just gave me this eerie, cool vibe, like it had never been touched by humanity before."

"What made you think that?" she asked. "There were no strip malls in sight?"

"Just a feeling. Growing up I was always fascinated with the great explorers-Magellan, Cook, Lewis and Clark." He sketched a line with his finger around the thick trunk of a sequoia. "Back before we'd touched every last inch of the earth and photographed it with our satel-lites. Back when you could actually be the first person to ever lay eyes on a piece of land." His eyes were distant, piercing the fabric of this universe and gazing into another, back to a simpler time when his adventurous fantasies could have come true. "All of the virgin rivers, and the primeval forests, and the uncharted coastline . . ."

"You're not going to break out into song, are you, Pocahontas?" she asked. When his eyes flickered back from his parallel universe looking a little hurt, she sighed. Go easy on the sarcasm, lady, she scolded herself. "I get it, though. You step into a clearing in the forest, and maybe, just maybe, you're the first person to ever set foot there. Somewhere out there is a place that started like everything else when the earth was a hot, boiling teakettle of lava and rock, and then rock turned to soil, and from the soil rose the gra.s.s, and eventually these 281 absurdly tall redwoods. And after five billion years, not a single soul has even so much as laid eyes on the place."

"Now you get the picture." His charming grin made a return, and he stopped walking. "Well, here's the fun part. I want you to pick a direction and just start walking." From his pocket he produced a narrow piece of fabric. "Wearing this."

"A . . . handkerchief?"

"Blindfold." He wrapped the black fabric around his eyes and tied it behind his head, knotting twice. Then he held out a second identical blindfold, which she took reluctantly. "I don't need my eyes to sense hesitation," he said. "You don't trust me?"

She caved and tied the blindfold around her eyes, plunging the woods around her into darkness except for the twilight filtering through the pores in the material.

"I trust you. But if I ruin this dress b.u.mping into a redwood, I'm going to let Raja kill you first." She groped around blindly until she found his wrist and slipped her hand into his. He squeezed back to let her know he was ready, and she led them in a new direction.

They made a full minute's progress before they collided with their first tree, and from then on Ash moved more cautiously, with her fingertips in front of her as a feeler. If they came across a fallen log, however, she knew she was doomed to end up on her face in the mud with a ruined dress.

"Now," Colt's voice said softly, "I want you to wait 282 until you get a feeling like you're standing in some place new, some place . . . untouched. Then squeeze my hand to let me know you've found it."

At that point Ash changed directions and took them farther off course, growing increasingly disoriented. How much distance had they put between themselves and the 101? Could they be looping back, wandering out into the winding highway just in time to get hit by a logging truck?

But even as the last image floated through her mind, a curtain of tranquility quickly descended. Her steps slowed until she came to a stop on a bed of leaves. She c.o.c.ked her head up toward the canopy. For all she knew, they had just burst through a rift between dimensions and emerged into a jungle in the Cretaceous period.

She squeezed Colt's hand. She could practically hear him smiling.

He opened the tripod. She heard the clack of metal on metal as he screwed the camera onto the base. The weight on her shoulder lightened as he took the rope from her.

With a snap he clipped it to the camera.

"Here we go," he said, and they started walking in a straight line away from the tripod. Fifteen feet later he stopped her and, taking her by the shoulders, aimed her back in the direction of what she a.s.sumed was the camera.

As soon as he placed the end of the line into her palm, it dawned on her exactly what Colt had planned.

"When you're ready to take the picture, pull the line 283 gently, and it will depress the shutter b.u.t.ton-but not too hard, because you don't want the tripod to tip over."

He slipped his hand around her waist.

She poked him in the ribs. "You better be smiling."

Then she set her head near his collarbone and pulled the cord. Even through her covered eyes, she could see the white pulse of the flash.

He started to move away, but she reeled him back in.

"Is it set up so we can take a second picture?" she asked.

"You know, just in case the first one didn't come out, and we lose our only proof that we were the first people ever to set foot here?"

He squeezed her hand again as an affirmative.

"Good," she whispered. Her free hand traveled up the rolling sinew of his arm, over his shoulder, and up his neck until it rested on the side of his face. She felt his hands firmly settle and then tighten on her ribs just below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as he pulled her toward him in antic.i.p.ation. As she raised herself up onto her toes, he was bending down to meet her halfway.

She paused only to feel the caress of his forehead against her own, before she parted her lips and slipped them over his.

The camera flashed again.

Between the underground parking lot and the stairwell in East Hall, Colt must have asked "You're sure this is okay?" nine times before she finally convinced him to 284 hush up for the rest of their trip down the hallway. Drunk on l.u.s.t, she nearly kicked open the door to her bedroom.

He'd barely stumbled inside, tangled in her arms, when she slammed the door shut behind him.

He was able to tear his face away from hers long enough to sniff the air. "Have you been barbecuing in here?"

"Roommate's perfume," Ash mumbled, and pulled his face down to hers again. They stumbled back to the twin-size bed, where Ash tipped over the footboard and sprawled out onto the old lacy bedspread she had replaced the charred one with.

"You're sure this isn't too fast?" Colt lingered at the foot of the bed. His body swayed back and forth like he couldn't decide whether to pounce on top of her or back out of the room and into a cold shower.

Ash unclasped her sandals and kicked them off-one of them bounced off the window-before launching herself onto her knees. "You really don't know when to shut up, do you?" She seized a fistful of his s.h.i.+rt and dragged him down on top of her.

This time Ash went for his mouth a little too aggres-sively, and they accidentally b.u.mped teeth as their lips met. Ash giggled nervously.

"What did I tell you about being patient?" he said.

She nibbled his earlobe playfully and whispered, "What did I tell you about talking?"

The laughter faded as his hands found her hips and 285 he leaned into her. The cautious and gentlemanly Colt, who had half heartedly attempted to thwart her advances, yielded to a pa.s.sionate, unrestrained hunter's side of him she hadn't yet seen.

And she liked it.

Her fingertips wandered with a mind of their own, and soon they had untucked his s.h.i.+rt. As they slithered up his ribs, she closed her eyes and leaned back- Colt screamed.

Her eyes snapped open.

He grabbed his chest and toppled off the bed and out of view. Ash scrambled forward, and her first thought as he lay on her s.h.a.g carpet, moaning with pain, was that in his excitement he had suffered some sort of heart attack or coronary.

Instead, as the moaning retreated, his fumbling hands found the opening in his b.u.t.ton-down. With a hard yank the s.h.i.+rt ripped down the middle, sending b.u.t.tons skittering across the floor.

There, tattooed in the valley between his now bare pectorals, was a large red welt that was growing darker by the second.

Ashline's handprint was burned into his chest.

286.

INTERLUDE II.

Centr al Amer ica It's just past nightfall.

The jungle releases its steam to the heavens, and the sky is packed with stars now that the western winds have carried away the rain clouds. The guerillas have been trailing her since just before noon, when the bodies were finally discovered in the citadel. The little girl had been too much for two unarmed, unprepared laboratory tech-nicians, but the general was fairly sure that la pequena chu-pacabras would be no match for a parade of submachine guns.

Twelve hours later, she is growing fatigued. The hounds bark persistently somewhere to the north. The weary soldiers begin to sing in their native tongue, though they are closer than they think.

She tries everything she knows to deter them.

She rips off a piece of her clothing, ties it to a branch, and then quickly switches direction.

287.

She intentionally slices open her hand and bleeds on the trees to mark several false trails.

She even finds a mud patch in which to wallow, as if the earth could cleanse away her scent.

But still the soldiers follow relentlessly. Stabbing pains slalom through her abdomen, brutal reminders of her seventy-hour fast. Her pace slowed hours ago when the fruit esters stopped working their magic, and she dry-heaves several times from dehydration.

She has only the light of the northern star to follow, but soon a different light blossoms on the horizon. Over the sounds of the dogs and the singing men, she can hear the low voice of a woman at work. Fifteen more yards, and the trees separate until the girl sees the walls of a house, and beyond it a village.

The portly but beautiful woman sits on a chair scrubbing away at a haggard-looking s.h.i.+rt. Occasionally she pulls it from the basin, holds it up to the firelight, and clucks her tongue, only to push it beneath the surface again. Her singing resumes.

The older woman perks up as she hears the rustle of leaves, and her wrinkled labor-worn hands pause in their work. The little girl staggers out of the woods and casts a last pleading look at the woman before her knees crumple. She crashes to the ground with her cheek pressed into the dirt. Her mouth moves slowly, forming silent, shapeless words.

The basin tips over, and the woman kneels at her 288 side. "Nina," the woman whispers. Then she cries out, "Cristobal! Jesus!"

The front door buckles open. Her husband stumbles out onto the stoop to find his wife leaning over the unconscious child. A younger man with the same stone-chiseled chin appears behind him. The father scoops the little girl into his arms and carries her into the single-story house. They wind their way through the kitchen and into a back room that reeks of sawdust and oil. The young-est son kicks away tools with his feet and, with quick work, unfolds a fresh newspaper to cover the soiled floor.

The man lays her down on her side, so that her face rubs against the picture of the fierce uniformed man on the cover. Her head slumps to the side so that her unblinking eye rests next to today's date- 3 de mayo.

"Agua!" the man shouts to the woman, who has been fussing in the doorway. She comes back almost instantly with a ladleful of water, which he s.n.a.t.c.hes from her and presses to the little girl's chapped, dehydrated lips. Somewhere in her dying brain, survival instincts kick in, and she finds the strength to slurp down some of the cool liquid. Most of it spills onto the front of her mud-stained s.h.i.+rt.

The father taps the girl's face, and her eyelashes twitch in response-improvement!

The woman dashes into the kitchen, and as she goes to fill a tin cup with water, she remembers the leftover chicken broth on the stove. Yes, the girl will need nutrients.

289.

She hears a high-pitched yelp from the other room.

They're losing her fast. She dips the cup into the Crock-Pot and hustles back to the work room, praying that she's not too late.