Page 82 of Wind Valley

The perfect hiding place, Lachlan supposed, though they didn’t have time to check each of the many keys. Time was running out. The farther away Maura got, the more danger she’d be in.

He grabbed a crowbar and broke the lock open. Inside the box, between two pieces of soft black foam nestled a device that looked like a garage door opener.

“This is really it?” He brandished it in front of Andrea.

“Yes. I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s powerful.”

“What’s its range?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

Fuck. He jumped to his feet and hurried toward the door. “There’s only one way to find out. Pinky, you stay here. Andrea?”

“Oh, I’m coming,” she said quickly. “But if it works, the snowmobile won’t?—”

“I know. The magnetic pulse will interfere with all electrical activity in the vicinity. Vehicles won’t function. That’s what Dr. Reed called a ‘null.’ That was the problem he kept running into. He told Pinky it was electrical storms, but it wasn’t. That disruptive pulse is why you came on skis instead of a snowmobile.”

“Not bad.” Andrea gave him a nod of respect.

He was pretty proud of himself that he’d put all that together. But it would mean nothing if his plan didn’t work. Once the device was triggered, SS’s snowmobile would stall out and he wouldn’t be able to get away. Especially if that armada showed up any time soon.

“Wait, you said ‘if it works.’ But you know it works, don’t you? Why else would you be here?”

She shook her head. “I’m here now because the Wave Core is very likely degrading. I have to retrieve it while it’s still viable. Have you noticed strange behavior in the wildlife? Maybe they can’t walk right, or they turn up in places they’re not supposed to be?”

“Chemicals are leaching out?” Lachlan frowned, then shook his head. “None of the chemicals in his formulas would cause that kind of problem.” He sorted through the various diagrams and formulas he’d been studying. “It’s the magnetic wave generator. It’s not properly contained.”

“It’s not properly calibrated,” she corrected. “Because we haven’t been there to monitor it. Jason knew it would be a problem one day. He just wanted to destroy it. He hired someone to come here and take care of it, but he never got close.”

“The grenade.” So that’s what the wolf attack victim had been here to do. His bad luck that he’d fled into Chilkoot territory. Bleakly, Lachlan wondered if the man was even still alive.

As he pushed through the door, he called to Pinky, “Don’t be alarmed if anything running on electricity stops working. I don’t know how long it will be. Stoke up the fire and get your candles out.”

“Boy, this is backcountry Alaska. I never even had electricity until about nineteen?—”

“Tell me the whole story later!” Lachlan yelled as the door closed behind him.

Outside, Andrea confronted him. “Give me the trigger. If you give me your snowmobile, I’ll head right toward Wind Valley. I’ll try it every few minutes.”

Lachlan eyed her. He couldn’t trust her, since she was a virtual stranger. But if he understood her motives, maybe he could trust those. “What do you want out of this?”

“I want what he promised me. He said we were going to change the world. I believed him. I still believe him. If the Wave Core works, and we can scale it up?—”

“And fix the null problem.”

“Of course. And the calibration issues.”

“Are they fixable?” he asked with a frown.

“I don’t know!” She threw her hands in the air. “He said no, but I don’t trust him. He stuck us here in the middle of the wilderness and made us live like animals and then it was all for nothing. As soon as he started getting results, we left.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. He said it was making the kids sick, but that wasn’t the real reason. He just said it was for the best.” Her face flushed with remembered rage. “I wasn’t stupid. I was very idealistic and I believed in his vision. But he treated me like a child, even though my family gave him the money we needed for his work. It took me years to see how narcissistic he was. I suffered for that thing, now I want what I sacrificed for.”

That all rang true to Lachlan. Andrea Reed wasn’t out to hurt anyone. She just wanted what she considered to be rightfully hers. This “Wave Core.” Dr. Reed must have changed the name from whatever he’d told Pinky—the “Wavy-gravy gobbledy-golloolly-spectro-something.”

“If the trigger works and the Wave Core emits a pulse, will you promise not to turn it off again for at least half an hour? That should give us enough time.”

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