Gone

sure she’s two bars.”
    Caine nodded. Then he sighed as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. “Put her on the list, Jack. Astrid the Genius: two bars. With a question mark.”
    Jack pulled out his PDA. It no longer got internet, of course, but its other functions still worked. He punched in the security code and opened the file.
    The list opened. There were twenty-eight names on it, all Coates kids. In the column after each name was a number: one, two, or three. Only one name had a four after it: Caine Soren.
    Jack focused on thumbing in the information.
    Astrid. Two bars. Question mark.
    He tried not to think about what it meant for the pretty blond girl.
    “That went better than I hoped,” Caine said to Diana. “I predicted there’d be some local bully we’d have to deal with. And I said there would be a natural leader. We get the bully working for us, and we keep an eye on the leader until we’re ready to deal with him.”
    “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Diana said. “He’s cute.”
    “Did you get a reading on him?”
    Jack had seen Diana take Sam’s hand. So he was amazed when Diana said, “No. I didn’t have a chance.”
    Jack frowned, uncertain if he should remind Diana. But that was stupid. Of course Diana would know if she’d read Sam or not.
    “Do it as soon as you can,” Caine said. “You saw the way everyone looked at him? And when I asked for nominations, his was the first name mentioned. I don’t like it, his being Nurse Temple’s son. That’s a bad coincidence. Get a read on him. If he has the power, we may not be able to wait to deal with him.”

    Lana was healed.
    But she was weak. Hungry. Thirsty.
    The thirst was the worst thing. She wasn’t sure she could stand it.
    But she had been through hell and survived. And that gave her some reason for hope.
    The sun was up but not yet touching her with its rays. The gulch was in the shade. Lana knew that her best chance was to make it back to the ranch before the ground grew as hot as a pie fresh from the oven.
    “Don’t start thinking about food,” she rasped. She was heartened to discover that she still had a voice.
    She tried to climb straight back up to the road, but two skinned knees and two abraded palms later she admitted that wasn’t happening. Even Patrick couldn’t make the climb. It was just too steep.
    That left following the ravine until, hopefully, it came out somewhere. It wasn’t an easy walk. In most places the ground was hard, but in other places it shifted and slid and landed her on hands and knees.
    Each time she fell, it was harder to get back up. Patrick was panting hard, plodding rather than bounding, just as tired and footsore as she was.
    “We’re in this together, right, boy?” she said.
    Brush tore at her legs, rocks bruised her feet. In places there were thickets of thornbush that had to be bypassed. In one place the thorns couldn’t be avoided, and she had to work her way through with time-wasting caution, accumulating scratches that burned like fire on her bare legs.
    But once through she laid her hand on the scratches, and the pain ebbed. After ten minutes or so, there was no sign of the scratches.
    It was miraculous. Lana was convinced of that. She knew she didn’t personally have the power to heal dogs or people.She’d never done it before. But how the miracle came about, she did not know. Her mind was on more pressing issues: how to scale this sudden rise, or skirt that bramble patch, or where, where, where in this parched landscape she could find water and food.
    She wished she’d paid a lot more attention to the lay of the land while driving to and from the ranch. Did this gulch head for the ranch, or did it veer past? Was she almost there? Was she now wandering blindly toward the true desert? Was anyone looking for her?
    The walls of the ravine weren’t as tall anymore, but they were just as steep, and closer. The gulch was narrowing. That had to be good news. If it was narrowing and becoming shallower, didn’t that mean she must be nearing the end?
    She had her eyes down on the ground, watching out for snakes, when Patrick stopped stock-still.
    “What is it, boy?” But she saw what it was. There was a wall across the gulch. The wall rose impossibly tall, far higher than the gulch itself, a barrier made of…of nothing she had ever seen before.
    Its sheer size, combined with its utter strangeness in this place, struck fear into her. But it didn’t seem to be doing