Turnabout

forehead as well. Passing through the town of Bowie, Valenti knew he had less than a hundred miles to go before he got to Laurie Dupree's house. He hoped he wasn't walking into a trap laid by Duff, but he felt certain he wasn't. If she were working with the bad guys, she wouldn't have bothered to warn him. He wondered if Duff was now placing her law enforcement career in the same kind of jeopardy into which he had put his own when he'd begun helping Max and the others. He didn't know what he and Amy and Duff and Laurie would be able to accomplish once they got together, but he was comforted that at least he had allies. Not only did he have allies, but so did the kids. He wondered what was happening with the kids since they had e-mailed him yesterday, and hoped that the reason the Special Unit was putting the squeeze on their parents now was because the teens had managed once again to elude their government pursuers. I'll die before I give those bastards any information that might lead them to Kyle, he thought, his jaw set in a hard angle of determination. And I'm willing to bet that Amy and the Evanses and the Parkers feel exactly the same way. Elk, New Mexico At the Special Unit's safe house, Special Agent Patrick Harrison was getting annoyed. When he had gotten the clearance to move in with a special ops takedown in Roswell in the predawn hours, he'd expected it to go smoothly. And to some extent, it had. But to a much larger extent, it hadn't. One of the sweeper teams had picked up Jeff and Nancy Parker without much trouble, but things had gone south when he and his own team had broken into the Evans household. Phillip Evans had been talking to someone on a cell phone prior to his capture, but he had destroyed the phone before they could take him. They had also found a security camera hidden in the living room, which had been outfitted with a broadcast antenna. When they disconnected the cam they had shut down its carrier signal, but they had been unable to determine where the signal had been sent. Shortly afterward, Harrison got word that Special Agent Paige's team had been unsuccessful in capturing Amy DeLuca and Jim Valenti; they had been unable to find them in the several hours that had elapsed since their escape. Harrison expected that Valenti might have left the area, and that caused him concern. Valenti was a law enforcement officer, and therefore had access to resources that most civilians didn't. Harrison ordered the ineffectual Sheriff Hanson to cut off all access codes for Valenti to state or federal databases, and had him put all of his deputies on alert for any sign of either Valenti or DeLuca. «Matters related to national security» was the justification Harrison had given the tongue-tied young sheriff; Hanson had apparently lacked the stones to put up much of a protest. The only other potential persons of interest they hadn't detained were Brody Davis and Charles Whitman. The Davis character ran the UFO Center, and although he'd apparently had extensive contact with the alien teenagers over the past couple of years, his dossier showed that he was essentially clueless as to who and what the teens really were; there was no reason to assume he knew anything about their current whereabouts. Whitman hadn't had more than passing interaction with the parents of his late son's friends for quite some time now. There was no reason for coming after either of them, at least for now. The news from the California compound hadn't been much better than that from Roswell. Three of the alien subjects apparently had been captured in New York, but during their transfer to the Los Angeles facility, two of them had escaped. Commander Matthew Margolin «Viceroy» had passed along the alarming news that with the simultaneous sightings of the aliens in Wyoming and New York, the Special Unit might now be dealing with duplicates of the metahuman teens. Or perhaps even shapechangers. The latter concept chilled Harrison to the bone. Many years ago he had been drafted into the Special Unit by an agent named John Stevens, and he had come willingly. While other government agencies dealt with terrorist threats, military coups, homeland security, or other issues related to national defense, only the Special Unit was in the business of protecting America and its people from the very real threat posed by extraterrestrial beings who had already penetrated the nation's borders. The fact that the Roswell teens had remained undiscovered for so long in a town already seen as a hotbed of alien rumor-mongering was terrifying in and of itself. They are already living among us, and we've been powerless to ferret them out for more than half a century now, Harrison thought. With the alien incursion already a fait accompli, who could say what else they might do? Although Stevens had disbanded the Unit a few years ago, Harrison and the others had been relieved and gratified when Margolin reactivated it. Most of the Unit members considered it their highest patriotic duty to help defend the country against aliens. Especially those that look enough like real humans to hide themselves among us, he thought. Until they decide to turn you inside out or lay their alien eggs in you. Harrison heard the floor creak almost imperceptibly behind him, and turned toward the sound. Agent Cutler was standing there, a frustrated look on his face. He was one of the best interrogators the Unit had, and he'd been interviewing the teens' parents for the past several hours. «Anything yet?» Harrison asked. Cutler shook his head. «Nope. They've all pretty much clammed up. And they want to see each other, to make sure the other parents haven't been harmed.» Harrison snorted derisively. «Have they?» «We knocked the guys around a bit, but nothing major,' Cutler said. «Mostly internal bruising. Phillip Evans is really hollering about his civil rights.» Cutler pulled a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and lit it. «We've been giving the women lots of water and juice. They're pretty uncomfortable now since they can't go to the bathroom.» «And they still haven't told you anything useful at all?» Harrison asked. «Nothing yet. They seem pretty set on not telling us anything.» Cutler took a drag on the cigarette and exhaled the noxious gray smoke. «So, I'm going to proceed to the next step in the interrogation process. You wanna be there?» Harrison nodded. «What's the next step?» Cutler smiled a barracuda smile of yellowed teeth. «We give them what they want. We let them see each other.» Nancy Parker was shaking so badly from fear that she could barely walk as they maneuvered her down the hallway. It didn't help that the dark cloth hood they'd put over her face barely let any light in; she could see the shapes of the agents, and the hallway walls of what appeared to be a private home, but she could make out nothing more specific than that. «Where are you taking me?» she asked, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. Her leg throbbed where she had cut it that morning while trying to escape the agents who had invaded the Crashdown, and her bladder was so full, she thought she might burst at any moment. Though they had been interrogating her for hours, they hadn't yet allowed her to use a bathroom. None of her captors answered her, and she dimly saw a door being opened in front of her. The room beyond was bright, and very hot. Someone pushed her inside, and forced her to sit in a chair. Suddenly, the hood was removed, and brightness flooded her vision, forcing her to close her eyes against the painful glare. She heard her husband's voice before she could make out his shape. «Nancy. Are you okay? Have they hurt you?» Squinting toward the sound of his voice, she saw Jeff. He was shackled to some kind of T- shaped post against the wall of a spare, cream-colored room that was almost entirely devoid of furniture or decorations. Jeff's clothes were disheveled, huge sweat stains darkening them under his arms and across his chest. She couldn't see any blood, though she thought his eyes looked oddly unfocused. «I'm fine, baby,' she said. «But I really could use a trip to the bathroom. What have they done to you?» «Nothing that won't heal,' said a familiar voice. The man sat down in a chair nearby, between her and Jeff. He was the one who had been interrogating her already, on and off for the last… how many hours have we been here? The man was short, with a receding hairline and wavy hair; absurdly, he reminded Nancy of that comedian that Liz had liked so much. Rob Schneider, she thought his name was. He turned to look over at Jeff. «Now we've given you something that you wanted you got to see each other. So it's time for you to give something to us. Quid pro quo.» «Get stuffed,' Jeff snarled. Nancy silently prayed that his defiant attitude wouldn't cause him any more pain. «We don't know anything. And we don't owe you anything.» The interrogator calmly lit a cigarette, then moved his chair closer to Nancy's. «Hmmmm, we don't believe you, Mr. Parker. We think you know more than you might think, and certainly more than you want to admit. How about we ask the questions, and if you do know the answer, you tell us?» He blew smoke into Nancy's face, making her cough. «First question.» Interrogator puffed on the cigarette and nodded to one of the other silent agents who had joined him in the room. The other man grabbed Nancy's arm, pulling it forward. Interrogator put the cherry end of his cigarette next to it. Nancy tried to pull her arm away from the heat, but the man only moved the cigarette closer. «What powers does your daughter have, and how did she get them?» Jeff glared, but didn't say anything. A moment later, Nancy felt searing heat connect with her forearm, and she screamed. «Stop! Stop!» Jeff yelled. «Liz says she can see the future sometimes, and 'zap' people. We don't know what that means. And we don't know how she got the powers.» Interrogator smiled at Nancy. «See, that wasn't so hard, was it?» Nancy tried to spit at him, but the spittle just dribbled down onto her shirt. Interrogator stood and walked over to Jeff. He put his hand up to Jeff's neck, his thumb on one side, his forefinger on the other. «Your turn, Nancy. Every second you don't answer my question will be a second that your husband's brain doesn't get any blood.» «Nancy, don't,' Jeff started to say, but the sound was cut off as Interrogator squeezed. Calmly, their torturer looked toward Nancy. «How many of the aliens are there? Max, Isabel, Michael, Tess… who else? Are there more than them?» Nancy's mind whirled. It was one thing to be brave when facing the agents in a room by herself, but she couldn't watch them torture Jeff. Her husband looked at her, his eyes pleading. She didn't know if he was pleading for her to not tell, or for her to stop the torture. Seconds ticked by. Jeff's face was reddish and getting more so, and he began to twitch against his bonds. His eyes fluttered, and