Storm Born

Chapter 2-1

2

“We’ve had a ping, sir,” one of the analysts told Agent Randall Lenz.

He immediately set down the tablet that held the report he’d been skimming and walked over to the analyst’s workstation. Not quickly, because he wanted to make sure he always looked in control no matter what the situation, but inside, he couldn’t quite repress a twinge of excitement. The search had been very quiet lately, and he’d begun to wonder if he was going to get called in front of his superiors to once again justify his budget, even though he believed it had more than paid for itself with the subjects he’d collected over the past few years. Unfortunately, most government agencies seemed to operate on the principle of “what have you done for me lately?”, making Lenz even more eager to obtain a new candidate to add to the group already housed here at the facility.

The division he worked for had a purposely vague title. Technically, he and his support staff operated under the umbrella of Homeland Security, but their mission had very little to do with protecting the country’s borders. No, he was far more interested in the enemies within.

“Target?” he asked Agent Dawson, the analyst who’d addressed him.

She glanced up from her screen. With a little more polish, she might have been pretty, but since she wore little makeup and always had her pale brown hair pulled tightly back into an unadorned ponytail, she mostly reminded Lenz of a schoolgirl masquerading as a government agent. “Adara Grant,” Agent Dawson said.

Interesting. Ms. Grant had popped up on the division’s radar two years earlier, but there had been no further incidents, and Lenz had thought it most likely that she’d triggered a false positive, rather than possessing any of the special talents he was seeking. But if she’d reappeared again after being dormant for nearly eighteen months….

“Details,” he said, making sure his tone remained brisk and businesslike, betraying nothing of the excitement that had begun to surge within him. Agent Dawson typed a command into her keyboard, bringing up a screen with a photo of the young woman in question, along with a string of previous addresses and contacts.

“Kanab, Utah,” the agent told him. “There was a call to 911 after lightning struck a tree on the property her mother, Lyssa Grant, is renting.”

On the surface, the report didn’t seem particularly conclusive. Lightning struck thousands of trees every year. However, Adara Grant’s file had been flagged so it would send out a ping any time a strange weather event occurred in her known location, meaning this probably hadn’t been any ordinary storm.

After all, odd weather seemed to dog the young woman, no matter where she went. He supposed it was a good thing that she’d never traveled to the South or the eastern seaboard, or those regions might have been plagued with even more hurricanes than usual.

“Weather?” he asked.

“Forecast for Kanab, Utah, called for clear skies and highs in the upper eighties, with light winds. Zero chance of precipitation.”

“Yet there was a storm.”

“Yes, sir.” Agent Dawson typed in another command, and immediately feeds from local traffic cameras filled her screen. Lenz could see that the skies over Kanab had been fiercely, brightly blue, making the red sandstone rock formations that flanked the town stand out in sharp contrast. As he watched the videos, he saw the sky darken, fierce thunderheads boiling up apparently out of nowhere to blanket the area. Lightning stabbed downward from those clouds, although the video he watched didn’t reveal where it struck.

Those images all looked promising, but he knew he couldn’t jump to conclusions. While he wasn’t overly familiar with the weather patterns of the American Southwest — he’d lived his entire life on the East Coast — he did know that Utah and Arizona and New Mexico could get pounded by some fairly spectacular thunderstorms during the summer months.

“Typical monsoon storm?” he inquired, playing devil’s advocate, and at once, Dawson shook her head, fawn-colored ponytail bobbing slightly.

“No, sir. My research tells me those storms aren’t due to begin until the end of the month at the earliest. Also, there were absolutely no clouds in the area before this storm began. It just…came out of nowhere. Our models give this particular incident an eighty-seven percent chance that it was somehow caused by Adara Grant.”

Why now, when things had been quiet for so long, when he’d mentally moved Ms. Grant from his very short list of possible subjects down to the also-rans, those people who might have been dogged by strange coincidences but who didn’t seem to show any special abilities after all? Agent Lenz had no idea, but he thought it was time to find out.

“I’ll need the jet,” he said, and Agent Dawson nodded.

“On it, sir.” She glanced up at him. “Approximate flight time is three hours and forty-five minutes. There’ll be a car waiting for you at Kanab Municipal Airport when you land.”

“Thank you, Agent Dawson,” he said, and she nodded but didn’t smile.

“Anything else, sir?”

“Have Adara Grant’s updated file sent to my computer,” he told her.

Another nod, and the analyst went to work. Agent Lenz left her workstation and headed back to his office to retrieve his laptop and briefcase, along with the duffle bag he always kept packed and ready in case he needed to head out on a moment’s notice.

As he went, he found himself smiling slightly. The young woman in question had managed to stay under his radar for quite a while, but now he thought he might finally have her within reach.

He couldn’t wait to start exploring the limits of her peculiar abilities.