Preview: TWISTED FATES
THE UNINHIBITED
“When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be.”— Lao Tzu
Ashland, N. C. (AP) — A meteor streaked across the eastern sky in a brilliant fireball over the Nantahala National Forest on the North Carolina/South Carolina state line before exploding, raining debris and fragments upon the ground. Some of these pieces were reported to have fallen into the Blue Mountain Reservoir, a part of the Cedar Rock watershed. An X (formerly Twitter) post from the U.S. Space Command has confirmed that the meteor, originating from an unbound hyperbolic orbit with a velocity indicating an interstellar trajectory, did indeed come from a different star system than our own.
The call came as soon-to-be-retired Detective Mike Wilson’s Chevy Tahoe crested the steepest point of Pecan Hollow Road above Cedar Rock, the town he’d resided in for nearly ten years. Fumbling for his phone, he cranked the wheel to pull into the strategically placed lookout area on his right and brought the SUV to a stop.
He had found himself repeatedly grateful for the little turn-off ever since taking possession of the cottage he now called home. The overlook, placed like it was in a natural gap between the trees, with just enough room for three or four cars to fit before the ground dropped away on the other side of the guard rail, gave the tourists enough of a bird’s eye view of the town and valley below to keep the brunt of them from continuing on up the road and into his driveway. He had two posts and a chain at the entrance, but he tended to only attach it on his way in for the night. More than once he’d returned to find the odd, more adventurous vehicle turning around in his small patch of yard.
“We got him,” Ken said in his ear. The other investigator didn’t need to clarify who he was talking about; Mike knew he was referring to “Jack-it Jake,” who had been terrorizing the town and surrounding county’s citizens for weeks and had recently moved up from petty theft and carjacking to burglary and murder, which he had committed in a spectacularly heinous way.
“Where? Is he being brought here?” Mike shifted the phone to the other ear, glancing up as something glinted in the sky above him.
He turned his head, both Ken and Jack-it Jake temporarily forgotten, and followed the object tearing across the sky, the head of it growing brighter and brighter as it angled downward.
Whatever it was, it was coming in hot and fast, too fast to be a plane. He dimly registered the distant sound of Ken’s voice as he hastily shoved the door open and hopped out.
It’s a damn meteor, he thought, and then the burning mass grew even brighter and flared outward. Squatting, he threw his hands over his head instinctively as two more smaller flares followed before the blazing object passed over him, dropped behind the slope, and disappeared from sight.
“Holy shit!” He straightened up and ran around the Tahoe and over to the railing. He could hear Ken’s voice again, frantic now, coming from the phone still clutched in his hand.
Small hunks of burning debris—fragments from the larger piece that had blown apart—were plummeting down from the white haze of what remained of the thing’s contrail.
He started back to the Tahoe, bringing the phone shakily up to his ear. “Jesus. Sorry, Ken.” He turned back to look out again at the burning chunks still falling. “I think a damn meteor just came across right above—”
He broke off as he picked up the sound of something rushing at him. Then a crashing boom rent the air at the same time he felt a hard shove between his shoulder blades. Letting out a cry, he stumbled forward, phone flying out of his hand, and went down hard as two more booms rumbled across, sending reverberations in their wake.
He remained sprawled out for a second, then slowly got to his hands and knees, crawled over, and retrieved the now silent phone.
Breathing heavily, he rose to his feet and looked dazedly across at the vapor trail hanging in the air. He stood there watching the smaller pieces glowing in the sky as they arrowed downwards—until one of them came whizzing through the trees beside him and slammed into the forest floor with a sharp crack. Abruptly all the colors and sounds seemed to come back into everything and he realized the danger he was in.
He sprinted around the side of the Tahoe, yanked the door open, went to get in—and was all at once overtaken by a fit of sneezing.
Jerking and nearly giving himself whiplash, he sneezed loudly once … twice … and then a third time before he could get control of himself.
What the hell was that about? he wondered as he climbed the rest of the way in.
He pressed the power button to try and turn his phone back on, then gave up, flung it down, and started the engine to turn around and get back to town.
~
Like Mike, more than a few residents of Cedar Rock would feel the effects of the passing and subsequent explosion of their rocky alien visitor.
Some of them more acutely than others.
~
Ben Abbot maneuvered the lockbox back into its hiding spot behind the two cardboard cartons labeled “old Xmas.” To reinforce that belief that nothing of any significance would be discovered there, he’d left part of a dusty string of lights with several missing and broken bulbs dangling out of one, and using his feet, had shoved both stacks back into the insulation. Even if someone was ever curious enough to flip open the one on top, he doubted they’d be inclined to go any farther.
Now if someone showed up with a warrant to conduct a thorough search, he might be in for some trouble then. But at that point, it would all be over anyway.
He shut off the light and carefully descended the ladder to the second-floor hallway.
The two-story brick home, the only thing that remained from his parents, was all he had left. What he’d initially seen as a somewhat shabby step down from the home he’d always envisioned himself in had now become the only thing of value he owned. And he wouldn’t even have it if he’d let himself be coerced into selling it by his brother and sister so they could receive what they considered their fair share. Both claimed to have been assured by their mother, who had died following a short bout with cancer almost exactly one year after their father keeled over from a heart attack, that Ben would handle everything—i.e. buy them out or sell the house and divide the proceeds—when she passed. But though she had voiced this to Ben as well, she had not done so in the presence of the other two, allowing him to plead ignorance of it. And since it hadn’t been spelled out in the will …
It was a good thing he’d stood firm, too, and it was a good thing he’d also refused to mortgage the place when Austin landed in jail and needed money for bail and a decent lawyer. Or when Gabrielle, who’d just finished her first stint in rehab and had lost her job, her boyfriend, and then her apartment had called crying to him about it. Once the money had run out, it had been all he could do to keep the insurance and taxes paid and the utilities on. If he had listened to his brother and sister, the house would already be gone and he wouldn’t be currently employed by the technology solutions group that paid his salary. It had been the connection he'd forged with his new neighbor who’d bought the adjacent home when old Mrs. Lewis—a widow and mostly a shut-in, thank God, for as long as he could remember—had passed away that had gotten him the position.
He sometimes felt a tinge of uneasiness at severing the ties with his only remaining family, especially when he thought back to their childhood when things had been pretty good. But he always quickly reined in these nostalgic musings, knowing how dangerous it could be to let your emotions guide you. And though he did feel some sympathy toward the other two’s financial plight, he had to think of himself.
Outside, an unexpectedly sharp wind blew into him as he strode across to the Lexus he had finally allowed himself once he’d secured the position at Forward Solutions. He looked up, expecting to see a thickening mass of clouds settling across the sky, but to his surprise it remained clear excerpt for a faint haze and some white streaks in the direction of town.
Another strong gust swept across as he reached for the door handle, stirring up dirt and debris and sending his other neighbor fat old Tom’s watering can skittering across the grass between their houses.
He looked up again, blinking at the dust settling around him. Excerpt for those streaks and bit of haze the sky was clear and blue with no hint of a coming storm.
Mentally shrugging, he slid into the seat and shut the door. Before starting the engine, he reached into the console for the packet of Kleenex he kept there. He could feel the tickle of a sneeze coming on. Hurriedly, he yanked two out just in time to catch it and one more right behind it.
Wiping at his nose, he lifted up to look into the rearview mirror. Faintly bloodshot eyes stared back at him below a shock of disheveled dark hair. Great, he thought, dropping the tissue to pat down the unruly strands. Now I’m developing allergies.
~
Tim Barrow was moving along comfortably at a steady seventy miles an hour, after having just passed an elderly lady barely topping fifty, when the fancy black car appeared behind him. In no time it had covered the distance between them and practically landed on his bumper. Hurriedly Tim flipped on his blinker and started into the slow lane, but the black car was already whipping around and, heart leaping in his chest, he had to jerk the Camaro back over.
“Shit!” He glanced over as the car slid by him—a Lexus, he saw—and caught a glimpse of the driver: thirtyish, stylish dark hair, trendy clothes.
The guy in the Lexus continued in the slow lane another few car lengths, then shot back over in front of him.
It figured. The guy had more money, so he thought he owned the world and the world waited for him. “Asshole.”
Nevertheless, he didn’t need to be riding in the fast lane. He carefully checked over his shoulder and moved into the other lane, mercifully empty for a considerable distance ahead of him.
He was still thinking about the guy in the Lexus as he pulled into the QT five miles ahead to gas up and get a drink and maybe something for his head. Though he’d been fine when he’d gotten up, he was now beginning to feel a little off. There was an annoying scratchiness in the back of his throat and he had the beginnings of what promised to be a doozy of a headache.
He parked at the last empty pump, got out, and started across the parking lot. Two girls, both pretty with blond hair, exited the store and headed across in his direction. When they were nearly abreast, they looked over at him and smiled.
He was so startled it took him a second to react. He turned, walking backwards, to grin back at them—and belatedly realized they hadn’t been smiling at him but at the person driving the car that had just pulled in—the black Lexus that looked exactly like the one he’d encountered. Even more humiliating, one of the girls, glancing back as the smile faltered on his face, witnessed his mortification and, elbowing her friend, broke into giggles.
Face burning, he pivoted back around and continued on into the store, avoiding the eyes of two men coming out.
He started down the first aisle, clearing his throat. The scratchiness seemed to have intensified. Through the line of windows facing out, he saw the two men walking over to a newer model RV parked across the lot near the car wash. Something else he’d probably never have. What would an RV like that cost? All these people with all this money. Where did they get it?
Blowing out a breath, he pulled open the cooler door where the sodas were displayed, went to reach for an RC, and paused. He shut the door back. He wanted, he deserved, something better. He walked across to the beer section, selected two 24-ounce cans of Budweiser—that should do the trick—walked around, grabbed a two-pack of BCs and a Slim Jim on an end display, and headed for the front.
He paid the silent man at the register, walked out, and started back across to his aging, road-weary hulk of a car that he’d previously thought cool but now looked merely pathetic compared to the newer vehicles around it.
~
Ken was waiting when Mike came out of the restroom. He’d already had to stop once at Hardees on his way in and now his eyes were burning and he felt a headache coming on. In truth, he hadn’t felt right since he’d encountered the meteorite. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he picked up whatever this was from it.
“Why’s he in there?” he asked the deputy, falling into step beside him.
“Tom’s already working on someone.” Ken glanced at him then did a double-take. “Damn, you look like shit.”
“Thanks.” He came to stop before a door on their right. “Who’s he interviewing?”
“That son of bitch Lester Stevens.”
“He finally came in?” They had been asking the man to come in for additional questions about the death of his live-in partner but until now he had refused, giving one excuse after another.
Ken gave an amazed laugh. “He just showed up.”
“So now he wants to talk?”
“Oh yeah. Tom said he’s talking up a storm.”
“Confessing?”
“One can only hope. Or at least imparting critical information. Okay, I’m going to get some coffee. Tasha made a fresh pot if you want any.”
As if in protest, Mike’s stomach gave a cramp, and he put a hand to his stomach, wincing. “No, I’m good.”
“You all right?” Ken asked. “You really don’t look so hot.”
“I’m okay. I think I might have picked up a bug, though.”
“Yeah, something seems to be going around. Maybe you should head on home.”
Mike nodded. “Maybe. In a bit.” He went to open the door and then paused. “What’s ‘ol Jakey here been saying?”
“Not much so far. Claims it must have been an intruder. That might change, though.”
“One can hope,” Mike said, echoing his words.
Ken resumed making his way down the hall, and Mike, wondering what he’d find, pushed open the door of the slightly larger room they occasionally used when their normal interrogation room was occupied. In his experience suspects, the guilty ones anyway, usually reacted in one of two ways. They either feigned nonchalance or they became overly emotional. Was Lester in the other room acting like it was just another day and him coming in was simply an inconvenience, or was he gushing fake tears for the boyfriend they were pretty sure he had held down in the backyard pool until he drowned?
Jack-it Jake Mathews had opted for nonchalance and was kicked back in a chair on the other side of the long table in the center with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes closed. There was no way he was sleeping in that pose, though.
Mike grabbed another chair and flipped it around so the front was facing him, sat down, and rested his arms across the back. He stared across at the young man. Twenty-eight, covered in tattoos and already a piece of shit. There was absolutely no doubt that he had committed the latest carjacking (they had him on video), as well as the murder of his wife and her daughter from a previous marriage. He’d left enough evidence, including his DNA, verified by the national database, under his wife’s nails where they must have fought before he used the gun on her, to convict him several times over. And there he sat trying to play Mike, or else defiantly unconcerned at what he’d done and the possible consequences.
Damn, his head was really beginning to hurt. Maybe he should go home. And take about three Excedrin. “So … Jack-it-Jake, how’s it hanging?”
The creep in question’s eyes popped open without a trace of drowsiness. “Don’t call me that.”
Mike laughed softly. This guy … “Or what? You’ll bash my head in?” Because that’s what the bastard had done. He had shot his wife four times until he’d finally hit her heart and then had taken a hammer to the kid. Just thinking about it now made him want to simultaneously cry and scream in rage at the lousy specimen in front of him.
“The name’s just Jake, man,” Jake merely said, uncrossing his arms and sitting up.
Mike regarded him. “So were you messed up or what?” If he had been, it might make a teeny tiny smidgeon of difference. But was it something he had knowingly continued to partake of even though he knew what it was doing to him? Or was it a recent habit?
Did it matter? He’d had a woman suspect in one time that had told him something he had never forgotten. It had turned out that she’d had nothing to do with what they were investigating, but as they were talking, one thing had led to another and she had told him unequivocally that she was nothing like she had been when she was younger. “I don’t think like that anymore,” she told him. “There were reasons for it, of course. I see that now. But I am horrified at how I was and I know I would never do anything like that again. It’s like I’m a different person now, truly.” And he had believed her. Having kids of her own now, she had felt terrible about what she’d done. Just sick at heart. She had been going through some stuff at the time of the incident, had been really young, had a bad upbringing, with a few drugs and some drinking thrown in. He could see it.
But the acts this guy had committed. It was way beyond what she had done, which had been pretty bad, he had to admit. Hence the clearly sincere regret she had exhibited. She’d gotten drunk, drunker than she’d ever been, and started a fight with a girl she’d formally been good friends with she felt had betrayed her by sleeping with her boyfriend. And she’d beaten her up pretty badly.
Belatedly Mike realized he’d been wool gathering for a while as Jake, looking uncomfortable, shifted in his chair. “So, how ‘bout it, Jake. What’s the deal? Did you do too much meth that day? Been taking it all week, maybe?” Just lost your goddam mind for a bit? was on the tip of his tongue, but there was no way he was giving him the idea for an insanity defense.
Jake’s response was to glower at him.
“Come on, it’s just you and me. Was it that your wife was a nag, the kid a drain, and you decided to opt out of being a husband and a father figure?
“Or maybe you just saw a way to support your filthy habit, huh? You got a life insurance policy on anyone in your family? Oh, excuse me, I mean your former family?”
Jake rolled his eyes.
Anger instantly coursed through Mike, almost shocking in its intensity. “Did you just roll your fucking eyes?” He stood up. The son of a bitch. “Be a goddam man”—he jabbed a finger at him—“and own up to what you did! What’d you get out of it?” He leaned forward. “You cowardly piece of shit! Or do you have a girlfriend on the side that made you do it?”
At this, Jake physically recoiled and spat, “Ain’t no woman gonna tell me what to do!”
“So not about another woman. Was it money, then, you thieving, conniving little—”
“That’s not how it was!”
Mike went still.
Though Jake’s expression showed no immediate reaction to the blunder he had just made, he turned his face away, blinking hard, and began flicking his eyes about the room. Possibly he was just now registering the lack of cameras, and how it looked more like a conference room with the long table between them and additional chairs in the periphery than a space for interrogation.
“What is this, anyway?” he finally demanded, hope flickering across his face as the fact that he might not have been recorded sank in.
“What is what, Jakey?” Mike turned the chair around and pushed it back up to the table. “I told you, it’s just you and me.” And you have just admitted to me that you did it.
He felt his anger building again. If ever in his miserable career there was the perfect moment when he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that someone was guilty of atrocious acts and therefore certain measures were to be taken, this was it. What if the murdering piece of shit hurt someone else? Hurt another child?
He started down the long table, unsnapping his holster.
“What the fuck, man?” Jake began to rise. “You haven’t even read me my rights!”
Mike almost laughed, but there was nothing funny about the situation. And his head was killing him.
He pulled his sidearm out and pointed it ahead of him as he came around the table. Was he planning on actually shooting Jake or merely wanting to frighten him? Afterwards, the details would seem blurry to him, as if from a fevered dream.
“Whoa!” Jake cried, throwing out a hand and stumbling back.
“Freeze,” Mike barked, still moving toward him.
Jake, clearly hovering between terror and thinking Mike was bullshitting him in order to scare him and reap some kind of weird justice, halted his backward movement and dropped his arm. “You can’t do this.”
“Oh, but I can.” Stopping a few feet away, Mike held the gun steady and stared stonily at him. “What you did to that good woman and that sweet kid … that can’t just be let go.”
“Good?” Jake nearly shrieked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Why the hammer, Jake?” he roared back, advancing several steps.
“The goddamn gun jammed, okay!” Jake paused, taking deep breaths as if to calm himself when what he needed to be worried about was calming Mike. “Listen. I panicked. All I was going to do was pawn some of her stupid jewelry. Then she got all pissed off and started threatening all kinds of shit! Just because I took a couple of necklaces and some cash. Like it wasn’t MY goddam money in the first place.” He seemed to have forgotten Mike was pointing a gun at him as he relived the anger that had driven him that fateful day. “She was going to call the law on me. Her husband! After I took her and her stupid kid in and supported them.”
“Supported them with what, Jake? It’s been a while since you had a regular job, hasn’t it?”
“She was going to turn me in! She was going to have me put in prison. How could she do that?”
Ah, now we were cooking with Pam. “For the car jackings and other thefts.”
“Yeah, enough to put me away for fucking life. She was gonna do that to me! So I shot the bitch and killed her kid too.”
Mike lunged at him, all reason instantly gone. “You evil—” But before he could pistol whip him as he’d intended to do for starters, Jake dove forward, headbutting him in the stomach and then catching him in a bear hug and slinging him around and down to the floor.
Mike landed on his side, half on top of Jake and somehow managed to retain his weapon. Holding it out away from him, Mike rolled over, pushed himself up—thank God he tried to keep in shape; the little bastard was quick and strong—belatedly whipped Jake across the temple, followed that with a left hook, and gaining his feet, stumbled back.
He pointed the gun at him, breathing hard, but here came the snake again, slithering quick across the floor and hitting him hard around the shins and nearly yanking him off his feet. Falling forward, he felt his forehead impact the table before he caught himself with his free hand. Stunned, he didn’t move fast enough and Jake’s fist collided with his cheekbone as he swiveled around and was knocked sideways. Staggering, he did the only thing he could do at this point, and aimed at the blur rushing him and pulled the trigger.
Jake, hit in the upper chest area, jerked back as a spot of red bloomed across, catching himself on a chairback. He stared at Mike incredulously, a line of blood trickling from his mouth. “Fuck you,” he wheezed.
“Fuck you,” Mike replied. “For what you did to that kid.” And then he pulled the trigger again.
This time Jake went down, and stayed there.
~
“What the hell happened?” Pete, his former partner, demanded angrily. They’d once patrolled together a long time ago and now found themselves working together again, only this time with Mike, who’d preferred to remain an investigator while Pete climbed the political ladder, standing one step below in a subordinate position. They were momentarily alone in Pete’s office now that the stretcher carrying Jake’s sheet-shrouded form and the paramedics he’d insisted check Mike out had left and some of the hoopla had died down.
“Some of it’s kind of fuzzy,” Mike responded quietly. In all the years they had served together in one capacity or another, he had never lied to Pete. And he wasn’t about to start now. “But I remember being really angry because he said he did it.” His brow wrinkled. “But then …” Had he really been going to kill him? “I don’t know. He came at me … at least twice.” He shook his head. “And you know what he did, Pete.”
Pete pivoted around to face him, sweat glistening on his brown face. “You look like you’ve been in a fight. That’s what it looks like. You went in there, maybe you said some hard truths he didn’t like and he came at you, and you had to shoot him. Right?” His dark eyes drilled into Mike’s. “Or are you telling me something different happened?”
Mike closed his eyes briefly as images of him coming around the table and then Jake rushing him and taking him down flitted across his mind. “No, he definitely came at me.”
Pete nodded slowly. “That’s all I need to know.”
~
Rachel Matheson never heard the explosion as the interstellar object smacked into the mesosphere, blew apart, and dropped a rocky fragment into the one remaining field she’d bothered to cultivate along the back of her property. But her two dogs, Thor and Princess, did, and it was their barking that eventually jerked her upright on the couch the next afternoon where she had fallen asleep watching a particularly slow episode of The Bear.
Slightly disoriented, she wiped the drool from her chin and stood up to peer out the window. There was no one parked out back where the drive curved around. And neither of the dogs were in sight. But she could hear them off in the distance, carrying on again about something.
Grabbing the can of Coke off the coffee table, she took a swig and shoved her feet into the flip flops she’d changed into when she’d returned from her shift at the diner. She hated the early shift, but once again that hatchet-faced Oma had scheduled her to be there at the ungodly hour of 6:00 in the morning not once but twice this week.
She shuffled out of the room she used as a sort of den and followed the short hallway to the rear door.
“What have you got treed now?” she called out wearily as she stepped onto the smallish porch and looked out across what remained of the land left to her by her grandmother when she passed away three years before. Rachel had needed to leave the situation she was in and since she’d had no wish to go to her mother’s or her father’s where they each lived now after divorcing and selling her childhood home, she had come here. It had seemed like a sign at the time, her grandmother passing and leaving it to her right when she desperately needed it.
So far she’d managed to keep from selling most of the acreage except for a few sections that adjoined the neighboring properties, but with the roof the way it was and her car ready to die at any minute, it looked like more would have to go soon. If anyone would even buy it. At some point, it would make more sense to sell the whole thing, both the house and the land, lock, stock, and barrel, than to keep parceling it out. But she hated to. She loved it there, wild and rustic as it was.
But she just didn’t make enough money at the diner. And with her job being so miserable, she couldn’t stand the thought of adding any extra shifts. She barely had a life as it was.
She descended the three steps to the hard-packed ground, crossed over the weedy patch of grass, in need of mowing again, and started across the fallow field beyond. Thor and Princess had both gone silent, she noticed.
On the other end of the bare, unplowed section, she paused momentarily as she caught a glimpse of the dogs through the stand of trees there. Whatever it was, they had it pinned in the lower field.
Instead of taking the track around, she cut through the undergrowth, pushing branches out of the way, and clamored down the bank, flip flops sliding, into the cleared area before the rows of tomatoes and corn and other vegetables.
Thanks to the afternoon thunderstorms they’d been having, everything seemed to be flourishing. She entered the first row and started across to where the dogs were on the far side.
If Randy down at the Sav-A-Lot would accept everything, she might get enough money to fix the air conditioner in the car, at least. She stopped a few feet back from the dark, shaggy form of Thor and the slighter, rust-colored Princess. “What you got there?”
Huddled over whatever it was with their backs to her, both of the dogs remained eerily silent and showed no reaction to her voice.
“Thor?” She moved a little closer, the hair prickling on the back of her neck. He was a solid black lab mix supposedly containing a bit of wolf that she’d inherited from her ex-boyfriend—the one she’d fled to come there. But other than having a thicker than average coat and an overly large head, you’d never know it. He was more teddy bear than wolf and absolutely adored her. Other people, however, found the dog a bit frightening, mainly because of the disconcerting habit it had of lifting its upper lip to reveal its teeth whenever greeted. He looked like he was about to tear into you but really he was only smiling. Crazy dog.
“Princess?” This time her voice managed to yank their attention away from what she now saw as she came around was a blackened object roughly the size of a small ham in the middle of a shallow crater about five feet in diameter. Princess and Thor swung their heads around and gave a few halfhearted tail thumps, then turned back to the charred chunk.
Out of all of the fields, it had to land right here on two of her best rows of heirloom tomatoes.
She stepped over to nudge one of the broken, limp plants that had been flattened during the impact. Even the ones not hit directly were going to be a total loss.
She looked again at the rock lying in the center of the depression, then craned her neck to gaze upward at the hazy sky where the damn thing must have come from.
A freakin’ meteorite. It had to be. She wondered just how many years it had traveled and how far it had come.
“Come on, Thor,” she called, dropping her gaze. “Come on. Get away from there. Come on, Princess.”
The two dogs hesitated then finally trotted over when she called out again a bit louder.
Pressing into her leg, Thor looked back at the strange rock and emitted a low whine deep in his throat that Princess, on the other side of her, copied a second later.
“It’s okay,” she reassured them, reaching down to give each of them a pat. “Now stay,” she said with a motion of her hand.
She made sure they were going to obey and then hesitantly approached the rim of the small crater.
End of sample