On the back of the door, taped at eye level, was a large piece of paper—what looked like thick and unevenly torn butcher’s paper.A crude sort of map had been drawn on it…but when he stepped closer, he realized that it really wasn’t that crude at all.In fact, it was a hand-drawn map of the greater Los Angeles area.Not all of the streets had been named, but there were lots of landmarks that had been labelled.The largest label of all was plain to see:LAX.The coastline was visible on the left side, and major highways were marked with thick black lines.But whatreallystood out were the colored lines that crisscrossed the city in various directions.
Miles studied the lines more carefully.They weren’t random; that was clear right away.Each one appeared to represent a flight path, drawn in different colors to distinguish between them.Red lines came in from the north.Blue lines approached from the east.Green lines descended from the south.Yellow lines traced routes from over the ocean.And they all either started or ended at that huge three-lettered label—LAX.
Miles felt understanding click into place.Was this how Clancy selected his victims?He tracked the flight paths that aircraft used to approach the airport.He watched where planes flew over the city on their descent.And anyone who worked at heights along those flight paths became a target.
No…no that didn’t quite make sense.No, there was something else going on here.He took out his phone and looked at the map Vic had been using, with the locations marked where the bodies had been found.He mentally applied those marks to the map—as well as the reservoir where Lisa Anderson had freed herself and the desert scene he’d been at three hours ago.All of those areas seemed to be locatedbetweenthose colored lines.
But what really clicked everything into place was that Vic’s pins were all within a decent distance of areas where Clancy had drawn blue circles.They weren’t as thick and prominent as what Miles was assuming were flight paths, but they were clear to see.
“Got you,” he said quietly.
"Kim," Miles called out, excitement building in his voice as he snapped a picture of the map."I think I’ve got something in here!”
She appeared in the doorway seconds later."What did you find?"
"I think I might know where two other launch sites are.”
She looked at the map, her eyes wide as she nodded.“Walk me through it.”
“The lines, I think, are flight paths.Maybe certain times, maybe certain airlines…I don’t know but I also don’t even know if that’s really important to us.Just look at those blue circles.There are six of them, all labelled.And they are all within a short distance of—”
“Of where the bodies of the victims were found.”
Miles pointed to the blue circle that was located exactly at the launch spot that Lisa Anderson had seen when she’d come out of her drugged haze earlier than Clancy had expected.And then, with a bit of hunting around the crude map, he found one positioned exactly in the same place within the desert where Clancy had attempted to launch Vivian Bennett.They were perfect matches.
“So these two,” he said, pointing at the two dots that didn’t line up with any of Vic’s pins, “are his last two launch points.”
“Okay…so do we just go check both of them out?”Kim asked.
Miles thought about it for a minute and shook his head.“No.If he was on the run and wanting to act quickly, I don’t think he’d risk coming back into the heart of the city.And this spot,” he said, tapping at a blue dot that was located downtown, “would take too long for him to reach.So that only leaves one.”
He tapped at the blue circle in question, slightly to the west of the desert location.“This one, right here…that would be in Vernon.”
“So we just drive out there and…and what?Look for weather balloons in the sky?”
“Yes.Or areas that would allow him to launch.Open areas without many eyes, that sort of thing.And maybe even dare to hope it will be harder for him now that he doesn’t have his little van of tricks.”
They were already moving back toward the front door as they made the plan.“We’ll give Morales a call and have her head over to the other location downtown just to be sure.”
When they left the house, Kim locked it behind them using her tools, and they jogged back to the car.Miles slid into the driver's seat while Kim climbed into the passenger side.And when he pulled away from the curb, even though they were still at least twenty minutes away from that Vernon-centric blue circle, Miles already found himself looking to the sky, thinking that he might see a few random weather balloons floating by, out of place…with a person hanging from them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The balloons floated above James Clancy like enormous jellyfish, their shimmering surfaces catching the afternoon sunlight.There were twenty of them in total, each one filled with helium and tethered to sandbags arranged in a circle around him.The ropes connecting the balloons to the harness he wore were taut, straining against the weight keeping them grounded.
He stood in the cracked parking lot behind what had once been a Food-4-Less grocery store.The building had been vacant for years, its windows boarded up and its walls covered in layers of graffiti.Broken shopping carts lay scattered across the lot, their metal frames rusted and bent.Empty bottles and fast-food wrappers collected in the corners where the chain-link fence from the neighboring abandoned property met the pavement.
Clancy had chosen this location carefully.It sat in an industrial pocket of Vernon, surrounded by warehouses and storage facilities that operated during business hours but emptied out by evening.No flight paths crossed directly overhead.The nearest residential area was three blocks away.He could do what needed to be done here without interference…just like the other launching areas.
The harness felt tight across his chest and thighs.He had tested it three times before putting it on, making sure every strap was secure and every buckle properly fastened.The same harness he had used for the others, now fitted to his own body.The perfect fit seemed to align with everything else perfectly ever since he'd escaped the agents in the desert.He'd stashed a backup car three blocks from his apartment two weeks ago, sensing that this job would be difficult, on the third level of a run-down garage.He'd tucked away enough helium for one last task and now…well, here he was.
Six victims.That had been the plan.Six people who spent a great deal of their time high up in the air, who manipulated gravity without fear, who breathed freely while looking down at the world from places he could never go.Six liberations to prove his devotion to the Elementalist's teachings.
But he had only completed two.He had failed miserably.Ah, and damn the first two had been so spectacular.After Michael Thompson, he thought it had seemed almost too easy—that he was going to finish his work and leave no traces at all.
And maybe that’s where things had gone wrong.Maybe he’d simply gotten too cocky.
Lisa Anderson should have been third.But in all of his planning, he’d not ever imagined that someone would have the fortitude and sheer will to somehow free themselves in such a way once they were airborne.And then the second failure…well, that had been a terrible mistake on his part.He’d been so eager to get Vivian Bennett out to the desert that he’d never even thought to discard her phone.Her very angry boyfriend had gloated about locating her because she’d had her phone on her when he’d slammed his head three times into the side of the van.
