Free No Immunity by Susan Dunlap

a rare ability to read the sediment. But here’s the truth, Tchernak, what I read is the local people. I spot the guy who’s nosed out the oil. Sometimes it takes me months, but I always find the real explorers. Then I follow them. It’s that simple. Oh, my experience, my background in geology helps, but it’s the locals who’re key.” He shrugged. “But now I’ve got responsibilities up here.”
    “Didn’t you ask what those responsibilities were?” Kiernan would demand. Well, no. Grady didn’t seem eager to talk about them, and God knows, he himself didn’t want to hear about them. They’d sat, awkwardly silent, he suddenly swilling the watery beer, the familiar salt and grease of airport eateries smelling stronger, more cloying, till he could “feel” it on the glass and the table. And then the Broncos scored and they could talk sports until it was time for Grady’s plane.
    What had struck him so strange, then? He squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to run the film back, to pause at that moment before he got caught up trying to avoid having to hear about Grady’s problem with his girlfriend. The girlfriend. Footloose Grady signing on for three more maudlin evenings. Wasn’t like the guy couldn’t get laid somewhere else. Women loved Grady’s little-boy bravado. Grady was only five-six, and still, when he went out with the football guys, it was little Grady who ended up with the girl. And here, hell, this was Nevada, any guy could get it here. So, why did Grady care about her? No, not the right question. Unless Grady had changed completely, the question was, What did he want from her?
    Tchernak smiled. Grady had local responsibilities. And he was gone a lot. Bingo. He didn’t have to have Grady here to ask who was looking after those local responsibilities in his absence. What was her name? But now that name might as well have been three civilizations down at the bottom of Grady’s suitcase.
    Dead end. For the time being.
    He opened his eyes and stared at the dull gray screen. What else would Kiernan do? How would she find out what those responsibilities of Grady’s were? Bills?
    Three minutes later Brad Tchernak was smiling again, looking at a gas and electric bill from an address across town.
    He checked the e-mail. But it was way too soon for Persis to get back, even if she pushed him to the front of the list. He could call her. He could e-mail and tell her to hold the data till he contacted her. No, as soon as she heard that, she’d figure there was no rush and go back to whatever she was doing when she got his message. Better to let things go, and check back in here after he tracked down Grady’s local responsibilities at the utility-bill address. A man who makes a sudden foreign trip and comes home to disappear, what could he have stashed across town?
    As Tchernak closed the apartment door behind him, he was thinking of Kiernan. Often enough he’d labeled her cold, distant, said it wasn’t normal the way she could mm off emotions, but now he envied her self-control. Grady Hummacher weighed on him. He cared about the guy, and he was damned worried.

CHAPTER 12

    The first thing Kiernan noticed when she pulled off the highway was the line of dead birds, a thick black shadow of the power line above. Las Vegas. Was there any other major city so totally committed to winning the war against nature? She turned toward the McCarran Airport exit. The airport was in the middle of town. She’d almost taken the previous exit when she spotted the soaring tower. Only at the last minute did she realize that tower was not the airport control tower but part of the Stratosphere Casino. The whole city was so flat around the sudden bursts of cartoonlike casinos that she had the feeling of driving on a game board, looking out for oversized markers.
    At the first stoplight she dialed Tchernak’s message number. No message for her. The light turned green. She plunged ahead between the clumps of apartments,