Desperate to recover his child, Max became unpredictable. He tracked down Kal Langley and forced him to help Max try to return to Antar, but they were unsuccessful. Isabel, rebelling against Max's orders that none of the aliens get further involved with humans, married the man she had been secretly dating, Jesse Ramirez. Michael grew restless under Max's unfocused leadership and attempted to take control of the group himself. And Tess eventually returned with Max's child, which had been rejected on Antar since it was fully human.

In spring 2002 everything came to a boiling point. 1 Special Unit was closing in, gathering evidence a teens. In an attempt to redeem herself, Tess blew up the nearby military base, but this caused further complications for the group. Max sent his child away so he could live safely with a human family, and the group found itself on the run from Roswell, traveling in a VW Microbus.

Max, Liz, Isabel, Michael, Maria, and Kyle now travel the country, trying to help others along the way. Max and Liz have finally married, but their happiness is tinged with hardship. They are all still pursued by the Special Unit, the Skins, and other aliens hidden among the human race. Even though they escaped Roswell, they cannot escape the forces arrayed against them…

I he storage locker's corrugated metal door had seen better days. When Quinn touched it, it rattled like a chain dragged by a ghost.

"So you lost your keys again, huh?" Rafferty asked, shaking his head as he pulled the pry bar from his tool belt and stuck it into the padlock. The lock gleamed like it was brand new.

Quinn wondered how many times the aging, spike-haired punker was going to repeat his little mantra about the keys. "Yeah, Rafe," he said tartly. "I lost my key again. Or the lock's seized up. Or maybe I just like watching a manly guy like you forcing doors open. Take your pick. So you gonna open it up or not? “

Quinn might have broken into the locker himself, without any help from the man in charge of the storage facility. But too many uncomfortable questions would have arisen if Rafferty had caught him at it.

Rafe held up his free hand, as if fending off Quinn's words. "Okayokayokay. Don't need a loada mouth outta you. “

"Likewise," Quinn said, leaning against the cinder-block wall and lighting another unfiltered cigarette. He knew he needed to keep calm. The cache of drugs and automatic weapons Mr. Conroy had stashed here would set him up for the rest of the decade. If his deal with Nasr went down by tonight, before any of Conroy's other guys realized what Quinn had done.

Mr. Conroy sure doesn't need the stuff anymore himself, Quinn thought, hoping nobody would find what was left of his former boss before he'd fled the country and was safely set up in a beachfront estate on Grand Cayman.

Rafferty's close-cropped, dyed-blond hair bristled like the quills of an angry porcupine. "Yer damn lucky I don't stand on ceremony, kid. I could always decide to enforce the 'no key, no get in' rule, ya know. “

Unimpressed, Quinn blew a cloud of smoke into the other man's face. "Yeah, Rafe. And I could always decide to tell the cops about some of the unsavory characters you're in the habit of doing business with. “

"More unsavory than you?" Rafferty said, his eyes narrowing. Quinn wondered for a moment whether he was going to raise the pry bar and try to brain him with it. Then, with a sullen scowl, the punker twisted the bar forcefully. The padlock shattered into countless tiny pieces, which rained down onto the concrete.

"Good work, Rafe," Quinn said, favoring Rafferty with a lopsided grin as he grabbed the storage locker's door handle. "You ought to consider going pro. “

Rafferty only watched in silence as Quinn pulled upward on the rust-and-graffiti-covered door.

It wouldn't budge.

"Is there another lock somewhere on this thing?" Quinn said after a second unsuccessful try at rolling the door upward.

Rafferty swore under his breath, then elbowed Quinn aside. The punker pulled upward on the door handle, his far thicker muscles straining against his mustard-splotched T-shirt. The door began slowly rolling upward, shrieking and squealing in protest all the while until it finally came to a halt, jammed maybe three feet off the ground.

Quinn made a rude gesture at the stubborn door. He'd never had this kind of trouble getting it open when he and the guys had stashed the goodies in here for Mr. Conroy. It's almost like something in there doesn't want to be found.

The punk yanked again at the door, which remained stubbornly immobile. He stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Dunno if 1 really want to see what you're keeping in here, anyway. “

"Then don't look," Quinn said, getting onto his back so he could slide under the partially open door. Though he hadn't anticipated having to crawl into the storage locker, he'd come prepared with a flashlight, mainly to make sure he didn't overlook anything of value that might have been tucked into one of the storage shed's dark corners.

Rafferty started crawling in after him, shining a flashlight of his own into the darkness. "Uh-uh. This place belongs to me. If you or your boss has turned this space into something outta Silence oj the Lambs, then I wanna know about it. Before the cops show up askin' questions' Quinn thought about that for a moment. Rafferty usually could be counted on to look the other way when it came to contraband… especially when he knew that said contraband was shortly to disappear from the premises. And Quinn wasn't fool enough to stash Conroy's body here. At this moment, Mr. C's getting up dose and personal with the East River 's marine life, he thought.

"Suit yourself," Quinn said aloud. He rose to his feet once he was all the way inside the dark chamber and shined the flashlight around at the heaps of crates and boxes that lined the walls and covered much of the concrete floor.

There seemed to be a lot more crates and boxes in there than he'd remembered. Quinn realized that this might take a lot longer than he'd anticipated. Then, with a curse, he understood why.

"Hey, I don't think all of this stuff is mine," Quinn said. Hastily, he added, "I mean, Mr. Conroy's. “

In the crossed beams of the two flashlights, Quinn could see that Rafferty hadn't noticed his slip. In fact, the punker now looked somewhat guilty.

Quinn moved closer to Rafferty. The punker might have been bigger, but he was also pretty easy to intimidate. "Hey, Rafe, you been doubling up on storage spaces again? “

"I hadda move some stuff around, just for this week. I was running out of space, and I had some paying customers to please. I gotta make a living, too, you know. “

"Maybe you'd like to explain that to Mr. Conroy," Quinn said, enjoying making the punk squirm. Sure, Mr. C was dead, but Rafferty didn't know that yet.

Quinn saw Rafferty's eyes go as wide as pizza pans, even in the semidarkness. "Nothing's gone missing, man. I promise. It was just, you know, a temporary move, that's all. I just pushed your stuff farther back into the shed, behind some of these crates from that Langley outfit. “

" Langley?" Quinn said, feeling a jolt of dread. "Sounds like FBI to me. “

Rafferty emitted a dismissive chortle. " Langley 's some Hollywood guy, you dope. Actors and musicians and like that. “

Gotta stop jumping at shadows, Quinn thought, rubbing his jaw. But as he considered the stuck metal door, his suspicions rose again. If Raje really just finished moving all this stuff in here, then why all this trouble getting the damn door open? When he shone his light toward the ceiling he immediately saw the problem. One of the stacks of crates was piled so high that it interfered with the track into which the shed's upward-rolling metal door was supposed to slide.